My home local, new york city, today is the first day of school for those kids, so i am wishing them the best year, even though its 95 degrees heat, which is always a problem everywhere when you dont have air conditioning, but i think whats happened is the same problems that afflict the nation afflict schools because schools are a melting pot of everything going on in the nation, the salad bowl, whatever you want to say. We deal with everything thats going on. So the division, the hate, the disinformation, is all really hard to overcome when what we should be doing in schools is having a welcome environment and ensuring every school, every public school, is a place parents want to send their kids, Educators Want to work and kids thrive. Theres a lot of effects of covid as well as position and inequities and climate issues that we have to deal with. Loneliness, learning loss. The disconnection that kids still feel. And so it makes it much harder when teachers are underpaid and overworked and have to deal with the noise of all the culture war. Host create a welcoming environment but the students have to show up for that. Im sure you saw the ap story about absenteeism among students. Across the country, students have been absent at record rates since schools reopened during the pandemic. More than a quarter of students missed at least 10 of the 20212022 school year, making them chronically absent. Before the pandemic, only 15 of students missed that much school. All told, an estimated 6. 5 million additional students became chronically absent, according to the date of the ap found. Whats causing that . Guest there are several things. Whats interesting is that in 20212022, we did 5 million worth of grants for backtoschool and a lot of our members went doorknocking to get kids back to school. And we heard from people who said, and kids who said, i have to work, high school kids. And others who said, well, i really dont want to take tests anymore. And others who were just disconnected. And so one of the things that the washington post, after that story, said, is maybe we should do community schools. Wrap services around schools. Make the school the center of community. What we are proposing is this solution for kids and communities campaign, which is not just wrap services around schools. That is important in terms of socialemotional needs and creating the school as a community for kids and families, but Something Else i am proposing is something that i learned back in teaching at a career tech add school when people were trying to kill those, which is experiential learning, handson learning, making school fun and relevant for kids, so if we created all sorts of different pathways for kids, in music, art, afterschool activities, debate, career tech add work tech ed work, and not just the traditional ones like welding or carpentry, but culinary, health care, all the new work, the made in america work. We have a manufacturing renaissance in the country because of joe biden, because of the work in the Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure work. What i we create these career paths starting high school why dont we create these career paths starting in high school . When kids see theres something there for them, they feel it. 94 of kids who go to qualified ct programs graduate on time and 70 go to college. So lets make school fun and interesting and engaging and lure kids back because those numbers is the same in terms of charters and privates. Doug harris did a study that shows the School Enrollment issues have not really you know, they are fairly small, the decrease in School Enrollment, but this issue of ensuring the kids feel agency in connection, thats the big issue agency and connection, thats the big issue. Host Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of teachers. Phone lines, democrats, 202 7488000. Republicans, 202 7488001. Independents, 202 7488002. And as we often do when you join us, a special line for teachers and students to call in to ask your questions, 202 7488003. Guest and before you take a question, can i just say, to all those students and parents, we are going to do as great a year as we possibly can because you are number one, and to our members and the teachers and paras and school bus drivers, thank you, because they are host you mentioned taking tests. Survey after survey has shown test scores have suffered for students across grades since the pandemic. How do you fix that . How do you catch kids up and what do you tell teachers when it comes to these tests and scores . Guest what we have seen is theres been a tick up. I dont think that is the issue. I think the issue is what you raised earlier on about kids having agency and wanting to be in school. What these tests are, the math and english tests, they are about memorization, not application, and in this age of ai and chatgpt, we have to be focused on application, critical thinking, on discerning fact from fiction. So i think what will happen is the test scores will go up when kids get a sense of i want to be in school. When you start seeing kids saying i want to be back in school, be connected with my community, you will see test scores go up. Host do Teachers Want to be back in the classroom . A question a headline from nbc news. From crisis to catastrophe, schools scramble once again to find teachers. Talking. About a Teacher Shortage guest theres a new website tracking the Teacher Shortage that im starting to use. Its from i am now forgetting the name. We will get it. But there is a Teacher Shortage. People are leaving who do not want to leave because they feel overworked, overburdened and targeted. A guy like pompeo, the former secretary of state its targeting people. Thats not good. But at the same time, whats happened is a lot of teachers have said they want to be teachers, they want to make a difference in kids lives, they want to be listened to. They went decent pay and to have some agency over the work. They want to be able to meet the needs of kids. You are seeing the communities understand that teachers are