i got to introduce to erika a

few years ago, quite a few years ago, actually, through mutual and begin asking like, what are you interested writing? what are you studying? what is it like to be you? basically that's that's usually how i start conversations and through that conversation i got introduced a little bit to her scholarly. i was really interested then bringing professor turner to a talk to the state of wisconsin. so i invited her to be in our leadership series through the state of wisconsin and the conversation was very engaging, very relevant to time a couple

of years ago and to relevance to today. and also, folks really to the content, to the scholarly questions and to your findings. so i want to invite you to the space to a little bit about who you are and to share the context of your book. thank you so much. yes, please applaud. all right. thanks much, ananda, and thank you, everyone, for being here. i see colleagues and former students and neighbors and friends and children that belong me. so it's really fun to have of you here in one room. i as ananda mentioned i'm currently an associate professor in at the university of wisconsin, where i teach courses on education policy and, politics and my research over the last 15 years i've looked at how school district leaders have responded to increasing and inequality in their schools, and

this work has culminated in the book that we're talking about today, suddenly diverse. the root of this project was my dissertation at uc berkeley in my concern for racial equity in education in and a question about why people who profess to believe in equity then act in ways that undermine that purported conviction. perhaps this wasn't available. i come from a black a chinese-american family where education civil rights and urban development were regular topics in car rides and dinner time conversation. i began thinking about equity in schooling. when i was about ten years old. just like that child over there and poised to enter school in the late 1980s in san francisco. so i was assigned to attend a very sought after on the other side of town. it was a school my mother had attended 30 years earlier, but when visited at this time, found that it was highly tracked with all the black students in the lower track classes were located in the school basement.

the other the district at that time was under a court order to desegregate schools and part that order was that they would reconstitute low performing schools and in particular one in the mission district, which is a predominant italy, mexican and central american neighborhood, and that had previously been underserved and now was had a new kind of more highly skilled with a social justice mission and what we would call now a culturally relevant curriculum the school was wonderful, but it raised for me a new question why had it taken a lawsuit achieve this in this purportedly liberal place? why were there that were still allowed to persist? these early questions for me years later, after i attended college, i became a middle school teacher, traveled with my husband and returned to the bay to attend graduate school. i started working with a professor who was studying decision making central district offices, and i'd been following discussions, expanding bilingual

education in san francisco with a multiracial and multiethnic student population. i got really interested in what were the motivations around how the schools tried serve diverse student bodies. but then called in wisconsin. and i started looking for a new project. indeed, like the multiracial multi-ethnic san francisco that i grew up districts across the country becoming more diverse in gentrifying central cities, in diversifying suburbs and in wisconsin, smaller, including two cities that i call mill town and fairview. that's not the real names. local newspapers there heralded the news. more kids of color and greater poverty. now the presence of people of color was not new in 2008, and either of these cities indeed, in wisconsin, indigenous have been here since time immemorial. but too many in leadership positions in these predominantly white and middle class communities. it felt suddenly diverse. and i wanted to know more about

how school district leaders making sense, were making sense of and responding to these new conditions in their schools. why were they responding in particular ways? to find out, i started studying fairview in milltown. milltown was a working traditionally manufacturing based wisconsin city with a conservative political orientation and anti immigrant politics. so when i went to milltown, for example, they had been kind of transitioning out of, well, paying manufacturing jobs that were being bought. those corporations are being bought up by global conglomerates, often do unionize. and then some people were getting higher paid manufacturing jobs and others were being filtered into newly. do unionized food processing work, which was very dangerous and also was part of what brought immigrant. then they recruited immigrant labor for that. but that was also a place then that generated an anti-immigrant politics. so they had anti de labor in laws and english only ordinances in the area. this was a district of about

20,000 students in fairview in contrast, it was a similarly sized but a relatively well-resourced community with more middle class population and a reputation for liberal politics, espousing values of equity and inclusion. so, for example, that ordinance at city had an ordinance since the 1960s that that was to guarantee a nondiscrimination city services along lines of race class, gender, etc. starting in 2008, i began interviewing people in fairview in milltown including 37 school district superette assistant superintendent, central office administrators, school board members and the like. i also interviewed from across communities, including civic leaders, leaders of color and some school sites that i attended, about 107 hours, probably a little bit more of meetings, mainly school meetings, but also public meetings and meetings within these central offices of these school systems. i took a lot of notes. i ultimately collected over 270

