captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> brown: egypt swore in a new leader today, amid a military crackdown on the ousted president's muslim brotherhood allies. good evening, i'm jeffrey brown. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. on the "newshour" this independence day, we get the latest on the celebrations in cairo's tahrir square and look ahead to the promises and pitfalls for egypt and the arab world. >> brown: then, as the west weighs arming syrian rebels. margaret warner examines the lessons learned from previous conflicts. >> woodruff: from our pbs colleagues in chicago, we have the story of a group trying to stem the exit of teachers from the classroom. >> it's a huge problem. i mean we lose 50% of all new teachers in the first three to five years. >> brown: and we close with some historical perspectives on last

week's extraordinary and landmark decisions at the supreme court. >> a historian 50 years from now-- i think it would be very hard for them to write about this period without writing about what happened last week-- three cases particularly that do have threads that run all the way through american history. >> brown: that's all ahead on tonight's "newshour." >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> and by the alfred p. sloan foundation.

supporting science, technology, and improved economic performance and financial literacy in the 21st century. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: egypt's new leader called for reconciliation today, even as the army arrested key members of the muslim brotherhood-- the party of deposed president mohammed morsi. cheers of celebration erupted in tahrir square today as egyptian military jets flew in formation over the streets of cairo, marking the installation of an interim president. state television broadcast live

the swearing-in of adli mansour, the former chief justice of egypt's supreme constitutional court. >> ( translated ): i vow to safeguard the republican system and to respect the law and constitution and to look after the interests of the people and to preserve the independence of the homeland and its safety. >> woodruff: mansour vowed to uphold the spirit of the 2011 revolution. >> ( translated ): the guarantee of the continuity of the revolution's spirit carries the hope for us that the values of this revolution will be upheld. the first of which is to put an end to the idea of worshipping the leader and creating a half- divine entity out him. >> woodruff: and promised to quickly organize new presidential and parliamentary elections. he was chosen by the nation's military leaders yesterday, after they deposed president mohammed morsi. anti-morsi demonstrators welcomed the change in leadership.

>> but it is the majority of the egyptian people who forced the army to give back the right we gave to mr. morsi. he didn't behave correctly so that we told him give it back to us and we are going to choose somebody else. >> woodruff: but morsi supporters denounced the military's actions. >> ( translated ): we reject the rule of the military. we will reject it with peaceful moves but we will confront it, but not with molotovs, like they do. but we will not allow the state to go backwards by tens of years. >> woodruff: later, mansour did offer an olive branch to morsi's muslim brotherhood party. he told journalists: >> woodruff: but while brotherhood officials asked supporters not to resort to violence, they said the group would refuse to work with the new political system.

meanwhile, egyptian security officials took the group's supreme leader, mohammed badie into custody. one of more than 200 brotherhood and other islamist leaders on a military wanted list. and placed morsi and at least a dozen of his aides under house arrest. reactions flooded in from around the region. turkey and tunisia were critical: tunisia's ruling ennahda party released a statement condemned the action, calling it a flagrant coup. but in syria, president bashar al assad praised the action saying it meant the end of political islam. meanwhile the obama administration is treading carefully in its response to the developments in egypt. in a written statement, the president acknowledged the grievances of the egyptian people but said he was deeply concerned about the military's removal of morsi and the future of democracy in egypt. at the white house, president

obama met on this holiday with members of his national security team to discuss the situation in egypt. his staff has contacted officials in cairo today. for more on what egypt's leadership change means for the country and the region, i'm joined by shibley telhami, the anwar sadat professor of peace and development at the university of maryland. his latest book is "the world through arab eyes: arab public opinion and the reshaping of the middle east." and hussein ibish, a commentator and blogger who writes a weekly column on the middle east for "foreign policy" and the daily beast. welcome to you both to the program. >> hussein ibish, first of all what do you make of this new leadership arrangement imposed by the military? >> well, what is most striking about it is the degree of consensus behind it. i mean, i think you would see a military action, a coup, in effect, coming, but i think this is a unique kind of coup, because almost all of the other social and political forces in

egypt other than the muslim brotherhood gave their assent to it and that's very unusual, so it is sort of a coup by acclamation and there is a consensual quality to it that is extremely unusual in a coup. >> what do you think of this arrangement? >> i think it really had an element of consensus in a revolution but an element of counter revolution, an element of, it has all of these things and i have thought of the problem. there is a consensus among morsi that he had to go in many ways but there is no consensus on what they want, because you had a liberal faction that wants to see real, genuine inclusive democratic reform and you have people who want to go back to something close to what the number rec regime was like and you have the military among whose offices there are still many who want to assert themselves so you have all of the contradictions and toes are likely to come into play very quickly. we saw it even on the first day when the liberals couldn't

