Standards. This is about an hour. Good morning, everyone. Takes for coming to this panel. M the Deputy Director at today we will discuss an issue that has been getting a little bit of attention these days, School Choice, and especially private School Choice. I know there is all sorts of forms of School Choice in this country, a conversation about charters. But given so much of the recent conversation and the president ial election, this is where we will do our primary focus, but we will allow time for other issues if you have questions. School vouchers and other voucherlike programs, cousins, if you will, have been growing in number. The cousins would be tax credits, scholarships, and education accounts. The latter of which one proponent called yesterday the cool new kid on the block. President trump and his secretary of education are big fans of School Choice, and betsy devos loves to talk about choice and has made it the centerpiece of her education agenda. Said, these are complicated times in washington, and so the president s plans are no means certain to become law even in a gopled congress. We had a panel yesterday where that was one of the points made. It is good to keep that in mind, that for all the talk, it is not at all clear what we might see at the federal level. There is still good reason to be here because as i think the panelists would tell you, most of the action is at the state level on this anyway and will continue to be so. A busy legislative session in states this year. One of our cap lists, robert ellen know and low, or even enlowrecently recently . I was. There have been efforts needed to create new programs or expand existing ones. Keep in mind that the 2000 bring indid not just donald trump. The gop made gains in states and thehold what is called political trifecta with 25 states where the republic of Party Controls the governorship as well as both chambers of the legislature. That is likely to give further momentum to some of these, even though this is not clearly a partisan issue, we are not. Someis going to build momentum. Our goals are to help you understand the current landscape of private School Choice and what is on the horizon. And how journalists can do a better job to keep the public informed on these initiatives and their impact. Questions such as who needs programs served . How do policymakers judge their success or failure . Keep inuld journalists mind as they cover proposals and explain existing programs in their states and communities. Theyof these are new or have changed. Maybe they have expanded in one way or another, and it can be complicated to keep track of. Easy too evs carve out time. That can be a challenge for local reporters. Remember the details matter a lot, who is eligible to receive a voucher, who is eligible to work, which schools participate and which do not, to what extent families use the funds on things beside education. With Education Savings Accounts, there are a whole lot of things you can use it for. Are there many schools that do not participate and why, and what kind of Accountability Measures are included, and one that is near and youre to the hearts of journalists, transparency, what his record of schools and programs so people can understand what is going on. Littlele i want to say a about Charter Schools, because in light of the election i want to point to two outcomes of note. One was in massachusetts where voters rejected a plan to raise the charter cap. In a counter narrative, there was a School Runoff election in l. A. That just finished up that tipped the balance toward a coalition of Board Members who support Charter Schools. Newhat may well bring momentum to charters in l. A. , which is already the city with more kids in charles in Charter Schools than anywhere also in that country. I gave the political reality check before about the Trump Administration agenda and how that will be complicated to get through congress. Another piece of this that is important to remember is the number of students we are talking about, at least in the current situation, and i want to , the researchice and advocacy group, for helping to collect these numbers, and it is a great place to get that kind of information. But currently, when you look at vouchers and voucherstyle programs across states, you might get one million, 2 million, 3 million participate. It is about 450,000, and that compares to 50 million kids in Public Schools today. It is a very small piece of the pie. Currently, a lot of the work underway is looking to expand that. Lineupined by a terrific of people today to help us talk through and think through these issues more, including immediately to my left, maggie cochair ofo is the the National Coalition for Public Education, which is an Umbrella Group for more than 30 National Organizations that have then fighting against voucher programs, both in the political arena and in the legal arena. Teachersrepresent unions, school Board Members, school administrators, the aclu, and others. Maggie is also the legislative director of the separation of church and state, so she keeps a close eye on what is happening across the country, and her group has been involved in legalcal advocacy and efforts to overturn vouchers. Deryl bradford, the executive director of new york cam. Busy guy. Dont let that get out. These are both organizations promoting School Choice among other issues and his Network Works on the ground to monitor and influence state local decisions and work with families and others. Next we have Samuel Abrams who directs National Center of the study a privatization at Columbia University where he studies School Choice and hes also keeping an eye on the developments, you