Where we are. I indicated this morning in the earlier comments you two werent able to hear them. But were at an important juncture point where the United States, which is the most successful economic democracy yet to have evolved on the planet is sitting with a huge opportunity where the competition of the world has now risen. It gets our blood flowing and our heart beating harder to do better and compete harder. Were at an educational moment where now we realize that with 330 million people, weve got this opportunity through the diversity of our population to really become something that no one else has ever become before, which is this highly educated, highly adaptive, highly creative population thats come in from everywhere around the world and can do things that are just off the charts. We have an opportunity to actually facilitate the birthing of a new economic trajectory for the United States. But just at the same time as that has happened, weve sort of run the full course with the old educational design. Its just it was good for what it was for. It achieved all kinds of things in the past. Its just inadequate for the future. So why dont we start with you, madam secretary, with this notion i heard you in the few opportunities ive had to talk and speeches youve given. You have this thing which is a mantra to me that a persons Educational Opportunity shouldnt be determined based on their zip code. How do we find a way to take every person, young person, emerging adult, adult, aging adult and find a way to educate them . How do we do this . How do we make school and educational outcomes different . Michael, thanks for the opportunity to be here and thank you all for this opportunity as well. Youve expressed it well. We are poised to be able to do something very important, and yet very different than how weve been doing it. I just want to reference the most recent nations report card scores where two out of three 8th graders arent doing reading or math at the levels they should be. Its a wakeup call for all of us. The system has run its course. We continue to just muddle along the last couple of decades. The reality is that we do need to interject a lot more innovation into our k12 years. And the administration and senator cruz and one of his counterparts in the house have collectively introduced a bill that i think will give rocket fuel to some of whats going on in states today. Its called the education freedom scholarships initiative. It will ultimately empower families and students to find that right fit for their k12 student. And also importantly, it will give teachers who are i think many of whom are entrepreneurial by nature and innovative by nature the opportunity to do things differently and to break out of that system that weve been stuck in for decades. You see new kinds of Educational Opportunities emergi emerging, maybe even schools forming. Were building a new kind of Community School which would had highly master teachers coming in, this is a whole new way of doing thing. Absolutely. Theres no limit to the different types of approaches to doing k12 education that we could introduce or that could be introduced. But it needs to be facilitated and this is the i think really important mechanism to help introduce that. Senator, you come from texas, which from its founding forward has always been a unique place, a countrylike place with its own spirit. Its larger than australia in terms of people. Its one of the largest economies in the world. Its generally conservative place politically, yet at the same time deeply connected to education, and committed to educational success across its population, investing massive investments. Whats your general assessment of the nature of what do we need to do next . Not so much the problems of the past, what do we need to do next . Listen, i think all of us understand that education is foundational. That it is the gateway to the american dream. I think every one of us has seen that in our own families, both k12 education and higher education. You know, if you look at every other Public Policy challenge we face in this country, whether its crime, whether its substance abuse, whether its healthcare, whether its poverty, every one of those follows from education. If kids are able to get an education, many of the rest of those problems largely take care of themselves. Not entirely, but you go a big step towards addressing all of those issues. On the other hand if kids dont get an education, theyre dropping out of school, we know those other challenges are much lo more likely to occur. We also know what works though. In terms of how you guarantee education right now we tolerate a system where theres vast inequities in the system. Africanamerican children, far too many trapped in failing schools. Far too many hispanic children, low income children. We allow Educational Opportunity to be separated based on wealth, based on skin color and zip code. What works is competition. Look, this is all discussing competitiveness. Education is not unique. Competition works whether youre making automobiles or widgets or teaching kids and empowering parents. Empowering students with scholarships to choose the best educational outcomes is consistently. Now the data are compelling. If you want to improve educational outcomes, you want to improve the Public Schools, the best way to do so is empower parents to make the best choice for their kids. So secretary devos and i have worked very closely on legislation that would provide 10 billion a year in federal tax credits that would be a allocated to the states for state scholarship granting organizations. Thats 100 billion over ten years, which even in washington, 100 billion is a lot of money. Those are new resources coming into half of it k12 education. Half of it adult vocational education, those