I think that the United States, we are positioned to be on the cuts edge where communities are not ethnically exclusive. Thats historically new. Its not something you find as you look back in history. Im very excited to help position us on a new kind of organizing society where communities are not ethnically bounded. I think its a great thing for School Choice to be doing. Thank you very much. Let me start here by saying thank you for inviting me to this wonderful conversation. As i was thinking about this panel i reflected on my own personal, how i even got here. I have an identical twin sister we were in new jersey which is a majority white community. My family had just moved out of philadelphia and they wanted a Better School option for us. My mother took us out of Public School and put us into private school. I think that has made all of the difference for us and its why im a huge proponent. I think every parent should be able to choose what school or what environment, like how do you best meet the needs of each individual child. Fast forward, as was previously mentioned, i was the ceo of the Charter School fund. I am a new jersey girl born and raised and now as i moved back to washington d. C. Where my husband is a sixth generation washingtonian. Whether it is the local city, local state, the data or narrative, it really comes down to whats happening locally. About two years ago i went out to Silicon Valley with all of the entrepreneurs. They do things differently out there. The ceo of thumb tack said i hear this debate about k12, about college, but this is the reality. If we are not preparing every single one of our students for their academic life, Economic Life and their life to be citizens in this global world then we are not doing our job. As i think about the purpose where we are now, my mission is to make sure every children can have a well rounded life. Im opening a school in d. C. Which is almost 100 african american. If we want to talk about data in terms of youre saying if white parents want to come to southeast d. C. , great. I dont think they are coming until the schools and neighborhoods are safe. Again, to be in two cities, new jersey and washington d. C. Where we have a thriving charter sector. My perspective is those are false debates. Every parent wants a great school. They dont care if it is a traditional Public School. Thats what we heard from the last panel. The other data point i want to reflect on is in the last panel he talked about being in the second wave of students post ground board of education. She described her experience as being invisible. Thats how the students that are dropping out of school today feel, invisible. The question is how do we meet the needs of every student today. We just heard cell phones go off. Our students are Digital Natives and thats why im excited to launch a school thats focused computer science. Can i enroll . Absolutely. Can you teach is the question. Thank you. We want you to get engaged. I will ask a question that follows up directly on yours. You said youre from a district thats 100 . If youre meeting the individual needs of every child is it okay to have a school that is 100 minority . Is that okay . I mean to me its the wrong question. How do we meet the needs of individual students. When we look at the portfolio of schools are they all the same model or do we give students real choices . I rescently its this idea there is no average student. There is no one size fits all. The more we treat individual dhirn as an average well do one of two things. One, well miss their talents or well bore them to death. Maybe school is an online activity. I think its the wrong question to be thinking about today. So next question is thinking about that, what is the role of government in this conversation. There are a lot of trends of mine and yours who argue that the system is actually doing what its intended to do is that true and what is the proper role in this discussion . Sure. I want to go back to your first question. They go hand in hand. The question is it okay . It depends who you ask. If you ask gary he will say absolutely not. He has been pretty clear about that. If i ask richard he said not great but i would like to see much more economic integration. I would say okay. What about Public High School here in washington d. C. . A number of students are going to the military and starting businesses and have jobs. The question isnt segregation today, tomorrow and forever. Its education today, tomorrow and forever. Thats what matters to me. What it can play is a small key part. If you have Community Members who say we choose to move to a neighborhood, let it happen. I see her in the back. She worked in massachusetts. They have a controlledchoice program. People decided i will move to cambridge and participate in the program to make it happen. The second oldest solitary integration is the program founded by black parents in 1966 they created project saying well give you Financial Resources and even work with the law to make it happen. So when people want to get involved i think the government should have a heavy hand. It can play discrimination as well as intervention as well as innovation. Here is an experiment you can do on your own to confirm this. Bring up a map of manhattan where the neighborhoods are color coded and then bring up a map of the School Districts in manhattan. Put those on your monitor next to each other and look how they do little loops and stuff. In order to make sure that the School District stays tracked with ethnic competition. Partly it is an ongoing continuing problem with people who dont want their kids mixing with certain other kids. School choice is public policy. It involves taking public funds and devoting it to