"immigration wars," and if you want to pick the book up, read it, or would like to participate in our conversation, on the last tuesday of the month, 9 p.m. eastern time, 6 p.m. out here in the fic ca e're going to be discussing "immigration wars" online, on our facebook page, and on our twitter feed. you can get the details. you see the details there. go to twitter.com/booktv, to facebook.com/booktv. go to booktv.org for details. thank you for watching us in l.a.. this is booktv on c-span2. >> author sarah explores the results of the state legislature's decision shortly after hurricane katrina to reassign control of the new orleans public schools to the recovery school district administered by the state by following a student, a teacher,

and principal traversing segments of the educational system. this is about a half hour. [applause] ouwo do amazing workany people for kids in new orleans, and thank you so much for coming. i'm just going to talk for 10 or 15 minutes or so and then take questions. if there's some people here tonight who are in the book and they might be willing to answer questions during that session as well if you're interested in hearing about what it was like to be part of that process from their vantage point. the other day, i was finishing reading journalist katherine's book called "behind the beautiful forevers," which tells the story of a group of families living in a mumbai slum, and in the author's note, she tries to explain why she chose to focus

on ordinary people rather than broader policy debates or history. she wrote something that i think summarizes what i had hoped to do and hope against hope gt ere better than i ever ul ewrote, "when i settle into a place listening and watching, i don't try to fool myself that the stories of individuals are themselves arguments. i just believe that better arguments may be even better policies yet formulated when we know more about ordinary lives," and i think if there's a single aspiration that led me to reporting, specifically, it's that one. sometimes journalism changes policy for the better in specific and concrete ways, but i think there's something to be said for journalism that permanently complicated or momentarily interrupts our understanding of the world we live in, and i can't say that all or even most of the writing

that i've done accomplishedded that goal, but it's something to aspire to as least. before i go further, i want to thank the people who let me writabttheir lives, particularly, lip stuart, her mother, mary lori, the principal of the high school, and aiden kelly, teacher and administration at zion academy. it was not just eye opening to spend time with them, but also a lot of fun at time, and i feel privileged to have met all. just a brief word about them. people who know mary lori knows she's always athe high school. you drive by on weekends and her car is out in front of the high school. you drive by at night, and the car's out front, and drive by on holidays, and her car is out front. despite all she does, she spent many sunday morption -- mornings with me talking about hr work in life.

i wonder how she found time to do something for hersf because she was always so busy doing things for others. i met lip at the start of freshman year in high school, and she's now more than halfway through her junior year. every so often, i told her, if there's something that you tell me or i observe in the course of reporting the book that you don't want including to let me know, and there was one time when i repeated that reminder, and they looked at me like i was being naive said i don't tell you anything i don't want in the book. [laughter] that was the moment i knew definitively she was not only funnier, but smarter than i am. [laughter] one of the things that struck me about aiden was that she was both exceptionally hard on himself and generous to other peoplement i think that spirit is what makes them such a talented person and teacher. i remember one day when a lot going on in the classroom, and

there was a visitor presenting, and all the sudden an e-mail was in my inbox from aiden reminding me if i wanted to write about that class, i should make sure i got visitor's permission because they didn't know who i was or what i was doing there. even with dealing with all the other responsibilities and classroom needs, he reached out and protected this person to ensure they were treated with respect. i didn't know what the book would be when i set out to write it. i just knew that i wanted to do something that would allow me to engage where the issues that i had been writing about for more than a decade in greater death penalty and i knew i wanted the story to be driven by people, although i had no idea initially who the people would be. the first draft of a book proposal focused on history of the douglas high school building in the 9th ward up to the present using school as a microcosm to discuss the history

of the city and education reform more broadly, and i was encouraged by colleagues who read early drafts to take a broader approach and settled on the idea following three different schools, and i wish the narrative might have been tidier if i just focused on one school like douglas, but as most of you know, the schools here are so varied in terms of their progress, experiences, and success that i felt like, in the end, one setting would have been too limited. i also planned, at one point, to have whole chapters or sections of the book devoted to sort of detours to other cities like new york, washington, d.c., and have sections on president obama or arnie duncan, and at one point, i presented to an adviser in a fellowship i had including the writer, and he came up afterwards saying it was a stupid idea because the people and experiences in new orleans