possibly have been happy when the security forces sent their forces to the media outlets, especially the religious ones but also al jazeera and provided legitimacy to of to the head of the legitimate religious figure in egypt was there at the decree, and he said, he said, well, i am doing this because this is the lesser of two evils. >> that tells you something about the quality of it. >> so you did have, hussein ibish, you had the liberals and the ultra conservatives that are standing with the military when they made the announcement, does it give it more legitimacy or not. >> undoubtedly much more legitimacy, however i think he makes a good point, you can see the fissures already and you may wonder if the liberals are upset, they say they are upset, i had a conversation with one of them earlier today and a senior member of the national salvation front and he was upset at some of the repressive steps that have been taken, so i agree that there is con enus is only on a

very few things, need to revise the constitution, a need for a new elections, and a need to get rid of the old government, but what after that, i think there is no consensus. >> so do you believe, should one believe, shibley telhami the military when they say this is a temporary arrangement or goal is to have elections as soon as possible. >> whether you believe them or not, they understand they have limits to their power and they learned a lesson you can see it from the first transition because they are not governing directly, they are appointing a civilian president, they want a technocratic government and distancing themselves, they see the masses, they see tell mahdi on the street and they can't possibly be aspiring to be another tyrant because they though they will face the same kind of reaction. >> it is a very different situation from what you had. >> well, they had that experience of a year and a half in direct governance between mubarek and morsi and they didn't like it, institutional problems for them and it damaged their reputation, they don't want to go back to it, they have certain spheres of influence

they need to protect or want to protect, control over defense and the national security, their secret budget and their uncataloged share this the national economy, maybe 20 percent or so of the gdp. everything else they would like to leave to somebody else to govern. they wanted a partner in the muslim brothers, they thought maybe they had one but think found out they are ineffective. >> speaking of that was it necessary for them to arrest a couple of hundred credit of the leadership of the muslim brotherhood? >> tha that is one of the major problems up front you have a message coming from the appointed president who says we are inclusive and invite them to participate and here you have the security forces raiding all of these major leaders of the muslim brotherhood, it is a mixed message which is why the obama administration is trying to use that as a kind of a way to influence events, given they have to decide on whether this was a military coup or not to abide by the american law.

>> urging them not to do it but they went ahead and did it anyway, they went ahead and made these arrests. >> and it is going to be interesting to watch what the new president does, who has the authority to do it, who is giving the orders, obviously the interior ministry but does the new president have the authority to say to them, stop or is this coming from the military? there is no constitution this place today. >> is there really a question though about whether the military is running things? isn't it clear they are? >> well, they are the power behind the arrangement, there is no doubt, but what decisions they are making is certainly opens a question. i think these decisions are rash and irresponsible, there is no need torre emive repression, will is nothing that the brotherhood leadership has done so far orca delays on the street that, a draiz on the street that warrant this. >> why are they doing it? >> i suppose in order to preempt any notion that you could find the islamists reacting in a violent or sub search receive

way or there is a part of this coalition that wants to try to destroy the muslim brotherhood as an institution this would be a terrible mistake, both sides in this equation have to restrain themselves, the muslim brotherhood cannot resort to violence or it will create a civil war but if the president ruling faction cracks down on them too much, they will, that will have the same effect. >> excuse me. can any new arrangement work, though, shibley telhami if they say we are not going to participate? >> that is really, immediately that is the major question, is how will the muslim brotherhood react? and here are the options. on the first -- they certainly can try to stay peaceful. they have been largely peaceful. they can stay peaceful, put masses into the streets, play the same game that the opposition did, paralyze the country and put pressure, have them, you know, acknowledge that they are part of the installation but on the other hand, if nothing happens and they are being arrested, we know

that there have been offshoots of the muslim brotherhood that have been militant in the past and this could happen again, this is a dangerous game being played and how the muslim brotherhood reacts is going to be a central, but one thing i say in terms of the hope, some people think they really have an interesting coming back to play, because they could win a parliamentary election given given the disarray in the opposition, they wouldn't do it now -- >> in other words it is not clear where the balance is? >> it is not clear where the balance is but it is not going to happen immediately. >> just very quickly less than a minute, shibley a telhami we described some of the reactions of the reaction of the leaders in the region, a split, what effect do you see on the region? >> this is a wakeup call to the islamists within the region they are not the natural representatives of the arabs and the muslims, the fact most of the other devout muslims doesn't

make them muslim brotherhood. it is an illusion that they need to break themselves from, and i think people in the west -- >> what countries are we talking about? >> i am talking about islamists throughout the middle east. >> turkey? >> certainly the turkish akp and their followers are nervous about this, all of the muslim brotherhood groups in the area must be shocked at the extent of unanimity of the rest of egyptian society rejection of mohamed morsi, so they are going to have to consider whether, you know, learning, learning the skills of conciliation and compromise and consensus building, which they haven't done as in all of these years in opposition and came to haunt them in egypt and brought them down the packet they couldn't do it. >> the story moves on, thank you very much, ibish and telhami. >> pleasure. >> picking up on >> brown: we have more on what morsi's ouster could mean for other islamist movements. find that on our world page. and still to come on the

