Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming to this panel. Eric, the Deputy Director or today we will discuss an issue that has been getting a bit of attention these days, School Choice and especially private School Choice. I know there is all sorts of forms of School Choice in this country and a lot of conversation about charters. In particular as well, but given the recent conversation and recent president ial election i think this is where we will do our primary focus, but we will allow time for other issues and is so forth School Vouchers and other voucher like programs, voucher cousins, if you will has been growing in numbers. The cousins would be like tax credit scholarships and Education Savings Account and the latter is what one proponent yesterday called the cool new kid on the block. As most of you know President Trump and secretary of education ours big fans of School Choice and a secretary betsy devos was to talk about choice and its made it the centerpiece of her education agenda. That said, these are complicated times in washington. The president billiondollar plus plan are by no means certain to become law even in the gop led congress and we had a panel yesterday on the politics of g12 where that was one of the points made, so probably good to keep that in mind. Its not clear what we might see at the federal level, but there is still good reason to be here because as i think palace will tell you a lot of the action, most of the action is at the state level anyway and will probably continue to be so. Its been a busy legislative session in states already this year with big debates. I think one of our panelists, robert were you when texas recently . I was. There was a lot of debate and im im not sure they got past debate in texas. Florida, arizona, arkansas, oklahoma are a few examples of the states where there have been efforts to either create new programs or expand existing ones keep in mind also that the 2000 election didnt just bring in donald trump to work with the republicanled congress, but also made gains in the states and now hold what is sometimes called a political trifecta with a 25 states where Republican Party controls the governor ship and both chambers of the legislature so that is likely to give further momentum to some of these even while this is not always a clearly partisan issue. Or not. Clearly though, i think that will probably build momentum. Our goals today will help you understand current landscape of private School Choice and whats on the horizon and how journalists can do a better job at keeping the public informed about these initiatives. Question such as who do the programs serve and what impact do they have two families and communities, how should the public judge their success or failure, what should journalists keep in mind and as they monitor and explain existing programs in their communities. So many of these are new or have changed, may be expanded in one way or another and it can be a bit, located to keep track of and its not so easy to carve out time when youre maybe covering a major school system, so that can be a challenge for local reporters. Remember that details matter a lot, whos eligible to receive a voucher, how much money its worth, which is schools per to state dont and to what extent our families using the funds that are eligible for things besides tuition with a whole menu of things you can use it for. Our most families able to get into the schools they want using the vouchers and are there many schools that dont participate and what kind of Accountability Measures are included. One other thats near and dear to the heart of most journalists is transparency, what is required of schools and the programs so journalists and other people can understand whats going on. Meanwhile, went to at least say a little bit about Charter Schools especially because in light of the election i went to point to two particular outcomes of note. One of them was in massachusetts where voters overwhelmingly rejected a plan to raise that States Charter limit and in a counter narrative there was a School Board Runoff election in la i just finished up that actually tipped the balance towards a coalition of Board Members to support Charter Schools and so that may well bring new amendment to the charters in la, which is already i think the city with more kids and Charter Schools than anywhere else in the country. Before we dive in and went to offer one last piece of context. I gave the political reality check before about the Trump Administration agenda and how that will be comforted to get through congress, but another piece of this thats important to remember is the number of students we are talking about at least in the Current Situation and i want to thank edit choice the research and Advocacy Group for helping to collect these numbers and they have great data about how programs were, their design, where they are and whats happening so its a great place to get that information. Currently, when you look at vouchers and voucher style programs across states he might get one, two, 3 million participate, no comments about 450,000 compared to about 50 million kids in Public Schools today. Its a very small piece of the pie. Currently, a lot of the work underway is looking to expand that. Im joined by atrophic lineup of people today to help us talk through get through these issues more including immediately to my left, Maggie Garrett who is the cochair of National Coalition of Public Education sort of an Umbrella Group for more than 30 National Organizations that have been fighting against voucher programs both in the political arena and in the legal arena and they represent teacher union, school board member, school administrators, aclu and others. Also the legislative director of separation of church and state so she keeps a close on whats happening across the country and her group has been involved in political advocacy and legal efforts to overturn vouchers and thats one of the issues im sure will come up to today. Next to her is darrell bradford, executive director of new york can, busy guy. Dont let that get out. These are both organizations promoting School Choice among other issues and his Network Works on the ground to monitor and influence state local decisions and work with families and others. Next we have Samuel Abrams who directs National Center of the study a privatization at Columbia University where he studies School Choice and hes also keeping an eye on the elements and you may often find him quoted in the news on the subject in recent times. Finally, we have robert enlow and i am mentioned his organization of choice. Hes the president and ceo of this National NonprofitAdvocacy Group tracking voucher and voucher style programs closely and as i mentioned they have helpful resources that kind of describe the landscape in a nonpartisan way, you know heres the program, heres what they do and so forth. With that, one other thing before we jump in is that we have another conversation later today at 3 30 p. M. Where we will turn the table and let journalists who will talk about their coverage of School Choice especially private School Choice , so if you want to dive in and hear their perspective on what to watch for, tips for getting information questions to ask, that would be a nice complement to what we have here. Despite what i said at the beginning about the trump agenda having a tough time, i went to start is a little bit about that and im not going to for this when im just going to ask each of you to spend a minute or two getting your quick view of trumps plan, what you make of it and what you think will happen. Hello. Thank you for having me. So, i represent the National Coalition of Public Education and americans united, so clearly i am disappointed in the trump betsy devos plan for education and what i think is particularly troubling is that instead of spending time on figuring out how to support Public Schools and improve Public Schools