were so compelling and interesting on their own, and so i settled on the idea of structuring the book around three schools with one person preimminent in each. lori, aiden, and all of whom i met at different times in different ways. since writing the book was a journey for me, i wanted to talk about what i learned over the course of reporting and writing it, apart from the fact i would make a terrible teacher. [laughter] the first is that the -- i feel like the extremists and absolutists on both sides of the public conversation over school, form, and other issues dominate the debate, but their voices don't capture the needs and desires of those attending and working in the schools. i had covered education for long enough when i started working on the book to some degree, but i was really amazed by the extent

to which the ideals and aspirations of many families and front line educators totally eluded talking points of those who have the soap box issue, and i got really frustrated about this and even angry at times.ian with a friend getting his dock rat in political science saying sometimes an extreme backlash or political movement is needed to nudge policy or practice in the right direction, and i thought that with a good and fair point, but i guess i wish going back to katherine's quote that in this country, people's life experiences shaped rhetoric nearly as much as rhetoric shapes their life experiences, and i think journalists have a largely unfulfilledded obligation to make this happen, to write, if you follow education policy less than the michelle reeds and ravages of the world and more about the people growing up and living and working and dreaming in the

schools. the second major realization that i came to is that too much of the debate about education and education reform is framed in ideological rather than sociological terms. most parents and a lot of educators are not spending time debates whether or not charter r amod or badord or bad ac o teacher's unions are good or bad. they care about the relationships and experiences their kids have in the schools, and whether there's a common set ofs is pair rations and goals and a shared vision on what education could and should be. there was a lot of debate a couple years ago, for instance, about the future of the colton school building in the 9th ward where a group of predominantly white parents opposed the charter network from taking over the building, and i went to one meeting where many of the parents were decrying long days, emphasis on test preparation,

lack of diversity, and i went to another meeting with african-american parents where they were talking about what they liked about the kip approach and how the more privileged white parents were trying to take something away they valued. i feel at the core this is about ogy and beliefsd understandings and ideals surrounding education, all of which has validity and long history behind them, but the writing and public discourse surrounding education do you want grapple with the issues and tensions at all. instead, it's obsessed with the admittedly not unimportant, but abstract ideological battles surrounding topics like governance and privatization. the third major lesson i learned relates to both book writing and education. i didn't, as i said, no in a lot of ways what the book would be about when i started writing it

because i department know how the school year would go for the schools i was in and the people i was following. i knew it was about people's experiences in new orleans schools after katrina, and i put a lot of thought in making should have i was seeing and learning about adiverse set of experiences, but it was not until i was writing the book and well into writing it that i realized how much the book is about school culture, and i'm relative when it comes to school culture in that i think there are schools that are highly structured that function well and others that are highly unstructured that function well, and ideally, you want a mix of approaches because different kids thrive in different environments. i did come away with the conclusion it's vital that parents, staff, and students come together against a shared vision of culture, organically or through the hard process of mutual dialogue and

understanding. i think the book shows the success that happens when that occurs when that happens and the struggles that a school un if doesn't. as one example, one of the schools i followed which struggled quite a bit in the first year did have this one sort of amazing success on that point, the principle early on in the year introduced the school, the students to the wolf fable, and the fable goes that there are these two wolves inside all of us constantly fighting and one wolf represents greed and anger, and the other wolf represents love and humility, and the moral is the wolf that wins at the end is the one you feed. that really took on a life of its own at the school and among the kids and students and students told each other to remember to feed the good wolf or to make sure the good wolf wins in the end.

i think at successful schools, you have a whole set of shared values and moreses like that whether or not it'spresss, ts, r aspirations. the final big take away for me relates to the title of the book itself, and that is that hope is not free or something that should be taken for granted that in many ways it's a luxury good, and i think that there are real and tangible structural inequities in american societies and cities that produced -- a rampant and pernicious inequality today. i'm not inequality is caused by people's emotions or feelingings about themselves or a deficit of hope, but that said, one of the students who i wrote about, one of the smartest people i'd ever met, and she simply could not imagine himself ever going to college, and it was not that he had a grand plan for life as an

alternative that phac neighborhooded him or that he but his sister even offered toh, gym of give him a money to go, but based on his own life experiences and those of others around him, he just couldn't make a leap of faith. wrote in the book in the most democratic societies, it wields destructive power, one that evades the mind and destroys it. i think when we think about structural inequality, we think of the practical implications, but we also need to think about its psychological implications because though are less easy to see and ultimately harder and complicated to come back. so that will wrap it up and take questions.

