Extraordinary achievement this book is. The most authoritative history that ive personally ever read of the School Choice movement is so thoroughly researched it really it really feels encyclopedic to me. Almost like it is everything you would ever need to know. I wanted to first ask, im obviously familiar with your incredible work as education reporter and. I know a lot of education reporters have these sort of crystallizing moments in reporting where were in classroom or with a family and we have an aha moment. Im curious, know if you had one of those moments that led you to start writing this book. Its a good i think i think you know i started thinking about the School Choice movement when i was reporting about segregation in florida and as part of that reporting, we interviewed our team interviewed just dozens of families that were essentially trying to escape the segregated sort of low schools in this particular county in florida. And i was i was sort of struck by what the options were. You know, there other Public Schools potentially magnets, potentially Charter Schools and. Then some of the kids were using School Vouchers to go to private schools. And we followed some of the kids. And, you know, and i just it wasnt part that series at all, but it just struck me as sort of this tension, sort of the systemic of a system and what family actually does, when they havent found a good fit for their child. And so that just kind of stayed with me and i didnt have much to do with it, you know, as far as that particular piece of work. But, but it kind of was the start of thinking about the history of School Choice. And so you start this book and i wont spoil the but i know that the book starts in the 1950s sort of pre post brown v board of education as a lot of Southern States began resisting the orders the court orders to integrate. Why did you decide to start the book there why did you pinpoint that the origin point of the School Choice movement. Because i imagine that, you know, some people in the School Choice movement would not be particularly proud that thats the beginning. Their movement. Yeah. And i think i think theres you know, theres some awkwardness about that, right. But i think, you know, one of the things i was sort of trying to figure out when i was trying to decide how start the book is sort of for where does this idea begin . And its actually quite hard to pinpoint where that idea begins because sort of the stylized history of School Choice is that it starts with Milton Friedman, you an economist writing an essay about vouchers in the fifties and then history thats told often is that theyre nothing sort of happens friedman keeps idea alive and then 1990 milwaukee starts the School Voucher program in the country. The first modern one. Thats sort of the history that you hear. But there is you know, theres other pieces of American History you kind of have to go back to. You have to look at what the Founding Fathers intended for education and how that developed because there wasnt agreement about how to educate the nations children. You can look at what happened with catholics. You coming into this country. They had all this integration of of catholic and common system was forming at that time in the 1800s. But it was distinctly practiced in. And so you could also start with the catholic and that whole piece of the history and so i kind of was grappling with what makes sense a beginning and i decided in 1950 not just because of segregationists i thought what was about that time period was that you did have Milton Friedman writing this essay about, School Vouchers. You also had sort of a lesser known figure in virgil blum, which was a priest, milwaukee, who was very much interested in School Vouchers for religious liberty to help religious families, private school and particularly catholic, but not exclusive to that. And so you had these two voices and then at the same time you had segregationists who were interested essentially in privatizing the School System to avoid brown. And it started in the lead up to brown. It seemed clear, you know, that we were moving in that direction and then intensified it post brown but i thought you know that time period is so fascinating because you start see how you could take one sort of tool mechanism in School Vouchers and use it for a lot of different purposes. And i felt like today were still having some of those same thread some of those same questions about, vouchers, who theyre for, who theyre not for. Does it help or hurt public system and how you factor in sort of values those, you know, religious education into that. And so i felt like some of those debates from the 1950s are still in play and so thats why i decided to start there. Well, i found the of the book to be one of the most intriguing, compelling parts, partially because it is so dramatic. Its very emotional. And it really has to do with. One of the biggest cases in Us Supreme Court history. I obviously encourage the viewers to pick up the book and it. But can you walk us through a little how brown v board of education and and how desegregation gave birth to a School Choice movement. Well so its interesting you know there was as i said, there were sort of indications that brown was coming down the line. There had already been a few court cases that were at the university desegregation cases at the university level. And so it seemed clear that next be the k12 system. And so it kind of started georgia and that was one of the first