would make a strong difference in terms of being open to charter school development. and from what i hear from people who live in new york the saying is bloomberg good, de blasio bad with respect to that issue. in cities many times the success of well performing charter schools is often a function of whether or not you have well-functioning charter management organizations. whether you have leadership development programs and, of course, the kipp charter schools at the forefront of having good leadership development programs. many times we have trouble finding local funders and civic leaders. now, let's go to the school level. and at the school level, we begin to get closer to home in terms of some of the frustrations that we have with making progress. even though we have

well-functioning charter schools, there is still an issue of teacher burnout in those schools because we require a lot of charter school teachers. these are teachers that often put in 10, 11, 12-hour days. and there's issues there with still being motivated to continue to put many years in teaching. we've had issues incompetence in charter school management. sometimes we have had issues with financial corruption with people who are misusing charter school funds. and then of course, you always have issues with curriculum and standards that are not carefully thought through. and as a result, charters are closed down. but what i'd like to talk to mostly here is i come from the university system. and i can talk all day about barriers at the state, city, and

school level but there are also barriers that are just as entrenched and formidable in our universities and colleges. this is the site where we train school administrators social workers, school psychologist and speech and language therapists. and this is where these individuals are socialized to have certain beliefs about how to educate children generally and minority children specifically. i, like many others here, have entered my career interested in one simple question. and that is how can we best meet the educational needs of minority students in schools. and i've discovered very early on that many times academia is not the place to find answers to those questions. and i've found that i've had to leapfrog over what we talk about

in academia. and i'm attracted to this environment here because it's this environment in which i run across scholars and writers that are candid and tell the truth. the john mcwaters, the heather mcdonalds, the jason rileys. these are people who have taken their lumps in various ways because they're honest. and i have appreciated that and i've learned so much from them. i've discovered with rare exceptions and there are exceptions, academia is not necessarily the right place to search for honest answers. to these particular questions. it may be a little bit later on, we'll talk about what i find there. i want to also focus on this point. and many times, we tend to characterize conflicts between what is best in education for black children as a conflict between the right and the left.

often, we'll hear that a lot. and i understand that argument. and there's something to be said for characterizing that argument in that way. >> however, i tend to take a deeper interpretation of where the conflicts truly are. and let me just throw this out here to let you know where i tend to be coming from on this issue. it's not so much a right/left issue because i've met liberals that get it. and i've also met conservatives that don't get it. the issue for me boils down to an issue of people who tend to live in the world of theory. and ideology versus people who tend to have their eyes open to reality. and i know that sounds a little bit arrogant to some of you, but that's just the way that i've understood this issue. either you're lost in a world of

theory and ideology, or you have your eyes open to reality. and i'll skip over a lot of what we've learned from prior studies. but basically, where we are now in terms of what best works for african-american communities and kids, with respect to education, is that we know that there are differences demographically in communities in terms of how that may influence outcomes. and there are some studies that have found that schools play very little difference in that. even though you might have averages in terms o of achievement outcomes that differ by community demographics, you have schools that have basically resulted in higher achievement that defies expectations. and basically these are the schools that we want to study to find out what they're doing right.

let me just end with this, a bit. i found that when i have really tried to be honest and look at reality and look at what actually helps black children and black education, and i take that knowledge and understanding back to the university. there's a segment of academics that get it. and they respond to what is being said. and they know it's true. even though they're exposed to a lot of other kinds of theorys and you know, social justice this and white privilege and all of this business. they know that what we're talking about is true, and it is something that is right. then i get another segment of folks that are terrified.

they're silent, they're afraid. afraid to acknowledge these findings because they will say to me after coming to my office and closing the door. they'll say, craig, you can say these things. but i can't say these things. i'm afraid to say these things. if i said these things, i would be crucified, but you can say them so they're silent and then, of course, you have this segment that is hostile. these were the people that would shout out they love minority kids and want to see what works in terms of education and so forth. but when they're shown what actually works they get mad. because, basically, they expect reality to conform to their theorys. instead of letting their theorys conform to reality.

and as a result, they're hostile to some of the things that we're talking about here. and so, let me stop at that point, i have a lot more to say. but let me turn it over to the next speaker. >> let me welcome chancellor anderson to the panel. thank you very, very much for joining us. we'll continue to collect your thoughts and yield. >> well, thank you very much. and i want to initially thank jason riley and the manhattan institute for putting this panel together. listening to the previous panel, i was struck by the fact that almost everything we're going to talk about today could apply to the previous panel. i think you're going to deal with some of the challenges in terms of black families in terms of crime and punishment in terms of all of these social challenges we face is directly traceable to education. i'll be brief. i want to talk about where we've been, where we are and where we need to be. i think hugh framed it correctly

when he started with the nation at risk over 30 years ago. and he also was correct in challenging us to view these issues from the vantage point or the prism of a child. and when it was released over 30 years, 38 recommendations that were put out before the public. and now 30 years later, virtually none of them have been adopted. a lot of them had to do longer school days longer school years. professionalize in our teaching corps. some common sense things. but over the past 30 years, we have done some of these things to try to raise standards and at least articulate a concern or desire to deal with some of the various achievement gaps we face. we've done it through the lens

lens -- industrialized nations. it's everything we do in education is with a political lens. and the second problem we have is nearly everything we talk about in education and particularly education reform -- common corps talks about standards down the road. talks about the 3 to 5-year plan. and i challenge us to, one take the politics out of education elevate discussion beyond the politics of the day. i think we need to make sure we develop this sense of urgency so that we recognize the -- the short-term reality of these kids. kids are dropping out of school

every 26 seconds nearly 7,000 kids a day, nearly half the kids of color, dropping out every day as over 1 million per year. since the president's been in office and he's done a lot to push change. we've had 7 million kids that have dropped out. so it's no wonder why our prison population grows. 82% of our national prison population are high school dropouts. and yes, we're increasing graduation rates but only a third of our high school graduates are career and college ready. so while we are making advances i don't want us to accept the dumbed down notion of incrementalism. i don't see anything wrong with having a 9% graduation rate. i don't see anything wrong with us upsetting the apple cart and allow innovation and creativity to flourish in our school districts. what's wrong with embracing this idea of having these programs we have seen some charter schools around the country where the model and the charge is give

us the kids nobody wants to educate. we want to take care of the kids dropping out. i was with some folks in philly who had an amazing proposal. but because we're so stuck in the way we've always done it and because the politics of the day, we refuse to even embrace the innovation and creativity that deals with the most challenged populations that we so-called dedicated to serve. so i think that we need to elevate the discussion, try to figure out ways to remove politics, make sure we work with innovative local school district leaders who i admire and i know she's committed to trying to do what she can to push the ball forward. i'm not just saying that because she's here. i believe that. but we also have to recognize that if we're going to push aside the politics today, we have to be bold and look at things from the prism of these kids. there's absolutely nothing wrong with embracing school choice if it works for kids. and that form of school choice

could vary depending on where you live. now, you know, i think the president has done a really good job pushing forward with charters. people say to me, i'm for this, i'm for that. it just doesn't make sense. indefensible and inconsistency in that notion. if you look at our scholarship program, our voucher program, 6,000 kids have gone through that program. 90% graduation rate, and 90% of them are going to college. and they come from schools where 85% of the kids are failing. how is that a bad thing? yet, we allow the politics of the day. and some people say i'm for charters, but not for this. well, look, charters only take up 6% of our school-age population of the 56 million school kids, all this ranker

over 6%. you say you're for vouchers and that's more toxic in terms of of some democratic political circles. at the end of the day, through the prism of kids, we're losing kids. yeah, i agree that we need to -- we need to embrace some of the social dynamics that exist in our families. but there's one truism that holds no matter what anyone else tries to tell you differently. that the more people educated, the less of the bad stuff they deal with. the less they're educated the more the bad stuff. whatever that is, homelessness, crime, joblessness. if we increase our high school graduation rate by 10% we automatically reduce our murder rate by 20%. and i think that what we need to do is lift up the models that work. now, you mentioned de blasio in new york. if he were -- and i'm not -- i don't get into the personal back and forth. i just deal with it practically. if he were really looking at it

from the prism of kids, he say you know, i don't like you, but i think we can learn from you. so i'm going to sit down and bring some of my best people to see what you're doing with these kids. if there's some there. we need to replicate that. we need to elevate the discussions so that we figure out what is the best way we all can benefit from the collective knowledge of those who are serving kids? as opposed to putting everyone in the proverbial box or bucket of you're over here so i can't talk to you or i'm going to fight you or cut you off. you're for vouchers, i'm not for you, you're for charters. the public schools, you know, the problem is americans who look at this with a nontoxic lens feel they have to take sides. it should not be about picking sides. it should not be the republican or democratic lens, black,

white, brown, yellow lens of the urban rural lens. and i'm telling you, it has nothing to do with test score preparation. it has to do with a mind set and energy of culture. we used to have a learning culture in america. we don't have that now. other nations have a learning culture. where everything they do is wrapped around the proficiency of their kids. and tapping into that will to be better and do better. and i think that we need to elevate this discussion about education and not just education, but learning in america. we build a new learning culture in america, and we build a national obsession around learning. similar when kennedy said in 1961 after sputnik. said we're going to be the first to go on the moon by the end of the decade. and it became a national obsession. it was something that brought us together as americans.