underpaid. I loved in the last state of the union the president said we should give teachers a raise and there was a standing ovation. Teachers feel both really pressed and holding the weight of the world and some are leaving because of the worst problem is that we are not getting enough new people to come in and young people can see that the teachers are not treated well, so when parents say, i love my kids teacher but i do not want them to become a teacher, that is a problem because teachers really make a difference. Host is it teachershortages. Com . Guest yes, thank you. I cannot believe you said it we have a National Data bank, but you have to look state after state, and what they see is that we actually have a higher shortage this year than last year, and it gets covered up a lot, like take houston. Completely covered up because they say that there is a warm body in a classroom as opposed to somebody who has certification in the areas in which they are teaching. Host and you can see statebystate the shortages reported with a heat map of where the shortages are. Teachershortages. Com. Guest and when you look at the map, what you have on your handy ipad, you also see a lot of it, not all of it, but a lot of it also tracks where teachers are most underpaid and where there is the most kind of culture wars. Host you are talking about guest florida, texas. Host teachershortages. Com. Plenty of calls already. The line for teachers and students, leslie, new haven, connecticut, good morning. Caller good morning. This is leslie, president of the new Haven Federation of teachers. I want to say we are really excited about the real Solution Campaign in new haven. We are committed to creating joyful and confident readers and bringing handson learning experiences for our students during community connections. We know that is good for our students. Can you say more about why these Real Solutions are also going to help with the Teacher Shortage and how it actually impacts our working conditions when we commit to these improvements . Guest i am going to be in new haven in a couple of weeks to see because they have done a really good job wrapping services around schools because we have to integrate social, emotional, and academic work. That is how kids come to us, and we have to integrate them. That means we have to have an infrastructure of those services. But what this does new haven has done this, and, you, leslie, have done this over the course of the last few years. A Wellness Project we did with educators rising, what we saw is that we stopped burnout or limited it when teachers had more autonomy over their work, when they were not just told what to do, when they said, i need x or y, and their principal said, yeah, lets try to make sure that happens. When there when they could actually get the services that kids needed, they felt better about this. And so i do think that the Real Solutions campaign, what tends to happen is that teachers and parents and kids, if you stop looking at the politics in washington, d. C. , and look at what happens in the school, anywhere in the country, whether the school is in a republican or democratic area, the alchemy that happens between teachers and kids and families is such that they are really trying to make sure we help kids, and when teachers cannot or do not have the resources, when they do not have small enough classes, when the building is so hot in the summer or fall that you cannot teach and people are fainting, when you cannot open windows in the respiratory illness, you see that teachers feel really eaten down. Host in new jersey, steve, line for republican. Good morning. Caller yes. Thank you for taking my call. I am a teacher who i feel like i have been forced to be unemployed, even though i am an experienced teacher with a masters degree and certified in more than one state, and have been unable to get a substitute position, even though i am cpa, also, and a very experienced teacher who gets feedback when they passed the cpa and say what a great experience they have had in my classroom, not only as an instructor but trained as a cpa host why do you think you cannot find employment . Caller i have even tried the local schools. I get a song and dance, oh, well, we will see if we need anybody. Guest steve, why dont you write i am all about solutions and trying to solve things. With that kind of credential and the fact that you want to teach, why dont you write me at our website, write me at the website, we will get to you, you are steve, and lets see if we can help you. Because if you would like to teach and you have that cpa credential, lets see what we can do. Because there is far too much bureaucracy and paperwork. The number one issue teachers talk to me about all the time, get rid of the paperwork and let us focus on teaching lets see if we can help. Go to aft. Org, or dm me on twitter. I cannot, because of all the threats i have gotten in life, i cannot give you my emails anymore. You can understand that. But just get to me on either twitter, dms, or on aft. Org, and lets see if we can help you. Host atwater, ohio, line for teachers, good morning. Caller good morning. Randi, i have a question. Guest sure. Caller i just retired at the end of last year and i have to admit i already miss it. I totally agree with everything you say, and chronic absenteeism among students and teachers went ram. After covid rampid after covid. When we introduce common core in the state testing, i feel like teachers were all of a sudden, their pace increased dramatically. My students were struggling to keep up, but it took away the otani and independent autonomy and independence. We did Amazing Things prior to that. That seemed to change. It was like this throw it at the wall, hope they get it, and move on. It took the fun out of teaching. I saw kids, you know, not enjoying education like they did. Do you see that as being a part of the problem or is it just me . Guest no, first off, thank you for teaching, pam. Thank you for all the years you taught. I was the president of the Teachers Union in