protect our workers by not exploiting workers coming in to the country. family unification, pathway to legalization and citizenship is all part of what has been our principles. house democratic caucus principle is developed by our hispanic caucus, et cetera. the issue of how many people come in and how many of those are h. 18, every category something debated. i am not at liberty to say because our group grew up with each other and they're not in a position to confirm or deny that they even exist. i will say it the end of the day we still want family unification

, however we get to that place. i am confident about the immigration bill. we just have to get their jobs legislation moving as well and in the mean time, make america more american by overturning the ill-conceived doma. thank you. ..

up go. >> michelle wie thank you very much for joining us. last evening john stewart and stuart and this evening cnn piers morgan and where delighted to have our old friends here at this event that many people across the united states can benefit from a lot of what michelle has to say. just to get things started to get this evening how did you come up with that fascinating interesting book, "radical" and

where did the name come from? >> so, i think the genesis of the name is an interesting one and that when i first got to d.c. it was the lowest-performing and most dysfunctidysfuncti onal school district in the entire nation and that was the pretty widely known truth. so i started doing things that i thought were obvious in that kind of state. i just started closing low-performing schools moving out and affected employees, cutting the central office bureaucracy in half and as i was taking all of these steps and measures people started saying well she is a firebrand. she is a radical. she is so controversial and i thought, really? after thinking about it for a while i just said you know what? it's bringing some common sense to a dysfunctional system makes me a radical than i'm okay with that.

so that is sort of the embracing that concept was the idea for the name of the book. >> some people call you anti- teacher however there are many teachers out there that really like you. which is it do you think? teachers love you or hate you or is there any in between? >> i think it depends on the teacher you are talking to. you know, i think the whole notion that i am anti-teacher is an incredibly odd one to me and i write about this in the book. i come from teachers. my grandfather was an educator and my grandmother -- my grandmother was a kindergarten teacher in four of my aunts and my best friend. i grew up around teachers and having this incredible respect for the difficult job they have every day and i'm still surrounded by teachers to this day. i think it is because i have such respect for teachers and hold them in such regard that i

have a tremendous belief for what they can do. and the power that they have. i refuse to believe what many folks say which is kids are coming from difficult situations in poverty and there's nothing that the school can do. i profoundly that notion. i believe that when children are in the classroom with truly effective teachers even despite the fact that they may face a lot of obstacles, those kids can achieve at the highest level so we should aspire to nothing short as a nation in making sure that every single kid gets in a classroom with a highly effective teacher every day. it is no less than we would want for our own children so it's nothing different than we should want for nation's kids. >> united states spends the most per-capita per student. why are america's children ranks 25 out of 30th in developed nations in math, 17th in science and 14th in reading?

speier know when i share those statistics with people they cringe a little bit and when i share the fact that we are 25th in math and some of the countries that are ahead of us are hungary and slovenia. and i think of americans, we don't expect to be behind slovenia or hungary. when i started students first someone showed me a scatter plot of all of the developed nations in the country and on one axis before academic achievement levels and on the other axis was the amount of money that country spent per child on their public the public education system. we were in the cochran -- quadrant that you don't want to be in which you spend a lot of money and have poor results and the only other country that was in that spot was langsam -- luxembourg. i have no idea what they're doing in luxembourg but apparently it's not good. the problem with this notion is that for decades now people have

been pushing this idea that what we need in order to fix the system is more money, more money, more money but when i got to d.c. i knew first-hand that was not the case. we were spending more money per kid in d.c. than any other jurisdiction in the entire nation and the other results, go school districts right across the river in newark new jersey spending $22,000 per kid and get kids are operating on grade levels in a single digits so the idea that we have to put more money and in a broken system and expect a different result is -- who i think what we have got to do is have a great deal of transparency around where our dollars are going so that we can stop spending money on things that have absolutely no impact on the kids. when i was in d.c. we had a budget for the schools of $1 billion a year. and of that $1 billion,

403 million of it was given to the schools which means the majority of the money was going into the bureaucracy, this loaded bureaucracy and that is not where you're going to have an impact. money is going to have an impact when it's in the schools in and in the classrooms and not when it being up by the school district itself. until we bring some light to that and until we shine a light on what kind of return on investment are we getting for different programs and different expenditures i think we will continue to live in this world where we are spending more money per kid but not just getting a result. >> in your book you talk about student vouchers. can you tell us about the change in your thinking on this intricate concept? >> this topic of vouchers gets people really riled up. if you want to have a debate does bring up the word voucher and people have strong opinions. you know i am a democrat and i

have in my entire life since i was in second grade. i asked my dad the difference between democrats and republicans in the said democrats feel more about people have less and republicans care more about money and i said then i'm a democrat. when i got to d.c. i had very clear views about what education reform should look like and what it should look like and where it drew bright line was around vouchers. we think vouchers are bad because you are taking money away from the schools that get the most anomaly helping some kids. when i arrived in washington we had a publicly funded voucher program. and people, it was about reauthorizing and people wanted me to weigh in on it. people said you are the top education official, what do you think? they pretty much knew what i thought that i didn't want to

jump to any conclusions i started to meet with people, families throughout the city. the discussions that i had absolutely changed my mind. i was meeting with parents throughout the city, mostly low income single moms and these moms have done everything you would want a mother to do. they research their neighborhood schools and figured out that only 10% of the kids at that school were on grade level and my kid has a 90% chance of failure if i go there, it's not good enough for my kid and then they would do the next best thing. they would apply to these lottery processes that we have set up to win one of the spots in a good school on the other side of town and inevitably they would lose because there were thousands of people applying and only had four spots available. they would say okay now what am i supposed to do? when i was looking eye to i do with these mothers and they knew that i could not offer them a

spot in a high-performing school that i thought was good enough for my own kids i said who am i to stop this money which was a 75,000-dollar voucher which by the way was less than we are spending in the district and going to catholic school where they could get a great education. i came out of favor of the program and people went crazy. what are you doing? and i would always say to people look, my job is not to protect and preserve a district that has been doing a disservice to children. my job is to make sure that every kid in the city gets a grade education. it can be a private school or a charter school. as long as kids are getting a great education i don't care. so i tried to bring a lot of my democratic friends along with me on this issue and i was talking to a public schoolteacher the other day. i laid the whole argument out and she looked at me and she goes yeah, you know, not buying

it. i said did you watch the movie "waiting for superman"? she said yes one of my best friends was in it. do you remember the scene when little bianca is looking out the window and she is crying because she can't go to school because her mom has fallen behind on the tuition rates? what did you think about that? she said it was heartbreaking. it was an injustice. she said i wanted to write the check myself. i said that would be a voucher. [laughter] the problem that people have as they see things like vouchers and they say the republican thing in the democratic thing. if we stop looking at things in terms of partisan politics and started making public policy based on the decisions we make for our own kids and i think we would have neither republican senatorial democratic agenda.

>> you put a lot of that on teachers improving student performance. what do you say to the critics who say teachers have no control over things such as home life, poverty level? >> they are absolutely right. we have kids who come to school every day facing enormous challenges. nobody puts him to bed the night before and nobody fed them breakfast before they came to school. maybe the electricity got turned off at their house and they couldn't do their homework. when you are facing these challenges does it make it harder to learn and therefore harder to teach some kids? absolutely, 100%. the canopy and excuse for why kids aren't achieving? no way. this is what i think is the thing we have to understand in this country right now. the u.s. ranks for the bottom

internationally on social mobility which means if you are a child who is born into poverty in this country, the likelihood that you will ever escape poverty is high. that in my mind goes against every single ideal that we hold as american. that is not the way our country is supposed to work. this is the greatest country in the world because if you work hard and do the right thing you can live the american dream. but children growing up in america today the likelihood you go to a -- school is 50% which means you won't get the skills and knowledge you need to go on and get a college degree and a high-paying job. that is just criminal in my mind. we can't allow poverty in my mind to be the determining factor of the kids chances in life outcomes. we absolutely can't do it.

>> what about the problem of teaching to task? >> this is a very good question and i see both sides of it because as of mom last year when my daughter was in the fourth grade, in the middle of april she was coming home and i was saying where's your homework? she said we don't have homework anymore because the test is over. i thought oh my gosh. what kind of message the son sending to the kids and the parents you're sitting there asking their kids questions and their kids are saying the test is over so we don't have homework anymore. there is this over emphasis that i think it's maddening that on the other side of that i talk to a parent in compton not too long ago who was extraordinarily frustrated because she had a little girl, a daughter who also got straight a's. she was excited because she applied for her daughter to go

to mattson middle school and was told later on that her daughter did not qualify for the lottery because she didn't have the academic skills she needed. her mom said what are you talking about? she got all a's kindergarten through eighth grade. they said a sir one thing but she took the test and she doesn't know reading comprehension and we can show you all the data. this mom felt so betrayed. she trusted the system and she thought when her kid was coming home with good grades if that meant something. she said why wasn't anyone telling me and showing me the data that actually compared her to her peers that she could not compete? so while we don't want an overactive system we also have to have accountability. the challenge i think that faces the nation is how can we strike the right balance, where we have accountability and we know what their kids are able to do and yet there is not such an

emphasis on the test that people think that's the end-all be-all. >> in "waiting for superman" you are first for more money for teachers -- [inaudible] >> that is what i was asking. during the movie if you saw the incredulous look on my face. this was the situation when it was being filmed. we had presented a plan to the union where we said we want to give highly effective teachers the opportunity to make basically double the amount of money that they were in the old system. if they are willing to give us tenure and seniority protection and etc.. but it's a choice. if you wanted to stay in the hold system you can but if you want to go on the new system, they will make a whole lot more money. the union said no and i couldn't