may often find him quoted in the news on the subject in recent times. Finally, we have robert enlow. Hes the president and ceo of this National Nonprofit advocacy group, tracking voucher and voucherstyle programs closely and as i mentioned they have helpful resources that kind of describe the landscape in a nonpartisan way you know, heres the program, heres what they do and so forth. With that, one other thing before we jump in is that we have another conversation later today at 3 30 where we will turn the table and let journalists who will talk about their coverage of School Choice especially private School Choice choice, so if you want to dive in and hear their perspective on what to watch for, tips for getting information, questions to ask, that would be a nice complement to what we have here. Despite what i said at the beginning about the trump agenda having a tough time, i want to start is a little bit about that and im not going to do this for each question, but im just going to ask each of you to spend a minute or two getting your quick view of trumps plan, what you make of it and what you think will happen. Hi. Thank you for having me. So, i represent the National Coalition of Public Education and americans united, so clearly i am disappointed in the trump devos plan for education and what i think is particularly troubling is that instead of spending time on figuring out how to support Public Schools and improve Public Schools and work with the kids with 90 of the students in Public Schools, so instead of having a plan that works with those students, instead they are solely focused on how to spend taxpayer dollars to send to private schools that dont have the same accountability, do not serve all students that can reject students based on characteristics, so i would be more pleased if the focus was on Public Schools and the most kids and schools that have to accept all students, but instead they have been using the pulpit to talk about vouchers around the country. Tuition tax credits. We have a budget that is decreasing funds for Public Schools, increasing funds for private schools. One of the programs would give millions of dollars to study and expand private School Vouchers. I think that is particularly troubling especially when you look at what they just did with the d. C. Voucher. For those of you that have been following that with only fully funded voucher in the country and they just renewed that again. And one of the things that is interesting is they instead of saying that its been studied for years, the studies are showing these are actually performing worse academically than the other students. And instead of when they renewed that saying they would keep studying they said i know you are using the golden standard now. My thinking is its not working out because the studies show is on improving academically, and now they say instead of using the Gold Standard youre not allowed to use it and have to use experimental studies for your voucher program, so i think looking at that and you can no longer use the Gold Standard for the d. C. Voucher and look at the budget saying we want to expand and study vouchers, knowing that they want to use they want to use quasiexperimental studies makes me suspicious, one, they are trying to further at number two what will those studies look like under the administration . I went to clarify that this this is not a law yet, it just past the house. The budget . D. C. Vouchers. The d. C. Voucher was put in the spending bill. So its a done deal. The first thing i would like to do is think the reporters that have covered me in a balanced way in this room and the second thing i would like to do is think Georgetown University for the Outstanding Institution of Higher Learning run by religious order that lots of people attend with public should, and the irony not be lost. As far as the budget is a sprinkle ofis things i like at an ocean of things i do not like. I for one have approached this entire episode said since it started in november as an a comfortable safe harbor role in which to make progress for kids who are really getting the short end of the stick based on zip code, color skin, or amount of money that parents make. So i think we will have an actual discussion. I would also like to point out the majority of the money in the choice portion of the wedding budget is actually to promote public choice. I do not know if i feel like you are against that if thats cool. Private schools have an Important Role to play in helping us faced problems. Help you get to a great school instead of being conscripted or sign one that does not work for you, that is something we should be supporting. Thanks, and on that point, to build on your observation about the contents of what the president has actually proposed, i think it is a 250 million or 300 million . 250 million. There is auchers piece where they want to ramp up charters will funding which already gives a pretty good chunk of change, 300 million, and they want to take it up to 500 million, and they are talking about carving out a billion dollars to the Title One Program for disadvantaged students to create incentives for some sort of public School Choice. There is a lot of questions around that, and political feasibility for all sorts of reasons, including the way the money is distributed and so forth. So it will be interesting to see how that discussion will what happens with that discussion. For having me here. It is an honor. I would like to build on what durell that the billion dollars in this proposal is for public School Choice. It is title i money that is of his follow the students from Public School to the other. What did surprise me was that there was only 250 million set aside in this Education Research s andam to fund voucher research in vouchers. I expected a lot more. That was my gut response. I was thinking more along the lines of race to the top, where billion inated 4. 