wall in a spot we are standing. >> this weekend more from alexandria, va. as booktv, american history tv and c-span local content vehicles look behind the scenes at the history of literary life of alexandria, va. at noon eastern on booktv. and sunday at 5:00 on american history tv on c-span2. >> now author sarah car explores result of the legislature's decision after hurricane katrina. to reassign control of the majority of new orleans public schools to the recovery school district administered by the state by following a student, teacher and principal as they traversed different segments of the educational system. this is half an hour. >> great to see people out tonight doing amazing work for kids in new orleans and thank you for coming. just going to talk for 10 or 15

minutes and take questions. some people here tonight in the book and willing to answer your questions during that session if you are interested in hearing about what it was like to be part of that process from their vantage point. the other day i was finishing reading journalist catherine booth's book called behind a beautiful forevers which tells the story of a group of families living in a slum and in her author's notes she tries to explain why she chose to focus on ordinary people rather than broader policy debate for history and she wrote something that summarizes what i had hoped to do in "hope against hope: 3 schools, 1 city, and the struggle to educate america's children" better than i ever could. she rose when i settled into a place, listening and watching i don't try to fool myself that

stories of individuals i themselves arguments. i just believe better arguments, better policies that formulated what i know more about ordinary lives. if there's a single aspiration that drove me to journalism and education reporting specifically that one, and if it changes policies for the better and very specific concrete ways, there is something to be said for journalism that permanently complicates or maybe just momentarily interrupts understanding of the world we live in. i can't say that all or even most of the riding i have done has accomplished that goal but something to aspire to. before i go further i want to thank the people who let me write about their lives, particularly gerald stewart and her mother, mary lowry who is principal of the high school and aid in kelly who is a teacher

and administrator, not only i opening to spend time with them but also a lot of private time and i feel privileged to have met all. just a brief word about them. people who know mary know that she is always at harry walker high school. drive-by on weekends her car is in front, you drive by at night and her car is out front and on holidays her car is out front yet somehow she does sunday mornings with me talking about her work in life and i used to wonder how she found time to do something for herself. imac gerald at the start of her freshman year in high school and more than halfway through her junior year. every sell-off and i would tell gerald if there was something i observed in the course of

reporting the book, and there was one time we repeated that reminder. and i don't tell you anything and don't want in the book. that was the moment i knew definitively that gerald was not only funnier but smarter than i am. one of the things that struck me about aiden is he was the exceptionally hard on himself and exceptionally generous toward other people and that is what makes him a talented person and teacher. i remember one day when he had a lot going on in his classroom and there was a visitor who was presenting and all of a sudden this e-mail popped up in my in box and it was from aiden that he was reminded me of a wanted to write about that i should make sure i got the visitor asks permission because they didn't know who i was or what i was doing there so even when dealing with these other responsibilities he thought to

reach out and protect this person and make sure they were treated with respect. i didn't know what this book would be when i set out to write it. i just knew i wanted to do something that will allow me to engage with the issues i had been writing about for more than a decade in greater depth and i knew i wanted the stories to be driven by people although i had no idea initially to those people would be. the first draft of a book proposal focused on writing a history of the douglass high school building in the ninth ward up through the present using the school as a microcosm for discussing the history of city and urban education reform more broadly and i was encouraged by some colleagues who read early drafts to take a broader approach and settled on the idea following three different schools and the narrative might have been tidier if i hadn't focused on one school like douglas but at most as you know the schools are so

very in terms of their progress, experiences and success that i felt like in the end one setting would have been too ltd.. i also planned at one point to have whole chapters or sections of the book devoted to detours to other cities like new york or washington d.c. and potentially have sections on president obama or arne duncan and at one point i was presenting to the adviser's fee of a fellowship i had including alex horowitz which came afterwards and he thought that was a stupid idea because people and experiences in new orleans were so compelling and interesting on their own so i settled on the idea of structuring the book around three schools with one person pre-eminence in each, lori, aiden and gerald win all of whom i met at different times in different ways. since writing this book was a journey for me i wanted to talk

about what i learned over the course of reporting and writing it apart from the fact that it would make a terrible feature. the first is what do i feel extremists and absolutist on both part of the conversation form other issues dominate the debate but their voices don't really capture needs and desires of those attending and working in the schools and i covered education for long enough when i started working on the book to some degree. i was amazed the extent to which ideals and aspirations of many families and front-line educators eluded the talking points to throw boxes on this issue and i got really frustrated about this and even angry at times. i remember having a conversation with a friend who was getting his doctorate in political science and he made a point that

an extreme backlash for political movement is needed to nudge policy or practice in the right direction and i thought that was a good and fair point but i wish going back in this country people's life experiences shea frederick nearly as much until they shave their life experiences. they have of gradually unfulfilled obligation to make it happen, to write education policy less, and a little more about the people growing up and living and working and dreaming at the school. and the second major realization is too much of the debate about education and education reform frames and ideological rather than sociological terms. most parents and educators don't spend time debating whether carl -- charter schools are good or

