Vol 1 – Introducing WonkyFolk

This week some of the topics we discuss include the following:

  • Why are we making WonkyFolk
  • Reactions to Nashville and trends we often miss at tragic moments like this
  • The commonalities and differences facing public education in Los Angeles and Chicago
  • Andy’s recommendation of the best read to prepare educators
  • The changes that ChatGPT may or may not bring to public education
Transcript
Jed:

Hey Andy.

Andy:

Hey Jed.

Andy:

How are you?

Jed:

I'm doing great.

Jed:

Well, thanks for sharing this idea of creating WonkyFolk.

Andy:

Absolutely.

Jed:

It's something you and I have been batting around here for, I

Jed:

don't know, several months here.

Jed:

And just this idea that if there's anything that I crave

Jed:

in the education space right now is just some sense of coherence.

Jed:

There's just so many things that are happening, at such a pace.

Jed:

And there's just so much variety at a national level.

Jed:

And certainly one thing I've just valued in you, Andy, and your work at Bellweather

Jed:

is just being able to bring coherence also with a perspective that's just nationwide.

Jed:

And so, hey, maybe we end up talking amongst ourselves and

Jed:

we think that there's some value that we're adding for folks.

Jed:

But you know, I just appreciate you willing to take a try with it.

Andy:

Yeah, I'm excited.

Andy:

Look, I think we both, I mean everybody can agree like the world

Andy:

needs more middle-aged guys with podcasts, a huge market gap there.

Andy:

And so I think we're going to try to fill it.

Andy:

You're one of those people I get on a call with you about something like you

Andy:

end up having these conversations about what's going on in the sector, what's

Andy:

going on in general, before you get to whatever the point of the call is.

Andy:

And you're always like, that conversation like that might

Andy:

make an interesting podcast.

Andy:

So it's good to actually potentially try that out although I unfortunately, I

Andy:

bet it'll be more stilted when we do it now then when you're just like getting

Andy:

on a zoom to kick something around.

Jed:

Well, we'll hope that we keep it fresh and who knows, we may

Jed:

also invite some people down the road to broaden out the discussion.

Andy:

Yeah, absolutely.

Andy:

I'm looking forward to that.

Jed:

Cool.

Jed:

Well, and I also just feel like this nexus of, look I overweight

Jed:

on charters in all sorts of ways.

Jed:

Right?

Jed:

And I think that's a good place for us to be generally.

Jed:

But your knowledge on the wonk side, on the policy side, K-12, that's where I

Jed:

think if we really can focus our energy here, I think there actually is value for

Jed:

two middle-aged white guys to offer here.

Andy:

Yeah, definitely.

Andy:

I thought you were going to say, coming out of winter, I'm always

Andy:

a little overweight, just period.

Andy:

I thought you were going to go there right out the gate.

Andy:

Yeah, I think that's right and charters are a big part and I think they're

Andy:

illustrative of a lot of what's going on, there are bigger things in the

Andy:

sector and obviously this week, like a big one that's on everybody's mind, is

Andy:

just this horrific shooting last week in Nashville at the Covenant school.

Jed:

Yeah.

Jed:

I think these shootings have become so frequent that when you start

Jed:

a podcast like this, it's almost off the news cycle already, and

Jed:

we're just grown so immune to it.

Jed:

But there are things that come up about this particular shooting that I just find

Jed:

illustrative of the problems that we face.

Jed:

And here it's a private school, right?

Jed:

The community that was involved or that was affected, all different and

Jed:

new, the political responses that we're seeing from policymakers, new,

Jed:

but all sadly, not very to the point.

Jed:

But I just think that these instances, these incidents of tragedy like this,

Jed:

I just think they contribute to a lack of trust that so many parents have

Jed:

in the public education system, or in public private education -- wherever

Jed:

you want to focus at this point.

Jed:

Well, I think your last blog entry talks about the relative safety of kids in

Jed:

schools versus all these other settings, but the broader narrative is: kids may

Jed:

not be safe at school and if there's anything that parents gravitate to, it's

Jed:

that desire to keep their kids safe.

Jed:

And so I see this potentially contributing to kid parents even pulling their kids

Jed:

back even more and trying to find other settings within to educate their kids

Jed:

where they feel like they're safe.

Andy:

Yeah, but as we've seen over the last couple of years, these

Andy:

can happen at any kind of a school.

