>> it was probably one of the most historic moments that anyone would ever experience. and so then it became what he had been unable to be for more than 27 years he was in prison. and he was on the run for many years and neither of his family, because he had two of them, one by his first wife who he was divorced from and to others. he had not been a father to his children. so all of a sudden now he's

trying to be the father not only of the nation but of individuals and as the father he had not been able to be all those years and he leans into me and says that of course you have to be at your son's graduation and you can interview me anytime, which was true. anytime i needed to interview him, i was able to and i was there when president clinton went to south africa and that was a time when he was having some personal issues around his actual behavior and nelson mandela was very -- he was advising him in a very positive way and did it very publicly. at the same time, and i think that sean will probably agree with this. and i think that this may be one of the values with the things that we try to keep alive and embrace more than even his name.

and his values sometimes conflicted with u.s. policies. even when his good friend bill clinton was standing next to him. because he was insisting still on being friends with fidel castro. and i didn't say that on television, that i? [laughter] >> and qadhafi, which has supported the african national congress, the country of iran and one of the lessons of mandela if anyone is interested, is that you have to sit down sometimes and -- well, first of all, my enemies, your enemies are not my enemies and he says that in one of bill clinton and he also set it to george bush. but he also had the, and i think that this is as they debate it. it's very confusing. but at any rate, he says that

you have to sit down with your enemies. sometimes your enemies can be your friends. and there are other times when you are butting heads with them. so as we look at the lessons of mandela, it's not just reaching out. and of course the south african regimes, he sat down with them to avoid many things and a firestorm in the country. but he was also told this as well, which at the time was friends of south africa but not the united states and the western world. finally let me say that i could talk about him all day, but i will not. and i worry. you say that the young people in south africa today are trying to

get the anc to remember what they were. but they have people like that here in america. young people in america today in high schools and colleges as well, they have no memory of the u.s. rights movement. moreover, as you go on, because the movement has sort of faded out when the free south africa movement revived this and that helped to bring about another national involvement in something that was important. but there is a group called the born free and they have no memory of south africa. they know the name, but i'm not even sure that they know his value. and then you have someone like this who is a young firebrand who is advocating all kinds of things that nelson mandela never

would've advocated and he's having this among young people, the vast majority are black and poorly educated thanks to the apartheid system, which continues to reverberate because those teachers were taught under that regime. and so they listen to somebody like this who is advocating nationalism of the mind which are all kinds of things that are going to be detrimental to the south african economy. so my question is, if i conclude, how do you and we in america keep alive the memory of what they stood for and how do we get our young people to embrace those values. to me, that is almost more

important than the names of those icons, even though i hope they will be venerated forever. >> thank you, charlene. alan is an oral historian. he is an emeritus at the university of south carolina and has taught at the university in south africa and he has published two books in the last two years and he's had a noble laureate write an introduction to his book and as a note of personal disclosure, i was very privilege to know both of them and to learn from them. i think that experience is one of the great enriching experiences of my time.

and that's another argument and when we learn about other cultures and other people, that we, ourselves, we can grow culturally and politically and having had the experience of visiting south africa, not only many times, but first in 1967, i have watched this history through my own eyes and not just through the eyes of the media. >> connected through the story and you have about 10 minutes and we have to open it up. >> i had planned to come and talk about this and the word was we rather than just i myself. and so i was writing about two people that were close to him over the years.

and connecting it to south africa and the u.s., which is how this theme was written and how we talk about it, it made me think about one other thing before i do that. the word collaboration is not a great word and hasn't been historically. but nelson mandela and the communist party were, as groups, working with other people to make the struggle work and i think that that is of great importance of we are going to continue to look at the legacy. part of the problem whether nelson mandela is demonized or lionized, is too create a person that never existed and it's not a real question. it is the weekly newspaper in south africa, and they came from some academic conference and a student had written that the

problem with history textbooks in south africa today when they talk about nelson mandela is that there was no one else in the struggle, he did everything. the problem was that it was wrong and it pointed out things that i knew well from doing my book. that he was involved in or he was involved in with this first. one of the things they the writer brought up is that everybody gives medieval credit for starting us. and when there was a decision made by a group of people to begin the struggle, there was great care taken in terms of we do not kill people, we do not -- and we take on electrical. there were mistakes made over the years.

but the guy said no, joe divac, not nelson mandela. and it was totally wrong. in a sense there were many other people that worked on that and getting matt started. the second thing in terms of his notion of mandela getting credit for everything is ending the armed struggle. and that was obviously after 1990 and negotiations had begun that things were very tough. and again he said that he got the credit for doing that but it raised joe's name and the reality was that he was linked to the extreme the other way. and of course he was involved in the conversation and of course he was involved in the conversation about some of the things that shone brought up and they were called the sunset

clauses they kept certain things in place for politicians and others who had been in the apartheid regime. it's an interesting thing because it gives him credit for that. but it didn't take him to where he was where he was involved in that. and it's interesting with the armed struggle with medeba and joe were in law school when joe was a law student as well. and joe actually in 1961 and 1962, was part of when he was sent to prison and there was a

connection in 1956. in that light has been part of the beginning stages of the cia time to track nelson mandela when most everybody was acquitted and there was a party and she was smart enough not to go because he knew that he had to get underground. and one of the guests was misguided called milford surely, who is this cia agent who eventually gave the word to the south african security forces where they would find medeba a couple of years later it was him that announced it and it was underground. ruth was a journalist and she

set up an interview in the home of a professor and they didn't announce that we were starting a war, but that we had tried in a peaceful way for so long to make a difference. and every time we do something peacefully, the response is harsh and it might be the only possible way to go to have an armed struggle. it might be the only way to go to max one thing that i want to talk about in regards to mandela in the united states, it is a schizophrenic story. because here is the man that was so demonized and as was mentioned, she had a long interview and i think i am talking about a different thing here in new york, there was a

town hall meeting with madiba the first time after he was released. and ted koppel was the host and it was at a lecture hall where he had been given an honorary doctorate when he was ill in prison. and the crowd was overwhelmingly thrilled to be able to see him. and when he breathed it was palatable. but it was a strange personification for whoever set the show up. it was a total set up and people asked questions from the audience and the pipe and questions from south africa on screen. and except for one or maybe two questioners, the questions were

that i'm going to show that you hate israel that you are friends with fidel castro. so he was absolutely brilliant and it didn't matter what they said. and they tried very hard to have conservative african-americans ask the question although they had to have a leader from the congress as well. but that is a whole another story. so this woman says were very worried about the journey of the economy. can you tell us how you think the economy will go and finally she couldn't help herself and said are you going to be marxist or socialist or are you going to be capitalist and he said i was thinking you would get to the real question. and then gave this pragmatic answer. he also spent a lot of time

going hard for creating and nurturing black on black violence between 1990 in that year and they piped in a chief who was the head to ask a question. so it was a total set up and then at the end about 45 minutes ted koppel came back to talk about this and in a very stern voice, after he had talked about it, he said your enemies are not our enemies and he said that i'm going to read a peer graph of it and then i will be done and it is him at his best. he says apparently, mr. ted koppel, you have not listened to my argument. if you had done so, you would not be serious and examining it.