35 2009. 19 states took slices of that with the provision that state list the cap on Charter Schools and determine teacher pay according to performance. I thought and perhaps this is where trump and thes will go, and it is something we need to focus on, is that they will allocate more than 200 million 250 million to state with conditions that states come up with some kind of educations savings account programs or tuition tax credit program. That may be down the road or too early for them to propose more than 250 million for them. So that was my gut response. Iq. Robert . Mr. M low thank you for having us and thank you to georgetown for hosting. Budget,e talk about the a reality check. Federal spending on education is up to 11 of the total. The majority of funds is at the stake and local level. Spend roughly 750 million billion in america, and the billion dollar proposed in the budget is higher for public School Choice than for private School Choice. So i look at the budget this way. There is good stuff and there is a lot of stuff that makes me worried. In reality, once it goes to the congress it is not going to withstand the pressure. I do not think any of the president ial budgets have withstood the pressure. Lets keep that in mind. No budget from the president ever goes over unscathed. So we will see a lot of challenges. We have a lot of questions to answer about the budget. What do these proposals look like in detail . We are spending time arguing about ideology rather than the proposals. So as we see them we can have some nonpartisan dialogue about this as opposed to the ideological dialogue we are having now. And talk about what might be good and whatnot good. Be good. Ight not there are those of us who think that growth in the title i and a good idea. So it is a bit of a mixture, but the reality is it is only a small portion of what he spent on k12 and it will not withstand congressional oversight. With d. C. , it was approved for three years. If you look at the program done by the former administrations research department, you have positive facts, particularly when showing children graduating at higher rates. Ae most recent study is firstyear study, and we will see what happens in the third year. When you look at d. C. Scholarship program that has been renewed for three years, and we should look at the bulk of the studies before we say it is good or bad. Would you like to respond . I do. There have been five studies on the d. C. Vouchers. It has not been around for one year. The last study was a oneyear study, so it is not like the program just started. The prior studies showed no statistically significant improvement in reading and math. People point to the fact in the third year there was an improvement in reading, though not found specifically significant. If you look atsignificant, so it it says thereer, is no statistically significant improvement in reading and math. In the latest study looking at one year of the students show they performed worse in math and reading and there was a statistically significant decrease in achievement in reading, so i just want to make clear that the prior study did not show any statistically significant in reading or math. Graduation rates, it did show a higher rate but its important look at that portion of the study where that was not based on actual student records, it was based on calling parents who parents whose students should have graduated and they called them and said, did your Student Graduate from high school . And it was a very small number like 400 some parents who responded. That is the graduation rate. Everyone is hooking into for the prior five years of study is that the parents who answered the phone, 450 of them approximately said their students graduated from college. I just wanted to point that out. We will talk a bit later about the research, but try not to get too deep in the weeds of it, but to give people a sense of what is going on. The one piece of the trump agenda that has been sort of unspoken by the administration itself at least publicly that we have heard a lot about, is somehow the idea of building in tuition tax credits into a tax system overhaul, if that happens. On,ne want to comment whether that is feasible, will that happen . It could happen. Its possible to amend the federal tax code to actually make this happen. I do think in this is sort of the challenge. If you suffer in a blue state one, like i do and have one of the challenges to what samuel was saying earlier is that the administration would not do this in a fashion that sort of had every state automatically opt in. States would have to opt in. From my perspective, the kids of the states i work closely with our likely left out, which is why a race to the top. The democrats and republicans are split on choice, which is to say like how much, where, for whom. Teachers like andrew cuomo will tell you that in new york state the Teachers Union came to , democrats in the city and republicans upstate, so lots of hand to beng their what i think is on the wrong side of this. Whether or not this proposal can survive the politics of congress right now is like a coin toss. I still think they should try it but i dont know if it will be , successful. Its interesting when you think about politics that leads to the next thing that i want to talk about, some of the recent developments in states and i will first ask robert because i know you really track this closely. And we mentioned