Latest / Normally / Normally Podcast: Nikole Hannah-Jones’ School Choice Reckoning with Erika Sanzi

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Normally Podcast: Nikole Hannah-Jones’ School Choice Reckoning with Erika Sanzi · Normally

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey guys, we are back on Normally, the show with
0:08
Speaker 1: normal-ish takes for when the news gets weird. I am
0:10
Speaker 1: Mary Katherine Hamm, and Carol is out today, but I
0:13
Speaker 1: want to welcome my friend Erica Sanzy to the program.
0:18
Speaker 1: She is the Senior Director of Communications for Defending Education,
0:22
Speaker 1: one of our favorite organizations, just like Sue in school
0:25
Speaker 1: districts and unions, left and right, mostly left. It's a
0:30
Speaker 1: wonderful thing to see. Welcome to the show, Erica.
0:33
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited
0:35
Speaker 2: to be here.
0:37
Speaker 1: So I'm having you specifically today because this Nicole Hannah-Jones
0:44
Speaker 1: long essay came out this weekend. Nicole Hannah-Jones is a
0:48
Speaker 1: New York Times magazine writer, a longtime education activist and scholar,
0:56
Speaker 1: I guess would be the term for her. And she's
1:00
Speaker 1: been reporting on education issues for years. She is the
1:03
Speaker 1: originator of the Project 1619 that was then disseminated through
1:08
Speaker 1: many schools. Her argument has long been that U.S. schools
1:13
Speaker 1: are just like irretrievably segregated and racist and that they
1:17
Speaker 1: carry this long tradition that stymies children of color and etc.
1:24
Speaker 2: Correct. You also forgot she's a genius. Remember, she's a
1:28
Speaker 2: MacArthur Genius Grant winner.
1:30
Speaker 1: So she writes this piece this weekend. Taking at least
1:37
Speaker 1: our worlds by storm, right, Erica?
1:40
Speaker 3: It's everywhere. Here's the headline. In fighting for every Black child,
1:44
Speaker 3: did I betray my own?
1:46
Speaker 1: A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter's
1:49
Speaker 1: education that I hoped would challenge New York City's separate
1:52
Speaker 1: and unequal school system.
1:54
Speaker 3: Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.
1:57
Speaker 2: And we blame her. No, we cannot.
2:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this began 10 years ago when she and
2:06
Speaker 1: her husband, who are New York residents, were looking at
2:09
Speaker 1: schools and thinking, okay, well, we have the ability to
2:13
Speaker 1: get her tested out to go somewhere else, to pay
2:16
Speaker 1: to have her to go somewhere else, but we want
2:20
Speaker 1: her in a predominantly Black and... among peers who are
2:25
Speaker 1: economically less advantaged. That was the object of their decision,
2:30
Speaker 1: was to keep her in a school like that, with
2:34
Speaker 1: the hope, in the original version of this story, that
2:39
Speaker 1: that would improve this school. And the reason they wanted
2:43
Speaker 1: to do that was because no student was more important
2:50
Speaker 1: than her own child. And so why would she give
2:52
Speaker 1: her child opportunities that others do not have?
2:55
Speaker 2: That was the philosophy. And here we are 10 years later.
3:00
Speaker 2: And she used the words collective good. So when they
3:03
Speaker 2: made the decision to send their child to this school, they,
3:08
Speaker 2: or at least Nicole Hannah-Jones definitely used the term collective good.
3:11
Speaker 2: So she was going to send her child to this
3:13
Speaker 2: school Because, again, the collective was the most important thing
3:20
Speaker 2: to her. Right. And she's not the first person I've
3:24
Speaker 2: ever heard of making this decision, though she happened to
3:28
Speaker 2: have a platform where she could write this very long
3:30
Speaker 2: piece about it. And people need to realize, too, like
3:33
Speaker 2: she could have sent her child anywhere. She was getting
3:36
Speaker 2: 30 to 50 thousand dollars per speaking gig. Right. After
3:41
Speaker 2: her big piece came out about her daughter when she
3:43
Speaker 2: was going to kindergarten and again after the 1619 project.
3:47
Speaker 3: So, yeah.
3:48
Speaker 2: So this was a really deliberate decision that seems to
3:50
Speaker 2: have blown up in her face.
3:52
Speaker 1: Well, and so, one, people are having all sorts of
3:55
Speaker 1: different reactions to this.
3:56
Speaker 3: There's a lot to unpack. Number one.
4:00
Speaker 1: Having your kid be on the cover of the New
4:01
Speaker 1: York Times magazine and explicitly saying we're going to we're
4:05
Speaker 1: trying this to see if the collective can be served
4:09
Speaker 1: by putting our child in a less than ideal position.
4:12
Speaker 1: quite a lot less than ideal educational environment, seems unwise, right?
4:17
Speaker 1: So this kid now has had to be the cover
4:20
Speaker 1: of both the first piece and the follow-up.
4:24
Speaker 3: She seems like.