places where where there were influence voices saying you know, we essentially need to give up Public Schools rather than desegregate them. And it was one of the things i found interesting in the research was that, you know, this is before google and the internet and and really widespread availability of of news in the way that we understand now. And and yet voices in georgia were up by national media, you know, so there was an awareness that was happening. And i thought that was most kind of interesting and then sort of watching how it spread, right, because georgia came up with sort of this idea of were going to privatize the School System, not just through vouchers were sort of a like an escape mechanism for students. I mean they were they were talking about leasing buildings to private entities. They were talking about putting Public School teachers, having private school teachers, then be eligible for state benefits, know they were talking about a wholesale privatization of the system, not just vouchers. And so i thought that was sort of this interesting example of how you might use vouchers, but brown itself was this just the sea change for education in america and so how the south reacted to it was incredibly interesting. But there is also this of tension there of segregation in the north. Its not just southern thing and how that kind of factored into the future of School Vouchers. You know, families fleeing south and then encountering different of discrimination in the north. And so i just i found whole period of time just so interesting. And so basically it i realize this is an oversimplification, but a lot of states created voucher for white families to skirt integrate so that they would not have to send their white children to schools alongside black children. Yeah. And it was actually, you know, it was actually considered to be sort of a less extreme measure, which sounds sounds strange. And i found that kind of startling when i was doing the research, because it seems like an extreme measure, but this was considered sort of a moderate alternative to just to close in schools, which did happen in a few places. And so it was sort of viewed as this escape mechanism, as i said, to let families in there, their children to all white schools, all white, private. It also when when it started being struck down by, the courts you know, the courts very quickly caught on to a lot of the things that segregationists were doing to skirt brown and started striking down various laws that were passed. Then they tried to, you know, southern lawmakers tried to make the program sort of neutral and. So then you did see tiny numbers of black students also using vouchers, but but it was pretty clearly a for white families to avoid desegregated Public Schools. Yeah, thats to me is of the most shocking things about that era that Public Officials would rather shut down Public Schools that they actually did, actually, not far from and parts of virginia rather than have integrated Public Schools. No Public Schools to them was to integrated Public Schools. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned that you found a lot of things really intriguing about this. Im curious to know having youve been an education reporter for a very long time we are all especially florida im sure youve covered the debate over School Choice over school reform. Florida is like a laboratory of School Choice. What were some of surprising things that you learned in researching this book . Well, you know, it was how little i actually did know, you know, and i a reporter in florida for ten years and, you know, and i grew up in washington state, which has essentially no School Choice. Very blue state, not the part i grew up in, actually, but overall. And, you know, washington has sort of Charter Schools a little bit, but it was extremely you know, it was contested in the courts and so i grew up in a place with no. And then i moved to florida as an education reporter. I spent ten years there and you know, and theres theres tons of choice. And so i was sort of unfamiliar it and and you know an education reporter so often your focus on covering the local School District thats sort of what youre assigned to essentially is covering the Government Agency and for me, i spent a lot of first just trying to understand how the system works. You know, the public system understanding how florida finances its schools, you know kind of basic things and sort of bumping into choice from time to time. You know, i might cover a Charter School that was getting shut down by the School District. You know, that had oversight and, you know, oversight of the Charter School. And so i might cover that but i wasnt necessarily really into the history of it all. And, you know, i would sort of run up against the debate for it but it was when i was there, it was sort of an established thing already, you know, the court case that struck down a particular Voucher Program in florida had happened and and so it was sort of interesting to me when i started it. I just i didnt know as much as i thought i knew. I is the way to say it. And so lots of things revelatory to me i mean, more than more than i would like to admit. You know, i really was familiar with sort of the stylized history that it started, Milton Friedman and then kind of nothing happened. And then milwaukee and. I didnt even know that much about milwaukee to be honest. Yeah, its interesting too, because i think especially if we really myopic and look at this