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>> comcast supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> book tv's author interview program chalk beat editor care fitzpatrick looks at the school choice movement and the future of education in america. she is interviewed by a washington post education reporter. afterwards is a weekly interview program with relevant guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest work. moriah: hi, it's so wonderful to be here talking with you today about your book. i want to first say what an extraordinary achievement. this book is the most authoritative history i've ever read of the school choice movement. ovement is so thoroughly researched it really it really feels encyclopedic to me. almost like it is everything you would ever need to know. i wanted to first ask, i'm obviously familiar with your incredible work

it is so thoroughly researched, it really feels encyclopedic to me, almost. it is everything you would ever need to know. i wanted to first ask, i'm obviously very familiar with your incredible work as an education reporter, and they know a lot of education reporters have these ice movemenn i was reporting about segregation in florida and as part of that reporting, we interviewed our team interviewed just dozens of families that were essentially trying to escape the segregated sort of low schools in this particular county in florida. and i was i was sort of struck by what the options were. you know, there other public schools potentially magnets, potentially charter schools and. then some of the kids were using school vouchers to go to private

schools. and we followed some of the kids. and, you know, and i just it wasn't part that series at all, but it just struck me as sort of this tension, sort of the systemic of a system and what family actually does, when they haven't found a good fit for their child. and so that just kind of stayed with me and i didn't have much to do with it, you know, as far as that particular piece of work. but, but it kind of was the start of thinking about the history of school choice. and so you start this book and i won't spoil the but i know that the book starts in the 1950s sort of pre post brown v board of education as a lot of southern states began resisting the orders the court orders to integrate. why did you decide to start the book there why did you pinpoint that the origin point of the school choice movement. because i imagine that, you know, some people in the school choice movement would not be

particularly proud that that's the beginning. their movement. yeah. and i think i think there's you know, there's some awkwardness about that, right. but i think, you know, one of the things i was sort of trying to figure out when i was trying to decide how start the book is sort of for where does this idea begin? and it's actually quite hard to pinpoint where that idea begins because sort of the stylized history of school choice is that it starts with milton friedman, you an economist writing an essay about vouchers in the fifties and then history that's told often is that they're nothing sort of happens friedman keeps idea alive and then 1990 milwaukee starts the school voucher program in the country. the first modern one. that's sort of the history that you hear. but there is you know, there's other pieces of american history you kind of have to go back to. you have to look at what the founding fathers intended for education and how that developed

because there wasn't agreement about how to educate the nation's children. you can look at what happened with catholics. you coming into this country. they had all this integration of of catholic and common system was forming at that time in the 1800s. but it was distinctly practiced in. and so you could also start with the catholic and that whole piece of the history and so i kind of was grappling with what makes sense a beginning and i decided in 1950 not just because of segregationists i thought what was about that time period was that you did have milton friedman writing this essay about, school vouchers. you also had sort of a lesser known figure in virgil blum, which was a priest, milwaukee, who was very much interested in school vouchers for religious liberty to help religious families, private school and particularly catholic, but not exclusive to that. and so you had these two voices

and then at the same time you had segregationists who were interested essentially in privatizing the school system to avoid brown. and it started in the lead up to brown. it seemed clear, you know, that we were moving in that direction and then intensified it post brown but i thought you know that time period is so fascinating because you start see how you could take one sort of tool mechanism in school vouchers and use it for a lot of different purposes. and i felt like today we're still having some of those same thread some of those same questions about, vouchers, who they're for, who they're not for. does it help or hurt public system and how you factor in sort of values those, you know, religious education into that. and so i felt like some of those debates from the 1950s are still in play and so that's why i decided to start there. well, i found the of the book to be one of the most intriguing, compelling parts, partially

because it is so dramatic. it's very emotional. and it really has to do with. one of the biggest cases in us supreme court history. i obviously encourage the viewers to pick up the book and it. but can you walk us through a little how brown v board of education and and how desegregation gave birth to a school choice movement. well so it's interesting you know there was as i said, there were sort of indications that brown was coming down the line. there had already been a few court cases that were at the university desegregation cases at the university level. and so it seemed clear that next be the k-12 system. and so it kind of started georgia and that was one of the first places where where there were influence voices saying you know, we essentially need to give up public schools rather than desegregate them. and it was one of the things i

