Out. Okay, there are numerous questions. Well go at front for the book signing. There are books available for purchase. But first lets give them a big hand. Thank you. Welcome, everybody. Great to have you with us today for conversation. Education, the right. What were going to dig into is at a time when there is evident polarization, enormous polarization across the country, fierce debate about many issues, education is no different, whether were talking about what we see in college and on College Campuses are fights about policies over Critical Race Theory and school and School Choice. In k12, how to tackle challenges in childhood. We enormous energy in terms the right versus versus the left and part of the challenge here is that on the right as mike and i talk about in our new book, getting education right, the right has often been at explaining what were against or whats than sketching a vision, what were for, what we want to about today is how the right has gotten to this point on education, where this point is and what a principled conservative vision of educational should look like going forward. When we talk about Early Childhood, k12 or Higher Education, todays event is going to proceed in two parts. On the first panel, were lucky enough to have virginia ary of education amy goodman to hear whos going have a conversation with me and mike about whats in our new book, getting education right after about 2530 minutes, were going to switch out were going to bring up a couple of distinguish scholars who are goingo the panel. Ill move into a facilitator role and. Well have a broader conversation about where we are in the question to the moment towards the end of the event or move to q a online questions can be sent to greg that for a at aei dot org on the spelling youll its greg dot for you are an ipr at ed at org or at the or the Hashtag Hashtag getting it right you can find the book at the Teachers College press website if you enter the code api at checkout get 20 off and for those of you who are with us in person today after the we invite you to join us in the hallway for a drink and refreshments. Weve got mike mcshane, National Director of research at choice and my fellow author on the new. As i mentioned, weve got virginia secretary of education amy goodman and again, im rick best, director of education policy studies at aei. Delighted to have you with us today. And im going to go take a seat. And amy, if you could get us started on the conversation. All right, thanks. We are now awesome. Good afternoon, everyone. It is such delight and a pleasure and an honor to be and to be with all friends and to see so many friends in the audience here and hopefully online as well. I of all start by saying, thanks. Thanks for writing this book. It was really fun to read knowing you both. It was also really fun to hear your voices come out so much. Theres couple lines in there about comparing an ocean, hearing to the experience in the super bowl that i really loved. So you all have to go find that. Make sure you go pick up the book and read. And i also just want to say thank you also for writing it. In this moment when there feels like so much tension in the world to create such a positive and clear and compelling message about why conservatives, we important to get education right. So thank you. It means a lot. And i just want to leave that my first question, which is why now youre reading this book felt like personal history in lots of ways, going back, remembering when i was younger and thinner and seeing all my friends in the audience there as well and looking back and saying, we got right things i wish we had done differently and we could have written this at lots of points in time. But why now . Why does it matter now that story is out there. And then a second, follow it to that. What do you hope changes as a result of this book being out there . I think the the why now could be that. Well, it started we got bored during the pandemic. Now. So some people baked sour dough bread and we had this great idea to write a book. And its really been its been a wonderful project that rick and i worked on in a very kind of different than how you and i often write things. We really kif time and passed at of drafts back forth. And it was really a lovely a lovely thing to be able to do. But i think the why now, you know, its tough to not start with Something Like the which was such a kind of dislocating effect. It caused so many people to rethink their relationships towards schools, whether thats, daycare, whether thats about k12 schools, thats about Higher Education. And, you know, i think a lot of what happened there just brought to the f e trends that were already happening. Some of the stuff that we trace in the book is that it was some of these things were rumbling and it just took the last, you know, pick your metaphor the straw that breaks the camels back to sort of break all of this open. And so we were obviously coming out of that. We see all the things that are happening in Higher Education nowadays and not the people in in the congressional hearings and others, but things that are happening on College Campuses. And i think, you know, theres that old saying you can curse the darkness or you can to light a candle and i think theres been lots of opportunity to curse the darkness and lots of opportunity to say, oh, heres this goofy thing that this school is doing or isnt it terrible that those schools are doing that . But we thought it was really important to try and put forward positive vision. Well, what might Schools Look Like if they were guided by principles, not just we want to be against this or against that, but what might be that that better a Better Future for our our children, our nation . Yeah, i think thats all beautifully said. The other reason why now is, as you know, amy, for a lot of our professional lives, education in the k12 world felt purple. The big question was not, are you conservative or progressive, but how do you feel about accountability or how do you feel about choice. Well, i think what hap what weve seen happen over the last half decade or ten years is that has fundamentally shifted. I