4:25
Speaker 1: A child who is driven to learn, who was, you
4:29
Speaker 1: would imagine, from two college-educated parents, is interested in striving
4:34
Speaker 1: a bit, getting to the top of the heap.
4:37
Speaker 3: And she was.
4:39
Speaker 3: She's very explicit.
4:40
Speaker 1: The child is, who is 16, talking to her mother,
4:44
Speaker 1: that she didn't get the chance to do that because
4:48
Speaker 1: of the environment that her mother chose actively to put
4:52
Speaker 1: her in.
4:52
Speaker 3: And there are some pretty heartbreaking exchanges that.
4:56
Speaker 1: Nicole Hannah-Jones talks about in this piece where her kid
5:01
Speaker 1: just says, did.
5:01
Speaker 3: You know that my school was bad when you put
5:04
Speaker 3: me in it? And the truth is, yes.
5:07
Speaker 1: Yes.
5:07
Speaker 3: She wrote about it. Yes.
5:11
Speaker 2: And she also knew that it was a or assumed
5:15
Speaker 2: she knew that it was an environment where like disruption
5:19
Speaker 2: reigned so that if you were a student that was,
5:21
Speaker 2: you know, sort of that ready and willing to learn,
5:24
Speaker 2: you know, you're sitting there and you want to be learning.
5:27
Speaker 2: that the philosophy, and it's not unique to that school,
5:30
Speaker 2: was that chronically disruptive students would not be removed and
5:35
Speaker 2: therefore all of the kids that were wanting or ready
5:38
Speaker 2: to learn were not going to be able to or
5:41
Speaker 2: the learning was going to be minimal.
5:43
Speaker 1: Yes, and this is a problem that frankly, many of
5:48
Speaker 1: my mom friends face when they're sending their kids. I
5:51
Speaker 1: live in Fairfax County, which is a big, you know,
5:55
Speaker 1: affluent county, but does a lot of the restorative justice
6:00
Speaker 1: disciplinary act.
6:01
Speaker 2: Hold on, we have to pause on that. So restorative
6:03
Speaker 2: justice in the piece is, from this weekend, despite everything
6:08
Speaker 2: going badly for her daughter, she still had to say
6:12
Speaker 2: that that was best practice. So her daughter was describing
6:16
Speaker 2: not being able to learn because it was so chaotic
6:18
Speaker 2: and so disruptive. And still her ideological mother says in
6:22
Speaker 2: the piece that, you know, removing kids from the classroom
6:26
Speaker 2: is wrong and that keeping them in the classroom is
6:30
Speaker 2: best practice, which the claim, other than her wanting it
6:34
Speaker 2: to be true, the claim is based on nothing.
6:38
Speaker 1: While her daughter is saying, but the whole system is
6:41
Speaker 1: rigged to help the people who are most destructive and
6:45
Speaker 1: most disruptive when I'm trying to just learn.
6:50
Speaker 3: And it's like, hand wave.
6:52
Speaker 2: And she thought, remember, she thought if we had money
6:55
Speaker 2: and resources, we could give money to the school and
6:58
Speaker 2: support the PTA. We could participate. She thought that she
7:03
Speaker 2: could go into a totally dysfunctional system, right? That is
7:09
Speaker 2: broken in every way. And just by contributing money and
7:13
Speaker 2: a little bit of time and maybe some wisdom, like
7:16
Speaker 2: she was going to help turn that place around.
7:19
Speaker 1: Yeah.
7:19
Speaker 3: Look, I think she.
7:22
Speaker 3: Parents can make a difference, right?
7:24
Speaker 1: Parental engagement can make a difference. This story can be
7:28
Speaker 1: very satisfying to people because to many who have faced
7:33
Speaker 1: Nicole Hannah-Jones debating or in other spheres or just disagreeing
7:38
Speaker 1: with her.
7:38
Speaker 3: This is a.
7:39
Speaker 1: Liberal mugged by reality in one of the most tough
7:43
Speaker 1: ways one can be. Now, we can discuss whether she's
7:47
Speaker 1: learned lessons from that. I'm not sure they're the correct ones.
7:52
Speaker 1: She did say sorry to her kid, which I thought
7:54
Speaker 1: was nice. When confronted with this, finally, she's like, Yeah,
8:00
Speaker 1: I do regret that this is the position I put
8:03
Speaker 1: you in. Because what happens is she goes into jail.
8:05
Speaker 3: Did you say the word sorry?
8:06
Speaker 2: I feel like I don't remember her saying the word sorry.
8:09
Speaker 3: You know what?
8:09
Speaker 2: I should fact check myself. The only reason I say
8:13
Speaker 2: that is because she definitely.
8:16
Speaker 3: She does.
8:16
Speaker 1: Okay.
8:17
Speaker 3: She says.
8:20
Speaker 1: I told her I'd been reading through old emails and
8:21
Speaker 1: that I was feeling really sad that she had gone
8:23
Speaker 1: through so much and that I had not listened more
8:26
Speaker 1: to her. I feel like you got cheated, I said,
8:28
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry for that.
