obviously, the higher we get, the better. but this is not 60 votes, which is what they had at the beginning of president obama. i think we did pretty well with narrow majorities during the previous administration. three new supreme court justices. comprehensive 30-your overdue tax reform. it is harder but we were successful before with a narrow majority and i think we will be again. >> looking at the results from last night, what do you take away from the mood of the country, where it is headed and

how it lands according to your expectations? >> if you are looking for a simple answer, i think it was a referendum on the current administration in part. people were just not happy with this administration. the democratic nominee obvus of. >> in your role as former leader, moving forward what is your level of engagement directly with the new trump administration? given your criticisms of the former president. >> i will do everything i can to help the new administration be successful. >> would you be in support of elon musk or rfk jr. having positions in the cabinet of president trump?

>> say that again? >> rfk jr. and elon musk having positions in the presidential cabinet considering that you on musk has been reported [indiscernible] with putin? >> one of the things about advancing age, live as long as i do, you will have a hard time hearing a question like that. why don't you come up here? [laughter] >> would you be in support of elon musk and rfk jr. having cabinet positions considering that elon musk has been reported to be in contact? >> yeah, i'm not going to get into that subject. anything else related to what happened yesterday? >> i'm wondering president trump

and senate republicans sometimes butted heads in the first administration. do you think the relationship will be smoother this time? what advice do you have to president trump to dealing with the new majority and congress in general? >> i had a lot of dealings with him during the previous administration. i think we did a lot for the american people. >> are you expecting clashes with president trump over nominees in case he goes more toward the economic populist route? >> it is way too early to tell who the nominees are going to be. i think the senate will treat them fairly. carl? >> democrats have a lot of judges in the channel they could try to push through these last few weeks. what do you think republicans should do if that would happen?

>> wen yu get the majority, you decide what to bring up, and if that is what the majority will do, each one will be voted on. >> were publicans have control of the senate and partisan to the, how do you expect priorities like -- >> expect what? >> appropriations and other lame-duck priorities? >> well, i think getting our worked on which no matter who has been a majority, we have not done that well for quite a while. deciding how to spend a discretionary money that we have, which is not a very big part of what we spend every year anymore, is really important. i would hope we would put a greater priority than the

current senate has on doing the basic work of government which is deciding how much to spend and getting it done as close to regular order as possible. >> i was hoping you could compare the 2017 tax cuts and job cuts as stanchion -- extension republicans are pursuing out of the bush tax cut? what is the republican position? >> i can speak for most senate republicans. we thought it was a huge success. it produced more revenue than last. -- than less. i am sure virtually all of us would like to see most of that extended. ok.

i think we're through. [laughter] good luck to you all. i enjoyed talking to you. it was a hell of a good day. thanks a lot. [indistinct reporter question]

this is about one hour 15 minutes. nat malkus: good morning and welcome to the american enterprise institute. it is november 6, the day after the 2024 election. we have results in, it is nice to have results to talk about. some are outstanding but we have

a fantastic panel today to talk about what the results mean for education moving forward. with me today is a wonderful panel. from my right to left, heather harding is executive director of the campaign for our shared future and her work focuses on the intersection of access to high quality education on racial equity. frederick hess is director of education policies here at aei. he is an executive editor education next and senior contributor to forbes and that is just the beginning of where his writing can be found. to his right is the director of education freedom and parental

rights initiative at the defense of freedom institute. ginny is a lifelong school advocate. thank you for joining us this morning. then preston cooper, senior fellow here at aei in education policy studies. he focuses on the return to investment in higher education student loans and higher education reform. and last but not least, derrell bradford, who leads our communications and policies trains and recruits look a little loose nationwide -- leaders nationwide. with this panel, which is an event part of the james q. wilson program here at aei we

have a relatively simple show. i will give a quick rundown of the results so far from the top to the bottom of the ballot and then we will have a panel discussion for about one hour and then open it up to questions from our audience here, those on the livestream, and our friends watching on c-span. we want to make sure all of the in person and online can ask questions and you can do that by submitting questions on twitter using the #2024 education. without further ado, i will run through some of the election results.

donald trump got 277 electoral votes. harris earned 224. trump won north carolina, pennsylvania, georgia, wisconsin. arizona, nevada, and michigan have not been called. in the senate we have 52 republicans already called and 42 democratic seats in contrast to before the election when democrats had a one-vote majority. there were three seats republicans flipped. ohio, montana, west virginia. save those, the democrats held in every other race.