[applause] >> sarah, thanks. i know you've been covering education for many years. at what stage did this turn into a book for you? did you come out after katrina thinking of it as a book project? >> i denial. i mved to new orleans five and a half or six years ago to be an education writer at the times tribune, but i didn't know coming here i was going to write a book, and from having talked to other people who had written books, i didn't want to write a book for the sake of writing a book because i got a sense of sort of what an arguous and long process it is, so i wanted to wait until i was at a point where i felt driven to do, and as i said in the remarks, i think it came from just like a desire to really grapple with issues and in more depths.

i worked at daily newspapers for seven or eight years, and you don't have the space and time to really go into stories and issues in as much depth as you would like even at the best of papers, and even as i said, the project really evolved over time and didn't end up being what i envisioned it initially. >> good evening, everyone. my first experience with sarah is as a student at the high school before i enlisted into the national guard, and when i returned from my deployment, she was still there, i guess,

recording the stories and all the good things that happened at the school, and i have a question. i would just like to send a huge across the board thank you for one, like, putting and letting the entire world know that good is happening in the city, and it starts with our children, our educators, and all the people who support,l the int are happening in this community, and ia your book kind of, once aain, pushed new orleans in the national spotlight saying, hey, we're struggling herings but through the struggles, we're persevering, tenacious, getting through the problems, so, thank you. i don't have, like, a question, but i wanted to say that. >> no, that's great. [applause] >> yeah, no, thank you, cornell, for sharing your story with me. the schools and the people who e

met in them were just very open and gracious with their time over the course of reporting that, so it really wouldn't have been possible without that openness, and so i think that's a real testament to the people working and going to them. >> [inaudible] >> how did you pick the schools to write about? did you want a variety or -- >> yeah, i did want a variety. since the charter story is the dominant one in the new orleans land scape, i decided i wanted them to all be charters, but i wanted them to be at different points in development. i didn't want all first year schools or five year schools or schools in the fifth year, and i wanted ones that had sort of a different approach and different

philosophy about teaching and learning, and ones with a variety of staffing profiles. you know, i was sort of -- i started off, actually, spending time in five or six schools and narrowed it down to three, and i decided in the course of the semester there's a ninth parallelism in them all being high schools, and so that was part of the reason that i ended up focusing on three high schools, and there was also just the issue of ones that i had a relationship with and was able to get more access to and other stories done previously so it was a combination of all of those different things. anybody have questions for any of the people who are in the -- oh, here. do you want to come up to the

microphone? do you feel -- >> >> how are you all doing on this night? congratulations to ms. sarah carr. i know it's a long struggle you went through. it's a long journey for you too so i'll make -- don't make this book your last book, continue on. [applause] >> oh, thank you, that means a lot to me. [applause] >> i know what people thought about after katrina treen ya, one of the silver linings that might be the kind of reform of education in new orleans.

i know you covered that in the book. what do you feel the state of education in new orleans is at this point? you know, years later? >> uh-huh. >> you know, there's no easy answer to that, and i feel people who made what happened here a complete positive and others make it a complete negative feeling the truth is in between that, and it's much more complicated. i feel there's a tremendous amount of educators working really hard in the schools, and just a human amount of progress that's been made, and a lot of families that feel like schools are more sort of stable places, focused on preparing their kids for college, but that said, i think there's a lot of lingering challenges.

i think that kids who are the most challenging whether or not because they have special needs or a history of behavioral issues in the schools, or are coming out of alternative settings or incarceration, are still falling through the crasck in a l o cas n gling to find schools that will serve them well, and i think there's issues of stainability moving forward and questions of whether or not both on the resource level and staffing level what's been built over the last several years is sustainable. i also, you know, kind of ended the book feeling optimistic and possess miss tick at the same time because i saw how transformative a good school could be for kids and even the most challenging kids, and i was able to spend time in schools that were doing that work, but i concluded that without kind of

broader changes throughout the city in american society that it's going to be very hard to revitalize cities through the schools alone in the long term and there needs to be progress on all fronts in the health care arena when it comes to criminal justice, recreational opportunities for kids, and that in the sort of -- what's happened here really needs to be assessed in the long term that we need to be looking at whether or not kids are graduating from college at higher rates, but also whether or not they are able to come back to new orleans and find safe communities to live in and jobs where they can support their families without having to work 80 hours a week. >> good evening issue everyone. i would like to say a special thanks to ms. sarah and her hard work. continue on. [applause]

