>> funding for "overheard" with evan smith is provided in mart by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. and from the texas board of legal specialization. board certified attorneys in your community. experienced, respected, and tested. also by hillco partners. texas government affairs consultancy. and its global health care consulting business unit, hillco health, and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation and viewers like you. thank you. >> i'm evan smith, he's a chief executive officer of amplify education and the former chancellor of the new york city department of education, the largest public school system in the united states. he's joel klein. this is "overheard." [ applause ] >> i guess we can't fire him now. >> i guess we can't fire him

now. [ laughter ] the night that i win the emmy. >> being on the supreme court was an improbable dream. >> it's hard work and it's controversial. >> right. without information there is no freedom and it's journalists who provide that information. >> window rolls down, this guy says, hey, it goes to 11. [ laughter ] >> joel klein, welcome. >> thank you, glad to be here. >> nice to have you here, i want to congratulate you on what i know you hope are two big products that am flyify is going to have out in the world now, one is a redo, and one that is more in the form of an innovation and curriculum that amplify tablet and the digital curriculum that you all are launching at south by southwest edu this week. this is a hope, big news for you, right? you're going to try to revolutionize the way we do education. >> i think it is big news. you know, when i was chancellor, the thing that always struck me

is we demand so much from our teachers. >> right. >> and our kids. why don't we give them the support that enable them to be more effective in the classroom? in the last three years that's what we've been doing at amplify. we've been developing this. and i think this curriculum in particular is going to change the way teachers teach and the way kids learn. everything we do, we do with teachers. in other words, we learn from them constantly. >> they're involved in the development. >> and kids. we probably had over a thousand kids in the development of our product. >> i want to come to the idea of the curriculum and talk more broadly about why education needs to be revolutionized in the first place, whether we're doing a good job in this country. the tablet, kind of a redo, there was a tablet, the tablet that is new, is more durable, it doesn't break as easily, the glass doesn't break and it's designed really for use in school, it's not a tablet that's been retrofitted it's something that is imagined for k through 12 use.

>> that's exactly right. you give a bunch of teenagers a tablet, some of them think it's a frisbee, you need to be able to make sure you have a rugged tablet. all of our software is really optimal for schools and we've got our tablets running in a lot of schools right now as we speak. >> right. >> and the kids and the teachers like it, but we found on occasion what we see is breakage rates, intel designed a tablet specifically for the rough and tumble in the classroom and that's a new partnership we announced yesterday. >> the curriculum side, as you say, teachers kids both involved in the development hard of hearing this curriculum, it's not just basically gaming. it's really education, right? >> it's all about education. >> you're going to try to get the attention of some kids who may not be reading as much as they should, try to engage them through new means. >> exactly. well, start with the classroom and the teacher, you've got a curriculum for a full year that sequences the things that a kid needs to learn, the different

exercises to engage him in. some active learning, some multimedia. all of which is saying to the teacher, these are the critical things to focus on. you can shift, you can add, you can subtract, but really think about it this way, i've got eric pandel, a nobel prize winner in physics, you've got him saying, really, these are the chief questions about the brain that a kid in the 7th grade or 8th grade ought to be focused on, or i've got somebody focusing on let's just say you mentioned tambor before, he did some work for us, readings on huck finn. now you teach about -- think about how you teach huck finn. if you get jeffrey tambor doing a reading of the first couple of page, kids get excited, they get involved, and we've studied this, we see if you give one kid a book and another kid the video and the book, the kid with the video and the book is going to

stick with it longer and better. >> is your assumption, mr. klein, this translates whether you're in california, alabama, michigan gain, maine, the way teachers teach and what kids need to learn is consistent enough across the board that there can be a digital curriculum that would apply in all cases. >> if you put aside the various accents, i think it translates. >> it's all about accents. >> right. >> not only do i think that. i'm so sure of it. now, when you look around in a global e >> yeah. >> and you see the challenges our children are going to face in the 21st century, i think it's hard for people to understand how rapidly ethics are moving. somebody just pointed out recently in an article that i read, eastman cocharacter with 125,000 employees shut down, and snap chat with about 19 employees sold. there's a lesson, it's important that we get it and give our skills the need they're going to