our challenge in terms of patriotism today is all fear based. the war on terror. what if we do a pivot? and instead of knocking down things that come from a different vantage point, we accent emphasize, celebrate those models that work for kids. we build a national around learning and growing our kids. see, i think that's what we need to do. and so, i know that there are -- there are ways to get there, but the ultimate path to success in terms of growing the proficiency levels of our children is not based on us versus them. it's based on "we," all of us. and i think that's what we need to be doing. >> chancellor anderson, welcome. >> thank you, i apologize for being late. school districts, things happen and, you know, -- >> no excuses.

>> so i would say, you know, i come from a very different perspective. i come from the practitioner perspective. i have the honor of serving 48,000 young people here in the nation's capital. as the chancellor of d.c. public schools where we've gone from being one of the lowest performing school districts in the country to the fastest improving urban school district in the country. and we have a very long way to go. but i think what gives us hope is that we are seeing steady and consistent improvements. not just academic improvements as measured by test scores. but we're seeing families choose d.c. public schools for 40 years. we saw consecutive enrollment decreases. and for the last three years, we've seen consecutive enrollment increases, and we are poised to see another increase, which means families see something different happening in

d.c. public schools. but i think when i think about what the real problem is, i think the problem is producing quality education at scale for all children. that's not just my problem as a district. that's the charter's problem, as well. there will always be a handful of schools or a handful of teachers or principals or districts that are able to make great things happen. the question is how we move from unicorns to a unified system where all children get a high-quality education. and what that means is a very different way to approach the problem. when i think about how dcps has gotten to improve so much, we focused on three things. we focused on rally improving the caliber of our teacher, of our educator force. so thinking about how we get and keep the best teachers get and keep the best school leaders,

get and keep the best central office staff. we also recognized that what we were offering our young people in terms of curriculum was not high quality. and it was random. because everybody was kind of deciding whatever they wanted to teach to these young people. and so we moved forward with a very rigorous academic curriculum. and then we also know that if we we -- if school is not a place where kids and parents want to be, then it doesn't matter how good our teachers are or how good our curriculum is. they are not going to come, they are not going to be engaged. so our theory of action has been around great educators' curriculum and engaging students and families. we've been lucky enough to have a city who aligned with us behind that vision. and built supports in place. so the district didn't have to do everything. the city recognized that early childhood education was a critical lever to k-12 education being successful.

invested in universal pre-k. the city recognized that if i'm busy building buildings, i'm not doing my core teaching and learning, and so they took that off my plate. and other people are modernizing schools. people who are experts in that so i get to concentrate on teaching and learning. the city also put up a lot of money because they recognize that if we were going to fix a broken system, they needed to make investments. and, you know i don't see that happening across the board more often than not, i see us deciding which sets of kids we're going to educate at very high levels. and then, we just kind of leave the rest to pass. i think, you know, we have this schizophrenia about how we do things. on the one hand, we want everybody to be autonomous. it's the rugged individualism of america. i respect your right as a teacher to teach whatever you

want however you want it. i respect your right as a principal to run your school. however you want it wherever you want it. but invariably that's going to work for some people and not for others. it's going to work for some children and families and not for others. and until we build a system where every child's need is met, then we're going to continue to see these gaps. when i look at other countries that are outperforming us, they don't say teachers do whatever you want to do. schools do whatever you want to do districts do whatever you want to do. they say here's a national set of standards. and, in fact, we are going to as a country, train our teachers, school leaders, to implement these standards. there are things that we know are good and right in terms of moving student achievement for kids. and yet, and still, we make them optional. instead of mandatory. when i think about this idea of autonomy and everybody doing what they want, it presupposes

that there is a fixed high-quality amount of human capital. and that's just not true. the less centralized your system is, the more it depends on the quality of the people. in new orleans post katrina, lots of people rushed into new orleans. so new orleans had a different human capital capacity than it did prekatrina. you were able to do some different things. take the same experiment in new orleans, that happened in new orleans, where i think people agree that we're seeing progress. it's not all you know not all cranked up just yet. but we're seeing progress. apply that same experiment to detroit where there has been no infusion of talent. and you have the same people with more autonomy less regulation, less of an opportunity to push the things you know are good and right for children. and we're seeing a completely different result. i think, you know, we know that

we have to do a certain set of things in order to be successful. just like any good teacher one size doesn't fit all. we have to differentiate. and so, we are looking at our students. we're looking at our schools and figuring out how our schools are doing. we're looking at our teachers and looking at how they are doing. but we own every single one of our students. when we have conversations and look at data, we don't look at it just in the aggregate. we look at individual kids' names. because if my principals and teachers don't know the children in their buildings and what they need, whether they are structural needs of behavioral needs or health service needs then we're not going to be able to build a system that can appropriately address those needs. we'll continue to rely on the amazing teachers who you know, are amazing principals who for whatever reason, are able to knock it out of the park without paying attention to the fact that we actually have the capacity to develop that same

behavior, that same talent in people. and the only way that we're going to get to systemic results is, in fact when we begin to invest in that talent and grow that talent and develop seamless systems where young people don't fall through the cracks. when we know their names and can diagnose their problems and get them the appropriate academic or intervention services that they need. we think that policy can do that. and, i think, policy is very limited. first of all policy is schizophrenic. 10 years ago, we were focused on one thing. 10 years ago, we were focused on the exact opposite. and we allow those policies to dictate everything. in fact, i think it's a combination between policy and practice that will get us to the right answers. but it really means us committing to the belief that every single one of our kids deserves a high-quality

education and building systems to do that. i'll end on the eva moscowitz point. people talk about autonomy and how charters have autonomy. if you give people autonomy, they can produce results like eva. eva does not rely on people doing whatever they want to do. if you've ever been to a success academy school, there is is a very clear curriculum. what you see in one first grade class, you will see in another first grade class. people are trained because what eva has figured out is these are the right things to do for the student achievement. and they are not rocket science. things people have been doing for a long time. she's figured out how to systemize that whether she has one school ten schools, 100 schools, that she can provide that quality consistently.

we don't allow districts. we don't allow some folks to make that same calculation and l build that same kind of system. but that, in fact is the only way that we're going to get to where will get to. not only do we have great people and rigorous curriculum and engage students and parents but also, we knocked down a number of policy barriers. to train our teachers differently that have allowed us to manage all kinds of things differently. and i think those are the questions that we need to ask. what are our high performers doing? and how do they do it consistently? so that we can agree on, and begin to implement quality education at scale for every single one, not some, but all of our children. >> thank you. let me ask any members of the

panel if you have a question for one another. did any of the comments provoke -- >> well, i want to comment on what the chancellor just said. she's absolutely right. there's no question in my mind that if chancellor henderson or if a handful of other forward-thinking chancellors around the country had the same freedom to -- that eva moscowitz had, they'd have the same results. and i go back to when hugh started talking about nation at risk. virtually none have been adopted. and one of the ones we know is most important is more time on task. if you're dealing with kids from disaffected communities already behind and they have social dynamics or what have you, cognitive issues going on or they need something different from the one-size-fits-all model. they need more time on task. and that 9-3 model we put in place during the industrial

revolution is outdated. and summers off is outdated for some. and if had the freedom to be able to hire folks who follow that, you know, edict that eva gives out. there's no question it would make a difference. but, again, those policies and the politics have sacrosynct. as long as we allow those arcane and nonkid-friendly rules and regulations to be the centerpiece of the road of operation for most school districts, we will not be able to change things. >> let me tell you how quickly that plays out, right? so we know of course that many of our young people need more time. we piloted eight extended day schools. we worked with the schools to

figure out what the best way to do it was for their community. and we gave them the money and the time to do it. we then -- we saw of those eight schools, seven of the eight saw double digit gains on both math and reading. wowsa, right? in one year. and so the second year i put money in so that 50 of my 112 schools could go to extended day. and we have a provision in our union contract that says that we had to negotiate because previously we wouldn't have been able to do this that says if the teachers vote for big change in program like extended day, the school can go extended day. now, if the teacher's vote is a problem. but many teachers saw the need for extended day and so we asked the union to take it to a vote. the union president instructed her building representatives to not hold the vote. to not hold the vote. they don't support extended day. even though i'm paying, right? don't hold the vote.