documents, and later i analyzed those as well. and that was things like newspaper reports, local community reports, blog posts that were being generated in these places at the time. what i learned actually really surprised you'd expect these two different places would do different things in response to a demographic change. yet they basically both come to a similar response. so in leaders in both districts were basically adopting business like practices as a means to respond their increasing racial and ethnic diversity and increasing inequality in their systems as a way to illustrate this idea, i'd like to share you a scene that i observed in milltown the more working class traditionally manufacturing and conservative school district. so i read from the book a little bit. it was about 8 p.m. in milltown just a few days before thanksgiving 2009 and retains was about to give the last

principals report of the evening a school board member introduced him as a veteran of one trimester of edgar elementary, which had been a principal at the school for only a few months. in fact, he'd only been a principal for a few months. the school board members seemed eager to hear how things were going rich, said i'm proud to be a new member of edgar elementary. i am not alone. challenges. we have eight new staff at edgar high socioeconomic status disadvantage, and we have a transient population. harriet, the board president him about this transients, he responded. we probably average 2 to 3 students a week at the end of the year. there are probably 20 to 30% turnover transients or transient. c were the terms people in the district used to talk about midyear student transfer in and out of the schools, often due to housing instability, racism, poverty, precarity at its roots. it wasn't just principal haynes's challenge. all three principals that evening presented to the school

board about similar challenges. but richard lee said that his goal for the year was getting better at using data. we have have clear learning targets. that's my passion as we are starting to analyze our goals, we are getting better at that, he noted. data showing numbers of students in special education. he called these the brutal facts, but he saw some hope in that data. rich noted that reading test scores for latino students and students identified as english learners had been improving each year. they already started in a hole, but each year we are closing a gap. now we need to figure out what we're doing and how to bring this to the rest of our populations. rich explained that he had applied for a supplemental grant to do this work. the board stayed another. there were a student council report to hear a budget strategy to address expected 2 to $8 million deficit. a report that wisconsin school finance was ninth worst in the country a bill that would require school districts to report all spending over $25. when the meeting adjourned, the

school board members cheerfully wished each other a happy thanksgiving and pleased with what had just transpired they headed out into the night. so what had just happened i mean, my mind was like exploding at this moment, but it was also really mundane. it was just like another school meeting that was happening. well, the principals then had just recounted serious poverty and enormous turnover in their or this transient city, as they called it, of predominantly low income of color in their schools. they hinted at a bevy of challenges, including funding teacher turnover, unmet needs and the school board discussion at the end the night spoke to large and ongoing deficits state government that was attempting to exert greater control over the school systems, making it harder for them to do their work. hearing the situation as said for rich made me disturbed, but they had left feeling at seemed pretty good about things i saw

them. they saw the meeting making progress against educational inequity. they many people there and elsewhere. what was happening as eliminating the achievement gaps all over middletown school board members were doing something kind of similar to i just kind of described they were adopting performance monitoring that sought to collect and and report academic performance data as a way to address the challenges and the circumstances they were facing. they were examining this through new professional development, that kind of rated teachers or had them set goals based on standardized data and were looking at their school based data as groups kind of in the schools and this is just really common at a teacher that hasn't done something like this this point in time. so they were adopting these kinds of strategies as well as ones like marketing diversity and developing schools like international baccalaureate to

meet new customer demand. but it wasn't just milltown, fairview. well, it it that will it's a relatively well resourced community with the middle class population and the liberal values. they were doing something remarkably similar, including evaluations of their strategic goals district and district programs, reports of the state of the district and all sorts of new assessments. there were also planning to market their diversity. what was happening in fairview, in milltown represents a broader phenomenon that's happening in school districts across the country, inspiring these business inspired means of operating schools and viewing these efforts as i think, oddly new, more effective means of addressing racial diversity and inequality in their schools i call this broader phenomenon race evasive managerialism, race evasive, managerial m is a way of leading public institutions like public schools that takes its cue from business,

specifically corporate and entrepreneurial business models. so you might think about previous iterations of schools being modeled on a factory model, right? it's a business so you can see how business becomes attractive to people in schooling. but in this this case or in this kind of iteration in its corporate and entrepreneurial of business in particular. so things like generic management skills, quantitative measurement of outcomes for decision making as well as and marketing as means for guiding organizations. and these approaches, again, are common across across different districts, not just these two, but then i argue that and others have pointed out that these kinds of approaches, when they do not address fact, that they exist within and already an unequal society or not explicitly designed to address that those approaches can allow

existing to persist. and it may amplify them. this is consistent with the common ways people. think about racism today. sometimes called what people have called as colorblind racism. so when we think about how most people think about racism today, they define it as the aberrant views of a few extreme individuals rather than as a widely embedded social or economic or political system. they think of racism as mostly something that happened in the past and instead racial inequality is posited as a result of or the of racial inequality are positive as a result of individuals or groups deficiencies. so while enduring systemic racism is often minimized, people become invested in seeming they're not racist. and i think the best example this is donald trump. donald trump has notably said that he is the least racist person alive, even as he has

