Given that this debate has been going on for 60 years, more than 60 years, why did 1900 people signed a Facebook Page to protest tonight the event . The controversy surrounding this forum reflects a large and profound divisions in american politics and society today. This country is more divided now been it has been in many decades. Many people on all sides feel fearful and deeply threatened. For educators this is an especially sad moment because in has made many people stop listening to each other. And this time of division what we need most is to listen and understand one another instead of circling the wagons into our own echo chambers. The Kennedy School is all aboutf understanding differences and building bridges, but creating an inclusive space now especially difficult because any people from all sides would rather shut each other down rather than hear what one another are saying. Im sure many people have followed the controversy over Collin Kaepernick and other nfl Football League players and staff who would be kneeling during the playing of the national anthem. What are they saying . From the farms of virginia to the halls of philadelphia to the field at gettysburg, the idea that we are all created equal is the vizslas of american aspirations. These americans in silently kneeling reminder our fellow citizens how were all falling short of that ideal because some of us are imprisoned or killed at much higher rates than others. Others. Yet many do you their very speech as unamerican. Many people on the left side of this political spectrum are also feeling here and threat that thm prevents them or listening to other views. Any disturbing series of recent events weve seen students and activists shut down conservative speakers at several College Campuses over the past year. Shutting people down is contrary to the values of this space and the harvard Kennedy School. We encourage the exchange of ideas and different viewpoints, even if we do not agree, especially if we do not agree it is important to hear and not others in attendance to listen and speak as well. The practice of our forum ask these principe giving a speaker to articulate their views and then existing that they take questions and you the audience, people in his audience will as they always do have an opportunity to ask questions in the last portion of tonight event. I will ask the Harvard University police to escort from the forum anyone who insists upon preventing others from speaking or hearing by disrupting this event. That is because our practice of dialogue and debate is critical. When you prevent others from speaking or hearing disagreeable views or when you yourself refused to be challenged by those who disagree, it means that you are so sure that you rigright and so sure that they are wrong, that you have nothing to learn from them. But on an issue like School Choice, how can anyone be so sure of themselves . When we look back years from now, we might see School Choice as a salvation for disadvantaged learners. In dorchester, the southside of chicago or detroit michigan. A salvation that enables them to escape failing schools and seize the opportunity for a better life. School choice might enable educators to create the widest array of opportunities and pedagogy is for students. On the other hand, we may come to see the School Choice came away to please the public and exploit uninformed pair to send their children to ineffective private schools while enriching the operators of those schools. Still worse, we may come to see School Choice as a misguided effort to abandon the dreams ofm Thomas Jefferson and horse man for system, schools which americans from all backgrounds high and low born learn how to be citizens of a successful republic together. I do not presume to know how the future will judge us on this question for so many others. I do think looking at the evidence will help us all reach a better future, evidence about what kinds of traditional public charterprivate school arrangements actually work. We will export these and other questions about education with our distinguished colic andeciau special guest tonight, professor Paul Peterson is a henry c shattuck professor of government and the director of the program on education policy and governance at Harvard University. Hes a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and Senior Editor of education net, a great journal of education policy. Hes a member of the missing which academy, American Academy of arts and sciences at the National Academy of education. He has written many, many books including saving schools from horace mann to virtual learning, go politics chicago style and city limits which is a pathbreaking study of urban politics and policy. Elizabeth the boss is 1111 secretary of education of the United States pictures been involved in politics and education policy for more than 30 years in home state of michigan and nationwide. In interview with the philanthropy roundtable, she recounted how she first got engaged with education issues in a visit to Potters HouseChristian School in grand rapids. There she saw a school that it matters to create a safe, warm and rich Educational Learning environment for many low income children. She start helping individual students with their tuition, then supporting the school itself which her family still does through their philanthropy. This effort grew into larger philanthropic effort to provide a scholarship fund, and then she pursued this commitment to choice in the Public Policy domain working to pass michigans First Charter School law in 1993. Then as