education. Some people are against School Choice because they dont like that the government is going to do this but im all for it. As to your other question regarding is it okay, i think is it okay is probably not the right way to frame it. I think policy is about tradeoffs. Its not do we want literacy or do we want citizenship education . Obviously we want both. The question is how do we prioritize both. They begin to drop off and other people whom priorities are out of wlhack. Should it be a priority or should we pursue and be indifferent to the student body. So i wouldnt want to say well, lets sacrifice all other priorities and lets not care whether kids learn to read and write because everything must be sacrificed into desegregation, the only thing we care about. I actually think one of the things we should want is for our children to form a common bond. I think it doesnt have to be limited to government schools either. Its a whole Research Question we could talk about. I think part should be to create a common bond among people who are not like one another. Its a reason why it should be a goal of our education system. Can you quickly follow up and quickly go into that research, very quickly. Sure. There have been a number of studies on tolerance on the rights of others. This is in the education studies that has gone back decades. The instrument they use is they ask a student to identify your most disliked group. People will name everything from, you know, republicans or democrats. They will say we evangelical christians. You get questions, should people be allowed to vote, be allowed to have a demonstration on main street, be allowed to have a book in their view. Private School Students score a little better on that than Public School opportunistudents. They do a better job to tolerate the rights of others. It matters a lot to desegregation. Take the term ethnicity. It meant many Different Things in many different times. Today we often mean nonblack. They are from other countries where they speak more than one language. Often it meant you spoke another language other than english. The italians were ethnic at one time. And so the ethnicity thing is very particularly since the largest would be not hispanics but people of german decent. As we unpack what it means to be an ethnic group even the term black is interesting is much more encome passing. Some of them choose not to put their kids in title one schools but also we never say the white schools are segregated. Its the black schools bearing the burden. We dont say the white schools are. What do we say about jefferson where majority of the students are asian. Is that a segregated school . Really quick, you know, the idea though back then was about resources. We have beautiful buildings and all of the books. The kids cant read or write. I think its important to put it in the context and i think education is the civil rights for our generation. We must make sure every student has access and that we are meeting the needs of individual students. I generally believe our students have expertise in different areas. Right now we treat brilliance as a single test score. I couldnt agree with you more on that one. And this is a challenging environment right now. How do we breakthrough the barrier around this issue or how can we have this discussion in a bipartisan way so we begin to break down the idealologies . So i am less interested in nonpartisan ship because it will be tough to have. Im more willing to what i call coalitions of convenience. Its just fine in an area where we can make it convenient and work from there. So this is why im actually starting the school. I was honestly tired of the debate happening before this past november to whats happening now because as i have said, there are students literally in school who are checked out, who are dropping out, who need all of us to be doing everything we can to help move them forward and the intellectual debate is whats stopping them. I do think as my mentor taught me very well which is finding this strip of community. How do we move this forward . I think of all politics being local. I think the National Debate can get exhausted and nauseating. If youre going down to d. C. Or really getting involved into that local conversation i think is the only way to do it. I think a lot of the way we accomplish that is by using new language. Language comes with a lot of baggage. Do you cant always unpack the baggage and explain it. I think the school choit is overinve overinvested. I dont think we need to unsay anything we have said. I dont think anything we we have said is wrong per se but we havent stopped and said when we say that what we mean is this. The language is heard very differently by people who have a different language word. I think in this and many other places finding new words to describe thing wills help create coalition of convenience. I think its to distance ourselves from anything that will taint the School Choice cause. I think in the real world you do have to work with policymakers and policymakers are who they are and particularly here in america we have a long tradition of being realistic. But that having been said its incouple want on us to prioritize coalitions across boundaries, coalitions across ethnic boundaries, across party affiliation. I think its necessary if School Choice is going to be the future of American Education and not just another policy fad thats here today and gone tomorrow because somebody got elected. Thank you very much. We want to have lots of questions. Please open them up and ask a question. Lets go from there. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for your comments. I have three questions that i will ask real quickly. Number one, you talked about the districts in manhattan. When i look at the districts in washington d washington d. C. I see the same thing. Has anything been done to look at economic segregation . Thats my first question. Second question is what will the impact of the u. S. District courts decision have on Public Schools . Third question, finally, is in light of trumps budget, and assuming, because they have said it is dead on arrival, but assuming that it passes, what will the impact have on Public Education and the goals of Public Education. I can answer is first question. Go ahead. Im not a lawyer or budge analyst. I will plead i dont have the expertise on the other two but economic segregation is some times studied. It is not as frequently studied. There is not as large a body but it is studied. When there are fewer studies its harder to generalize. Number 2 only 10 fkt comes from the federal government. Most of it will come state and local. Its about 45. 2 and the rest will have an impact if it goes through. It is taken away from funds or after School Programs, that will have a tremendous impact. And also some of the loan money. The third case, the case that you mentioned i will try to get to it later. No. I was just going to say all politics are local. I do i am deeply concerned about the budget. It supports me who is starting a new Charter School. It is impacting our families and the services that they received. You cant have one or the other. I think we have to continue to advocate. This is where the local organizations that have been doing this work for years, i think we have to rally together and leverage all of the resources we have to make sure our families get those services. Its part of a longer tradition connected to urban areas. [ inaudible question ] thats bigger part going in there too but we should always yeah, thats a big issue. It was for an ability to be part of a kplcommunity. Every kind of person has a seat at the table in our democracy. So i want to ask you about children of color with disabilities who are really impacted by some of these decisions to see what kind of data that youre seeing. The best private schools in washington will not accept children with significant disabilities and the Charter Schools around the country in many cases are not responsive to the needs of children with more involved disabilities, many of whom may have the strongest talents and abilities of any of the youth in america. So what are your ideas about advancing opportunities for children of color with disabilities . Well, i have done several studies and while its true that School Choice takes away the legal system or doesnt take away but if you use School Choice youre no longer part of the legal system that allows you to sue your school for services. Students have consistently reported they receive Better Services and also better conditions like they are not bullied or attacked at school as often, thats one of the most dramatic differences. The concerns that have been raised about students with disabilities not being able to find slots in Public Schools dont seem to have materialized. People have come forward and said we cant find the school. Given the large number of School Choices that specifically served Large Population of students with special needs it doesnt seem to have materialized in the act dh actual programs. Awesome. Before you go online of the 61 programs of School Choice but of the private School Choice side almost half of them are serving special needs kids. There has been a dramatic growth in the number of private scholarship programs. Well, i started my career off as a special education teacher. As im starting this school all of my work has been lead by a simple motto which is good teaching is good teaching. That being said i recently joined the board of National Center for Charter Schools and special education to make sure we are advocating on two fronts. A lot of schools, when it comes to special education the majority of their time is focused on compliance and not actually services. So i think to the extent that we can really make sure that our schools are given the tools, the resources to shift away from compliants. It allows for more personalization and i think well be able to move to ball forward. I think they are inan dated with lawsuits, some of them well deserving, some of them not. The idea that a School Leader has to spend more time versus how do we meet the individual neat needs of students i think thats why they are not being served today. My name is gregory clay. My question simply is what do you think of devoss . I have known her for ten years. I worked with her before she was a public figure a. I know her shaheart is committeo helping all kids. I also know that she wants to make sure that we spread the pot. Most of the conversation has been about School Choice. I understand people hear charters. There will come a point where there is more about Public Schools but her intention is not to detroy Public Education. I dont know her but i know there are no permanent friends or interests. We have to find ways to whoever has the biggest pot of resources because our students require it. Well, and if the decent people refuse to serve in public office, that leaves the indecent people to serve. I dont want to attack somebody for taking a position. Thank you. My question today is what impact is the extent have to do with enrollment, persistence and completion. Okay. Any comments . Most of my research is on k12 education. Im hesitant to say too much in a field i know less about but i have looked at College Entrance and the College Entrance rates in the United States today track pretty closely to graduation from high school with certain course requirements. We heard this morning if you want your chi