That is not yet entirely politicized. In this polarized World Without the shock i noted people in the city but the most comprehensive Early ChildhoodEducation Program in america is in oklahoma which is a deep red state so thats something we could do. Theres smaller things that we could do like mentoring for kids, and they dont mean drop by mentoring. The crucial thing but mentoring you know this is not have lunch once a year and say how are things going. You got to be in their lives supporting them, providing them with, helping provide them with these airbags and so on which i know you are doing and that would make a big difference. Frankly as i say in the book, the fact that School Boards without even thinking about the consequences have instituted a aaa for what was once everybody in america thought it was part of what you got when you got a public second education, he also got his soft skills for football, bank and course and zone. Go to your school board and ask if you pay to delay and if they say yes, we have waivers help in the effort shows kids know about who got a waiver in the stigma attached to getting waivers, doesnt work. While georgia asked the School Superintendent what else you could do to help kids in that school. Theres on range of things from big schools to small things. You talk about high school becoming universal in trade movement from the agriculture to congratulate and went to the problem of the progressive era your now making Community College, trade school and only college universal. Thats right, everybody talked a bit about that part of the education system. Its great for the president has called attention to that and other local governments around the country have called attention to that by saying lets make Community College free. Thats great but actually the evidence shows is that so much of dollar cost of the Community Colleges. I talked about these kids they also dont have any adults who can cannot help them guide them through the public process to figure out what school they should go to and so on. These kids lack savvy. The thing that is most important is in cutting back funding for Community Colleges across the country, those have come disproportionately on advising and counseling and supporting these kids and thats the worst thing to cut because thats what makes the dropout rate at Community Colleges very high. The dropout rate is very high but not for financial reasons but because these kids dont have the kids have you thought about taking that course next term end of this course this term . We were doing a dialogue with some of the students in ferguson in st. Louis on race and among the things that came out of it was both the students in the high school and the former superintendent of the high school said its not on making to Merritt College free, it should be seamless which is you dont sit there worrying getting from eighth grade at tonight degrade, maybe a little bit of rigmarole hip to go through but it should be a seamless process of going from senior year into the proper Community College trade school, whatever they do. Thats right. Spiff the other things simple enough to have the vision is not the execution of every kid having a mentor come advocate have an Afterschool Program and begin having a good summer opportunity, every kid having Early Childhood, every kid having post secondary education. Those are not complicated things. They are the question of political will which means my last question before we open it up he made a joke that wasnt funny nor a joke that we are a partisan city right now. Youve been extraordinarily nonpartisan ever remember with george w. Bush, you involved with. Youve been close to and in helping us there. You advised paul ryan when it came out with his Economic Opportunity for land. I jeb bush as well as president clinton brought you to camp david and barack obama kdeezy National Medal of something or another, right . More relevant thing is as long as were dropping names, i spent hours talking to the president about this issue. Right. So how do we make of this the moral and economic issue of2016 and not make it part of the partisan divide . Well, you know thats a 64,000 question from my point of view but i do think to recapitulate what you said, there are some tough questions about exactly who decide to write programs to fix the problem but this is not a case where we dont have any good policy ideas. This is a piece we said we dont have the political will and we dont have the political will fundamentally because we put ourselves as a country where we dont think these as our kids. We think of them as somebody elses kids. If you go to Portland High School now and the parking lot you can see parked right next door to each other bmw convertibles driven by kids whose parents live on the lake and jokers we wouldve called it in my day in which kids olympic the parents of the once dont think the others kids as one of our kids. Thats what i call the book our kids because i think thats a crucial step weve got to get over. Its true that political big on both sides of the aisle i think correctly see this as a major issue. Its been part of michael to make this problem of the opportunity gap the central domestic issue in the 2016 election. I want this to be the litmus test. If youre a serious candidate, what is your solution to the problem of the opportunity gap . Thats my aspiration. I think were making some progress. A number of candidates on both sides have begun to talk about the opportunity gap. If we all agree with the problem, we can talk about how to fix the problem. I do worry though that this will turn into a search for villains and the political field will be so strong that this issue would get pulled into its all about fixing the economy are all about fixing the families can or is it really cultural or really structural and we will lose sight of the kids. I want to focus on the kids. The