now she seeks to transform Education Systems to provide such choices for parents and students more broadly. Her fierce advocacy of School Choice has drawn equally fiercee criticism. The New York Times wrote that it is hard to find anyone more passionate about the idea of steering public dollars away from traditional Public Schools than betsy devos. Arsenic confirmation vote to become education secretary could not have been closer. It was split 5050 with Vice President pence breaking the time. So we have a lot about and controversial issues. I would be returning a bit later to moderate the questionandanswer time but for now please welcome to the john f. Kennedy junior forumel professor Paul Peterson and secretary elizabeth devos. [applause] thank you for that kind introduction. T and doug elmendorf, thank you for the opportunity. The Kennedy School. Click one of the but of all of American Post secondary education. Professor peterson, i look forward to our conversation but i first want to recognize the significant and influential contributions to the advancement of School Choice you have made over the years. To both the program on education policy and governance here at harvard and education next, few scholars have left such indelible fingerprints on this critical conversation. Thank you for continuing to facilitate that dialogue. T and a special thanks to president faust for a decade of leadership as president of this one of americas most finest institutions of higher learning. As she and how to prepare for the next apps, i was sure nothing but the best. During cambridge there are many great people working on manyeatp great ideas to better the lives of all americans and people across the globe. Thats been the case for a very long time. Your graduates have gone on to shape culture and society, create new businesses and new technologies, help cure diseasec and yes, lead governments at all levels around the globe. Its a privilege to be at the Kennedy School. I dont really want to talk about my age, but president john f. Kennedy is the first president i can personally remember, though i cant say i remember all that much. I do know that president kenny understood the proper role of that,ate, and once warned every time we try to shift that problem to the hands of the government, we are sacrificing the liberties of our people. President kennedy had it right. Despite the fact that we disregarded his observation, he is still right today. One of the pernicious effects of the growth of government is that people worry less about each other. Thin thinking their worries are noww in the hands of socalled experts in washington. There is perhaps no better example than our current education system. Many inside and outside ofe than government insist the government system is best equipped to educate children. In that fantasy scenario, the state replaces the family, thech schoolhouse because the home and the child becomes the constituent. Not too long ago the American Federation for teachers tweeted at me, the union wrote betsy devos is public should invest in individual students. No, we should invest in a system of great Public Schools for all kids. A the union bosses made it clear they care more about a system, one created in the 1800s then they do about students. Their focus is on School Buildings instead of schoolkids. Isnt education supposed to be about kids . Education is an investment in individual students. That is why funding and focusme should follow the students, noti the other way around. I have been on the job now for some time and i came into office with a core belief. It is the unalienable rights and responsibility of parents to choose the learning environment that best meets their child unique, individual needs. I am even more convinced of that today. This symposium rightly asks us to consider the future of schoot choice. The current reality is the vast majority of futures in America Today are left to chance, not te choice. The world got to see what many of us already knew in the film waiting for superman. Parents who want to create theie child from a feeling school are sometimes allowed by the system to enter a lottery for only a few seats in a different school. Even today thousands of children by four limited openings. The students are numbered and often represented as plastic balls rolling around in a cage as if children were part of a bingo game. I suggest that any sycophants of the system or skeptic of choice visit one of these lotteries. Watch the faces of these paren parents, many of whom are struggling to get by every day. Watch their faces hidden in their hands are covered in tears because they didnt win a new future for their son or daughter. This scene is heart wrenching and it is downright disgraceful. Childrens futures arent to be gambled. There are too many kids in a school that doesnt meet their needs and to many parents who are denied the fundamental right to decide the best way to educate their child. It is what makes me so passionate about changing this paradigm once and for all. Now, ive been called the School Choice secretary by some and i think it is meant as an insult but i wear it as a badge of honor. E. Lets talk for a moment about what choice really is. School choice. Private defenders of the system would have you believe it means vouchers, right . In Charter Schools and they say it means private schools or maybe even religious schools. It means forprofit schools and they say it means taking money from Public Schools, no accountability, no standards and the wild west and the market run amok. I am going to give it to them. Theyve done a mighty fine job of setting the scene for that house of horrors in the press. They did so by trying to paint an indelible line forcing a false dichotomy. If you support giving parents any option, any say, you must therefore by the biometric post to Public Schools, Public School teachers and students. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Think about it. Yes, food. Probably a good time to think about it since it is just about dinnertime. Like education we all need food to grow and thrive. We dont all want or need the exact same thing at the exact same time. What tastes good to me may not taste good to you. What is working for me right now might not work a year from now. Accordingly, we choose how to get past the food that meets our unique needs. Think about how you eat. You could visit a Grocery Store or Convenience Store or a Farmers Market to buy food and cook at home. Or you could visit a restaurant, maybe a sitdown place or maybe a fast food joint, may be a hybrid that combines the best of both. The department of education there arent many restaurants but you know what . Trucks started lining the streets to provide options. Some are better than others and some are even local restaurants that have added contracts to their businesses to better meet their customers needs. Now, if you visit one of those food trucks instead of a restaurant do you hate restaurants . Or are you trying to put Grocery Stores out of business . No, you are simply making the right choice for you based on your individual needs at the time. Just as in how you eat, education is not a binary choice. Being for equal access and opportunity, being for choice i. Not being against anything. I am not for or against anyone type, one brand or one breed of School Choice. Am im not for any type of school over another. The definitions we have traditionally worked from have become tools that divide us. Isnt the public made up of students in appearance . Isnt public money really their money . Y . Taxpayers money . T everho and doesnt every school aim to serve a public good . Ol a school that prepares its students to lead a successful live is a benefit to all of us. The definition of publicuc education should be to educate the public. That is why we should fight last about the word that comes before school. I suspect all of you here at harvard, a private school, will take your education and contribute to the public good. When you chose to attend harvard did anyone suggest you are against public universities . He t no. You and your family sat down and figured out which education environment would be the best fit for you. You compared options and made an informed decision. No one seems to criticize that choice. No one thanks choice in Higher Education is wrong so why is it wrong in elementary, middle or high school . Instead of dividing the public when it comes to education the focus should be on the end, not on the means. We should be for students, all students and that is why i amt prepared to give access to the learning environment that is right for their child. I believe in the students and i trust parents. With that understanding of choice what does the future look like . I am not a creature of washingtons im not afraid to say this. We do not know what the future of School Choice looks like. That is not only something with which i am okay but something i celebrate and embrace. The future of choice should be whatever parents want for their children and the future of choice relies upon parents being empowered to make choices for their children. What this looks like the one family will be different from what an indiana family decides. And one choice what looks for one child will be different looks like for his or her own assembling. States are different, families are dynamic and children are unique. Each should be free to pursue different avenues that lead each child to his or her fullest future. Fu that is why i wholeheartedly believe the future of choice does not begin with the new federal mandate from washington. That might sound counterintuitive to some coming from the us secretary of education but after eight months in washington and three decades working in a state, i know if washington tries to mandate choice all we will end up with is a mountain of mediocrity, spending any boast of bureaucracy to go along with it. Washington does have an important supporting role to play in the future of choice. We can amplify the voices of those who want better for their kids. We can assist states who are working to further empower a parents and urge those who havent. We dont need a new federal program to administer. Washington and in particular the Us Department of education justt needs to get out of the way. That is because the real future of choice is in the state. It is in their futures to shape and it is already underway today. I recently went on a tour of the heartland to visit the teachers, students were shaping their own futures. We called it the school to work because i wanted to highlight and learn from innovated educators who are breaking free of the standard mode to better meet the needs of their students. What i saw was encouraging. Traditional Public Schools, charter Public Schools, independent private schools, parochial schools, from school and even a high school at as you and they were all different, all with unique approaches but what they all had in common was just that. It was a deliberate focus on serving their students. Students and parents chose them. What worked in those schools for the students might not work everywhere and it might not