Rarest actually is a german language printing here in the center. There are only two copies of this july 1776 printing of the declaration in german that had survived. This is been shared with us by Gettysburg College in pennsylvania. Its side by side with a salem, massachusetts printing of the declaration. We also explore the promise of equality, so this notion that all men are created equal endowed by their create where certain unalienable rights, thats language that each person has to decide, does that apply to me. So people who wrote those words maybe didntly recognize the revolutionary potential in them. Actually some people like john adams probably did realize that when you declare that all men are created equal, people might say, well what about women . What about enslaved people . Laboring men . We try to explore that story through this wall here where we look at the status of laboring men, of enslaved people, of women. Including abigail adams. More exhibits of the museum of the American Revolution in philadelphia and the your phone calls about the museum and the revolutionary war on American History tv, starting tonight at 7 00 p. M. Eastern. Now education policy and lists on the federal role in education and how that could change, under the Trump Administration. Later, the topic turns to states accountability. The Education Writers Association hosted this conference. All right. Think were going to get started. Were giving people a little extra time, its a maze to get here. And we are missing aft president randi winegarden. Shes on her way, shell be joining us as soon as she gets here. Good morning, my name is lauren camera, im the education reporter at u. S. News. You are at the changing politics of k12 panel discussion. Thank you for being here. Ewa has wrangled a pretty awesome team of panelists to discuss and answer all of your pressing politics questions, because theres nothing really going on in d. C. Right now, right . I am going to leave the bioto you guys, you can look in the program and see the extended bios, ill quickly run down the line here, we have lindsay burke, the education policy director for the heritage foundation. Which for you outside the beltway, a conservative think tank here in d. C. Chavar jeffreys is the president of democrats for education reform, hes also a civil rights lawyer and next to him is marty west. Marty is an education professor at harvards graduate school of education. He was also previously an education policy adviser to senator lamar alexander, the republican from tennessee, the chairman of the Senate Education committee. A quick housekeeping note. This is one of the first panels of ewa so please tweet using hashtag ewa17, to you and your panelists everything is on the record. So its fair game. A little warning. We want to you make news. So this is also being livestreamed on periscope. So welcome for the periscope viewers. Because we have such a big task ahead of us today, we want to provide lots of time for your questions. We are going to forgo opening remarks from the panelists and just sort of dive right into this. But i wanted to take a minute to set the scene that were currently in. So ill just ask six months ago, how many of you guys thought we would be in this politics and education policy position we are in today . Raise your hands. No . No one . Really . So the collective we kind of missed the ball on this. I dont think many of us expected to have a President Trump. Maybe we expected that a republican would be in the white house, but maybe not this republican. Hes certainly doing things a little differently as he has pledged to do. We are transitioning from an administration that really prioritized education, right from the getgo, really, with race to the top, supercharging the School Improvement grant, expanding the office for civil rights. Pushing for universal k12. So on and so forth. And now we have an administration that is so far has a singular agenda it seems of School Choice and is focusing a lot on rolling back the role of the federal government in undoing a lot of these obamaera initiatives. His recent Budget Proposal as im sure you all know proposed to slash 9 billion from federal Education Programs and eliminate dozens, including things like teacher preparation and afterschool programs. We will get to all of that. We have an education secretary, who has proven controversial so far. Whose confirmation required an unprecedented tiebreaking vote from Vice President mike pence. She has really gone through the wringer in terms of the last few months, been blocked by protesters trying to enter Public Schools. Has been booed, giving a commencement speech at bassoon. Similarly to trump, her main focus has been School Choice, including private School Vouchers. And we will dig into this as well. This is all happening of course against the backdrop of states implementing the e. S. S. O. Returns a lot of the decisionmaking power to state and local School Districts. The law was crafted with this kumbayah moment of bipartisanship in congress. Bipartisanship that seems to no longer really exist. We will talk about that as well. And despite republicans controlling both chambers of congress, as well as the white house, its unclear whether any type of education legislation or any legislation, major legislation is going to be able to move given some of the interparties fighting. We will get to that as well. Where does this all