best way to make that happen in 2016 is to make sure everybody reads your book. With that note, let me open it up. Yes, maam. You will shout and i will repeat and the microphone will get to you. I read some research that says the most important its not money its not education from its motivation. Icing for kids that are highly motivated to succeed and have worked very hard and succeeded and ive seen some rich kids have not been very motivated just by the education and have not done well. So could you speak to that issue, please . That is no doubt true that motivation makes a difference but we shouldnt assume that that motivation is coming from a jeans or god that is it is from some outside the kids or maybe the kids just woke up that morning i decided not to be. Thats what we know about motivation actually is that it comes from having success sequences are in life. And so mary sue is now mary sue is a young woman in portland on talking about. She is less motivated to my granddaughter. Mariam, her parents are collegeeducated and shes going off to france this summer and shes motivated to become really good cultural historical whatever shes going to be. Shes highly motivated. Mary sue is just trying to find somebody who will love her. You can say well giunta mary sue doesnt have very high motivation but that comes out of her experience from comes out of mary sues experience. I dont want to look at her parents or the rest of us off the hook by saying no, i know what youre saying by one make sure were focusing on motivation. Just for yourself up by your bootstraps, you will be fine. I had all of the of that feeling myself. I come from a modest background. I thought if i can do it why cant kids now do it . I now see that was someplace between thats become harder to force up a by your bootstraps in the past 60 years, is that right . It has. It has become harder, and its become harder in the following way. We have privatized most i dont mean this in any political sense but we used to Pay Attention to all of our kids and therefore, we had playgrounds and little leagues and so on. But that has all gradually been privatized, which if youre my grandchildren thats great. They can have wonderful soccer games. They can learn sticktoitiveness integrate and all that stuff. Mary sue is elderly. We interviewed hundreds of kids all across america from Orange County to lead to the bend oregon, to the boston area and almost none of them had any Extracurricular Activities at all except watching tv. Spink and you said somewhere between nuts and evil, thats a strong statement. Where they show that just saying this, as chelseas mother does in your book, it is really pernicious consequences. Yes. I mean, our kids i mean our own biological kids are doing well, and thats great and we are doing all we can to help them. And thats greater im not saying theres anything evil about that. We try to help them. Im not saying thats evil but if you think about, im not talking just you personally, of course. Im talking to everybody. If we thought of marys as one of our kids come if i thought of marys as when my kids i couldnt sleep at night and told figured out a way to help her. Im sorry we have so many hands. National conference on session should. Very nice if you bob. Partially as a result of blowing we only have some data and that shows a very strong correlation between education and Civic Engagement. I wonder at a no we dont have the same data set from the 50s but i wonder if that was different back then, and if so why and what that means for our future . Well, thank you very much for the question. Your underlying observation is that people of more education are generally more likely to say in civic activities. It wasnt quite as true, it was a little true but not always because there were other institutions that mobilize people to take part in politics. Political parties mobilize people to take part in politics and unions and churches mobilize. One of my earliest Research Papers back in the 60s when i was an infant was on the importance of these those organizations in mobilizing political support. I guess thats where i believe it. And we dont have that now. If you think Political Parties are going to do this, i dont mean you do but Political Parties spend as much time trying to figure out how to do breast presentation among their opponents than it did to increase participation among their own advocates. Thank you very much for being here today. This has been wonderful. Between mary sue and mary in myriam, in the middle of that there is a whole group, a vast a group of people of young people who are not college material. What has happened to the trade schools . You know, today at my house i had a telephone and, the washing machine man, the refrigerator man. I cannot begin to kill the of all the trades people that come to my house. So these are perfectly capable people. What happened to the trades go . First of all, can i get the name of your plumber . [laughter] sure. No, i am agreeing with you, of course. You are right, that is a big gap in our array of opportunities we provide kids. There was for a number of years a mantra that was called college for all, and basically all kids in america now believe that. They all believed they need to go to college forgive and forget fully they need to get college. But it has perhaps unfortunate, the side effects are defining what they needed in terms that were to nearly focus on it particular kind of post second education and not for example on apprenticeships and other kinds of serious education, but education and not at liberal arts but aimed at a real job fixing things or making things. Theres some good models. In the book i talk about a number of models around the country, programs and exactly as youre suggesting, at that group of kids. [inaudible] limited is an others and okay, go ahead. But really there are a lot of people who want to say