Transcripts For CSPAN2 Education Policy Experts Discuss Challenges For High School Choice 20170824

Washington dc. This is just over 90 minutes. Thanks for joining us on this sunny august afternoon. I hope everyone had a great view of the eclipse yesterday. Maybe you werent where i was where a big fat cloud came over right at that moment. Pretty cool, hearing all the media act like we were going to go blind if we looked at the sky. I am amber northern, senior vp of research, pleased to have our Live Audience today and cspan covering our event today. I will be welcoming the panel in a minute, i want to thank our partners at the American Federation for china who are with us today. And i am not on twitter, probably the last person you not on twitter, i dont miss being on twitter, you can join the conversation by using the hashtag engaging choices, for those who like to engage in conversation on twitter please do. We would like to hear what you would like to say and when we get to q and at the end we will look and see if we have questions coming in. We are here to talk about School Choice at the High School Level. I am going to keep this overview brief. Mike told me to and he is not here today. I will keep a brief and i sat in panels like this and the moderator is the least interesting person on the panel but our point here today is there is a growing sense the comprehensive typical American High School is not serving well all kids. It is a hard job to fill. And comprehensive high schools have been around, most to have attended them, we also know there have been many studies of private and Charter School studies that have come recently that showed promising results, if students attending Charter High Schools in particular were more likely to graduate from high school, Persistent College and in their mid20s a pretty cool study, unique study by credo. Significantly post higher levels of annual growth compared to traditional schools. They do this work where they translate to the number of days of learning but those gains equated to 40 days of additional learning which is a pretty big gain, particularly good results for black, hispanic and low income students. I wont spend a ton of time in the research. The point is studies around vouchers posted good results for High School Graduation rates. The research is not all good news but the point is there is enough good news about i schools of choice that we should want more of them. The growing movement around multiple pathways to career and what do those things look like. Before turning to the panel one more plug, because part of this event is initiated by a study in june, a National Survey of High School Student engagement. We surveyed 2000 High School Students in traditional schools, Public Schools, what engages you, what gets you interested, what motivates you to learn . In a nutshell they said Different Things, reported different ways they are engaged, and one group was the subject lovers, and most engaged by learning challenging things. And those are the kids have social aspect of school, they want to do more, teacher responders of another one, those are the kids who connected with their teacher, and another adult in my school, i need to know they are invested in me academically and personally and that helps me get engaged with the material. Please read the report, other groups of students are engaged differently. One of the things i took away from the report, students arent ridges. We had this report years ago by the new teacher project, the widget effect and the headline was teachers arent widgets, they are not all the same in terms of their quality so here we say students arent widgets either. They are engaged differently, motivated to learn. Engagement and choice go hand in hand, we have multiple types of choices for kids, different schools, and different choices doesnt have to be schools. One of the things we talk about with our panel, what is it that prevents more high School Choice schools from opening, what obstacles do we need to think about, opening more of them and helping them succeed. We have a great panel, what is cool about this panel is a mix of practical experience, working with kids, researching these types of schools and so on. He will find them speaking from a variety of viewpoints, the president of opportunity america, i am not doing this in order. The president of great Educational Opportunities foundation at the Brookings Institution and zach verdon, of Hope Christian school in wisconsin. I will let them introduce themselves, they do a better job when they are doing that. I will have them explain briefly their background on the topic today. And ask them to share a personal anecdote that speaks to choice that i school level. I like to tell people whats going on, what the agenda is like so we cannot be informed. With back, and i am going to start with john. Give us your anecdote and all of that good stuff. I am a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Thank you to all of you for coming and joining a very interesting topic. I have a lot of impractical experience. Most of my work looks at what i would call the demand side of issues. If you take a School Choice reform has been a type of market reform where there is a supply side and demandside peers supplyside question about what it is yet taught me that often comes with this. The demand side is the of what is it the families want. I should say i should come up with the question of high school a little bit nervous about how that works and a part of that reason is my dissertation work. And its my dissertation research. As part of that dissertation, i was running experiments here in washington d. C. And also in milwaukee. It was a very simple at your event. The idea was we would randomly assign a booklet that has information, so it has this or does colorful clip with what types of programs, how they score on test and other information about schools. They have the school grading, and a big eyepopping reading with a fivestar school or a green star school and so we set up the experiment with a Treatment Group to get these booklet in the control group we thought we would go and see if giving people this kind of extra information with the signal quality would get them to choose any differently and maybe you flagged as being particularly good. So we ran the experiment, data came back in and for families moving from Elementary School to middleschool, the results were exactly what we would have gas. They were higher performing, better schools. Families moving from middleschool to high school, it is not even that it didnt have an effect. Posted is actually chose lower performing materials, which is odd. So when you think information interventions are pretty not listen to give a booklet, it is sort of hard to come up with a story for why they didnt prefer that. We dug into the books listed in the book for graduation the spirit that emerge in choosing their own schools. I ran a third experiment. But that some information and i just like to see how getting that information and affect what parents want. They learn so when they expose information, they are more confident in sort of a series of what seemed to me like happy outcomes. When you show the same information from kids, we didnt see any of the positive effects and a hint that kids were lower. Consistent with what we saw. I would be interested in knowledge you have theories about that. One possibility is we are talking about 13yearold and 13yearolds are project decisionmakers and they are in stressful and we are asking them to do that. There is a risk i think it would have to be thoughtful about that. When we are handing over authority to kids and families for School Choice reform, we empower them. We are empowering them to put pressure is and theyll think a lot about what types of pressures we are getting and in that particular case, and about what we can do to help. Yeah, great. I am president of a nonprofit here in d. C. Called opportunity america. We work on a variety of issues called workforce education and career and Technical Education, our big