Civil Discourse in Action
The Line endeavors to fulfill its purpose of encouraging civil discourse through both what we say and do. To that end, we invited Chris Cerf, just retired superintendent of Newark Public Schools, and Ben Austin, executive director, Kids Coalition, to share their ideas and opinions about K-12 education. Their conversation follows here.
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Clearly articulate what you believe is the value of education.
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Ben AustinVerified
Unfortunately, I agree with everything you’ve said, Chris. To clarify, it’s not like there’s anybody lobbying against the interests of kids. For a brief period of time I was on the State Board of Education in California. It was a unique situation because Governor Schwarzenegger, whom I didn’t know, appointed me. I also was a paid staffer on his opponent’s campaign.
I got put in a position of power in a situation where I really didn’t owe anybody anything for my position. So, I decided on my first day to announce I wasn’t going to talk to lobbyists. I was just going to try to do my best to cast every vote as if it directly impacted my own daughters. It probably wouldn’t surprise The Line readers to know that pretty quickly I ticked off the teachers’ union by casting votes around what I considered kids-first teacher accountability. But I also made the charter community pretty mad by voting to shut down charter schools where I wouldn’t send my own daughters. I created the first regulation to close the bottom 10 percent of charter schools in the state of California every year.
It became clear that throughout that process, there were lobbyists in the front row of every single meeting – not just teachers’ unions and charter schools but textbooks, administrators’ unions, you name it. You live that, Chris. As I said, it’s not like anybody was lobbying against the interests of kids, and oftentimes one or more of these interest groups would align with what I considered to be a kids-first agenda. But I felt little to no political pressure to always vote for kids, especially low-income kids.
We sometimes confuse policy with the underlying incentive structures of the system itself. I think that there are people like you, Chris, who are inherently going to be a lot smarter than I am about the specific policy prescriptions of what a kids-first agenda would look like if we were to reimagine public education.
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Chris CerfVerified
I want to reframe the question in light of what I think are some shared assumptions. Ben, listening to our back-and-forth here, it strikes me that we may both need to consider the possibility that we have such a clear view about what “a quality education for all students” means that we have restricted our field of vision a little. We have not given the weight that is due to other people who may be well intended and in service of kids, who have a very different understanding about what that may be. Let me elaborate. I’m interested in the perspective that it may elicit from you.
Ben, we share the view that a children’s-first objective has to be preeminent. We share the view that there are political and economic forces and interest group forces at work that frequently prevail at the expense of that interest. But even if we focus on what’s in the best interest of children, there is lots of room for disagreement. For example, there is a school of thought that says that we are underserving the “gifted and talented” in order to provide better quality service for those who have the furthest to travel in terms of economic opportunity. There is a school of thought that says that we are overemphasizing the mechanics of reading and math and not teaching enough about civics, which explains some of our national politics. There are some who argue that there is value in keeping a neighborhood school open even if it is failing.
All of these arguments create the kind of polarization that has overtaken the dialogue around public education.
We need to work together to open our minds to the possibility that there are many versions of truth and right and light and justice under the general heading of, let’s try to do everything in the best interest of children.
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Ben AustinVerified
Yes, I think that’s a really good point. Education reformers often come in as do-gooders with prepackaged answers that may or may not be applicable to the communities in which we’re organizing. To your point about focusing on low-income versus gifted students, I have an interesting perspective because I have done most of my work in low-income communities, like you have, but I’m also a dad at one of the highest-performing neighborhood schools in the LAUSD.
I have seen the system from the perspective of both ends of the spectrum. While I have a pretty unique vantage point on my own privilege on a day-to-day basis, I also see that fundamentally, students across the spectrum are not being well-served by the current system. I think your point that we all need a healthy dose of humility in this conversation is a critical one. My perspective on that is that I truly don’t know what the right answer is.
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Ben AustinVerified
I do know that the status quo isn’t working. Like millions of parents across America, I drop my kids off in a classroom that looks and operates and educates pretty much in the exact same way as my LAUSD classroom did 40 years ago. I think that the LAUSD is doing a terrific job of preparing my children to enter a world and an economy that doesn’t exist any more.
I also agree with you that education reformers, in general, and I, in particular, have been guilty of coming to the table with prepackaged answers before we listen to other perspectives.
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Chris CerfVerified
Let’s build on that point of agreement a little bit. With the wisdom of years of experience, I have worked on trying to get past a very simplistic view of the world – that there is a right and a wrong. There are those who treat education as narrowly transactional and those who focus uniquely on successfully educating children regardless of background. But it is important to understand that there are points on a spectrum here. To assume that individuals who take a position contrary to our own are choosing “wrong” over what is undebatably “right,” is not a path to productive progress.