8:30
Speaker 2: Okay. So that's awesome. And the most important person in
8:33
Speaker 2: the story is the daughter. I think that's true. So
8:36
Speaker 2: it is important that she did that.
8:38
Speaker 1: And her daughter, who is quite a young lady, says
8:43
Speaker 1: to her mother... And this quote, I think, reveals what
8:46
Speaker 1: kind of young lady she is. Sometimes I wish instead
8:48
Speaker 1: of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought
8:51
Speaker 1: about me. I never really got the education I wanted.
8:54
Speaker 2: Oh, yikes.
8:57
Speaker 1: So it's a very human story. But the human failing
9:01
Speaker 1: in it is over and over again, adults failing children,
9:07
Speaker 1: including the mother in this situation, and the teachers and
9:13
Speaker 1: the principals. and the teachers unions that are in charge
9:16
Speaker 1: of all of them and let them stay on the job,
9:17
Speaker 1: even when they're failing are all failing kids throughout this story.
9:23
Speaker 1: And is there accountability for any of it?
9:27
Speaker 2: And this was her situation from K through eight. It
9:30
Speaker 2: isn't like this was like a year or two years.
9:33
Speaker 2: This was a long time where the other thing that's
9:37
Speaker 2: weird is like, she's, you know, she, she says, you know,
9:40
Speaker 2: I've spent more time in schools and basically all of
9:42
Speaker 2: you and, And I'm a scholar on this topic. So
9:46
Speaker 2: then one wonders, her daughter's academic gaps were so massive
9:51
Speaker 2: that she was just not proficient in basics, whether it
9:57
Speaker 2: was punctuation or fractions, or I believe they said single digits.
10:01
Speaker 2: And what I'm slightly confused about, because it sounds like
10:04
Speaker 2: Nicole is kind of surprised and shocked, like she finds
10:08
Speaker 2: that out late. So what's weird, though, is, did she
10:13
Speaker 2: not sit for her state testing? So the mom, Nicole Hannah-Jones,
10:18
Speaker 2: is very anti-testing. She's on the record all over the place,
10:21
Speaker 2: very anti-testing. Now I'm wondering, like, did she opt her
10:24
Speaker 2: out of the tests? Because even though they canceled the tests,
10:27
Speaker 2: and I think what would have been like maybe her
10:28
Speaker 2: fourth and fifth grade year or third and fourth grade
10:30
Speaker 2: year because of COVID, there would have been some years
10:33
Speaker 2: of state testing that would have given her mother something
10:37
Speaker 2: to look at. And so I am just sort of
10:39
Speaker 2: curious how she was so, I mean, I will say
10:43
Speaker 2: it is easy when a school is giving your child
10:45
Speaker 2: all A's and B's, most parents think, rightfully so, that
10:50
Speaker 2: that indicates that their child's not only proficient, right?
10:54
Speaker 3: But like, excelling.
10:57
Speaker 2: And what we realize now is that in so many cases,
11:02
Speaker 2: in fact, most cases, really, the grades just don't correlate
11:05
Speaker 2: to those proficiency levels. But again, she knows that, right?
11:08
Speaker 2: The average person who's not focused on this may not,
11:11
Speaker 2: but she knows that. Or was it that her anti-testing
11:15
Speaker 2: belief was so strong that there was no evidence that
11:19
Speaker 2: was going to come out of that, that was going
11:20
Speaker 2: to be enough to convince her?
11:21
Speaker 1: So yes. It seemed to me in reading it that
11:24
Speaker 1: because she is anti-testing, she wrote off the testing as,
11:29
Speaker 1: my kid's not great at taking tests. The grades reflect
11:33
Speaker 1: that she is learning. Now, what's interesting to me is
11:35
Speaker 1: it takes her till fourth grade to determine that her
11:39
Speaker 1: child isn't writing fluently, is no longer advancing in reading,
11:43
Speaker 1: and in fact can't do math, despite The fact that
11:49
Speaker 1: math had become her favorite subject. Now, think about it
11:53
Speaker 1: from the position of the child. You're doing the work.
11:56
Speaker 1: You're not being told that you're doing it incorrectly. You
11:59
Speaker 1: feel like you're skating right along. Maybe you have a
12:01
Speaker 1: natural affinity for this.
12:03
Speaker 2: And you think, I'm really good at this. I love
12:06
Speaker 2: doing this and I'm good at it.
12:08
Speaker 1: Yes. And so she thought that was her favorite subject.
12:12
Speaker 1: And then her mom finally checks her work in fourth
12:14
Speaker 1: grade and goes, oh, my gosh, that none of this
12:17
Speaker 1: is correct. And we have to like really reassess. I
12:21
Speaker 1: am a little confused about how she didn't clock that sooner.
12:26
Speaker 1: Because as you say, she's going into this knowing what
12:30
Speaker 1: the weaknesses of the system are.
12:33
Speaker 3: That's her whole philosophy. That's her whole research.