be needing in the the 21st century. >> you acknowledge that the quality of public school districts vary from district to district within states, the quality of public education in one state differs from the quality in another state, and so it's hard to imagine that what is needed in one state may be the same as what's needed in another state, that's really more the point? >> no, no, i disagree. i think what is needed is needed across the board. and we can all take our game up, you're right, in some states, in some school districts, people are performing better, but there's plenty of room for improvement, so when you bring together, for example, getting a kid involved in a complicated text, understanding it, you know, our motto is we want kids to read like a detective and write like an investigator reporter, and that's a pretty hard challenge. you know, too often complicated texts are hard for kids to engage in. so using these different aids and exercises and student-induced learning and so

forth, all of that, social networking, it reinforces a process, even for the highest performing kids, we pilot this stuff, we pilot it with kids from the highest performing skills and kids from challenged schools. it applies and it works. and the most important thing is to get the kids excited. you mentioned the games, we've developed the suite of over 40 games done with the best gamers in the world. >> yeah. >> i mean this is not, you know, sort of some knockoff game. these are really world-class games, but they reinforce learning, so you've got a kid who is in a cell fighting off viral attacks and so forth, when he starts taking cell biology, he knows all about the cell because he's lived in it within a game. same thing we have which is called lexica, which is a library that is underchallenged and under attack. what does he do or she do? what the kid does is basically read more. and so since this is all digital, you know, you've got good lie brains and bad

librarians and they know what you're reading, you like tom sawyer, you ought to read more of this, it engages kids, what you see is it's starts to do something important and it's hard, learning has got to be demanding and it's got to be engaging, if you make one or the other, it's too easy to engage kids, i could show them videos all day long, but that wouldn't be depending. >> is it fair to take from this that education is broken? the fact that we've come from a place where this kind of a tool is necessary to get public education, broadly said, on track, maybe it's not public education institutionally is not doing a good enough job of educating kids, is the system that we've lived under for all of these years not working. >> i think it's changed a lot. the demands on the system have changed a lot, when i started public school in new york city? 1951, somewhere around 60% of our labor force in that year were high school dropouts. today the number is about 6%, the demands on the educational

system are very different. why not use technology to improve teaching and learning and every other sector, we've seen technology change the world. why not do it for education? >> well, i can think of two reasons why they might be resistant to it. one is it's expensive. the second is conventional education, public education, whether it's teachers unions or group think that goes back many years, it's been done this way, we have to do it this way always, there's a resistance to the new, not just public education. >> i think the unions is interesting. randy winegarden has a thing where teachers share lessons online, you can learn from each other. i think they're seeing the power -- >> you think the teachers and other institutionalists, they're okay with the idea of this kind of change. >> our experience has been yes. if they don't embrace it, it won't work. it's not like something i can force on you, if i give you a digital curriculum and you don't want to use it -- when i was in new york city i left computers

left in the basement, if the teacher is not going to use its, it's not going to work, i think there's an eagerness by teachers, one of the thing we're seeing with the baby boomers retiring, we're getting more and more millennials, more and more digital coming into the system and they're excited, but my favorite one was a woman from jamaica who was teaching and she never used a computer or tablet in her life, she got on our tablet, so excited about it, it proves no more holy than recently converted, she completed -- >> a convert. >> exactly. >> that's it. >> i think we're going to see that, and it only works if teachers think it helps them, and the experience we're having is that teachers feel helped and supported. >> right. >> when we see kids trying to figure out who killed edgar allen poe, the great mystery of who killed poe, when we see these kids having to read more poe to -- >> you're achieving the goal in the end. >> that's what it's all about. >> you talked in the context of

this curriculum about up to common core, let me move away from the moment, to this idea of common core, i believe as of right now, 45 states have embraced common core as we understand it around the country. texas, virginia, virginia, nebraska and alaska have all opted out, minnesota is kind of going halvesies on us, you have a tenth amendment sensibility that has permeated the politics of this country. we don't want washington to tell us what to do. we don't want one size fits all. why is some kind of common curriculum or common curriculum a good thing for this country. >> as you pointed out -- >> a handful opted out. >> they didn't jump out, it's not an idea of federalism. >> going back to what i was saying before about the demands of the 21st century on our kids in terms of how they're going to have to compete, getting kids focused on complicated texts,