leave us . A lot to cover. Where does it leave the education reform movement. Teachers unions, should we expect any movement on education legislation. Whats to become of the office for civil rights. Most importantly, what should we all be paying attention to as we go back home and cover our education beat i. Going to dive right into it. Please be thinking were going to save 20 minutes at the end for all of you guys. I want to start off and lets talk about School Choice. At the top of everyones agenda. Lindsay you are from the heritage foundation. A big proponent of school of choice, the whole gamut, Education Savings Accounts, vouchers, tax credit scholarships. Some people in this room might be interested or not expecting the fact that you dont really want the Trump Administration going there. So if you can talk a little bit about that, where you come from there and give us a little idea of what states are doing interesting things and what we should be paying attention to. I want to thank everyone for being here. Its nice to be here. Thanks to ewa for having me. I think weve got a great panel. On the School Choice front, you totally nailed it. We are, i have been a huge proponent of School Choice, heritage has long been a huge proponent of School Choice, it is our specialiperspective is ae above. Charter schools, voucher options, tuition tax credit scholarships, you mentioned the new cool kid on the block, Education Savings Accounts, which is where i really think the Education Choice movement is going right now. We see sort of an all of the above approach. Any option that ep able as parent to select a school that fits well with the needs of their child. I think is a good option. Having said that and prefacing this with the fact that i spend my waking hours thinking about how to expand School Choice, is it appropriate for the federal government to be engaged in a large scale push via a new National Program and i think thats really key is whether or not its a new program. I think we have a fair amount to risk by engaging in a new large scale federal program. States are doing it on their own already. Were seeing state after state, year after year, adopt new Education Choice options. Every legislative session, we see more and more states add School Choice. And then theres the practical matter that were all aware of, that 90 of all Education Funding is state and local so practically speaking thats where the dollars are. Unless you were to do a new program, which is what i worry about a little bit. If were establishing a new program, its hard to reconcile the creation of a new program with reducing federal intervehicles and education. The other perspective that i hold, that at least from the conservative perspective, really wanting to advance these two notions in tandem. Limiting federal intervention and advancing Education Choice for parents and their children. So starting a National Program gets a little problematic. It continues to solidify significantly high levels of federal intervention. And local school policies. And come have some unintended consequences down the road. I think well get into this probably a little later. But the word on the street is maybe its a federal tax credit approach that might be under consideration. And we can talk about this. But i think every opportunity to make this a decision with what that Program Looks Like it, the federal government would likely regulate it and what does the impact on the larger School Choice program be down the road, the federal normative idea of what a School ChoiceProgram Looks Like. So i think you know, the view isnt worth the hype on the federal School Choice question. Marty, i want to thank you about the viability of this. In congress. Whether this is politically possible. We heard President Trump pledge on the campaign trail to direct 20 billion in federal spending towards this big umbrella of School Choice. We saw in the budget, a 1 billion boost for title i, for School Districts that promised to allow those dollars to follow the student to the school of their choice. Also a 250 million private School Voucher program. Which we really dont know how it would be structured. As lindsay mentioned, potentially tax credit scholarship down the road. How does this work in congress . What should we be watching for. Is it even a reality . So republicans now control both thes house and the senate and the presidency, i think that led a lot of people to expect that it would be politically very easy to push major School Choice agenda from washington. Lindsay didnt mention heritage that is located 73 feet from the senate. That works very hard advocating for its position in congress and theyve been very effective and theres not overwhelming republican support for major federal efforts to expand School Choice from washington. Because of concerns for that that means for the federal role. Thats why weve seen in the past, the house often being reluctant to even bring up for a vote, proposals to allow title i dollars to follow students of their choice, they dont want to expose the fact that theres not actually strong support for that in the republican caucus. So that creates obstacles in an administration thats try to take advantage of its control of the federal government to advance School Choice proposals. As you mentioned a few ideas. Theyre all relatively small hp ball ideas. The within a. S. A. , theres this weighted student funding pilot