significantly eroded the rights and safety of people of color, disabled people, people living in poverty, immigrants through his words and actions, organizations and individuals do something similar, though they latch on what others have called official antifa racism, notions like inclusion, diverse groups, or eliminating achievement gaps that are framed as anti-racism but do little to nothing to challenge or deconstruct existing systems of oppression. giving their get so okay moment sorry. so they don't they don't. they do not get at the roots of the problem in other words. right. it's kind of a little bit like sometimes people call happy talk given these two different places, they're different resources, they're different political environments. you might expect that mill town and fairview would have fundamentally different approaches to racism and inequality they generally did

not. why was this? to find out. i traced two policies in each of these two districts, and they found that these kinds of approaches. the performance monitoring or the marketing and trying to attract new customers are merged as district leaders tried to navigate what were really increasingly untenable situations, especially if you had a large population of students of color or low income students. but they usually tried to do this without, confronting the existing inequalities in their systems and that route, actual educational inequalities that we sometimes call the achievement gap. so they faced a lot of different challenges. this included the changing demographics and growing inequality and remember that. so this was 2008. it was the great recession, right? so not only were many people out of jobs or financially precarious, but state governments were also really ailing. and part of their response to that was cut budgets within schools as. well, but in addition to that,

they were facing pressures from accountability systems. the one in place at that time was no child left behind and open school choice policies, accountability systems they were doing is they would say, if you're not your test scores for each of the groups within your school system, and the more groups more diverse you are, the more groups you have each one has to be going up. and every year bar is raising. if three years your your schools are not achieving those targets they get increasingly serious sanctions, including eventually being turned or reconstituted. so this was one pressure, another one was open enrollment, which is a form of school choice that we have in wisconsin. it gets less attention than vouchers or charters, but it operates very similarly. it makes market out of schools and essentially in wisconsin, if you can transport your child to different district, you can stay in your home, but you can send them out of state. what happened out of district. and when you do that money from

the sending district gets transferred to the receiving district in wisconsin. we had kind of a safeguard on that. but that raised over every few years. so at the time of this, the whole safeguard was going to come off. and then as many students as wanted could go and lakeview, they had sorry, in fairview, they had tried to address this through a desegregation plan. but with the supreme decision, parents involved in community schools, they began to feel that that would be and so they could no longer rely upon that as a way to kind of staunch this concern about exit. so they wanted to deal with all of these challenges, but they wanted to do it without making people mad, and particularly so they were being asked to, do more with less under these conditions. they knew they had just, you know, originally kind of early 2000, mid 2000s. they tried to somewhat deeper

changes to the schools. so they put into new training, put into new training programs for teachers and that kind of thing. but they soon found resistance from predominantly white privileged families or from their predominantly white teachers who were about those changes and and raised objections over time. the district leaders emerged, embraced instead, made these managerial approaches as solutions that appeared to help them achieve their equity equity games in these difficult but without upsetting teachers and and these families and they didn't want to upset them not because they thought that they were right fact they were very critical of them and they thought both groups were basically racist. but they also felt that their schools were had to respond because of the fiscal and political support that the schools relied upon from those.

so in adopting these race managerial approaches, instead they began to try it. this is how they tried to navigate through this kind of muddy waters. and you see. district leaders viewed these approaches as a way to address inequity, garnering and maintaining support for public schools. but i want to ultimately suggest that they didn't either raise the voice of managerialism undermines equity, and it also public schooling. so let me speak to the racism first. first, you can think of these kinds of approaches using language of diversity or of reducing achievement gaps as ways to justify policies that perpetuate inequity. they leave the existing systems in place, but they also distract from other things that they could have been doing their time and resources, things that might have made a bigger difference in student lives. and perhaps most importantly,

under this approach, racial comes to mean raising test scores. it comes to be understood as promoting diversity marketing, comes to be seen as promoting diversity or keeping public schools afloat rather than another approach. in other words, inequity is reframing as equity racism reframe, as anti-racism, but they're also undermining public schools. so i would argue that they're doing this in a couple of ways. first, managerial policies follow a logic of efficiency and customer service rather than of public service or of equity. but they also, in moving to these concerns, reflect their own centering of the concerns and educational visions of their predominantly white and wealthier constituents teachers and the families and. moreover, in undermining the racial equity, as i would say, they were doing, they also undermine the legitimacy of public schools, because as much as they are already systemically as in in ways that perpetuate