believe it. it was interesting because the guy who was the president of the teachers union at the time has had a come to jesus and now he's an education reformer. what he tells me now is do you know why i didn't -- because i didn't want that policy in place. now i'm getting all these e-mails from teachers saying we wanted so he he said i knew i was going to lose the vote if i didn't so i didn't put it out. eventually we got the contracts in place and this is the interesting thing about it. people were very skeptical about what kind of impact this would have. if you pay teachers a lot more money based on the results etc. and there was a study that just came out a few weeks ago that studied several urban districts across the country and what it showed was most of these districts, they retain their highly effective teachers and

their ineffective teachers in exactly the same way. there was no differentiation whatsoever and the one outlier for the study was washington d.c. where they kept 88% of their highly effective teachers and only about 4300 of their effective teachers and i said that means what we are doing is starting to work because the great teachers are feeling more valued and they know that they are being recognized and awarded for their work. >> michelle america's most precious capital is there children so wide does this merit pay apply to teachers and why aren't low-performing teachers removed? >> you know, it's a tough thing to understand why this goes on. it defies all concepts. see everybody in the audience and most people in the audience,

merit evaluation as a way of life. whichever way you cut it is so important dealing with children and so much resistance to merit evaluation. >> i can tell you have having run a school district for three and half years that much of the education in the community is allergic to the idea of accountability. people want to say well we aren't accountable because of this reason or that reason or another reason and it's extraordinarily problematic. i don't know cusack awy but let me tell you how i think we have got to change this. i now live in california which is one of the most difficult states to get anything done as far as education reform. there was an episode that happened in a school in l.a. where they found a teacher who

was basically a sexual predator and they showed that he was -- so the school district had to fire him and they couldn't. it was just this absolute travesty and a school -- the parents were up in arms so a legislator from that area introduced a bill to the california legislature that would simply make it easier to fire sexual predators. not ineffective teachers but sexual predators. you would think that a bill like that would be passing. it didn't even make it to the education committee. it didn't even make it out of committee and make it to a vote by the legislature. that is how powerful the status quo is in making sure that no laws will be passed. when you think about it if you went out on the street today and asked people what they thought about it i guarantee you

virtually everybody would say of course we should pass a law like that but do you know what? the people on that committee who voted no, nobody knew that. there was no public light shone on that so those lawmakers are not going to be held accountable for those decisions that are to the detriment of children. the only thing this is going to change is if we as every citizen hold our elected officials accountable for the kinds of laws and policies that were put in place and we send that message to them that if you are going to vote with the best interest of the kids and we are not going to vote for you next time around. [applause] that means you all have to figure out who are your school board members and state legislators. >> why do most teachers receive the same grade every year? you touched on it briefly previously but is it demotivating for the excellent teachers that the poor

performing teachers don't have to improve their own performance regardless. they might get the same 2% raise every year regardless of what they do. >> again you see why i was shocked when i was trying to make changes and they got such pushback. you have some employees that are doing really well and you should be a will to compensate those employees more of. that is just not how the education work so we have something called -- >> get paid according to what kind of the degree you have been how long you have been in the profession. it literally drives effective teachers when they see somebody down the hall who comes in when the kids come in and leaves when the kids leave and meanwhile they are coming in two hours early and staying three hours later and producing results and it they get paid less than that person does because that person

has been there longer. it's just not the kind of environment that people would want to go into and stay in and it doesn't make teachers feel valued. you know, i got in a little bit of trouble the other night because i was giving a speech and all foreign and was lamenting the fact that highly effective teachers don't get paid enough. the thing about it is i said ask about players -- go now my husband is a former nba player so this is why i got in trouble at home. basketball players get paid $12 million each year for dribbling a ball around. [laughter] what value are the adding to society? meanwhile i think we should pay $12 million to our most highly effective teachers because they are determining the future of our nation. but we have this skewed culture where we don't actually respect and honor teachers for the incredible work that they do and

we certainly don't pay them what they are worth. >> in australia they have -- schools and china and india 220 days of public instruction. why do you think the united states is only 180 days? which is drastically different. in china and india it is 40 less days per year and if you multiply that by 10 it's a big disadvantage. [inaudible] people all the time talk about what do we need for education in my opinion you have to put every single resource to bear to solve the problem and the resources people underestimate is the resource of time. if you look at the schools in this country that do the best whether it's the traditional public school or charter schools etc. they are in school more and they have the kids working

before school and afterschool and on weekends. we have a 180 day calendar because we are still living off the agrarian calendar. literally, it's interesting i sat on a talk show the other day or a block is said michelle rhee is wrong. ask if it's not doing worse than what it was doing before? that person is actually right when you look at the fact that academic achievement levels of our kids in america in the 1960s and 70's is pretty much on par with where we are today. so it's true that from that vantage points we are worse. the problem is there are countries that are leapfrogging ahead of us. countries like latvia and liechtenstein.

i'm not not kidding. like the end liechtenstein are growing academically at two to three times the rate of american kids. so if we are saying the same because we are running the school system the same way we were 100 years ago based on the agrarian calendar and other countries have figured out to you know what? if we want to get ahead we have to educate your kids and put more time in etc. then we have remained the same in terms of achievement levels but fall in terms of the global achievement. >> two and a half weeks of vacations per year so why do we received three and half months per year and do you think that will ever change when we talk about other countries and the amount of the school year is and marc focused on students? >> i think it's only going to change if we make a commitment as a country to addressing this issue and doing something about it.

as long as school calendar is something that is negotiated in a collective organ in agreement we are in trouble because this in my mind we should set out as a country our kids are kids need to be in school axe numbers of daisy year but he could sit collectively bargained when school districts don't have money to put on the table often things the things they can bargain away is the best german two children. when you have communities who over the last couple of years have gone to a four day school week ago they didn't have enough money to negotiate, that is where we have to draw the line. i am actually for collective bargaining. i am all in favor of being in the center and around things like benefits to absolutely be

able to bargain those things at the table but when it comes to how long kids should be in school that in my mind should not need a bargaining chip. >> at that point feels like there is more -- tell us where's duden's first is going and what is next for the organization? >> thank you. i started a few years ago when i left d.c. with the idea that if you look at what was happening in public education of the last two to three decades he would see that it was largely driven by special interest group whether it's textbook manufacturers, teachers unions,. these organizations have tremendous resources and they use those resources to put a lot of influence on the political process to get those policies and regulations in place to benefit them.

i actually don't have any problem with that. that's that's the american way and it's a democracy we should be able to do that. the problem is not that these organization exists, the problem is at that point would didn't have an organized national interest group with the same teachers union advocating on behalf of kids. and because the kids were being represented at the table you have a skewed landscape, an environment that was tilted towards the centrist and away from kids. we have to start a national movement of everyday people who care about education and who know what kinds of policies that did put in place and who are willing to fight for it and hold public officials accountable. it has to be an organization has political muscle. we have 2 million members across the country right now and over 150,000 in new york. almost 300,000 in california and these are very active people. they have been searching for a

venue through which they can fight for kids. it matters to us. we have over 115 laws in 17 states that we are working with over the last few years. we have gotten involved in the electoral college is with over 100 politicians and last year's election. we are beginning to level the playing field on behalf of the kids and i would say we still have a long way to go. >> where does most of the money come from? >> it comes from a variety of sources. people who are passionate about this and what i'm proud of this the fact that we have a lot of proud members who donate. our average during the -- donation is about $84. everyday people, parents and teachers, grandparents, business owners who know the future of this country is going to be based on whether we can fix the public education system.

>> we will take a couple of audience questions before we move to the book signing. i will ask you to speak loudly and i will repeat the question. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]

[inaudible] >> that is part of the reason why i wrote "radical" partially because i wanted to tell my story and explain to people why i have come to the views that i do. it's hard to sort of get teachers or educators to understand that but partially for the average mom out there who's frustrated with what she sees and he wants to do something about it and does not know how. what i will say is this. take right here in new york city. it doesn't matter where you send your kids to school and it doesn't matter, you have to make the decision that you think is in the best interest of your kids. you can't let politics or guilt or anything else make you send your kid to one school or another but there something you

can do. let's take new york city for an example. most of you probably know this but the city recently lost $300 million in state and federal aid because the unions basically refused to implement teacher evaluation system. everybody has to be evaluated. everybody has to be held accountable. it's the way of the world. but the fact that the union refused to do this and very rightfully stood his ground and said no because what the union wanted was for the evaluation for the mock to be placed into in two years and it would sunset after two years. the teacher would be removed after two years but then we would revert after the old system and the mayor said no, what's the point of doing that?

where's the public outcry? where are the people that are picketing out there in the streets saying you cannot deny our kids $300 million because you are being held accountable and have a reasonable evaluation system in place? this is where students first is organizing. everyday people like you and it doesn't matter where your kids go to school. you have to get involved in that process because until the legislators and albany and the governors they just have to hear from people like you that you are going to make her decisions on whether you contribute to their next campaign or vote for them. right now they are not -- not hearing enough from people like you. [inaudible]

>> we live in a culture where children go home to homes where they watch five hours of tv a day come compulsively using facebook and hollywood tv filled with various things. mass media of television and radio obsessed and my country is hostile to education. i raise the question with the best teachers what good does it do unless the whole culture changes and maybe that is part of the problem. i would like to hear your reaction to that. >> he i am an educator so i don't know how to solve all of the social ills out there and i

can tell you that the kids are not the only one spending too much time on facebook and texting. i know a lot of ceos that are spending too much time on their iphones as well. there was a study that came out a number of months ago that was done by an economist at harvard. what they showed is that, and they studied over 2 million kids over a 20 year-year period. what they found is that if a child had a highly effective teacher, just one in their third teen year school history their earning potential, the likelihood that the graduated from high school and went on to college was greater in the likelihood that they would avoid a teenage pregnancy was higher. so i guess they're all kinds of problems out there. we should try to solve a lot of the problems but we also cannot forget that what happens in the schools matters a lot.