and i have replied to one of our friends here that i have refused to be drawn into the differences that have existed between various communities in the united states. you have not commented that i'm going to offend anybody by refusing to inform myself in the internal errors of the usa. why are you so keen that i should inform myself and i don't think he meant to inform, in the internal affairs of cuba and libya. i think that you should be persistent. and if you think about television. all right? ten seconds, silence. >> one of the amazing things about this was television came to south africa in 1976. so nelson mandela had already been convicted and was already

in prison and he didn't grow up the way that we do. in such a media bubble. the south african government refused to allow any pictures of him to be taken were to be shown in the south african media so no one can actually the ham and so for him to become him as they say, an incredible pundit, if you will, without ever experiencing the media speaks in the way as someone who knew how to communicate with people and was able to master this medium even though he was completely unskilled and unprepared for it. and this is part of the reality of america which looks at the world through the bubble of tv and the images of tv and often misses the subtleties and the contexts in the background and i think that mandela brought in honesty that we really see on

television and the willingness to see the ability to challenge this intellect and i'm thinking about that is even in south africa, and i just have to tell this story. >> 10 seconds go by and he says, mr. ted koppel, have i paralyzed you? and he says, oh, i can't be realized that easy. let's go to a break and then they come back and he says i guess i was somewhat paralyzed and mandela just takes his hands and says i'm done. [applause] >> okay, let's get any questions on both sides here. try to keep your questions short because we are running out of

time. and i made an appeal at the beginning of this. nelson mandela lived for 95 years, can you give us 95 minutes but they turned me down. so we have to finish up quickly so if there are questions, please raise them and introduce yourselves, if you will, in the microphone right now. if not, we can continue this conversation. >> i just want to quickly respond on this question. he is a young individual that broke away from this and did really well in the last election and since the election he has changed the way that people do politics for africa. and most people use to watch soap operas.

but i think that what we should recognize it is we forget that they also used to be like that. they wore uniforms and mandela used to also -- and that's the way politics are right now. and he also called for reform and talked about corruption and he himself said that if this government -- the apartheid government, you should get rid of this government. so they don't often know about this. they know nothing about this but what i was referring more to his when he died and over that couple of days, like 24 hours per day, they were like, this is

the history and it has something to do with the election results. but in a way people were confronted with this. >> except that it isn't a sin. you have a moment, as it was, when madiba passed away and then it was forgotten and i think that the one thing that we have to continue to remember is that this young democracy is only 20 years old. they will make mistakes as we made here in the united states longer of 20 years and now. but i lived part of the year and martha's vineyard and there's a vine that grows in my backyard and a has a red tigerlily, someone might know what it is. anyway, it is a vine and you can pull it out here. within a few days, it is over here. and so i'm just saying that i want us to appreciate that south africa's only 20 are sold in the young democracy is taking baby

steps. but if they don't root out some of the corruptions that come from the top and if they don't get themselves to hold politicians accountable, it's going to be like a vine in my backyard despite the fact that they are only 20 years old. and i see everyone standing up. to your point about that is, the conversation i had this yesterday with one who actually is part of the new class in south africa who shocked me in her positive descriptions, we still think she is a bit of a nod, but at the same time says that he is growing as mandela grew and at the end of the conversation i was shocked because she said that he is truly causing a big stir in

parliament and her expectation is that he may eventually take over this predominantly white party which is the only serious opposition to the african national congress and he might take over the democratic space of the democratic alliance. >> i would add to what i was trying to a moment ago. we are dealing with a story that is not as complex but filled with contradictions and there is no one thing that is necessarily true. in my own book, i see that as having many faces and he plays many roles, including the roles of nelson mandela which he invented. so he played this and abraham lincoln and he was an actor on some level. and he was able to bring those

talents and skills and to politics without losing a beat and support. >> i think that one of the things that is important, is that he was a human being with weaknesses and we all it tore him as we do this way. and yet there were issues that he himself talked about. an example, this is widely something that is reviled for his position on hiv and aids. and then later after mandela had

retired, don't call me, i will call you, he then became a very fierce advocate for hiv and aids. because he lost one of his children, his son, to hiv and aids. and i think it's important to remember he was a human being. >> we have to wrap that for now. my own story is coming out in a book called when south africa calls. we answer. it is a story of solidarity and the solidarity movement and so thank you all. please stay engaged with this issue and i appreciate your coming in participating, even if he didn't participate when you're here, thank you for paying attention.

[applause] hello. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> coverage of the rutland book festival continues with a discussion about voting rights. [inaudible conversations] >> okay, we are going to get started. good afternoon, everyone. before we begin the program i would like to let you know that the books by the authors in the program can be purchased from books on call in new york city near the entrance to the building. authors will be signing their books at that location as well. that is not to be messed.

it's right after the program. my name is erica wood, i am a professor in new york law school. and i want to thank everyone for coming today and thank the brooklyn book festival for organizing this tremendous event. certainly it would like to thank my fellow panelist. today's topic of voting rights, is incredibly timely. i believe that we are at the most critical moment for voting rights in our country and for civil rights movement 50 years ago. and it has let us to this point. why are we here where everything seems to be happening all at once. and why would there be three related events that bring us to this point. first was the 2000 election, which we knew had the power of the vote in the country. the second related to that is the result of the election which gave us our first african-american president in the white house.