"newshour": providing military aid to rebel forces; keeping teachers in the classroom and making history at the supreme court. but first, the other news of the day. here's hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: americans across the country and around the world gathered today to celebrate the nation's 237th anniversary of independence from great britain. for the first time since hurricane sandy ravaged new york last fall, visitors were allowed to climb up to the crown of the statue of liberty this fourth of july holiday. first time we have been to new york city and athought it would be nice to be here on july 4th, see the statue of liberty. >> the >> sreenivasan: the iconic landmark had been closed since the storm battered liberty island where the statue stands. the force from sandy ripped up docks and walkways, and left most of the island under water. but today, after months of around-the-clock repairs, new york city mayor michael bloomberg joined federal officials at a ribbon cutting ceremony. >> one, two, three, hey! ( applause ) >> sreenivasan: meanwhile on nearby coney island, in

brooklyn, a somewhat less sacred symbol of the american holiday, the hot dog, was the subject of the 98th annual nathan's competitive eating contest. but at most cookouts non- competitive eating was the norm as americans gathered for picnics around the country. in washington there was plenty of red, white and blue at the national park service's annual parade down constitution avenue. at george washington's mount vernon on the banks of potomac river, crowds enjoyed early daytime fireworks, ahead of tonight's show on the national mall. in his weekly address, president obama urged americans to live up to the words of the declaration of independence and thanked u.s. troops around the world. >> you have defended us at home and abroad. and you have fought on our nation's behalf to make the world a better, safer place. >> sreenivasan: some of the 68,000 u.s. troops stationed in kabul, afghanistan celebrated the holiday with song. and at bagram airbase, outside of kabul, more than 30 troops

took the oath of citizenship. some military bases in the u.s. were forced to cancel or scale back celebrations because of the automatic budget cuts known as the sequester. one place the celebrations didn't stop was boston, where security was tight as large crowds gathered for the first time since the boston marathon bombings in april. crews at the scene of a deadly wildfire in arizona made more progress today containing the blaze. the yarnell fire-- burning northwest of phoenix-- is now 45% contained with nearly 700 firefighters working around the clock. fire information officer suzanne flory described the operation's main focus today. >> we're going to continue doing what we call a mop up, making sure hot spots are out around structures. we're doing this maybe even a little more than we normally do because there are so many structures involved. we want to make sure that those areas are clear so that folks can get back home as soon as possible. at he same

time, an investigation into the deaths of 19 firefighters in yarnell over the weekend is already underway. initial autopsy findings released today showed the firefighters died of burns and inhalation problems. chrysler announced five separate recalls that affect 840,000 vehicles. most of them are in the u.s. four of the recalls involve electronic issues, but the largest is a recall of 490,000 cars and s.u.v.'s that have problems with their active- restraint head rests in rear-end collisions. since june, chrysler has issued two recalls involving some four million vehicles. a family dispute over the legacy of former south african president nelson mandela deepened today. the remains of his three deceased children were reburied at their original gravesite after a court order. mandela remains in the hospital on life support, in critical but stable condition. we have a report from jonathan miller of "independent television news." >> reporter: the mandela cortege arrived back in qunu this afternoon. and, having been dug up twice now, the remains of three of

nelson mandela's children were laid to rest for a third time back in the ancestral graveyard. there's an urgency to this. court papers now reveal that doctors advised the family it's time to turn off the life support. the chief of the clan, nelson mandela's heir mandla is on the warpath there. 20 miles down the road in mvezo he lashed out at his feuding family which has inflicted a humiliating legal defeat on mandela in the battle for the bones and where the great patriarch should be buried. >> it seems like anyone and everyone can come and say i am a mandela and demand to be part of the decision-making in this family. >> reporter: in court, mandla's aunt makaziwe mandela and 15 other family members accused him of illegally exhuming the remains. he's branded her a shameless