something. When i was growing up, they were no outreach programs no outreach programs. Today, every organization that he belonged to has an outreach program. So i do think that there is Civic Engagement. You name the university the Aspen Institute the portrait gallery, everyone has an outreach program. So why do you say there is no Civic Engagement . Well, i dont want to be badmouthing outreach programs, but we just do it without calling that. You are always been outreach and most of us are no longer outreach. I dont mean formal outreach. I mean the little old lady with her fur coat and fur hat enforcement at the counted on the desk and said this woman deserves an education. The mind boggles. She would never set on doing outreach. She was helping one of the kids in town. In a way thats a kind of more formalized way of trying to make up for the fact that we used to do this a time or just in our lives, and we dont anymore. Right there on the aisle. Thank you. Could you talk a little bit about the role, not of external organizations like mentors and so on and so forth but actually families and working with families on film engagement or other faithbased practices . I shouldnt have omitted that. I agree very much that coaching, parental coaching programs and Home Visiting programs of which the Family Partnership is the most well tested, but there are those, too. There are some proven examples. Those are good and needed. And, indeed, theres this debate, sort of wonky debate in the state and elsewhere about as head start work or not work. And an important part of the answer is it works much better if its combined with outreach to the parents and coaching of the parents to the programs of the sort youre describing. Thank you for describing me for reminding me i omitted that earlier. I was one if anything unique to the immigrant energy or the immigrant experience and their sense of how they helped each other out. Yes. First generation immigrants controlling for what they are economically, and much more stable structure family relationship and thats part of the startup we all have and thats basically true. Thats the good news. And its very some ethnic group to ethnic group. In general immigrant groups look a little more like traditional american families. You know ozzie and harriet, both worrying about the kids. Thats the good news. The bad news is that vanishes after one generation. And a different life im a big advocate of immigration at a talk by the publicly financed olympic i like the idea of assimilation. People becoming a richer mixture to our country. This is what every which a simulation is problematic rethink, the immigrant families can become in the Second Generation more like the rest of us here. Im curious about the role of technology. You talk about the khan academy being the platform and Access Network younger less educated people are using more social platforms human platform. Can you talk more about the bright spots or trendlines was Something Like facebook, like i know increasing were people going out to vote or get more people to register as organ donors. Can you talk about some of the social Technology Companies bringing in ways to close some of the scissor issues . Well, maybe youre more aware of those that i am actually. I am aware i know of course about a lot of the ways in which social media are changing our lives because just before the explosion of social websites and social media and so it occurred just after i wrote the book, so by far the single most often question im asked is how about the internet . I thought a lot about the internet does or doesnt make up for this in very many ways which it does. But now im focused not on his unit good or bad for building productive social relations but is it narrowing again. Frankly, i do not know. He would tell me that i did not know of any website or any major app that specifically devoted to narrowing the gap. The reason i think thats important is often pass on in the background even facebook is another, aware of relationships. I got friends on facebook a few of them ive actually never met but most of them i know in real life. And so my relationship via facebook as a kind of ally of combined real facetoface connection and the internet face connections. These poor kids are so isolated from any realworld facetoface connections that that i think is the challenge. I dont think that a purely virtual, purely virtual app is going to solve the real problems these kids have. But the more creative question which i do not know are the ways in which we can create a new kind of ballot that is directly directed specifically to mary sue. Smx has . And marys is on facebook. She is. And, therefore, you could figure out how do we go about to make an alloy that includes reallife support. This gentleman here and then ill come back. You have it, sorry. You talk about assisted graphs that show the divergence of the bottom third of the top third which i think were all aware. More recently theres been been a lot of attention from Thomas Pickett and others about scissors developing between to 80 and 20 , to for people to go to dinner to college, they can get for your degrees and are still not improved or Economic Standing and facing a bigger gap, you know, separating them from the well off. I wonder if youve looked at this and also one of the reasons that this is happening is that as robotics and Computer Technology advance, more others relatively heidi steele jobs are being done by machine and that trend is likely to accelerate in the future. So when you look at that what prospects doesnt offer for people are trying to make it and will improve their relative standing . Right. From my point of view, and you will correct me if im misunderstanding your question you were talking about the demand side how is demand shifting at various levels into education or income hierarchy. And you probably know about the famous our cl