if what we are concerned about is poverty because a lot of people say kids in poverty -- these are real challenges and don't get me wrong but if we want to fix that problem, the best way for somebody to break the cycle of generational poverty is to get a high-quality education. we have to embrace the fact that education plays a very significant role in what the culture is going to look like in the long-term. if we are producing kids that do not have the skills and knowledge necessary to get a well paying job, and nowadays 50% of employers say they cannot think people in their applicant pool that have the skills they need to fill jobs. think about that. with this unemployment rate in the country, for half of the employers who say they have jobs than they can fill them because our education system is not

producing people who have those skills, we are on a very very difficult course for the future. education can play a very large part. >> he michelle thank you so much. my question has to do with -- [inaudible] for someone with a high school education to work in a factory or an auto plant and make 80 or $90,000 a year. those jobs now are gone forever. and for people to be able to make a similar salary and the skill level they need, no one is talking seriously for speaking publicly about the structural problem.

you have the school district that is fighting about whether whether -- [inaudible] what do you see is the most effective way to address that? >> well, you have to bring reason into how public schools operate. you know, it is astonishing how many conversations i am in in public forums where people will say to me well, you seem to have sort of you want want all kids to go on to college but not all kids are cut out for higher education and i say, excuse me? >> the bottom line is if you look at the data it is very clear that the vast majority of the jobs 10, 15 or 20 years from now are going to require some

level of higher education so viewers saying some kids are not cut out for that you are basically saying that they are not going to be able to find a decent paying job that would keep them in the middle class. you know when i was in d.c. i remember going into a school and they were doing, they had a program that used to be called vocational education and now it is called career technical education. i walk in and the kids are doing shoe repair. and i said, really? shoe repair? are we thinking we are preparing kids for profession by doing shoe repair? we have to be thinking about what are the jobs that are going to be available 20 years from now? we have to look at things like clean tech and green tech and that sort of thing and our career technical education should be geared towards those

skills and professions. so even what we think of as vocational ed and career track what can we do to build the skills of kids so they could intentionally go straight into a profession after high school? it's a wildly different set of skills and fields than we were looking at 20 years ago and we have not made that shift yet. [inaudible] >> 50% vouchers is a great idea, $5500 sounds like around 50%. i'm just estimating. >> you mean in terms of the amount of the voucher? >> per-capita teaching. >> this requires. [inaudible]

this argument that the unions throw out in order to try to have a trump card what about special needs kids? there's a simple answer. each special needs kids counts as two kids. when you figure out the per-capita spending you make your calculation that manner and they have two predefined the special needs of they get a double voucher. so they are calling the teachers unions blocked. the federal government wanted all states to adopt 55% fee limit and they said you were not getting any highway money unless you do. congress can do that with federal legislation money as well. if you don't fully voucherize districts in this manner you are not going to get federal money if you don't make those requirements all the way down the chain to the municipality's.

see let me first say this. there are lots of people out there that believe let's have universal vouchers and let's voucherize but i'd actually don't believe that. i'm for choice but only when choice results in better outcomes and opportunities for everyone. the voucher programs that we have support at students first are geared towards low income kids who would otherwise be failing in school. i actually do think, to your point, can be worked out in terms of how much of voucher should be. what i find curious is the absolute aversion that people have to the concept of vouchers in education and there were two reasons why. one is if you don't believe the public dollar going to a private institution, you don't believe intel grants. that's the same thing.

when a kid gets about grant federal government dollars to go to harvard or yale or wherever they want with their grants. if you don't believe in food stamps that can be used in redeemed in your neighborhood. medicare is used used not just at public hospitals. so the idea that we just can't do that in public education is obvious in the second thing i say is people believe the argument with vouchers. they say well we shouldn't take money out of the system. should take that money and it just in the failing schools to make them better. and here is why think that makes sense. we don't use that logic in any other part of our lives. if you went to a dry cleaner down the street and if every 10 shirts who took their seven came back with a huge burn marks on them what would you do? you would stop going. what people said weight you can

stop giving us your business and your money because we need your money to be able to invest in new equipment and to train our employees and if you take your business away we are not going to be able to do that. what would you say? so if we are willing to take that much care with our laundry shouldn't we take at least that much care for their kids and not be willing to say okay let's continue to invest in this thing that has failed for generations and hope that someday it might get better. meanwhile some kids are not learning how to read and write and not getting the skills they need. it makes no sense. >> ladies and gentlemen, michelle has to go on piers morgan and she has agreed to sign. >> you are probably going to be nicer with the questions then peers is. >> before we close out, firstly

i would like to thank a real old and dear friend for making this incredible event possible and that is leslie cohen who we briefly we briefly mentioned and also anybody who has any stake in education and if they want to get -- students first.org according to many critics and others are doing all types of interesting work. also most importantly the lady right here who has two or three books. the book has received incredible reviews. if you have any stake in education or education means anything to you personally, your kids, your family or the future of the country according to many individuals it's a must-read then i strongly recommend it. please join me in thanking michelle rhee. [applause]

>> up next "after words" with author sarah garland. on her book "divided we fail" is the story of an african-american community that ended the era of school desegregation. it chronicles ms. garland's return to her hometown of louisville kentucky where african-american parents closure

of a predominantly black school. for the sake of desegregation. this is an hour. >> host: why did you start to write this book with xml your first book was about gangs in central america and this is somewhat of a shift. >> guest: in some ways it is in some ways it isn't. i got into segregation in the suburbs in my last book and researching for schools and looking at the decentish in between school districts in long island so that spurred me to think about these issues. the reason i wrote it is i grew up going to a public school they are and i was blessed in second grade to a school that was in inner city surrounded by housing projects in a poor neighborhood in the city. it was something i hadn't thought about actively since i was a little kid. so when the case went to the supreme court i was obviously

interested in following it because it was very personal to me. >> guest: i always like to ask people their personal connection to the story before we get to the meat of it. when you were bused into the inner city did you have a particularly -- advance on desegregation and school integration? >> guest: as a kid you don't think about it and looking back even when i was looking at the reaction for kids in the 70s when they started busting a lot of the kids would say you know i like the school. they didn't think about it and it was the same way for me. as i got older i started to think about not only going to a school surrounded by poverty that i didn't see in my neighborhood in the suburbs, that was definitely eye-opening but at the same time the schools i attended, there was tracking so you have the regular program and then you had the advanced

programs. those were cut very closely along class lines. you absorb that any start to think about it than i remembered me in high school and one of the only classes i took where it was mixed between the tracks and the global studies. there was an african-american in the class who said she tried to test into the advanced program at one point and she couldn't get in. she was obviously very intelligent and outspoken woman. that affected me and i still remember that in tenth grade, thinking about these different tracks. reflecting on that, you have desegregation but at the same time within the schools you still have segregation and you were sending a message to kids when you have classes full of kids that are smart kids and classes of black kids who are supposed to be the dash kids.

if you think about how this worked out and i've always been interested in this idea of how do we do diversity well? >> the dominant american life over the past 50 years or 60 years now has been the brown decision in this idea that if we could desegregating if we could force the hand of schools and policymakers that we could have a more diverse school and greater education on not just quality that equity. obviously pushes against that narrative somewhat. brown versus board is mentioned in the book. tell me about what round has meant for education equality and access in the country so far? >> guest: it's a hard question because i think we hold that ground is this amazing feat that

we accomplished that we rolled back segregation and we looked at what happened afterwards and we see how incredibly difficult it was, divisive in some ways but also you have this very incremental progress after death it was very frustrating to people. it was seen as a great victory but i think also it's important in doing this research to look back at what we didn't accomplish yet. so when i was looking at desegregation and how it was finally implemented 20 years later after brown was handed down 20 years later we started tossing at the way the programs are set up still maintained quite crudely jenna lot of voicing class privilege so that poor kids had to be lost and part of that was logistics but part of it was maintaining the status quo.

so i think the brown decision, it's a difficult decision. one of the most interesting books i have ever read is what brown versus the board of education should have done, looking at if we would have done it differently differently how it might've change things. it's really just thing. you probably wouldn't have the unanimous decision which was very important but looking at the counterfactual and thinking about what a victory it was but also what it didn't accomplish. >> host: did you mean to write a book the pushes back his skin such a celebrated public policy considered one of the greatest victories of the 20 century for america. did you push push back against better highlight the story of people? >> guest: oh yes. this is not the book that i expected to write. i went into it thinking that,

and i think in louisville especially in the gration was a good thing and it brought people together. it made me think a different way about the world and than i might have other wise and a lot of my classmates the same way. i think one of the points i make often in the book is that during the heyday of desegregation in the 70s and 80s, you son of a black white achievement gap shrinking faster than i ever had. there were some money accomplishments and successes. >> host: what about steve segregation as such, i mean the gap was so huge that just getting access to books and resources and teachers may have shrunk the gap. the desegregation process was --

>> guest: i think it's hard to separate that out. with the research how does the integration of that kid's? kids are learning from each other or is it because if you're a black child in the classroom with a majority white middle class, you might have some more resources in a school than you might otherwise have. one of the points in the book his favorite theme was green follows white. he supported desegregation at the time. it's a difficult complicated question and there are a lot of other things going on at the time. it wasn't just desegregation i don't think. i want to make it clear that i think it was a very important thing to do. but i was surprised that i ended up writing this book that was looking at what went wrong and it was not what i expected to write about.