profiteer and accuses makaziwe of suing her dying father for control of his money. yesterday police forced their way into mandla's estate at mvezo on the hunt for bodies. he's built a palace and culture village here. the rest of the family suspect he wanted his grandfather buried here too in a mandela theme park. mandela denies this. he's says it's the rest of the family that's cashing in on the mandela brand name. so the great reconciliator who taught a whole nation not to fight, perilous now to do anything about his own warring, family. thankfully it seems unaware. >> sreenivasan: mandela has been hospitalized since early june for a recurring lung infection. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to jeff. >> brown: we return now to syria. in an interview published today, president bashar al-assad said that only direct foreign

military intervention can threaten his government. he added that he believed that would never happen. while direct intervention remains off the table for the united states, there has been a change to strengthen assad's enemies on the battlefield. margaret warner reports on those efforts and moves to back rebels in past conflicts. >> warner: three weeks ago the obama administration, in a policy shift, announced it would provide what it called "dramatically increased assistance" to some elements of the syrian rebels. since then, white house officials have offered few details on what the military aid would look like. deputy national security advisor ben rhodes spoke publicly about it on june 14th. >> i can't give you a specific timeline or an itemized list of what that assistance is and when it will get there. what we want to do with our assistance is strengthen their effectiveness so that they have better capabilities as they are pursuing their efforts within

syria. we want to strengthen their >> warner: the decision came after u.s. intelligence determined that, "the assad regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year." that crossed a red line set by president obama earlier. the move also followed the fall of the strategic rebel-held town of qusair near the lebanese border, seen as a sign that president bashar al-assad's forces, backed by hezbollah fighters, were regaining momentum. early reports indicated that the u.s. assistance would be limited to small arms and ammunition that drew criticism from arizona senator john mccain. >> these people, the free syrian army, need weapons, heavy weapons, to counter tanks and aircrafts they need a no-fly zone, and bashar assad's air assets have to be taken out and

neutralized. >> warner: but the administration is concerned that heavy weapons intended for the free syrian army rebel force could end up with more radical jihadi rebels, like those of the al-quaeda linked al-nusra front. this is not the first time the u.s. has provided such aid. for example, during the last decade of the cold war, in the 1980s, the u.s. furnished arms and training to the nicaraguan contras as well as to the mujahaddin fighting the soviet occupation of afghanistan. >> so what does history say about how successful the u.s. has been in arming rebel opposition movements? on that, we get two views, michael pill bury assistant undersecretary of defense during the reagan administration, he was responsible for coordinating covert aid to the afghanistan new a ja dean in the fight against the soviets and now a senior fellow at the hudson institute and still advise it is defense department .. and robert

dreyfuss is a journalist and contributing editor at the nation, and author of the book, devil's game, how the united states helped unleash fundamentalist islam and welcome to you both. bob dry few, beginning with you as the u.s. embarks on arming the syrian rebels, what has been the track record in the past of success or failure in doing this? >> .. well it is a mixed record to say the least. we can point to afghanistan as the primary example of what happens when the united states kind of bumbles into a country that it really doesn't understand the dynamics of, and unleashes a force it doesn't control. you could say the same thing about angola during the same period, during the reagan doctrine era, when we tried to back rebel groups in that country against what was then a pro soviet government, but in both cases you are unleashing a

devilishly complex force that you don't control, you don't command, and which is something that you are taking a huge risk in funneling arms and money into a group like that. >> michael, is it -- has history proven that it is really a risk and in fact leads to more problems? i mean, take the afghan example, which you were intimately involved. >> i would say it is possible to succeed. pessimists often pearl lies action so it is important to see the risks .. >> well, do you think arming the afteafghan resistance was, in te end, successful or supports the history, has the history shown ultimately that many of those same mujahedin became the core of al qaeda which became a sworn enemy and dangerous enemy to the united states? >> well, you pay the taliban, they became the core, some parts

of the people we worked with and aided and gave money to, did, in fact, become taliban leaders. but the majority became part of the government in afghanistan today, including president karzai, are a heap wardak, his defense minister for six years, so, no, we end up unleashing forces we couldn't control. we ended up supporting the eventual vick tors, but far fewer people had to die than if we had done nothing. >> in afghanistan, in particular .. it wasn't just the taliban but actually because we were twice removed from that, we were funneling our money into the pakastanis who then, in turn, distributed the money and the arms to the rebels, a big chunk, in fact the majority of the chunk of the money and support we were given went to one of the leaders of the party that is literally fighting us today in eastern afghanistan.

