I want to start her next panel. Welcome to the second panel of the day. This panel is entitled where are we now, Educational Opportunity and integration. Ur panelists will be gerard patterson, a scholar from the institute, commissioner of florida, a virginia secretary of education, and the president of the black alliance for Educational Options. He has a long history in education. Dr. Greg forster is the director oaken amia network at the center for transformational churches at Trinity International in a received. Freemanormally at the foundation for educational choice. He is the author of six books and the coauthor of three additional books. He received his phd with distinction at yale university. Founder ands the ceo of digital pioneers academy, which i learned was just recently . Yesterday a week ago yesterday . A week ago. Given a charter to open in washington, d. C. Senior adviser for Charter School policy at new leaders for new schools and the executive director for Charter Schools at the new york subsidiary of the public of education. So the goal of this panel is really simple. Like the stories you heard in the last panel and the discussion you heard in the last panel, we want to discuss and review the data as it relates to education, and to Educational Opportunity and integration. What does the data tell us . What are the issues we have to deal with . Withll start with gerard 10 minutes of comments, great with 10 minutes of comments, and maching will have 10 minutes of comments. Then you, the audience, will fire some good questions, like johnny did last time. Without further ado, start, please. Let me thank for the thank the center for giving me the opportunity to talk about a subject is that is vitally important. 63 years ago, brown v board of education was decided by the supreme court. Fastforward. Robert mentioned i was secretary of education in virginia and commissioner in florida. 50 years ago, it would have been impossible for me, as a black man, to serve as a state later in either of those two states. It was the work of brown, the naacp and the work of others who made this possible. 50 years ago, a member of a werer of our students performing well in what they call segregated schools. They went to college. But there were resource challenges. Fastforward to today. More students, africanamerican and otherwise who were graduated from high school. Many africanamericans going to college whether hbcus or nonhbcus. One of the things that i believe chokes conversations about progress in his overreliance on the term segregation. I say we have racially identifiable schools. I am under no deciding where people are going to live. I get it. To say that my oldest daughter who went to Public Schools, they are saying that 63 years worth of progress never happened and that is untrue. We have racially identifiable schools told with poverty, but poverty is not an indicator of destiny. We are talking about what brown had a chance to do. It definitely shifted the type of schools it needed to defend. A we have a number of another thing about brown is the advancement of cell phones. This is a different conversation. [laughter] what we have today are racially identifiable schools with a set of challenges. We also have a set of schools bullet to the Public School option model and we will talk more about that. Last year, we had to members of congress commissioned a study. It was released may 17, 2016, identified that we had a number of students, nearly three fourths of a school that are commonly africanamerican or of color and under resourced. That still exists. One part of the report we didnt spend time on, was the majority for the sake of argument majority minority schools that won blue ravens or gold medals, because of their academic achievement. What we need to do is to look at the schools that exist. What are they doing differently . Is it resources, family involvement, curriculum, expectations . All of those things that 50 years ago made sense, but empirically you know it makes sense across the board. Thanks all to say that we have schools that are segregated and not doing well just isnt true. The government be responsible for investing the resources. It is also a question about expenses. Where is the money going . And washington, d. C. , you hear a number of numbers. I had an opportunity to work for Public Schools, and we spent a lot of money. We did not have a 50 graduation rate, it wasnt because of money. There was a rise of special education. If there is something more you know 63 years later about brown, the number of special needs students, there were different names for them back then. For me, robert, as i close, 63 years from brown, we dont have sex dated schools have segregated schools. We have to finish out find out what the schools are doing. We have schools run by africanamericans, hispanics, asians, we are now in positions of power in ways that we were at back in 1954, but today we manage a multibilliondollar school budget. There are things we should be able to do to advance the narrative. Im excited to be in washington, d. C. Speaking of this. Back then, we wouldnt have been in this room. We are all browns greatgrandchildren and i am proud to be part of the conversation. Thank you. I have been asked to speak about what the Research Shows on School Choice. Im sure you have all heard the joke about the economist who fell down the well. People ran over and said are you all right . He said i dont need a row, a semihave a ladder. A just assume that i have ladder. One challenge in my field is that a lot of the studies published really dont look at data. They do not look at measurements of what has happened in the real world. They take the authors assumption of what they think should happen, build a mathematical model, and present that as a data. One of the