12:37
Speaker 1: Milieu is to know what the weaknesses of the system are.
12:42
Speaker 1: And she still seems to not understand that.
12:47
Speaker 3: But she's going to run into them.
12:49
Speaker 2: Except for her, the weaknesses were, remember, everything, everything was
12:53
Speaker 2: white supremacy. Everything was segregation. Everything was racism. So for
12:59
Speaker 2: all we know, like, I don't even know if a
13:01
Speaker 2: test in math was something that she accepted as evidence.
13:04
Speaker 2: So I almost wonder, like, yeah, she knew the system
13:06
Speaker 2: was dysfunctional, but the thing that she thought was so
13:10
Speaker 2: wrong with it was so ideologically based that And so
13:14
Speaker 2: the fact, because she was shocked. Let's remember, she expresses
13:17
Speaker 2: like shock that the lunchroom is so chaotic and there's
13:21
Speaker 2: no supervision, that the papers aren't marked up or corrected.
13:25
Speaker 2: And it's like, how is she shocked by that? If
13:28
Speaker 2: she's been in so many schools and has so much
13:31
Speaker 2: experience and knew exactly, like she made a choice to
13:34
Speaker 2: put her school, her daughter in this school. Like, how
13:36
Speaker 2: did she not know this? Anybody who knows anything could
13:40
Speaker 2: have told her this.
13:41
Speaker 1: Yes. And- Yeah, she she missed it. She missed it,
13:45
Speaker 1: which makes you wonder, like, how much of an expert
13:47
Speaker 1: is this person? Which is what do we really wonder?
13:50
Speaker 1: It's like, well, but that's so that's the interesting part
13:53
Speaker 1: about this. A lot of people are giving her a
13:55
Speaker 1: lot of credit for admitting she was wrong.
13:58
Speaker 2: Yep.
13:58
Speaker 3: I will give some credit for this is a very
14:00
Speaker 3: hard thing.
14:01
Speaker 2: Yep.
14:02
Speaker 1: Talk about now you put your kid out there in
14:04
Speaker 1: the first place. So that was painful to begin with.
14:06
Speaker 1: Now you got to do this follow up. Her child
14:08
Speaker 1: ended up choosing to go to one of the more
14:13
Speaker 1: predominantly white, accelerated, sort of gifted and talented area high
14:21
Speaker 1: schools in New York, because in New York, you can
14:23
Speaker 1: get into different high schools like that. They have a
14:24
Speaker 1: bit of like a school choice element. So she decides
14:28
Speaker 1: that she wants to go for it and get into
14:31
Speaker 1: one of these schools. The problem for Nicole Hannah-Jones is
14:34
Speaker 1: that she has been explicitly building her career on arguing
14:38
Speaker 1: against exactly this.
14:40
Speaker 3: Type of school.
14:42
Speaker 1: And so part of the, I think part of the
14:44
Speaker 1: motivation for writing this was not, was at least partly
14:48
Speaker 1: that she's about to get caught because her kid's now
14:51
Speaker 1: in this school, right?
14:53
Speaker 2: A school that she herself was publicly saying should not exist. Yes.
15:00
Speaker 1: So she's gonna get caught for that. So she writes
15:03
Speaker 1: this piece, but I think she wrestles with some real
15:05
Speaker 1: stuff here. And in comments, to her credit, with people
15:10
Speaker 1: who are saying, Hey, you're too hard on these teachers
15:12
Speaker 1: and principals who utterly failed you. She's like, I actually
15:15
Speaker 1: think we should teach children to read and do math.
15:19
Speaker 1: And I don't think we should excuse this. And so I,
15:22
Speaker 1: I appreciate some of that. What's missing is her culpability.
15:27
Speaker 1: In all of it. Or, oops, my bad to anyone
15:32
Speaker 1: I convinced to go down the same road who might
15:35
Speaker 1: have lost opportunities for their child because I said that
15:38
Speaker 1: it was racist to seek out other opportunities. Oops, sorry
15:42
Speaker 1: to all of my debating adversaries for years whom I
15:46
Speaker 1: have called everything under the sun and implied every bad
15:50
Speaker 1: thing about because they simply thought testing and advanced studies
15:53
Speaker 1: were good to have in school systems.
15:57
Speaker 2: I have so many thoughts about this topic right now.
15:59
Speaker 2: So like, I agree. Actually, it's funny. People were using
16:03
Speaker 2: adjectives to describe the piece and some of them I
16:06
Speaker 2: accept and I think do deserve some, you know, praise
16:10
Speaker 2: or appreciation and others I reject. So like, I do
16:13
Speaker 2: think it's an honest piece. Yeah. But then people were
16:17
Speaker 2: using words like ethical and humble. And that's where I
16:22
Speaker 2: sort of draw the line because she doesn't really walk
16:25
Speaker 2: the much of what she's done over the past decade back.
16:29
Speaker 2: She disses school choice repeatedly in the piece, even though
16:33
Speaker 2: she just exercised it for her own child.