inequality, they are also very much legitimate as places that should do just the opposite. that should be kind of how we think of addressing inequity in our systems. so to undermine that is also to undermine public schooling. a final story i think will help make this clear and this the way that these kinds of can undermine equity and democracy in schools. so a respected professional political actor in fairview, holyoke was known as an advocate for latino communities. i often saw him rushing into political and community meetings after work, still wearing a sport coat and tie or sweater vest for years. julio, a fairview latina advocacy group he worked with, had been involved, along with many other parents, nonprofit leaders and local advocates, in getting the area school districts, to pay attention to the growing student population in their midst. the latino students, many of

whom but not all of whom were immigrants in particular, was involved with efforts to promote bilingual education for spanish speaking youth in fairview county, he recalled the years it had taken to get the first dual language immersion bilingual program approved in the district. now, the situation was different, with increased demand for foreign language instruction from monolingual english, white families and a district desire to halt white flight. a school board decision to dual language immersion, bilingual programs to fairview schools came pretty easily, and julio said, unfortunately, you have heard it before, reflecting back on this earlier decision to expand the daily program, voice turned to my core. oh my gosh, 50% of the students in the district are students of color. we have to stop the flight. he chuckled at this constant school district focus on white middle class families, but continued seriously. there's always been a there oh, we don't want to really scare

the majority community but the other side is he said. but we need to recognize that this new demographic of kids is entitled to a good education as anybody else. we have practices that can help them. julio recognized fairview district leaders had hoped to use language immersion programs to attract and predominantly white middle class families to fairview. it was part their efforts to market the schools as a positive heavily diverse place. it his motivation. but he saw there were some strategic benefits to his cause. we actually leverage the voice of those who do a traditionally or have traditionally had a voice into giving us an opportunity to have a voice. it was unfortunate that it had to happen, he said that way. but the school board decision was made to expand a language immersion, not because we asked them, but because they asked him, julio said, emphasizing the influence of white families who wanted more dual language immersion programs and which had

influence over school board members who didn't want to scare that community. however julio accepted pragmatically that unequal responsiveness was part of the racial politics involved in securing these programs, and he and expected that they would develop bilingualism, reinforcing let latinas students cultures and offer english learners greater access to academic content schools, which is what the research suggests happens. while this example could be seen as a win, as some people call it, interest conversion, obviously something good bringing together these different strands of desires. it was also an example of how school district leaders valued and responded to the desires of white middle class families as valued customers. expanding those programs when it viewed as a model that was of interest to them better educational programs for latino students in spanish dominant children. when it's on the. in other words, they were only or mostly interested in when was

on the terms of what was acceptable and desirable for white families. in other words, it how this decision beneficial though it may be, was also an example of voice and inequitable educational opportunity in fairview and a bit happy with the outcomes as he was. julio garcia knew it. so it's one of the first book length critical race analyzes of school district policy. i hope that this book suddenly diverse helps us recognize and understand than race and inequality is very central to how we make decisions. school districts and to be able think critically about what are the directions for it from here. thank you. there was a phenomenal

introduction about you and the navigation of learning the data and oftentimes we think about data as numbers and you made a point to highlight the stories as a place of data and, then draw conclusions and analysis and you really got us deep into the analysis part. i wanted to start this conversation with you, erika, lifting up the provocative title of standardly diverse and for people of color that's not what we would describe happening yet the this phenomena of we we're where all those people came from. did they just move here? where do they. we don't know who they are. is is a the phenomena that i

see. i have definitely experienced that in madison. and i see that throughout the state. can you talk to us a little bit about the title, the i guess, about to lift up the the term incongruity, which bring a lot in the book? the incongruence is of experiences of people of color, students of color and families of color as it relates to the title of the book. yeah. yeah, that's that's great. thank you for that question. and under so and you can also chime in i think with what you've seen as a school board member and other educator in other positions. so i actually kind of my i think i told you this my editor wanted the book to be called suddenly diverse and i did not want that because i said it's not suddenly diverse. one of the points i'm trying to make in book. and she said, well, it'll sell books, and then you can explain that. so let me let me explain. so basically, you know, i think if you look back in both the

cities and their histories are different and they're distinct, i talk about them because there are these but there are also interesting things that are different in the two places. but of them had histories of having students of color. it just wasn't really attention to till it got to about 40 or 50% of the student population and in each place. and also until accountability policy pressure was made them pay attention. but there had been communities of color in both places for a long time. district leaders who were predominant white were not from these communities, and they basically weren't paying attention. and they say this like before this. we didn't really realize we didn't pay attention to it. we didn't know. now, i mean, communities of color knew that their students were not being served well. and there was a lot of data, you know, in the documents that i looked at where they talk about this within their media or in their communities is the way that students were being underserved in fairview, specifically african students. but in both places. and i think you know, why is