and third is an enormously important supreme court opinion that came down last year where for the first time the supreme court failed to protect the right to vote in our society. a right that the supreme court had called preservative of all basic civil rights. these three related events in the last few years have brought our country to a critical moment about the right to vote and what it means in our society. so since 2010, new voting restrictions have been enacted in 22 states in our country. and that means nearly half the country will face new voting restrictions and race is certainly a factor in that. seven have new restrictions in our states. of the 12 states might pass laws making it harder to vote and

nearly two thirds are covered because of past estimating issues in these last couple of years. in addition, 6 million americans have been disenfranchised because of a kernel conviction in their past and black americans are times more likely to lose the right to vote as a result of these laws and one out of 13 african americans have walked away as a result of the kernel conviction and in three states, kentucky, florida, virginia, nearly a quarter of their african-american population. in total, 2.2 million african-american citizens have lost the right to vote because of a kernel conviction in their past. and of course, this is not the first time that our country has it. widespread efforts to deny citizens of color of their most fundamental rights. so we are going to talk about the history of voting rights and what in what is happening today and how it reflects the history and what the future might hold.

we are going to do all that in 50 minutes. so let me introduce my panelist terror. joining us to my far left, professor michael higginbotham is a professor at the university law school and he has also written a book. to his right is a contributing writer and the author of the book, the right to rebuild a democratic polity and be sure to check out his new book coming out as well, i certainly am. next to him is a author of several books, including high cotton, out there, and the black vote in u.s. democracy, which he will be talking about as well. so in your book, you reflect on

the history that i have mentioned that you identify what you call a racial paradigm and a vicious cycle that continues to this day. can you explain this paradigm or the ghost of jim crow. >> thank you to everyone for coming out today. the title of the panel here from reconstruction to obama is really a title that gives an appropriate focus so often the panels like this and events like this, start with the civil rights movement. i think that that is a huge mistake because what is going on today in regards to the paradigm that identified in the separation and the victimization and the discrimination, what is going on today is very reflective of what transpired to end of reconstruction and worker

to maintain jim crow practices. for example, restrictive voter id laws and the limitations on early voting and same-day registration and the racial chairman during that occurs and these are practices that are very reflective of things that went on to and reconstruction and maintain jim crow grandfather clauses, literacy tests, we can argue about whether the intent today is the same, and that is arguable, but the effect in terms of reducing the contribution and participation in the voting process of elderly people and young people and most significantly of racial minorities is they are and it is real and i don't think it can be

disputed. clearly president obama has an amazing personal story and i think in 2008 we recognize the monumental development of that was and i think his personal story being biracial, being raised by a single mother, in terms of being raised by grandparents. it is an incredible story that he wasn't supposed to make it in america let alone to be president and to make it to the white house. that was not supposed to happen. but personal story aside, it reflects progress that racial minorities had an opportunity to participate today that progress does not mean post-racial. it does not mean that race is no longer significant in terms of

opportunities afforded or hardships endured in our society. that is what my book talks about with the progress we have made and how much further we need to go as well. >> thank you. >> congress responded to this during the jim crow years, which has been authorized i think five times. with overwhelming majorities. can you tell us about the voting rights act and how it came to be and what its impact has been and also about the supreme court decision as well? >> sure, absolutely. >> okay, so basically it is a fascinating story. the 15th amendment is passed in 1870. he gives people the right to vote free of racial discrimination and then basically for 95 years there is

a gap between the 15th amendment and the voting rights act. and basically what you have is only about 30% of african-americans in are registered to vote in the southern state in 1954. and the civil rights act passed in 1954, none of which came close to solving the problems of widespread voter disenfranchisement were 7% were registered to vote in 1964. so the voting rights act, the most important thing was to abolish the literacy test and that gave the attorney general the chance to file this as well, the two main things with other

voters as well and other language minorities in addition. until one of the things that was done that was ingenious was the people in the johnson administration were pushing it and they knew where the problem lies. they knew mississippi, alabama, georgia, but they just couldn't name those states and that would've been on constitutional and they had to figure out a way to get rid of this overnight so that they wouldn't come back, they would be gone once and for all. and basically said there is lower than 50% voter turnout and there is a literacy test as well and those would have to submit the voting changes to make sure that it does not occur. and so the other literacy test did not replace that.

so that was the shelby county versus air cooled her decision. he struck out section four and they had to approved as in what the decision men to the states with the bose wars history, georgia, mississippi, all these places, they no longer had to approve this voting change with the federal government and they can adopt voting laws like readers reading as well once they go into effect after the litigation. and that is really the biggest asset of this case. >> bringing it to your personal story, i think that today we had

a 24 hour news cycle for the talking heads and the commentators and the politicians talking about this and we sort of lose this in an abstract idea and not as a personal experience. one of the things about your book is talking about the personal experience of voting. and so you reflect on your parents experience in the role that they played in their experience of the civil rights movement all the way to the absentee ballot as well. i'm wondering if you can tell us about why you wanted to tell that story, the connections are that you have seen between a personal experience in the history in regards to that. >> a really miss my parents. i think the matter what age you

are that happens and i realize as much as i argued with what shows to it before them, i depended on him a lot to tell me what i thought because i trusted them as sources of information. normally their own experience but they are a library, really. and so i often think that i didn't grow up protestant but lack at the time of secular faith. as well as progress that is, of course, the object and social justice and of voting in my family has always been a very important instrument of citizenship simply because the history being denied is also an intimate one. it reads and every member of the

family experiences these chapters that you are reading about or talking about. no matter the class or the region, north or south. it is easy to forget that history is a human drama and as much as we are at the forces of history and the mercy of that, it's important to remember that they were made by were set in motion by people who made choices. because it is the only way that we can think about how to modify or undo some of these choices by remembering that we are participants in this ongoing process and i think that one of the problems of the civil rights era, holding it up as important as it is, i think it is the heroic battle for certain generations because it wasn't world war ii, it was not world

war i and vietnam didn't work out the way that great victories are remembered. it is the civil rights movement and legislation and it was a tendency to think okay, it was one and it was over in a forces against desk never rested and they kept on insisting. they kept on interfering with implementations. and everything that the professor has said is being done is sort of old hat and a lot of people have said that the vote won't change any time. if that were today would not have spent so much money and effort to get you to vote for them but to keep you from voting. so i think in a way they have

given up the white house. as much as it sums a lot of guys to the moon to think a black granite is in charge of all that money, they can be the demographic as much as we can. 50% of the united states under the age of two years old launch a member of the minority. so 35% of the electorate are single mothers. these statistics can be argued with. women voted as a bloc in 2012 to vote their own interests, although we don't call it back, but they certainly did. and so i think that that is a -- instead of always thinking of our opposition as crisis management, we should take of it as electoral participation something else we do along the way, why didn't he driver's

license so anything that is normal to be included or show up and i think that the greatest weapon against social change is this kind of intimidation that you don't want and that you can't cross the threshold and we still live in an isolated and segregated society in the park. and the way to overcome these fears is to always keep it in some ways personal so that it's very clear to you and you're doing this for your children and doing this for people who are not here anymore and you are standing up for something larger than yourself. i don't have children, but i care about the future because children are the afterlife. and so i just can't stand to see them when. [laughter] >> so for that reason. just to give them a bad day.