the six races are not called. republicans have a narrow lead in pennsylvania. dead heat in nevada and michigan. republicans are down and democrats up in arizona, maine, wisconsin. in the house, republicans have a lead with 197 seats, democrats have 177. it's too close to call for a number of reasons, no one has reached 218. republicans have a shorter path to secure the house however there are a lot more races the democrats have open. on the west coast you can see a lot of those gray districts which are yet to call and many of them will probably go blue. we talked about the federal

elections but there is a lot of action in the state, not a lot in the governor's offices where there were 11 races and no change in party control in any of them, all three incumbents won and the rest held by the parties that had them. and state legislatures we see stasis. one thing to note is i believe 48 states had unified governments yesterday and in the next legislative session there will be one more that flipped from split to democrat and the remaining 49 have not flipped or been called. we have some state superintendents of education, in montana susie hedlund and held

on and mow greene changed the north carolina elected superintendent from kathy truitt republican to the democratic side, michelle mauro. in north dakota and washington we are waiting on results. some key ballot referenda we will talk about. 15 but we have lived out five. colorado amendment 80 is too close to call but it established that all k-12 children would have a right to school choice in the state constitution. it does not look like it will win and it needs 55%. in kentucky amendment two another school choice to authorize the state to provide funding to nonpublic schools, roundly defeated.

i think 2-1. in nebraska, similar amendment, not similar amendment but one that would maintain a scholarship program for students attending private schools, also roundly defended -- or defeated. in kentucky and nebraska it is interesting that they were both on the [indiscernible] in states where trump so really worth talking about with our panel and in florida there was an amendment that would make school board elections partisan and it looks like he did not reach the 60% threshold and in massachusetts a question that would repeal mcat schools as requirements for graduation has been repealed despite folks in the state many of them arguing against it and then just two more things to look at.

the l.a. school board race, the second largest in the nation and it is on a knife's edge. it was a 4-3 split prior controlled by union backed candidates and it is up in the air now. and the most exciting district in the nation, chicago. this is the first time chicagoans have voted for school board members. the other 11 are appointed by the mayor. last month the entire school board resigned. of the seven races called they have been evenly split, three union backed, three not and one who is unaffiliated. three are outstanding and just to add, mayor johnson appointed a president of the school board

also named johnson who has already resigned this is after the initial slate of appointments so a lot to unpack in chicago so that is the run down, i am gonna catch my first question to rick hess. what will the 2024 election mean for education? is trump 2.0 a huge deal? rick hess: let's start with what trump means. it means a lot for higher education, for washington. it covers a lot of the funding. if i was a college president this morning i would be feeling very stressed. i think where you have seen republicans frustrated with how the department has dealt with anti-semitism on campus, i think

those colleges will find their feet to the fire. where you have found colleges that feel like they are suppressing free inquiry or engaging in ideological agendas, i think you will see folks in the department of ed very aggressively asking whether or not they are complying with federal statute and potentially putting funding eligibility at risk. federal role is less direct in k-12 so it will matter less directly but what i just talked about are things you can do through the executive branch and that is where the change in administration will matter the most, partly because i think after a relatively constrained and traditionally reagan approach under betsy devos republicans have grown frustrated and i think you will see a more aggressive department of ed. how much that matters in congress will matter on how the house comes out, it will matter

on what the senate numbers are. the bottom line is you will probably be able to see republicans do some legislating through reconciliation. you can imagine the next year's tax bill, it is much harder to see the school choice passing legislation like a parental bill of rights which will require either dismantling the filibuster or getting 60 votes in the senate. nat malkus: for the rest of the panel, is rick underplaying it? ginny gentles: on the parental rights we have some acronyms to throw out. for a pet and p bra. i would see a trump administration quickly moving toward sending a clear message that parental rights are

fundamental in one way to do it would be to strengthen privacy and strengthen parent ability to access information surveys curricula that are presented to their children and to perhaps look into ways to legislatively provide private right of action so parents cannot be told no, you cannot see what we are teaching your child, no, we will not tell you if we are transitioning your child to another gender identity, we will keep it secret. if that happens rather than just being able to complain to the department they will have some tool to be able to sue. nat malkus: to clarify for those at home, these other things the department could do under legislation? ginny gentles: the private right of action is down the road that they would have to work with caucus -- congress but i think we will see a clear message about the protection of parental

rights being a priority in the next administration and advocacy for school choice education freedom has been part of the campaign he promised to sign the educational choice for children act likely see through reconciliation but i think we will see a cleanup of the charter school program and some other things that the federal government can do without legislation. heather harding: both of you keep saying the department as if there is not a threat to the department. while there might not just be a direct path to get rid of the department of ed, we are likely to see a severe neutering so i am wondering how we think that the department is going to function if there are echoes of this project 2025 notion. they do provide protective for protected classes.