this well, i mean, part of it it just goes to speaks to who is in charge of the schools. part of it is how demographic changes happening in the u.s. even so so, we have been a predominantly white country in these places. they were predominantly white cities and because of birthrates and movement in the schools were the first places to see some of this growth. so if you weren't associated with the schools, you might not know about it because schools were and still are in both places, diverse than the general population. and i think this is because who votes and who agrees to pay more money for the schools is different than for who is being served in schools. right. and that is what the districts need is they need those who vote and can vote and who pay property taxes to continue to to do so. but these inequities were not new and, you know, it's telling that they did think it was suddenly diverse. there's a second part to your study question, and i don't i know i have other questions, but

what just shared because you in your sharing of parts of the book and just now you mentioned this word majority, which i associate to a mathematical analysis. right. we're really talking about 51%. and but that's really not what we're talking about because we are talking when we're not talking about numbers necessarily, we're talking about influence, which is what speak to. you referenced bodies of work of the hoarding and the influence of white families that tend to be largely connected to the aspect of education which, all of its political. but they will the loudest voice, the majority of votes, the the people that are driving money because they say to you and your face, i'll leave. i'll leave the district. and i was like, oh, get going.

that happens the time. like any time families. and so that's interesting because they know this. so and you can tell they know because they're threatening to do it. so i think that, you know, that district people, superintendents, school board members would say that all the time while they're threatening to leave. i mean that's why it was a concern for them. mm hmm. and and they you know, i think there is a good question about whether white flight is actually a real concern that they should have or not for a number of reasons. but that was kind of a power that was being wielded. i think, to your point, and i think i'd like to think not so much about because i, i actually don't agree with the notion of white flight much. and i don't think the historical records shows that to be the case. but i think what it signals is who has power in the system. and that's where we should really be paying attention to because it could be it could be privileged that are people of

color, too, that could be doing this. and there's a history of that in various places as well. so what i mean by that is if we think about how our school districts are set up, and this was the case for both of these places. you often have a city district and then it's surrounded by other districts. each of those has its own governance structure. but i think more importantly, its funding structure. and that funding is based upon where people live. and so therefore, how much money is available to your schools very much is reflecting how much property wealth there is in that place. and when people who have money move to a different place, not only do they take the enrollment money that comes with that student being enrolled in that district, but they may also be affecting a property in different places. actually, it's sometimes more important than really housing prices is corporate taxation. and so i think that's important to distinguish, too. so why i kind of say this notion of white flight is not exactly the thing i want people to focus on. and the idea of like i white families just being racist, which was very convenient for

district leaders as a like as a target to argue against. but what is the system that enabled them to wield their power in that way to get what they wanted. and that's not a power that is available to low income families or to families of color. it's not available to them because that was usually who was representing them on the school board. so school board members would talk all the time about, well, when i see so-and-so in the grocery store or my neighbors are, you know, getting on my case about this, well, who are they living to and who do they know and see in the grocery store? right. is not equally distributed across those people who who have kids in the schools while okay, we're going to have to be here all day y'all, because this is a lot. i really appreciate it. i'm just going to stretch from your comment and i want to take us to the doing the right thing. right, which you mention here. you mention in the book and the leaders that you interview. we're also talking about that. one of the things that in the when i was in the school board and my colleagues would say the community wants the community,

that i would just always like raise my hand in terms like which community are we talking about? right. who we're talking about. because if we're talking about your community, right. white, middle class, upper middle class, working in corporate wisconsin, you know, like, like if you're talking about your community then i, i can understand your concerns of your community because that's not what people are having concerns in our in my community. i have recently this is real story y'all i have recently heard state leader sharing their concern about getting sued and when i hear about that which is connected to the white flight, i hear about white people suing the state y, people suing the district. why is white people suing the schools. what i don't hear is the fear of brown, black and indigenous families and the organizations

that they associated suing and putting that pressure on and accountability. in fact, so much so that when we see brown and black families leaving, are we criminalize that? we say, how dare you, black family, go to take your kid to a private school? how dare you? brown black, take your child. create your own school. how dare you do that? why? and and i want to stick to to this conversation about doing the right thing, because i do believe that majority of educators have in their minds and their hearts, they want to do the right thing. and they're doing that right thing or they're they're pursuing the the doing the right thing is in the racialized control text of their school district, state or whatnot. you mention the tension of racial equity. within the structures, they