>> thank you, and they put up with me for a long time so i'm very grateful to them. they have very busy lives and were very gracious about making time for me again and again and the book wouldn't have. possible without them. >> congratulations, car -- sarah, and i challenge you not to consider yourself a good teacher because having read the book, there's multiple ways to convey ideas and have the installed in our lives so congratulations. >> oh, thank you. >> yep, and i gist want to talk to you a little bit about one of the things in the book was around expulsion and suspension, and, also, you have paul tuft's book that's been recently relesioned talking about non-cognitive variables and their importance on achievement and so on and so forth. can you talk a little about the role of a curriculum?

>> uh-huh. >> and either in terms of how limited it is here or what it should be in terms of addressing all the needs, significant need? >> sure. i do think the way that the landscape of schools has evolved here over time, and not really because of anybody's bad intentions or deliberate oversight, there's one model of school that's particularly prevalent, and that is sort of a very highly structured environment that's focused on core subjects and academic remediation in getting kids to the point where they can pass the state standardized tests and go on to college, and i think there's a number of schools that are doing absolutely amazing work in a wonderful job with kids, and there's a number of kids thriving in those environments, but i feel unless we have sort of a more diverse,

kind of ecosystem of schools and approaches, that it's going to be hard work moving forward because there are -- there's some kids that just dn'tre in that environment, and there are not a lot of choies if you don't. i think for a lot offamilies, there's a choice of the model i just described or sort of a school that they really perceive as being sub par or that might be slated for close sure that they just know is not going to be there in the long term, so i hope moving forward there is more of an emphasis on the diverse curricular models, and sort of educators who have just different ideas of what a school cap should be. >> made a comment at the start saying that you thought you would be a bad teacher, which made me curious on two things. why do you think you'd be a bad teacher, and, second, if there's

something that you'd like to teach or you hope to teach with this book, what would that be? >> yeah, no, that's a great question. i -- i meant i'd be a bad teacher in the traditional model. as fun as it is to see all of you out here tonight, i actually do not like presenting in large groups of people, and that's so much of what being a teacher in a conventional school is like, but, actually, i would be much more successful and feel much more comfortable working with people one-on-one, and there is some role and need for that in the schools. i don't -- i -- in terms of what i hope the book teaches, i -- i don't have any delusion that it is people who are adamantly convinced that sort of charters are great or charters are awful or a specific governance model is what's needed are going to waout that.k and say, h

itno n argument-based book in that regard, but i hope that it helps us i understand people's lives a little bit better and see where they come from and how their own life histories and experiences shape what they want out of an education and what they need out of an education so i guess going back to the food quote, i don't know they change policy, but i hope it makes us policy and makes us understand each other better. >> i had a quick question to summarize this quote, and maybe you can tell me how the three

schools you spent time in kind of relate to this, and you see this going forward as an idea. the notion that all children could and should be inventers of their own theories, critic of other people's ideas, analyzers of evidence, and make personal marks on this complex world is an idea with revolutionary implications. >> yeah, that's a great quote. yeah, i mean, i think that, really, that's critical thinking and original thought and really sort of the ability to study and learn about what interests you and have sort of a self-directed education at some foundational level are really important, and that's critical things, i think, is the best thing that my own education gave me. i think it's -- it's increasingly hard to sort of live up to that ideal just with the burdens placed on schools

today surrounding standardized testing, and standardized testing is something i had incredibly mixed feelings about because i feel we need a way of measuring school's progress and schools that persistently fail kids over a period of years and sometimes generations, really need to be health accountable to that, but it also makes it very hard for schools to develop and sustain kind of vibrant art programs and music programs and to kind of have the educational offerings that reach and appeal to the diversity of kids who are out there, so i don't envy school administrators for having to figure that all out. does that answer your question? ..