where people are not supporting privatization, most americans like public neighborhood schools but still we have to think about how the protected classes, generally the job of the fed so i am worried about those things and not may be actual legislation or getting rid of departments but in how people behave for civic servants. nat malkus: shockingly, donald trump suggested he would abolish the department of education. you can say not to take him seriously, how do we take that seriously? what will be the effective trump on the department over the next several years? >> this is a fig leaf. frankly you cannot do any of the things he wants to do without the department in play.

it's almost impossible to get the department to behave differently. ask betsy. and i am listing this from our friends, it is possible they will take a different take than how the office of civil rights acts and there will be some controversy over that. i happen to be a great fan of single-sex schools, i went to one, so obviously the department can have a role in that and make it easier or harder for charter schools to open but to accomplish these things you have to have the department so i think the story is the u.s. do you he is not going away despite what he said. >> the trump campaign made a higher education issue on the trail lay in the way i have never seen from a republican

candidate in my lifetime. i really have never seen so much emphasis on things like accreditation reform, endowment tax, creating a national university, regardless of whether he goes after trying to accomplish those specifics i think higher education will be a priority for his administration in a way it was not before so that is why i would look closer at what potential avenues they might have through the department of education to achieve some of those goals and i would say we saw under the obama and biden administrations there are a lot of of avs the df education that wants to go after particular colleges but biden used it for for-profit colleges but if you had a more disciplined department there are potential ways to try to hold colleges accountable. >> i think heather is right to

put it on the table. when you look at republicans, they are mixed on if they want to abolish it, much less independents and democrats. there is no way you can even get 50 republican senators who want to abolish it. it would have to go to congress and it would be a heavy lift when there are other priorities and the reality is when you talk to people in maga there is a deep split between those who have the project 2020 five philosophy of let's dismantle the department and the jd vance style who say it is crazy to talk about dismantling, we need to go in and use at the same way the other side has in the last four years and i think what we are going to is the second cap is gonna emerge triumphant. you never know for sure but that is the way i would look at it. nat malkus: on the higher ed level versus k-12, if you use

the department in the way you are saying, where do have more room to run? a lot of times we associate it with k-12 schools but maybe there is more room to run in higher ed. rick hess: in k-12 federal government picks up $.12 on the dollar. in higher ed is the lion's share so it's a much bigger financial play for higher ed and because of the financial role in the way the laws are written it has a more direct relationship. looking at i believe institutions they get billions each year in federal research funds and the students collect billions in student loans. it's money that taxpayers pay. when you get to school districts the federal government can play a large role in the way ginny is talking about, guidance relating to things like student privacy, title ix, k-12 sports

participation, school discipline. i think you will see a trump administration sharply change direction but ultimately it has a much bigger footprint than it does of higher ed. heather harding: i think if we are looking at common ground places it seems important to me that if there is going to be more action at the higher level we bring together the federal agencies that focus on workforce and higher ed and create better pathways. if we are concerned what parents care about, they care about safety k-12 and up and they also care about their child's ability to engage in the career on postsecondary and we have not really talked about that as an opportunity and we need to move away from some of the culture war polarization stuff, telling other people what they need to

do and really focus on what government can offer. >> this is probably one of the opportunities for by partisan -- bipartisan collaboration. i wrote a piece talking about how harris did not mention student loan forgiveness or doubling the pell grant in her stated policy position at least the 2024 version of her does not but there is a lot of talk about apprenticeships and creating more opportunities for workers without college degrees implementing skill-based tires and the government and this is an issue where democrats have really realized they need to tap to the center and if there is kind of one area where we might see a divided congress kind of work together to fix it would probably be workforce development. nat malkus: if you talk to any superintendent they will say even though they only get 10% of

the money from [indiscernible] they get 90% of the regulation so there is an opportunity to lift the burden they are to have a big effect at the local level. ginny gentles: and before we jump to focusing on workforce we have to address what is going on with k-12 education so i think a strong message from d.c. or congress or the trump administration that it matters what has happened with learning loss and chronic absenteeism and that we had 190 million in covid arra funding that was eventually lit on fire. we showed fully funding schools does not magically solve the academic struggles so many schools have right now so i think a trump administration cannot immediately just move to addressing workforce issues [indiscernible]