focus. I recently started to look a little bit or quite a lot of career and Technical Education Charter Schools. That is sort of uninteresting overlap to imagine a ven diagram with schools that is a hot new trend. Kids learning Technical Skills along with their Academic Skills and getting some workspace learning along with it. A lot of advantages, its not the old broken ad. It is to raise the Technical Skills with the Academic Skills and showing a lot of benefit in nonCharter Schools. The way you engage kids that arent that interested in learning, theres a development to them in a project they can do. It gets them excited about learning. Also way to make curriculum. One kid said i wasnt interested in math until i started doing welding. I go back and get interested in geometry. They also look at the rewards of succeeding at something, kids who have never succeeded that much might be good at coding or welding or whatever. The exciting new trend that has been slow to catch on in the Charter School and for understandable reasons, the Charter Movement has been focused on getting kids to college and graduating from college. They were serving kids who hadnt come from families who maybe havent had a chance to go to college and they have been kind of skeptical and that smells like feel that. Thats our population come you know, thats the populations were tracked in the past. It has been slow to come to the revolution going on for about five or 10 years and the rest of k12. Right in the last few years, a number of charter educators started to discover even the best Charter School on the block, it is a challenge to get kids from low income and not academically engage kids in college and beyond, even if we do a super well, we are not succeeding everyone. Which should try that cte thing. We are starting to see the middle ven diagram get populated and its very exciting. I think it is kind of two revolutions coming together and when it works, it is even more than the sum of the parts. The Charter Movement is just taking off and we are working with them. We cte schools what Charter Schools brain that most schools cant do, and they have the flexibility you talked about, and where they can innovate on curriculum, march the technical curriculum and math curriculum than a District School can do. They can work with employers who need to work with to get kids out of the workplace and learn what skills. They can hire teachers out of industry sometimes more easily. They can break at the school day so you go for school before school year and then you have a week off we get an internship. Theres a lot of promise, so im going to tell a story about a kid. Of course it is high schools, right . Cte starts in middleschool, but generally is high school. They have to have a Charter High School to do this. One of the first kids i met that taught me the promise of cte in a few years ago he was actually on the gulf coast and i was visiting a cte school that had a robust Welding Program. This is a kid who came from a high school were literally that not only had gangs, but a prostitution ring. You can imagine what kind of high school that was. He had discovered hed been a marginal hanging on statement, hanging on by a fingernail. He didnt even know what welding was if someone came and said we had a Welding Program. He had to google it and figure out what it was. For the time i met him, he was coming out of the Welding Program and he was one of the best welders in the group and incredibly proud of it. He found something he was good at that the teacher was interested in. It was unbelievable transformation. Of course i got excited and then i discovered i needed geometry. Its a very exciting story. About a year later they are sort of tears of welding, common guard welders commendably folders. He was making his way from construction project to construction project in the Gulf Coast Oil industry and on his way to making a six figure income that year. He had made it to college, but sometimes they do get on an economic have to go to college. Who knows where the schedule and that. Can we combine that magic, witches and for every kid. Some go straight to harvard. Can we combine that magic with the flexibility of charters. A few more quick images before my time as that. It is all spaces and you have kids and they have the flexibility to make them spaces and have the adaptable. The curriculum is entirely focused on aerospace. The aerospace is the focus, so not only are you doing your math or aerospace interscience or aerospace, but you are reading the Wright Brothers biography in english class and learning how to do your history through aerospace. The calendar sixers had been the school where you do six weeks of school and a week off for internship a work in hospitals or Software Companies are nonprofit work, you name it. So to me, charters are really exciting possibility. We are talking about expanding high School Choice. This is one of the only places you can go, but one of the very exciting places we will see a lot more in years to head. Excited to be here talking about it. Hello, everyone. And the executive director for Hope Christian schools, network a school serving nearly 3000 students across southeastern wisconsin in milwaukee. We have started school already, so we are busy and running at full steam. They are particularly important to me and i really appreciate in afc taking on this incredibly important topic. They get so incredibly titled to parents and students just a little bit about me, before becoming executive director, Hope Christian schools, and in the taught high school in the milwaukee, philadelphia, camden, new jersey and houston, texas. Really passionate about the high School Topics and the High School Space. At Hope Christian high school to talk about their mission. It is how important it was for students to be able to develop and get ready and outstanding character before their communities. Some parents or Community Members would ask colleges are everybody and absolutely agree. Cool thing about milwaukee is theres lots of options and parents and so we dont need to be a comprehensive onesizefitsall type High School Like so many big large high schools are. We can be a niche high school. We can Say Something specifically are going to offer to the parents who want that for their kids can have that for their kid. That is incredibly personal to me as a parent, i mean frankly, you dont make too many larger decisions for your children that how you will educate them. If you want a certain type of high school and setting for your students going to provide more choices for parents and families that want Something Like that. On a personal level, we have a couple of toys. Theyve got a little sister named katie. But henry is developmentally delayed and shy and introverted. So why worry desperately about the typos education you can have and how it can be treated by his peers. High school is a little bit scary. We worry about him getting bullied and left behind a little bit. Henrys little brother, tommy is tracking ahead right now socially, emotionally and intellectually. And worry about him going to a comprehensive high school. For us, finding the right balance in having the right opportunity and fit for our kids is incredibly important. We have the option, weve been blessed in my family to be able to find and balance what we think is good for our kids and we are able to do that. So many families across our country dont have the opportunity and blessing like my wife and i do to be able to sit and find the right educational option we want for a child k12. This topic of high School Choice is incredibly personal for not just me, but a lot of the parents here in the room and across the country that are watching and listening. Thanks for having me. My name is kevin teasley, founder and president of gdl education, greater Educational Opportunity in minneapolis. I came out of the School Choice words, talking to their college here, a long time ago from brookings politics markets in american schools. I think the country is on fire when it started talking about