texas, which a lot of people would be mystified. How is it texas of all states has not been able to enact private School Choice policy . Football. Durell said football. I will argue that has a lot to do with rural texas and rural america. Who is the largest employer in most rural areas . Is the School Districts were then working with the Teachers Union so you have this sort of political connection between rural towns a and legislative leadership you have a lockstep control on votes in rural america. That has an impact on the voting in texas. It has always been about the rural vote on this issue. I think it does have to do with rural, but i dont think its really about the Teachers Union. Perspective, so, often times when we are reading articles about vouchers the way they are sometimes framed as its the Teachers Union versus im not quite sure who they think against, but that is not reality. Pd and wecochair of nc , have about 60 organizations in it isnt justand the Teachers Union. They are part of it, but we have the naacp, baptist joint community, lgbt organizations womens , groups. You could go down the list and pick up the communities opposed to private School Vouchers for various reasons, so when i walk in the door i dont win with a certain perspective, i go in and argue naacp is really concerned there are not civil rights protections for any of these students. I say lambda legal is concerned because a lot of this money can go to private schools that can reject kids because they are gay or have gay parents or can teach anti gay curriculum with your taxpayer dollars. Theres more to this than just the Teachers Union. Second, i think we are missing the idea of how important Public Schools are to the rural areas. That is where the community gathers. Theres no Public Private schools. There is an option, so this means it will be a twisting tax Credit System taking money from the Public School, their one Public School and it will not go to their community. It will go to a private school somewhere else that is not serving the rural schools. Tuition tax credits dont work that way. Thats really important. Tuition tax credits are like the neutral way to fund these programs because the money you want to talk about vouchers, that is one thing. Second thing i will say is i will totally agree with you on rural and private school density. Like check or fail, a lot of people write about this. I think that choice in the way approachedeast have it a lot of people have approached it is sort of optimized in places like are pretty dense and have people close to one another that have like, i dont know, private schools, Charter Schools, like a universe of options. So no one at least no one i know is also proposing this is the optimal solution for every place or even every kid, only that it should be one of the solutions we pursue. Durell, ultimately the tuition tax credit does function like a voucher because the money is fungible and if corporations and individuals are getting dollar for dollar tax credits theres that much less money in , the coffers to fund Public Schools. That assumes you believe every dollar that is spent on education is dedicated to the Public Schools. In new york state when i worked on this and in new jersey when i worked on these things like to the point is that the tax credit is actually different money. But even after you get past like there are lots of churches state issues resolved much better with a tax credit than a voucher, but the reason why these proposals are like the cool cousin instead of the cousin who like shows up acts, is because they dont directly impact Public School spending. I would have to disagree. Its an end run. You mention football, you are, pushing something in a different way. Actively there is just not that much money, right or wrong. You can be an advocate for or against School Choice, but i think you have to concede that if the money will be reallocated to these programs to Fund Private School attendance through tuition tax credits then there wont be that much money left in the budget to fund Public Schools implicitly. It is just an implicit. The presumption here is that all dollars are dollar for schools instead of , perpupil funding, so when you district,one school and if you are lucky enough to afford to move if youre in a district that doesnt work and i was hoping we wouldnt get into these conversations, but it looks like we are. We come to the table with private School Choice with that thousands of parents trapped in schools that dont work for them with children or gay and , lesbians that are bullied in Public Schools at a higher rate than any other school. Should really restrict the options of those families are increased the options for those families . This ends up being a debate about who controls the money and people in charge of this conversation from the Traditional School site to control the money picked oh Scholarship Program in america spends anywhere near what the Public Schools spend per child. In indiana if you receive a scholarship to a program you average 4000 for a low income child to go to a private school. Private schools that except the program are accepting more children of color and a surly more children of poverty than Traditional Schools right now. They have higher rates of poverty acceptance. There are a lot of myths and we bring with us thousands of parents and groups who are tired of being forced in schools that dont work, who want options. They also want to be able to have conversations about if i was want to Say Something to journalists, spend more time understanding what the house School Funding formula is. In my home state we spent over a , billion dollars in the last three