What I am constantly struggling with is that I am acutely aware of the cynicism of the system, of the sort of transactional nature of a lot of resource allocation and employment-based decisions. I am painfully aware that when there is a tension between any definition of student interest, some of these interests, far too often the students’ interests, get overwhelmed. Yet, at the same time, I really hope that as we move into the next phase of education reform, all of us are able to look really carefully at our opponents’ perspective and try to find an intention for good. I believe that is the project of the next phase of school reform and it’s one that the old warriors need to reflect on.
My experience in Newark brought that to the fore. There has been a real emphasis on building bridges and healing while trying to hold on to the core value of always making child-centered decisions, even if some of those decisions have political casualties. Concurrently, there has been a recognition that not everything we believe in and attempt to implement works. The perspective of those who oppose us, although maybe not always presented in a way that fosters reasoned discussion, is worth listening to. And that refining and even abandoning our ideas sometimes is the right path to pursue on behalf of children.
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Ben AustinVerified
For sure. I love that.
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Ben AustinVerified
One of the reasons why I think this conversation and The Line are really important at this moment is that local community organizing around education can be hardball politics. In my own experience, doing this kind of work in Los Angeles was a lot more bare-knuckle, personal and mean-spirited than working in the White House.
All the adults on all sides of the public education debate need to commit to basically not saying or doing anything that would get them kicked off of an elementary school playground.
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Ben AustinVerified
We shouldn’t engage in name-calling. We shouldn’t engage in bullying. Many of the so-called education leaders on both sides of this debate wouldn’t last 10 minutes on a school playground without violating basic rules of fair play. Adults in this space need to take responsibility, in a way that we have not before, for setting an example for our children for how to engage in civil conversation. That’s the first step. The second step is to actually listen to each other.
One area where I just might push you a little bit, Chris, is that I agree that we need to listen to each other more. I agree that we need to come to the table with more humility, but I think, that there is, even subconsciously sometimes, an innate push to please the adult interests at the table. That has an impact on our policymaking – whether intended or not.
When we’re talking about a kids-first agenda, there are facts that matter. It is important to listen to everybody’s perspectives. It is important to come to the table with humility. It’s also important to ground the conversation in facts and data and research and expert opinions that move. That can get lost in the wash.
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Chris CerfVerified
I agree with that. I’ve often said – I’m stealing Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s line – “that everybody is entitled to their own opinions but not their own set of facts.” Let me give you a real-world situation that may set us down another path. Social scientists seem to be able to look at the same set of facts, or plug them into equally – from a lay perspective – defensible statistical models and come up with widely divergent answers to the same question. The debate about the impact of vouchers, for instance, is an example of that.
I may be a little more skeptical than I should be about the reality that lots of things are presented as an objective, knowable truth. But when you peel back some of the layers of the onion, they reflect subjective judgment masquerading as facts.
The complicated endeavor in this field is to be both fact centered and have a kind of almost righteous conviction in the rightness of the mission of equalizing opportunity and giving all children a chance at a successful and happy life.
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Chris CerfVerified
But we also have to be a little bit skeptical of absolutes and the evangelists among us – including you and I – who have moved past the point of critical reflection and are focused on a set of convictions that in some respects may be worthy of reexamination.
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Ben AustinVerified
That’s a great point. The voucher example is a good one. From a holistic system perspective, I oppose them. But as the recipient of a school scholarship (much like a voucher) that allowed me to get an education that otherwise may not have been attainable, it’s hard for me to argue against them. I understand that and deeply appreciate the value of vouchers at a very personal level.
A counter example I would throw out is seniority-based teacher layoffs. There isn’t a lot of data and evidence, or just common sense that would suggest that approach is the best way to make layoff decisions. Because of the tenor of our education debate, where one side screams really loudly but doesn’t consider the impact on the kids, that side wins. The debate has a he-said, she-said tenor to it. We don’t tend to advance the ball.
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Chris CerfVerified
Let’s take those two examples. On policy, we are in the same place. One can construct, I think, arguments, as you acknowledge, on vouchers for the other side. For example, if your definition of what’s doing right for children is to get as many kids on the lifeboat as possible, and not wait for comprehensive structural reforms, it may take you down one path on vouchers. If, on the other hand, your perspective is that this is about some people sacrificing for the greater good of a comprehensive public education system that may take you down another path. With regard to vouchers, the reality is that people who have means – rich people – undermine community-based public education every day. They move out of the most impoverished neighborhoods into areas with access to a higher quality of public education or can afford to send their children to private school. To deny that same option to people who don’t have the financial ability to do that is a fundamental wrong. At the same time, facilitating an exodus from public education clearly can have a collateral impact on the traditional system.