found interesting in the research was that, you know, this is before google and the internet and and really widespread availability of of news in the way that we understand now. and and yet voices in georgia were up by national media, you know, so there was an awareness that was happening. and i thought that was most kind of interesting and then sort of watching how it spread, right, because georgia came up with sort of this idea of we're going to privatize the school system, not just through vouchers were sort of a like an escape mechanism for students. i mean they were they were talking about leasing buildings to private entities. they were talking about putting public school teachers, having private school teachers, then be eligible for state benefits, know they were talking about a wholesale privatization of the system, not just vouchers. and so i thought that was sort of this interesting example of how you might use vouchers, but

brown itself was this just the sea change for education in america and so how the south reacted to it was incredibly interesting. but there is also this of tension there of segregation in the north. it's not just southern thing and how that kind of factored into the future of school vouchers. you know, families fleeing south and then encountering different of discrimination in the north. and so i just i found whole period of time just so interesting. and so basically it i realize this is an oversimplification, but a lot of states created voucher for white families to skirt integrate so that they would not have to send their white children to schools alongside black children. yeah. and it was actually, you know, it was actually considered to be sort of a less extreme measure,

which sounds sounds strange. and i found that kind of startling when i was doing the research, because it seems like an extreme measure, but this was considered sort of a moderate alternative to just to close in schools, which did happen in a few places. and so it was sort of viewed as this escape mechanism, as i said, to let families in there, their children to all white schools, all white, private. it also when when it started being struck down by, the courts you know, the courts very quickly caught on to a lot of the things that segregationists were doing to skirt brown and started striking down various laws that were passed. then they tried to, you know, southern lawmakers tried to make the program sort of neutral and. so then you did see tiny numbers of black students also using vouchers, but but it was pretty clearly a for white families to avoid desegregated public schools. yeah, that's to me is of the

most shocking things about that era that public officials would rather shut down public schools that they actually did, actually, not far from and parts of virginia rather than have integrated public schools. no public schools to them was to integrated public schools. yeah. yeah. you mentioned that you found a lot of things really intriguing about this. i'm curious to know having you've been an education reporter for a very long time we are all especially florida i'm sure you've covered the debate over school choice over school reform. florida is like a laboratory of school choice. what were some of surprising things that you learned in researching this book? well, you know, it was how little i actually did know, you know, and i a reporter in florida for ten years and, you know, and i grew up in washington state, which has essentially no school choice. very blue state, not the part i

grew up in, actually, but overall. and, you know, washington has sort of charter schools a little bit, but it was extremely you know, it was contested in the courts and so i grew up in a place with no. and then i moved to florida as an education reporter. i spent ten years there and you know, and there's there's tons of choice. and so i was sort of unfamiliar it and and you know an education reporter so often your focus on covering the local school district that's sort of what you're assigned to essentially is covering the government agency and for me, i spent a lot of first just trying to understand how the system works. you know, the public system understanding how florida finances its schools, you know kind of basic things and sort of bumping into choice from time to time. you know, i might cover a charter school that was getting shut down by the school district. you know, that had oversight and, you know, oversight of the charter school.

and so i might cover that but i wasn't necessarily really into the history of it all. and, you know, i would sort of run up against the debate for it but it was when i was there, it was sort of an established thing already, you know, the court case that struck down a particular voucher program in florida had happened and and so it was sort of interesting to me when i started it. i just i didn't know as much as i thought i knew. i is the way to say it. and so lots of things revelatory to me i mean, more than more than i would like to admit. you know, i really was familiar with sort of the stylized history that it started, milton friedman and then kind of nothing happened. and then milwaukee and. i didn't even know that much about milwaukee to be honest. yeah, it's interesting too, because i think especially if we really myopic and look at this in the present, we might view

these issues to be kind of strictly bipartisan republicans are in favor of school choice. democrats are against. but as your book shows, that's really not the case. even going all the way back to the origins. i really liked anecdote you shared about the sociology. just who wrote sort of a treatise for school choice in both right wing and a left wing publication? can you talk a little bit about how how this how school choice sort of defies a lot of the rules that we have come to think of that, you know, split issues into half. yeah that was one of the things that i think kept me going through doing all of this research you know, i spent five years on it was sort of surprising moments in the research. and one of them, i think really was the idea that that this was not strictly a right wing thing and certainly in the present day, every school choice is incredibly polar rising and people are very, very strong about it.