think what used be a conversation dominated questions of how do you organize school, serve kids, has become a conversation in which were many of our friends on the left have made it first and foremost about a series of what i suggest are pretty extreme dogmas and therefore, in order to engage and respond effectively, it cant just be stopping those dogmas. Its got to be starting from a place of principle. What are we for . What is what is the role of schools . And so in some sense this is a response to the break up of that education, marriage and an attempt to offer a of how do we move forward in its aftermath. And i should i should say i didnt answer second question. I was going to hold you. There you go. I appreciate that accountability already has a transparency to it, just like here we go. I love it. Well, ill give you some choice. We could keep p we wont. But think, you know, what do we want to be different . I think part of it is that we want particularly on speaking sort of for our friends on the right and, you know, a movement that were both part of. I think we want to see a bigger i think oftentimes we can look quite narrowly of well, how does this one policy or even this one area of childrens lives, how can we figure out the best policy to increase reading and math scores on this or to raise Graduation Rates because of that . I think what we try to do with this book by articulating these broader principles and thinking about how principles might whenever were talking about education, the child is three or 23. What are the constants that exist across all of those . It might give us this broader way to have a bigger conversation about what are the ends that we are trying to pursue. Like what are we trying to here . What is the point of all of this . And then that leads to questions like, well, then who do we want doing that . Who do we want teaching our kids . How do we want them to be prepared, etc. . And then how do we want to organize a system to achieve those ends . But part of it weve had a series of very narro convsations. I think we wanted to take step back and broaden the lens, add on to that, know a little bit. ■5 okay, awesom thats what i like. Derek, you brought up principal. So lets talk about values. Tell me what you think about conservative values in education. Why do they matter . What are they . And in the book, i know you go through them a lot and again, everyone should go get this and read it, but tell us some of the highlights. Sure. I mean, partly defense. What do you mean by conservative . Obviously, we live in an era when politics is often defined by personalities. You know, i you know, if youre a republican, the question is how do you feel about donald trump . But by conservative, were not talking and were educators. Were not wereot. So we have the great luxury of when we talk about conservatism, talking as we explain in the book, talking about a set dispositions, a set of of thinking about the world that have been handed down to us by thinkers like burke and kirk and a number of others. And so for us, the what did you know, then we can have good faith. Theres, you know, as many definitions of conservative as there are people who wanted to find it. But for us the key principles here are a sense of personal responsibility, a sense of gratitude, a respect for things that work, distrust of utopian schemes. And so when mike and i are talking about a conservative vision, its a vision thats anchored in respect for the role of parents in the family, the importance of communities, the affection for our shared history, our shared for our shared humanity. Its a, you know, anchored in a belin rigor and unapologetic embrace of things like excellence and merit and accomplishment. Keep saying this is everything in our terms. And, you know, and then very much about the responsible party, the responsibility of ■ educators, but also the responsibility of learners the responsibilities of schools and colleges, but also the responsibility of the families that are sending tse kids school and now what happens is even we talk about these things today, one, we dont talk about a lot of this. Some of these things which we think of as no brainers in certain precincts in education are treated as bad ideas or ideas, which is to us, frankly, bizarre. And we think to most americans. But even folks who are embracing some of these things have wound up embracing them in a performative way. Or we talk about parental rights, but we dont hear much about parental responses, all of these. And so for us, again, not about whose side are you on . Its about these ideas, its about these principles, these precepts, and frankly, whether folks call themselves republican or, democrat or something else, if these ideas resonate with them, thats great. We dont think of conservative as conservative as belong to this or that political camp. We think of it as a set of habits of mind and of the one of i think our great joys have been has been having people read the book and react to it and say, well, this doesnt actually feel that conservative to me. And were like, well, thats anything that you would like to embrace, including endorsements from people who are definitely not republican. Thats a great statement. So lets get my view on anything. It was brilliant it was great. And thank you for helping us out. So the conversations already begun the discussion has taken off and in twittersphere or whatever we call it now and online and on blogs and, thats what books do, right . They create conversation. And i really think that and hope that thats what this book does. It gets people talking and, discussing and debating. And so let me bring one of those debates here. So one of our friends wrote and said, really great. But there are some things that i wish you talked more about. And so, you know, check with this morning said, wow, id really love to have seen more about what is the conservative agenda within schools that most Community School be their home school of choice . And why didnt you all talk more about and improving curriculum and about teachers . So i may give you a shot now to lay out what is the conservative viewpoint