ability to change those structures or the influence, right. the incongruence is of influence of changing those structures and little we see the change when everything all the organization still the same and all we're doing. we're going to look at the data. we're going to ask for more data, we're going to ask folks, we're going to do another and whatnot. can you talk us a little bit about how you navigated that specifically as a parent of, you know, brown and children easy question. yeah, it's hard to know where to start there. i mean, i think it's maybe if you haven't seen it in schools like this idea of looking at data is just really, really common. and i'm not against that. i mean, that's my job is to look at evidence and research. but there's a lot it doesn't actually tell you that you want to know here, but you might be able to for different i mean because mostly the data that people are looking at is standardized test data in math and reading.

so you're learning on particular data what students kind of know or don't know. you know, it's just it's very fraught, though, like as a parent. so i think that's limited because it doesn't tell you what you should do instead. right. and that's a point about managerial approaches. there's no professional educational knowledge that comes with looking at data. i mean, you could have that, but it's not required. and that's why it's also sometimes attractive to administrators. oh, sorry. that's that's why it's sometimes attractive to administrators, because you don't actually it can kind of you a role, even if you know anything about education. so, you know, and so this like just in madison, we see this more and more tests and that kind of thing. and i, i really feel a little conflicted about it because on the one hand, like it's kind of a waste of and that's my like that's my take away around a lot of this performance monitoring. is there be a certain amount of it that's useful but mostly when people get that information

don't actually do anything different. and even if they did something different, what basis? right. because the data doesn't tell you what to do. and so we've got our kids and they're taking all these tests and they could be learning other things. they could be learning something right rather than how to take a test. but, you know, a lot of times it's not that particular teacher's fault. teachers also may object to it. and these are the pressures that coming down. so i think in some ways that's you know, but what the leaders are also kind of facing. so, you know, i think what to try to think about is like, what's the bigger picture here beyond just this particular day or this kind of thing? and what is it that i want could probably send in like in these districts, like, for example, in middletown, what they would do is the suburban districts were also losing population and student population. and so what they were doing is they had started advertising to students to get students to come

from middletown down into the suburban districts. right. it was a market what the what the policy allowed it facilitated that even more so already existed. and then would offer that your kids could take gifted and talented classes everybody i forget what i call a prairie town could be gifted and talent was pleasantville right? and but that was their way to get families there. and it was, you know, a a calculation that was no, but i think. is that what we really care about and want for what our learn. and for me that's kind what guides it is not just like my own children, but thinking more broadly about like public education, why i in it, why i study it is because i think it's really more about our society in the kind of place we want to be. and so i'm not thinking as much. also, my children are do wonderfully. you do all do very well in school and i'm proud of you and you read a lot but i think also because you know we just that's that's the that if the test scores are not how i measure what's a good school i want see

like not only that my own children are doing well on those kinds of things, but more broadly are they're learning to be kind of good people citizens. do they know about history so they can understand what's happening in our world today and those kinds of things as well. well, do they know about history. right. that is a that's an important and somewhat controversial conversation. think. but yes, in 2023, i want us to move to the race this evasiveness terminology that you introduce in the book. i mean i've heard different folks different scholars talk about that i don't think that we talk enough about that about that term. i don't think people understand deeply, in particular a historic echo in institutional context. context of that terminology. but what i really appreciate was your analysis is to parallel to a managerial business, a

corporate framework like the competition, the marketing, the outcomes the in what it was, what i find it to be interesting in particular to your last comment around we know that data but we're not changing anything because corporate world they know that data they will do things otherwise they become irrelevant. in fact, when one of the most common questions that i got the two times that i ran for office was what are you going to do about voucher schools? and i said, i'm not going to do anything about voucher schools. like i'm not a state. what i want to do about the schools to ensure that brown black families don't leave and no other child, the school district is to make the school district better for everyone. right. and so but that's not what's happening. we have the data even in majority brown black school district like madison is that decisions are not there.