we helped create al qaeda by supporting the islamist whose rallied around osama bin laden's role in afghanistan in the late 1980s. by going into afghanistan, we led to a catastrophic civil war, which broke the country apart for five years after the soviets left, and then led to the taliban regime, and everything that has happened since then. >> let me get mike pillsbury back in this. in this case, the administration is trying to arm the good guys among the syrian remembers, that is, the ones who are the original sunni opposition who are not islamists to strengthen them against i didn't a difficult mined rebels, have we ever attempted that kind of -- making that kind of fine distinction and with any success? was that a problem in afghanistan? >> yes, it was. there was .. a problem involving the pakastanis having a preference for the more i didn't a difficult minded mujahedin and

trying to support those who have been trained in the west and more secular in orientation, there are a number of lessons that were learned by president reagan's effort with the afghan rebels. one of them was, the first five years we made many mistakes, the program was too small, the weapons were single shot, world war i rifles, ther there was no political coordination. the second five years when we were successful and president obama could learn lessons from what to do about syria. >> and the lessons are that you have to -- if you are going to go in you go all in? >> exactly. >> we got much more involved with the afghan rebels. >> we helped them plan missions, we shared intelligence with them about what were the most vulnerable targets that would kill almost nobody but the targets themselves, would so impress the other side that the war would end sooner. that's the kind of intelligence information that the syrian rebels need. >> bob dreyfuss?

>> yes, by all accounts, we just know that these syrian rebels, the majority of them, are, in fact, one or another strain of radical islamists especially the best fighters and the idea that we understand syria well enough to vet and pick and choose which of these rebels groups to support is ludicrous. we didn't understand iraq when we went in there, we didn't understand afghanistan. in 2001 when we went in there, i would argue we still don't and we certainly don't understand syria in terms of its internal dynamics. i don't see what the united states has to gain by supporting rebels, especially when there is a diplomatic path out of that, and that would start, by the way with us putting pressure on qatar and saudi arabia to wind down their support for the rebels and then draw them and assad into this geneva peace conference which the united states and russia are trying to put together. and iran could play a role in that too. >> and mike pillsbury final quick thought on you on the

point that mr. dreyfuss just raised that at the very least you have to have great coordination and common purpose with your allies in this. >> yes. >> and not be at cross purposes? >> you also have to focus on humanitarian. >> you agree with that? >> i agree with that, that was in the second five years, where the success came from but you also have to focus on humanitarian side, you see standing aside, doing what bob dreyfuss recommends we stand aside and do nothing we are not going to have a peaceful cease-fire, a million people are going to die. that is the reason for the intervention, i support what president obama has decided, and i think bob dreyfuss and others better get on board, that debate is over. we are involved now. the question is, how to be effective, how to win. >> well i think unfortunately this debate is over but thank you both, mike pillsbury and bob dreyfuss. >> woodruff: now, a coming crisis in the classroom, as more

teachers exit the profession. a non-profit organization is combating the high turnover rates by mentoring new teachers. our story comes from ashar quraishi of wttw chicago. >> reporter: walk in to abby miller's third grade class at sumner elementary school on chicago's west side and you'd never guess this is her first year teaching. >> if he puts them in ten rows, how many chairs should he put in each row? get to work. i'm setting the timer for six minutes. >> reporter: she exudes the confidence and authority of an old hand in front of her sometimes unruly eight-year old students. >> my mom and i have this running joke that in my first year of teaching i actually have 15 years of experience. >> reporter: still, it's been a tough year for miller and for the chicago public school district as a whole. >> whose choice was this? rahm's choice! >> reporter: the year began with a bitter dispute between the

chicago teachers union and mayor rahm emanuel over wages, teacher evaluations and class size. it was the district's first strike in 25 years. and then the city's controversial decision to close more than 50 elementary schools sparked renewed opposition from teachers. the closings this fall will be the nation's largest ever. amidst all the very public disruptions, about 100 chicago public schools suffer from chronically high rates of teacher turnover, losing a quarter or more of their teaching staff every year. as a result there are thousands of new teachers, like abby miller who are trying to take charge of a classroom for the first time. >> how come every time we come back from math lab half the class has lost their pencil? to say it's a challenge is an understatement. >> i kind of had a false sense of what i was getting myself into. you can study it in a classroom, you can say "oh well, if this student does this, then you

should do this, if this student does that, then you should do that", but really it depends on where you teach, it depends on who you teach, things that worked for my fifth graders at the beginning of the year, don't work over here, things that work over here with the third graders, didn't work with my fifth graders, and i have a strong feeling that things that worked this year are not going to work next year. >> reporter: her experience of trial by fire in the classroom is increasingly common. a recent national study found that the teaching workforce is getting younger and less experienced. making matters worse is a tsunami of retiring veteran teachers. between 2004 and 2008 more than 300,000 veteran teachers left the workforce for retirement. walk into any classroom in the country today and you're more likely to find a teacher in their first year of teaching than any other experience level. and they're not sticking around. at the core of the crisis say experts is that first year teachers are particularly vulnerable when it comes to