Andy:

They happen at traditional public schools, they happen at charter schools,

Andy:

and they can happen at private schools.

Andy:

Actually they're really rare.

Andy:

I think we are sort of soaked.

Andy:

You have to hold sort of a couple of things in your head at the same time.

Andy:

One, just every one of these is awful and just unique in its awfulness.

Andy:

And that they're also pretty rare.

Andy:

I think most people are surprised when you ask how many people have

Andy:

been killed in mass shootings at school since, say, Columbine.

Andy:

You get some really astronomical numbers and it's actually fewer than

Andy:

200, which is 200 too many obviously.

Andy:

And again, everyone is uniquely horrible, but they're not as

Andy:

ubiquitous as you would know if you spend a lot of time, if you would

Andy:

think you spend a lot of time online.

Andy:

Meanwhile, youth violence, particularly in out of school and communities

Andy:

is an enormous problem, has been for a while and to your point,

Andy:

things that don't get headlines.

Andy:

It doesn't necessarily get a whole lot of headlines and it's just sort of a

Andy:

grinding and sort of staggering toll.

Andy:

And so I think we struggle to talk about these things and then when

Andy:

something like Nashville happens with some of the circumstance around it,

Andy:

everything kind of grinds to a halt.

Andy:

What's I think really troubling about that is, you know, these

Andy:

shootings in general, not everyone, but in general, they're preventable.

Andy:

Four out of five school shooters say what they're going to do ahead of time.

Andy:

We don't have all the details on Nashville, but this person, their parents

Andy:

were apparently concerned enough about them to want to intervene around their

Andy:

access to firearms and so forth, and so I think what's getting lost in a lot

Andy:

of the rhetoric and the concern and the talk about hardening the target and all

Andy:

this is if four out of five young people who do something like this tell you that

Andy:

they're going to do it ahead of time.

Andy:

Why aren't we heading that off more upstream?

Andy:

To your point on trust also what's going on with trust in the school

Andy:

with students where they can't engage adults around these things.

Andy:

There's so much leaking ahead of time, and yet we're still not heading them off.

Andy:

I think we need to have a hard conversation about school

Andy:

culture and why that is.

Jed:

Well, yeah, I think there are a lot of forces at play right now that are

Jed:

keeping candor and agency out of schools.

Jed:

And so we have a lot of adults and a lot of kids that can't talk about the thing,

Jed:

and when you can't talk about the thing, well, of course you're not gonna be able

Jed:

to talk about these kinds of things.

Jed:

My wife's a clinical psychologist, she was just forwarding me some stories from

Jed:

just social media about parents who are sewing school districts right now over

Jed:

bullying and then suicides that have been happening associated with those.

Jed:

And I think these shootings, they tend to crowd out, the attention

Jed:

on many of these other things.

Jed:

And so of course, the problem of gun violence in schools has to be taken on for

Jed:

sure but also these other issues can't be crowded out from our attention such that

Jed:

we can stay focused on what's really going on with our adolescent kids right now.

Jed:

Because the psychological crisis that we have in this generation is

Jed:

unlike anything we've seen previously.

Andy:

And they're related though, right?

Andy:

A few years ago, the secret service made an analysis on school shootings.

Andy:

And one of the things they talked about was this leakage and this upstream,

Andy:

kids basically saying, in many cases explicitly, what they were going to do or

Andy:

having a lot of, in the case of Parkland, the shooter said explicitly what they

Andy:

were going to do when they got the chance.

Andy:

Or lots of like signs and indications that common sense would

Andy:

tell you something's going on.

Andy:

But a common factor the Secret Service found was bullying and that kid, the

Andy:

people involved in these shootings, they were the victims of different kinds

Andy:

of bullying and they actually called pretty explicitly for really vigorous

Andy:

anti-bullying programs -- what you would call SEL programs, stuff like that.

Andy:

And I thought it was interesting because SEL is getting sort of sucked into

Andy:

this ongoing culture war vortex we have, and here you've got the secret

Andy:

service, which I don't know that anybody's gonna describe the Secret

Andy:

Service, like a hotbed of leftism.

Andy:

And they're calling for you have to do this, you have to create that culture.