so can you talk to us a little bit about the business model? what was in your findings? how you navigating that and how our leaders navigating that? because part of the business model is the dehumanization of people and including the educators. i mean, you know, there's a chapter that's not written or it's kind of written, but it's not in the book. and that was just because the book had to be published. but it it talks about there were places in each of the districts where there were people who really in these central offices, but also some, you know, school leaders in different teachers. it wasn't a policy, but they were really trying to make connections to families to have families have a voice. and especially families of color or marginalized families have a voice in the way things were done. but the managerial approach is antithetical to that. the managerial approach puts the decision making power in the hands of the manager who is not a professional educator or doesn't have to be and is in a

family with, a child with a stake in it. and so you know when i was just giving a talk about book on i guess it was yesterday in michigan to two educational researchers and that makes educational researchers or people in the department of public instruction or federal government, you know, kind of complicit because we actually benefit from all the focus on the numbers because that's our job. and we can get grants from it. and we can study i mean, it's not what i do, but just in that area. so i think that's kind of you have to understand that part of what's driving it is that there are people whose job it is to do these things or who gain from a part of that. but that giving that or recognizing the expertise other actors, including teachers and families, is a way that kind of challenges that. and then there was that in places but if you're always trying to do what's most efficient right how to raise

test scores the fastest or how to just attract the most customers, it will always reinforce the existing inequalities because they'll the fastest way to test scores is to attract kids who have higher test scores. you see that in new orleans when they have this like, you know, fully market based school system. and what they do, they try to attract students with higher test scores. they don't try to actually improve their schools, which was the theory of how it would work to have school choice. so, you know, i think that is just that approach will never get you. because and so it's with the marketing, it's the marketing, the test where they're very tightly intertwined. usually wow. okay. we don't have time to get too much deep into that because i do want to hear from you all, and this is how we're going to do that. but i ask one more question and why i'm asking that question. i want to invite all to think about what question you want to ask dr. eric sterner. and i want to ask you to not pontificate. i know you have amazing opinions

about all the things that we're talking about, but we're going to stick to the question. i was given permission to interrupt you and i will use that that. erica, what your vision for educational equity and this data wisconsin. well, thank you so much for asking me that question. we have 2 minutes. so, you know, when i collected the book, really it was a long time. the data for the book a long time ago had a few children, was on the job you know, on the job and so forth. but a lot of things were also changing during that time. and the way i thought about it then and changed really a lot. and one of the, you know, different among the things that were happening, especially as the book was coming out, trump had been elected we had no longer child left behind, but what was supposed to a more flexible accountability system. i don't think that's really turned out to change what people do in schools at all. so things like that were happening, but there also a lot

more attention to, i think, especially after covid. but it didn't start then with organizing people, organizing against prisons like prison abolition and the movement for black lives and what those people have to do because they really want a different system, especially prison abolitionists. they have to think really differently about what that looks like and think about. so what are you actually going? and so i think there's actually really great ideas in some of those movements about what it could, how things could look otherwise. so, you know, for example, when you think like i think community care actually, which we talked a little bit about before, is a great idea for rethinking what in part we're trying to achieve in some other work with a colleague, alex freydis, at the university of connecticut. we've kind of been thinking about like from that idea of integration, which was really prominent, especially in fairview, as a way to achieve equity, kind of before

managerial approach. but that often was about moving kids around in practice and in in about achieving. but there's other things, as you were mentioning before. so beyond kind of the numbers or the resources, what do schools offer, whose knowledge is valued? what kind of learning do we want to have? and that, i think, has to be part of how we think about what educational equity is, whose culture was our valued, and that not one is valued over others, but that there's actually equal status accorded to those. and if there were, you would see that like parents of all different groups would be welcomed into schools and seen as positively contributing to kids education. and then you would see that the curriculum itself would reflect that. and right now, largely it doesn't still. and then the other thing you would see, i think, is that participation piece that everyone would have an equal say over what their kids education looks like or how everyone who had a stake in that way. right. which is actually all of us would have, you know, equal power to affect what that looks like.

so now when i do more of my research, i mean i don't know if these who are none of them are actually none of these people are actually still in their offices, which is another interesting thing. i think within five years, almost everybody was gone. and but would they ever like, let me and again, no, but i think like the the thing that actually holds my promise for me a lot more is thinking about like how parents and families and communities organize and push against this because they ultimately have the most stake in having change, right? others a lot of stake in keeping it the same so well, that's a that's an amazing way wrap up the conversation that having in transition to questions from folks around who has that stake to make change right and the energy especially when we think about folks leaving the buildings, living leaving the district and leaving the profession altogether. so i will say this one thing as

a as a woman of color working for the state of wisconsin, i've been working for the state for six years, and i'm one of the veterans women of color. and that's scary to think because six years is like one administration by so oc who's ready to ask a question and i'm going to ask you to use your educator voice and i'll repeat the question. yeah, go ahead. oh, there's a is a microphone. look at this. we're already here. thank you school is bad. public policy. all right. we're going to turn the microphone on. but but the question was voucher schools right? is voucher school a bad i mean, it depends what your goals are for schools. i think if your goals are to siphon money from schooling into private hands, then yes. and it's a great, great mechanism for redistributing wealth back to wealthy from the state. and that's largely what they're