in the present, we might view these issues to be kind of strictly bipartisan republicans are in favor of School Choice. Democrats are against. But as your book shows, thats really not the case. Even going all the way back to the origins. I really liked anecdote you shared about the sociology. Just who wrote sort of a treatise for School Choice in both right wing and a left wing publication . Can you talk a little bit about how how this how School Choice sort of defies a lot of the rules that we have come to think of that, you know, split issues into half. Yeah that was one of the things that i think kept me going through doing all of this research you know, i spent five years on it was sort of surprising moments in the research. And one of them, i think really was the idea that that this was not strictly a right wing thing and certainly in the present day, every School Choice is incredibly polar rising and people are very, very strong about it. There does not really seem to be middle ground. I have gone search of middle ground and i have not found much. So one of the things that i thought was really surprise seeing was sort of this idea of overlap, you know, that if you start book in 1950, you have these overlapping ideas from voucher advocates, you have to segregationists, you have Milton Friedman, you have virtual gloom. But then, you know, these these programs that were started the south, they started very quickly to get shut down by the courts the late fifties and into the sixties. But during the 1960s, even as the courts are saying these programs essentially racist, you know, theyre trying to thwart. Brown you had new voices coming in and some of them were progressive voices saying, you know, vouchers could actually be a tool of empowerment for low income kids and particularly for black. And i thought that was so startling that you would be making an argument that at the same moment that the courts are saying these programs are thwarting desegregation and they need to end. And so i thought that overlap was fascinating. And of those some of those people, you know, Christopher Jencks you mentioned, thats the anecdote. Who wrote in two different politically leaning magazines about this idea he was you know, a fairly liberal sociologist at the time, and kenneth clarke, who is actually in brown, he wrote an essay this, you know, and so i thought that was something that i think out there a little bit youre in maybe the Choice Movement i think youre aware of some of those voices potentially. But i the larger you know, most people i dont think are actually aware of that. So i thought that was was interesting. And you see that essentially the entire history, which i also thought was fascinating, i mean, certainly it is dominated by the movement, dominated by conservatives, but theyre not the only voices. And so i found that kind of intriguing. And it it made me sort of dig a little deeper into okay well then how did sort of work you know how did these different ideas about choice sort of play against each other . You know, and i thought it was interesting that you, Milton Friedman, essentially with Christopher Jencks and some of those other voices about how you do vouchers. Yeah, thats it is really astonishing. It on one hand in the south, you had School Choice being used to integration to avoid a major ruling on civil rights in the north i suppose and i think milwaukee is a great example of this you had people arguing this is actually tool of empowerment for black families. I think really theres who really embodies that contradiction more than Polly Williams in, milwaukee seemed to me was like a very, very fascinating character. Can you talk a little bit about her and her in the movement . Sure. So probably williams, a black Democratic State legislator in milwaukee, in wisconsin, and she was she was shes passed away now. But she was a really interesting woman because she deeply interested in education but she was opposed to integration. And she was very much i mean, think i would call her a black nationalist. You know, she was very in helping her community. She was interested in trying to sort of make institutions work for black families. And she she didnt that the milwaukee Public School district was working for black children. And so she did a number of trying to sort improve the system and. One of the things that she was opposed to was bussing. She didnt she thought essentially that integration in milwaukee was falling too hard. The burden of it was largely on black families and she didnt think that it was actually doing much to black children. She didnt think they were benefiting from being bussed to another school. And so you know some of her policies were attacking integration policies. Some of some of the things she proposed like one of the ones, i think, that got the most attention was that she and howard fuller, whos a civil activist involved in the movement, made a proposal for an all black School District in. And, you know, that was one of the ones that really got headlines in a lot of little different ways. She was trying to improve education and and felt like really wasnt getting a lot of support her own party from democrats and sort of open to this idea of School Vouchers and would you know she would say and she was quoted as saying that it wasnt about Milton Friedman she didnt necessarily have a familiarity with Milton Friedman for it was very much this is that could help black students essentially leave the public School System that