choice. Within the word choice, its a definition. There is private school vouchers. They are within Public School within the cross district. If the School Choice battles back in the 90s, in california actually, trying to educate folks on what choice meant and help them decide what choice is best for them, charter, voucher, et cetera. In 1998, and i started to promote and indiana we dont take any credit for the lobby being passed, but we are pushing for vouchers and we decided it was time to Start Talking about it and start doing it. They are in state of indiana. That is in 2002. Today they did not start out with the Management Organization but we do have five Charter Schools, two in gary, indiana, one in Colorado Springs and two in baton rouge. If you would ask me in 2002 with the mission was used to create highquality Charter School. Today, the reality is my mission is not that. My mission is to be poverty. You can have a highquality school just about anywhere. Try having it in a high poverty neighborhoods. Thats where you want to focus my attention is really serving the students who are falling through the cracks already. We all know if you look every single year, colorado just released their part stores. Indiana will do it soon. We all know what the students are failing and that is the student i want to serve. Weve actually started k12 and in the sense that they dont try to be the big mega 5000 Student High School that would provide all the options and i went to a school 1200 students when i was in high school. That was a big high school. But you can go to high schools and get various languages, whether its latin or french or spanish or you name the language, our high school had it. You can go to shop class, architecture class, drawing class, lots of different music programs. In the high school that i have today and the high school is that we have today, we dont actually have those programs on our campus, but we do offer those programs to her students. Our school in gary, indiana somehow heard about. The 21st century. We had i think the First Student to actually graduate from Purdue University with her bachelors degree from her high school. Completely paid for, by the way. She got a degree in sociology from Purdue University. A four year bachelors degree completely paid for by her school. Six others it means for two years of college completely paid for. Now, dna total story i would like to share is that the school because we approach it from a very different is, im an administrator of the school that serves a total of k12. If we were to attack the school from a to, and say we have 250 High School Students and they get a Foreign Language credit to meet the state standard. I only have so many dollars, so we offer thats really fair to the kids who want to take latin or german, italian, whatever. The topdown thinking is what happened in Small Schools around the country. What we do, instead of the topdown thinking, we say what you want . Okay, what you want . I want to take spanish. We are going to make it possible. We are in gary, indiana, northwest, purdue, university, a lot of colleges around her community. Instead of me hiring one teacher , live at. Youve got to take advantage. That is not the attitude. We try to reach out to every single one of her students and say what do you want . Here is the dollars for you to take that course of the Community College level. It may sound strange. I will tell you the families that we had six years ago when we started this program, they are like what are you talking about . Mike is not going to college. Gary, indiana, 90 of the families have no College Experience whatsoever in their household. So 10 have it, 90 dont. Here we are talking about sending our kids to college. Or degrading college. And so, we started with a very simple premise. You can do college. You are smart enough and we believe so much that in ninth grade, we are going to make ask you to take, empower you to take the test, which is the Entrance Test the most Community Colleges have. And if you can cast one part of the threepart test to my math, reading, writing, we will start taking you to college and youll start taking collegelevel courses. While youre in our high school and we will provide staff. Well provide the text looks. Well provide transportation. We will do the whole nine yards to make sure you are successful. That they are is a Life Experience itself. You fail, but youre still with us in ninth grade. We will remediate you. You are with us. We will mediate you. Come back next semester, ticketing and hopefully weve done our job where we remediate where we remediated you enough to where you can pass the test. Once they pass the test can we put them in a specific number of courses, freshman english, freshman math, collegelevel freshmen, collegelevel freshman math, english, et cetera. They Start Building their confidence. They are successful that they can do collegelevel material. Years ago, our kids graduated with only three College Credits. Today on average, and the school has 43 seniors graduate this year, all of whom graduated with at least 17 College Credits. One was a bachelors degree, six with their Associates Degree. Colorado springs, a much smarter school, talking about 50 High School Kids total. I had 11 graduates. Theyll graduated with about 34 College Credits, two with an Associates Degree. So, we have to as adults realize that students are ready to rise up to Higher Expectations and we can have Higher Expectations and they can succeed. I will tell you personally, we have a student in the news recently, right . I have a student who was in six different homeless shelters in gary, indiana. Two different foster homes. One of six kids, split three and three into foster care. You bet he did. He graduated from our school with more than 30 College Credits, a full ride from the university of virginia. Hes down there quite frankly, which is very challenging. The reality is, he has a chance for a full ride in studying medicine. This other young lady that had a bachelors degree, she started talking about going to college when she was in sixth grade. Her mom is single, data is not in the picture. What is the chances of her going to college . She came to us and graduated with a bachelors degree, graduating from high school. And now shes a reading interventionists at her school. These things can happen if we have Higher Expectations and empower students. Going back to what you are talking about earlier about the students choosing the high school. We have students choosing our high school. Parents arent involved in that choice. Very good. Thank you, guys. This is helpful. I think you did good, give thought and does. Its real in terms of what we are talking about. Real outcomes for real kids. I think what i would like to hear us now some of the difficult stuff, right . Weve heard some happy stories and now lets talk about the not so happy stuff, which is the obstacles that prevent these high School Choice of opening. We are talking about all the different varieties of high School Choice that you mentioned. You can take it in various corrections, really, i will give you some quick numbers. We have 900 public magnet schools, level 900. We have 1500 Charter High Schools. We have 2700 private high schools. And guess how many traditional district high schools . Anybody know . Audience participation point. 