moving books that used to be written in the tenth grade down to the 8th grade, those are the kind of challenges we need, and it's essentialier to be done with a single set of high quality standards, if a state like texas wants to adopt high quality standards i'm fine with that as long as they're demanding and rigorous. >> by whose standards. >> the standards of respected academics. that's what achieve did. they brought in leading academics, what worried me, this worries me in new york, if you're a political person, if you have low standards and easy tests you can get high grades, so, you know, it would be great to report to the parents in texas 90% of the kids are proficient and all of them are above average. everybody loves lake would wouln for that reason. [ chuckling ] this is an amazing statistic, one third of the kids that go to college are prepared for college. >> let's talk about that, common core does tie into college readiness, we talk about college

readiness, who could oppose college readiness, we want kids to do whatever it is -- >> you're not going to oppose college readiness. >> i'm not going to oppose it. >> i hope not. >> i'm aware of statistics, pick on texas for example, the state that does not embrace the common core, if you look at the hundreds of thousands of kids who went into the 8th grade of texas public schools schools in, you track their progress for 11 years, six years after they would have graduated from high school, fewer than one in five have some kind of completion of higher ed, where it's a four year degree, a two year degree, or a workforce certificate, one in five. fewer than one in five. for african and american and hispanics kids it's fewer than one in ten. whether or not we like washington, if you like one size fits all, i'm going to take on responsibility in my own state, in the case of texas it doesn't seem to be working. >> that's the problem. it's not that it's not working,

it's not working for the kids who are unprepared. to me, one of the key things that common core is doing is elevating the discussion, and again, if texas wants to have standards -- >> or alaska. >> or alaska or anybody. i hope they're more demanding than the standards, but i think the common core has set at least the baseline. >> you think the bar is high enough as they say? >> it's a baseline. i think over time we'll probably have to raise it again. >> have to raise the bar. >> i mentioned the hispanic and african american codery of kids in texas, across the country we know that if you look from 2000 to 2010, the number of anglo kids in public schools across the country declined, the number of african american kids declined slightly, the number of hispanics went up 50%. the percentage of overall enrollment in public schools across the country. we're going to become more and more hispanic population in this country, and many more kids in public schools are going to be nonanglo. what is the particular challenge

that presents from the public education standpoint? you were the chancellor of a public school system that was quite diverse, you understand the challenges. >> sure, over 40% of my kids in new york were latino background. >> what do you do in that case. >> there are several challenges here, first and most important challenge we've got to get past, some of these kids are undocumented, therefore they're not able to go to college and so forth, we've got to get the dream act and other things done so that there's a path way for those children and their families, they're going to be here, i want them to have the skills and get to college. second thing of course enormous challenges with languages, in addition to everything else, the kid's native language often times are not english. >> you're a big prononet of dual language. >> multiple language. one of the things we opened up a lot of dual language schools in new york city, i'm a big proponent of getting kids fluent in english. that's a major goal we set in new york when we did the work. the third thing you have to do

which makes these things is challenge is obviously you've got kids from all, it's not just one hispanic population. multi-population, multiple, and getting those kids into the american system and getting them acultureated to it, getting them ready to do literature and history and so forth, it's enormous challenge, certain amount -- not every library needs to look the same, but the standards need to be the same, if you start changing the standard, you're going to short change the kids. >> tie that to accountability, a lot of discussion in this country about what is the proper amount and method of accountability in public education, we lived under no child left behind for awhile, we're seeing that fade into the background, you did, like nine years in the largest public school system in the country, surely you have thoughts on accountability for students, what's the proper amount of standardized testing? and what should be the

accountability metrics for teachers? >> i think the reason we're having a big debate about this is people are trying to find one size fits all. most organizations that run well, run on core principles of accountability, but people design them to address the issues, so one of the reasons i was always a big fan of charter schools is different charter schools, whether it was kipp or yes or whatever, they had their own systems of accountability, and what are the things you would look at? you would look at the way you observe people in the classroom. >> yep. >> you try to make sure you strengthen them, if you're a good principal and a good leader, your job is to constantly help people improve. over time you see how they're doing with their kids. you look at their kids, if they're good tests, you look at what kind of progress -- >> the test score is not the only thing. >> not only not the only thing, the evaluation, the ability to observe people, to watch them grow, or in the rare case where they don't grow, to take appropriate action. so i think but you need a certain amount of flexibility, unfortunately k-12, everybody is