there does not really seem to be middle ground. i have gone search of middle ground and i have not found much. so one of the things that i thought was really surprise seeing was sort of this idea of overlap, you know, that if you start book in 1950, you have these overlapping ideas from voucher advocates, you have to segregationists, you have milton friedman, you have virtual gloom. but then, you know, these these programs that were started the south, they started very quickly to get shut down by the courts the late fifties and into the sixties. but during the 1960s, even as the courts are saying these programs essentially racist, you know, they're trying to thwart. brown you had new voices coming in and some of them were progressive voices saying, you know, vouchers could actually be a tool of empowerment for low income kids and particularly for black. and i thought that was so startling that you would be

making an argument that at the same moment that the courts are saying these programs are thwarting desegregation and they need to end. and so i thought that overlap was fascinating. and of those some of those people, you know, christopher jencks you mentioned, that's the anecdote. who wrote in two different politically leaning magazines about this idea he was you know, a fairly liberal sociologist at the time, and kenneth clarke, who is actually in brown, he wrote an essay this, you know, and so i thought that was something that i think out there a little bit you're in maybe the choice movement i think you're aware of some of those voices potentially. but i the larger you know, most people i don't think are actually aware of that. so i thought that was was interesting. and you see that essentially the entire history, which i also thought was fascinating, i mean, certainly it is dominated by the

movement, dominated by conservatives, but they're not the only voices. and so i found that kind of intriguing. and it it made me sort of dig a little deeper into okay well then how did sort of work you know how did these different ideas about choice sort of play against each other? you know, and i thought it was interesting that you, milton friedman, essentially with christopher jencks and some of those other voices about how you do vouchers. yeah, that's it is really astonishing. it on one hand in the south, you had school choice being used to integration to avoid a major ruling on civil rights in the north i suppose and i think milwaukee is a great example of this you had people arguing this is actually tool of empowerment for black families. i think really there's who really embodies that contradiction more than polly williams in, milwaukee seemed to me was like a very, very

fascinating character. can you talk a little bit about her and her in the movement? sure. so probably williams, a black democratic state legislator in milwaukee, in wisconsin, and she was she was she's passed away now. but she was a really interesting woman because she deeply interested in education but she was opposed to integration. and she was very much i mean, think i would call her a black nationalist. you know, she was very in helping her community. she was interested in trying to sort of make institutions work for black families. and she she didn't that the milwaukee public school district was working for black children. and so she did a number of trying to sort improve the system and. one of the things that she was opposed to was bussing.

she didn't she thought essentially that integration in milwaukee was falling too hard. the burden of it was largely on black families and she didn't think that it was actually doing much to black children. she didn't think they were benefiting from being bussed to another school. and so you know some of her policies were attacking integration policies. some of some of the things she proposed like one of the ones, i think, that got the most attention was that she and howard fuller, who's a civil activist involved in the movement, made a proposal for an all black school district in. and, you know, that was one of the ones that really got headlines in a lot of little different ways. she was trying to improve education and and felt like really wasn't getting a lot of support her own party from democrats and sort of open to this idea of school vouchers and would you know she would say and she was quoted as saying that it

wasn't about milton friedman she didn't necessarily have a familiarity with milton friedman for it was very much this is that could help black students essentially leave the public school system that she thought was failing them. and so i thought here's someone who embodies some these contradictions because, you know, i don't want to give all away. but she she became somewhat disillusioned with some of her white conservative allies over time. and so i thought her story spoke a lot of the different sort of, questions and debates and the tension, all of this. and so that's one of the reasons i focused on her. and also because milwaukee was sort of the first modern program. so it made to focus some attention there. so you basically had a woman who you would describe as a black nationalist representing a majority city, partnering with white lawmakers, conservative white lawmakers. yeah. and she called she called it the unholy alliance which i actually

it was actually the original title of the book i thought that was so great in so many ways. it it did not it did not say education to a lot of people. it did not end up being the title of the book. and i use it, i think just for a chapter title. but i thought that kind of that short description really did kind of speak to the strangeness of the alliance that she made with tommy thompson, who was the republican governor at the time. yeah, i think that's that's one of the things that makes education and reporting so fascinating, is that there are no clear partizan on a lot of these issues. and i think school choice is probably the best example that and what do you want people to take away from this book what do you hope that they'll conclude or learn once they finish this book. well so i really was trying to go into it a journalist as someone with our own viewpoint