25,000. It goes all the way down from 900 magnets, 1500 Charter Schools in 25,000 traditional high schools. So clearly there is room for some of these other secondary options to open and flourish. But what is the problem . Who am i going to put on the spot. Zack, how about you. Give us some problems in your neck of the woods. Well start with problems and work our way toward towards solutions. I would say Hope Christian schools is kind of representative of some of those numbers. In the reforms based on a see a lot of elementary and middleschool operators added to Many High School operators and its not for lack of entrepreneurs are innovators youre trying to get in the space to work on it. This just an real challenges the High School Level. Like i said, of our eight campuses, only one of the high school and thats because the challenges are unique to the High School Space at a prevent defense from opening up our high schools. We also do not high schools and some of the other regions, open sky education. We also run Charter Schools in st. Louis and phoenix in addition to the privately run publicly funded private schools in milwaukee. That is because the High School Thing is just such a different animal because theres a lot of different parental expectations and student expectations when he gets to the High School Level. Once you get to the High School Level, nuts and parents and dividends start thinking about things outside of just academic programming. They start thinking about the experiences they had, School Reputation comes into play. Dominance of the athletic program, special facilities, how nice is the gymnasium. You think about the music program. Kevin mentioned auto classes are welding if you went a bit comprehensive high school, a lot of those things play into what people expect of a high school and all of those things are really, really expensive. Not just because youre adding additional programming and staffing, but you also need additional spaces to house those are grams as well. The cost of high school itself starts going up really quickly and unfortunately, the dollar amount for charters and particularly choice in terms of whether it tuition or vouchers, does not keep pace with parental expectations, so figuring out how to offer those many Different Things come you are trying to find specialized features like a spanish teacher, a shop teacher, trying to find a basketball coach, football coach. You are trying to find an art teacher or maybe a pottery class. Youve got all of these different specializations that you need along with unique facilities that also come with additional programming costs. And yet, as we all know too well, the funding disparities come at a funding hasnt kept up, so its been hard for the High School Space to keep up with the lack of resources sustainably to be able to do that. I think those are some of the baseline challenges of the high school, but i think which you also do at the High School Level that makes it challenging or difficult for operators to want to get into this space is a lot of the accountability protocols that are in place. A lot of high schools are held accountable are measured on the public side by a state assessment. But the high school itself, the ninth through 10th grade level entity is it responsible necessarily in all cases for what is having k8. As disincentives to get involved in the high school game, recognizing it got a smaller amount of time which are still going to be held to an absolute bar in measure. So if you really want to get into the high school game, you almost need if you want to say over the sort of quality of Educational Programming that students have had before they get to high school, one would need to start with k8 so you can stay there, otherwise you are held accountable for just what you can get done in terms of attainment, with just a couple of years. I will probably stop there. So, with cpe charters, you have those expense and accountability multiplied by a few fact or spirit of talk about that in a second. Even before you get there, you have the stigma issue. The people who are skeptical that anything but college. We sometimes call that the bachelor bust mentality. People think that guys going to go to a cte school. Hes never going to get to college or they see someone like my mother, they had in the kid who started in a school that was about coding and got so excited about math that he eventually went back and ended up in college. They feel its a choice and they were afraid, so that a big theme for charters, District Schools those are the expense questioned by several factors. Its about welding or whatever it is. That will involve welding spaces and tack and all kind of stuff robust and whatever you are doing. The teachers are more expensive because you want to hire teachers out of the industry. You dont want to shop teacher whos been using the last decade welding techniques. You want someone who just came out of industry and knows how they are welding this year and what the jobs are. The equipment is more expensive, so is an extra big issue for cte charter. You have these kids who are going to classic speaks an internship with competencybased learning. You are not preparing them to take the test like anybody else. You dont want to say they cant take the test if they are not good enough for her. And then you have the additional problem of employers. Really the different relationship with an employer because really the different between the new cte, one of the biggest differences is you have to have a relationship now with employers who make sure that youre really teaching something they will hire for for something exciting that israel and even the economy that might be a real pathway for that kid. You cant do that without the curriculum and most important, maybe give those kids a chance to be on the job in the workplace a little bit. Thats the most exciting part. If you dont have an employer, you cant have internships. How does the High School Principal though the relationship with the local employer . Not easily. Even the employers and the teachers that know that happen and try, and i sometimes say employers are from mars and teachers are from venus. Its very hard for them to build relationships. It is not easy. Theres a lot of cte charter, but lets not exaggerate the chaos is the word you can do it. Anything you want to add to that . You can probably speak to this better than i can, but i will pick up on what ive heard quite a few times, which is starting a school where you are picking up kids who have gone through the School System already, i hear over and over again is challenging. Those who start Charter Schools, for example and dont have a lot of Elementary Schools. So that could be accountability. It could also be bad habit that happen over time. There is often a rush to sort of younger and younger so they are bringing kids in very early on. That and starting a lot younger. So that i think is a tough spot. Thats why we do k. 12. High school in baton rouge and i wont do it unless we start the k12. Our goal for eighthgraders is not to be eligible to go to a College Prep High school. It is to be eligible to go to our high school, which means to pass the College Entrance exam at the ninth grader. of her and eighthgraders last year are already starting to take the College Level courses in ninth grade. I think one of the Biggest Challenges to starting a New High School is really just traditional thinking. Traditional thinking by all of us, including me. I am a dad. Ive got three kids. Indianapolis they dont have a High School Like what i have been gary, indiana. Its very frustrating to me to see my kids going to a very good high school, but they will graduate with simply high school diploma. And maybe, you know, honors diploma, but it is still just going to be a high school diploma. And i have a masters degree from purdue and six other kids this past year have an Associates Degree. To me, that is the higher standard. We need to be thinking differently about how we run schools. You are exactly right, and the challenges of hiring staff, the challenges of having the stability, they are expensive. We have to challenge around inking to how we resolve those problems. I had a young lady in Colorado Springs graduate with a welding degree, an associate degree in welding. I dont have one welding tool in a campus, but the Community College does. I had another gentleman, they were twins. One of the twins graduated with an Associates Degree in on the mechanics. I dont have a garage on a campus. If i were to provide physically, it is very tight, so i dont have enough money. If i take the dollars that each student represents and say okay, we are going to try do spend minutes dollar, you want french come you get french. You wont welding, that is what we as administrators