[laughter] >> that smug congress mean man is a noble ambition. [laughter] >> michael, in your opening remarks. we talked about progress in the broader situation. i'm wondering if you could talk about what you think has changed under the obama president be with these issues and what has not been wide. >> i think what has changed since the civil rights movement is very significant in the sense that clearly we have ended jim crow practices and a lot of violence that has occurred against individuals to stop them from going to the polls and those are significant things. we have passed this legislation

in housing and voting and public accommodations. and of course we have elected and reelected our first black president and those are significant things in that they have created additional opportunities. and they have showed us that no matter what color you are, you can achieve the highest status in this country whether this or other things. but what we see today, this is what causes me great concern. despite the fact that we could have a black person achieve the highest political office in the land, the way that he is treated on occasion by some and dick cheney may be one of those individuals in a group, not by all, but by some, is extremely disrespectful and represents what i believe is another ghost

of jim crow. and that is an example of giving his state of the union address in 2900 congressmen saying that you lied. that is unprecedented in our history and does not happen. so when folks say that that is just politics, that is a republican looking at the democrat and that has nothing to do with race, i say to them that i think is former president jimmy carter suggested, some of those practices have a lot to do with race. as a foodstamp resident, these are all unprecedented acts in our political life. but there is more than that. the book comes out in march 2013 and people say that we are post-racial, and i'm not sure,

have to read some of those examples. what i say to them as please do. because if you have some doubt, i think that if you see some of the examples mentioned in the book, you at least have to tell me why this has nothing to do with race. this includes people like trayvon martin, people start to say maybe you are right, there are lots of those going on now. and it's very reflective of what transpires in the past and we have to be very careful because we say that we are post-racial, we are not going to continue some of the things like the voting rights act that was referred to in the shelby county case which nullified sections of that. we are not going to continue to make the progress that will get us to the point where we illuminate this paradigm that we talk about in terms of separation and hierarchy and victimization. >> pulling from that with what

michael is referring to, what is the impact of the shelby county case and things have happened across the country as a direct result of that position and maybe you could tell us about some of those recent developments. and it's really happening on the ground as well. >> oh, absolutely. the timing of this decision was so interesting and what was so striking was that we had just come out of an election in 2012 where we saw the most aggressive widespread right to vote since before 1965 and so they had never seen anything like that for essentially 50 years where states all across the country were implementing new voting restrictions, not just states in

the south or states like florida or ohio in 2004, the places like wisconsin and mena and kansas, places with no history of doing this kind of thing all of a sudden started to do it after the 2010 election. so i spent this election covering this and it never came up once during the supreme court debate. it wasn't brought up by the people that were against it or for it, and there's there is an article that i read called the shelby county decision and the end of history and it felt like there was no sense of history or recent history and what we have seen from this decision was that restrictive voting laws have become even more restrictive. so i will give you one example that i'm writing about in my book which is north carolina. they are a state that justin

passed this restrictive voter law, but got rid of same day voter registration and got rid of public financing and basically everything that north carolina had done since 2000 to make it easier to vote with voter turnout in the late '90s. and particularly for young people and we saw that in 2008 when they won the state in 2012. so north carolina introduces the strictest voter id laws in the country in the house passes it in april in north carolina. the shelby county decision comes out in june. so they have passed this law but they haven't tested it enough.

so then the legislature takes a 16 page bill and they make the voter id law a lot tougher. the student ids, the county ideas, because the registration and all these other things and now it's a 57 page bill in the past in three days. no debate, no public hearing, all of a sudden everything in north carolina making it easier to vote has been repealed. so they knew that they didn't have to approved this. previously the federal government would have said that this is discriminatory and african-americans are more likely to use early voting and not to have an idea. we have this number and it is a theoretical discussion. and i was just a north carolina

talking about this. it's a very interesting litigation with the lots were in effect. so if you have an example of one that would've been blocked it is now in effect, i think that is the base best case study i can give. >> thank you. darrell, now what happens? >> the same thing happened in texas. another voter id law that had sort of went through in texas and they are a large concentration of the latino vote their. and it's always been that it has sought to keep the ball out because they don't trust them. benjamin franklin told the constitution that if you're asking these people to die, you must give them the vote. throughout the 19th century, state-by-state, there were

different laws about who is excluded due to property, often those that want citizens were not allowed to vote. and if people wanted these votes can to keep them in power, the conservative politicians of the late 19th century said the exact same things about why european immigrants should not be allowed to vote. the same things they are saying about immigrants now. but they can't be trusted. in some way that their votes are not reliable. and so even the reconstruction republicans that supported the vote for the millions lave opposed to vote for the chinese in california. and they weren't allowed to vote in the 19th century. so it's groups that don't sort of one u.n. and it has is very classic

expression in the. and a lot of them that were forbidden from voting before the new deal in the south were always the middle class. and you could even get lynched for voting in florida in 1920 when the women got vote, so many women try to vote at the ku klux klan reemerged, specifically because of this sort of threat. and so i think that -- while the situation with air colder he's trying to do something about the voting rights act -- looking at states like places in pennsylvania, on the one hand as long as citizens united is on the books. there is all this sort of money flowing wildly and i have seen

these advertisements on youtube. that's where i went to get away from all of that. and now you have people telling me things on youtube and the unconscious of who i do not know. so i understand when some people are disappointed and obama and the administration. but i often think that if we didn't have obama, who would we have? we are in this position trying to hold off the right wing and at the same time the only time to get people interested in electoral politics is to offer something more. and i wish that they were kind of part of new coalitions coming. and i've been very impressed and i don't understand entirely the role of social media and obama's victory. even he kind of plays it down

somewhat. but he has a great handle on that. one thing about twitter and things like that is that they do sort of have this atmosphere of direct democracy. when the polls were closed in ohio, people got up there and said no, stay in mine. we are still open. so there is a way to get around all of this money. but it was a question of people meeting other people and that is one of the hardest things to do in the united states now is to meet someone on like yourself and to have some kind of meaningful exchange. >> i think it's very important. we talked about the past in this country where if you didn't have

property you couldn't vote. if you are a woman, you couldn't vote. it's so significant for us to remember that and also to change. that is why it is so problematic today with what many republican legislators are doing in terms of these overly restrictive laws on voting. voting is the cornerstone of our democracy and we should learn from the past that it was wrong to deny those individuals the right to participate in by learning from the past we should be encouraging people to participate and making it easier for them and i was there when they had the first democratic elections over there. three days of voting with over 80% of the eligible individuals participating. and we are lucky on a good day if we get 50% of voters to participate. so i am concerned that yes, we want to maintain the integrity of the voting process, but we

want to democratize or set up. and i believe that the proper balance is not being achieved by what is going on today. i am very concerned that we are not having more people participate, but we have legislatures that are attempting to reduce upper really wrong reasons. ..