16:35
Speaker 3: She's now a beneficiary of it, yes.
16:36
Speaker 2: Child. She was very much looked up to, especially by,
16:42
Speaker 2: I would say, like sort of like progressives and pressured
16:45
Speaker 2: them or maybe or tried to convince them that they
16:48
Speaker 2: should do what she's telling them to do. And I'm
16:50
Speaker 2: quite positive that a lot of people did sort of
16:52
Speaker 2: follow her lead. She has nothing to say to them
16:54
Speaker 2: about about leading them down a bad path. And her
16:59
Speaker 2: she is so vicious. online and when anybody disagrees with her.
17:09
Speaker 2: So including another, a fellow New York city parent could
17:12
Speaker 2: be a person like a working class Asian parent who's
17:15
Speaker 2: worked really hard to get their kid into school, whatever.
17:17
Speaker 3: It could be my friend, Maude Marin.
17:20
Speaker 2: Who again, like she was vicious and cruel and a
17:25
Speaker 2: bully to everybody who, and I mean, respectfully, uh, disagreed, questioned,
17:33
Speaker 2: said they had a different viewpoint. I remember she and
17:35
Speaker 2: I got in some little tussle about charter schools and
17:38
Speaker 2: it was like, she was the, I was like, this
17:39
Speaker 2: is the meanest person. So, and there's nothing about that
17:44
Speaker 2: in the piece at all. She never acknowledges basically like
17:49
Speaker 2: I mean, she also, now that I think about it,
17:50
Speaker 2: anyone that disagreed with her, she immediately called them a racist.
17:53
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's the play.
17:55
Speaker 1: And so when it's discovered that, in fact, maybe you
17:59
Speaker 1: were mistaken and that this wasn't all racism, part of
18:02
Speaker 1: the coming to grips with that needs to be, I
18:05
Speaker 1: was mistaken and perhaps not all.
18:07
Speaker 3: Of this is racism and white supremacy.
18:10
Speaker 1: But instead, what she does is she allows the principal
18:13
Speaker 1: who failed her child to continue to blame this on, quote,
18:19
Speaker 1: segregated schools. Another thing I want to say about that
18:22
Speaker 1: is that Nicole Hannah-Jones has a very specific level of
18:25
Speaker 1: integration that she wants. Because she talks about, well, integration
18:30
Speaker 1: is very important racially, and if it's too populated with...
18:38
Speaker 1: like economically disadvantaged and black and brown families, and there
18:42
Speaker 1: are no white kids, that's white and Asian kids, that's
18:46
Speaker 1: bad because you've got the white Asian flight to the
18:48
Speaker 1: other schools.
18:49
Speaker 3: But it's also bad if the.
18:50
Speaker 1: White and Asian families do too much to take control
18:55
Speaker 1: of the power structure of that school and area and
18:57
Speaker 1: then start making it work for their children. That's also bad.
19:00
Speaker 1: So I'm a little confused about what the right amount
19:03
Speaker 1: of integration is.
19:05
Speaker 2: It's not that she chose the school, but she kind
19:08
Speaker 2: of said to her daughter, she relented and said, you
19:10
Speaker 2: can choose the school you want to go to. And
19:12
Speaker 2: she then and she chose a school that her mother
19:14
Speaker 2: would have gladly shut down.
19:15
Speaker 1: Right.
19:18
Speaker 2: If she could have. So, yeah, I talked to a
19:20
Speaker 2: friend on the phone today and he said his name
19:22
Speaker 2: is Darrell Bradford. And he's like a total he's like
19:25
Speaker 2: I was like he's so into the story because he's
19:26
Speaker 2: like an education nerd.
19:28
Speaker 1: Right.
19:28
Speaker 2: And he was and he said that in the piece
19:31
Speaker 2: there's recognition, but not contrition. Right. And I think that's
19:36
Speaker 2: exactly right. Correct.
19:37
Speaker 1: We're going to take a break on Normally right now
19:39
Speaker 1: for a second, but we will be back with more
19:41
Speaker 1: reactions to this because I can't stop thinking about it.
19:44
Speaker 2: Same. All right.
19:48
Speaker 3: We are back on Normally.
19:49
Speaker 1: I'm with Erica Sanzi. of Defending Education. And we are
19:52
Speaker 1: talking about this Nicole Hannah-Jones New York Times piece, partly
19:55
Speaker 1: because it distills basically every educational story that we think
20:01
Speaker 1: about in these spaces and that concern us and that
20:04
Speaker 1: make us angry, including the fact, by the way, that
20:07
Speaker 1: she completely ignores covid as any kind of accelerant of
20:15
Speaker 1: problems uh in these schools which i think is uh
20:19
Speaker 1: very interesting because it was an unprecedented school closure period
20:24
Speaker 1: and i think uh someone pointed out to me that
20:26
Speaker 1: she actually very early was right that school closures would
20:31
Speaker 1: be bad for children with fewer resources but then she.
20:34
Speaker 3: It violated the narrative of the tribe. So she kind
20:38
Speaker 3: of just.
20:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's weird. She did. She spoke out on it
20:40
Speaker 2: early and then kind of like went back into her shell,
20:43
Speaker 2: which doesn't seem like her. But perhaps she is intimidated by,
20:48
Speaker 2: you know, her own tribe. But because it was it
20:51
Speaker 2: was again, it's like, you know, you want to give
20:53
Speaker 2: credit where credit is due. And she did speak out
20:56
Speaker 2: on that, but not for long.
20:58
Speaker 1: So this was an interesting piece to me, partly because
21:01
Speaker 1: I went to similar schools. I looked it up, actually,
21:06
Speaker 1: just so that I was I like to fact check myself.
21:09
Speaker 1: Durham City Schools, which I attended, were 89 percent black.
21:13
Speaker 1: So I was the minority. I was in these schools
21:17
Speaker 1: and they were, you know, actually, here's an interesting point.
21:20
Speaker 1: We can get to the under underfunded part of this.
21:23
Speaker 1: Back then, when I was in those schools, that was true.
21:27
Speaker 3: They really were.
21:29
Speaker 1: There were Durham County Schools, which were much whiter. And
21:31
Speaker 1: then there were Durham City Schools and they were black.
21:33
Speaker 1: They did have fewer resources. Nicole Hannah-Jones' child school is
21:40
Speaker 1: funded at the level of $ 50, 000 per kid.
21:46
Speaker 2: $ 52, 000, actually, if we're being precise here.
21:50
Speaker 3: Yep, $ 52, 000 per child. The schools that I went to,
21:54
Speaker 3: that story was real.
21:56
Speaker 1: Over the years, because there has been such an effort
21:58
Speaker 1: to reallocate money, to redistribute money, to make sure that
22:03
Speaker 1: schools in those areas are not disadvantaged in this way,
22:07
Speaker 1: especially in New York, people got to update their information
22:11
Speaker 1: because that part's not true anymore. She says that at
22:15
Speaker 1: some point in this piece, she refers to them being under-resourced.
22:18
Speaker 1: And I'm like, ma'am, these schools are not under-resourced.
22:22
Speaker 2: In any way. she pivots in the piece. Larissa Phillips
22:26
Speaker 2: of the Free Press noted this. Because there's no way
22:31
Speaker 2: she could back up her claims about underfunding in New York,
22:34
Speaker 2: she pivots without saying she's doing that and she starts
22:38
Speaker 2: citing national data instead to try to like make her
22:42
Speaker 2: case um because it would be a laughable case obviously
22:46
Speaker 2: in new york um and and but she confuses the
22:49
Speaker 2: reader because like i hadn't noticed that at all it's
22:51
Speaker 2: not till somebody smart who knows this argument tactic um
22:56
Speaker 2: pointed it out so she.
22:57
Speaker 1: Also says at one point she sort of sleight of
23:00
Speaker 1: hands it by referring to the amount of money that
23:02
Speaker 1: ptas bring to the table and And that does differ
23:06
Speaker 1: between rich school areas and poorer school areas. But again,
23:10
Speaker 1: when you have 50K per student that is allotted to you,
23:14
Speaker 1: it's a failure on the level of fraud to not
23:18
Speaker 1: be producing children who know things.
23:20
Speaker 2: To not have supervision in the lunchroom. Remember, we're understaffed.
23:25
Speaker 2: We don't have supervision. I'm like, how can you have
23:27
Speaker 2: a lunchroom with no supervision and And the school is
23:32
Speaker 2: at $ 52, 000 per, that makes, that is actually impossible.
23:37
Speaker 1: No.
23:37
Speaker 3: It is impossible.
23:39
Speaker 1: That's why most, many of these things, once you start
23:41
Speaker 1: digging on the level of failure, you realize what is
23:46
Speaker 1: happening to this money?
23:47
Speaker 3: That's, we, it's certainly not making it to the kids.
23:51
Speaker 1: And I would like to point out that if you
23:53
Speaker 1: want an analogy for, you know, allegedly underfunded schools, you
23:58
Speaker 1: can go down to Mississippi. Yeah. Where schools of identical
24:03
Speaker 1: but even poorer demographics have been performing extremely well over.
24:09
Speaker 3: The past 10 years.
24:11
Speaker 1: And they do it to the tune of 10 to
24:13
Speaker 1: 14 K per year per student. So, you know, like
24:17
Speaker 1: I said, that story from when I was a kid,
24:20
Speaker 1: when we really were differently funded, is not the story now.
24:26
Speaker 1: And in fact, school funding does not correlate to. success
24:31
Speaker 1: for students. What correlates for success to students is expectations, accountability,
24:36
Speaker 1: and parents who will stay on their kids' butts about it.
24:40
Speaker 2: In the first two you just said were non-existent in
24:43
Speaker 2: her school because there was like zero accountability and the expectations,
24:49
Speaker 2: from what we can tell, were extremely low. I mean,
24:51
Speaker 2: part of her daughter's complaint, right, is that the expectations
24:54
Speaker 2: were so low that she could not achieve or strive
24:59
Speaker 2: or learn in the way that she wanted to.