bad or americans are bad or whether teachers unions are good or bad. what they care about our their relationships and experiences kids are having in the schools and whether there's a common set of aspirations and goals and shared vision around education could or should not be. and the future of the school building. and the dominant white parents oppose the charter network. and many of these parents were decrying kids's long days and emphasis on test preparation and lack of diversity and i went to another meeting with mostly african-american parents where they were talking about what they liked about the approach and how these more privileged white parents were trying to take something away that they valued and i feel like at its core this disconnect was about sociology and different beliefs and understanding that the

ideals surrounding all of it, surrounding education all of which has some validity and a long history behind them but so much of the writing and public discourse surrounding education doesn't grapple with these issues at all. instead it is obsessed with not being unimportant but much more abstract ideological battles surrounding such topics as governance and privatization. the third major lesson i learned relates to both book writing and education. i didn't as i said no and a lot of ways what my book would be about because i didn't know how the school year would go for the schools the die within and the schools the i was falling and obviously i knew it would be about people's experiences in new orleans schools after katrina and the lot of thought into making sure i was seeing and learning about a diverse set of experiences but wasn't until i was writing the book and well

into writing at that i realized how much the book is really about culture. i tend to be some what troubles of this when it comes to school culture in that i think there are schools that are highly structured that function well and ones that are highly instructive that function well. ideally you want a mix of approaches because different kids thrive in different environments but i did come away with the conclusion that it is absolutely vital that parents and staff and students come together around a shared vision of culture either organically or through the very hard process of mutual dialogue and understanding and i think the book shows the success that can happen when they can occur when that happens and the struggle that is pulling countered that doesn't end as one example one of the schools i followed which struggled quite a bit in its first year did have this sort of

amazing success on that point, the principal early on in the year introduced the school, the students to the wolf stable and unstable those that these two will decide all of us are constantly fighting and one wolf represents the agreed and anger and the other wolf represents love and humility and the moral is the wolf that wins at the end is the one that you feed. that took on a life of its own at the school and among the kids and students would tell each other to remember to feed the good wolf or make sure that the good wolf when the end land at successful schools you have a whole set of shared values like that. whether it is expressions or hats or aspirations. the final big take away for me relates to the title of the book itself, and that is hope isn't free or something that should be

taken for granted. in many ways it is a luxury good. i think there are real and tangible structural inequities in american society and cities that have produced rampant pernicious income inequality we see today. i am not trying to imply that inequality is caused by the collapse emotions or feelings about themselves for deficit of hope but that said, one of the students that i wrote about was one of the smartest people i had never met and he simply could not imagine himself ever going to college and wasn't that he had some grand plan for his life as an alternative that fascinated him or that he wasn't smart or capable enough and at one point his sister even offered to give him the money to go but based on his own life experiences and those of others around him he just couldn't make that leap of faith. i wrote at one point in the book

that even in the most democratic societies the idea of cast wheel the destructive power when it overwhelm the mind and destroys it and when we think about structural inequality we tend to think of its practical implications but we also need to think about it psychological implications because those are less easy to see and ultimately carter and much more complicated to come back. so i will take questions. [applause] >> thanks. i know at what stage did this turn into a book for you? did you think of it as a book

project? >> i moved to new orleans 5.5 or 6 years ago to work as an education writer. but i didn't know when i moved here that i was going to write a book. from having talked to other people who have written books i didn't want to write a book for the sake of writing a book because i gotta sense what an arduous and long process it is. i wanted to wait until i was at a point that i felt driven to do. it came from a desire to grapple with issues in more depth. i worked at the of newspapers for seven or eight years when i started writing the paper for this book and you don't have the space and time to go into stories and the shoes in as much depth as you would like even had the best of papers so that was what motivated me and as i said the project really evolve over

time. it in end up being what i envisioned initially. >> good evening. my first experience was as a student before listening to the national guard and when i returned from my deployment she was still there recording the stories and all the good things that happened at the school and rather than a question i would like to send a huge across the board thank you for 1, letting the entire world know that good is happening in the city and it starts with our children,

educators and all those people who support the positive things that are happening in this community and i think that your book kind of once again puts new orleans in the national spotlight saying we are struggling here but through our struggles we are persevering and we are tenacious and we are getting through our problems. so thank you. i don't have a question. >> that is great. [applause] >> thank you for sharing your story. also, the schools and the people i met were very open and gracious with their time over the course of reporting that so it wouldn't have been possible without that openness. that is a real testament to the people working and going to them. [inaudible]

>> how did you pick the school you were going to write about. did you want a variety? >> the charter story is the dominant one in the new orleans landscape. i decided i wanted them to wall be charters but i wanted them to be a different points in their development. that didn't want all first-year schools or all five years schools or in their fifth year. i wanted one that had a different approach and philosophy in teaching and learning. and staffing profiles. i started off spending time in five or six down to three. and the fourth semester and

having the mall be high schools, and focusing on three i schools. and the issue that they have more access and through our work to do stories on previously. was a combination of all those different things. >> anybody have any questions for the people? >> come to the microphone.