you know i felt like there are pieces of this history around and there's there's a number of of partizan books, you know, for or against school choice. and so i felt like i wanted to create something that would explain all of this history that i thought i hadn't known as a reporter. that was helpful in sort of understanding what's going on in education right now. and i wanted it to be, you know, sort of neutral and fair minded, which actually is kind of hard. i think people want you to make an argument and to pick a side, especially with something that's incredibly polarizing. but i think what i what i'm hoping for is that people who are maybe less familiar with school choice but are watching news right now and seeing sort of this landslide of choice legislation and all this activity and all this discussion about parental freedom, know all

of these things that are kind of dominating the news. i think what i would hope is that someone could read the book and at least have a good understanding of how we reached this place and know where some of this is coming from. and then, you know, i i had some sort of driving in the introduction about, you know, what does this mean for public and what does it mean for democracy and sort of what do we owe, our communities? but i didn't want to answer those questions. i wanted that to be for the reader answer. so, yeah, i mean, i won't again, i won't spoil the ending but the the main meat of book sort of ends around 2018, 2019, pre-pandemic, you do go into the pandemic and what's going on currently in the introduction a little bit but what if we if we were to look at period of time between when your book ends and the current period you know you call this the death of public

schools. you do sort predict that this movement will grow stronger. if we look at that period of time does it prove your thesis does it how do you reflect on on what's happened since the book ends in relation to your book. yeah so i did end 2019 and i, i was sort was sort of looking for an ending because it's weird to be writing something where it's dominating the news cycle which, you know, that wasn't happening when i started the book around 2017, but it very was happening as i was as i was finishing book. you know, the the pandemic happened and and it was a really strange thing because. i was sort of living through that. and my own children were out of school and doing remote learning and then homeschooling for a period of time and i had an

infant and it was it was kind of a disaster actually. but it was but it was interesting because. then the pandemic kind of opened. you know, i think this political opportunity for for republican kids, you know, to to really push school choice legislation in a way that we hadn't seen for a while and so, you know, there was just this crazy of school choice legislation and and there was also kind of a shift argument for it right. the argument previously had been what empowering certain groups of students, you know, students with disabilities and low income students and. and there had been a really strong argument that this was actually a civil rights issue. and then somewhere during the pandemic, it shifted a bit and started being a little bit about parental freedom for everyone. and then were there are a few pieces that came out, you know, the heritage foundation had a piece come out where the authors

were essentially that that republicans should use the culture. you know, the stuff about crt and die and these things to push legislative wins essentially for school. and when i saw that come out i was really struck by it because it's rather different than making an argument centered around civil rights. and then we started to see, you know, republican lawmakers passing laws restricting how you can teach about history, you know, particularly black history. and so i was looking at this period of time and trying to figure out what it means. and i, you know, i think it's interesting because it's made the book very relevant. but i of, you know, for a history book, i felt like you can't can't end something, you know, literally new laws are passing you know, you can't have the ending of something that's like shifting sand.

and so i, i kind of thought, well, i will sort deal with it in the introduction. i think it's very much pointing in a direction and i certainly like the argument i was making in the book is real and true and that these things are happening especially when we look at some of the the supreme cases. you know, but i felt like it was still a little early to say how all of this would shake out, because i think right now we're we're starting school year when all this legislation is passed and we're just now starting to the numbers of people who are actually going to take you know the state up on some of these new programs. if no one actually uses the program, then it is not creating a sea change, you know, but we're starting to see actually the numbers really increase. and so i think it does point in a direction that is, you know, not great for the public school system. and i feel more and more

confident about the argument that i was making. but still think there are some pretty big questions where it all ends up yet. i'm trying to be conscientious that this is one education reporter talking to another education reporter. can you talk a little bit about what has happened since the book ended in 2018? and i you deal with some of it in the introduction, but it seems like we are living through a pretty extraordinary part of the school choice movement. can you talk a little bit about what has happened since the pandemic started? yeah, i mean, i think, i think there's been this explosion of choice legislation. there's huge expansions. more than half the states in the country now have choice programs. there's also been kind of an interesting backlash against charter schools, which had been sort of the more popular and accepted education from choice, you know, that had bipartisan support when president trump came into office and when betsy