>> the black population or any disenfranchised population looks to the federal government to readdress the wrongs while the states are engaged in whatever they are doing to stop this. we are in this because they have given up on the federal election but the control of the states, control of state legislatures and all of this thing is in their grasp so we have this party growing that has been with us since brown versus education. it was an obstruction party

then. it is really to prevent or interfere with change as if it is a threat to what personal likeness boys called it or i am not sure what power. i just think we know what they are doing. we know why they do it. it is not interesting. what is more interesting is what are we doing or not doing. and why, say, liberalism is not the counter force to this terrible, sort of, blind reactionary stuff going on that imperils the future which is why we have the climate march going on right now. i think there is -- i don't know. i struggle to not give into pessimism but it is easy. if you are pessimisttic no one can make a fool out of you.

but if you believe you are vulnerable -- when i read during the civil rights era it was clear how dangerous it was and how uncertain the ow outcome was. there was no precedent this would work. i think we are still in that era more than you think. because there are black officials and baldwin said there is going to be a black president when would country changes -- when the -- and we are changing, things are better, but it isn't like you can reach a point and you can all go to the party and it will take care of itself. what we are missing is a sense of vigilance and why it matters to people who never thought they had a share before or had to care. so, i don't know -- sorry. i meant to end on a stronger

note. >> that is the perfect place to invite questions and discussion from the audience. you all are hear for a reason and we would love to hear from you. make sure you step up to the mike so the viewers at home can hear your question. thank you. >> hi, i have been hearing a lot about the civil rights movement -- >> in terms of how it is presented it is viewed as the beginning to an end. i am wondering if we should reorder our thoughts and look at the updates where they tried to ignore the stories of the struggles going on before and after the civil rights movement. i am wondering how we viewed things and put the movement as a

paradime. in a lot of ways it affects the way in which we engage in issues like voting. >> when he was talking about south africa i remembered a story a guy told me in the 70s that he had his eye taken out with an elephant whip because he was caught reading books by baldwin. i think if the civil rights movement was thought of as a human rights movement and everyone realizes they have a stake in the campaigns and it isn't just for blacks or women or minorities. maybe people don't want to be down there with victims. i understand why obama resisted the notion that he is treated the way he is because it is

racism because the president of the united states can't come off as a victim. if we enlarge the categories and let prosperous white people know they could be in danger or the surveillance stuff might get them in danger. maybe then people would think about themselves differently in the culture. >> i think that is an important point. i don't think we as americans should look as the civil rights struggle as a black struggle. it is an american struggle. americans should be concerned that people are not able to participate fullly in the democratic process. it shouldn't be we say it is black people that can't. or it is latino people that can't or women that can't. we should not look at it that way because it is harmful to america not to have all of its human resources involved.

we are in a global market competing with other countries. if we keep wasting our resources we are not going to be as competitive and be able to live out the real american dream. >> one of the problems is the poplar narrative ends with the assassination of dr. king and what happened after is never real part of the story. -- really -- and that is one of the main reasons i want to write the book i am writing and that is to tell the story of what happened after 1965 because i think that is a crucial part of the law that is lost. when you see the supreme court decision we were talking about with people like john roberts -- they refer to the progress but never the struggle all the way through to get the voting

rights. so the post-'65 period is important to study and hasn't been told well enough. >> felons are prohibited from voting in several states. isn't this against the rules? they paid their price to society and why are they being discriminate against? why are people not trying to overturn the law. they have completed sentences and owe nothing to the states anymore. >> i think i will take that question because i worked hard a bit on this. you are absolutely right. so there are a number of states where you lose your right to vote for life upon the conviction of a felony. in florida, which is a state i have been looking at closely, there are over a million people

disinf disenfranchi disenfranchised in the state of florida unless the governor wants to stop it. these laws have been challenged. there is a justice authored opinion from 1978 or somewhere around there called richardson versus ramirez where they found there was an exclusion in the 4th amendment on the voting bans. so sadly, litigation hasn't been successful. there have been about 20 states that changed the law in the last decade. and there is a federal restoration act in the congress and sen aate. but the fact 6.1 million

americans don't have the right to vote because of something they did years ago isn't helping anyone. >> my students were fascinated to hear in new york state, what we see as a progressive state, didn't give african-american americans the right to vote until 1970. but the issues you mentioned in terms of early voting and same-day registration those rights don't exist in new york. and new york is seen as the beacon of being progressive and achieving equal rights. i wonder what that says about new york state and is there a movement to have that happen in new york? >> i am not an expert on new york government but this always

comes up. i think new york should have early voting. but new york doesn't have the problems in elections that texas or north carolina have. all states are not equal. it was fascinating when this, not to keep beating the dead horse, but during the shelby discussion, justice kennedy was criticizing the act for targeting states and justice bryer says of course they were targeting states. what do you think the civil war was about? >> i just had a question about what you think the structural problems that drive down the participation rate? right now the electoral college

deciding the elections and everybody including minorities might think my vote doesn't count because my state is majority republican or democrat so it doesn't matter if i vote. on the congressional level, the districts where minorties are in a majority district and feel my vote doesn't count. do you think changes in those areas might raise the participation rate? the comparison to scotland that was a true democracy. one vote counted there. every vote counted. that is not true in the electoral college. >> we are just about of time but

want to chime in? >> i would love to see a lot of changes including changing the electoral college. i think one person/one vote is what we should have in the country. and in the presidential races we don't. there is the early day voting and the three-day voting we could do to increase participation. i don't think changing certain structural aspects will increase. i think we have to change the hearts and mind of the american people to value that participation more. but also to make sure there is one person/one vote. >> so i am afraid we are out of time. we are on a tight schedule at the book festival. but thank you for coming. [applause] >> please don't forget the authors are signing their books

downstairs outside the building and i am sure they will be happy to enter tain questions we didn't have enough time for -- entertain -- >> we conclude with a panel on public education. >> thank you so, so much for coming out today. we know there is a lot going on in new york city today and we