>> i just want to say congratulations, a loan struggle north of the paper. and the last book continuing on. [applause] >> like a lot of people, and the silver lining that might be education in new orleans. you cover that a little bit in the book. and you feel the state of education in new orleans at this point. years later. >> there is no easy answer to that.

and people who sort of a complete positive and others who make it out to be a complete negative and the truth is in between and much more complicated, and the tremendous amount of educator's working in the schools, and a huge amount of progress made. and families who feel like schools are more sort of stable places preparing kids for college and that said, there's not a lot of lingering challenges. and they are the most challenging whether you have special needs or a history or behavioral issues in the schools or alternative settings, and in a lot of cases struggling to

find schools that serve well. and there are issues of sustainability moving forward and things on the resource level, who have been dubbed over the last several years is sustainable. and kind of end of this book feeling really optimistic and pessimistic at the same time because i was able to see how transforming live, and the most challenging things and spent time at schools that were doing things that work but broader changes in american society. and revising through the city at all and there needs to be much more progress made on all kinds of things. and recreational opportunities

for kids and sort of what happened needs to be assessed, whether or not kids are graduating from college at high rates or whether or not they are able to come to new orleans or have safe communities to live in an jobs where they can support their families without having to work 80 hours a week. >> good evening. i would like to thank ms. sarah and her hard work continuing john. [applause] >> how they put up with me for a long time, i am very grateful to them. they have very busy lives and work gracious about making time for me. this would not have been possible without them.

>> congratulations. i would challenge you not to consider yourself a teacher or a good teacher because having read the book there are multiple ways to convey ideas and have them installed in our lives so congratulations. i just want to talk to you little bit about one of the things in the book around and expulsion and suspension and also a book that has been recently released talking about non cognitive variables and important achievements and sullen and so forth. can you talk a little bit about the role of a curriculum? either in terms of how limited it is here or what it should be in terms of addressing all the needs of a significant need of children? >> sure. i do think that the way the landscape of schools has evolved

over time, not really because of anybody with bad intentions or the lebron oversight, there is one model of school that is particularly prevalent and that is a highly structured environment, very focused on core subjects and academic creation and getting kids to the point where they can pass the state standardized tests that go to college and there are a number of schools that are doing absolutely amazing work that did job with kids and kids' that thrive in those environments but unless we have sort of a more diverse sorts of ecosystem of schools and approaches it is going to be hard work moving forward because some kids don't thrive in that kind of environment because there are not a lot of choices if you don't. there's a choice between that model i just described and sort of a school they perceive as

being sub par or might be slated for closure that they know isn't going to be there in the long term. moving forward there is more of an emphasis on diverse curriculum models, different ideas of what a school can or should be. >> you made a comment at the stars, you thought you would be a bad teacher. which made me curious, and second, if there was something you hope to teach with this book, what would that be? >> that is a great question. and not a bad teacher in a traditional model. as fun as it is, and what a

conventional school is like, and much more comfortable f-1 on one. in terms of what the book teaches i don't have any delusion that people who are adamantly convinced that charters or are great or awful force this to the governance model is what is needed, to read my book can't say i was completely wrong about all that and it isn't sort of an argument based book in that regard, but i hope that it helps to understand people's lives a little better and see where they are coming from and how their life history and experiences shape what they

want out of an education and what they need out of education. i guess going back to that close, i don't know that it will change policy or that it should change policy but i hope it makes us all understand and think about each other a little differently. >> thank you very much for coming out and speaking tonight on two topics of interest to me, education and the city of new orleans which i love. i want to ask a quick question to summarize this quote. maybe you can tell me how three schools use spent some time in kind of relate to this and you see this going forward as an idea. the notion that all children could or should be inventors of their own theories, critics of other people's ideas, analyzers of evidence and makers of there and personal marks on this complex world is an ideal with

revolutionary implications. >> that is a great quote. i think really that critical thinking and original thought and the ability to study and learn what interests you and has a self directed education with some foundational level are really important and critical thinking, the best thing my own indication -- education gave me. it is increasingly hard to live up to that ideal with the burdens that are placed on schools today surrounding standardized testing and standardized testing is something i have mixed feelings about because we do need to have a way of measuring school progress and schools that persistently failed bids over a period of years, sometimes generations, need to be held accota