25:02
Speaker 3: Yeah.
25:03
Speaker 1: She also compares her struggle to those of Black families
25:09
Speaker 1: who broke the color barrier.
25:10
Speaker 3: In the Deep South, which I, let's be serious, folks.
25:15
Speaker 3: Those are not the same thing.
25:16
Speaker 2: Well, the self-importance, I mean, you have to remember, the
25:21
Speaker 2: self-importance here is like kind of astonishing because she compares
25:25
Speaker 2: herself essentially with these like civil rights icons um and
25:30
Speaker 2: and i have actually come to a conclusion as i've
25:32
Speaker 2: been thinking about this so much so the two things
25:35
Speaker 2: that i think she is incapable of doing are apologizing
25:42
Speaker 2: oh she guess she did to her daughter so maybe
25:44
Speaker 2: this isn't true but she doesn't seem very good at
25:45
Speaker 2: that and she certainly hasn't done it to a lot
25:47
Speaker 2: of the people that she's hurt and she also is
25:49
Speaker 2: incapable of extending grace yeah and That's kind of what
25:54
Speaker 2: narcissistic people struggle with. They have a hard time apologizing,
25:57
Speaker 2: extending grace. And we have a president who, the more
26:00
Speaker 2: I think about it, kind of reminds me of her.
26:03
Speaker 2: So it would probably, she would probably not love the comparison.
26:06
Speaker 2: She wouldn't love that comparison. But it's true.
26:08
Speaker 1: To the point about... about accountability. James Surowiecki, whose name
26:14
Speaker 1: I apologize, I don't.
26:15
Speaker 2: Know how to say. I know who you mean, though.
26:17
Speaker 2: I know who you mean.
26:18
Speaker 1: He says the real takeaway from the Nicole Hannah-Jones article
26:20
Speaker 1: is that teachers and administrators are failing Black and Latino
26:23
Speaker 1: kids and that New York and other cities presumably has
26:26
Speaker 1: to stop sitting on its hands and take action to
26:28
Speaker 1: meaningfully change this. And somebody replied, yeah, that was the
26:31
Speaker 1: takeaway 25 years ago. We've been telling you this, and
26:35
Speaker 1: this is what bothers me about every story like this.
26:39
Speaker 1: is I was talking to Jennifer Say just the other
26:42
Speaker 1: night about her public persona during COVID and being a
26:48
Speaker 1: critic of all these policies. And the sin that all
26:53
Speaker 1: of us have committed over the years is being right,
26:56
Speaker 1: but not in the exquisitely correct timing of lefties. Lefties
27:02
Speaker 1: get to come to the party 25 years later, four
27:05
Speaker 1: years later and go.
27:06
Speaker 2: Aha, Now it can be said.
27:11
Speaker 3: Now it can be told.
27:13
Speaker 1: And Nicole Hannah-Jones' story is a whole lot of that.
27:17
Speaker 2: 100%. I mean, it's actually, I mean, if you look, like,
27:21
Speaker 2: people wrote at the time they predicted that this was
27:24
Speaker 2: going to happen. They knew that she was wrong about
27:29
Speaker 2: virtually everything, and therefore there was no reason to think
27:32
Speaker 2: that this experiment with her daughter was going to play
27:35
Speaker 2: out the way that she wanted it to.
27:39
Speaker 1: Somebody also noted that she tweeted just two years ago.
27:44
Speaker 1: Eight years ago today, the New York Times Magazine published
27:46
Speaker 1: my cover story on schools' aggregation in the great melting
27:49
Speaker 1: pot of New York City and the way elite parents
27:51
Speaker 1: and politicians conspire with structural inequality to keep our schools
27:54
Speaker 1: separate and unequal. Eight years later, this sweet baby girl
27:57
Speaker 1: on the cover is getting ready to graduate eighth grade
27:59
Speaker 1: as a bright, empathetic, funny honor roll student from the
28:03
Speaker 1: school that she went to, a non-screened neighborhood middle school.
28:06
Speaker 1: By test score metrics, many would label this school a
28:08
Speaker 1: failing school. But just as I write in the piece,
28:10
Speaker 1: we judge these schools and their students without ever stepping
28:13
Speaker 1: foot inside.
28:14
Speaker 3: My daughter is not worth more than any other child. Oh,
28:17
Speaker 3: that line. Eight years later, I still know we made
28:20
Speaker 3: the right choice. So big changes in two years.
28:25
Speaker 2: But I mean, doesn't it seem like she has to
28:27
Speaker 2: be lying? Because because based on this story. This was
28:31
Speaker 2: all unraveling and she was, you know, becoming aware of
28:34
Speaker 2: this way before two years ago. Yes. Just like rah-rah, cheerily.
28:39
Speaker 2: I mean, because two years ago, she did not know
28:41
Speaker 2: that her daughter was going to choose a school that
28:46
Speaker 2: she had opposed.