Andy:

Because if kids don't have a trusting environment in school, they don't have

Andy:

adults they're going to trust, they're not going to go to them and say, "hey, here

Andy:

are these things we're seeing that are, that are worrisome" and you're just not

Andy:

gonna have that kind of information flow.

Andy:

It comes back to one of the reasons I know you got active in the charter

Andy:

world, one of the things that attracted me to charters is just where a place

Andy:

we can create a kind of intentional community where kids and adults just

Andy:

interact in different ways than is sometimes the normal in schools.

Jed:

I think kids are really tuned into whether or not there is authenticity

Jed:

and agency in their environment, and if they sense for whatever reason,

Jed:

that the adults in that space can't say what they want to say, or it's all

Jed:

canned, or it's just completely and utterly predictable, they just disengage

Jed:

and the only place the conversations will be happening is in the hallway

Jed:

or outside of school, and or in social media where of course, a lot of these

Jed:

bullying problems get to be only worse.

Jed:

For me, I just feel like the problem of lack of agency in our public schools is

Jed:

just much more profound than we recognize.

Andy:

Yeah.

Andy:

I think that's right.

Andy:

So one of the things I knew we wanted to talk about today, speaking of challenging

Andy:

public schools is what's happening in a couple of the cities and you're just down

Andy:

the road from Los Angeles, which was in the news quite a bit with that strike.

Jed:

Yeah.

Jed:

I think this strike situation in Los Angeles and the problems we see in so many

Jed:

urban schools doesn't get enough attention and perhaps in my writing at CharterFolk

Jed:

just beats on it till people are just ready to cry mercy but, I actually think,

Jed:

no matter how much I can focus on it, there's still way more problems that are

Jed:

there than we're paying attention to.

Jed:

And we're seeing an aspect of the urban education world, only

Jed:

double down a path that we know is going to result in further demise.

Jed:

And that's certainly what I see coming out of the Los Angeles situation.

Jed:

I think things hang into balance right now in Chicago.

Jed:

We are recording this on a Monday, the election results will be on Tuesday

Jed:

and we'll release this on Wednesday.

Jed:

But Chicago and Los Angeles have probably been the two hotbeds of teacher unions

Jed:

taking on new levels of aggressiveness and new levels of political engagement

Jed:

that's translated into them having virtual complete control of the Los

Jed:

Angeles Unified School District right now.

Jed:

And we'll see what happens in Chicago.

Jed:

But should it go in the direction of the Chicago teacher union having

Jed:

more control in Chicago, I don't see that doing anything other than

Jed:

speeding the demise of the district.

Jed:

Do you, do you see it differently here?

Jed:

What nuance can you offer as it relates to the challenges we have

Jed:

in urban education right now?

Andy:

Oh man.

Andy:

It's hard to know where to start and those two cities are...

Andy:

there's some commonality and some distinct issues.

Andy:

One of the commonalities is obviously just unsustainable fiscal structures.

Andy:

I'm sort of struck we keep having these conversations and these entities,

Andy:

we've got to figure out what we do to get them on a sound financial footing.

Andy:

Whether it's, you know, and itcame up in the Chicago race some of the issues

Andy:

around pension, retirement financing.

Andy:

In LA, you look at the school district's own numbers on the percent of money

Andy:

from the retirement that they're paying into retirement for people who

Andy:

aren't even working in the system.

Andy:

The percentage of classroom dollars that are now going to that it's staggering

Andy:

and we're not sort of having any kind of an honest conversation about that.

Andy:

Whatever the latest thing is ,the strike dujour, and the sort of

Andy:

constant negotiation that the teachers unions have with the districts just

Andy:

plays out in these different ways.

Andy:

I was sort of struck that in the wake of the pandemic, all the avowed concerns

Andy:

about learning loss and everybody saying they're gonna get serious, that in LA you

Andy:

had this strike and there was just very little attention to, like, kids need to

Andy:

be in school right now more than anything else and we're just gonna have a, another

Andy:

school holiday essentially for politics.

Andy:

And there was just like very little outrage, it just almost seemed like

Andy:

it's business as usual, which was striking to me, given the context

Andy:

and given the stakes right now.

Jed:

Yeah.

Jed:

What was shocking to me was that, Jackie Goldberg was, and the superintendent was

Jed:

there saying there's no need for a strike.

Jed:

We're willing to give you guys absolutely everything, essentially,

Jed:

and yet they wanted to strike anyway.