buckling under the pressure and frustrations they are sometimes ill-prepared to face once they take to the classroom. >> it's a huge problem. i mean we lose 50% of all new teachers in the first three to five years. >> reporter: ellen moir saw the problem first hand. as a director of teacher education at the university of california santa cruz she found that success was eluding even her best and brightest student teachers. >> they said, "oh my gosh, i thought i was going to be a great teacher and i'm not. i feel like a fraud, i shouldn't really be doing this work." and i thought, "wait a minute, there's some disconnect here if you could really get a great teacher ed. program and you tee someone up for their first year of teaching. what's the problem?" >> reporter: inevitably she says these teachers faced some of the toughest assignments, in some of the country's toughest schools, and they were left to sink or swim. to combat that, she founded the new teacher center-- a non- profit educational organization

that focuses on first-year teacher mentoring and development led by skilled, veteran teachers. >> tell me about some of the things that have been challenging lately. >> reporter: larissa bennett is one of those expert teachers and has been mentoring abby miller for the better part of the last school year. mentors like bennett meet one- on-one with their apprentices to provide professional development, leadership training, and specific advice on classroom management. >> they did just below what i expected and it was hard not to see that as a reflection upon my teaching. so, that was a tough day. >> we want them to know that they have someone that they can go to. teachers that feel supported, that feel appreciated and valued, stay in the profession. so if we can get to those teachers their first year and make them feel those things, give them the tools to succeed, they would stay. >> reporter: in addition to that support bennett says teachers in big districts like chicago don't have the luxury of taking months

and years to become effective. >> we need them great yesterday. so we help them develop skills and strategies to teach in these difficult areas. >> reporter: the high dropout rate for new teachers is also expensive. for example, the price-tag associated with recruiting, hiring, and training a replacement teacher is substantial. it's estimated that every time a teacher walks out the door in chicago, it costs the district about $18,000 to replace them. according to a report from the national commission on teaching and america's future the total cost of turnover in the chicago public schools is estimated to be over $86 million a year. nationally that figure tops more than $7 billion annually. >> and you want to make sure you're asking those mentoring questions, right? you know, i'm wondering if have you thought about doing it this way? you know, could it be possible that? think about where the teacher is in their practice. >> reporter: new teacher center mentors meet regularly with other expert teachers to discuss protocols for supporting their first year teachers.

they partner with school districts and educators to help implement best practices for new teacher induction. >> as the country's talking about developing teachers, i think there's a much greater understanding and recognition that really talented teachers are not born, they're made. and we have to be systematic about it and we need to really build off of the talent that we have in our school systems. >> reporter: the new teacher center has financial support from numerous foundations as well as the u.s. department of education. it's one of the largest teacher mentoring resources in the nation. today the organization reaches over 15,000 new teachers, in all 50 states with about 7,000 expert teachers and is being modeled in countries like singapore, finland, scotland, and panama. and moir says it's working. >> it's a great idea and it's super successful. i mean look it's hard to measure teacher effectiveness but let me talk a little bit about the retention side of the equation. we're easily upping retention by 20% in the districts that we're

working in. in 24 of the largest urban districts i mean retention is up significantly. >> reporter: and for teachers like abby miller while this year has tested her resolve she says the mentoring has helped her retain the grit that got her into teaching in the first place. >> right now i see myself still teaching. there is a reason that i decided to come into teaching, you know it's tough, there are days where i come home and throw my arms and say i'm done, i'm not doing it anymore, but those are in the rarity and there are more days when i come home and say i helped this kid learn this today. >> reporter: using a grant from the u.s. department of education the new teacher center plans to expand in chicago with a focus on high-poverty schools.

>> brown: finally tonight, a july 4th view of america, through last week's landmark decisions at the supreme court. two were seen as victories for gay rights advocates and another struck down a key provision of the 1965 voting rights act. for some long-view perspective on the court and its rulings, yesterday i sat down with four historians. >> and joining me are ellen fitzpatrick, political historian at the university of new hampshire, kenneth mac, who specializes in civil rights history, and race relations at harvard law school, george chancy a historian at yale university who has written widely on the gay rights movement and served as an expert witness in the same-sex marriage cases decided last week, and presidential historian michael beschloss, and michael le let me ask you to set the frame for us to start off here. the supreme court in one week tackling major issues that

resonate through american history. >> yes, you know, oftentimes you go through a week like this and there may be cases that are interesting now but not likely to be written about later on, the historian 50 years now if they are writing a general political history of the united states i think will be very hard for them to write about this period without writing about what happened last week, three cases particularly that do have to run all the way through american history. >> ken net mac did you see a broad theme in these cases either in the kind of issues they were tackling or in the out comes? .. >> yes, i agree with michael beschloss, that history was invoked in actually all of the cases, history to invalidate a section of the voting rights act, history in the sense that chief justice roberts says voting discrimination of the kind that this section was trying to attack is history, it is part of the past. and history invoked to strike