looking for one system, you know, you have lots of different industries here in texas, they all have their own accountabilities. >> on common core we do think that there's a way to have something if not one size fits all, a basic set of principles we're going to accept across the state. >> not in terms of the adults in the school. in terms of the kids i do think you need some kind of meaningful -- what it means to graduate from high school, ready for college or career, i think you need to benchmark that and that's uniform across the country. in my own view, if we had each school working out, the way organizations do, a reasonable accountability says they don't have to be identical, and i don't see why they are. i mean i assume organizations that you worked out, texas monthly or whatever, people -- you held people to account, if you were doing a great job, you wanted to get behind them, promote them, if they weren't, you would work with them, you held them to account. you didn't need a formula. you were a good leader. that's what i wish we could -- >> district by district --

>> even school by school. you could have it district by district, but i would like to see the kind of flexibility so that people don't feel it's fair. accountability systems work if people say this is fair. >> if people buy into it. >> yeah. one of the problems with public school, always seemed to me, my father, when he was a kid, during the great depression used to sell shoes and he taught me early on, you can't fit a size 9-foot in a size 7 shoe, and that's -- no matter how good a salesman you are, it's not going to work. that's what it seems so much of public education is. i've got a size 9 shoe, we have a kid who has a size 11-foot. president obama came to visit recently in new york. i did this meeting somebody from ibm, and he said to me, what can i do for the schools? he said here is what we do. i would like to create a program for kids who at the end of it they can become technicians certified by ibm to work -- we now have a six -- >> these are not kids that would

go on to college. >> two years of college. >> they go into the workforce. >> what ibm wanted, they wanted a associate's degree, two years like a community college. so we put together something that's hard to do, we took a four year traditional high school, we went to our city university in new york, took a two year program, merged them together with ibm, at the end of this, you guilty et your associate's degree, you've got to pass a rigorous exam by ibm to show that you're a good technician, then you go to the top of their list to get hired at a job when we did this started at about 55,000 plus benefits. >> better salary when you start than some kids get going to four year college. >> no question. and what we found is we put it in a community that was predominately minority, lots of minority kids signed up, working very hard, so that's my theory, why can't we differentiate, why do we have to have this cookie cutter model of k-12. >> stay with that for a second, you mentioned charter schools.

charter schools are becoming more and more of a thing around the country, except it seems like in post michael bloomberg new york. the new mayor of new york doesn't seem to be as big a fan as charter schools as his predecessor was and other mayors do. >> our charter schools in new york, when bloomberg took over we had 18 charters by the time he left office there were 183 charters. i think this would matter to anyone in the city. last year for 20,000 spots over 70,000 minority families -- >> never enough spots. >> just incredible. so this is what these people want for their children. now, i agree with the mayor that we want to make sure that we focus on all of our schools. it's not just charters. you know, you've got lots of kids in traditional public schools. >> the focus on charters taking away from the traditional public schools. >> i think we can do both. there's no question oh. >> has he asked your guidance on this. >> no he's not asked my

guidance, every kid wants a great school, every parent want as choice. i've never met a parent who just said give me the neighborhood school. i've never met -- none of your viewers feel that way. >> would you extend choice to the place that often there are people who want to take it, that is to vouchers, charters, expanding the ability of parents to get their kid out of a failing school and put them in a school that works or put them in a charter school, that's one thing, then the conversation goes to vouchers. take public money into parochial or private schools and let parents have choice in that respect. >> my first position is that we ought to ramp up charters, the kipps and the uncommon school. i think it's a more challenging set of questions when you get to vouchers. i can see argues for them. >> where are you on that? >> i've been willing to try it to see if it works but convinced that the bigger solution is going to be with the charter schools. >> what is the next wave of public ed reform?