>> host: the first section is about -- and i found it sort of compelling as you tell the story of this girl who dreamed of going to central high school and she dreamt of it all 15 years of her life. she was told she couldn't go. the school couldn't have more than 42% african-americans and she was being put on a wait list that might derail her dream of getting a good education to become a lawyer. that type of story was compelling. how much of that came up in your research? in your research narrative of people? >> guest: those stories to me are what made it really and tristane and how emotionally connected people felt with their school. but how they saw the teacher in that school and not just because because -- part of it was what she wanted to be a lawyer and no other school in the city had a law

program. but it was also very emotional familial connection. her dad gone there and her mom had gone there. it was the black school in louisville for decades and decades. people had a very emotional connection to it. it was a very good school at the time in the 80s. eventually they put in an advance program there so you have the elite of the black community were going to that school. the people that i talk to in the book, there were two things going on, concerned about educational quality but also about our schools and this is our community and it's very important that we have some say about our school. >> host: as people got those letters and in the metaphorical sense the engineering of the 1950s was producing outcomes

that were nonetheless harmful. how soon the people in the town realized they needed to make some sort of policy pushback? >> the desegregation plan was negotiated every year. it was this ongoing constant conflict in some ways. but for some people, i profile activists who are really behind this fight and they had gone to control desegregation and so for them, they have been watching this and they were really concerned that desegregation was close -- going to close central. so many other black schools have been closed. ..

not to flee to the suburbs, private schools. an to do that they have to convince them to keep their children in public schools, and then they're thinking privately at least is that there not going to want to send there kids downtown and a lot of the schools have been under this. at the in their mind, they have not done a lot of research. so it is partly just work and

logistical. how do we, how do we maintain, how do we keep them happy in that situation. >> host: the white middle-class flight. that might have been totally okay with them. this ability of the community. but for other reasons. the tradition of the school. >> guest: absolutely. a tradition of -- a tradition of black empowerment and that we built this school ourselves. we did this largely without a lot of help from the school district go without a lot of resources. had to fight for every penny. so i think a lot of the people that i talked to saw the way that it had been gorgeous the attitude. black people basically failed in

doing education in the community. they need the help. they need to have their kids sit next to a white kid. i heard that a lot. there is a sense of -- >> from the community or from the outside? >> i hear that from the activists. we should not have to the have the blacks next to the whites for them to learn. an understandable frustration. maybe if he were deficient and our culture and community is now being recognized as good as. and so i think that was one of the problems with the way desegregation was thought of and implemented. if there was not a shared resource need we're going to help you. >> is there a danger in that approach? it seems to me that could return

saying we're trying to hold on. we are going to hold schools to so that we consider we have our own stuff. >> i agree. there were times. telling the stories, people and stories, have not been out there. i agree. it is a difficult question to say -- it is a question that we engage now. the close the school down because is failing a because it does not have enough students? because it is -- test scores are low where do we, you know, try to keep it together even though those things are happening. and that think it's a very difficult balance. i don't have the answer. >> increasingly, none of us to.

but what i think is amazingly than is you chronicled this perspective, highlight this perspective, but you also help us track how the activists engage in the push back. oftentimes i think that the victory, people don't really get the sense of what steps they took to get there. tell us a little bit about that. , ultimately to advance a legal argument. shifting the task of the entire country. how'd you do it? >> a bunch of very interesting and eclectic people. i spend time with them. but they came at it from different, you know, very different places, although a lot of them had been friends. one of them was a curious football coach. he just had a coach attitude. he had written editorials

constantly in the newspaper. at the edges, activism. kind of knew what they were doing when it came to doing community activism. another had been part of the black nationalist movement in the 70's. and so they were grown up from that. the civil rights theme in some ways. of that time frame, but also on the outside and critiquing it, but learning from it. they knew what they were doing. people who arrow about. just a wonderful lady. she, you know, she got very involved in protesting the first iraqi war in the 90's. she was very involved, and that is as yet pull then. she wanted to say this is where she had gone too. there were also minorities in

the communities. it was an anachronism that the african-american activists fighting, they wrote a book about them. but, yes. >> maybe even, but how do you as a black person and a black community convinced by people that my people in the short end. >> the thing is that there were not. there were behind this first federal case. and they did not in that going on there won there fight which is central high-school which is what they cared about. some of my parents, but it turns out that a lot of places you had

fights where you had the naacp on one side fighting said maintained desegregation programs. then you would have, you know, a black school board member or an arm and league member on the other side saying, you know what, let's hear rid of this. so really there were lonely, but there were not necessarily completely alone. >> power brokers. and i guess, and maybe you can answer this, your subjects, obligations. they think it makes policies. they have an ideological commitment. does not make its own. it is its own thing. or they align to a tradition. makes its bones politically.

you get -- resentful of the black organizations. >> in some ways it is interesting. so and a shoot, you did not have a huge uprising. did not have a lot of black leaders definitely had a significant reader list. you did not have a big uprising against them. i think there were people in the communities, yes, this is not really gone away. it is an interesting question. i don't know.

>> i don't think there is an answer. i also wonder. i became more sort of compelled to questions certainly not on the left -- national level but the local level. don't really play out on the ground for the people who are supposed to be helped. >> in some ways there is a need for schools to be more diverse than they are. maybe not in academically, but there is this idea that if we are educated together that kind of thing. add to think their is a reason for it not just traditionally.

>> and the verse question. >> yes. audi you get money into neighborhoods. one fast way to do that is for example, you have a gentrifying of the parent. it's horrible. yes. but think that is with the educational formula is really trying to do. we will become a you know, desegregation, it is mostly over in most places. how do we deal with that? had we deal with the fact that those cities and air and areas, it is not even a possibility. it is not even feasible anymore. >> popular opinion based on legal terms that we see now. >> it is hard to do for us.

the school choice movement. that has gone into the consciousness of the american public. they deserve the right. and so i think turning around and say okay, put them in the busing program, you have huge. it is a choice program that choices are managed. i think that is in the opportunity to do this. and in terms of where people live, you have had the growth of cities, and it is making it so severe, you have neighborhoods that are becoming more diverse. in the cities we have the right middle class moving back again. so there are some opportunities.

the 50's and 60's. other means were very different. the 1975. using the city as an example. it looks so different now. >> absolutely. >> part of what i wonder, before we change years, if the parents are taking an account of those kinds of policy shifts, making demands for new approaches to educational reform. other factoring all that stuff and? of the locked in as well? >> i think whenever you talk to parents they care about where their kids are.

i always hear people talk about parent involvement in schools, and they're just really focused on kids. what is going to happen. again. and some parents have more savvy than others, particularly with school, and some people value different things about schools, you know, being close to my house may become a you know the teachers people are different. but i think in all of the people i talk to, the parents, that was in motivation. there were not thinking about, you know, even chris unmerited to occur kid to the supreme court, the motivation was he wanted her son to get into the school. so it was not really know what a kid that has been down.

i don't think that started out. and i think for the most part we were not really thinking big picture. very small picture. my five year old. >> i think that is so difficult about school. you have these clashes. and so it is hard to think about the larger society where it is your child. in my personal case parents sent me down to the school. my mother spent time where i went to elementary school. she was familiar with the school. she did not it was a rough school. so when she was sending me the

school it must have been difficult, but the same time it had been -- they have really worked on the school to make it palatable. and that is what made it okay to marry classmates and up to go there and stay there. i only had to go there for two years in the state for four. because, you know, at the same time that is a really good program. >> my elementary school has done excellent elementary school. >> i mean pretty -- there are not very many school districts around the country. i wrote about some recently that

looked at how few 200 something better still during the segregation, but it's still doing and just reelected a school that was supportive of doing desegregation. because they cannot just use race, because of the supreme court decision, they're using in com and education and other factors and race. >> anything in particular. >> yes. absolutely. , the lawyer who was involved in bringing this case got so angry. this is due to areas of the city that there had been back and forth between. part of the frustrations is part of the frustration with the program is you had us in going

on an integration going on between poor black students and upper-middle-class white students, but then you also add black students and metal working class never of students and a very poor white neighborhoods which is something that moreover kentucky is maybe more of a factor. you have a very population of low income and working-class whites. a very large population. so you have a very high poverty schools. so it was perfectly integrated basically, but every kid in the school was poor. >> right. >> which is not necessarily solve. i think it is important for those kids and no one another, but it does not necessarily resolve the resource problem. >> which speaks to other more broad issues that we need state personally. broader social.

we will take a quick break. >> okay. >> what he do about the israeli-palestinian problem? took the president until 2002 to develop. and to states for two people. a jewish state and a palestinian state, but only when that palestinian state would be a decent, stable, peaceful, democratic, non corrupt government. first that means -- >> an insider's view into the compass and centel years of the bush a administration's policy on the israeli-palestinian conflict sunday at 10:00 p.m. eastern. part of book tv this weekend on the c-span2. >> so the book talks about desegregation and ultimately the parents frame it as a policy

that failed. talk to me about the reasons why? >> so frustrated because the way it was implemented undermined in some ways what black people wanted for their schools. so you had hundreds and thousands of black teachers fired. and then obviously not what people were looking for. there were fighting for her their desegregation of schools. again, like i said earlier, to make way for, you know, whether you want black kids are white kids together and that scarce parents. >> this argument, white people, white parents don't want -- they get scared away. >> at the time.

i think, that is what happened. in that think you had marriages that happened. the county system. that situation. but you had the school closures. i do think that was part of the thinking. also, you had situations where a school was -- away school would be closed. so they kept the school. it was an issue and so on. so they had the clout and political savvy. they also had something to do with it. and you had a black principle that was fired. administrators. you have this fallout that i don't think people anticipated. >> added they never see this? i kept thinking, how did people not for see this? the final number of resources. obviously the could have been

expectation of fairness. the first. fifty's and 60's and 70's. anticipate that black teachers would be fired. was it not foreseeable? were they sold a bill of goods? >> i think that further -- my understanding is that just needed to get rid of this education. having these two systems may be have different salary scales for black-and-white teachers college is the case before desegregation where you had -- i mean, you could not have any integration between faculties. you had -- that was just, you had to get rid of that. so i think, i have no idea if people foresaw.