down the defense of marriage act, when justice kennedy clearly is saying that the fact that certain states seem to be moving to protect gay marriage is a movement of history, that the court is going to acknowledge and in part base its opinion on that. >> george comawns situate, the same question to you what struck you watching these cases, particularly the one you were most interested in, and involved in juxtaposed against some of the others? >> well, there were of course varying mixed decisions in terms of the civil rights, one really can't overstate the importance of the marriage decision, because marriage is historically been such an important symbol of people's equality and full citizenship, slaves couldn't get married, jews couldn't marry nonjews in nazi germany and justice kennedy really spoke to that in his decision, which spent a lot of time talking about doma and infringement on

the equality of gay people and giving them second-class marriages, and then again in a voting rights act, talking as if history was behind us as if the problem of race in america were over. >> and ellen fitzpatrick, bring you into it. give us a first general overview, what did you see? >> i think probably the most relevant point to refer to is justice kennedy's comment that in the defense of marriage case that these really reflect evolving understandings in communities of the meaning of equality, and all of these cases, i think, in some sense, really touch on that question. what are our fundamental rights hohow should they be enforced? and have we reached a point of progress in our society where we

no longer need the kind of supervision that the reconstruction amendment, the fifteenth amendment really put into the hands of congress, has equality he involved to that point where that is no longer necessary? in the marriage case, obviously, saying that new understandings in states and in communities do force really this issue, and the importance of acknowledging the dignity of this right. >> michael, actually, that word evolving is what i want to pick up on because we talk a lot here about things that seem settled at one point and, at one moment and then unsettle and a we get to watch it. >> in history there is an argument that never ends and that's the way it should be. >> in the beginning when what the supreme court should really do, there was a minority of these justices that were almost cloistered and not knowing what is going on within society and i

think you have to say if these justices, for instance, on marriage equality had been sequestered somewhere and not aware of changes within american society over the last ten, 20, 30 years, this decision might not have come about and it was, to some extent, for that reason, a surprise. >> and kenneth mac, pick up on that .. because one of the questions in a moment like this is the court leading the way this is it following the way? does it watch what goes on in the society at large? >> well, the consensus among constitutional scholars today is that the court, if it leads, it leads only slightly, that it very much follows what is going on in larger society and, in fact, it always has, and it is not at all surprising to see attitudes towards gay marriage evolving dramatically between the enactment of the defense of marriage act and today, and to to see the supreme court, the

supreme court's court approach to this issue dramatically, the consensus among scholars that study the supreme court is that this kind of thing is essentially what the court does, if it is ahead it is a little ahead, and it is very much embedded in the larger world around it. >> well, george chauncey in the case of same-sex marriage there certainly was a lot of commentary in the last, well, weeks, months, years even about how quickly things have seemed to have evolved in the culture. is that the reality or is that just how it appears at a moment like this? >> well, there obviously has been a pretty dramatic shift in public opinion in the last several years, but we need to remember that marriage has been fought for a long time and only really became an issue for gay advocates in the late eighties when the aids crisis and the fact that growing numbers of women were having children together, confronted with the fact that their relationships weren't recognized by the law, and they suddenly had to deal

with hospitals that wouldn't recognize them and funeral homes and adoption agencies, and so the marriage movement grew out of that in the nineties but it was immediately confronted with very powerful resistance in 1996 this has been mentioned, in the height of a presidential campaign when it first just looked like one state might make marriage legal and why congress overwhelming i will passed the defense of marriage act and plea clinton signed it, and in 1993 when massachusetts became the first state to give marriage rights it produced a firestorm of opposition and finally 41 states passed constitutional amendments or both that granted marriage to a man and woman this has been struggled over in a pretty intense way for 30 years, and in the last decade it has really just in the last few careers we have begun to see movement towards a growing popular support for marriage equality. >> and just to stay with you for

a moment, what is your theory on the question i asked the others about what happens with the court in a moment like this? are they following the culture, leading the culture in some sense? what do you think? >> well, i think they are doing a bit of both. you simply can't underestimate the significance of the court ruling that gay couples, gay married couples should be treated the same as heterosexual married couples and kennedy's language of quality and dignity really resonate and at the same time, and i think that only would have happened in the context where 12 states had enacted marriage, most of them by legislative action, referenda, and at the same time the court did not settle the marriage debate for good, it returns the decision to california so people can get married in california now, but there are still 37 states where people can't get married, 30 of them have constitutional amendments prohibiting them from doing so-so this is something we will be fighting for years to