put on your classes, look into the future, right? look into the crystal ball, what are we going to be talking about in three years or five years in terms of public education reform or what should we be talking about. >> i think two key things, the thing we started with and the use of technology to really empower our teachers and engage oh. >> that than left the station. >> it's gathering speed as it goes forward, it not just left the station. when i see my former colleagues talk to me, the second big thing goes back to the thing i was talking to you about with ibm. you know, you said to me a kid should be college or career ready. >> right. >> not everybody wants a four year college experience, liberal arts experience. so i think what we need to do is something european away ahead of us on, develop career and technical schools that will support our schools. >> public private partnerships probably help. >> indispensable.

rahm emmanuel called the ceo of ibm, said, what are you doing for bloomberg, i want you to do it here in chicago. sam said okay, i'll do one, you did one for bloomberg, you need you to do five for me. that is rahm emmanuel. >> rahm emmanuel tends to be competitive. >> i thought that was smart competitive. why can't you take the financial houses, why can't you take the auto companies and have them build these partnerships. they used to say to me what can i do for the schools, and one of the things they can do for the schools is really help us transform the schools from strictly one career -- one college pathway model to a multiple career pathway model and give kids choices. we had a high school, four year high school that was basically a design and construction high school in queens, at the end of four years when you get out of high school, you can apprentice right into the construction unions, over $40,000 a year. and the kids loved it. and my whole theory of what's going to happen is we're going to then see the kind of

diversification that actually addresses the needs of the kids rather than saying, here is the needs of the school system, and the kids have to accommodate to the needs of the schools rather than vice versa. >> very interesting. this is a great topic. it couldn't be more of the moment. i appreciate you making time to talk about it. >> my pleasure. >> congrats on the new products, i like how you have moved past your chancellordom. you seem as energetic. >> chancellordom is a good word. >> we'd love to have you join us in the studio. visit our website at klru.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, q and a's with our audiences and guests and archive of past episodes. >> if you look at countries that succeed, places like finland where they're getting great results, teachers are highly

professionalized. the model we have right now is not a model long-term sustainable, so i hope we would be able to evolve it. over the years in new york we did some of the work to move that forward, but i think you need to do a lot more work. >> funding for "overheard" with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation. improving the quality of life within our community. and from the texas board of legal specialization, board certified attorneys in your community, experienced, respected, and tested. also by hillco partners. texas government affairs consultancy and its global health care consulting business unit hillco health and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation, and viewers

maybe you have some energy- saving appliances, like an energy star-rated washer and dryer. but what about your tv? chances are it's on more than your washer, dryer, and kitchen appliances combined. did you know that if half of us in the u.s. replaced our regular tvs with an energy star model, the change would be like shutting down a power plant? you can find the energy star on everything from standard to high def to the largest flat-screen your heart desires. ow that makes sense. ow that makes sense.

steves: hadrian's wall was built by the romans during the reign of emperor hadrian, nearly 2,000 years ago. this is one of england's most thought-provoking sites and much loved by hikers. this great stone wall stretched 73 miles, from coast to coast, across the narrowest part of northern england. this was more than just a wall. it was a cleverly designed military rampart manned by 20,000 troops. at every mile along the wall, a small fort guarded a gate. its actual purpose is still debated. the wall, which often takes advantage

of natural contours in the land, likely defined the northern edge of the empire and helped to defend roman britain to the south from pesky, hard-to-conquer barbarians to the north. today's modern border between scotland and england still runs pretty close to this ancient wall. a particularly well-preserved segment of the wall leads to housesteads roman fort. roman forts had a standard design -- a rectangular shape containing a commander's headquarters and barracks. there's little more than stone foundations remaining. these stones raised a floor to give stored grain ventilation. and this was once a set of spartan barracks. pondering these desolate ruins, i can imagine the bleakness of being a young roman soldier stationed here 18 centuries ago.

r "they lived in great houses" is provided by: and the members of kcsm, who generously responded. captioned by the captioning company burbank, california >> narrator: hillsborough, california, a town incorporated in 1910 by san francisco's fashionable elite. a wooded enclave 20 miles south of the city. conceived of by millionaires as a bastion of privilege, where northern california's high society devoted itself to imitating the elegant ways of european aristocrats. a closed society where offspring of powerful families intermarried with one another, surrounded themselves with the trappings of royalty, and lived in great houses.