i would imagine that you actually had some ambivalence about this because i do think that some black people saw this is potentially going to hurt, you know, are my school or an going to lose my job if we have to integrate with the way school. they're not going to love me teaching their kids. there was an interesting poll that was done. not very reliable, but they are interesting in that they showed black southerners. so it's like, we think that some people, i still think that it was an important -- i mean, getting rid of the segregated schools was worth the risk, but that was, you know, it had this fallout. maybe it could have been anticipated. but there is a report that was

done. you had as civil rights activist actively saying and tracking this. look, look at how many teachers we had come how many we have now and how many we used to have. people have pointed it at the time. black activists, black policy, bike advocacy, constantly chasing at the expense of world policy. it seems to me that this was foreseeable. as you indicate, all kinds. but at the end of legal segregation, it was such an important and valid victory, and extraordinarily symbolic victory, but all of these other residual a facts really kind of damage to.

as you said, because we ended the resegregation. >> i mean, it is hard for me to say. i think every time we're looking at these issues as the feasibility. there is the dream of what could be and then it's like what's practical. what can we do, what is politically possible. what was politically possible in the 50's, you know, obviously they had a lot of other ripple effects that were very important so, you know, i don't know if the calculations were made and they said or not try to get everything we want but we will at least get this big victory. but coming you know, i think weighing the differences that it is still an important victory.

the buck. >> it was important. you know. >> is just as not work like it was supposed to i think is what happened. it was really, there was this dream that this is going to up to open up the doors for children to be educated. finally share resources. look at the resources that minority have and compare them to suburbs. >> there is another piece of this. the collateral fact, liquidating schools, just the teachers. those sorts of things. but there was also the community

effect. in your book you talk about how people were pushing back not just because people are getting fired, but @booktv now because programs are lost. but the communities were broken. >> that was one of the big issues that people talk about. your neighborhood school. i don't have an experience of a neighborhood school, so i did not really get that. so i, you know, my school, my resonate, so that was a very important thing. >> what does and never heard school with that perspective offer a community? >> especially looking back at the history of southern black education, there is this deeper pride and a lot of the schools that were built because these were, you know, black education

in the south started out in people's homes and churches. here is your school. something that the black community felt. they got some help from the north. but there was a lot of pride in that. this was more than just this cool down the street where i can play and it's convenient. we can go and hang at the pta meetings. we felt that this is our pride of our community. it was very symbolic. >> as symbolic as trumping. >> but i think it is symbolic. i think that it matters to people, your identity and who you are. there is this tension that i looked at in the bought -- in

the buck. people are grappling with an my american or am i african-american? how you deal with assimilation and success in a larger society? and it underpins their identity. it is the heart of what a lot of people are grappling with. the activists to get involved in this. how much that identity and culture i have to give up in order to succeed. hold on to the corrective community identity if you have a kind of stable. upper-middle-class. the blue collar class.

not exclusive to your book. part of how the black community was bragging with desegregation. this and as they headed testily these never its. >> this situation to my previous book. i was looking at up urbanization. it is interesting. much bigger. the numbers are smaller, so there are fewer. people are running out of inner-city. >> what is the argument. if there is food and security, crumbling housing, it was bad. and so they leave the first chance they get. ..

and the answer is not to have listed aggregation on jim crow. obviously that's not the answer. there were federal policies that needed a track different people to move out of the city and into

the suburbs and took apart these vibrant city neighborhoods that used to exist overmix income and so on. it wasn't just individual choices. this is federal policy choices and local policy choices to make this easy to the people who had the money to get out. there is issues, but it wasn't just desegregation to facilitate it didn't fix the achievement gap. it helped probably. it also didn't cause problems, but it was one of the fact yours. >> host: your book spotlights the complexity and a masterful way. talk about the supreme court because that becomes a pivotal

moment. while this is rooted in grassroots will activism in some ways there's school, ultimately the changes the complexion of the nation. >> guest: it did. they got out of their hands. they couldn't find anybody to be their lawyer and the first phase the first place come the first place come the survey found the sky, to the court who has an interesting guy. he's very enthusiastic. he was really compelled by their story, but he was then taken out by periods who wanted to send a kid to the school and they could come us with a ticket to the supreme court and was a big deal in some ways and was also a into something dirty happening. even when the decision came down, most school districts in

the nation weren't doing a seen anywhere. something dirty wing in a lot of ways. >> host: he did allow for a conversation about the role race plays in public policy. it still matters now because we have affirmative action were still wrestling with what role should race play. the supreme court codified saving rates can't be the only fact there. >> guest: that's right. >> host: what are the other fact is based on a supreme court decision with regard to schools? >> guest: they been created with parental education. the argument is the same proxy surveys. there's been the idea that we

can be looking at socioeconomic status as a basis of integrating the k-12 level and that conversation happened even higher ed is about rather than affirmative action, which turns to have the best and the brightest. we should be using class and said because they are so promiscuous you attending universities. >> host: you could end up in a place like louisville with a bunch of poor wickets in one school in poor black kids at another school. >> host: there was one of the big complaint all along that she so had high poverty schools. i think it's a compelling case that the people who say race still matters say that yes,

income can capture and be a proxy for making sure we have racial diversity. racial diversity matters because people, different experiences. they argue that it matters in the experience of race is more than just income. for black americans, the wealth gap is much harder to measure, which he may have differentiation in income, for example. wealth is a different matter if that makes sense. >> host: income could be property, which is more -- >> guest: those experiences are caught up in the history of discrimination and history of

segregation and the continued racism in this country but those things are not captured by just clicking a class. so that's the argument per se and we still need affirmative action for assignment to schools based on race. >> host: i understand the nationalist argument that we want to protect her schools, but was very addition that sort of mirror the argument of the liberal elite, least the academic liberal elite to save we need to value diverse to be, that there's something good in a school about having blacks and whites and latinos in the same place. the sony asserted mailer argument. >> guest: the two families i

focused on, the mom and daughter in each case had different opinions, so in jackson's case, she had this horrible experience in the 70s out to this white working class, fairly high poverty neighborhood. kids spitting at her, throwing snowballs with rocks in it, awful still really nervous about sending kids and they had to be passed eventually. she kind of saw is important. my kids about opportunities they would not have had a fake onto the school across the street, which is still a struggling

school. so when we talked about it, she really said these opportunities for important. they have these networks and experiences. they wouldn't have gone camping. i wouldn't have been able to do that for them. that said, jamaica her daughter feels totally differently. she ended up going to school near my neighborhood. we switched places at different times. she had good experiences, but also felt racial quotas were inherently wrong and it didn't matter. she too should have this experiences down the street from our house. >> host: both political sides and say we want all schools to be choice schools and equal.

and that's where you want to push you because your book offers such a powerful critique of desegregation. talking about how it's perhaps an oversimplified analysis at the works or doesn't work. talk about what those were. people will pick up this book and have strong responses. one response -- i read a review that interpret your focusing too much government is bad and government intervention is the problem. it's reasonable to interpret sure but that way. this is what happens when government keeps tinkering and engineering. a check and make a sequel as a result we ended up hurting the people who are trying to help.

this is what happens when government gets in the way. >> host: that's not necessarily what i was trained to get across. i think the issue if that is who is running government and for whose benefit. that's an ended up happening was desegregation. the problem is decisions are being made for the most part with a certain constituency and mine. that wasn't just the white middle-class by the way. returning to keep the black civil rights happy, too. they stipulate that contingents fighting for desegregation very intensely all these years as well.

but in terms of what works, i listen to lots of people everyday talking to me. i spent a lot of time in relatives schools that seem to be working on there so we sent to that's problematic with how -- why it's working so well. it's a really hard question to answer. one of the things is the effort to de-school choice and diversity at the same time, which is a new trend. this is something charter school operators are interested in here in new york city, for example, but elsewhere in new orleans, the purpose is to create student bodies. unit and governors say school choice and desegregation.

part of it is just an anti-charter school argument that people say why it should come in and come in and work on the schools we have versus opening a new school will take the students doing well. >> host: the most talented students will be taken off the top and go to the other schools, leaving traditional public schools to how what's left. >> guest: that's the main issue. in one school they went to in atlanta, where they had built a mixed income communities were not only was the school -- is becoming more diverse, but the created a school in an income

community. they had to tear down the projects there before you and in a lot of people didn't get to stay. >> host: that they can listen to as well. often companies dislocation of somebody. a person could read this as a consequence of liberal democratic. we've rejected that argument out of hand. another argument is exactly why we need school choice in the most liberal sense possible. we should send us any options go wherever they want and increase funding for homeschool options on a charter school movement should expand and become

privatized. there's that argument as well. is there an argument for why we need election? >> guest: no, i don't think so. the choice is not a bad thing. parents wanted. kids benefit from different learning environment and parents tend to know best what is good for their kids. one of the issues fiscal choices equity and if we care about providing a good action for every child that there is the parent who won't be able to navigate the streets is a newfoundland and new york city as an example where for high school there's hundreds of choices of schools seek out to, but the large comprehensive high

school, a lot of those struggle because they tend to get the kids who don't make an active choice if that makes sense. select desegregation there are problems that come with it they need to be dealt with and thought about. we can look back and say this for and that didn't work. we can think of that not necessarily as a critique, but are we to make them better where the smart thoughtful and try to avoid repeating some of the same mistakes. >> host: basically you're time we have richard tired to indiana saw -- >> guest: not yet. maybe my next book.

>> host: when they first moved here, he spent a lot of time in helmand. the primary people who visited have been friends and relations from the area. it is a pretty nice hostess, very cordial and welcoming. during jackson's fame, pretty much from 1859 to the rest of rachel's fight, they have lots

of company and many, many parties or dinners are things that the hermitage. they were entertaining and appreciated sign things, too. she had very, very nice things. the kind of tool and manage of her as for the country lady, she wasn't that exactly. it is more about her comfort in the big cities than about her actual appearance. >> now, and discussion on education brick. this is an hour.

>> ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the texas book festival. we are glad to have yell with us and especially glad to have others with us today. others today are paul tariq, no citizen left behind and michael brick. there is existing connections here. my name is mark strama. i want to start this discussion briefly with a little bit of educational context about the states challenge. i got a press release in the texas education agency a couple months ago they said on the fourth grade science made, to access african-american students

performed the best of all in the country come. nurse to every cohort in every other country. our hispanic students were the sixth best on the fourth grade science made. anglo students are the eighth best of all the students. it's different than what i expect it. i went to the nape website rank 29 in the country. that's not so great. how is it possible when you disaggregate the student codewords and evaluate them against the rest of the country come to each of the three cohorts is in the top 10% and we

all know those comprise over 95% of the student population. how is it possible collectively they are 29th? the answer is african-american and hispanic students in texas and in the country significantly underperformed anglo students. in texas, african-american and anglo students make up a larger share your the entire student population. so when you're lower performing categories of student are a larger percentage of total student population, you can have all three groups in the country and still the 29th when you combine them. the big sur question, our public schools doing a good job are the

mediocre? the question is how are they doing with a student population relative to where they started, we are doing a better job moving him up a steep mountain. but because of demographics, our mountain is steeper and if you measure not based on

i spent time reporting is a pediatrician is watching out that have been in to improve environments for kids.

a lot of it takes place in schools doing without a lesson, when those qualities become character and in different ways, different educators from a test teacher in brooklyn to a private school principal in new york city to venture is in the highest poverty. chicago case is support and help they need to do better in this realm. we don't quite know how to teach the strings, hot help kids improve. what i wrote about in the book is some new innovative ideas that might help kids do better in this dimension and in the process, help them do better in high school and college in linux. >> i'm going to follow up each author's introduction of their book and then we'll get to the next out there. you wrote a book will reporting

for "the new york times" turned into a book called whatever it takes. they very aggressively pursued a grant from the federal government to try to replicate the model house here. yesterday one of the kipp students bring to a for it three or four years ago and your response was a lot of this is my repudiation of what i wrote then. i read this book as a validation of the science behind why the wraparound cradle to college motto makes sense, but what about this book -- is this a confirmation or a deviation of what he thought then? >> i i think what i was trying to say what she was talking about one particular line in an

article in 2006 we talked about middle-class values as an important part of education and trying to look more deeply at the skills that are now in more important part of what is the successor schools are. in terms of how this relates to reporting, a little of both. in many ways it's an affirmation. i do think the best way i know of to deliver services to high poverty neighborhoods is to do them comprehensively. simply working in a high poverty neighborhoods isn't enough. the school needs to be surrounded by early childhood programs, parenting support, afterschool programs, help with college admissions, all the things provided in the 97 book neighborhood. i think that model could work.

while it's still too small for my liking, it's a good start to try to spur a lot of different communities into replicating the model. the one way they spoke to us cast down on some of those harlem children's zone model is geoffrey canada and my first book focused on the charter schools he runs was focused on standardized test results. as a journalist, that was a handy device because many cheers focused and tiredly on how kids do at the end of the year, it's a great narrative device. this amend when test scores come on and off of principles and legislators to feel that way as well. a lot of research i read challenges the idea that standardized tests are measuring the skills for a child's long-term success.

i've come to be a doubter of the kind of particular educational focus check is using or misusing and charter schools while i now believe more in the infrastructure he's built to support them. >> meira levinson is not just a faculty member at the harvard graduate school of education. seasick graduates here in austin, texas. [cheers and applause] i let her speak for a few minutes about the citizen left behind. >> thank you, mark. i went to pick up on the dilemma of how to interpret nape scores and the question of the aggregates were texas is mediocre, dead meadow or significant subgroups were texas is outperforming 80% of the other states in the country for

every sub group. what i talk about in the book as we are accessed as a nation but the question academically. it takes up a lot of our time and a lot of your work when you work on public education. is this good, bad, how do we improve the scores of hispanic and african-american students versus others, et cetera. to think about much more than academic achievement, measured by things that standardized test. not only are kids doing much more than merely succeeding in school, but the idea is somehow it should not only be a nice place to spend time, which all too often it is in.

schools that serve low income kids of color are demoralizing and demeaning and disrespectful, but most of the time they spend should prepare them to lead a happy and fulfilled lives as people, as workers and citizens. one of the things we spend almost no time on these days is thinking about with citizenship needs in this country. we have a lot of patriotism and when they shouldn't be here in a thick back, but we don't take seriously what it means to be a citizen, where we are democracy and what we would look like if we were better democracy than today. so what i read about is the idea we have a civic empowerment gap

is large and well documented as the academic achievement gap is. we don't know if you're well-educated and have a fair amount of money, if your native english english speaker, you are much more likely to have voted, to be a member of a political party, to have been contacted by a candidate, who have had some conversation with a government official, whether elected or appointed, even to protest it were other things to think of this more outside, all of these things are more likely to do if you occupy a him or space and society. that means right now our demographic characteristic is determining who actually has power as a citizen. that is fundamentally antidemocratic. we should not pretty to have civic and political power based on the color of somebody's skin or how much money they earn or

wealth in the bank. as a teacher for eight years and is a proud graduate of the austin independent school district, i came to understand my students opportunities, even my own phallus tune in opportunities is structured not only by what academic achievement they have, but the ways they are able to see civic and political power in order to fight for democracy and justice on their own the house and other the house. ultimately it's not one shot racing out of poverty and escaping their neighborhood, which means leaving behind the one they love and who love them. it is to improve communities so they can all epitomize collectively and have a better democracy.

>> let me follow that up with this concern. i have a background in getting young people engaged in politics. i was director programs are proper though. i run campaign academy can make getting a people involved in my campaign. i love young people's engagement with her on my side. [laughter] when we engage the public school system and not, i've got a friend who's a government teacher at small-town texas, whose these are the exact opposite of mine. she teaches a majority minority cluster and she would take them to tea party gatherings. how do you address boundaries and appropriateness of politics and public education?

>> it's important we engage students the citizen. what is the argument to the right now fully recognize to teach kids to be writers, they should be writing every day. to teach kids not annex, they should be doing math everyday. it's personally reasonable a kid who plays baseball with a tivo at five or six, joined the little league at seminary. play every single year and a pitcher in high school came up to preseason, postseason. both a lot of time practicing hitting and throwing and catching the ball. we spent no time asking is to practice citizenship. if we reform education in the way of arguing we should to close the civic empowerment gap, the friend you mention a

small-town texas may be taking her students at the party rallies, but she's also one of support and expect tatian. shall be taken him to testify and she's going to -- of the teach in a politically engaged class, but it will be an ideologically particular class. there's lots of ways they can keep the class are being ideologically driven and partisan, but still have kids to citizenship, be sentenced in the way they are writers and mathematician and baseball players. >> michael brick is a former "new york times" writer and his book, saving the school is about reagan high school it here everyone remembers when they didn't make the scores, they were going to be shut down in

the state of texas. she walked us through the story. >> thank you for leading the conversation, representative sample in. it opened in the 60s as someone consecutive state football championships. the magical banners all over town. 40 years later not much more than a place they rated unacceptable by the state for years in a row, a lot of families have fled for charter schools, magnet schools, other public schools across the highway in the year the representatives someone is referring to, 2009, 2010, the

one-year deadline to teachers and administrators had to for lack of a better term save the school. it follows the principle. and about garza was a dynamo chemistry teacher, basketball coach and on the one hand they try and raise scores, which both came in a broken system and number crunching on at the same time realize they're not going to say this: in a sustainable fashion whispered in the numbers of any new group of kids will need a whole bunch of tutoring. they spent the you're trying to put into place the things a lot of us remember about high school , afterschool clubs and sports teams we can be proud of it maybe a third of the book is

about basketball. >> michael was a sports reporter for some of that time. the chapters about basketball are very vivid. [laughter] >> take it away. >> i asked the other to policy questions, but it got ask you this. which are written after spending a year and said reagan high school and inside people's lives to shake you hadn't heard the winning pass it and if they hadn't crossed the threshold of acceptability through the measured this year under standardized tests? >> it would have been a different book. the kind of series to that is in terms of journalistic engagement

over the course of the year, things were going in that direction. i recognize i'm not going to cheer for anybody, but at the same time i'm not going to have nearly as interesting of a book at this doesn't have a decent ending on it. i don't know if anybody was therefore the lincoln obj game. that history goes pretty deep. the moment a later point in -- i really experienced moment another people's lives so soul stirring as you're on and the birth of your children. it is a good basketball game. [laughter] >> we are on live national

television right now and may carry a book festivals has been the way to see jerry springer moment. so we're going to provoke an argument among us. i'll be unsuccessful because there's a lot of commonality. i'll try my best to get them to argue. we will have time for questions from the audience. so if i'm unsuccessful, maybe you will be. one of the hottest topics to standardize assess them. i will state the case for. the case is this enormous system and without objective measures of how kids are doing, you run the risk of the bigotry of low expectations, providing diplomacy kids who can't read them. it seems reasonable there should be, to your point about

democracy, there also has to be a common foundation of knowledge. even if every school had equal rigor of teaching different things, you produce a cacophony society is one generation rose to not knowing who curt cobain is an another grows up not knowing the master ps. that changes what you know about government. said each of you has critiques of the standardization. talk about that michael's first. >> i think tests are good, standards are good and you can follow any rule out the note. that's what we've done by doubling down on standardized testing, ratcheting the competition every 10 years since the nation at risk report in