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Chris CerfVerified
For last-in, first-out seniority-based layoffs, it’s a lot harder to artificially construct good policy arguments on both sides. But I can try. One could argue that the greater good for children is to have a stable workforce. A prerequisite for a stable workforce is to have evaluation decisions made on a non-arbitrary basis. There’s a lot of history of irrational principals, of nepotism, of gender-based discrimination, race-based discrimination and so on. A system based on neutral business rules, like how long you have served, actually creates an incentive to attract and keep good people.
I don’t accept that argument. I think it is overwhelmed by the reality that, if you’re asking me to accept preserving the job of a demonstrably inferior educator based on seniority, I can’t argue that is in the best interest of children. But it does, I think, frame the point that we’re talking about – there is room for discussion or certainly room for child-centered arguments on almost every issue. Ultimately, all of us have to choose the belief system and the mission that we believe is right.
We should be very self-critical of even our deepest-held beliefs, and acknowledge that they are subject to complicated analytic questions, or subject to biases, and subject to herd instincts of agreeing with those who seem to agree with us.
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Chris CerfVerified
If we are going to make progress in public education, we need to both be very focused on our beliefs, and not let them give way to compromise, and at the same time, try to engage in these discussions in a way that does not simply reject out of hand as frivolous, or wrong, or baseless, or even immoral, the arguments of those who disagree with us.
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Ben AustinVerified
But as the plaintiff’s trial attorney said in the hearing, it’s also objective. An objective measurement would also be to test who can dunk a basketball. However, height of a teacher is just as arbitrary in many ways as the number of days in a classroom. My daughters’ first grade teacher, who is really one of the best teachers I’ve ever experienced as a dad, was laid off in the LAUSD through a seniority-based process. She was tied for being the least senior. For the tiebreaker, they take the fourth from last digit in your social security number. If it’s a high number then you’re protected. If it’s a low number, you get laid off. I understand that we could make a colorable argument that that’s a good way to lay off teachers; it’s the way that we do it in the second biggest school district in the nation, so somebody supports it.
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Ben AustinVerified
My point, Chris, is that it’s hard enough to get at the hard questions about how to reimagine public education for the kids of today. It’s virtually impossible if we have to debate issues that, frankly, I just don’t think deserve that much debate.
There’s a really interesting needle threading that needs to occur. I am doubling down with you on the need for humility on all sides. But in particular in our education reform camp, like many of our brethren, I’ve been very guilty of coming to the table with prepackaged solutions.
For the first parent-trigger campaign that I ran in Compton, I showed up as a caricature of myself. I was a caricature of an empowered white education reformer who has a Georgetown law degree. I showed up in a low-income community of color and said, “Hey guys, there’s this cool new law. Your school is underperforming. Here’s a better charter school. Please sign this petition. And you’re welcome.” It wasn’t quite that simple but it wasn’t until I got my ass kicked that I learned to see parent trigger through a very different lens, a much more humble one. I realized that we needed to help engender ownership among parents. We began to use parent trigger to help parents form what we ended up calling parent unions. We developed a curriculum to train parents in community organizing and education policy. Then when the parents decided what they wanted to do with their power, we would back them up. That’s when the parent trigger started to work. It took me some time to learn about my own arrogance through the trial and error of losing.
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Chris CerfVerified
I want to add that we’re expressing a need, as you say, to find a little bit of humility and to look for some balance in the perspective of those who disagree with us. But I think we probably also share the view that the national unions do not appear to share that perspective about humility and balance. It does take two to tango, make war or make peace.
As much as we can acknowledge our own tendencies to be evangelists for a cause, it’s really important, I think, that everybody on all sides of the debate have that same conversation with themselves. I am most skeptical about, or at least most apprehensive about, whether that capacity can be developed among those who have sought to turn “education reform” into a malediction, which occupies echo chambers created by social media and uses vast resources to generate supportive opinions for hire. Money buys just about any perspective.
Let’s go back to where we started about what constitutes a quality public education and are we correctly pursuing that. The ability to have an educated generation of young people who are able to distinguish between honest debate among people with vastly different points of view and false debate between people who represent well-heeled perspectives is at the heart of an effective education. I hope that as we move forward together we really do focus on generating that capacity in the young men and women we educate.