cycles. I can tell you it did not go to teacher salaries, so if we have conversations about money and who gets it, lets have real conversations. We have federal money, state money and local money coming in. No private Choice Program takes any local dollars. Thats just not part of the game. In indiana we get 90 of the state dollars, so i was hoping we would not have this conversation in this way, but we are then we have to talk about who controls the money and where it goes. If i could highlight one thing, there is an organization i chair with School Finance work and looks at School District boundaries and those types of things and im like the dumbest person in all of the meetings, but we recently did a 50 state survey of School Funding and i , cannot tell you, there are 50 ways to spend money poorly and not know what you get out of it. I mean, its a deeply frustrating to know that you can like the taxing power is awesome , that we can collect resources with the best content and have absolutely no idea where it goes and even less of an idea of actually what we want to get for it. Like sound basic in new york is like an eighth grade education. Like, is any kid going to be wellequipped at 23,000 a to makeas sound basic their way in this world right now . The conversation about how we spend money on our children is one that far exceeds where they go to school. When we totally need to have. Not just about private School Choice. If you want like 30 seconds , is there anything you want to respond to you . I think i am good. Lets table that and followup. Others, feel free to chime in on this. What are the most important developments that you have seen this year . I know one of the biggies is arizona, arkansas, a few other states. Can you quickly highlight . We have reporters presumably from all over the country. If there is a few you want to tick off to say Pay Attention because something might be coming. There were 17 states this year introducing Education Savings Accounts, which were called the new cool kid coolest block like these where funds are set aside for families to customize your childs education. Arizona has passed a program allowing all families in the state to receive Education Savings Account customizing for their child. Arizona has now makes Education Savings Account for all families with this robust Charter School movement in a robust Public School so there is this state of educational options. How much money is in the pot . They get 90 of the state funds is what i believe. So, this if enough people participated this could be a huge change . Yes and typical programs talk , about 1 and then they grown to like 4 or 5 . The sky has not fallen with private School Choice programs. Nevada well and about it will probably get their savings account funded. Survey last year passed what i believe was the first of what people call universal or near universal Education Savings Account, where basically a pot of money will be set aside for families that want it to use for tuition to private schools and usually a menu of other options. And what is different about nevada that caught everyones attention was that for the first time it said virtually any family as long as they had a child in Public Schools in the last hundred days a could use that. So often, as we know, voucher programs often this is where they start, but its for low income children or just with students with disabilities and then it starts to grow. Nevada is an example where it expanded. There was a legal challenge that blocked it based on the way it had been planned it to be funded and so now they are trying to figure out a different way to fund it that will pass legal muster. Legally in the Supreme Court of nevada said its a , constitutional program, just find a better way to fund it. So, even if you dont find funny funding for the program this year, its constitution will be on the books so the question will you be able to find funding . Your places like ohio that try to consolidate their programs into one bill. Texas tried to get a special needs bill force Education Savings Account. As a parent of a special needs son i know how important it is to customize your childs education. Florida is growing its program. Arkansas passed a small program. You have seen a lot of states grow. Indiana grew its program increasing tax credit , scholarship amounts. There has been a lot of discussion and movement this year but there has not then any new states, online this year. More building on existing. More building on existing. Its more like about the environment, not like the School Choice programs specifically, so i would urge everyone to not just focus on the conversation about choice. Coconstructs. There is a real sort of fight and if you align them politically on the right about choice and how many flowers should be blooming, right . The equipment conversation on the left is about accountability. Both of these are important by the current policy du jour in particularly on that accountability side. Im a big believer in state testing, i believe it matters. The voting public hates it. Elected officials seem to hate it. If you look at the downforce of opt out on our ability to actually like figure out if the schools are working, its a miserable political situation and so like i view these two things as paths forward that need to be reconciled together. It is like, how do we get it better . On the other side its like how do we bring a more , dynamic system into the universe empowering more families but isnt the wild wild west . I think you should look at resolving those questions together. In the midst of all this dialogue and debate at the federal level states authorizing , with their Choice