need to be making sure as well and getting as much as possible. I hate to do that on cspan undecideds about getting it through. When you think about it, we need to take the amazon approach today. You can get anything with amazon, cant you . Anything. They are providing anything. It provides you the welding our facility. Using johns metaphor, what i am hearing, what is so bad about the comprehensive high school. These are all the problems because i asked you for the problem. Maybe what i should have asked is what is wrong with the comprehensive high school if it can offer all of this choice in all these different classes and whatnot. What is it you guys are hearing from families and students and research because maybe im beating up on it unnecessarily. Again, some of those exciting things i see, its hard to take out your classrooms. Everyones going to focus on baker thinking or aerospace. You are allowing them to focus. High schools had a lot of trouble added to workbased learning. You try to get a 16yearold for internship. How do you get them there and how do you arrange it. How do you prepare the kid for that . Its hard for the employer to do it, too. Hard to figure that out and need some help figuring it out. It is hard for high schools to do some of the specialized thing that ct Charter Schools want to do it, hard to they are going to read about doing their math or aerospace. Not many comprehensive high schools are set up to do that. Its hard for a school thats doing everything to do that, too. I would say it in another thought that went to have a fantastic experience and thoroughly enjoyed it and took shop class and participate in athletics and those were all wonderful things. But the student or family that baby doesnt want that, they may not currently have a choice. Maybe it is important for you to know that your student is in a small environment where they have a meaningful relationship with teachers, for everybody checks in on them. Maybe you question some of the values or social pressures your student will be exposed to a large comprehensive high school, so you dont want to go that route. Not necessarily from my perspective at the comprehensive high school. It provides a lot of benefits and opportunities. For the parents that dont and arent enough options if they are looking for something different. Im going to ask you just a few specific questions for each of you. We speak a little bit more. Parents and students can to see choice differently. Weve got this depressing factoid about kids wanting to go to their school. What do we do about that problem and the little bit about what youre learning. Youre doing research in northern does well. How you were learning about how they should be structured that might benefit better. Sorry about the depressing introduction. Choice can be dignifying. If you are sending a student into a school of the a school of the dope on a 10, thats not going to work out well. There are some good things about having kids get involved. Its sort of our School System. At the same time, theyre a guard rails we can put up that was sort of help to make sure the courses are working the right way. You can imagine a few different models. There is choice where kids can choose whatever school they want and you often see this. Parents can prescreen a couple of options. Pick out schools they think are fine. You are creating a space. At the school level, i hear often from middle schools that they are holding sessions with eighthgraders in there talking to them about the choices. The spirit about that is wonderful. Theyve had that conversation and i think its moving. On the systems side, we are talking about the choice in all these different high schools in which they can choose. Theres lots of different choice so kids can choose and report covers this pretty nicely. They can choose courses, teachers, and the principal, a lot of what we are talking about will happen in a comprehensive way. You can offer a lot of choice and i think one of the benefits of doing Something Like that is not as severe. I think its wonderful to have welding and aerospace. It sounds like a good idea. If that means that with a course for the program and now you are switching in the opportunities to keep some stability why you still have that choice. And i speak to that issue and to those who have the wrong thing. They do the same that they are focusing on and they get excited about learning. 13yearolds, 14yearolds, they are a project and they really got excited about doing it is how mike learners and achievers. They are on topics where that is not really they dont expect people to go on. They expect people to get excited about learning and to take the agency and do it somewhere else. Thats why one of these hard challenges that these schools is integrating subjects with your basic math, basic english, basic learning how to read tempting, basic learning all the things you need to do in high school because a lot will go onto a different topic and many will eventually go to college and thats the point. Its not meant to be put on not tracking your step. Its a way into learning and then you could go on a variety of other things. That come you brought up something as we were preparing this call that i didnt know too much about them not as the of Higher Education and plays upon those choice. Can you talk about the role of High School Education . I think another challenge, the spectrum of nine through 12 and what happened at that time has a lot of external pressures that are kind of forcing folks into what they can and cant do. The example at amber brought up is just Higher Education credit requirements. Like if you want the students to have the option and possibility to go on and enter college, for example, at our high school, we align a lot of align a lot of for curriculum and credit offer and support is required to get into the university of wisconsin Higher Education system. Higher ad in a lot of ways, shapes and forms to take a lot of which you can do at a High School Level based on what you are trying to do and not below the stifling for those who want to do something really innovative, go to cte route or aerospace or whatever rows. If they forego those credit requirements, then they are essentially closing that door for students. In many cases across different states, theres a state requirement for a number of credit to what you can offer, what you should offer. That coupled with a parent asked the patients are and should be in many ways, shapes or form but high schools are able to do and innovate and try new things because of what other societal and Higher Ed Institutions are placed on high school and whats offered. If i could just chime in on that. At least in indiana and colorado , they do have some play on what they have to provide. Its not just the course operating. Ill just tell you a story about this young lady that did get her bachelors degree from purdue. I spent a lot of time with her this past year. We were going to abc, nbc, fox and everybody else i wanted to talk to her. My daughter is a senior and she took the cte bonanza to raven, what was your score in the acp and the s. A. T. . She said mr. Teasley, i didnt take the acp or s. A. T. , but shes got her bachelors degree from Purdue University. How did that happen . Shes also got a twoyear degree from ivy tech, so when she went to purdue and applied, she went in not as a high school graduate, but as a College Junior College Transfer suited. Perdue looked at her transcript from ivy tech, which was all as and bs and accepted her based on that transcript. In fact, when perdue found out she didnt even have her high school diploma, the Admissions Office called her up, believe it or not this is a true story, called her up and said you dont have your high school diploma. You dont do that to raven. Raven said you expected me based on my transcript. I never represented i graduated from high school. Im not going to name drop, but he is a friend and if you look at twitter, you will see he has a picture of himself with raven. That was not going to happen. Reagan did