and so, there were a number of schools. we ended up getting 26 schools to go extended day. and, of course that year, they saw big gains, as well. and i have a handful of people who just don't support it. and so i said to my union president, as lately as yesterday, now i have more than 60 schools that want to go extended day. she says i don't know what they're doing in extended -- i said who cares. why does that matter to you, right? if the teachers and principal are figuring out how to do this and we're seeing good success. and she said, it has to be negotiated. and i said, let me ask a question. who decides what's best for kids? a handful of teachers who do or don't want to work until 6:00? or the people who are literally held responsible by their jobs like me, the principals as to whether or not they move student achievement. and she said well we're not moving forward with this. and i said, you don't have to have a vote.

and we will do it regardless of the vote and you can take me to arbitration and all that stuff. but by the time that is done, two years of kids will have had extended day. and i'm good with that. but -- there are colleagues of mine who don't have the ability to do what i can do. there are colleagues of mine who don't have the backing of their mayor. there are colleagues of mine whose unions will strike in the streets for lesser things. and so, when i have to fight just to get -- and i'm putting money, not just saying, you need to work a longer day. putting money, i'm putting training in place, right? i'm allowing teachers and principals to design this. this is what the union says it wants, right? but on principle, you're not going to support it. how can i push student achievement as quickly as i need to when i know the right levers are to pull but i can't pull them because of these policy issues? >> i have this exchange reminds

me of a speech i gave here at the national press club in the late 1990s. it was one of those keynote speeches. and i called for the charterization of all public schools. i didn't mean convert them all to chargers, but i meant give the people who run the building the autonomy to hire and fire, to extend the day to allocate and control the budget resources toward the goals that are set by the -- and do that in a grand bargain in exchange for paying teachers as professionals. tie that to the compensation issue. my friends at the national education association said i bet you wouldn't dare come out and say that to us. i said, i'll come as long as you keep the door to the speaking hall open, car gassed up and ready to take me if i have to make a hasty exit. but i think you're reaching to. these impediments that are so severe, the other point i'd make, and then i want to turn it over to the audience. in fairness to mayor de blasio,

he is wrestling with the question of we've created small public schools, which are highly successful, don't get a whole lot of attention. they've been evaluated rigorously. the charter schools exist but not a lot of attention paid under the previous administration to the main school the bull of the schools. and he and the chancellor are trying to figure out what to do there, and i think their theory is find resources, attention, and they're going to turn most of their attention to those schools. and that's a bit of the tension over the expansion of the charters. anyway, are there any other comments that -- yes? colleagues on the panel? >> i'd like to make a comment. i have a little bit of a different interpretation of what has been said. i -- again i agree, just have a different interpretation. and interpretation i come from is that basically years ago, in the '50s '60s and '70s we

would always have large scale educational research studies that come out with recommendations for how to get kids to learn. and a lot of times when these studies come out, you always have this political fire storm that surrounds what the study finds. i always come back to the issue. and i'll repeat some things i said before. we have to understand what is reality. and not ideology. and basically, all that we have discovered that works were findings that came out of studies decades ago. and basically, we find that what good public schools do and what good charter schools do, it dovetails 100% with what we find

from laboratory research. and let's take this issue of time. and, again, i agree with what's been said. i just have a different way to frame it. and the way i like to frame it is that we have to understand that all children are not the same, you know one of the pet peeves that i have is that we talk about children and black children in particular as this amorphys mass. you have individual differences within all groups. you have super bright kids, above average kids you have average kids, you have slow learners, and then you have special ed kids. and basically these, this variability is in all groups of individuals.'upñ there's a basic rule of learning that basically says that the time that it takes for the very

bright kids to learn something kids at this level need more time to learn it. i can give a reading passage to someone with a very high iq and he'll understand it in half an hour. someone who is a little bit lower, it takes them more time to read it a number of times to figure out what the passage is saying. they need more time. and so basically, basic laboratory research says if we want to get kids in this range to master the skills that it takes these kids to learn these kids need more time. it's just the basic fact of life. it's a fact of nature. and so, basically what we see is that those charter schools and those public schools that are successful for getting their kids to reach proficiency and to raise their test scores, these are the charter schools that implement the following rules. now, i'm not recommending this for all schools.

but, like, kipp schools and success academy schools, they have these recommendations in place. instead of starting at 8:30 and ending at 3:30, many of these schools start at 7:30 and end at 5:00. many of these schools in many of these schools the kids have to come to schools two saturdays a month. in many of these schools they also have to come three weeks during the summer. and you do the calculations and it's something like 60 to 70% extra time they're spending learning, they get the results. and so let me just you know one more example. then i'll shut up. testing. a big political issue in many schools is why do we have to have a lot of testing? why do we have to prepare for tests?

and the good charter schools and the good public schools basically, whenever they test their kids the teachers have a culture in that school where they come together, they look at the test results, they see where the kids are falling down, they meet and talk about how they can teach the material better, and they -- and they implement in their curriculum ways to teach so that kids will be successful on tests. but in teachers' unions and many other teacher groups, that's a political football. many teachers' unions hate testing. they don't want to -- they would frame it as we're cutting into our instructional time by teaching to the test. and this is something that our ed schools tell us is something that we don't want to do. and so one of the things -- i mean, i hate to be overly pessimistic, but like he said, many things in education are

political. and what frustrates many of us is that the research says this is what needs to be done to get kids to learn. and if we can just do it kids will learn. but almost everything in education tends to be a political football when it comes to time discipline, is another political football testing is another political football. >> okay. letsz let's open it up to any questions from the floor. is there a microphone? yes, right behind you. >> tad howard. i want to ask you about sports. because in my work career i've noticed two characteristics of people who are really good employees. very basic. they show up every day and show up on time and they're team players. they help out. they contribute stuff like that. one of the disciplines that encourages both of those show up on time and teamwork is sports. and sports has a whole bunch of benefits, we could go on forever on that.

but i'd just like to know or get some feedback as to where you see the role of sports in education. >> so i think that part of offering education means developing their talents and no the just the test scores. and so we've actually made millions of dollars of investments in sports, in bands and choruses and requiring music and art and foreign language and p.e. and library because i do believe we have to develop the whole child. the classroom is not the only place where kids learn how to be good people and good citizens. and i think sports has a very important place for some of our young people the only reason they come to school. and they will make a particular gpa. i don't care what your motivation is as long as we get the results. i want to make sure there are schools that have things that engage our young people. i think that, you know, this is a panel we've been talking

fairly generally, but this is a panel about what we need to do for african-americans in education. and i think when you see schools that eliminate programs that are of the arts and music nature or of the sports nature there's a level of disengagement that happens with our young people particularly. and i think that you know, that is a problem. when we got to dcps, we saw schools that were only doing english and math because that's what was being tested. and we had to say no every school is going to offer the four core subject areas because science and social studies are as important. and every high school will have at least 20 electives and every middle school will offer algebra. and there will be choruses and field trips and go on college trips and we will rebuild career and technical education because we have a disconnect in terms of what we think the goal is.

we as educators think the goal is higher test scores and beating other countries. my parents don't care about what's happening in finland. they care about whether or not their kid is going to get a job after they finish. and what i've told my staff is, we're not going to -- graduation rate is important, but all it tells us is how quickly and slowly people have moved through our system. if we're really holding ourselves accountable to the education that we provide being a game changer then let's hold ourselves accountable to where our kids are two years after they graduate from us. because if two years afterwards they're not either in college or in a job, then whatever we've done, the whole way around extend the time, doesn't matter. that's what our stake holders, that's why baltimore is burning. because those young boys don't see a way to a job or the ability to take care of their family. and they don't see that for themselves, they didn't see it for their parents and didn't see it for their grandparents.