devos became the education secretary, i think that administration was so polarized, amy, that it had some ripple effects in choice. and so we did see kind of a democrat backlash against charter schools, you know, and that, i think, is playing out a little bit. but we have also this question of whether or not, there's going to be religious charter schools, which is kind of a wild card thing that's still playing out, even in the last few months. but i think the overall that has happened is that just been this massive expansion of school choice legislation. and one of the key things within that has been, you know, this push universal school vouchers, which means that they're no longer limited to low income children or they're no longer limited to just students with disabilities. the idea that every family is entitled take some amount of tax dollars and, then pay, you know, use it to pay for the education

that suits them and it varies a little bit by state, but generally that, you know, that means home schooling and private education and, you know, if you want to use it for tutoring, online learning. and so i think that piece of it that it's really universal is one of the biggest things that we've seen. and for me, you know, the argument i was making in book was sort of looking at whose for school choice sort of wins out in the end, you know, as milton friedman, who very much was in favor of universal vouchers for everyone, or is it sort of more paul williams, who very much viewed it as a tool for low income? and i think right now we're really seeing that it's friedman, you know, it's universal that sort of wins the day. and maybe the priest bloom who who really wanted the opportunity direct more taxpayer dollars towards religious schools. yeah you know virgin blue is is of a lesser known figure and i

talked to people in the choice movement who who don't know who is which is interesting because he really sort of predicted a lot of this in a way, and was was arguing in a direction that now we're seeing the supreme court take. but he was making the argument in, the fifties and sixties, you know, and it's really that was really interesting in the research to look back at some of the things he was writing decades and decades ago that are so relevant today. so yeah i think the the religious liberty aspect it is also having a moment i think yeah one of the i have been writing a lot about the religious charter school in oklahoma. this is a catholic school wants to or the catholic dioceses wants to open a virtual charter school which means it would be entirely funded taxpayer dollars. and they've said that they are sort of picking and choosing which federal laws they would abide by.

i'm curious to know much you think christian nationalist ssm is playing into the current school choice movement because? there are obviously people who believe that the us was founded as a christian country and that therefore we should allow taxpayers to support christian education, the schools and that even public schools should have some christianity. how much do you think that's playing into the current school movement? i mean it's interesting to me because i think it's it's a lot more relevant now actually than it was, you know the i use virtual gloom in the book sort of to to stand in for a lot of those issues. you but but actually when look at how school choice happened you know it passed it had very little to do with a push religious education you know that's not how

milwaukee or cleveland happened. and i mean, in the sense how it passed, how they formed, you know, allies shifts to to get the legislation to pass. you know, that wasn't really a piece of it. i think it's interesting now because it's it's very much part of it in a way that i think it wasn't you know in the nineties in the early 2000s religious schools included eventually included milwaukee and cleveland started with them. so it raised all of those church state questions. but it wasn't sort of the argument that people within the movement were making for why we needed it right. that wasn't it wasn't about pluralism and the united states history as a christian country. it wasn't sort of about that and it was is interesting because the supreme court, you know, essentially validated cleveland's vouchers in 2000 to.

and one of the lawyers involved in that case in a piece after for the for the new york times he was he was quoted as saying if the case had been about if the justices viewed the as being about religion, then it probably wasn't going to go anywhere. but if they viewed it as being about education and then they had a shot at winning and, they did end up winning. zimmerman. and so it's kind of striking today to see that so many of the arguments choice are about values and, you know, pluralism, that the country has this history. of so many different people from so many different places, different religious views, all being here together, you know, and that people should be allowed to select an education based on their values. and i just find it interesting that because it wasn't really as big of a thread in most of the history as it is now, apart from maybe if you to go back to the