Programs. They are doing it in concert s. Th charters and public in indianapolis, the school board is about reforming and bringing charters in and at the law says they can bring in anyone they want into the public district. They now have tools to create new ideas in the School District. We now have Charter Schools, private School Choice and is a more dynamic environment thats what is happening in states. I saw npr had a really interesting indepth story about the Indiana Program and one of , the fascinating parts of it if i recall correctly was how the nature of the program has changed in important ways and , the students who are participating have changed. The whole demographic has shifted. It is far more white than it was previously, not so many low income families participating and so forth, and i am wondering if someone wants to reflect on that situation . I will jump in. One piece of news that was quite striking was Donald Trumps visit to Catholic School in orlando with betsy devos a couple of months ago and then you had cardinal dolan, a laudatory bit in the wall street journal several days later praising trump for that visit. That npr piece that eric just mentioned is an excellent story, a long, detailed story one of , the best stories on this topic concerns Catholic School attendance. They focus on fort wayne in particular, and what happened, this voucher is funding students who are already in the schools. They are not transferring from Public Schools to Catholic Schools, they are already enrolled. It is a direct subsidy of Catholic School attendance. What has started in 2011 there were 7500 students in Indiana Program and today there are more than 34,000. It is funding a different population, as eric said a , different demographic, so its something to watch. I will add Something Else to watch is what will happen in the next week in nevada and there you have something interesting. You mentioned a trifecta. In nevada, you have a republican governor and two democratic houses and he is running with resistance. It is going to be there interesting to see how that works because the Legislature Closes its session june 7. Robert, i want to ask you because i know this is your home ground, indiana, so i am sure that is a place near and dear to your heart. What is your take on the shifter there, and has this been moving in the right direction or wrong direction . I would think its moving in the right direction and. I think we have to be thoughtful about the numbers. Are you okay with that sort of, you know, removing incoming thresholds or things of that nature . What we have in indiana, that is what makes it so complex. So when we talk about whos choosing private schools using the program and whether youre subsidizing existing families you have to ask yourself what would happen after the program. If the program wasnt there how many families would be at private schools . We have that answer for the last 50 years. 9 of the population. Now, you know with the program more people are able to access. With a statewide program that looks pretty much like the statewide demographics of our state in terms of racial demographics. Although, the Choice Program is a slightly more africanamerican children and significantly more hispanics. Children of hispanic background are getting served highly, and the low income families. One of the questions about the pathway last year if you look at the state report the largest pathway into the Choice Program in terms of numbers were prior Public School students. One of the reasons also when you see growth is we added a sibling provision. So if a child was eligible and in the program now their Family Members can go. You wanted to chime in . Thankin, i would like to myco panelists for putting up my copanelists for putting up with me. Two things, the nevada situation is interesting not just because of the also because of the achievement School District is under attack. What you see there isnt like the tension around esa, but tension around reform rightly or wrongly. On the existing families and went to answer that with a different thing. There is this writer named Nicole Hannah jones who is an awesome writer and i just dont agree with everything she says. She did this great piece where she had this mega cute daughter on the front of the bike at integrated school for my daughter in a segregated city, with that city being new york. When she points her at the end i think is most telling is the fear of the parents who are like the black parents who are enrolled in this one school they think is working pretty well that the school will be overrun by like white affluent parents that do not share their values. And i think this is a question about how we organize education period and who has power and who does not and that is not something that sort of like exclusive to private schools. Point, robert and i have talked about this, when schools get more white affluent families in them they become more politically powerful. And if you dont believe that we can talki have talked about thi. This is the natural state of things and its unfortunate, so the question i think also is if you care about these programs should you care about whether or , not some like working class white people actually as a way toin them make sure they do not go away . This is a really important concern because like that school in brooklyn, as it gets whiter and better its not going away. That school, when it was doing ok with black families, something everyone wanted to change so theres always this discussion about race about schools and whether or not it performs or not and it happens across sectors. The political sustainability by expanding who participates