there's no investment in the city in the infrastructure. there's no investment in them. and what we're trying to do at dcps is show kids if you do what we do over these 12 years and do it well, we can change your life outcomes. >> eke o. next question. right here. we'll come to the back of the room next. okay? >> on international peace attesting. you mentioned finland, we always hear that the u.s. keeps slipping lower and lower in our rankings on math and reading. but when you break it down by race and you look at, say, whites in america compared to whites in europe we beat everyone except finland. and when you look at asians in america compared to asians in asia we beat everyone except like the very, like japan and shanghai, i think. and likewise with hispanics and america, hispanics in mexico. blacks in america, blacks in africa. so i wonder if the problem

isn't, you know, school choice or maybe we have good schools and good programs. and it's not, i'm reminded of the title of a book. if it's not bad schools, it could just be bad students. and i wonder if all these revolutions we have every year, sorry, every five years with no child left behind common core all this if we're not just spinning our wheels at the institutional level. >> well, i would disagree with that notion. look, i visit schools all over the country. and we have far too many schools that don't serve kids period. and i think that the international comparisons are indicators, but we shouldn't be -- they shouldn't be held -- i mean, i think that we know that we can do a better job of providing equal access to high-quality education for all children. i think that has to be the given premise. we also know that when it comes to black and brown babies in america we're falling short.

we also know when it comes to children, white, black brown or yellow who are born in poverty that the achievement, the fastest growing achievement gap is among rich kids and poor kids in america. and so, yes, we -- we're high-performing schools, middle to above middle to high-performing schools are doing as well as anyone. but we've got a lot of challenges with these other schools. and i think that the problem is we haven't found a way to systemically make sure that we meet the challenges that face us in terms of educating kids. but the other thing is internal. i think that we've -- if we talk about education reform we talk about doing better. we've got to do -- we've got to hug people while we change them. so we've got to figure out the best way to win hearts and

minds. because people don't know what they don't know. and so we've got to -- we've got to lift up the models that work. i mean, you know, doing work in louisiana to see some of those women we work with in public housing able to get scholarships, get their kids in private schools charter schools. several of them came to me who had dropped out and said we didn't know education could be fun for our kids. and so when you excite the possibilities, then you elevate the whole notion of what educational and learning can be. and i think that's what we need to be. and i also don't think we need to be satisfied with incremental gains. i mean i think that there's nothing wrong with us saying that 90% to 100% of our kids who are going to graduate or get some vocational educational. and when we talk about you know 50% in some cities 60%, 70%, i don't think that's good enough. >> okay. there's a question all the way in the back. yes? >> good afternoon.

my name is -- >> by the way, the next to the last question. i have to do a little -- >> okay. my question is for the chancellor, ms. henderson. i want to say outstanding job. washington, d.c. schools have turned around, i'm a grandmother of children who go to washington, d.c. schools. i'm a pastor, and also, i run a drug ministry. i've seen the energy, the passion, and the challenge change in the last three, four years. and i'm so proud of what you all are doing. my question is this educationally, i think you're on. what do we do emotionally? because the emotional issues are greater than the education issue. you can be an intelligent dummy and that's what we're now pushing. people with brains but no emotion, no heart, can't handle themselves. how can we do internal and external and then how do we take that to the kids who parents are disconnected?

can we get some programs into the school to help them grow with their children? do you understand what i'm saying? >> yes absolutely. so, thank you for the compliment. we're working really hard. i think you know, it is important for us to not just make sure that our young people are academically prepared but to make sure that they can then take that and go out into the world and do something with it. and one of the things that we are thinking a lot differently about is how we create an educational system where children have to demonstrate knowledge in a very real world kind of way so that they are being prepared for the world that they are going to go into. what do i mean by that? nobody in their regular work life, except maybe me sits in a room where like people just talk at you for 30 minutes. and then another person talks at you for 30 minutes and another person talks at you for 30 minutes, right? that's not what happens. in your regular life, there's a

problem to solve. you have to work with a group of -- groups of people to solve that problem. you've got to figure out how to get resources that you might have. some of which you might have, you might not have. at some point there is some public demonstrable display of resolution of that problem. that's not how schools are set up right? so why do we give credit for how long you sit in a sit, not whether or not you've demonstrated mastery of the content and the way you actually are able to solve problems. you hear a lot of people talking about competency based education, that's ultimately what that is. if children know a whole lot of stuff but they aren't able to take that and translate it then something is different. so for us what that means is, in addition to a common core aligned curriculum, we are requiring that at every great level and every subject area there is what we call a cornerstone project, which is a

project that every third great teacher will teach across the city which will help us get to expectations. there are different levels of expectations for different kinds of students. there's a rigorous project that everybody is going to do and then demonstrate the success at it. it usually is not an individual pursuit. so little of what we do is individual. it's often a group pursuit or what have you. so changing the way teaching and learning happens in a classroom. on the parental front, i mean, we found two things. one, while i appreciate people's confidence in our ability to do everything. schools can't do everything. and so we have to figure out -- it's an opportunity to find partners who are experts in, you know developing adult learners or helping families get the services that they need. and colocating in the school or referring. we've begun to built partnerships who can address the

needs of our children at the same time we're trying to address the academic needs. the other thing we found to be really frank about parents is every single parent wants to help their kid whether they are well off or not. whether they are well-educated or not whether they're tall short skinny or fat. it's our job to educate their kids. we've embarked on an interesting program where we actually for teachers give parents things to do with their kids at home so parents don't have to guess. when parents are part of helping their kid achieve parents have a different level of self-efficacy. in fact they come to school more and take advantage of the kinds of programs we now have located in the school. then we see, you know families change. we have adult education that we offer in many of our schools in the daytime and in the evening so parents can come to school with their kids. in school districts that are struggling, it is a lot to ask us to get our core stuff right

and get all of the ancillary stuff right. we need good partners to help us do that. >> thank you. i'm afraid the clock has run out on the panel. join me in thanking the members of the panel. [ applause ] >> we're going to take a short break, 20 minutes, and then we'll be back with our third and final panel. thank you. now a panel exams ways of maintaining family cohesiveness in the african-american community. among the speakers bob woodson who heads the center for neighborhood enterprise.

this forum was hosted by the manhattan institute. and a number of other issues in the black community. >> we want to keep thinking moving here if we could take our seats. we will continue with the third panel and then we'll grab a bite.

i hope everyone's found the previous two panels informative. i certainly have. and we're now going to move on to panel 3. restoring the family. i will are introduce the panelist. the moderator is william e. sam wits. she writes on family issues and culture change in america. she's the author of four books including marriage and cast in america. and again, kay will be moderating the panel. the panelists are -- start with

ron haskins, senior fellow in the economic studies program at the brookings institution, and senior consult at the anna can ee foundation in baltimore. in 2002, he was senior adviser to the president for welfare reform policy at the white house. he is senior editor of the future of children, a journal on policy issues that effect children and families, also the author of show me the evidence, work over welfare, inside story of the 1996 welfare reform. and co-author of creating an opportune society. next panelist i will introduce is robert woodson. founder and president of the center for neighborhood

enterprise which since 1981 has provided training for more than 2600 leaders and community based groups in 39 states. mr. woodson is also the author of youth crime and urban policy, a view from the inner-city, and the triumphs of joseph how today's today's community healers are reviving our streets and neighborhoods. and finally, glenn loury, professor of economics at brown university. mr. loury also taught at boston university, harvard, and northwestern. he is recipient of gug enheim fellowship and carnegie scholarship. member of council on foreign relations, and author of several books including one by one from the inside-out, essays on race in america, race and incarceration, american values,

which was put out on 2008. on a personal note, i would like to say that both professor loury and bob woodson more than they could possibly realize influenced my thinking on many of the issues we are talking about today over the years. i discovered both their writings when i was in college. never thought i would be here today sharing a stage with them. just simply devoured their work in the early '90s, newspaper columns, books, and it is a privilege for me to have them here today. i want to say thank you to both of them for participating in this. [ applause ] and with that, i will turn things over to kay hymowitz. >> thanks. and welcome to what seems to be the third panel on the family. for those of you here earlier, you'll know what i mean. i'm very pleased to be here because i've done a lot of work

on the moynihan report, and it is such an important moment in american history. really a kind of hinge moment, not only because moynihan recognized what was going on before anybody else in the black family but also because of its aftermath, that is the public response to the moynihan report. when moynihan first wrote the report, he got a fairly good response from within the administration. bill moyers, senior staff with lyndon johnson, was very excited about it, yes, that bill moyers, and johnson himself was so taken with the report that he gave a speech very close to here at howard university for the graduation of the graduate class of 1965, and he said the following.