1983 business into a brightest minds in the same dismal rates of literacy and math and science scores only with resegregation and i don't know what else good has come out of it. >> meira. >> it would be fine to have a cacophonous democracy if we truly had a cacophonous democracy rather than something approaching an oligarchy. if we have multiple voices and nobody had the dominant voice. i open my book with this anecdote about curt cobain. my all black students, none of the 35 students i had with me at the quiz bowl had ever heard of curt cobain and the mostly white teams that this was hilarious they had never heard of him. when i explained to the spike is

the reason i was hilarious was the same in my case referred someone to not know master p. everybody knows master p. you may not, but everybody knows master p. the problem with the disparity is not that it matters that you know who kurt cobain were master p is, but my kids are wild and we're going to need to know kurt cobain or the equivalent to have the kinds of conversations where they would be respected. and listen to and taken seriously. if we had a truly inclusive conversation would be okay because they would explain who master p was for the equivalent

in the kurt cobain or the equivalent. this is the list everybody needs to know, you get teachers who teach the list because any list is going to be long. at the current time you're ready. we have such an enormous education system that it may be standardized testing is the lever we have to keep people honest. it's a really important tool to have as a way of forcing accountability to say i want my kid to learn. but it is a tool also leading us further down to a system of mediocrity and it not clear how we climb our way out of it into a truly professionalized for some professionalized education system if all we do is pursue accountability to the ants

agree. the >> if you haven't read meira spoke, the scene of her explaining to kids on the best that not everybody knows who master p is this so funny. she says look, august 2 think everybody knows who kurt cobain is. how is it different? because everybody knows master p. [laughter] >> a couple thoughts about standardized tests. i think there's a lot of good about accountability and the idea of high expectations and ways to measure schools at educating their disadvantaged subgroups is all very important. to that extent, there's lots of good out of the last 10 or 20 years of accountability. the problem for me is the test

we emphasize and the only cast in the current regime are measured cognitive skills. good measure for a ctm sap, mostly this narrow range of cognitive skills. the evidence is there in the economic literature and the reporting i did do what makes a bigger difference for students is there noncognitive skills. the things reflected more in a student's gpa. if we had a way of measuring long-term educational result, things that college graduation rates, we would have a system that would work better. the problem is if you're trying to give a kindergarten teacher a

bonus based on how many students graduate from a four-year college, he or she has to wait 20 some years to get the bonus. as a thought experiment or something valuable that accountability convert better if we were holding school systems accountable for what we really care about. >> meira, i asked you about the boundary and teaching civics in school. michael, yours has committed to her kids, that some readers would find she crosses sundown areas of appropriateness and have a case to her house almost every night of the week for bible study and making our

engagement centered around are christian faith. many people would have a bed. some people might. your policy prescription food could be reduced by saying the navy is any enough. how do we address this issue of where the public for kids into the lives of kids in their homes, which seems to be the gates foundation and the education reform movement is so obsessed with teacher quality that turns positive student outcome, but long before teachers have an effect, the family does. that's what you quote barack obama as saying. that's what i say every time navigation effectiveness, but that's the hardest lever to

control. where are the boundaries? >> reporting to police in high poverty neighborhoods on the south side of chicago. my sense is what's going on as kids are surrounded by disadvantage that goes so far beyond just their schools. abbas neighborhoods, families, the environment they live in schools are a useful tool for trying to counter these difficulties to give skills they need to do well in life. it becomes clear that schools allowed or not enough. there are some experimental and innovative intervention did you work with families, especially in the first few years to change that environment in a positive

way, to support families and parents often easier to get that support. it's a kind of intervention that outside of the neighborhoods in the abstract we can get anxious about because they should be a pretty strong separation between families of the government. in the practical sense, when you are there with a home visitor as i was visiting a teenage mom, trying to get her support she needed to help her get her baby to raise support, the race started life, it becomes clear this is a does the public should be above did in some way. a lot of what we need to do is figure a way to get beyond the boundary created. it seems easier to get through the boundary study abstract we look at it from here.

>> in your first question you ask about ideologically boundaries. another we want to cross that i write a lot about in those cities left behind is he has students are crossing back and forth all the time because they're going home, coming to school and right now schools are too bounded. so they can find learning generally to their walls on the walls of the classroom. they often put a boundaries including kids prevented from learning stuff. it means we are not asking kids to do stuff for the communities in which they live. we treat low in cognitive as the sequels that need. they have all of these deficits

and problems that we are just going to send resource after resource down into the sinkhole to try to make them productive citizens and workers family members by the time they are 18 or 19. that's very disrespectful to self-reliant kids, but also being we are taking some of their most years when their early adolescent or late adolescent who knows so much about what their communities need and they are not shy about telling you the park is dangerous and more likely to get murdered them pick up -- play pickup basketball game. they can tell you what needs to be done. if we have the confidence to say okay will help you make changes now. when you're 14, 15 you have a

lot of time a lot of time iberians. we'll teach you how to make a different matter that the park save her. maybe you're going to need to change some lot about sm lee and you have to get support from the neighbors. that don't make school seemed like a more relevant place. >> the principle of reagan high school does not, call center student or student leadership. those who investigated themselves and say what do we need to do? they have to write the turnaround grant. i thought your treatment of that science teacher was really well done because he never talked about the boundaries.

you kind of just illustrated them. where did you come away from that experience? >> camdessus and interesting reporting challenge. i didn't expect to christianity thing to be such a big part of her story. if you do it longform journalism and you're not a surprise cover doing it wrong. like any serious minded person has a keen sense of boundaries. she never gets in the car alone with female student that she doesn't talk about jesus in the classroom. i go through the history of the organization slake fca that have a long history in schools. but i know can this new if she wanted to cross the line to talk

about jesus, she could is because nobody gave a about kids are breaking. >> i was struck at the number of times she had anabel told the students they let their students. she said i love you. annabel made the rounds before the standard a tennis to each classroom to tell them she loved to. your book cites a study that did this to say right it has affects how they take the test. remind you that girl she is a girl before a math test lowers her score on the test. what is your reaction to that in contextually, the whole argument is a matter of high expectation. that's always to me not actionable recommendation, what

is the role of expectations and all this? >> researchers around the idea, whether it's a groups, and closed as well feel a special identity and 80 around a skill or ability, when they have that triggered prefer a test, they will often do less well. growth in middle-school math is a perfect example to what girls are asked to write an essay about the girls before taking a math test, they will do less well. there's lots of interventions that counter stereotypes when kids are reminded that they can improve and intelligence is now a blow, they're able to overcome. it's an indication of how the realm can be and what we think

of is this purely cognitive act to video going to school. so i think this idea of how adults and allies of school children interact is really important. you can teach cognitive schools by lecturing our reading of the book. a lot of character strengths that make a huge difference and long-term outcomes tend to be developed through relationships with adult, whether it's family members, coaches, teachers. his hs coaches something about how one-on-one -- >> she's an interesting character in terms of boundaries, too. i had heard berating my kid was totally over-the-top, but you seem charitably disposed towards her. >> i write about this stuff chess coach in intermediate school and proclaimed and there

is something about watching her telly chessplayer his boss was completely pathetic was certainly jarring to me. lots of people in a coaching role can be somewhat harsh, whether his hs coach or athletic coach our music teacher. she was able to deliver critiques in a way that made it clear that she cared about them very much and how they did and she believed they could accomplish great things that she would try to give them the knowledge and ability to go beyond it over, to better the next time. >> by the way, somebody should do a study on what effect they should have if you tell them you love them. i bet that improves their scores.

she was not a touchy-feely person, but clearly was committed to those kids. >> i met this guy wilson harris who runs the ex-spice and that's his whole gig because the teachers are so busy doing test rails that they have a guy to do other stuff you describe would be a mentor. >> in addition to the scientific proven results come it's also sad the fact we have or we don't expect kids to go into an institution and feel loved and respected and cared for. that's really sad% to seven euros, 12 euros, 14 euros into places for six or seven hours a day where it's often an anomaly for them to see this overexpression of respect and

love. >> nobody ever said that to me when i was in school. i came from a home or i knew i was loved. nobody may have ever told you that a home, but i love you. >> these kids are pretty savvy. they know we have this competitive system for the schools compete against each other and the losers identified as the weakest links, so we get tough on non. even if it's not meant to transfer to them, that is the teachers like annabel are trying to work against. >> i remember when one of my students said to me -- two of my students were talking and i had just told one of the students i thought he was smart and they said dr. levinson always says that. the second student said, but she means it. and that was some thing.

they had this conversation about what it and that i believed each of them was smart and how that actually led them to do better. ..

>> that is when i was in high school. a pronounced my group and predicted that we would leave the american economy into the third world. what actually happened is that when my generation had the were -- workforce, we had the biggest economic boom. the standardized tests that were the basis of the nation at risk were wrong about my generation. it turns out that we have learned some things that didn't show up. the best. i theory that i have heard of why that doesn't get measured is that we have this rich extracurricular environment. not just student journalism and all of that, but basketball and football where kids learn competition and teamwork. were they learn problem-solving. in civics education, there is no

better way to learn government than things like gender statesmen and model united nations. rather than actually going to city hall and changing the law yourself. extracurriculars were to address truancy and dropping out. so we quickly cover that is a measurable thing that we should be investing in. you have any specific ideas, is it something that we undervalue? >> it is not a measurable thing that we should be investing in. >> i actually think it is a measurable thing. not necessarily measurable in terms of outputs, but at least in terms of input. massachusetts actually has a lot of has every high school has to have a student government that is not just about the answers. there has to be a budget and policy making power. we can measure that whether

schools have real school student newspapers order organizations where kids are in control. those things are essentially important. >> i think that one of its time to make cuts in education politics, we can do things that don't show up in the next weeks for next year's test scores. you can make that case. maybe they aren't going to help with the standardized test scores. we would definitely continue to fund all of these extracurriculars.