in and those who are more empowered. I want to push back on that. I mean, Milwaukee Voucher Program has been around for years. These programs have survived without doing that, places that did have more limited focus have been doing fine. But they are always under attack. Very much like my Excellent College here. Like in Charter School space i would say new york and you pointed to massachusetts and i would say even the massachusetts referendum went down in boston like the majority like it got killed in the suburbs where a majority of the voting public who had never been to a Charter School is white and likes their schools and is pretty affluent. I thought i read the exit data, and even in boston, there were more opponents then supporters. Yeah, yeah but i think again this i was surprised by that. So was i. I think theres this question about scale in whom again. The majority of people of america dont have Family Members in Charter Schools. They may or may not have a Family Member in a private andol or a Choice Program it may or may not be going great. So we ask people who have not experienced this thing to talk about it and make decisions and that politically is difficult. I want to get some questions from the audience. So, if you can come to the podium. We will first start with a few journalists and then we can get to other questions. Identify yourself. Im Brian Mcvicar from grand rapids, michigan. Michigan has a constitutional ban on providing public funding for private schools. Short of changing the state constitution, what would the federal push to expand private School Choice look like in a state with such a band . I have no idea how these things will collide. I do think these amendments are pretty horrible message in america. Unless there is a conservative push to deal with these amendments i am not sure what would happened. That said, i think a lot of people federal tax codes are to exist everywhere and so a change to it sort of happens everywhere regardless of state laws, but i doubt michigan would opt into such a program. I know youve followed the legal dimension of things. Yes, so in michigan you have a no aid clause and for those of you that dont know, there are 37 states that have provisions that are stronger than the u. S. Establishment clause so , separation of church and state that says you cant fund sectarian religious organization , schools, etc. Michigan, that was actually voted on recently actually twice in the voters in michigan said they wanted to keep it, so its a popular thing in michigan. It was on the ballot and they chose to keep it. That actually has happened around the country every single time one of these provisions have been on the ballot including oklahoma recently. They have kept provisions in place. Yeah, so the state cannot spend money for a Religious School in michigan. There are other provisions in other states that i think would be helpful for you to know that in addition to having no aid clauses they are provisions in , other states that say public funds must fund Public Schools, separate thantle that no aid clause. Florida has one of those as well and so those are always a challenge as well. I think the question would become, and since this hasnt happened, right . Program, some are great incentives and they couldnt take it. Michigan cannot take the money because they would have to dig a program that would be constitutionally prohibited. Other states if they create a , program where that money funneled down would be a legal question and we would say the federal money and then the state divvy it out, they couldnt do that. Something else, there is currently a case, Trinity Lutheran in the u. S. Supreme court looking at some of these , no aid causes and so that could be a factor in the future how all of this sort of plays out in the courts, and the state legislature. It gets even more difficult when you heard secretary betsy devos say there will be a state , so it gets even more challenging in a state like michigan. I went to plant one seed in each of your brains before we run out of time. I will take down the list and ask each of you to say if you are in a state that has a new or existing private School Choice program, what are three things that a reporter should be asking about that to help their community make sense of that program, its effect, and what it means . This is something ive been thinking about. Can you tell us who you are, please . I am emily logan. I cover the federal government and there is a lot going on, but a lot of people are pointed out we are sort of in this very unique opportunity for the federal government to do some policy on School Choice and so i wanted to pick the panels brain and see other options out there with the federal government what they could do with School Choice and what proposal might have the most chance of actually getting through congress and getting the president s signature . I wont take bets on anyone any one of them, but i would say that there should be more than one of them. So like i have been a person talking about like to our point about like a traditional tax credit works better in the dense northeastern environment. Tax credit for individual expenses around test prep and tutoring, like sort of the hybridization of 529 plans. Pol of this event Available Online at cspan. Org. Just search education. I will take you live to the council on foreign relations. Looking at u. S. China relations and the question complex and oppressing questions, foreignpolicy questions before us. That is the question of whether avertand washington can the pressure toward confrontation. The pressure of history. The patterns of history that drive the ruling power and a rising power