come and the court wasn't ready to intervene. >> and ellen fitzpatrick go ahead and weigh in on this question of leading and following and where are we in the evolution? you started with that word yourself. >> yes. >> i agree with professor mac that the supreme court is generally if you look at its long history quite a conservative institution, occasionally it is in advance of society but rarely is that the case. it usually is reacting to longer term changes in the country itself. one thing, though, that i think we should feel less optimistic about in looking at these decisions is the voting rights issue. that is, in this instance, it seems to me that the court has taken quite an activist stance in arguing that congress has overreached in the various rules that it has put into place in

supervising, using the power of the federal government to supervise elections particularly in the south, where there has been a long history of infringements on the right to vote. and it is far from, it seems to me, those infringements are far from a dead letter, and yet the court seems to be judging the history of the last century in a very positive way, and arguing, really, that those kinds of safeguards are not necessary. if we look at it in the broadest implications of what they are saying, and that, i think, is a reading of recent history that certainly justice ginsburg took very strong exception to, evoking the very same history, but reading it in a less optimistic way. >> but didn't, michael, i mean in is another issue that has

reverberations in the past which we lead to activism by the judge. >> absolutely. >> one way or the other. >> yes. and that grew out of 1965, the voting rights act, that was one of the crown jewels of the johnson administration under the earl warren, very progressive court, leading on at least the court's side a very different period now and i think even the most dispassionate person would really have to say this is a roll of the dice if we are looking at this 50 years from now it will either be this decision meant that voting rights once again began to get restricted through the country or it worked. >> kenneth mac what what do you think of that on that decision? but also this question of judicial activism on one side or the other, and how that too evolves? >> yes. you notice actually on both of the decisions, the gay marriage one and the voting rights act, the majority essentially invalidated an act of congress,

and the dissents both invoked judicial activism, it is just that the two sides were switched with one vote switching sides to make the majority in each case. so it is a standard rhetoric in the supreme court that many, many dissenting groups of justices ev judicial activism. these are both end of term cases. they are the last cases the supreme court decided this term. these kind of cases are usually the cases where the justices are very decided, where often the decisions are not necessarily based on clear precedent, but on the majority of the justices feel for where the law should go. and in that sense the voting rights act decision and the gay rights act -- gay marriage decisions are both judicial activist decisions. one thing i would note is that the voting rights decision, the

voting rights act was re-authorized in 2006, but overwhelming majorities in both houses of congress signed by president george w. bush, very, very different, the gay marriage decision it seems to me, the president and -- many, many states were moving in that direction, so in the voting rights decision, the court overruled what was, you know, a consensus amok two branches of government, and a very reaching consensus. >> well, george chauncey, you were starting to say before that you think that there is far more to come here, particularly on the marriage question. this history is certainly far from over, right? >> oh, yes, absolutely. and i just say to the last question, i it is clear that justice kennedy was really thinking about the issue of become accused of judicial activism this has been a marriage theme in the marriage debate and a handful of judges

granting marriage rights in fact it is the first three states that acquired gay marriage rights, the same-sex couples through court decisions and now california, and the other ten states have done so through legislation and popular referenda but this marriage issue will continue to be waged state by state for years to come, and although the press has focused on marriage for lots of good reasons, given its symbolism and practical effect there are many other issues that gay rights activists are working on, the endemic bullying of kids who are identified as queer in schools across the country, really complex legal and cultural issues at that transgender people faced, the up surge in new hiv infections among young gay and bisexual men and the fact that congress itself has still not passed a federal law banning discrimination in employment. so it is not like the marriage issue has been settled itself or

even if it were, that gay rights would have been a done deal by now. >> all right. we are going to leave it there and thank you all for, george chauncey, ellen fit fitzpatrickn net mac and michael beschloss, thank you all very >> woodruff: again, the major developments of the day: egypt swore in an interim leader and the military rounded up a number of the top muslim brotherhood members. the statue of liberty reopened on this fourth of july holiday, eight months after superstorm sandy forced it to close. >> brown: online, we have more of that ribbon-cutting ceremony at the statue of liberty. hari sreenivasan explains. >> sreenivasan: you can watch all of the re-opening of one of the nation's enduring icons. see the video of today's festivities in new york harbor on the rundown. plus we dig into the newshour archives to hear words about america from walt whitman, read by former poet laureate robert pinsky. find that on art beat. all that and more is on our website newshour.pbs.org. jeff?

>> brown: and that's the "newshour" for tonight. i'm jeffrey brown. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. we'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening with david brooks and ruth marcus, among others. have a happy fourth of july. thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> and the william and flora hewlett foundation, working to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions captioned by media access group at wgbh

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