this is so incredible to hear these words and to imagine a sitting president uttering them. but he said the next and more profound stage, the battle for civil rights, is the family. negro poverty is not white poverty. the breakdown of the negro family structure is the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, presents prejudice. when the family collapses, it is the children that are usually damaged. when it happens on a massive scale, the community itself is crippled. now, let me put it this way. well, when johnson gave that speech shortly after, he said he believed it was his greatest civil rights speech, but to put it bluntly, not many people agreed. there was tremendous upheaval and push back from civil rights groups and feminist groups as well, so much so that moynihan

was pushed out of washington. and johnson went silent on this subject. one response that i wanted to read to you was from an activist and author named joyce ladner who interestingly enough became president of howard university years later. this is what she wrote in response to that moynihan report. one must question the validity of the white middle class life-style from its very foundation because it has already proven itself to be decadent and unworthy of emulation. you get a sense of the tenor of response, and why this conversation went so underground. in fact that prevailed, although people didn't put it in quite those ways.

today the conversation about the black family is actually improved quite a bit for this reason. around the early '90s to mid '90s, there started to be more research showing children of single mothers really were at a disadvantage. there was enough data at that point over a decade, over several decades, to see these trends and to develop enough research that -- i am going to be quoting the late james wilson, even socialologists had to believe it. there was a sense among family researchers, yes, there was a problem here, a genuine problem, but although the conversation has been somewhat improved, it

is still in many ways very reminiscent of that early debate that we had between moynihan and his critics. i am hoping that the panel today i know our panel today our excellent panel will have interesting ways of thinking about that debate and hopefully have some solutions to this problem that continues to be so much part of our american discussion today. so i'm going to begin with ron haskins who will layout some of the numbers for you on where we're at. >> all right. thank you. i'm a great admirer of the moynihan report, read it back in 1965. i was young then, just learning to read. i read the thing, was astounded by it, and i was way more astounded by the reaction to it which was shocking as kay has

said. so my job is to just layout some numbers about what our situation is. recall that moynihan was complaining primarily about black families and his thesis was that because of weakness in black family structure, blacks would not be able to seize the opportunities that were coming available to them as a result of the civil rights movement. and i can tell you that what i am going to say to you is moynihan's concerns now apply to hispanics and to whites, to the whole country. and here are the numbers. i got these by i recently analyzed the censuses. this is representative of the whole country. here is what happened with family composition. first, marriage rates declined for every age group and every ethnic group, every education group, with one exception, that's quite fascinating, declined in 1970 and 1980 for

college educated women, but have been stable and risen a little for college educated women. i think there's a lesson in that. for every other group marriage rates have declined. now i'm going to tell you a fact demonstrated by social science. this fact will make it worthwhile that you came here today. sex did not go out of fashion even though marriage did. and when those two things happen, you have lots of nonmarital births. this was the problem that moynihan focused on the most. now we have nonmarital birth rate among hispanic and whites higher than when moynihan wrote the report, and their level among blacks in 1965. so today 72% of black kids are born out of wedlock. 53% of hispanic, 36% of white kids. overall nonmarital rate in the united states was over 40%.

if we put the marriage rates and birth rates together, and let's describe the change in the family constitution of females at age 35. this is a nice way to summarize what has happened. in the last 40 years, married with children, that category, the one i am always most concerned about because we are worried about kids, has fallen from 78% to 51%. 35% decline in percentage of women who have had children and are living with their children since 1970. single with children as you would expect has exploded, more than doubled, from 9.3% of all children to 20.5% of all children. these figures at any given moment over a period of time, figures are even higher. this constitutes a revolution, and the next question to ask that the rest of the panel will

answer, so what. so what. the answer is that first of all kids who live in single parent families are five times as likely to be poor as kids in married couple families, and they're very prone to ups and downs in the economy. and the family is prone to ups and downs. nobody thinks poverty is good for kids. right there you get a hint of what about the next thing i am going to talk about, kay mentioned it, research on single parent families, married couple families. bear in mind, when this research started, they were convinced it made no difference. one of the most famous psychologists came to the conclusion the kids will be all right, they'll go on and be fine. we know based on hundreds of

studies and they're accumulating all the time, this is primarily professors doing this work including wilson sociologist, a famous one, sarah mcclanahan. good memory. sarah mcclanahan who wrote the original book and has written several things since then, including best studies of impacts being causal that kids have a lot of trouble when they're reared by female headed families. the fact was right when he wrote, now three times more correct, his conclusions apply to hispanics and whites as well as blacks. we are in for serious trouble. >> ron? glen lowery is going to speak next. >> unfortunately the facts don't matter that much.

that comment you quoted of james q. wilson, even a so the a social altgist could believe it. is indicatative of something really important about the state of our political intellectual lives in this country. facts don't govern, narratives govern. this is about the story we tell, the conflict over control of the narrative has taken precedence over an if you will evidence based, rational implementation of policy. when you throw race into the mix, it just gets tough. i can give many examples not only about the debate of flal and family structure. of course he was right. he was right in 1965 about the condition of the african-american family and how it was changing, right about the implication that ron haskins mentioned to the effect that the consequence of this social

transformation amongst african-americans would make our embrace of the newly opened opportunities more difficult. he was right to the extent he insinuated that this was a matter not only of the african-american social landscape but a matter of importance to the nation as a whole. of course he was right about that. those who had the hunch, moynihan was not really a social scientist, come on but he was a very effective policy intellectual with things to say and he had a hunch. those that had the hunch that the unraveling of the traditional family spelled real trouble for our society have been shown to be right. i just want to make a couple of points about this. so what, it has consequences, but what do we do? cultural engineering is not an exact science, not something i would want to bet my life on.

you can pull the string and unravel the fabric of social institution, but reweaving that fabric going back in the other direction is a very difficult thing to do. the tools that the state has available are welfare and assistance policies, tax policies and so on, are very crude. one is pushing against a guide that moved far from the '50s, restoring the traditional family. i saw the title and with respect to organizers, i almost laughed because it is such a futile objective. traditional family? i have a dear friend, david blank enhorn, runs an institution called institute for american values, he's a good man. he wrote a book, i don't know, 25 years ago or more, called fatherless america, in which he was lamenting denigration of the role of fatherhood within

american culture, and david has embraced gay marriage and i don't criticize him for having done so not in the least, my son is a gay man for that matter, but he has done so in part out of the desperate need to find allies in defense of marriage per se. part of his motivation is simply they're for marriage, i am for them. i'm looking for allies for marriage. i don't see that many around. it would be easy to get ideological, wag my finger at leftwing feminist that wanted to destroy the family and so forth. i don't want to do that, i don't want to lose the weight of what i am trying to say about intellectual political difficulty we wandered into amidst partisanship. as soon as i say that, everyone runs to their respective corner and put up their defenses. pat moynihan was a friend of mine. i knew daniel patrick moynihan. i was in the audience in 1985,

that would be 30 years ago when he came to the kennedy school at harvard, and gave lectures, later published as his book family and nation, in which he tried to defend his own intellectual contribution and at the same time defend the political program of a democratic party. he took a real shot at it. but it wasn't only family members. defining deviancy down, that was also pat moynihan. the character of our intellectual discourse, our ability to be honest with each other, to call a spade a spade, one might say with trepidation. look at the discourse going on now in the aftermath of ferguson, baltimore, and so forth. people are writing on op-ed pages of serious newspapers if there hadn't been a riot, there wouldn't have been justice, without any sense of self consciousness or irony.

you me that's the way we get justice through riots? is that justice? people are saying that as has been mentioned here, i think jason mentioned it, are saying that the very evocation is betrayal of equality in the country. we can't even talk about it. i don't want this to just be a la meant, i am going to conclude with a suggestion. we desperately need leadership here. someone has got to push against the prevailing tide. somebody has got to have the courage to say something, even though they know that 95%, my friend says you try to tell black intellectuals opinion writers let's restore the black family, maybe you get two or three out of 10 to agree, if they write it in the op-ed, they're snowed under by avalanche of reaction.