things i have to do is figure out which of these studies is using information out of the real world. One of the things we track and regularly publish updates on is the research on School Choice and ethnic segregation. There have been 10 and. Studies and pure gold empirical studies. Nine studies have a positive finding that School Choice have a benefit and a 10th study finds that it makes no visible difference. Seven of these 10 studies take a snapshot of the ethnic composition where kids are eligible for School Choice, and a snapshot of private schools. The studies find that the private schools are less segregated. It tells us that the School Choice programs are moving students from more separate data schools into less aggregated schools. While that is a snapshot, it tells us that School Choice programs are moving from more segregated schools to less aggregated schools. The other studies are following individual students geared we dont often get to do that. That is a better method. We dont often get to do that. We dont get the data. There has been one in milwaukee and one and louisiana. The one in milwaukee found no difference. One reason is the study didnt get going until 15 years after the program started. It was possible that the program had some effect on segregation. Then it reached some equilibrium and there was no further information to be found. Another plausible explanation is that milwaukee is a really segregated city, more segregated than the average city of that size. The students may be moving from overwhelmingly black Public Schools to overwhelmingly black private schools, so they are created to serve that population. We dont know. The transfers of students are not increasing segregation. The program and louisiana found that the program improves ethnic segregation. The studies downed a small increase in segregation and private schools, but a much larger decrease in segregation in the Public Schools that students are transferring out of. It was a dramatic reduction of segregation in that program. The other study found no change, or the same a very large positive effect in Public Schools. These results are counterintuitive to many people. Our culture has conditioned us to think that private schools are much more ethnically segregated than Public Schools. The data does not bear that out. School choice programs are often described as something that will increase segregation. It is counter intuitive to find out that it decreases segregation. I think the main reason is because in the public system, students are assigned what schools they are going to go to taste on where they live and american neighborhoods are residentially very segregated. That is a combination of ethnic discrimination in the housing market, and people self selecting who want to live near other people who are like them or look like them, and there is actually feedback that those feed off of each other. One time, my wife and i moved into a new city and we caught the realtor filtering the housing results. Boy, was he terrified when he realized he was caught. I dont think his motivation was discrimination. I do think, however, he was motivated to make the quickest sale he can, and he wants to show us as few houses as we are not going to be interested in as possible. We were frustrated we couldnt find the house we wanted, as in as we took the filter all, we found the house we needed. And we lived there for several years. It was an enriching experience. Sometimes, my friend on the right will say they poohpooh the idea there is still dissemination in the housing markets. I know my personal experience is not a valid empirical study, but weakened we can debate how widespread this is, but we cannot to debate that it happens. I think it is going to be extremely difficult to overcome ethnic segregation in schools. Private School Choice was not designed for the purpose of reducing segregation, but because it disconnects where you live rom where you go to school, it does seem to have the effect of the desegregation of schools. I supported for a lot of reasons and i think it should be i think it should be a goal of limit isolation of our schools. I think the United States particularly, we are positioned to be on the cutting edge of the emergence of a new kind of human humidity. Human community where communities are not ethnically exclusive. It is not something you find as you look at in history. I am very excited about School Choice to position us where it eliminates that you cannot get into this community because of your ethnic background. I think thats a great thing for School Choice to be doing. Thank you very much. Ive got to respond to that. First, let me say thank you for inviting me to this wonderful conversation. As i was thinking about this panel, i reflected on my own personal position how i got here. I have an identical one sister. We grew up in new jersey, neither of our parents went to college, and we both failed kindergarten. Yes, we both failed kindergarten. Apparently, we colored outside the lines are didnt follow directions. I share that story because we were in new jersey that was a majority white community. My parents had just moved out of philadelphia and they wanted a better School Option or us. For us. When we failed kindergarten, my mother took us out of Public School and put us in private school. I think it made all the difference for us. Its why i am a huge proponent of parental choice. I genuinely believe that every parents should be able to choose what school and what environment take away the construction of school, like how do you best meet the needs of each individual child. So fastforward. I heard gerrard talk a little bit, as was previously megyn mentioned,etty soon as was previously mentioned, i was ceo of the Charter School fund, i am a new jersey girl, excited to be