Jed:

And then at the end of the strike, when they talk about what the deal was

Jed:

it was essentially the same as what they had been talking about for weeks.

Jed:

So what really was the motivation here?

Jed:

And do you really have to have another three days of student learning

Jed:

loss in order to make that point?

Andy:

That's a tactic and I think that's not always appreciated.

Andy:

Like the teachers unions that having the strike, getting people out there, getting

Andy:

people riled up, it's a membership tactic.

Andy:

It reminds the members why they're there, all this stuff.

Andy:

And they will strike even when it's not, even when we could actually

Andy:

get to a deal without a strike.

Andy:

We saw that in LA.

Andy:

That was really the sort of thing that really I think changed with teacher

Andy:

strikes in general, I think you have to go back to Karen Lewis in which she did

Andy:

in Chicago in back in 2012, I think it was, where that point, the unions were,

Andy:

you know, Randy Weingarten was talking much more about reform than she talks

Andy:

about now and, was saying tenure shouldn't be a job for life and we need to like

Andy:

reform teacher evaluation, much of stuff that now would be considered heretical.

Andy:

But she was like going to the press club once a year to

Andy:

talk about all these things.

Andy:

And in Chicago, Karen Lewis was like, you know, no the hell with that?

Andy:

We're going to fight on this, we're not going to get on this train,

Andy:

we think there's another strategy we can fight and essentially

Andy:

exactly what you're talking about.

Andy:

The ultimate deal was pretty much the contours of the deal that was on the

Andy:

table, but they were pretty explicit, they needed to be able to have a strike.

Andy:

It was politically important and they did.

Andy:

And they and, I mean, the senior people in the union were relatively

Andy:

open about that was what was going on.

Andy:

And here we are, this keeps playing out.

Andy:

And the interesting thing about Chicago is it's such a stark choice.

Andy:

You've got Paul Val, and you can tell the director, we can talk about him and what

Andy:

he's done, and then Brandon Johnson and it's two very different choices facing

Andy:

Chicago voters and it can be no illusion about which way things will go, depending

Andy:

how that race turns out tomorrow.

Jed:

Yeah.

Jed:

The thing that I just think that we, in the charter world in particular,

Jed:

need to spend more time thinking about what is our agenda, what is our North

Jed:

Star as it relates to the evolution of these large urban school districts.

Jed:

I think for a long time we just basically stayed under the radar screen.

Jed:

Hey, that's not our job.

Jed:

We don't have to worry about what this thing evolves into.

Jed:

Let's just keep growing our schools and it'll work itself out on the other end.

Jed:

Now we're at that other end and charter schools disproportionately have charged

Jed:

into large urban school districts to try and serve as many kids better

Jed:

than they've been served in the past.

Jed:

And now we've got just massive numbers of people leaving major urban areas.

Jed:

And so our schools are there.

Jed:

They're fighting for enrollment in Los Angeles.

Jed:

It's interesting, basically, charter school enrollment has stayed flat for the

Jed:

last five years, around 110-115,000 kids.

Jed:

But in terms of percentage of Los Angeles that is served by the charter

Jed:

school sector, it's grown from 16% to 21%, just because we've stayed flat.

Jed:

Okay.

Jed:

Well, what is the future?

Jed:

What's really going to happen here?

Jed:

I don't think the charter school world can stay in a keep our head low mode anymore.

Jed:

No.

Jed:

We have to say, we actually think this is the future that all of public education

Jed:

needs to move into, and this is the role that we think charter schools can play

Jed:

in helping us get to that better place.

Andy:

Yeah.

Andy:

And I think the charter community has a decision to make about sort of

Andy:

how it wants to play its politics.

Andy:

Because one of the interesting things about Chicago is there's definitely

Andy:

a race element to the political race -- there is a racial element to it.

Andy:

And you're seeing that and civil rights leaders are talking about that.

Andy:

But you've got some young progressives in the city, some reformers who

Andy:

are African American coming down for Paul Vallas in part over the

Andy:

school issues and the reform issues.

Andy:

And again, I have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow at the ballot box.

Andy:

That's not a prediction.

Andy:

It's just you're seeing, but you're seeing some of that.

Andy:

And I think that does, there is this idea of how do you create sort

Andy:

of a multiracial reform politics that would include charter schools,

Andy:

and used to include charter schools.