1800s and talk about catholics, you know that, was very much that but but it's kind of interesting to watch it now because this isn't what it was about 19 long ago. yeah. i mean, i think that was another really fascinating nugget to me that, you know, we know the catholic church has a very, very robust system of of schools and they developed because the public were overtly protestant. that was really, really interesting. me? yeah. know and the the catholic school system is sort of it's sort of interesting to watch this play out with the religious charter, you know, because it is the archdiocese that made the application is going to be if it opens it's going to be an explicitly catholic virtual school because, you know are not monolithic on the issue of school choice. there has always been there have always been advocates like blum who wanted more state aid for

schools. and he really thought catholic schools were providing a public service. you know, catholic schools tend to be good, you know they tend to have that reputation and so he really thought these schools are providing public service and deserve funding and also that religious families shouldn't taxed for a system that they are not, you know, participating in and then also be paying tuition. you know he thought that was discrimination. but it's interesting because the the religious charter school opens a lot of questions about government intrusion and government oversight and so not not everyone in the school choice movement you know is actually in favor of that. and so i found that kind of interesting, too, to watch people saying this is legally permissible and we'll see. but it's not a good idea either. yeah, that is one thing. and again, that really shows that school choice is still even

now that it's very polarized not a cleanly partizan issue because you have advocates for try charter schools, for example, who are coming out against this religious charter because they believe that charter should be public and should follow all the same laws and rules that public schools do. and i'm curious to know, to like how much and this is something i reflect on a lot, especially in covering the politics of of education movements and the politics education or frequently talking to adults who have own agendas, who bring an ideology, who want to, you know, make political winds in reflecting on this book, how much was this about kids? the great question, you know, i, i spent some time as i writing the book thinking about the fact that this was much more legal history than i realized.

and was much more about politics than i realized. and, you know, and that that pushed me in some interesting, interesting directions as a reporter, you know, because i had first kind of become interested it because i was following family and interviewing children, then watching them go to two different schools and sort seeing their experiences of, you know, was this a good escape from public schools was. it not, you know, watching people kind of bounce essentially looking for the fit and then to be doing sort the writing and the research and and that that actually a lot of this is political arguments a lot of it is legal arguments. and and, you know, it's it's maybe less about kids than i thought in certain respects. you know that was sort of startling in a way. and i you know, i mean, i think

students are at the heart of the conversation right there at the heart of the debate, because it's about how do we educate the nation's kids and what is public education. you know, you hear republicans making an argument that public education is actually any education paid for with tax dollars, which is rather different than the traditional understanding of of what public schools. you know, and so it is sort of it is sort of to see the kids being a little bit secondary sometimes to a legal argument and of political maneuvering. one example i had in the the book that i thought was more about political maneuvering and less about children was what happened with washington dc's program very early on when when republican lawmakers were making of the first proposals for dc to school vouchers. the the vouchers were worth so

little that even the private schools in dc were saying, you know, this isn't going to pay our tuition you would need so much more money to make this meaningful, you know, and so i asked a few school advocates kind of was this really about because it didn't actually seem to be about opening a lot of doors for children with with first proposal not talking about later and you know and a couple people told me what was more about keeping the argument alive you know then then thinking it was actually going to happen especially at that time of the democratic president. mm hmm. and so basically was a proposal for a voucher program that wouldn't have actually allowed children to leave public school to attend a private school. yeah, basically. and so i guess. sorry, go ahead. i just the it's just it's sort of that's hard to square with an argument. this is about kids right. and i think some democratic lawmakers sort of pointed out at

the time, some the hypocrisy of that. now, the when it did pass was was the voucher was worth a lot more. and so then you might be able to say this is a lot more about actually opening doors children but but that very early proposal it was just and i just thought it was striking you have private school leaders. you know, this is enough to be meaningful. and i'm interested in the fact that you actually started, you know, your interest in this topic came from actually reporting on families who were trying to make these decisions rather than the other way, which is typically it happens. how did your reporting in pinellas county in florida, in sitting with these families who, were trying to decide whether they were to use a voucher program or send their child to a charter school. how did that inform the way you did your research and how you wrote the book? well, you know, it's interesting because wasn't as said, i wasn't

super familiar with the ins and outs of the history of school choice. and i was also much not focused on that. you know what was covering in pinellas county was very much about one school district making, you know, kind this horrible decision to essentially resegregate their schools. and then what happened time as those schools were sort of bled of resources and that was very much my focus and i really that that that piece of work that it was five stories that series spoke to you know segregation and integration as a potential solution. and i thought was sort of interesting when that piece of work got much viewed through the lens of whether a person was for or against choice. and and so some people who read that thought well, the solution to these segregated schools is