back in newark, and now i am back in d. C. Where my husband is a sixth generation washingtonian. Whether its the local city or state, the data or narrative, it really just comes down to what is happening locally. About two years ago, i went out to the silicon valley, the tech entrepreneurs do things differently out there. The ceo of thumbtack said i hear this debate about schools, college, but this is the reality. If we are not preparing our students for their academic, economic, and their life as citizens in this global world, then we are not doing our job. I think of the purpose of brown v. Board of education, where we are now, to make sure that every child can live a wellrounded life. When i hear data around the majorityminority communities. Newark, new jersey is almost 100 eligible for free lunch and reduced lunch. A school in d. C. Which is 100 africanamerican, 100 eligible for free lunch. If you want to talk about data in terms of i typically will say, if more white parents want to come to southeast adc, great. I dont think they are coming and till the neighborhoods are safe and they are provided highquality options. Until that happens, i think this is a false debate around is it majorityminority, segregated, to be in two cities where we have a thriving Public School sector as well as a thriving charter sector, my perspective is those are false debates. We shouldnt be choosing between charter or district. Every parent wants a great school, they dont care if it has charter in the name of it. Or a traditional Public School. I think that is what we heard from the last panel. Pinpoint that i want to reflect upon, in the last panel, we talked about being in the second wave of students post brown v. Board of education. She described her experience of being invisible. I thought, that is exactly how the 1. 2 million citizens dropping out of school today feel. Indivisible. The answer is not more money or more schools. It is how we meet the needs of every student today, because of the Digital Economy, the world is moving fast. Our students today are digital natives, we have to prepare them to move them into the Digital Economy of the future. And thats why i am excited to launch a school focused on Computer Science. I think that is a skill that everyone of us shall have. Can i enroll . Ms. Ashton can you teach it. Thank you very much. We are going to do a little bit of a directed questions here and we want you to get engaged. Im going to ask the question, you say you are from the district it is 100 . And a School Choice system if you are meeting the needs of every child, is it ok to have a school that is 100 minority . Is that ok . Ms. Ashton to me, again, it is the wrong question. It is how we meet the needs of individual students and when we look at the portfolio of schools, are they all the same model . Do we give students a real choices . I once read a book that said the idea that there is no average here, there is no one size its onesizefitsall. The more we see children as an average, we are going to miss their talents, or two, we are going to bore them to death. When we look at schools, we need to make sure there are innovative options, we look at school days, school years. And as i said, maybe school is not a place that students go to, maybe school is an online activity, but i think it is the wrong question for today. Mr. Enlow is there a situation there are friends of mine who argue that the system as it is set up, Public Education is actually doing what it is intended to do, keep segregation from happening. Is that true . What is the proper role of government in that situation . I want to go to your first question and then to the second. The question is, is it ok. The answer is it depends on who you ask. If you ask Richard Ellenberg calenberg, and say not great, but i would like to see more economic diversification. A number of the students are going well, going to college, going to the military, starting businesses, and have jobs what about the Los Angeles School predominantly black, it is also a school of choice. There are racially identifiable schools who are doing well depending on who you ask. It is education today, tomorrow, and forever, that is what matters to me. The role of government is a small part. If you have a group of Community Members that want to have an economically integrated system, let it happen. I see someone in back to work in cambridge, massachusetts. They have a choice program. People decided im going to move to cambridge, going to participate in the program to make it happen. The second oldest voluntary Integration Program was founded by black parents in 1966 who got tired of all the schools in boston not doing anything for them. So they created project exodus which now became a national program. The government was a small partner who would give academic and financial resources, and even work with a law to make it happen. So when people want to get involved and when necessary, government should have a heavy hand when discrimination is going on. I think to your question as to whether the system is designed to perpetuate segregation. Here is an experiment you can do on your own to confirm this. Images, bring up a map of manhattan of ethnicity where the neighborhoods are color coded by f the city and then bring up a map of the School Districts in manhattan. Put those on your monitor next to each other. Look at how the deuced it of the School District does a loop and stuff to make sure the School District stays tracked with the composition of ethnic neighborhoods. Partly, that is a legacy of history. Partly that is a problem where kids people dont want their kids mixing with other kids. And we have to confront that. It is a false dichotomy to say do we want a government solution or do we want School Choice . Public policyis and taking p