and work with the kids with 90 of the students in Public School, so instead of having a plan that works with those students, instead they are solely focus on how to spend taxpayer dollars to send to private schools that dont have the same accountability and no servile students that can reject students based on differentcharacteristics, so i would be more pleased if the focus was on Public Schools and the most kids and schools that have to accept all students, but instead they have been using the pulpit to talk about vouchers around the country. We have a budget that is decreasing funds for Public Schools, increasing funds for private schools. One of the programs would give millions of dollars to study and expand private School Vouchers. I think that is particularly troubling especially when you look at what they just did with the dc voucher for those of you that have been following that with only fully funded voucher in the country and they just renewed that again in one of the things that is interesting is they instead of saying that its been studied for years, the studies are showing these are actually performing worse academically than the other students and instead of when they renewed that saying they would keep studying they said i know you are using the golden standard now. My thinking is its not working out because the studies show is on improving academically and now they say instead of using the Gold Standard youre not allowed to use it and have to use clause ites terminal studies for your voucher program, so i think looking at that and you can no longer use the Gold Standard for the dc voucher and look at the budget saying we want to expand and study vouchers, knowing that they want to use quasiexperimental studies makes me suspicious, when they are trying to further at number two what it what will those studies look like under the administration . I went to clarify that this is not a law yet peered just pass the house. The budget . Dc vouchers. The dc voucher was put in the spending bill. So its a done deal. The first thing i would like to do is think the reporters that have covered me in a balanced way in this room and the second thing i would like to do is think Georgetown University for the Outstanding Institution of Higher Learning run by religious order that lots of people attend with public funding and ironing should not be lost. As far as the budget is concerned other than the fact that i think its dead on arrival one tickets to congress its like sprinkles of things i really like in an ocean of things i dont like and i for one have approached this entire episode since it started in november as on a comfortable safe harbor in which to make progress for kids who are really getting the short end of the stick based on the zip code, color of the skin or amount of money that parents make, so i think we will havent actual discussion about what this budget means when it gets there and i would like to point out the majority of the money in the choice portion of the budget is actually to promote public School Choice, so i dont know i feel like if you are against that thats cool, but i for one i dont consider myself a private school advocate. Private schools have a Important Role to play in helping us all problems are kids face. On the good schools advocate and think if we align Public Policy to help you get to a great school instead of being conscripted or assign the one that doesnt work for you about something we should support. Thank you. On that point just to kind of build on your observation about the content of what the president has actually propose i think is a 250 or 300 million. 2050. Implementation of vouchers and some research thats been unspecified like theres a lot in this and there is a piece where they want to ramp up Charter School funding, which already gets a pretty good chunk of change with about 350 million and they went to take up to 500 million and meanwhile they are talking about somehow carving out a billion dollars to title i program for disadvantaged students to create incentives for some sorts of public School Choice. I think there is a lot of question around that and the political feasibility for all sorts of reasons including the way the money is distributed and so forth so it will be interesting to see how that discussion what happens with that discussion. Thank you for having me here. Its an honor. I would like to build on what darrell said durell, im sorry that the billion dollars in this proposal is for public School Choice. Its title i money that is supposed to follow the students from him Public School to the another and that by itself didnt surprise me in the proposal. What did surprise me was that there was only 250 million set aside in this Education Research program to fund voucher and Fund Research in vouchers. I expected more. So, that was my gut response. I was thinking something more along the lines of race to the top where obama allocated 3. 4 billion in 2009, 19 states took slices of that with the provision as you might remember that states lifted the limit on Charter Schools and determine teacher pay according to student performance. I thought and perhaps this is where trump is a possible go and i think it is something we need to focus on is that they will allocate more than 250 million to states with the condition that states come up with some kind of Education Savings Account program or Tuition Tax Credit Program. I thought they it may be down the road or too early for them to propose more than two and 50 million for that, so that was my gut response. Thank you. Robert . Thank you for having us and thank you to georgetown for hosting. Lets first of all before we talk about the budget have a reality check here. Federal spending on education is nine to 11 of the total work the majority of funds is at the state local level spending roughly seven and 50 billion in america on k12 education of it which is 60 were so comes from the federal government so when we talk about 2,050,000,000 in some cases that is a rounding error compared with Traditional Schools get in a Million Dollars in the budget is higher for public School Choice is for private School Choice, so i look at the budget this way. There is good stuff and theres a lot of stuff that makes me worried, but the reality is once it goes to the congress it is not going to withstand the pressure. I dont think any of the president ial budget has withstood the budget pressure. No budget from the president ever goes over unscathed so we will see a lot of challenges. Also, we have a lot of questions to answer about the budget. What do these proposals look like a detailed . We are spending time argued about the eye doc ideology rather than the proposal so as we begin to see them we can hopefully have nonpartisan dialogue about this as opposed to the ideological dialogue we are having now and to talk about what might be what might not be good. Those of us that dont think that cuts are good idea and there are those of us that the the Choice Program are a good idea, so its a bit of a mixture, but the reality is its only a small portion of what we spend on k12 and its not going to withstand the congressional oversight. If you look at the bulk on the Scholarship Program done by the former admissions Shows Research department you find positive effects, actually particularly in attainment, so children graduating at higher rates and going to college at higher rates. Most recent study is the first study and we will seek what happens in the third year because most of the programs that you study in the third year you find a increase. The dc social program has been renewed for three years. Would like to respond . I do. There have been five studies on the dc voucher. Hasnt been around for one year. The last year it was called a oneyear study because it studied one year of schools in the program, so its not like a justice started. The prior studies showed no significant improvement for reading and math. Some p