they need to immediately fix title ix but skip over the fact that we just had covid expose what was already happening which is severely declining academic results in our schools and we need to take that seriously. federal government cannot fix that but they can maybe redirect what is going on with title i funding which has also increased significantly like pay attention to how the federal funds are allocated rather than just continuing to increase the funds and hope it works out this time. nat malkus: on the skills based hiring, it is something that is bipartisan but i do not necessarily our audience will understand so can you fill that out a little? >> sure what we mean by that is the that nominally require a bachelors degree, getting rid of that bachelors requirement and instead looking at what skills people have, what alternative

credentials do they have that might qualify them for the job and this was an executive order that trump in his first term did to try to implement this in the government and harris set on the campaign trail she wants to do it again but i guess harder this time i don't know so but it is you know an issue we have not seen implemented a lot at the state level and i think 20 states now have announced their governors have said we are going to get rid of degree requirements and a lot of private employers are jumping on the train. nat malkus: so there is some alignment between the parties. there does not seem to be alignment on student loan forgiveness. what is the recent action and how different of a ternary taking? preston cooper: the biden

administration student loan forgiveness was a signature issue they tried to enact by executive order and did four major cancellation plans most of which have been struck down or blocked in the courts. i am not sure if harris was going to continue with that she didn't mention it on the campaign trail i guess she figured it out that this was going to be sort of a losing issue for them and i guess you know president trump will probably stop those loan cancellation plans currently waking their way through the department of education i think the big challenge though will be you know -- >> it was under trump during covid that we started the rain -- the loan repayment pause which then snowballed into the forgiveness. how confident are you that trump 2.0 will say we are pulling the plug on loan forgiveness activity? preston cooper: well so i think

the original decision to enact the pause and then extended was a decision made from an administrative standpoint with a said it would be too complicated to transition everybody back into repayment right now let's make it the next administration's problem and then by then extended it so i do not know if there is a lot of energy within the trump worlds to try and do that again but i do think they are going to face the major challenge in january when a whole bunch of people who are not necessarily paying their loans now, 60% of borrowers are still not making payments after laws expired a lot of them will start becoming severely delinquent on their loans and to head into default and that could major -- that could be a major

headache that the next trump administration has to deal with. nat malkus: if you look at how education impacted the 2024 election there is a huge split between college-educated voters and non-college educated voters. i think there's a split with the college loan part and also the contests we have had on college campuses that have been poorly perceived. what is this a nexus, especially when we have a trump administration just for the respective higher ed moving forward in america rick can you take that up? rick hess: as has been widely commented, the biggest fault line in this country is not

race, it is education. college-educated voters have migrated steadily to the left over the last 15 years and those who have not gone to college have migrated steadily to the right. this plays out certainly in the role values play and i think it displayed in things like distrust of elite institutions and distrust of the media. last night we saw the extraordinary frustration from trump world at the way they are perceived and described in so much of the mainstream media and this huge difficulty comprehending how all of these people could engage in behavior which is seen as fundamentally illegitimate so the problem for colleges i think is they have

very directly stared into that. i remember when the university of michigan president spoke to thousands on campus lamenting about how we are all disheartened about last night as if it was obvious that every member of 70,000 of the university community had obviously voted for hillary clinton. there was this mindset that took place. it accelerated in 2020 during the pandemic and after the killing of george floyd. and higher ed has found itself now we are it is so far to the left to not only of the new administration but of the median voter and certainly kind of working-class americans that there is just this fundamental disconnect and what you have seen with the embrace of institutional neutrality and with campuses trying to put new guardrails in place, these

efforts around efforts to create a new campus center is both an effort from the outside from the right to drag campuses back but also on part of college leaders who feel like they are stumbling at the edge of a cliff, how do they feel -- how do they figure out to backpedal in a way to maintain respective campus community and i think we will see a lot of this play out in the next few years. heather: i think we are conflating political ideology with civility and our nation's identity as americans and in democracy. it is not just that people are concerned. you even questioned the way the new york times described the trump campaign. when you talk to parents and everyday families, they want their kids to be nice, to treat

each other with civility, and to treat each other fairly and the rhetoric is so high and negative that is very easy to say politicians should be out of the school. it is very easy. we also want to have a sense of our rights and values and public institutions respect though. so i wonder if it is just an ideological divide or is it actually that we would just like to have more respect and civility in the way we debate these things. >> that is a completely valid distinction and even those of us who are happy with the way the elections came out i am the first to concede that i think trump, even in his victory remarks, kept detouring into things that were uncivil and unproductive. and it's not just rick, you are a snowflake, the way we talk and

engage matters. on the other hand i think part of the problem on the right is that we saw colleges that in 2016 were bringing students before bias response teams for chocking trump for president on the sidewalk, this was something you could be reported to campus for. we saw campuses talking about micro aggressions. repeatedly students were brought up [indiscernible] then after october 7 when we saw burning flags, jewish students barred from campus at ucla, students threatened and bullied on video that went viral, suddenly higher ed was like no, it is complicated, we have to have a great deal of respect for these points of view.