indeed graduate with her bachelors degree. She did graduate from high school. One of the things i wanted to share if this is a young lady who went around the system to get her bachelors degree. Very innovative, very nontraditional. She didnt get the high school diploma. She didnt get the acp or s. A. T. And she didnt take a bunch of High School Level foreignlanguage or High School Level english and math courses. She took collegelevel english, math, which by the way, one semester of College Counts for a full year of high school so a lot of schools will require you to take two full years of Foreign Language. Well, you can do that in one year in college, two semesters. Spanish one, spanish one or two. Onetoone and one or two. Youve got your two years of high school taking care of. I remember when i was graduating from college and came here, one of my best friends actually graduated from a California High School at age 16. Most of us graduated from high school i think when we are 18 and for college when 22, roughly if we did before your traditional thing what i did. This kid, a friend of mine back in the 80s graduated when he was 16. Raven did the same thing. She graduated 18 from high school and bachelors degree at 18. So, she has accelerated. What i am trying to keep harping on here folks is weve got to get out of traditional thinking and i would encourage you to do that, too. We dont need to have all of these features in all of these facilities within our building if we are going to try to be inclusive, which we are, by the way. We have welding on one side, auto mechanics on one side in history and criminology on the other side. Accounting, rn, cpn. Weve got all kinds of offerings because we look at it from a very different lands. We dont have to provide it. And a jump in here . The flexibility and accountability, the exciting things about a lot of about a lot of the schools that they do have the flexibility and you hear over and over again from the stories you talk about by the other peoples expectations. We brought together a bunch of educators for a round table and they wouldnt get off the topic. I have to prepare, no matter what i do when no matter how exciting the program is, at the end of the time they got to do the tests, or whatever it is. It is a burden, a problem theyve got to be ready for those higher ed expectations. Prove to the state theyve got so many units. Theres so much flexibility that we have to go back in that little box. There was this moment the roundtable where they said wait a minute, be careful what you wish for. We do not want to get out of those tests. Again, we are emphasizing if we start to say our kids are going to take those tests come one will say you are not educating them all. He could miraculously get them through college. Then you can point to something higher. If youre not getting most of getting most of the college come you still want to prove you are getting them ready for whatever they are going to do. It is a challenge. You have to teach the kids aerospace and give them time to work in the aerospace shop, but you also need to get them ready to take the algebra ii test. It is a burden on schools, but a burden that most educators would choose. Most educators are not saying getting out of those expectations. They are saying we have to work harder so we can get our kids. Did you get the opportunity earlier to tell us which are learning about structuring these programs . I did not. Im sure many of you know this. The new orleans has probably embraced choice reforms more than any state in the country has before us, that is sort of growing out of the horror that was hurricane katrina. They have essentially all Charter School system set up now. I spent the last couple years in new orleans studying that system. One thing that i think they are doing very well down there now is understanding the kind of infrastructure that you have to build around the School Choice to make it work. This isnt a panacea where you just sort of turn on choice and suddenly everything works really well. Theyve given a lot of thought to the system they set up and whether they are giving people help and support. So for example, new orleans is certainly not alone here, but parents have a single application they go out and apply to all their schools, which keeps them from having to run around and keep track of them showed deadlines and also the kinds of things that if you imagine we are thinking about this with high School Choice, that is hard for parents. If we have 13yearold who are choosing those schools, that is going to be really tough to get kids to meet all of those deadlines and know exactly they have centralized the enrollment, the application and placement process. They also think have been very good with transportation and making sure kids can get to schools around the city, which is not true across the board. I think increasingly they are very good at outreach. What types of outreach do we need to get to families, were just putting information on the website might not be enough and often involve something more than that, sort of getting information out in front of families choosing. One study from a couple of colleagues. The terrorist who have both worked at tulane have done a study on what types of characteristics families look for when they are choosing schools. It sort of nicely illuminates the elementary and middleSchool Choice difference from the high School Choice. One of the big predictors of families choices for high school was whether the school had a band or football program. In new orleans it was a big, fun thing. But there is a different set of considerations going into these choices when it is families choosing. They are hopping out of the place. I want to make sure we get the opportunity to share with you guys. When you talk about the role of marketing for his schools of choice and how that can be done while were not done so well. You talk about the marketing pcc in your work. Thats another interesting piece weve learned, been in milwaukee where its a relatively competitive marketplace, for those folks seen in milwaukee, and theres variation and they also have Charter Schools, which runs the gamut similarly. They have privately run, publicly funded schools are their thoughts a student and Parent Choice in the city of milwaukee. We really have too understand our brand and Value Proposition what is it that we bring our offer that differentiates us from Just Another School around the block or around the way. Being able to have that Value Proposition that you can share with students and families in branding yourself and marketing yourself as such cleanly and consistently is huge for opening up School Choice options. Say nothing of all the other challenges. You have to figure that out. We also have to suffer marketing came up to. Who we are, the value we offer. It could be true we are trying to market to a segment that is that used to necessarily have a ton of options are choice and an opportunity where you knew what she would go to. You havent choices or options necessarily a good Educational Opportunity. Theyve got marketing an entirely new segment to choice for students and families havent thought about that. Where you can get who you are, what youre about to provide families. Not only will you be able to market more effectively to students and families, but shall also find the students and families who didnt know they were looking for in terms of the education you are offering. Can you give an example of the marketing thing you would use to recruit to something different. Caress, its our mission. You should be able to walk into any one of our schools and scholars and asked what is the mission they will tell you it is college and character. Finding that pitch, the valueadded, youre going to get ready through college and have a character thats going to make you a leader and a change agent in your community, that is really powerful and compelling than not dumping all schools can offer. That is what sets us apart in different. Where we can stick it cleanly to god, whether its putting it on a