are dollar for dollar tax credits for programs that are implemented at the state level, designed at the state level that respond to state needs. You want to talk about powerfully transforming the educational system and increasing the opportunities and the outcomes, this legislation if we can get it passed would be the most far reaching, the most significant legislation since the gi bill. Lets talk about that. Out in arizona we have freedom of movement, and so in our institution with more than 100,000 students now for the first time represent the entire Socio Economic diversity of the country. We run Charter Schools, we have 100 High School Graduation rates. Innovation is the driver. Innovation is everything. Cultural innovation with the faculafa faculafa faculty. The response is practically and politically into that. I dont want to get down into the weeds here. But how do we get everyone involved in the innovation process . The existing institutions, some will make it, some wont make it. The notion of competition, youre absolutely right. Competition is the driver of all things that help us to drive the forces of creative destruction, coming up with new models, making these things happen. How do we facilitate competition and then deal with the complexities of that competition being against basically Community Driven boards with tax paying citizens, governing School Districts in districts that they believe that they own . How do we do that . I always like to refer to florida, which arizona has been a real leader in the area of education freedom and school choi choice, but florida has a wider variety of programs and probably more students in total more insects in florida, also. More bugs. A lot more humidity, too. But whats been interesting in florida is as more of those opportunities have been introduced, the traditional system has continued to improve. And in those districts where the largest number of families are making choices other than their assigned school, all of the outcomes for that district have continued to improve, including the Traditional School the competition is driving up everyone. Because the Traditional Schools are making decisions that heretofore they wouldnt make, absent something to benchmark against and compare themselves to. As you all are both intimately aware of this and ive read the things youve been saying and writing, so now as we change the way the world works, where education now is no longer something you give to a young person and they maybe go to college, maybe not going to college. If they go to college theyre done unless they go to graduate school. You educate yourself after that. We need to think about education as a universal thing. A life long. Universal life long learning. How do we do that with the designs we often find ourselves with . Senator, ideas about that . I think we need to do so both on addressing the substance and addressing the politics of it. You talked about the barriers, the institutional inertia. We now have real results. I remember 25 years ago ive been involved as betsy has been in the School Choice moment for decades. 25 years ago youd have an discussion about School Choice. The argument was it will destroy the Public Schools. If that argument were true it would be a compelling reason not to do it. We now know unequivocally that argument is false. There are 18 tax credit programs in states across the country. As the secretary pointed out, the data are overwhelming that when you introduce competition and choice, the kids that exercise choice, their educational outcomes go out, but also the Public Schools improve. In the face of competition, the educational outcomes are better. I view this as the civil rights issue of the 21st century. We ought to be horrified at generations of kids, many of them minority kids being stuck in a system that is not giving them hope and an avenue out. How do you do that . You make the case on the merits. Another major argument used against choice typically is we dont want to take money from the Public Schools. One of the things betsy and i did in designing this, this is 100 billion that doesnt take a penny from the Public Schools. None of this is coming from existing educational funds. This is new funds coming in, but coming in with the requirement that competition and choice by integral to that. Were also trying you talked about lifelong learning. Half of the bill is k12, the other half is vocational. And a big part of the reason for that is the big v . Everything. A life long right. States opt in. Every state can choose whether to opt in. You can opt into the k12 or Adult Program or both. Each state can design programs to meet their needs, but part of what were trying to do with the vocational element, allowing people, adults to get training for new skills, is broaden the coalition behind this. In particular, what i hope to do is bring more blue collar unions to the table. You want to talk about the growing the numbers of Union Members working in skilled trades, this is 50 billion in federal tax credit scholarship tax credits to do so. If we can bring those players look politically the School Choice dynamics are fairly transparent, which is that in washington virtually every democrat opposes School Choice programs because teachers unions have historically opposed them. The only way to get Something Like this to move is to change that gridlock, to change that and my hope is if we can bring players who are traditionally political allies of democrats, who are blue collar unions who have been with democrats who suddenly change the cost benefit analysis for a democratic member of congress to say wait a second i can provide enormous opportunity for africanamericanafricanameric n africanamericans kids, hispanic kids and grow the number of skilled workers. I starts to be i hope a