to give children choice, to give them the ability to leave and other people, you know, sort viewed it as very much a bid for, you know, these schools need more resources. they need more funding, they need more veteran teachers. you know and so i became kind of aware of that these sort of polarizing reactions to it in the in the aftermath but i wasn't focused on that when i was reporting it. the thing really did sort of take away from it was watching families who had voices technically but maybe not good ones, you know. and so maybe you had a family who was in this sort of under-resourced segregated elementary school in a public school in pinellas. and maybe there's a charter school nearby that they can go to. but it's not doing much better than school that they came from. you know, has many of the same issues. and so then maybe they bounce

to, you know, a private school with a voucher and then there's pitfalls there, you know, just kind of this this thing that stuck with me was this tension between, systemic reform, which can take a long time. and what do you do for your child right. and that is kind of actually what informed a lot of reporting in the research for the book was sort of looking at where that fit into this history and kind of how that played out. and i imagine know the answer to this, but when families were weighing what they were going do, where they were going to send their child and when you were doing this reporting, were they thinking about politics? where thinking about the fact that sending their child using a voucher could be a win for jeb bush or what what were some of the things that they were actually thinking about? no politics, it wasn't in it at all, you know, and and that's

one thing i you know, i tried highlight a little bit in the book. i have a very sort of short section. you kind of have to zoom out a little bit from this argument and and move away from that and at, well, what are the what are the families actually looking? you know, they're not really concerned about church state legal historically. you know, they're not necessarily having this sort of political debate or this at all through that lens, very much about, you know, does this school have recess, which the public schools that i wrote about in pinellas county, some of them at the time did not even have recess. you know, some of those classrooms that were so stark that they, you know, they made me want to cry when i left them, i felt bad that children were in those schools, some of the some

the families i talked to were very about safety. you know, i mean, some of their kids had been hit or kicked, you know, they they'd experienced violence in the schools. and so safety was a concern. you know, they were just some the actual concerns had had nothing to do with politics and very much to do with how is my child going to navigate the school day? are they going to learn to read or are they going to get to go outside and play? sometimes, you know, is the school a joyful place? is it is it focused on test prep? you know, all of these things are very familiar to me as a parent. and sometimes i think lost a little bit in the debate and maybe should be grappled with more. yeah. think one of the also one of the most fascinating things i recall from the book is when betsy devos showed up at a school in milwaukee to talk about school choice to promote school choice.

she, of course, is probably the most polarizing education secretary in history drew a lot of protesters. a black parent walking his child in said you're you're talking about somebody's kids. what do you think that moment of shows us about the school movement? yeah. you know, i i really appreciated that that school in milwaukee for for letting me of come in i wasn't there for the protests i visited that school later and interviewed families and that that particular scene that that man recounted for me, you that kind of came from from the families who were a little bit sort of hurt and, maybe irritated that that this debate was essentially happening about their child, sort of the recognition that it was about their child and and, you know, and what i thought was interesting there is that's

lutheran private school, milwaukee. it's a it's a high performing school because milwaukee's program requires a certain amount of accountability. you can actually compare test scores and so that's a fairly high performing school. it's considered one of the maybe better schools that takes vouchers is it's predominantly black, it's predominantly low income. it was at the time i assume it may still be now, but one of the things that the parents picked up on was that many, many of the protesters, most of the protesters were white and they were very much reacting to betsy devos. you know, as you said, is it is a really polarizing figure. but i thought this was so interesting as far as all of these threads that i was sort of following in the history you know, because it it about race it was about who was using the school vouchers and it was about

who was protesting the school vouchers. and know. and i thought there were some things sort of crystal ized in that moment where i sort of direct the readers a little bit more to families and how they're sort of living this out and what they're interested in and and maybe that protest to sort of get some of those things, you know, one of the things that is really interesting, that race is a thread that's pretty much unavoidable throughout the the book. you know, it's pretty overt at the beginning. white families are using school to escape integrated public. but, you know, things get sort of muddled, obviously. at the same time, a lot black leaders are saying that this is a tool for empowerment. can you talk a little bit about the surprising ways that race has played into the school choice movement? yeah, you know, this is one of the things that i also was sort of captured by.