appreciate you being here. i think you did a really good thing by getting in here. you are in the right place at the right time. it is going to be a fantastic discussion. we are lucky to have three really, really fantastic experts talking about a critical issue so we are happy you are here. we have a terrific moderator. please turn off your cellphones. the room has good acoustics and the phones through it off. we only have 50 minutes of discussion and those people have so much to say so we will not take questions from the audience but all three people will be sitting outside where we come in and if you would like to buy their book and talk to them there is question and dialogue that way. happy you are here and i am really, really pleased to

introduce the moderator. she is a teacher at ps9 and taking it from here. >> good afternoon. as you can tell by the number of people in the room this is a critical issue facing our schools today. not just in new york city but across the nation. is that too quite? is this better? okay. when it comes to public education in new york this is a very interesting time. in march of this year the civil rights project at ucla issued a report called new york states extreme segregation group and this revealed that many schools experiencing segeratiregation at into the deep south but here in

new york city. new york city has one of the most segregated public school systems in the nation. from 1989-2010 the city's black and latino doubled but the exposure to white counterparts decreased. black and latino students are in segregated classrooms. less than 10% populations are white. new york city schools were not always this segregated. better control of the schools led to integration efforts. when i started at ps9 the school was 50% white and a third

qualified for the free lunch. today it is 73% white and only 11% of students qualify for free lunch. a mile down the road hundred percent of the students qualify for free lunch and only 11% of them are white. today we are lucky to be able to explore the issue of race, class and segregation within the new york city schools with three authors who expertise cross education. to my left we have the author of "the teacher wars" which is now a new york times bestseller and she is a staff writer at the marshal project. she writes about many issues like criminal justice, cities,

women's issue and public health and she appears in the atlantic and slate publication. peter is on the left and from 2008-2011 he was an appointee by the governor to the state board of trustee of new york and he was elected to the national bord of education in 2014. "schooling for resillance" is his ninth book. and at the end of the panel we have david banks who ten years ago petitioned the new york city mayor to allow an all-boys public school. the first of its kind in 30 yours to open in one of the most troubled districts in the

nation; the south bronx. he was trying to prove when rituals are combined with college prep level and mentorship even the most challenging students can succeed. the eagle academy for young men flourished and has been replicated all around. in his new book he shares experiences from the eagle academy and his journey and approaches to help even the most challenging of students. dana, david and pedro thank you so much for being here. i thought we would begin by trying to better understand new york city's public school segregation. what does it mean our schools are segregated? how does the segregation affect the quality of education for students? and how did we get here? >> dive right in?

thanks, leah. good afternoon. i would say before i address what does it mean i would want to address the question of why did we allow it. when you consider this country went through such a heavy upheaval over the school integration. troops were sent to little rock, arkansas. we have had blood on the streets in boston and philadelphia. how can it be by 2014 it isn't mentioned? that includes the state of new york, the obama administration and including the mayor of new york. after the report came out, not a word from the chancellor, mayor or governor. not a word. and they silence speaks, i

think, the fact that we accepted. now we find ourselves as a nation -- we are not at plussy even. that promise was separate but equal. we have separate and profoundly unequal. the two most important issues facing education today are not addressed. they are racial segregation and inequality in funding for schools. and despite the campaign for fiscal equitties ruling that should be addressed is a non-issue. we have known for years not only are unequal resources making the gaps in the in academic performance we call the achievement gap but we know whether we allow our schools to be -- when -- segregated the way they are it is difficult to generate support for public schools.

leah's school probably does well garnering resources from the parents and i know of many schools that can't because the parents have no resources. so those affect the learn environment and whether or not teachers stay. we are made a system that is failing, but it fails not because the kids fail, and david's book and work shows if you provide the right environment, all kinds of kids can be successful. they care because this city doesn't care enough about its children. >> i will take the part of the question how we got here. i know it isn't going to be news to many of us in this room but brown versus board of education applied only to the southern and border states that segregated schools by law as opposed to the way the school district lines were drawn.

so that is the distinction. the courts declared that northern schools don't have to desegregate and they don't have to swap student populations and always during the reagan years we saw federal funds withdrawn from schools like chicago in the north that were attempting to desegregate schools. so these policy choices and the way it was implemented in the south are the reasons why in new york we have the deep acce segregation. and housing is a problem with this. the cheap mortgages that were available and redlining in the suburbs to the white families and you see white flight. often it is discussed that

desegregation of schools led to white flight. there was no broad desegregation of schools in new york city. it was driven by the red lining and the cheap mortgages available. so what we had in new york city under mayor john lindsey which i wrote about in my book in the late '60s is the situation of fewer and fewer white students. so it is becoming more difficult to achieve desegregation. busing would be one way but today there more choice-driven strategy i hope we can talk about. but the mayor didn't want to bus because he was looking at boston and saw the issues and he had presidential ambition and didn't want to be involved in that. there is another factor and that

is the black power movement was beginning to reject desegregation and it is important to acknowledge within the black community there was a strong critique of desegregation. so when the forces come together: the courts, the critique from the black power and the politician reluctance. and we never regained that. >> i think what we found in terms of the increased segregation is that we -- the fact we have a lesser amount of white students who are actually attending our schools in and of itself and on its face it isn't a bad thing per se. i think the problem is we don't have number people who are advocating to support the public

schools. what you have is a system where we have lost broadly so much n confidence in the public school system. i grew up in crown heights where the schools were desegregated and great schools. but over the years, the system lost confidence and so many well-meaning white citizens have taken their children out of the schools. we have had school chancellors who led the school system who didn't put their own children in the schools they lead. so that signal from the very top has been very troubling. i think pedro eluded to the point to the lack of resource and the consistent fight for having to find the proper resources to make sure the schools are funded in the way they need to be is a bigger

issue and needs to be addressed. >> i think we can talk now. if a lot comes down to funding, what do you propose we do at a policy level to make people pay tensi attention to the public schools and give them the resources they needed. >> i was a teacher in the new york city system for seven year. worked in an elementary school. and was an assistant principal for two years then the founding principal of two different high schools in new york city over the course of 11 years. i have been in the system throughout my career and seen a lot of what has been happening firsthand. but in creating the eagle academy for young men, the first all-boy public high school in 30

years. it is a traditional public school working hand and hand with the department of education. we recognize if we want to change the system we are not going to charter our way out of this education situation we have. charters have to play a role. but at the end of the day, more than 90% of the kids going through the traditional public school and we need to develop models that move the needle in that regard. black and latino boys are at the bottom of success in new york city and across the country and that is why we wanted to focus on the young men. as an educational lab, if you will, to figure out what it takes to move the needle. what i am doing in my role at the eagle academy foundation is something that should be done by the city and department of education by funding the opportunities young people need. i have to raise money and create

opportunities so men have an ex tensive day. getting off after 3:00 and sending the kids home isn't a recipe for success. we keep the young men in school until 5:00-6:00 and they come to school every saturday as well. it is the sports, chess, debate and other clubs and activities that work to create the kind of environment that young people are drawn to and want to be a part of, they have developed all kinds of initiatives in creating opportunities for parents to be motivated to be involved. most schools say they want the parents to be involved but they don't mean it. it is slogan they hang on the wall. the actions they practice say to parents we would prefer if you stay away. we know best.