and so forth and so on. they've got to write it anyway. the president of the united states has to say it anyway. when the president of the united states is the first african-american to hold the most powerful office in the land, he has to say it anyway. i voted twice for barack obama. i mean him no disrespect, intend him no ill will, but i am so deeply disappointed that the events that transpired in the last six months have not called forth from him the kind of counter cultural leadership. when i say counter cultural, against the prevailing zeitgeist that wants to account for these matters in terms of absent opportunity, tacit racism, psychological impairment of police officers. there's absent opportunity, plenty of racism, and some police need to be worked on but at the root is a failure now a half century on-going of african-american society to be able to respond effectively to opportunities.

you're not supposed to say this. people get on leaky boats and risk their lives to get here from every continent on the planet and by and large once they get off those boats, they do pretty well. i think the system with its flaws is working pretty well. i think it is unavoidable, the question, you people what's up. and that's a question that we people should be asking first and foremost of ourselves. thank you. >> robert woodson. >> i would like to speak to this from the perspective of a social activists that spends most of my time in low income neighborhoods. i affectiontsly say most of my

friends are ex something. >> but not ex-friends. >> no. they're ex-drug addicts, ex-prostitutes, ex-something. and i think that when i was active in the civil rights movement, probably one of the few people when dr. king died, i hit the streets with ten neighborhood leaders and interposed ourselves between the national guard and the police and the rioters. the reason we could prevail is because the people i was with was respected and known by the people, not a single civil rights person, not a single pastor was there, but they were grass roots leaders and they represented what i call community antibodies. the sickest part of the body draws the healthiest antibodies. but we only call or come in in times of crisis. these are the legitimate leaders of low income people. it was after that that i realize that a lot of people who suffered and sacrificed most in the battle for civil rights

didn't benefit from the change. it was about well educated people. that's why bill raspberry, when he was reporter for "the post" i think october 31st, 1965, a banner headline, poor negroes are not benefitting from gains of the civil rights movement, and the same kind of anger that we heard in baltimore was echoed 50 years ago by low income blacks then because the interest and poor blacks according to a bait and switch game where they use the demographics of those at the bottom, and when the remedies and money arrived, it didn't go to them, it went to those that provided services to the poor. so we are in serious need of some self examination inside the black community. that's why i am calling for a one year moratorium and whining about white folks.

i'm going to absolve y'all for a year. the high council of black leadership gained me the authority to absolve all white people for a year. this gives us an opportunity to address the enemy within. it means we need to stop pimping poor kc]÷people. that means we have to apply our values, old values to a new vision. yes, the families are descent grating. but it wasn't happening if it wasn't racism or poverty. if that's true, during the ten years of depression, wouldn't a black family be disintegrated? it didn't. the marriage rights were higher than it was in the white community, even though the unemployment rate was 25%, was 40% for the black community, we

didn't descentint great. i don't want to talk about how the time that happened with others who began to, they wanted to disconnect work from income, and welfare became a right. we become to moral deregulation occurred, and where under john lindsey, we just, and the governments just opened up offices and recruited people on welfare so the biggest spike in welfare was at a time when the black unemployment rate for black men in new york was 4%. and so it just went out of control, and they said if we disconnect work from income, families will desinigrate and men will leave. dropout rates will occur. we will poor this system with poor people. it will compel america to engage

in inkm redistribution and that's the answer to poverty. that's how this family went off the cliff we're on. okay, what are remedies? the remedies are and my criticism of both scholars to the left and right, we talk about the 70% of the black families that are dysfunctioned. that means 30% are functioning. so why don't we do studies of capacities among the 30% to try to find out what is going on in those households that can perhaps give us some idea of what are the coping mechanisms. that's what the center does. for ten years in public housing, right here in the '80s, women and mothers there said that our housing is horrible, but we have to change it. so the residents, the mothers got together and began to organize a management of public housing.

kimmy gray, she was abandoned at age 21 with five children and divorced. got off welfare and sent all kids to college and in ten years enabled 400 other kids from this housing project to go on to college. teen pregnancy rates were down, almost eliminated and it was on "60 minutes." everyone came to examine this success except researchers. [ laughter ] >> except policy makers, and there are other examples where there are people taking responsibility who operate mediating institutions. no, we're not going to replace them, glenn, but there are alternatives that can help young people, coaches are substitute fathers. we have a lot of ex offenders whose lives have been transformed and redeemed who are coaches and surrogate fathers for kids.

we've got to come up with alternative ways. but my point is we need to stop studying failure. you learn nothing from studying failure except how to create failure. they read like autopsy reports. we really need to do capacity studies and that's what we do is you have to go into low income communities, find out who is working, how can we begin to take some money that are going into people who are in, who are professional service providers that paracommute parachute remedies. instead, we should take some of that money and give it to people indigenous and come up with innovative approaches. they are social entrepreneurs and in like any entrepreneur, 3% of commercial entrepreneur create 70% of the jobs.

it only takes a minority in these communities that can be applied to the whole community. we just need to begin to study success. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> so it strikes me that we're having a discussion i've heard before. although, very eloquently expressed and i'm wondering, i have a feeling all of you feel that same sense of deja vu you referred to when we're talking before, glenn, that we've been doing this a long time and hearing the same stuff. so let's push a little bit and think a little bit more about is there, are there any new ideas out there as ron and perhaps both, all three of you know, the government programs that started under the bush administration

for promoting marriage were not successful or very disappointing and certainly when it comes to government initiated programs, it's not clear what we have, other than some, maybe some tinkering with the tax code to reduce the tax disadvantage for married couples, but, you know, i'm for one very skeptical about that. i want to push more to see what is new out there? more can we think about? >> i'm a little skeptical, too. i admit that. i completely disagree. i'm on bob's board for maybe another 20 minutes. social science is about looking for successes. we have literally hundreds of important random assignment experiments to find out what works and we found out some things that do work. now, if you're expecting that we're going to launch a program and we're going to increase the high school graduation rate by

80%, that's not going to happen. that may happen over a period of years, but we've got programs like small schools of choice in new york city. a huge experiment. random assignment. well, close to random assignment and it shows you can increase graduation rates in the most disadvantaged rates in new york and they go to college. that's a positive outcome >> let me interrupt. what about with the family? there are schools that work -- >> okay, you want to concentrate just on family. the only thing i think we can say with confidence that we know is we can reduce non-marital births. we have good programs that have shown that. they are controversial. republicans are likely to the oppose them. there is a huge battle in colorado right now. >> explain what you're referring to. >> i think there is a lot of controversy here and i think it's because many of the organizations are involved with family planning are involved

with abortion and the that raises red flags with republicans but to be concrete about the situation, in colorado, one of the people gave the state a lot of money to launch a larc, long acting reversible contraception. it was good social science, and they showed a big reduction, first of all, the mothers themselves, the women themselves, some of whom are mothers choose larc because it doesn't rely on memory. they get a larc, an iud is the most popular kind and it lasts for up to ten years. they don't have to worry about it. second the thing, of course, it also reduces the birthrate and then most interesting of all, it substantially reduced the

abortion rate. so you would think republicans would support this but no, the legislation is going to let the program die. they won't support the program. >> let's get feedback. >> what really bothers me is that in a book, was it james c. scott talks about thinking like a state. he talks the difference in practical knowledge and theoretical knowledge.: he driebs theoretical knowledge describes it like a stip captain steering a ship across an ocean. when the ship captain gets to the port of baltimore, he or she turns that ship over to a harbor master because the harbor master has knowledge how to take the ship out and in of port.