doing. if you want to know more about it, you should really. it's also a resegregating factor. i'll be introducing at 4 p.m. today. kara fitzpatrick, who is going to talk about her book, i think it's called the death of public schools, and it's trying to trace the voucher movements. i think you know, she would be a great place. if you're interested in that, to look more at that. but i guess one of my points is, is vouchers is that thing and the evidence really abysmal about. the educational attainment students in those schools as well. so, i mean, just on those basis, i don't think it's like a good use of money in voucher schools. but you are taking money that i mean, most of the people in wisconsin, for example, that are taking advantage of school vouchers already had their children either, never had their children school or already had their children in private school. so it's essentially subsidizing private school. the idea early on was that it would be used to help low income kids. that's really not how it works right now. so but i think there's other

mechanisms that don't work that differently. and the one that i'm pointing to in the book is around inter-district open enrollment. okay. especially with virtual schools. now, you can essentially send your to any other school district. and so some of the districts, especially those who need funds, have started these virtual schools. virtual schools are really bad. on the whole, the evidence for like just students learning anything abysmal. part of that might be who chooses to their child to a virtual school because it may be that the school already is not working for that kid. but in general, really bad response rate. and so it's kind of like a little bit or perceived as a way to make money for certain districts. but kids don't get an education and this then can take funds for the districts who might need more. do we have time for one more question one more question

because you know, i can be here all day. yes. i even heard. she didn't want wanted to do that. so sorry. i was trying to help you all. it's fine. i'm you mentioned that your title for the book. i would like to hear more about your title and not the editor's title. and why did you chose that i mean, why did you fell in love with that title that you couldn't put to the book? oh, well, you know what? actually, i'm horrible at titles. i didn't have a good alternative, which is partly why i had to go with it. and i just trusted is a person who's good at their job and they know what they're doing. and i can explain it. so i don't i didn't have a good alternative. i wasn't comfortable with putting out there because so much of what i'm writing about is like, it's important how we talk about things and, you know, many people will never read this book. most will never read it. and i think, you know, so i didn't want to kind of put out idea that these places were

suddenly diverse, which is not actually what i but i do spend like at least a chapter a good part of a chapter explaining, how we get the diversity. it's not just like people coming from chicago is often how the story was told in these two places. but really about global movements of people to the united states more broadly because this is happening, it's about changing age age cohorts, giving birth, etc. it's about also and then there's other things. the economic changes are not like people thought about it often as like poor people are coming here. but it was the great recession and also wisconsin has been a stronghold for middle class manufacturing jobs. and at that moment, those were largely being bought up by international global conglomerates and then unionized. so those good paying jobs were no longer good pain. it used to be, i think, like six out of the top ten middle class community was like there was like a majority middle class here in wisconsin. and that's not anymore. i mean, that's not just a

wisconsin story, but it's particularly evident here. and so the things that people were thinking was like about those people coming here as opposed to these broader kind of trends and process that were under that were underneath that and that weren't like individual families or kids. i mean, individual families and kids were coming and experiencing this, but so i just worried that and i think, you know, the other thing that i spent quite a bit of time is just critiquing the of diversity as the way we should think about what's happening rather than and as a focus of what we need versus like equity or justice and so but, you know, now there's much more critique out there about the like there can be a kind of certain fast illness to, these notions like diversity that don't to it. so i think it makes sense to people to question that. but i didn't want the argument is somewhat different so i didn't want it to be

misunderstood. and my hope that then it does attract people who see those things and then they kind of think differently about it. and all my work really is, is trying to do that, is trying to think, help us think about like contribute to paul is what i call policy knowledge contribute to how we think about what are the problems of equity or what are the problems that we're actually trying to address. because i think if we get those wrong, then we don't know how to move in the right way. that's incredible. i want to wrap our time with challenging the folks here and folks are listening to this recording to say when we talk about people influence and people with power is us, right? and so please do purchase 5 to 10 copies of book and share with your colleagues. share with parents, share with the school district, whether in madison or whatever you grew up or, you know, districts across the state are hurting financial bully and could really benefit

from from this incredible donation. lastly, i want to thank the public library for all the organizer, the volunteers, the leadership here, the wisconsin book festival, too, the amazing recording crew that's here, the media that's here. and to all of you that came to join us, amazing conversation and you to you, professor erica turner, for writing this book. your courage. what this book and then being here with us. thank you, everyone. yeah. the the year is 2013. we are in providence, rhode island. it the middle of winter, snow and ice fall as far as the human can see and