i was doing the research because if you're starting sort of in this time period in 1950, you know, with segregation and and that's one of the main elements at the beginning when freedman and blum are making their arguments and kind of track that over time, you know, i mean, race is on avoidable. it's a major part of the history. and frankly, i think the argument this was a civil rights issue is sort of how, you know, school choice advocates essentially won the day. and, you know, legally speaking and made their to the public in a lot of ways. and and so it's it's interesting to see, you know, how that how that tension plays out because. you also have black families and latino families who are opposed to choice, you know, and you kind of have to grapple with that and know had a lot of support from black leaders. polly williams was very

influential. other black leaders were also in support and that had a of sort of grassroots support from black families but cleveland didn't and i thought that was interesting because a lot of black legislators in ohio actually were opposed. you know very much opposed to school vouchers and felt like this is going to bleed resources out of the school system. you know it's not going to help enough to make it meaningful while it actually pulls things out, a system that needs help and needs resources. and so i felt like, you know, i wanted to sort of make those different points that wasn't all one thing. it wasn't supported. but, you know, it wasn't this kind of monolithic thing. and it played out differently. different cities, you know, you saw that also in washington, d.c., when initially some of the black democratic lawmakers were opposed to school vouchers.

and then i think because the city school system was not doing well, came around the issue, you know, and so just i tried to look for different elements of the history that sort of exposed some of those those threads and the different ways that that race played into it. one of the most and i don't mean to touch the third rail here i think one of the most controversial assessments i've heard of the school choice movement and you get into this in, the book is that, you know, white conservatives are black families, black leaders and purposely starving public schools of resources to advance school choice that they're quote unquote, using them with poorly. williams was actually a white leader who who openly said we used polly williams for her race and for her party. what do you think of that assessment that people who are against the school choice

movement have made that black families and the black community is being used advance these arguments? well, i mean, i think, you know, i found that interesting. well, but i think you know, you have to actually talk to black and to two black leaders, you know, polly williams gone. but she addressed that during her lifetime, you know, that she did not used. you know, she had intentions for choice. some of her allies did. and she was extremely comfortable calling them out publicly when she felt like they were going in a direction she didn't agree with. howard fuller, who also was in the book and was an school choice advocate and from milwaukee, you know, he sort of addressed that to and had difference, as of his own with some of white conservative allies. and some of those differences really came out over account for the programs. you some of the some of the

people like fuller and williams wanted greater accountability for the program because they saw some of the problems for families when things didn't go well like a school closed you know and so i think i think it's not for me to say if conservatives are used on black families or black, i think it's for them to say because i think they have agency. and, you know, i think i think that you know fuller, kind of said he addressed this through he said, you know, that that he could see why conservative allies wanted sort of hold him up because he was he is now a former superintendent of milwaukee public schools. he's a choice advocate and he's a black man. and he addressed this in his memoir, said that he very much understood why they would want to sort of push him out front and as a face for the movement similar to how they had with

polly williams. but at the end of the day, for him, he thought that school choice was the best tool of empowerment for black families and for for all families, really so, you know, i think it's it's maybe a more nuanced answer to that charge that you hear. you know, and i think that we see this with polling to see a lot support for school choice and have for a long time you know from black latino families especially young ones and definitely don't want to leave public schools traditional public schools out of the conversation. what has all of this meant for traditional public schools? and what do you think it's going to mean in the future as the school choice if it continues on the current strategy continues to grow? you know, i think it's going to play a little differently depending on where it is, right. because i think we're seeing this play out regionally almost. you know, red states are passing all of these choice programs,

blue states, not so much. in fact, in some blue states, you see some pull back on charter schools and greater regulation. and so what's what's interesting to me and why i sort of drew some of the conclusions i drew was, you know, that that if talking about having a different school system, you know, essentially a different school systems in red state versus blue, then we already have gone a really long ways from where we started with a traditional public school system for everyone. and i think you know it's still playing out some of these programs the universal. some of the early projections you know in arizona and in florid have these programs costing a lot more than maybe was anticipated in part because they're also open to families already are in private schools. so the state is essentially subsidizing private education

you know, and so i really wonder if there's not going to be some kind of backlash or some kind of attempt to to deal with ballooning costs. but i also, you know, i wonder if republicans really can or would want to pull back on. and so i just you know, i think at the end of the day, there's almost there's there's only so much money. and and the way some of these programs work. you don't have a very good ability plan. you know, your budget as school district. and so, you know, i don't think that it bodes really well for for traditional public schools. but i but i do think it's going to you know, it's just going to be different in versus where i grew up in washington. well, we're out of time. thank you so much. it's been such a great conversation. the book is wonderful and congratu

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