postcard or billboard or talking to students and families are even asking around students and families to refer a friend, what is that value added, Value Proposition is the three cs. You know, i think this is tricky in the public side, too. One of the places where they get to the High School Level. They are about how schools are performing are not available or not available is clearly in haskell as they are, for example, we have proficiency measures and theres sort of a good reason to prefer how they are referring. A lot of state accountability systems increase three to eight Old Testament high school. The only test them once or maybe not testing them at all. Some of these tools that we happily can feel good about at the Senate Senate comes to tax scores we can Say Something about how kids are learning in those schools. Those dont work as well. In the absence of that, and figure out what it is that families want. They are turning into what it is driving School Choices and that is, i would be putting out to another risk you wonder what kind of choices people can make. Just to chime in. This isnt necessarily on point to your conversation with a choice high school. But you hit it right on the hide. High schools dont have as much accountability as kate ate schools. At least the ones im aware of in indiana, they have to High School Students have to pass the basic algebra i english tents and biology one test. At the High School Requirements in order to get a high School Employer minus 40 high school credit. What about the other 37 . Do we know anything thats happening in most classrooms with a 37 other credits are being taught. The reality is we dont. We look at s. A. T. Scores, psat, s. A. T. We look at you then id be passing class grades and we rely a great deal, ive cracked kitchen are now. We rely an awful lot on High School Teachers who are not showing any kind of standardized test results to prepare our students for what . Either college or cte programs. That is a huge risk in my opinion. We dont really know what is going on and i will tell you honestly i walked into an 11th grade class before and seen fourthgrade standards being taught. And everybody was eating it up. They loved it. Fourthgrade standards in 11th grade . No. I must say, if you are going to graduate from high school, i would much rather see a graduate with a whole bunch of College Credit that i can do look out for high school credits at least the kids graduating from high school with a College Transcript we have basketball. We do not football. We are pretty good. We usually make the final four in the last three or four years. That really has built a lot of spirit for the school. But i always laugh and please take this funny. When im at the basketball game because i think we have an advantage over everybody else because everybody on my basketball team, they are not High School Kids, they are all college kids. They may be high school age, but they are going to college and they are playing a bunch of High School Kids. Kind of funny. Youve got me thinking about what i have been asked you that you would like to share before the audience. Kevin, real quick because they know you two shared something, but the one thing i wanted you to share is youve got Charter Schools in three different days. I want to know how these are impacting or making it easier because we know it is a big part of whether it easier or harder to get the school spelling. You know, i wouldnt have necessarily known the answer to that question unless i came to the conference this past summer and presented what we were doing in indiana. We had a National Audience and there were some folks from california cant be done in california. But why is that . Well, there are laws apparently and dont quote me on this. Im just sharing with you what i learned from the audience and that is there are laws against High School Student taking a number of College Credit courses in california. I dont know if its true or not, but it is what was represented to me. I do know in colorado and frankly a lot of high schools you said 25,000. High schools will say they are doing the dual credit, doing Early College. They dont tell you they are limiting it. Well, you can only take three credits per semester. In fact, the young lady that got a welding degree in Colorado Springs came to me from a 2000 Student School. My high school literally, k. Eight, k12 school only 350 kids. Only about 75 to. Why are you coming here from a 2000 Student School . Number one am only a junior. And if i was still at the traditional high school, i would only take two College Courses when im a senior. Adults are putting in place the kind of barriers to kids advancing. Heres the young lady she came to us. She chose her high school, not her parents. She came to us specifically because she learned about her Early College program and the ability for her to get an associate degree in welding, which was very interesting to me. Are you saying that can happen in multiple states . Im not so sure. Im not going to sit here and say im an expert, but i do know a number of schools will say yes, we do a credit, but you have to pay the tuition or yes we are dual credit coming up to buy the textbooks. Textbooks are pretty doggone it. 150 bucks for one textbook. Or you have to pay for the transportation or you have to figure out how you are going to do it along with the other High School Requirements we have. We literally have built our scheduled, most colleges are on a block schedule. We built our high school on a block schedule and we actually changed our calendar to colleges. One of my daughters started college this past monday. Well, the high schools started back the first of august. Some of the high schools we have have actually mimicked the calendar of the college because theyve got High School Kids that want to take College Courses. What do they do if they are taking a High School Calendar school year in their spring break doesnt match up for christmas break doesnt match up . These are barriers to success in really barriers to helping High School Students excel. We dont fit their schedule. Well, who is going to change here . The students or the school . We change. The School Changes because that is what we are here for. We are here for the students. Anything else you guys want to share that we maybe didnt touch on, didnt get to . I know we have a lot to cover. One of the answers one of the hardest things about ct charter and the answers to the other problems is the winning together of the two curriculums. So if you can figure out a way while they are learning well enough that they can take the algebra test at the end or the geometry test or whatever it is, im mixing up my math subjects now. That is a success story. Schools put a lot of effort into that on how do i put the geometry through the welding so the welding so you can come out really now in the geometry and how do i teach the english through the aerospace that that you really can come out and pass those tests. That is hard work. You are reinventing your curriculum, really. The schools that do well is the ticket to success in making schools that do it well, were you really feel like they are getting interested assistants, and schools were at kind of a gimmick. I wont name the schools are the particular gimmicks that would stand out, but where you have some clever thing that sounds like english or music or something and its not. That is in no way, location, location, location. Employer is the hard part about it to the second hard part is integrating of the curriculum. The key to making it is not hacking. Very good at what can we do for you . Anything you want to share . Recovered by a march a lot of the challenges and what i will say is theres obviously work we can do on the funding side. A lot of the traditional thinking mentioned before, i think theres busy can challenge that an increased choices at the High School Level. At the end of the day, if none of those were to change, something i heard is the clear about who you are and who you are not. Because acted up marketing piece. You can be clear