the talk of micro-aggression turned out to feel hypocritical so i think what you see on the right is a civility problem. for someone like me, the problem is not that campuses are being civil, the problem is they are using talk of civility as an ideological weapon to silence perspectives and advance certain viewpoints and that is the problem i would like to see campuses address and i think that is what you will see trump aggressively moving to counter. >> there were two points raised. i agree on the civility point. we run a fellowship about fellowship. it's very important to me. on the one hand i think there is

a fallacy to the way people are thinking about schools, particularly k-12 schools, that there is some magical world in which there is no politics, no culture. there are culture wars, which i just used as shorthand, because there is consistently a war for the culture. who we are as americans, our schooling institutions, places that transmit values. to have a valueless school is kind of like not having a school, right, so instead of thinking how do we extricate this maybe we should just accept that this is a core part of it and that is a different conversation i guess so i want to put that out there and the second thing and here i will shave my party, you cannot be the party of college educated people and not have a k-12 strategy to not have -- to not

make more college-educated people. at the reagan institute dr. biden showed up to give remarks on the president's behalf and it was very clear what the agenda was. pre-k and loan forgiveness. everything in between like we do not know what that is, right? so i feel like this is like such a, this is so outrageous, at least you can disagree with it but you know, kiersten bassler, red state superintendents have k-12 agendas. science and reading, expand teacher pay, expand school choice. there is at least something so i don't want to skip over this, it would have been a great

opportunity for presidential leadership to say what they care about on k-12. ginny gentles: let's be honest as to why the party does not have a k-12 agenda. joe biden is a very proud union member. they likely made it clear to the party, we got this. we got you. we take dues from our members and spends millions to elect to you. you will do what we want. so the union can hold politicians and the american federation of teachers have six bargaining units and only one is k-12 teachers. the other our early childhood providers, graduate students and those who work in higher ed and then a growing health care unit

so anything you see -- >> which is why a growing pre-k make much sense. ginny gentles: that is my point. they were dressing set -- addressing things on the other side of k-12 but we want more unionized jobs so please grow these other entities through so we can have more unionized workers. heather harding: as a k-12 girl and may be the only democrat on the stage, i want to say something. oh, you two? i didn't even know. [laughter] growing jobs is probably a good thing at this point in our country. in fact, we need more men to speak in the gender gap in care work and education jobs and for 50 years we have seen a feminization of the profession.

we also need more diversity in our teaching ranks and a tax on de i, however poorly done, will not get us there. we have to be committed. also an unbundling of the system will also not get us there because a variety -- vast majority of kids are in public schools and your point about funding is i think an open question about if we are fully funding our public schools. go get a voucher in arizona, you can afford a trampoline. can you afford a high quality education? and i think that is really important before we just settle that because we have a lot of hand -- [crosstalk] nat malkus: the research -- the whole thing about bundled or unbundled in diversity is worth taking on and what we have organized is the best way to

segregate education in america and it is assigning kids to school based on where they live and that is giving the schools today are more segregated than they were before brown so i think the argument that trying another way may be open enrollment, may be like other ways, like we should try that because we know what we have right now which is like the most brilliant way to make sure that a black kid never sees a weight student in the classroom. -- white student in the classroom. >> we talked about the harris campaign not really having a k-12 agenda. does that trump campaign have one that i best -- that i missed? >> i think it it's the republican platform basically dropped in the summer. [crosstalk] nat malkus: people need to keep in mind that trump has also

repeatedly disavowed anything to do with project 2025 so reading tea leaves there is certainly the harris campaign trying to promote the notion that trump was running on 2025 and trump consistently said he was not so what relationship that will have to whatever comes out of that strategy, ok, let me bring it back to something heather said about di, heather i said -- i heard you say, last week a compelling point you said if we are gonna make the case for publicly funded education it is because of certain values we have in common and i urge you to talk at that point i think you mentioned the pledge of allegiance, a shared touchstone and i would argue if you look at trump has done historically well among latino voters and the best

a republican has done with black voters and half a century, particularly black men, and part of the appeal was the democratic party is nervous about those traditional markers of shared american identity. that the 69 p project which was -- talks about america -- san francisco during the pandemic they were trying to strip abraham nate -- abraham lincoln's name off the schools that there has been this disdain for popular shared culture and i think one of the opportunities here is to the extent as democrats are asking what happened with the latino vote last night, how do they kind of recapture a feel for the working class coalition, part of it is i