Andy:

And then you've got this countervailing pressure, which is the broader pressure

Andy:

in the country with the culture wars and everything where the party just

Andy:

cleaving apart and charters feel like, well, we're going to go, their

Andy:

heart is with the Democrats even though their political support is

Andy:

increasingly more with the Republicans and you're seeing that tension.

Andy:

And that could play out in some really dangerous ways for charters, particularly

Andy:

if you decide these other issues that are sort of adjacent and tangential around

Andy:

educating kids become the thing that you're going to put front and center.

Andy:

So I think it's actually a pretty fraught time for charters.

Jed:

I agree with you.

Jed:

And I think that the rationale behind the creation of CharterFolk was the

Jed:

idea that our charter people, you know, believing that they're a part

Jed:

of something bigger than themselves and willing to do more than they, than

Jed:

is typically expected, as has been our history will continue to happen.

Jed:

Well, in our urban settings when our charter folk are hearing all of these

Jed:

things about how we're on the wrong side of history and we're associated

Jed:

with all these what, whatever, right wing interests or whatever it is,

Jed:

our own base can become wobbly.

Jed:

Our own base can feel like we're on the wrong side of history.

Jed:

The only way, in my opinion that we can like communicate to them and to other

Jed:

supporters and others that actually our values align with theirs, is to come

Jed:

out and be more vocal about the way our school systems are set up, our redlining

Jed:

attendance boundaries, our selective admissions that we know screen out

Jed:

kids by race, our funding systems that suck money away from high needs kids

Jed:

to subsidize more affluent families' educations, allowing schools to be

Jed:

completely and utterly unaccountable, so that the kids that you know are most

Jed:

vulnerable suffer most -- these are things that are counter to our values and the

Jed:

way that charter schools are set up.

Jed:

We are set up to operate schools in a completely different way, and we're

Jed:

going to advocate not only for our students to be served in that way, but

Jed:

all students to be served in that way.

Jed:

In that moment, I think the progressives who you know have thus far heard silence

Jed:

from the charter school world will need step back and say, wait a second,

Jed:

what do I think about these things?

Andy:

Yeah, I think so.

Andy:

Look, you're an optimist.

Andy:

I think what's happening now that's very striking to me is two sort of

Andy:

related but somewhat discordant trends.

Andy:

One is, among parents, you're seeing in the data, parents are more willing

Andy:

than ever to move across party lines, at coming out of the pandemic.

Andy:

They're frustrated, the old alignments don't make sense to them, and

Andy:

they want results for the kids.

Andy:

And so, the parental vote is up for grab.

Andy:

It's much more, it's much more fluid right now.

Andy:

And then at the same time, among elites you're seeing people are sort of chucking

Andy:

all their prior education commitments out the window in the interest of partisanship

Andy:

because things are becoming so hardened.

Andy:

And so you've got Democrats who used to support charters who are now like,

Andy:

yeah, you know, like that's two partisan of an issue they've gone quiet and

Andy:

like those two trends, watching them play out, I think there's both an

Andy:

opportunity there for charters, but also just enormous, enormous political risk.

Jed:

Yeah.

Jed:

And the disconnect between the public positioning and

Jed:

what the polling data shows...

Jed:

I mean, striking in 2019, when UTLA had their last strike, every left-leaning

Jed:

person in Los Angeles, every democratic policymaker wanted to virtue project:

Jed:

we are with the teachers, we're with UTLA, we support this strike, right?

Jed:

And then UTLA thinks, okay, let's capitalize upon that by getting

Jed:

this parcel tax approved that will fund teachers pay at higher levels.

Jed:

Didn't even come close to passing.

Jed:

Not even close.

Jed:

Right.

Andy:

Well, yeah, it gives a lie to this whole idea of like standpoint,

Andy:

the epistemology and that we're going to listen to people and do what

Andy:

they want, because the support for charters, I mean, you know, strong

Andy:

majority support in the African American community, strong majority

Andy:

support in the Hispanic community.

Andy:

There's the idea that like charters are some sort of like unpopular

Andy:

thing or political jump ball.

Andy:

The only people who really aren't there on charters politically

Andy:

are white progressivesm, right?

Andy:

But white progressives and the teachers unions, that's a pretty powerful

Andy:

coalition inside the Democratic Party and it's not an insignificant

Andy:

political coalition in general.

