Be readyor anything. It is wonderful to be here talking with you today about your book. I want to first say what an extraordinary achievement the book is. The authoritative history that ive ever read in the School Choice movement. Its thoroughly researched and it really feels encyclopedic to me almost. Its everything that you would ever need to know. I wanted to first ask, im very familiar with your incredible work as an education reporter and i know a lot of education reporters have these sort of crystallizing moments in reporting with a classroom or in the family and we have a moment. I am curious to know if you have one of those moments that led you to start writing the book . I started thinking about School Choice movement when i was reporting about segregation in florida and as a part of that, we interviewed our team interviewed dozens of families trying to escape these and i was sort of struck by the options were. There were other Public Schools, Charter Schools and then a sum of the kids were using School Vouchers to go to private schools. We followed some of the kids and it wasnt a part of that series but it struck me as this sort of tension between the system and what the family actually does when they have not found a good fit for their child. So that stayed with me and i didnt have much to do with it as a part of that particular piece of work. But thinking about the history of schoolrt choice. I know the book starts in the 1950s, sort of pre and post as a lot of Southern States begint with the court orders to integrate. Why did you decide to start the book there . Why did you pin pointed out as the origin of the School Choice movement because i imagine some people in the movement wouldnt be particularlyy proud that that is the beginning of the movement. I think theres some awkwardness about that, but i think one of the things i was trying to figure out when i was trying to decide how to write the book is looking for where does this idea begin and its hard to pinpoint where the idea begins because through the stylized history of School Choice, it starts with Milton Friedman and economist writing an essay about vouchers in the s50s and then the history that is told often is that nothing sort of happens. Friedman keeps this idea alive and then milwaukee starts the School Voucher program in the country. That sortha of the history that you hear but then theres other pieces of American History that you kind of have to go back to. You have to look at what the Founding Fathers intended for education and how that developed because there wasnt a reason on how to educate the nations children. You can look at what happened with catholics coming into the country and immigration of catholic people and the School System performing atbu the timen the 1800s. It would also start with the catholics into that whole piece of the history. So i was kind of grappling with what makes sense at the beginning. I decided in 1950 not just because of segregation but enough time period you did have Milton Friedman writing this essay about School Vouchers and a sort ofs lesserknown figure who was very much interested v n the School Vouchers for the religious liberties to help religious families attend private school and Catholic School but not exclusive to that. So there were these two voices and at the same time, segregationists who are interested essentially and privatizing the School System to avoid. And it started in the lead it seemed clear that we were moving in that direction and then it intensified postbrown, but i thought that the time period is so fascinating because you start to see how you can take sort of one tool or mechanism and use it for aan lot of different purpos. And i felt like today we were still having some of those same threads and questions about the vouchers. Who they are for, who they are not for and does it help or hurt thein public system and how to factor in the sort of values, religious education into that. So i felt some of those debates from the 1950s are still in play and that is why i decided to start there. I found at the beginning of the book toto be one of the most intriguing and compelling parts partiall because it is so dramatic. Its very emotional and it really has to do with one of the biggest cases in the u. S. Supreme courtt history. I encourage the viewers to pick up the book and read it, but can you walk us through how the board of education and desegregation came first to a School Choice movement . So, its interesting. There was as i said there were sort ofco indications brown was coming down the line. There had already been a few court cases at the University Level so it seemed clear that next would be the k12 system. There were influential voices saying we essentiallyy needed to give up Public School rather than to desegregate them and it was one of the things i found interesting in the research is before google and internet and the widespread availability of news in the way we understand it now and yetrg the voices in georgia were picked up by the National Media so there is an awareness that this is happening. I thought that was kind of interesting. Then a sort of watching how it spread because georgia came up with this idea we are going to privatize the system, not just the vouchers, they were like a sort of escape mechanism for students. They were talking about leasing buildings, talking about putting home School Teachers, having private School Teachers then be eligible for state benefits. They were talking about a wholesale system and not just vouchers. So i thought that was sort of this interesting example of how you might use vouchers. But brown himself was this change for education in america and so how the south reacted to it was incredibly interesting but there was also a sort of tension of segregation that exists in the north and then how that kind of factored into the future of the School Vouchers. Families fleeing the south and then encountering different types of discrimination in the north. I found that whole period of time so interesting. So, basically a load of states created Voucher Programs so that they wouldnt have to send their children to school alongside black children. It was actually considered to be sort of a less extreme measure which sounds strange, and in found that startling whn i was doing the research because it seems like an extreme measure. In this escape mechanismie to lt white families and their children to all white schools all white private schools and being struck down by the courts. We did see tiny numbers also using vouchers it is a movement for the desegregated Public Schools. S. That is one of the most shocking things about that era is the Public Officials would have rather shut down Public Schools. No Public School was superior. You mentioned you found a lot of things intriguing about this. Im curious to know. Youve been an education reporter for a long time. We are all especially in florida you covered the debate over School Choice and school reform. Its like a laboratory of School Choice. What were some of the surprising things that you learned in researching this book . Its interesting how little i actuallyd did know. Its not the part that i grew up in but overall. Washington has sort of charter of the schools a little bit but it was extremely contested and the court. So often your focus is on covering the local School District. For me i spent a lot of time trying to understand how the system works, the public School System how florida finances its schools and sort of bumping industries from timete to time. I might cover that but i wasnt necessarily tuned into the history of it all and i would sort of run up against the data for it but it was when i was there it was sort of an established thing already. The court case struck down particular Voucher Programs in florida and w so it was sort of interesting to me when i started researching it i didnt know nearly as much as i thought i knew. So lots of things were relevant torre to me more than i would to admit. I really was familiar with this history that started with Milton Friedmang and then Nothing Happened and then milwaukee and i didnt even know