the harbor master's skill is like with what grass roots people do. they are expert because of common knowledge about how to steer that ship all these principles in that environment. you could not take that same harbor master to detroit or some other seacoast and port. so we need new ways of evaluating these kind of interventions, and in our market economy, it only takes in every other way, if a doctor finds that operating on a frog and put it back into the vat and they heal and the wound heals in the presence of bacteria. we say it's counterproductive. it's on the front page of the newspaper. if people are able to bring about their restoration and recovery of families in a given community that has 100, they are restored, why don't we rush there to find what are the implications for taking it to

scale? but you dismiss it. and that's the problem. the principles that operate in our market economy, we just ignore them when it comes to the social economy. instead, we say well, unless what you're doing fits our model of evaluation that we can have 20% of the people doing it here and 20 more, you're forcing innovation that is based upon common sense practice or people to fit your model of evaluation, otherwise it's not legitimate and doesn't get funded. >> put aside your response to that for a second while we ask if glenn has anything to add. >> i think this is a very interesting exchange and as a social scientist, i'm a professor of economics, it interests me greatly because of course, random assignment assessments of various policy initiatives has become the gold standard for figuring out quote

what works closed quote and this is from philosophy 101 and this observation there the are other kinds of knowledge, okay, i find very interesting. i want to say something else. another argument for the mediating structures idea that bob is trumpeting here is that it can rely on sources of authority that are not available to government. >> that's right. >> religious authority, for example. it can speak to people in terms of what are we called by our god, however we understand that to do. what does it mean to be a good person in a full throated way? not in an abstract way. in a way that ties into narratives that are, kid walks -- that's not something that a

state can do. if i ask a kid why didn't you steal that candy bar. he can give two different answers, one, it has to do with what the state will do. i might get caught or punished. another has to do with him not being a thief. i'm not a thief. our people don't steal. now where would that idea come from? who are our people? how do you instill that? that's calling on a different kind of authority. if it's not there, it's not there. maybe that means the movement needs to be a movement of people who can get there by there i mean to the place where they can authtortive ly say that's not who you are, this is who you are. >> uh-huh. >> glenn, i think eloquently describes that because i can take you to the an area 20 years ago there was 53 murders because

of these warring factions. the police couldn't stop it. we have five grass roots leaders that have the respect of those kids and brought the leaders to my office. we negotiated a truce, and as a result, and they went back to rebuild that community, paid by the government housing authority and so what we did was we didn't have a gang-related murder for 12 years, and so we took the principals that we found and exported them to other places. again, it was -- what we learned from that, if you have a situation where there are 1,000 kids, controlled by 10%. if you come in and change the values and authority structures, they then become a catalyst for changing the 90% and that's why. we've been able to institute -- so what i'm saying to you is that there has to be a 60% of apples' income comes from a product that didn't exist six years ago. why can't we apply that

imagination. to social intervention? >> have you seen interventions in the relation to the family you would want to tell us about? >> absolutely. people like myself. my dad died when i was seven leaving my mother who was a domestic with a fifth grade education to raise five kids in a very troubled neighborhood. what i had to rely upon then are my fellows, a group of men that i went around with who were my, you may call it a gang. we weren't predatory but they became a surrogate family for me and enabled me to progress to -- until i was 18 and went into the military. so there are other structures in these communities that serve to substitute for families. sometimes coaches. i know my coach, i don't know my english teacher. we got to come up and paul ryan is the same. his dad died when he was young. so we got to identify structures

within those communities. if you were to ask me to select my blood family or my fellas, i tell you my fellas because my family couldn't get me to school safely. in other words, we got to appreciate these other alternative structures can be as important to an urban youth as his blood family. and we need to provide support for institutions that provide an alternative for families. >> wait a minute. >> so i'm going to give some advice to glenn. >> sir? >> because i'm exactly where glenn is. you wouldn't know this with bob because bob is so hostile against social science. i completely agree with bob. i think there's a huge place for the community. i would always go with the community. the first thing is to get support from the community. i don't have any problem with that. where i absolutely draw the line

is i rarely heard anyone as effective as bob is but i hear claims from people all over the country, all the time, we got a letter to save their child and say spend another billion on this or that and when you do a good study, it didn't make any difference on average. averages are the key. we have, you going to move something, you have to move averages. bob, you get better use of evaluation because the government is going to insist on accountability and the things that we under take and pay for that you can show they were not with anecdotes and emotion, but with data. >> let me just say to you baylor universities came in studies our violence-free system. they did the kind of study and it's been accepted for academic review. i know that turns people on. [ laughter ] >> bob, you're not being

sarcastic? >> no, me? >> i'm so -- you're so constructive with your sarcamp. anyway it's it's been accepted for academic review. we're not against it. take the time to come and study the things that work and instead of the things offered by academics, that's all. i'm not against evaluating, but study the right thing. >> you have to figure a way to integrate what bob's talking about with accountability and good studies. >> i have endless examples that we have presented 60 minutes can find it, cbs can find it, the newspapers can find it but social scientists cannot. we're just saying come where the solutions are, use your skill to evaluate what's -- >> now you guys have to behave here. >> whose the judge? >> you've been perfectly fine. >> strong memo.

>> so i'm going to turn the questions to you now and hopefully, they won't be about social science. so let's see, what do we have over here? >> professor lowry. >> sir? >> put the question extremely bluntly. you pointed out people come here from all over the world and seem to do pretty well and so what's up with you people? and i gather the question here, you people meant what's up with black people. now there are some people who have looked into that question pretty seriously and concluded as charles murray or richard lin, many others that what's up with black people is partially at least inheritable genetic traits. is that something we should look into or was that unspeakible taboo? >> so my answer has two parts. one has to do with whether we should look and the other has to do with what we have found. we should look.

okay? the prohibition on inquiry in that area in my mind is a species of anti-entintellectualism. that is to say a bunch of people saying you can't ask that question. that's such a bad question to ask, you can't ask it. okay? so i really don't think i want to live in a society in which political mobilizations prevent inquiry into relevant substantive matters that are important. the second part of my answer has to do with what we found. i don't agree with the "bell curve." i've read it. in fact i was on leave for a couple months in india when the bell curve came out. and got a bad case of dysentery.

and didn't have much else to do but to read the bell curve. i've read all the appendtses. what i want you to know, sir, is they can't snow me with regression analysis and statistical manipulation. >> good for you. >> i'm a fellow of the society. there wasn't anything in there that i didn't understand. my conclusion upon reading the "bell curve." was the case wasn't established, the case being that inherited differences in intellectual kpauft between people oof african and european descent capacity, social interventions aimed at promoting greater racial equality, you wouldn't be able to move the needle that way. i among the many critical reviews of the "bell curve" and many in the social psychology literature and economics and socialology and political science, i remember one very well. the, i think it was arthur goldberger. i could be wrong about this.

he was with the university of wisconsin. who said the issue here is not whether or not i can account for certain proportion of the variance of income, earnings or whatever by reference to variation in genetics. the issue is whether or not amongst the various things that i can actually move. i can invest in education. i can perhaps change employment opportunities. i can do other things of that nature. the effect on the thing we care about will be significant or it will not be and we can't move. i mean, you know, it not a policy variable here. i guess i'm saying two different kinds of things. one is i'm not persuaded by the evidence as summarized in that literature that the claim about the importance of racial

differences and intellectual ability is true. i don't believe that claim. i'm also saying we have many other instruments that we could employ to intervene in people's lives that could be effective so we don't need to get to that. >> john has a question. >> bob, this is a question for you and i guess also for ron. i wrote a piece under the manhattan institute some years ago where i charged african american studies departments and by association professors of fields related to that to let go of the idea the proper thing to study was failure. i questioned why it seemed to be so unthinkable that you study success to identify what would help the black community as opposed to chronicling the failure and the response to this, actually rather surprised me.

that notion was like science fiction to my critics. the idea that an academic pursuit would be to study how people have triumphed over institutional racism and what a lot of criticism was, it's interesting, you never know what people will come up with. this is how it came off tew a lot of black graduate students, for me to write the columns implied that i'm a snob. they thought that what i was saying was why can't people study how to become someone like me, and so they thought that's a bad idea because you're supposed to be studying ordinary black people, and i think that's an internalization of the low self-image for predictable reasons. that's what they thought. it would be snobbish to study success. how would you respond to that? because that's the response of many social scientists to the idea of studying how it triumphs over institutional racism. >> let me tell you this.

the people that you talk to presume to speak for black people. okay? the moment you take it to black people like i did one night on it was a broadcast that went out to 12 states, all black news station then and the same, i had a moterator and a guest in the studio who was taking the same position attacking me for this and this. but when the phones opened up, the comments were 7-1 in support of what i was saying. so with what we got to do is allow the people in whose name they say they speak to speak for themselves and they will just undermine the authority of these people because i've had endless times.