just make sure they get a good nights sleep and send them to school. but we believe parents have to be partners. without the parents you can teach the kids, but if they don't grow up with respect to the family and community, they take everything they are given and leave and never give it back. part of the educational process is about developing the healthy spirit within our young people so they understand people fought and sacrificed so they would have to opportunities and part of the educational experience is giving back to the community. that is the only way communities will ever improve. if everybody takes what they get and leave and never come back we will continue to have this conversation for many years. >> how are you able to provide the expensive after school programs and how might you

suggest replicating it at the city level? >> i help others understand investing in a population like this is an important investment. this isn't just a feel-good story i tried to write about. essentially what we said is this is an issue of national security. in an increasingly diverse country we cannot afford to have so much wasted human capital on the sideline and we continue to make the investment in the prison population and incarcerate these young men so they are not giving back to the tax base or be fathers to children or husbands to their wives. you take a part of the fabric of

any community, remove it, and wonder why we have the problems. so i have to raise the dollars that bridge the gap and provide hope and support for the families. but that is something the city could do. to the mayor's credit they are trying to do this to some degree. they are beginning to make investments in support for extended day programs at the middle school level which i think is critically important. we do a good job at the elementary schools and around the country but where the decline takes place is at the middle school level that is a place we should make an investment. they are given them indications they are looking to support the middle school process and that is just the beginning of the type of work that has to happen. >> it is important to talk about how the public school is funded. 13% comes from the federal

government and the rest is 50-50 between property and local taxes outside of new york there is more to be done to redistribute them. they do a better job in places like kansas, hawaii, vermont. so there are legal changes that could happen to make it more feasible and equalize the resources between the communities. >> let me also say this is the 60th anniversary of the brown decision and 50th anniversary of the civil rights act. title one was put into place. the elementary secondary act. it was framed as a way to co compensate for what children didn't have. that is why we measure students with free lunch because schools

with poor kids get additional resources. that is what the law required. but it is never to be equal. even the extra resources that come with free lunch don't level the playing field. there is still a huge imbalance based on resources. what is importance is that if you look at this country's history, the time when the greatest gains were being made in reducing disparity and achievement based on race and socioeconomic stats and that was in the 1970s. since that time, we focus very narrowly particular on the education policy on academic standards and accountability and particularly since no child left behind that is all we focus on. and under mayor bloomberg we had a strategy of shutting down failing schools. which schools were those? they were almost all of the schools serving the poorest

children. we have had no strategy to address the basic lack of opportunity in those schools. i think david is right. if we bring in the extra services, it will help. but we also know services alone don't provide good academic instruction. you need more than that. this administration hasn't developed a strategy for that. there is a new report called the forgotten forth. 1/4th of the schools in new york have children below proficiency. there is no discuss about this report by either the mayor or chancellor since release said. i was expecting something different from the mayor and chancellor and keep calling them out. something more than pre-school. pre-school is important. but all of the kids have to see improvement if we address the issues david is talking about.

the growing inequality that the mayor said is his nob one priority. >> pedro, you said extra services are not enough to close the gap. what else do we need to do as a city to improve the issue? >> i will say briefly and dana will elaborate. the other dumb thing we did was deliberately assigned the least experienced teachers to the neediest schools. show me the research to support that strategy, right? we have this very high turnover in teachers in the south bronx and new york. i had a meeting with principles and not one of them is over 40. they are running schools and way over their head because we have not thought about this. how do you create schools in high poverty communities.

it is going to be hard to integrate brownsville. we have to talk about capacity in the schools and bringing in resources and highly competent educators. >> this is one of the crucial points i make in my book. there was a study on 850,000 children and looking at the impact of teacher turnover on gray grades. this impacts kids and lowers their achievement even if my own teacher isn't new. if the teacher in the classroom next to mine leaves, it impacts

me. it comes through there classroom walls. why does this happen? it is obvious when you think about it. when a school is focused on rehiring, retraining, recruiting staff the adults are focused on this process and not instructions at the classroom level. the stuff of the education which is the adult child and the child-child interaction has to be the focus and i think we would all agree about that. but so many schools in new york city have poor working conditions for adults and are tough places to build a career over the long haul they never get to improve the classroom material because they can not get over this. i look at research on teachers that leave high poverty schools and why they kid that and what would get them to stay and the number one thing was a great

principal. so we need to look at the principals running the schools. another thing is they don't have the opportunity to advance except by going to the administration themselves. teachers have this flatline for decades and it is in terms of day. pay is one part of that. and the second part is opportunities to lead among adults. it isn't just among kids. teachers are people. they have all of the same drives and desires for opportunities like what leah is doing. we don't often provide teachers with the opportunities especially in the high poverty schools so there is a lot to make the working environments better and address the issue of teacher retention which is very

important in new york city. >> and the notion of how we are preparing to teachers within the school of education and holding them to some level of accountability because it doesn't happen really. i graduated from saint john's law school, worked for the law department and left the school system thinking i was network coming back. when i came back to be an assistant principal, i was starting in january and wanted to be into school in september and that meant i had one access semester to get another master but only 24 credits to get your certification. so my goal is how to get 24 credits. brooklyn college offered me 15 off the gate. no one offered 24.