that much about milwaukee to be honest. Its interesting because especially if we view these issues to be strictly bipartisan. The sociologist that wrote the treaties to School Choice on rightwing and leftwing publication. That is one of the things that i think we have to be going through to do this research. One is that it wasnt a rightwing thing. There dont seem to be middle ground one of the things that i thought was surprising is the overlap theres voucher advocates and you have Milton Friedman, you have virgil bloom. These programs that were started in the south, they started very quickly to get shut down by the court in the late 50s and into the 60s but even as the courts are saying the programs are essentially racist, you have new voices coming in and to some of them are progressive voices saying School Vouchers could be a tool of empowerment are low income kids and particularly for black children. And i thought that was so startling that you would be making an argument like that at the same moment the courts are saying the programs are affordingd. Desegregation and ty need to end. Some of those people in the magazines aboutt this idea he ws fairly liberal sociologist at the time and Kenneth Clarke wrote an essay about this. I thought that was something out there a little bit if you are in the Choice Movement i think you are aware of some of those voices i potentially, but i thik the larger, most people are not actually aware of that and so that was interesting. You see that throughout the entire history which i also thought it was fascinating. Certainly it is dominated by the movement and by conservatives, but they are not the only voices. So id found that kind of intriguing and it made me dig a little deeper into how does that work, how do the different ideas about choice play out against each other and i thought it was interesting that you have Milton Friedman for some of those other voices about how you do for the voucher. It is astonishing. On oneho hand in the south you have the School Choice being used to avoid integration and a major ruling of civil rights in the north and i think milwaukee is a good example of this. You had people arguing this is a tool of empowerment. I think really theres nobody that and bodies that contradiction more than Polly Williams and milwaukee. To me it was a very fascinating character. Can you talk a little bit about her and her role in the movement . So, she was a black Democratic State legislator in milwaukee shes passed away now but she was an interesting woman because she was deeply interested in education but was opposed to integration and was verya much i think i would call her a black nationalist. She was very interested in helping her community. She was interested in trying to make institutions work for black families and she didnt think the district was working for black children so she did a number of things trying to sort of improve the system. One of the things she was opposed to she felt essentially integration and milwaukee was largely on black families and she didnt think that it was doing much to help black children. She didnt think they were benefiting from being lost to another school. Some oftt the policies were attacking the immigration policies. Someng of them she proposed like one of the ones that i think got the most attention was that she and howard fuller, a civil rights activist in the Movement Made a proposal for an allblack School District. That is one of the ones that got headlined, but in a lot of different ways, she was trying to improve education and felt like she really was into getting a lot of from her own parties and sort of became open to this idea of the School Vouchers. It wasnt about Milton Friedman. She didnt necessarily have a familiarity. For her it was very much this is something that could help students. Heres somebody that could embody these contradictions. I dont want to give it all away. Her stories spoke to a lot of the different questions and debates. One of the reasons i focused on her andd milwaukee was the first modern program that made sense to focus on the attention there. The majority partnering with white lawmakers. The original title of the book i thought that was so great in so many ways. It didnt say education to a lot of people so it didnt end up being the title of the book and i used it for a chapter title. But i thought that kind of Short Description did speak to the alliance made with Tommy Thompson the white republican governor at the time. There are no clear partisan boundaries and this is probably the best example of that. What do you hope they will conclude or learn once they finish this book . I was trying to go into it as someone with a viewpoint that teaches theres history around and theres a partisan book for or against School Choiceo and o i felt like i wanted to create something that would explain all this history that i thought i hadnt known as a reporter and with whats going on in education right now i wanted it to be sort of neutral and fairminded because i think people want you to make an argument and pick a side with something that is. But what im hoping for is people who are may be less familiar with School Choice that are watching the news right now and seeing sort of this landslide of Choice Legislation all this activity and discussioi about parental freedom, all these things that are sort of dominating the news. I know that i have some sort of driving questions in the introduction about what does this mean for Public Schools in the democracy. But i wanted that to be for the reader to answer. Inem the pandemic you do go into the pandemic and whats goingucn currently. Between when the book ends and the current period you called it the death of Public Schools. You do sort of predict the movement will grow stronger. If we look at that period of time, does it prove the thesis and how does it reflect on what happened since the book ended in relation to your book . I was sort of looking for and ending because its weird to be writing something where its at dominating the news cycle. That wasnt happening since i started the book but as i was finishing the book, the pandemic happened and it was a really strange thing because i was sort of living through that and my own children were out of school and doing the Remote Learning and homeschooling for a period of time and i had this kind of disaster actually but it was interesting because the pandemic kind of opened up i think this political opportunity for republicans to push School Choice legislation in a way we hadnt seen in a while and theres this crazy avalanche of School Choice legislation and s also a shift in arguments for it. The argument previously had been a lot about empowering certain groups of students and that there had been a strong argument that this was a civil rights issue. Somewhere in the pandemic it shifted a bitit a and starte beg about parental freedom for everyone. Theres the Heritage Foundation and had ad piece come out and arguing that republicans should use the culture of war and these things and push the legislative wins for School Choice. It is rather different than making an argument centered around civil rights. Then we started to see the republican lawmakers passing laws and restricting how you can teach about history. Looking at this period of time and figuring out what it means. In the history of a guy feel liken you cant and this as the new law. I will deal with it in the introduction. I think it is very much pointing in the direction and certainly it feels like the argument i was making in the book is real and true and these things are happening especially when i look at the Supreme Court cases. But i felt like it was still a little early to say how this would shake out because i think by now, we are starting a school year and all this legislation has passed and we are just now starting to see the numbers of people that are going to take the state up on some of the programs. If no one actually uses the programs, then its not creating this change. But we are starting to see the numbers really increase and so i think it does point in the direction that is not a great fr the p