program. It would allow 50 districts, up to 50 districts to use funding systems to combine federal, state and local funds and allow the funds to follow the children to the Public School this they attend. The Trump Administration apparently seems to want to incentivizing participation that and adding half a billion to that and encouraging states to participate. But you know, even that is not necessarily a School Choice program. Its really a way to try to model out a different way for administratoring federal aid programs, that is more compatible with School Choice, but doesnt go much beyond that. So i really think that theres a, an uphill battle facing a lot of these proposals. And so far weve heard a lot about empowering states to make these decisions on their own and not relying the federal government to do that for them. It is a huge theme for this administration. Youre going to see it more and more, especially as we mentioned in the introduction amid the backdrop of esa, which shifts a lot of power back to states and local districts. And shivara, i wanted to ask you to talk about what youve seen in the terms of the ruppup to how the stakes are getting higher at the state level, the local School District level. Were on the heels of this Epic Campaign spending of the l. A. School board. What should we be as reporters, local School District reporters thinking about as some of that turns over to you know, their responsibility versus the federal governments . Very happy to be here. The reporters should focus on the real core issues and the core work of public scoots, you know obviously choice conversation is relevant and is significant. But it deal with a relatively small number of kids in terms of the overall scheme of things. Particularly outside of the Charter School sector. The states implement esa plans, what are the standards that states are going to choose in terms of when they expect of kids. Are those standards aligned with insures that kipds are college and career ready are those standards in line with the ongoing shifts in the labor market. Which is changing at a rapid rate homt are School Districts, and the districts hold accountable each child. Weve had a history, this is where more sub stapgs, people like me would support a federal insure basic equity. Where kids generally havent met those stan rds, lowincome kids, kids much color. What are states going to do to hold districts so all children can learn. Schools are consistently not meeting benchmarks or individual disaggregated of kids arent meeting those benchmarks bharks are states going to do . Just put up a letter that this school is a c or d, or make sure youre doing tangible to make sure those young people have an opportunity to fulfill their potential. How are states going to make sure it has a sufficient number of highly qualified teacher in those classrooms. We do lot of work. To that educators can hit the ground running from day one when they hit the classroom. How are states going about insuring that they have a strong supply of teachers and School Leaders . Higher end, what are states doing to make sure that universities in their states are admitting meaningful numbers of Pell Granteligible kids, we have many universities im talking about kids in similar situations, academic perhaps, they would rather admit an upperincome kid. Kids with the same academic parole file. Because the state universities are under significant revenue pressure. What are states going to do to make sure that, our college and diversity is going to be open to all. What kind ever substantial levels. At the end of the day we have 400,000 kids in this country who attend voucher skills, over 3 million who attend public Charter Schools and over 350 million. We choice through the Public Education system. Through public Charter Schools, theres a very strong track result of results there. And you also have builtin mechanisms to inchur capacities that some things those people lagss of kids. Core bread and butter work. We think its very important not to lose track of that. Because boss kids in troys programs. He theyll have the capacity to enter you know public universities at meaningful levels, as well as the broad masses of kids. We have so much day to day kind of nuts and bolts nittygritty work, we cant afford to lose track of that. Is it more important to cover local School Board Elections. Focusing on the federal government its frying to rewrite no child left behind. We have since done that the tiltawhirl is shifting back towards state and local School Districts. What pointers can you guys give us for vetting candidates that we might see domg up. Ill totally not answer that question. But telling you if im a rother, what savatt said is right, theres 400,000 kids in private tuition vouchers so 400,000 kids today. So we have seen several states adopt effectively universal options. So if you look at nevada, there are programs currently, an enjunction legal battle right now. Theyre working out some financing. If that all works itself out. 473,000 kids in nevada will be eligible for an Education Savings Account this fall. Not that theyll all take it up, but eligibility will be 473,000 skids for an esa. Arizona just took their Education Savings Account universal. It happened three weeks ago, theres still an aggregate cap on the number of kids who can participate. But eligibility is universal in arizona, thats the trend that were seeing. States adopt,