>> if he can directed to one speaker, he tries to do so. thank you very much. we just appreciate all of your opinions and thoughts and solutions. is that a problem? >> who wants to the first? >> this is one of the reasons that standardized tests are so important in this conversation. we are going to get vouchers or have charter schools or other forms of publicly funded schools that don't have public oversight, then we need some means of ensuring that they are providing education that we, the public, feel comfortable funding. our only mechanism for doing that is the cognitively oriented standardized tests. i think that having educational opportunities for kids is good.

but we do need to give the public a pretty strong voice in terms of ensuring that we can put our public monies towards and they are doing good things for kids. and ideally we would have a much wider array for measures that we would look at schools and educational programs in order to make sure that kids are really getting what they deserve. >> michael? >> we want to pursue the ideal quality public education for kids. the answer is yes, let's do that. if the answer is no, then vouchers and charters take a hit. [applause] >> we have had an experiment in public policy with something called supplemental educational services. you mentioned that it descended upon reagan to seek these vouchers for private tutoring.

we know this market. it is a terrible public policy. it doesn't work. because frankly the choices being exercised in that marketplace are not what is best for the kids. the educators from the schools can spend the money better than what is being spent through vouchers. choice works well for a lot of kids choosing charter schools because they come from a family or have it within themselves to character and quality and social capital that they make great educational choices and they aggregate themselves among other kids who have made a great choice for them. but the vast majority of kids in the school system have not made that choice. what happens is that those having taken the initiative and they are left with even more

student population to educate. there is just no evidence that those families -- that they will make great decisions for their kids. instead, what is going to happen is, i think the whole idea gets really politically hot and crumbles when the first thing it seeks funding from vouchers. that will change the debate a lot here. next question? >> i agree that there needs to be some accountability and standardized test scores to get that accountability.

>> we are broader broadening what we measure sometimes. there is a public policy agenda that i just haven't seen it has a standard way of measuring all the things rather than answering bubbles on a standardized test. >> measurement has to be a tool. i don't know if you want accountability to be a carrot anymore than he wanted to be a stick. because that is a tool window you don't have another tool to figure out how kids are doing. so testing a kid is not going to tell a teacher how to teach better. it is not going to teach us how to allocate funds any better. so when you are asking if there is something out there, the

question is if there is something out there to improve practice, how to teach kids better. we actually know a fair amount about that, but it's really hard and it would take treating teachers as professionals and it would take attracting many to be mentored and making changes that we haven't been willing to make the country. >> michael's book shows the harm of the stick. he created this pressurized environment that made it really hard for him to do education in the joyful way that education should be done. but there is a carrot to try to incentivize kids to come to school. the stick was if they don't show

up, we are shutting the school down. and that is what caused the school to start going door-to-door, dragging kids to school. that affect without harm than good. is that right? >> that is an interesting way of looking at it. there were bigger branches that were swung before that little sticking around. and when you figure out how to go over there, you know, at that point, what you are left with is disproportionate group of english language learners and poor people and it works and i

don't see that as a policy model. >> okay. >> yes, someone sent me the republican party platform. and there they do not want creative thinking taught from public schools. they do not want creative thinking, and that is certainly what we need. other comments? >> i think the language was thinking skills. i am in favor of creative thinking and schools. [laughter] >> good afternoon. i am currently a graduate student at texas state university. i've been in east texas for two years and you mentioned the role

of extracurricular activities and keeping kids involved in education. i'm wondering if you could comment on the role of the arts. the comments he made so far are purely what you have mentioned. you mentioned student government and athletics. what do you think the role of the arts should be? remap i will turn it over to my fellow panelists. i think the arts are important in all sorts of ways. they are important and make more well-rounded students than adults. in my reporting, i think one of the things that is so effective about our teachers is that they are in the same kind of training

role with students, the same way that what i wrote about was. and i think that one thing that is becoming clear is that they do get developed most effectively through those relationships and what the teacher, elizabeth siegel does, they go over the mistake. there is a with loop that kids get it can be incredibly positive. music and art teachers are doing the same thing. it is actually much harder for math teachers and geography teachers to do that. i think in lots of ways, the relationship that a teacher has with his or her students is a good model for others to follow. >> okay. we are down to four minutes. one goal is that we haven't

talked about botulism, which means that you'll have to read paul's book. because it is essentially about that topic. and we haven't had a jerry springer moment. so i'm going to try to provoke a very springer moment. what are the implications of the outcomes of this election for the things you care about? [laughter] >> this is an area in which they don't seem to disagree very much. witty talk about education is relatively similar, which is a little disturbing to the democrats and republicans. i also think there are many creative and productive ways that we can run education in

washington. it is focused on accountability and i'm worried that putting some of the wrong incentives in place could be a problem. i think that a broader mandate includes things that would go beyond schools that would help. >> i think that president obama, if he is elected for another four years, he wants to ensure this over the next 40 years, and he should expand this enormously. the public schools in the united states are becoming ever more poverty-stricken, unfortunately. and those are right now the students were at the bottom of the civic empowerment down. it was therefore going to be in

this interest to take a generation of young people and have them practice being citizens day after day. they would likely support the democratic party. but if mitt romney wins, he might have an interest in supporting civic education. because right now what we know is low income kids of color are likely to grow up. and if they vote democratic, he could have some impact in actually teaching beyond what the context is like. in either cases, they can clearly come up with a good education. >> michael? >> this is about our only bipartisan issue. everybody has been on the same side and has left us behind. there are a lot of reasons that

the election is important. i think that the tone that either candidate will take in office will affect what happens with education. i don't see a lot of difference in their policies. >> okay. how come you wrote about this "new york "new york times" magazine. having different tones, do you think it changes if he gets a second term? >> we talked about poverty over the last couple of years. i'd like to think about how they were doing poverty in 2007, he was elected to a second term. we all have high hopes for what could happen in the future. it is hard to say what will really happen. >> okay. i talked to the beginning about the scores. in texas, the student population

grew twice that. the low-income population is 71%. the english language learning population grew 169%. these are the issues that we have to address in the state. i think you for joining us. [applause] >> on the next "washington journal", we will talk about gay marriage, guns, and immigration. and a new proposal to have nurses fill doctor shortages. later, if americans have enough savings to retire. we will also take your phone calls and e-mails and tweaks. "washington journal" is each morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span.

>> at the white house on wednesday, vice president joe biden spoke. here's what he had to say at the briefing followed by comment by president obama. >> this person is a 30 year veteran of the united states secret service. she has a variety of roles from some protective activities to cybercrimes. this is somebody who has a strong record of leadership. >> "the washington post" reported about information that would like to get your response on. many say that he was a weak candidate because there was

little time with most of the career in administrative jobs. is that a concern for the president to have someone like that? >> no, i believe the president knows. the other thing i would point to is i know that the outgoing director is somebody who strongly supports the candidacy. it is not just the president who believes that that is the right person for the job, but the outgoing secret service who believes she has the skills necessary to lead the agency. >> there has been a lot of scrutiny about what the cabinet looks like. now, the head of the dea and the u.s. marshals office will all be

women. is that something that we should be taking note of? >> well, this person got the job because of the 30 years of experience and leadership skills that were shown throughout the career. the fact that she's the first woman to lead the agency is notable. she has chosen the right person at the right time to lead this agency that has a critical law enforcement function. also in terms of safeguarding the financial system and other large public events. so she has a big job. she is the right person to get it done right. >> okay. are you all set? okay. >> eye, julia pearson, do solemnly swear that i will support and defend the constitution of the united

states against all enemies, foreign and domestic. that i bear truth and defense and i take this obligation freely without reservation. and i will well and faithfully discharge my duties of the office of which i am about to enter. so help me god. >> congratulations. >> thank you very much, mr. president. >> i have to say that her reputation within the service is extraordinary. she has come up through the ranks and has done just about every job is to do at the secret service. obviously she is breaking the

mold and i think that people are extraordinarily proud of her and we have the greatest confidence in what lies ahead. i am very confident that she will do a great job. >> thank you. >> i couldn't be placing our lies in better hands than hers. >> you're going to do a great job. >> thank you. >> a lot of people have worked with her and know how dedicated and how professional and committed she is. and i think we are absolutely certain that she will thrive in this job. thank you guys.

[inaudible conversations] >> coming up next on c-span2, the massachusetts senate race. for some of the republican candidates debate each other, followed by the democratic candidates. in followed by booktv programs, looking at the education system in the united states. >> candidates for the u.s. senate in massachusetts participated in a primary debate on wednesday. it is scheduled to take place on june 25. the primary is happening on april 30. this is one hour.

>> good evening, everybody. welcome to the second primary debate. i'm from the college of communication. there is something rare in massachusetts politics. and an open u.s. senate seat. we are hearing the republicans vying for their party's nomination. we will hear from each party. dan winslow, michael sullivan, and businessman gabriel gomez. it's a great opportunity to introduce yourselves to the voters of massachusetts.

>> let's talk about issues and i know it is a good conversation tonight. we have time for responses from each of you. the words that characterize the party is scary, narrowminded, stuffy. make the case that you are not those people. they want mr. gomez, we will start with you. >> we are going to talk about what we are for and what we are against. we have more personal freedom and more effective government. we have been doing that and it

really resonates with what the people are talking about. >> sir, make the case that you are not one of those stuffy old men. >> yes, i am proud to be a republican and proud to be a republican nominee. the people i am talking to, the concerns about issues and national security, concerning concerns about energy. i think we connect with them that's when we listen to their concerns. we have the opportunity to serve and we are excited about going around and listening to people. >> what is the postmortem on the gop? >> a member of the party of lincoln, i am proud to be a part of freedom and respect for individuals and opportunity and responsibility.

many don't want to associate these attributes with republicans anymore. but the fact is the majority of voters come in the next 30 years, will be women and millennial is a new americans, and we have to show them that by reconnecting, they are not the grand old party anymore. we are the great opportunity party. and that is the promise we have. >> if one of you is elected, we have to try to work with democrats. but if you are massachusetts republicans, can you work with mitch mcconnell? >> absolutely, i could work with the senator. i have a very good background. i come from a first-generation american family. i'm part of the most diverse organization in this country. we have people from all different parts of the country

with all different kinds of views. no mention was ever accomplished with different people and different points of view. that is what i will do in the u.s. senate. moderator: a very quick response. >> i have spent my whole professional career doing now. but in the private sector and the government sector as well. it is something that people expect me to do. you find common ground for the purposes that best represent the people in massachusetts, as well as our nation. >> as a state representative, i have 20 years in the private sector. i have a record of problem-solving and you cannot buy or sell. you have to be able to work with people. people of good faith.