Andy:

And so here we are, but I do think charters are one of those, you know,

Andy:

they pull back the veneer on some of this stuff and you can sort of see

Andy:

where the more raw political power around some of these issues lies.

Jed:

Let me ask you something out of white progressives, Andy, because

Jed:

my sense is that their opposition to charters may be fragile because, It

Jed:

can be shown that most of these white liberals have got themselves into very

Jed:

favorable public education situations that they now structurally deny others.

Jed:

But they're not being, it's not being shown to them, or they're not being held

Jed:

accountable for the fact that they are reserving this special benefit for them.

Jed:

And if they were forced, you know, to confront their own hypocrisy on this

Jed:

issue, I don't see how they stay in their current mindset unless they're

Jed:

willing to go to, okay, I actually oppose charters not for these great progressive

Jed:

values, but for naked self-interest.

Jed:

I'm not sure that the white progressives can actually pivot to naked

Jed:

self-interest as their justification for charters opposition going foward.

Andy:

I don't know.

Andy:

I mean, look, the history of ed reform in this country, going back decades,

Andy:

one way to look at it's a history of people with means evading whatever

Andy:

sort of reform strategies put in place, whether it's busing or choice or anything

Andy:

else more recently, to figure out how to make the system work for them.

Andy:

I mean, I guess I do think there's something to charters made a strategic

Andy:

error by focusing overwhelmingly -- obviously the highest need is in urban

Andy:

communities and then rural communities -- but focusing overwhelming on urban

Andy:

communities without having something there politically for the suburbs in a

Andy:

country where the politics are pretty suburban driven and so you, but not

Andy:

building that coalition so forth, I think they left an exposed flank that

Andy:

is, is causing a lot of trouble now.

Andy:

And so we should think about what does sort of a middle class

Andy:

chartering strategy look like?

Andy:

And I think that's, look, people want customization.

Andy:

They want different kinds of schools.

Andy:

They want Montessori and, and I think there's a lot of political

Andy:

opportunities to make sort of public school choice in the public system

Andy:

much more robust and attractive.

Andy:

But the second part of it is that is also, I think, in some ways self-inflicted,

Andy:

for your strategies, I understand what you just laid out, to work people have

Andy:

to be kind of willing to take some hits, be a little bit contentious, point

Andy:

out this hypocrisy and all the rest.

Andy:

And I think one of the things that really happened over the last decade, and you

Andy:

really have to give her credit for it, is Randy Weingarten kind of convinced

Andy:

a lot of reformers that they were the problem, that they were too acrimonious,

Andy:

they were too divisive, they weren't consensus oriented enough and so forth.

Andy:

And that you heard lots of the rhetoric we have to collaborate and all this,

Andy:

and why do you have to be in...

Andy:

you know, a lot of reformers started to be like, oh yeah, why are we so contentious?

Andy:

To the point where Michelle Ree would run a commercial pointing out that like, A

Andy:

lot of our schools like, you know, huge achievement gaps, they don't stack up

Andy:

well internationally, and everybody's like, oh my God, that's so mean.

Andy:

Take down the ad and, and funders got nervous about it.

Andy:

Your strategy, if we do want to point out that, yeah, of course,

Andy:

everyone's kind of implicated.

Andy:

We redline education opportunity in this country by where you lived.

Andy:

Our colleague, Darrel Bradford, is I think probably one of the

Andy:

most articulate people about this.

Andy:

But there's other folks, Tim DeRoche has a new organization.

Andy:

We do work on this at Bellwether.

Andy:

Yeah, it's interesting, um, that like, you know, if you, you have to actually be

Andy:

willing to take some hits and point that out and be like a little bit contentious.

Andy:

Not just for the sheer hell of this isn't culture war stuff where it's just

Andy:

like for the sheer hell of spinning people up, but just you have to be

Andy:

willing to say some controversial things and make people uncomfortable.

Andy:

And I just don't know if the appetite is there right now.

Jed:

Or if the courage is there.

Jed:

Yeah.

Jed:

I mean, this is where my MFA playwriting comes back in.

Jed:

Aristotle knew all the way back even then, right, what's the making of drama?

Jed:

Conflict.

Jed:

You choose your conflict and from that you can drive a narrative.

Andy:

But that's why we get along Jed...