think they need to ask whether the faculty set has taken them to a place on traditional markers on patriotism that is anathema to a huge share of americans however they feel about tax policy or abortion and that seems to be a real opportunity for us to get back to a conversation which is grounded on we can all agree on these things even if there is some extremist on either i and -- and in that provides the foundation for moving into a conversation about the science of reading, math instruction where we don't, you know, california has said algebra is racist or is asking students to show their work in math is racist and i think we have an opportunity to get back to

shared values that shall decide the excesses that i think have distorted our conversation over the last five or 10 years. ginny gentles: but the distortion we are seeing on college campuses and k-12, i think could probably be traced back to the education in schools, right, so if you are training up teachers to think the way you are describing and then the teachers are not running the science of reading and ignoring other aspects of good quality teaching and going into the k-12 system you are making society sicker so there is an opportunity that the trump administration may be has not addressed in this articulated k-12 agenda to really tagger that ed schools and figure out what is going on and trace the federal funding that is going to those and find out how some lovers can be tweets to change the culture and improve the quality of instruction that

budding teachers are getting but as far as the k-12 agenda for the trump administration he made it very year that he supports universal school chores and will sign the educational choice for children act which the federal tax credit and he has made it very clear that there will not be men and women -- men in women's sports which is what we can interpret plans to address the title ix regulation and those things are huge and i think a robust agenda right there and then there is other things that we have seen -- >> i heard him articulate that they want them to teach arithmetic and reading but not woke. on school choice, really interesting results last night. on the one hand republicans did it red states in terms of esa's other five or six years and in two states were trump took the vote 2-1 we have the referenda on

school choice that went down 2-1 . help me understand that. >> any school choice advocate who's been around for a little while is like, of course, unions are very good at throwing a lot of money at these ballot initiatives. they always have come they always will. is not the way to move something that should be handled through the legislative process. over 30 states have private scholarship programs are what's called education savings accounts. 12 states now have nearing, approaching universal school choice. the legislative process is fine. there's ballot initiatives in nebraska, colorado and kentucky. you are talking about over $7 million in nebraska that the nea and the nebraska delete put into an organization to oppose.

that's a lot of money, $7 million in nebraska. that's not even accounting for them flipping the switch and telling their members how to vote. >> i'm curious how you will respond. one thing that seems to be the heart of momentum by the pro-choice side of the abortion debate has been just remarkable success and initiatives which has intimidated the republicans. this is kind of the opposite of that. i was in kentucky last week and one of the things that folks were telling me was that, harris just outspent trump 2-1 and that didn't seem to turn the tide there. they were telling me that a lot of the pro-school choice referenda stuff came down to rand paul, talking about how markets work and folks talking about how your local public schools stink. it seems to be if there were any

messages that generally don't work for the sadvocates its mars swell, your local school stinks. i thought we had learned after 30 years that everyone should have options. you're closer to these referenda that i am. is that actually how these things get argued and if so, i was is not driven by more effective messaging, fueled by what we've seen so far over the last three or four years? >> specific to kentucky, i followed his wife, kelly paul, i felt like she messaged it very effectively. you are up against the machine, up against a political juggernaut, directly spinning and being very clear about how to vote on this one thing or else all public schools will be closed, you're killing public education. the fear mongering is always going to turn off people's critical thinking.

>> calling trump a fascist is fear mongering too. >> like how much my groceries because. >> think about massachusetts. >> talk about what they did. >> when they did question two, which would have -- i can't even come up with an adjective that would describe how small the increase in the number of charter schools would have been. the statewide referendum when charlie baker was governor, charter schools in massachusetts that studied in great detail, their highly effective, mount holyoke was like, no.

that went down 2-1, there you go. they are going to disrupt your local schooling, whatever. and yesterday, massachusetts, puritanical shining light on the hill of high standards, also voted basically 2-1, we have another conversation about standards. i think it's very important because a lot of people think of talking about a more open system and you don't want accountability. unlike, no, this is being eroded from the left right now in a very significant ways. >> i just highlight those two things to say that whatever you're doing, a referendum change on existing thing is incredibly hard. this is why arizona worked

because they had the program already. the arizona esa was universal. it was basically a positive right at the time that you couldn't take away and when people like, we're going to take it away, they were like, no, we are not having that. that's different from colorado, nebraska, and kentucky. >> so unions are political and spend money. there's another lesson there. i'm still in love with accountability. local control. not only the teachers unions or any union spend money, local control won. and we still have communities that have a lot of disparate outcomes and local control won in massachusetts. >> this is the massachusetts

school reform, from 1993, bipartisan, they adopted an exit exam for high schoolers in 2001. 10 years later, massachusetts was scoring highest in the country and reading and math, fourth and eighth grade, international at the level south korea and japan is a top of the class. here's the thing. accountability has got a bad name, both because we made -- we have backed away from eat your vegetables education. but the other part of this is that i would argue that mcat graduation requirements are not accountability, that's about testing kids every year and writing teachers. this is about should kids know how to do english, math, and science at a high school level before you give them a high school diploma.