within current constraints about who you are, which are high school was and what kind of transformational educational option and opportunity you provide for families and a screen that from the mountain tops and wear it out and proud. I think that is how we are going to within current constraints begin to realize the promises of high School Choice. John. No, go ahead. One thing weve touched on we havent really talked about is sort of to me an interesting statistic is Charter High Schools in the u. S. Are about half the size of an average of traditional Public High Schools. What i often hear in sort of the descriptions of the programs is they feel very personal and it feels like relationships and may be possible in that context and the way they are not. That not to say they wouldnt keep traditional Public High Schools from being much smaller than they are, but there is that gap. Go ahead. Why dont we just incurred the audience to think differently and the sense we always are saying we need more money to do this. One of the challenges to creating a high School Choice is how much money do we have. So how Many Services can we provide with those dollars . Just turn it around. How much can we spend on the student in meet the students needs . I mentioned the amazon kind of analogy, but when you think about it come you go on amazon, get on your phone right now, go and buy just about anything you want on amazon, but amazon doesnt make any of it. They provide it to you in your app is the opportunity to buy it. I think perhaps we need to start thinking instead of the 5000 Student School that i see in the backyard of where i live, maybe we need to be looking at more of a boutique place that is a doorway to a lot of opportunities. Our high schools are small and incident and that is part of the intimacy that we all enjoy with amazon. And the relationship with the individual which is what we do at our schools. I know the names of our students. We dont have thousands of them. We have few of them and we developed a very personal relationship and we opened up the door of opportunity for each of them. I like it, access and opportunity. Its a different model. Id be curious to hear some questions from you guys about that idea or others. I think karen, your questions for me. We will pass the microphone around for folks with her hands up, right . If you could identify yourself and ask a question. I guess my question is primarily maybe focused on you. There seems to be an application in the conversation that choice involves multisector choice but it seems like choice has exploded within the Public High School rounds. I think were talking about their traditional Public High School as if its a monolithic comprehensive High School Model when, in fact, that model is less and less frequent the way i understand it. My question is does sector matter in outcomes or in the availability of choices . Or is one of the issues here there are already ample choices and growing choices within public high School Systems . Thats a good question. It is certainly not the case that choice within high schools is a new phenomenon. For a company as of high schools built in part to get People Choice within the context of a comprehensive high school. I think it is largely a question of what it is that we think families or kids should be able to choose. When it comes to sectors like host to traditional public versus chart i dont think many people have an inherent preference for one of the others far as which school to go to. I think they do have preferences over what the programs are in the schools and what the teachers ar alike and what the experience of going there, the environment. I dont think that matters so much. I do think when it comes to private schools that are preferences for sector specific preferences when it comes to private schools. But im certainly of impression a lot of what we talk about as cross sector choice we could accomplish within schools or within sector and one way or another. A lot of cities now, not just high schools, but a lot of cities have quite a bit of choice across a traditional Public School system. They might give preference or guaranteed seat families who live right around that school but it opened up quite a bit within the traditional Public School sector. My name is leo. Im a reporter for inside sources. This question is kind for everyone but probably in particular for the school administrators. Its about the flexibility versus accountability portion. The question is, should these schools of choice a subject to the same accountability systems as their neighboring traditional Public Schools, and why or why not . We do participate in the same accountability as traditional public. I do think that is a challenge for those who want to be innovative and outside the box because you have to at some point or another performed on those tests. And if youre authorized or at least in a charter world, if youre authorizer doesnt like the results and you get an accountability grade and you get three fs in a row your shutdown. In indiana, indianapolis in particular there was a school that literally was approved by an authorizer, and in the application specifically said we are not going to teach to the test. We are not believers in the state standardized test. And authorizer approved that charter. The charter still had to administer those tests. Well, was anybody surprised by the results that the tests, results were not so great . That school got like three fs in a row and the authorizer and others said shut it down. Im sorry, they were doing exactly what you just approve them to do begin thinking it was a projectbased type school. That was very upsetting, frankly, from a charter perspective, from an Innovative School perspective, had 300 parents one to send the kids to this school. So parents were voting in support of the school but the government agency, the authorizer said sorry, youre not good enough. There needs to be a balance i think. We need to add some additional Accountability Measures in place. In my school, in gary, we dont get any credit for the College Credits that our students are earning. Because the state likes to look at ap test results. How many ap classes are you taking . The u. S. News world report, the best high schools in the country, im sorry, its a bunch of bunk. Its basically all about if you take ap courses, it doesnt say how many of you pass the course and it doesnt measure you on how many actually passed the test. It measures you on how many actually took the course and took the test. Thats ridiculous. So you have a bunch of high schools i going to be u. S. News and world report lists im going to start offering ap courses. Thats crazy. Yet a bunch of kids that are taking ap courses and they may get an a or a beat from the teacher that teaches the course but then how did they do on the actual ap test . Twos and ones. Sorry, thats not cutting it. You have to get a three or four. So accountability is important bubut i dont think its sophisticated enough right now. Too bland. Cannot add to that . I appreciate kevins sentiments and i think its a question of whether everybody should be under the same sort of accountability metrics and regime but rather recognizing the unintended consequences of imperfect accountability systems. Ill use an example that john brought up before. Most state assessment and the cattle b reports rely on overall student attainment, cut scores that are determined largely at the state level that they deem on the state test as marking proficiency within any state assessment or test. That may be all well and good you can watch the rest of this event cspan. Org. We will take you live to a conversation on biological terrorism and how to prevent attacks and outbreaks. Its hosted by the Interuniversity Center for terrorism studies and just getting underway. Bioterrorism has only grown worse over time. Its more threatening. It is probably more eminent and certainly the tools we have for dealing with it are, is adequate today as i they were 20 years a. Almost also like 20 years ago more and more of the political