Sharing what you believe is the value of education will help drive civil engagement and decision-making.
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Ben AustinVerified
Yeah, I think it’s a good place to kind of land on all this. On the one hand, just to state the obvious, the Trump administration has laid out in stark relief the urgency of doing exactly what you’re saying, of educating our youth about how to distinguish fact from fiction, how to question sources and question authority. That is not just an existentially important value; it may ultimately, in this point in our history, determine the future of American democracy. I sadly don’t think that’s hyperbolic. I couldn’t agree with you more. But I also agree with your assessment of the extreme elements of the blogosphere, some elements of the teachers’ unions et cetera.
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Ben AustinVerified
I will never forget when I was on a family vacation in Yosemite and I got an email that Diane Ravitch had sentenced me to hell, literally. I just didn’t even know how to react or what to think about that. It was so jarring to me that she sends me to hell for a parent-trigger campaign where the parents didn’t even use the parent trigger to turn their school into a charter school. They used it to get a new principal after their school had been failing for five years. I didn’t even know how to respond to that and ultimately responded just by telling my story. I thought that the best response to that type of vitriolic rhetoric was not to respond in kind, but to respond by being a human being.
Before we can find common agreement on policy, or even common values, I think that we need to find common humanity and begin from there. At the end of the day, as you know, we’re not trying to win a political campaign, even though it oftentimes feels that way. We’re trying to transform a system for kids. There is no way to get there, there’s no way to make it to the mountaintop, if we’re not all marching together.
To your point, it takes two. We have to orient ourselves towards that perspective, where our goal isn’t to destroy our opponents, or to sentence our opponents to hell, but to find a way to work together because it’s the only way we can transform a system for kids. I don’t know what the answer is completely. But I know it’s just got to start with seeing each other as human beings. I think that there is some promise there.
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Ben AustinVerified
I had a coffee not too long ago with the president of UTLA, the teacher’s union in Los Angeles. I won’t say what we talked about but that it was a civil conversation. We treated each other like human beings, not opponents and enemies. I don’t know where all of this ends but that’s where it’s got to begin if we’re going to get to a kids-first agenda.
I think the answer is definitively, yes. The lens through which I think about that question is that the purpose of public education is to serve children by providing them with a high-quality education. Still, whether you’re wearing your hat, Chris, or mine, most of what you have to deal with is adult-oriented politics. Education gets captured by adult interests. It shouldn’t be all that surprising given that there’s a lot of money involved – billions of dollars – within a system where kids don’t have a say. And in states like California, many of their parents can’t vote. Kids don’t have political power. They don’t have political action committees. They can’t lobby. But at the end of the day, they’re mandated by laws that they can’t impact to go to schools where they have no influence. Those same laws determine how those schools are run and often decide the trajectory of a child’s future, especially a low-income child.
My experience has been that in closed-door conversations with transactional politicians – when there aren’t reporters in the room – the issue of children really doesn’t come up. If the core argument you’re making under these circumstances is do the right thing for kids, especially low-income children, children of color and undocumented children, you’re not going to get a lot of traction.
My work in education reform has focused on theories of change to reorient the underlying incentive structures of the system to serve kids. Right now, our theory of change is to put a lot of heroes, like you, into positions of power, and ask them to rage against the machine for kids. We need a theory of change, in my opinion, that incents transactional actors, not heroes, to do the right thing for kids because it’s in their self-interest.
I generally agree with your take, Ben, but let me just frame it slightly differently. I really don’t think we have a national consensus about what we mean by a quality education, or even more broadly, what is the purpose of public education. As a former history teacher, I can tell you that people have articulated that central value in various ways, from fostering democracy to facilitating the melting pot to educating the sons and daughters of the master class to give them the reins of the country while others labor in more manual laboring positions.
It was really only in the last decade or so, captured by the name that shall not be uttered any more, No Child Left Behind, that we tried to coalesce around the value that in fact our mission is to equalize opportunity – that birth circumstances should not determine life outcomes and that every child, regardless of the situation in which, through no fault of her own she’s found herself, would have just as good a chance at a good life, success, however that might be defined. I do think that part of the challenge we have in this field is that folks like us assume, to the marrow of our bones, that that is a value that is shared by all, when in fact it truly isn’t.
As you say, the $750 billion a year enterprise which is K-12 public education – second only to healthcare in its size in the American economy – is going to attract a lot of interest. Many of those interests do not have as their primary objective the best interests of children, however defined. The real challenge we have in this field is that far too often, when there is a conflict between pursuing one of those interests and quality education for all, the latter is subordinated.