new york city for a long time, and we ended up , one of the last things i was able to do was help all of those moms, at that point, moms more than dads, but all of those moms who left for a few years to raise their kids. They came back but did not get the same attention. There was an equity. We actually fixed that. I am so glad you came back to teach after you raised kids, but common core, the problem with common core was it was an attempt to actually really get to deeper curriculum knowledge across the country. Like European Countries do, but it became common core testing, not common core teaching. So teachers felt like they were on an Assembly Line to produce test scores as opposed to meeting the needs of kids. That is what it was thrown out, and that is why there was so much going on about it. But that did limit the agency that teachers like you had to actually address how to teach kids. How to meet their needs. And not always look at it through the pace and calendar that somebody gave you. Host staying on curriculum, how much input who should design curriculum . Guest [laughter] host how much input should parents have . And when and how should that input be given . Guest this is going to shock a lot of people who are calling in. Neither parents nor teachers have enough input on curriculum. Neither of them do but there are places that actually have good, programmatic ways of getting to good curriculum. So, on a state level, curriculum is basically done on a state level, not district level. Districts have some latitude, but on a state level. So they are curriculum committees. There are people who sit on the curriculum committees and they report to the state commissioner, this is what should happen. We often say that parents and teachers should be on the curriculum committees and give input so that there is real and put there. But there should be real input from both parents and teachers in terms of curriculum. But that then gets to the question of what you do, like what happened in terms of all of these culture wars . What happens there and banning books . There is also a process in most places about when a book gets read or put in a library there are these processes. There are School Board Meetings and real input that happens, and so when something turns out to be inappropriate, there is a process to actually deal with that. What has happened now, take florida, 60 of the book mans in florida book bans in florida are done by 11 people, most do not have kids in school. The person who actually pushed to ban Amanda Gormans the hose we climb, the book i brought with me the hills we climb, the book i brought with me, that is the poet who did the poem during the inauguration. 24 hours after she did that beautiful poem, i did not hear anybody say, oh my god, that was problematic. It was beautiful and great for Elementary School kids who pushed to ban that . Somebody who has not even read it someone who is a holocaust denier we have to have a news the processes that create input for both parents and teachers. They both have to have agency in the input of curriculum. Host on. Input, i would like to get your thoughts on the group moms for liberty. One of the members was on the program. This is one minute about what she had to say about the founding of moms for liberty. [end video clip] [video clip] we have not put any money in promotion. It has been authentic, facets growth. The media and National News comes out all the time and says this is not happening in and Public Schools, that is not happening. Then a mom opens the backpack of her child and sees the curriculum and the problems. So she googles, who can she go to for help . It turns out, moms for liberties is the only organization that will stand with parents. Parents are starting to see the educational failure in america. Lets lay out what happened. The scores came out last year, followed up this year, we have the lowest math scores in the recorded history of the u. S. , the lowest reading scores since the 1980s. Two thirds of american fourthgraders are not reading on grade level. Parents are starting to wake up to this in question who has been in charge of Public Education and why are my children are learning . [end video clip] host that entry from july. Your thoughts that interview from july. Your thoughts. Guest there are a lot of fantastic parentage is, starting with the ptas, where people have been volunteering for years. Then there is red, white and blue, moms rising, parents get together, with a platform of 5 million parents. Parents, thank god, are looking for ways to be engaged in their kids schools. The other parents i talked about do not do divide and conquer. And in terms of florida, they do not do it she just said. They are curriculums that are done by the state, and you saw this year, the hullabaloo, and frankly, the noxiousness, that the state tested by changing the curriculum on history jested by changing the curriculum on history. Frankly, that has been promoted by people like desantis and, you know, let me just say people like desantis. Ultimately, what we need to do is we need to try to stop these problems, which, by the way, the new research says, according to doug harris and things like that, that these problems actually were caused by the disconnection and by the issues around covid. But when we talk about solving those problems, i talked to anybody, even a group that private southern and law group is called an extremes group. Even a group that basically one of their chapters [indiscernible] i will talk to anybody about trying to solve the problems our kids have of loneliness, of learning loss, illiteracy, but you have to work with teachers, not try to create division. Host you mentioned desantis. Thats good afford, robert, line for independents. Caller good morning. Just picking up on what you just said, the absolute importance of parent engagement in the childs experience in school. With that said, can you tell the viewers if you oppose or support parental notification by the school when their student or child is requesting to use different nam