i cell tell you when you take and sit before an audience of ordinary black folks, and i've done it all the time. they have a different perspective than the people at these black studies programs, so i would suggest just like i was on with five black mayors and they said bob, where do you get these ideas? i said from your constituents. [ laughter ] >> and so you know what i challenged them to do and maybe you should do this sometime, i said i tell you what, mr. mayors, why don't we debate these issues in any public housing project in your district, the two of us and let's see what the people in public housing have to say about your views versus mine. see, when you set up a situation where you change the venue where these ideas are being discussed outside the university and

out of narrow minded students who are pampered but take them into the community. let's just take this venue and shift it and discuss this in front of the people and see what they say. that's what you've got to do. >> ron, did you want to say anything? >> no. didn't you have a question for ron, as well? >> does he have any sense of what i mean about that particular attitude among social scientists. because it seemed like you didn't know what string that bob was referring to, if you understand what i mean. >> you're not right i don't understand that last point. but i think i understand what bob was saying. he made it clear. i don't detect anything like that in social scientists. social scientists are willing to study anything and be controversial. some are not cautious. they have the same flaws anybody else does. i think if they thought that

something might be a solution to education, to family, to whatever, they would with be more than willing to study it. in fact, they tried to get a grant to do it and make their name on it. don't you think that's right? >> i think that's basically right. i think however the universities as institutions are less open to free inquiry than they might be. i don't think that's statutory. there is not a rule against it. it's customary. it's a lot of social pressures to that effect. but i don't think that extends to the community of social scientists taken as a whole. >> i did not say one syllable to defend universities >> think tanks are another matter. [ laughter ] >> at least think tanks tell you where they are and willing to

have argument with each other, that's the american way. and universities appear not to be that way. >> can i say one thing in response to the iq question? >> sure. >> we know from a careful studies about schools. we're going to get all the panels, crime education we know that there are ways of improving the performance in schools of disadvantage kids through the charter movement and others. this fellow roland fryer who happens to have been a student of mine won a metal in economics, the most known economist and spent 15 years studying what makes the harlem children's zone work. what makes the kip academies work. can we go to houston and reorder the way they're doing education in those schools.

and with random assignment and ascertain whether or not things are getting better. there is a problem with cognitive ability. this is what i wanted to concede. there is a problem with the intellectual development and that impairs their employment opportunities and probably has other consequences. but not in their genes, i believe it's in the socialization and institutional processes of education and i think we can through social science learn more about how to make that function better. >> let's see, i want to make sure, 30 seconds but we do have more questions. >> okay. so the typical black kid in the inner city has problems in the family, is in a dangerous neighborhood that seriously impairs his ability to go outside or learn and goes to the worst schools in the country and we're going to attribute the lack of success to genetics? it's crazy. it's crazy. i think you should study it. >> they are also run by their

own people. [ laughter ] >> what? i see a lot of these black kids are being destroyed in institutions run by their own people and we don't want to talk about that. >> now we have a lot of hands up. >> okay. go ahead. >> hi -- who graduated from brown university. >> can you hear me? >> yes. >> the actor who graduated from brown university wrote a book called the "the conversation" about black relationships and the black family structure and the need for it to be a part of the overall growth and dynamics in the black america. i'd like to know your thoughts about that because it was a best seller. it was very well researched. i read it twice.

but i would love to know your thoughts about that. >> anybody familiar with it? >> i don't know the book. >> oh, no how could you not? >> i don't know this book. >> he studied economics there. >> oh. >> maybe it was before my time. i don't want to speak out of context. i don't know what i would be responding to. >> okay, sorry, we'll remember the book. okay, over here. >> my name is ricardo bird with the national association of neighborhoods. i would like to panel to address the fact that we can look at baltimore as a success story that on a night where the police with drew from policing there was no uprising. there was no uprising. most black people stayed home. they did not go to the streets. a few hundred people,

unfortunately, did, but the murder rate did not go up that night. there was generally no racial violence on a wide scale that night. so it shows that the black family is not as weak as some would like to claim because on a night where all hell could have broken loose, it did not. so maybe we're much better off than we think and others try to give us the impression that we are totally gone of moral character. that is not true. >> any response? >> nope. >> i agree with that 100%. i think the reporting about baltimore could be criticized from a number of different angles. i did see stories to the effect of the moralization at the grass roots level of people and of

people spontaneously coming out to affirm the right, the right kind of stuff there. so to think that the community is gone of moral resources is a profound error. bob's whole program doesn't have any traction, if that's true, and it's not true that the community is berefed of moral resources, so i'll leave it at that. >> the real leaders come out before the rocks are thrown, not afterwards bowing down before the police, we're safe. you have these brothers out there, 300 black men on the scene physically intervening. they went into a store and they had the moral authority to direct the young people to leave the store and not loot it. those are the real leaders. >> we have time for one more question over here. >> this panel is discussing very personal issues. you're discussing issues related to when you get married, if you should get married, whether or

not you should have a child out of wedlock or in wedlock and to a certain extent, i hear some frustration amongst the panels, the panelist in that a theme that comes out, not only in this panel but also in the previous two panels is but it's just the right thing to do. but it's just the right thing to do. and i resonate with professor lowry's example about the candy bar because you took us to the edge of an exempt and left it where you gave us the example of a child who refuses to steal a candy bar because of social psychological or social science reasons versus i am not a thief. >> right.

>> and that begins to introduce issues of right and wrong. and i know wherever we talk about issues of right and wrong, we as academics have to defend our positions with data and i understand that, but you're coming very close to the edge, particularly with this panel of introducing issues of spirit and religion and i know a typical response of an academic panel is we need more churches to be involved in x, y and z but you're treating churches lick they serve social science and the reality is that churches, particularly the christian church has it's own agenda and that's belief in jesus christ and the second issue is whether or not it manifests changes of behavior. how should we as academics and social science folks treat this issue? is this a taboo issue, or is this an issue that deserves

conversation among us as academics and policy makers about the role of the church and spirit in terms of reversing trends? is that off a limits or legitimate. >> it's a very dense question but if we can get a quick response. >> i think 80% of the effectiveness of the groups i support are face centered, not necessarily church centered. we must make a difference, and so what we do and what we say to people, you don't have to accept the content of our faith, but you should respond to the secular consequence of our faith. in my book "the try -- triumphs of joseph," the change that comes about is inspired by faith

in groups that i serve but what we're asking people to support is the secular consequences and you can evaluate that. >> glenn, did you want to say something? >> i do want to say something. i do appreciate the question very much. tiptoed up to it and in my mind i got closer because when i said that the enter mediating institutions can draw on sources of authority that are not available to the state since the state can't take a position on a question of faith. we have the first amendment to the constitution and so forth. that's when i had in mind. okay? and the mechanism that would persuade this young kid that he's not a thief and that's not what we do in the african american cultural experience would not universally not only but would substantially be predominantly it would be a faith-based set of

relationships. so the, after the rodney king riots in los angeles in 199 2 i published a piece in "the wall street journal" that caused me a lot of trouble. it was called "the god in the ghetto." i was a better christian then and more courageous win because i don't think i would dare to publish a piece. basically, what i said then and this is not about me but i want to put this on the table, we can have our programs and debates and we should study them and do it but at the end of the day, there is no substitute for reaching that place inside of a person, the spiritual place inside of a person that empowers them in a way we might not be able to forecast or imagine as social scientists. >> i want to give ron one last

chance to say something. >> i guess i agree with the other panelists that the church is a crucial part of this and i'd be perfectly happy if people were willing to join a church and follow it and incorporate it into life and i would be happy, bob, not to study it. [ laughter ] [ applause ] >> thank you very much. >> that is part of the problem. >> all right. i want to thank you-all for being here, for a very lively panel. thank you. >> thank you. all this week, it's american history tv in prime time. tonight, abraham lincoln's assassination 150 years later. on the night of april 14th

1965, john wilkes booth shot lincoln as he sat with his wife mary mary, watching the play, our american cousin. the president, bullet still lodged, was carried across the street to the peterson house where he died the next morning. we'll look back on that night with events from a ceremony honor ing honoring that anniversary tonight at 8:00 eastern on cspan 3. dr. francis collins recently testified on capitol hill before the senate health education labor and pen gens committee. that initiative funded through the 2016 budget is a research effort designed to improve treatment for diseases like cancer and leukemia by tayloring health care, not a one sized fits all approach.