Andy:

When people come into the sector, they're like, they wanna work in education.

Andy:

They're like, what should they read?

Andy:

And they're like, should I read like Dewey or E.

Andy:

D.

Andy:

Hirsch, or whatever?

Andy:

I'm like, start with Aristotle.

Andy:

Understand the nature of power and politics and like a lot of what goes on in

Andy:

this sector will make more sense to you.

Jed:

But see, I ultimately think our movement will be

Jed:

defined by what we advocate for.

Jed:

And I think that when we advocate for dumb things, that it's easy for somebody

Jed:

like Weingarten to say, you've been too extreme, you haven't been thoughtful,

Jed:

you don't have this all the way thought through, or you're just simply, cheaply,

Jed:

bashing people, you know, without a real theory, we leave ourselves exposed.

Jed:

So I don't by any means say, oh, let's go out and just willy-nilly

Jed:

start taking a meat axe to red lines.

Jed:

But I do believe that there are ways for us to thoughtfully start to erase

Jed:

them such that the question is asked.

Jed:

We're not talking about huge numbers, we're just saying, every school district

Jed:

in America should have to reserve 5% of its seats for people that come

Jed:

from outside the school district so that we can start to have more choice.

Jed:

And, and see what people, how they start to respond at that point.

Andy:

Yeah.

Andy:

Little things on zoning.

Andy:

There's a lot of stuff you could do.

Andy:

I think choice is a piece of the solution set, but it's not the whole solution set.

Andy:

There's the, your, yeah, your idea, there's something you can do on the

Andy:

zonings, a whole bunch of stuff.

Andy:

I actually think that's how you, it's as if, like, if you think about it, like if

Andy:

you walk from -- you're in Los Angeles, I'm in Virginia, or you know if you walk,

Andy:

you're in California, sorry you're not Los Angeles, we're just talking about LA but

Andy:

you're in California, Northern California, and I'm in Virginia -- and if like we walk

Andy:

to each other and our compass is off a little bit, we're not gonna notice, you're

Andy:

not going to notice that when you're in Nevada and I'm not going to notice

Andy:

that when I'm in West Virginia and Ohio.

Andy:

But when we're trying to get where we're going, we'll suddenly

Andy:

realize I won't get to your house.

Andy:

I'll end up in Portland or down in LA, right?

Andy:

And that's the way we think about.

Andy:

How do you start to change the system?

Andy:

You know, some of this is like the cast some ideas about nudge and so forth.

Andy:

How do you change the system, so in 25 years, people are like, oh,

Andy:

wow, that's totally different.

Andy:

But they didn't see it.

Andy:

You're right, I do think we have people who, and this is I think on both

Andy:

sides, who just wanna be contentious.

Andy:

There's people who just want to sue school districts and all this, and

Andy:

lawsuits that aren't going to actually get anywhere given how the law works here.

Andy:

And there's, you know, people just wanna come in and try to blow

Andy:

things up and it's conflict for conflict's sake is not productive.

Andy:

But there will be some friction if there's going to be progress.

Andy:

That's a pretty well established principle as well.

Jed:

For sure.

Jed:

Yeah.

Jed:

Well, we talked about keeping this to a around a half

Jed:

hour, so we're getting close.

Jed:

I wanted to just a ask you one last question.

Jed:

What are you making about, and this could be another hour long

Jed:

conversation, but just let's spend a couple minutes ruminating on this.

Jed:

What are you making of ChatGPT and its implications for education?

Jed:

Is it being overhyped?

Jed:

Is it being underhyped?

Jed:

Are we in a moment where we just don't know?

Jed:

I'd just love to hear your thoughts about this because my daughter just, used

Jed:

ChatGPT to help her on her first essay.

Jed:

That's interesting, she's writing about ALS and ALS is at the origins

Jed:

of Charter Folk too, my dear friend Brian Bennett, who passed away.

Jed:

And ALS really matters in our family's life.

Jed:

And now Tess is writing me from college.

Jed:

ChatGPT has helped me understand ALS at whole other levels of understanding.

Jed:

But that's just one example.

Jed:

How are you thinking about it as it relates to K-12 stuff?

Andy:

Yeah, I mean, look, Jed, I'm far from an expert on this.

Andy:

I'm still learning.

Andy:

I listen to people like John Bailey who are doing a lot of work on this.