that strikes me as different accountability. this is about making sure we are not just passing kids along because it's easier. in massachusetts -- voters said no. >> let me ask about the vegetables question. i really like it when politicians ask our schools -- i didn't see much of it. we have pandemic learning laws. don't get me started on chronic absenteeism. no one seems to care that much about rigor, is there somebody somewhere in election night that took a stance for easier vegetables? >> no. we should not ignore that part of this is symptomatic of something else. excuse the term, we screwed so many kids over so hard by

keeping the schools close longer than we needed to. when the new started coming out about how bad that was, people were like i don't want to see this anymore. it's like the national debt when you talk about learning loss, it's like living fear on one side. you can also argue we never really had fiscal accountability. at best we had transparency. the act of beholding the schools accountable, reconfiguring, that almost never happened. if you accept that at best we had a system of accountability, and that changes what we think about right now substantially. i think that is probably a good thing, it can get to honesty about, we are accountability people, we care about interventions and stuff. but if for the next five years

is so bad that nobody is actually doing anything about it, how are you ensuring a parent knows how his kid is doing? should you be able to go in-place you want and get a diagnostic, because the schools don't want to do it. let's talk about that. >> one place i think you still little bit of your vegetables, there was a clear signal in the campaign that it will keep on keeping on with what governor holcomb has done, and partly this is about taking it to the schools of education and telling them however you guys like to be treated, here's how you want to be treated. also there is a larger cultural debate. you guys are victims of bad advice, too. that is an important part of the shift. i don't know if this brittle,

angry mind we are in the middle of, if it's possible to have that kind of multilayer push. >> this conversation is really interesting to me because it's moving away from accountability at the k-12 level. accountable she is very much in vogue. it's a complex system of carrots and sticks, we are seeing movement at the state level too. texas just passed a massive overhaul of muni college funding formulas. getting graduates into good paying jobs, and if there is a republican trifecta, we will see what happens with the house. that's probably going to be a major push. >> the college cost reduction

act, that chairman fox pushed the house. what has been the response from democrats? is it possible getting to 60 votes in the sim crack -- in the senate for democrats? >> she has about 160 cosponsors in the house right now including the folks who will be the leading contenders to be chair of the workforce committee. even though fox is term limited, this or something like this will probably set the agenda on higher education for republicans going forward. that might've originally been hoping to get some democratic cosponsors on this. there were some sweeteners in there but i think the reality is kratz -- democrats are captive to the higher education lobby and they will resist any kind of form of accountability, which is a shift from a few years ago we

had elizabeth warren and folks like that pushing accountability for colleges. >> you can't do anything like see cra, you would have to pass legislation. >> you could potentially do the accountability pieces. a lot of those pieces are directly affecting revenue in terms of requiring colleges to pay back a portion of unpaid student loans, cutting off aid eligibility to some schools. it's possible they would get through on reconciliation. >> >> that means in case the house actually goes a slamdunk. there's going to be someone at the department of education who will need to fill that post. what do you want to see them do?

>> before we speculate, i just want to call everyone's attention to the piece on cardona to get some opinions on this. i interviewed chairwoman fox for an upcoming podcast and she shared your sentiment that this has been an extremely poor leadership and a failed department of education. we are hearing a lot about higher education here we haven't mentioned the fafsa debacle and the impact there. there's a lot of cleanup to do when it comes to fafsa and higher education.