political picture driven by the results behind it. Do you want to add to that . No, i think ted stated it well. It is time to change the dynamic for most kids k12 experience. By introducing a lot more freedom into that world, youre going to get a lot more innovation and approaches to actually experiencing that education. And youve been such a leader at asu, im thrilled to hear about your reaching into the k12 years. But, you know, asu doesnt have the only model for that. There are many models and you want many different approaches. I just think about, you know, my experience going back to junior high and high school and the fact that today for most kids that basic experience hasnt changed significantly. How irrelevant so much of it was then and how irrelevant it is for many students today. How do we you know, changing that equation for hundreds of thousands, millions of students is very meaningful and important for the future of our country. One of the things senator you were mentioning this, this correlation between Educational Attainment and ultimately social mobility. Education attainment and life health outcomes, education attainment and whether or not youre going to be incarcerated, living below the poverty line. Its a strong set of correlations. Yet in the United States, we allow at a state level, state by state by state, people to self select and drop out of high school at age 16. I was telling the secretary that we built this digital Preparatory Academy that gives High School Diplomas as well as college credit. Has fantastic robots we put together to help people to learn across any kind of barrier. Were fighting a cultural thing. Theres this thing that somehow the rules from 1940, most of those bills were passed in the 30s and 40s that everybody didnt have to graduate from high school. How do we modernize the legislative process to upgrade this notion to lifelong learning. We shouldnt have anybody that doesnt have a High School Level of education. No one. We shouldnt have anyone who doesnt have access to ongoing lifelong education. How do we modernize that legislative process . Not the process itself but the outcomes. We cant totally eliminate people making poor choices, thats part of the human experience. Some of the children, totally different. Some of the people making the choices to drop out and give up, they dont have any good alternatives. You know, if youre a single mom in the inner city and youre struggling to just even put food on the table, your only option may be the school down the street that has a 50 dropout rate that has rampant violence ill give you a statistic from the cleveland Public Schools. This is is one of the stats that was litigated and went to the supreme court. A 9th grader entering high school, he or she was statistically more likely to be a victim of Violent Crime at school than he or she was likely to graduate on time in four years. That is a stunning, a heartbreaking indictment. I think the key to change is getting those kids another alternative so that a lot of kids in tough, tough environments the beauty of choice i think the choice im supportive of choice in every manifestation, whether its Charter Schools or private schools or sc scholarships or t credits traditional public school. Absolutely and competition between Public Schools. Part of what this legislation is designed to do, one of the things that secretary devos and i work very closely on, we wanted to expect federalism. We didnt want a one size fits all solution from washington. We wanted each state can choose to opt in or not, and each state designs a scholarship tax program for their own state to meet their needs. That means all sorts of states can try different models. Some can try Distance Learning or telelearning or using technology. Others can do apprenticeships. Theres a whole range depending on you know, in houston, we need a lot of oil and gas workers. That may be less relevant in iowa. And so given the economic needs, given the needs of the students, you want to have that flexibility. I think if theres a good choice, if theres a good option, an awful lot of kids look, in my family i think back to my father came to the United States from cuba in 1957. He was an 18yearold kid, couldnt speak english. Had nothing. I mean, he washed dishes making 0. 50 an hour. But he was admitted to the university of texas. He was able to study and learn english and he ended up being going on to eventually get a job as a cook, but then as a teaching assistant at u. T. And a Computer Programmer at ibm and a Small Business owner and now hes a pastor. Getting the beginning of those steps opens up a final frontier. Your dad gets this great education at u. T. Austin and is able to move forward. Whats happened now in higher education, is that so many universities have in a sense theyre not scaling to the scale of the complexity of the country. So we have thousands of institutions and people say we must have enough. But im like, no. Many kids that are going to college are not graduating. I met with assistant secretary bob king this morning for breakfast at 7 00. Im a friend of his, known him for a long time. What do you want to see at the University Level and the College Level . Just the top line . Well, i think at the higher id love every opportunity for institutions to look at how theyre going to change how theyre delivering their tried and true model today, which is becoming less and less relevant. We know than fewer than 30 higher ed students are traditional higher ed students. The challenge is to connect with the employers in your region and employers to connect with the educators. I said dont call a legislator, get together with one another and talk about how youre going to address the opportunities and how youre going to adjust what you have traditionally provided and think differen