Andy:

There's others.

Andy:

So my sense is it over-hyped or under hyped?

Andy:

Yes, both.

Andy:

Great.

Andy:

I can see, every time there's a new technology around

Andy:

learning, people freak out.

Andy:

Paper was controversial at one point.

Andy:

They tried to license printing presses.

Andy:

So when something like this comes along, everyone's like, oh my God, we've have

Andy:

to ban it and restrict it and so forth.

Andy:

That's like an old human reaction to new knowledge technologies.

Andy:

I mean, we even saw that a little bit with like, in the early days of like email

Andy:

and the internet, there was some of that.

Andy:

And so like that sort of reaction is both understandable, time-honored

Andy:

and probably overstated.

Andy:

On the other hand, look, this will change teachers jobs and so forth.

Andy:

I worry it gives, you're starting to hear already again,

Andy:

why are we teaching content?

Andy:

Mere facts when kids are gonna have ChatGPT, which I think is a huge

Andy:

misreading of how we learn and what you need to know to be able to understand

Andy:

the world and make sense of it.

Andy:

So like the excesses on all sides are sort of apparent.

Andy:

I think some of it's very exciting.

Andy:

And one thing I'm intrigued by, you look at some of the stuff it can do and I screw

Andy:

around with it like everybody else does, everybody thought like automation and

Andy:

all this, they were like, oh man, sucks if you're a cashier or a truck driver.

Andy:

Turns out, like probably if you write like entry level ad copy, you work for

Andy:

one of these websites that's basically a click farm and building listicles

Andy:

and this kind of stuff, or maybe, and this is like hits close to home, maybe

Andy:

you're a blogger like me, this thing can do some of the things that you do.

Andy:

And I think that's interesting and maybe we'll occasion a slightly

Andy:

different and less sort of class-based conversation about automation

Andy:

and new technology and so forth.

Andy:

And my last thought is just the speed of it.

Andy:

I remember a few years ago, I was looking at some of this and messing around

Andy:

with, and it was really bad, right?

Andy:

It just was not ready for prime time and now, in a relatively

Andy:

short period of time...

Andy:

So I don't know.

Andy:

And then of course, look, I've seen all the same movies you have like, so I worry

Andy:

like are the robot's going to kill us all?

Andy:

I have lots of thoughts, but no real answers.

Andy:

It's really, it's really interesting.

Andy:

What's your take?

Andy:

I mean, so obviously your daughter's now cheating in college...

Andy:

I appreciate you.

Jed:

So, I patterned CharterFolk after Stratechery by Ben Thompson.

Jed:

And I've just been so impressed by him over the last five

Jed:

years of reading his stuff.

Jed:

And he is just always so smart and he is always so measured.

Jed:

And then he had a chance to see Chat GPT, and he just went over

Jed:

the moon about what this meant.

Jed:

He had never had an experience interacting with technology in that way.

Jed:

And he wrote that, and that then led the New York Times and to BBC and all sorts of

Jed:

others, quoting him and interviewing him.

Jed:

What is so new about this?

Jed:

I tend to think that since COVID and and racial reckoning with George Floyd

Jed:

this is probably the most important thing that has happened in the world

Jed:

and when we look back on something that happened during this decade.

Jed:

And I also think it's happening at the same moment that trust in education

Jed:

is evaporating and people want to be able to do different things, but they

Jed:

don't feel equipped to do it themselves or in small groups or whatever.

Jed:

And I just think this ChatGPT thing is going to give people the

Jed:

confidence that they don't have to have any more trust in any other

Jed:

schools that is absolutely necessary.

Jed:

And so if there's anything I think this is going to do, it's going to accelerate

Jed:

the forming of new educational models and ones that ultimately are going to

Jed:

challenge our public education system much more so than it will empower.

Andy:

All right.

Andy:

Well, that's a bold prediction.

Andy:

I'll be interested and we can revisit this.

Andy:

I'm not going to be in the prediction business, but by the time this does

Andy:

come out and this will be our first one, we'll see what people think,

Andy:

we will know at least the answers to whether or not the Chicago cops

Andy:

can all put their "Let's go Brandon" stickers back on their cars or not.

Andy:

So we will pick it up with that and some other stuff very soon.

Jed:

See you in a couple weeks.

Andy:

See you.

Jed:

Okay.