inside of what we should be believing and working for within schools. But i also want you to talk about why does this need to be an either or . It doesnt need to be either nor. I mean, first off, checker dearly, but know we did 70,000 words. I think thats beyond most peoples Attention Span and we have on every one of them rarely do people say we want more and on every one of those topics i think it i you know we addressed them all pretty forthrightly. So. Sure. So, you know, first off, great. I love when people are saying, well, what else can you tell me . Thats great. But also the idea of writing. I think any volume is to engage readers and move the conversation. I think mike or i for a moment suggest we either have the answer to what conservatives should embrace or the application for how each of these things should play out in 100,000 schools or 6000 colleges and universities. Thats part of the beauty of the american system, is theres lots of ways to apply these things in lots of places. But look more fundamentally, some of this is pretty straightforward. I think one of the things mike and i talk about is that you theres the real world in which decisions get made. In that real world, theres always compromises, and thats natural and healthy. But i think one of the challenges for conservatives have been that in the compromises have been made over, say, the last 25 years, we frequently wound up not just compromising on tactics and particulars but compromising on principle. So for a big one for me, for instance, is that when we talk about School Discipline, theres questions about the fundamental problems with notions of restorative justice, with the way this stuff has been applied. Our colleague max eton has written elegant about these questions, but theres also the fundamental question of are parents responsible for making their kids, making sure their kids behave. When i started in this stuff and i taught high school in the 1990s when i was training student teachers, there too much emphasis on the role of the parent a enough on the responsibilities of the educator. It was good and healthy that we have learned to pay much more attention to insisting that. Educators not make excuses, not blame families, but conservatives stop talking about the family rule. I mean it is hard to find republican officials even, you know, outspoken table thumping republicans who want to say should be taken away. A kid, their kids phones at 8 00 at night. Parents should making sure that virginia its hard to fight if its a possible thing. You know its hard to find folks who are saying, you know what, weve got to talk about parent rights to see those parents. Right. To see that curriculum. But we got to talk about whether or not parents are making sure their kids are going to school. Weve got to make sure parents are checking their kids homework to make sure its done. So for us, a lot of this is not just about the policies we embrace, but as we argue in the book,anchored in values and principles. And i fear that we made the mistake over the last 25 years of growing nervous, of growing hesitant, to talk about principle and what we actually see is a problematic reaction from asian and the other way where weve seen all of these online, you know pajama nutjobs tick tock who want to launch kind of cultural grenades but dont actually want to have a serious conversation about the responsibility side of the equation. Yeah, i think we have clear stuff in the book about think policy ideas for existing schools. We talk, we have a big section about teacher pay and how eliminating bureaucracy so we could pay teachers more. We have a lot about School Discipline thats in there as well. But i think as rick was saying, i mean, a big part of this is and its a tension like when were conservatives thinking about how policy is made is that we have a bias localism, right . We want 14,000 School Districts or those 50 different states to create that are right for them. So no book that were going to write that says, well, this is the student discipline policy that all 100,000 schls should have. But what we can do is articulate these principles so that when that school board is meeting or when that state board of education is meeting, or when state legislators are meeting, they can have in their mind, okay, how should we thinking about this problem . How can we solve this problem . What are the tradeoffs are inherent in all of that because because of the peculiarities of all different communities that exist in our country, they might come up with very Different Solutions that are guided by those same principles. And so its tough when youre conservatives writing book about education in america. People are like, well, youre not prescriptive enough. Its like, well, thats because thats not really our thing. But then its like, oh, well, youre too of foggy on the other side, but thats what were trying to do, is give these principles so that people can think through these problems when theyre them in their own communities. I think i see a volume two coming in. So there we go. So, so i take us to Higher Education. So i think one of those compelling statements you make in your section on higher ed is say that conservatives need to engage in Higher Education, not abdon it. And you also make it really clear you think that there is an upcoming era where we need to launch new models and actually develop new colleges. So i want to ask you to talk more about that, given that we are entering or are in this great upheaval right now where were having demographic over half the country does not see value in a four year degree right now. And we are also having plethora of ways to deliver knowledge and skill development. So why is there a age of college around corner and what do you think the conservative values are . Yes, ill take the first half. Youll youll get the second half. But part of its of not not sort of making colleges the or others know one of the quotations that we use in the very beginning, the book when were talking about what it means to be a conservative, is a quote from the british philosopher sir roger scruton, which i wish more americans knew about. Scruton