>> the fafsa for next year has already been delayed by two months. there are 20 outstanding technical issues with the form that they still haven't fixed. this is going to be a debacle nature as well. cardona has done his successor no favors here. he's leaving a lot of messes to clean up. in the student loan repayment transition, the on-ramp, the transition period expired several months ago so people will start going into delinquency on their loans. that's something the next secretary of education is going to have to clean up. >> let's be fair, is it reasonable to expect some money to simplify the digital form and just four years? here's my two cents, i think one of the things the republicans

would benefit from immensely is if they have somebody go into the department who is value aligned and has a track record of being able to run large bureaucracies, partly because for republicans, it is an away game. for me, the obvious call on this is kate bromley, who not only is louisiana's veterans day chief, agreed public school educator, a teacher, principal, and former superintendent who has managed remarkably to do -- and cares about results and to do shared values. given has central higher ed is going to be, we mentioned a moment go the chair of the house

education workforce committee is going to have to turn over the gavel in a couple of months. i think virginia foxx could be a fascinating choice. >> we have a couple of rules for answering -- asking questions, please give your name and ask a question. if you don't ask a question, i will cut you off. so raise your hands, we have some folks, there's a question upfront here. also just a repeat, those are minor and c-span, you can tweet us questions at 2020 -- #2024 election. >> i been involved in d.c. charter schools from the beginning about 30 years ago. frankly, we haven't seen the results that we thought we would, even pre-covid there's probably a 60% gap between affluent and poor kids. i'm wondering for those of us in

favor of school choice, should we give up on charter schools and just go to esa's? >> no. although i do think there are lots of ways for them to play well together and states where that is allowed. charter schools have a lot of strategic expertise that can be very beneficial in the esa world. in particular, esa's ring down the cost to try. so if you want to do something new, you get 10 families in one part of the building instead of having to authorize it only thing and start with 500 kids. i would say that charter schools are on a continuum. the continuum is growing and it is important. they used to be the fulcrum between private school choice and open enrollment. and now there's a whole universe of activity happening over here which i call the half bundle, then there's homeschooling and

go your own way in all this other stuff. that has changed where the balance point is. there are things that charter schools specifically do very well, especially those formally known as no excuses, like prince. they are an important feature of the system and they need to be protected and supported. >> any thoughts on how the charter ecosystem might be affected by this election? or is it cruise control either way? >> i think it is time to go back and revisit all of the concessions of the last 30 years in the charter world. particularly at the state level, there are states where people are writing checks to families and saying, you figure it out. at the same time, there are no more caps on charter schools,

for instance. if that is the risk tolerance for people, all the unnecessary things that have accreted on how charter schools are regulated, that basically make them like the public schools they're not supposed to be. i think we should revisit that. it's a time to revisit how we think about school finance overall. the whole like, hey come you can do this but you don't get a building. or you choose this option, your education is worth 50% as much. i don't think a kids education should be worthless because of where they live. that is the thing we can revisit, as well as my local property taxes are so ensconced in how we fund schools. there's all kinds of negatives in -- negative incentives built into that. with the million fewer kids in the system and fiscal clips coming all over the place,

there's never been a better time to revisit how we support all america's kids so they can become the best versions of themselves. >> is it desk for charter schools and its private school choice? >> i can't speak for the trunk coalition. i heard keep men out of women's sports, but i didn't hear it revise the charter school program restriction. but i'm fairly certain we will see a revision to the federal charter school program funding mechanism because the biden administration put on a lot of restrictions that will hurt the growth of the charter movement. i think were going to see support from senator cassidy, likely health committee chair, and for innovation and expanding options and i think charter still have a role. >> question right here in the

center. >> is that the political center? thank you so much for organizing this so quickly and responding to events last night. i have two questions about higher education finance. one is about the federal loan program which obviously is mired in the legal process. question is what is the future of the federal loan program. aei wonderful event back in may on the role of private lenders in higher education financing. and i'm curious what is the future role of private financing in higher education? >> in 2025 next year, a minute -- mention the college cost reduction act that would put

some limits on federal lending. next year we will see the expiration of the tax cuts and jobs act, it's a bipartisan priority to extend a lot of those tax cuts and that will have to be paid for somehow. >> tariffs. >> we could do tariffs, we could also eventually limit loans to graduates. the graduate student loan program is going to be about 130 billion dollars net loss over the coming 10 years. i would expect that republicans if they control congress will probably take a look at some of those programs is call savers. given the recognition, the unlimited longs for graduates, students have tuition inflation and has led to the proliferation of a lot of very silly masters degrees out there. and of course that's also going to create a role for private lending. if you pull back on federal lending there might be still some good programs out there that deserve financing so we

might see more private lenders step into the space to finance those students. which is what we saw pre-2006 when there were actual caps on lending to graduate students. that is definitely a space i will be watching. >> you saw a bunch of effort, risk-adjusted, return adjusted lending which offered specialty -- for folks majoring things we talked about, jobs that are needed, to get favorable rates. the second is that, remember it was supposed to be a pay for. it was supposed to pay for the. instead, taxpayers have eaten hundreds of billions over the last few