i said i will have to do this in two semesters now. i woke up in the middle of the night with a voice saying who said it had to be at the same time. so i went to three colleges and got all 24 and was in a school as an assistant principal that year. the real indictment is it was the easiest thing i have done. i found the classes to be like mickey mouse courses. the enterance way to the system was that easy. when i became a teacher, i was a political science major and decided to take a job before going to law school and it was easy to become a teacher. so that is why point. we are not preparing our teachers, i don't think, with

anything that is really resembles rigorous course work. and we don't prepare them for the realities of what they will face particularly a tough neighborhood. the notion of working a classroom of boys. a lot were young ladies who liked school, had a good experience with teachers and wanted to be ms. jackson the teacher. and they go to schools of education and they are the teacher sitting in front of the class and they have quame in the back of the room who is a complete handful and they have no way of handling him. they didn't even though this kid existed. i tell the story of my brother

phillip. my brother and i are year apart. i did well in school. but my brother had real challenges in schools. and the teachers misdiagnosed his brilliance and thought he was a bad boy with a lot of energy and recommended him for special education and said he should be on medication because he was too hyper. he was just a boy with all of the energy in the world. they were not racist. they just didn't know how to deal with him. phillip went on to graduate from college and followed by dad on the police department. father and son with the same game. phillip was promoted to be a sergeant then a year later a lieutenant. you have father and son with the same name and both lieutenants and then my brother is promoted

to captain above my dad and my dad said it is time to retire. phillip went on to be deputy inspector and today he is the four-star chief of department and the highest ranking police officer in the state of new york and could be the police commissioner. but if you think about the teachers that didn't understand the boy energy and they were not prepared. we need to look at how we prepare to teachers for the difficult students. >> i think we will love to hear more about what you would propose as far as teacher preparation. finland and other places teachers are spending an ex t s tensive amown of time doing residency programs or learning from mentors. what do you think the united

states needs to do? >> only have of teachers have significant teaching experience in the classroom. and i mean more than a couple weeks by significant. often time student teaching is in front of 4-5 students in the teaching circle. in chapter ten of my book i look closely at residency programs. they are focused to do the four year degree, then a full year doing education course work and during that full work they are four days a week in a classroom in a high poverty school and watching teaches that have the ability to teach well and screen for the ability for a teaching an adult.

we see really good numbers coming out of these programs. i look at the one in memphis in my book. the teachers are saying 5-10 years in the profession. it is different from teach for america. they are specifically going out there looking for people who want to commit long term to teach and not just teaching anywhere but in a specific place. the memphis program is focused on memphis. they take class on the history of race relation in memphis. it is specific to the area and i think that is important. >> i am glad dana made reference to other countries and the way teachers are trained and prepared. in those countries, teaching is a high status profession and that the what we want to make. there is a debate about getting

rid of tenure for teachers. i would say if you want to further undermine public education let's go that way, right? because we want to attract, make it very difficult to get teaching. it should not be this easy to get into the profession. you ask you should have to demonstrate you can teach whoever it is you are going to teach. and beyond that we should make it a profession that is attractive to stay in. so that there is support for teachers across the country. it is easy to tax the schools of education. i tried berkeley and our students do well training in the content of what they teach and know instruction. they are not prepared to teach the kids. why? because they go into underresourced schools in classrooms. tell me the program that trains

you for that. there is no such program. we take the least prepared people someone from teach for america or a credential program and put them in the most difficult circumstances. no other profession does that. we cannot focus on one slice line tenure or schools of education and think one slice fixes the whole thing. we have to do many things at the same time. make the profession more attractive, provide more support, make sure the training opportunities include faculty from the universities coming in. social workers, school counselors. if you ignore the other needs the kids need, the kids with the greatest needs continue to be

the ones most likely to fail and the teachers fail because they are working with those kids and are overwhelmed. we cannot focus on one piece. we have to understand it is all interconnected and think in a comprehensive ways to help the schools get the support they need to do the challenging work of educating our children. >> as someone who has been in the system for many years, there is no one place you can go to within the system for curriculum. the largest school system in the world. there is no one central rep repository you can go to. if we wanted to teach a class in forensic science and there is a course with the curriculum laid out and you can adapt it to your students they don't have it. everybody is working in silos

and there are no built-in incentives for people to share. you have a lack of connec connectedness. if you happen to be in a school that is supported you are lucky. but we setup this system of accountable and standards and they put you in the classroom and you are on your own to figure it out. it makes no sense. that is the point when he said there is no plan. if you have been selected to be the chancellor. what is your plan of action? it can't be that you know we are talking about universal pre-k and the whole conversation evolves around that and once we

imeleme implement that we think we are arrived. there are many pieces to this and you need people who are smart, dedicated and thinking outside of the box. the bloomberg administration did a lot of good things when joe cline was chancellor. but the level of connectedness is looking. charter schools were a laboratory that was supposed to help us figure out how to make the things we threw up on the wall and stuck and we figure out how to implement them. there is no system that is taking that learning and in a systemic way and making sure everybody gets it. we have a system of accountability that provides for

bureau accurateic system of paperwork driven by this accountability push and we have rareryly stepped back to ask what great teaching looks like. and once i see it, how can i replicate it and move it from

the place it is happening to the place where it isn't. i try to go into classrooms, including inner city newark where supposedly all of the schools are failing which isn't true. i try to look at what the teachers are doing with their students and we need systems are less punishment and more reform. >> so, let me build on that point dana made about the a accou accountability system. one is pressure makes schools better. there is absolutely no evidence. it is threatening schools and embarrassing the people who work there will make them improve.

that is a national strategy under no child left behind. but we don't acknowledge there is no accountability on the people in charge. we have top down accountability. accountability on the principal, teachers and children. if the children don't pass the test they are screwed. the chancellor, mayor, state legislature -- no accountability. so i would say we need to reframe it and do what they do in canada and toronto and the city in north america that made the greatest stride improving schools in poverty is toronto. despite the crack smoking mayor they focus on capacity building

in schools. if a school is struggling they go in and see what they need and pokes on building the school up. not threatening and pressuring it. that change in approaching the work would change everything. new york state has had roosevelt public schools under state control for over 15 years. roosevelt is stale not a model strict. in new jersey, every major urban district with the exception of elizabeth is under state control. why isn't the governor held accountable for the failures in camden? he runs it. it isn't the educators killing it. we consult with ceos and hedge fund image -- managers for

assistance. >> it is an issue of -- this is really in many way as crisis of leadership and vision. because we have been at this for far too long and still haven't really advanced the needle much. we have places we can point to. places like eagle academy and others that have been doing better than eagle academy. but there are islands of success. but the larger system still struggles mightily and i see that as an issue of leadership. so i agree with pedro and the notion of holding people acco t accountable for that is important. but i think that, you know, when rudy was the chancellor here in the school system he had an idea i thought worked well and that was the chancellor's district. that was the school's that did find themselves struggling the most got the most help in support and resources.

it isn't like rocket science; right? so he would make sure they would zero in and provide schools support they needed to try to move it. ...