28:48
Speaker 3: I think the daughter, again, she let her daughter make
28:52
Speaker 3: the decision.
28:52
Speaker 1: I think her daughter having made that decision is what
28:55
Speaker 1: forced a reckoning over this philosophy.
29:00
Speaker 2: But the thing you just read from two years ago,
29:02
Speaker 2: because I saw Liz Wolf from Reason share this.
29:06
Speaker 1: Yeah.
29:07
Speaker 2: That is irreconcilable with the piece that she wrote this weekend.
29:11
Speaker 3: She would have known more bad things were happening.
29:14
Speaker 2: Because wasn't it fourth grade where she started? Didn't it
29:17
Speaker 2: all start kind of in the fourth grade?
29:19
Speaker 3: Fourth grade was when it started falling apart, yes.
29:21
Speaker 2: So that's... It's funny because now when you read it,
29:25
Speaker 2: you realize actually the message from two years ago, she's
29:28
Speaker 2: totally overcompensating.
29:29
Speaker 3: Things are amazing. Everything is so amazing.
29:31
Speaker 2: Yeah. When really it wasn't. But she didn't have to
29:35
Speaker 2: say anything about it probably until she was like, I'm
29:38
Speaker 2: going to get totally called out. when people find out
29:40
Speaker 2: my daughter's at this school that I would have shut
29:42
Speaker 2: down if I had a magic wand.
29:44
Speaker 1: So I could talk about this forever, but we have
29:47
Speaker 1: to move on to another segment. But I do want
29:50
Speaker 1: to make the argument briefly that perhaps, just as a takeaway,
29:53
Speaker 1: a person who did make this statement devastating a mistake
29:58
Speaker 1: with her own daughter who seems to be doing well
29:59
Speaker 1: in her high school environment now uh maybe we should
30:04
Speaker 1: not take entire curricula ideas from her let's maybe let's
30:10
Speaker 1: maybe not do that anymore Yeah.
30:13
Speaker 2: I think adopting a curriculum that was basically kind of
30:17
Speaker 2: either written or created by or inspired by her, that
30:20
Speaker 2: just seems like a really dumb thing to do, which
30:23
Speaker 2: is what most sort of, like, fad-type things are in K-12. So...
30:28
Speaker 2: Very consistent with being dumb, but terrible idea. Yeah.
30:32
Speaker 3: Don't get taken in by the fads.
30:33
Speaker 1: The problem with K-12 is these smart, dumb people have
30:38
Speaker 1: to keep coming up with new ways to teach your
30:40
Speaker 1: kids when, in fact, the old ways worked pretty well
30:45
Speaker 1: and they're back to the basics in Mississippi and kids
30:48
Speaker 1: who go to schools that are demographically the same, if
30:51
Speaker 1: not poorer, than the ones that Nicole Hannah-Jones sent her
30:54
Speaker 1: kid to are doing much better.
30:56
Speaker 3: And that's just the cold, hard truth.
30:58
Speaker 1: All right, we'll be back on Normally in just a
30:59
Speaker 1: second with one more segment. All right, we are back
31:06
Speaker 1: on Normally. Erica, you have an update on a lawsuit
31:09
Speaker 1: from Defending Education about free speech. Where is that and
31:13
Speaker 1: what's going on? University of California, Berkeley.
31:17
Speaker 2: That was one of these cases of of compelled speech
31:20
Speaker 2: where you were essentially told you had to use a
31:25
Speaker 2: person's preferred pronouns, you know, even if you objected because
31:29
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, you know, that's I don't believe in that.
31:31
Speaker 2: I don't subscribe to that ideology. You know, my my
31:34
Speaker 2: religion didn't matter. And so we had filed actually need
31:39
Speaker 2: to look at this closely. Do we file a complaint
31:41
Speaker 2: or do we file a lawsuit? I feel like it
31:42
Speaker 2: was a lawsuit. And we just got a preliminary injunction,
31:48
Speaker 2: which is good because that means that, you know, that
31:50
Speaker 2: that that it's looking like they are not shutting us down.
31:54
Speaker 2: And they're saying this is a problem. It's a public
31:56
Speaker 2: university and we're looking at a compelled speech issue here.
31:59
Speaker 2: And we've already had success at the K-12 level on
32:01
Speaker 2: this also.
32:03
Speaker 3: So, again, like.
32:06
Speaker 2: What we've learned in the five years that we've been
32:08
Speaker 2: in existence is essentially that people like love the First
32:12
Speaker 2: Amendment until it applies to situations where they don't want
32:16
Speaker 2: it to. And so they think that they can sort
32:18
Speaker 2: of tell people what they can say and what they
32:20
Speaker 2: can't say. That's been a huge problem in schools. And
32:23
Speaker 2: we're seeing it in K-12 and higher ed. And we're
32:25
Speaker 2: having some success right now where, you know, even as
32:28
Speaker 2: much as I think it's killing some of these judges
32:31
Speaker 2: to admit it, they have to say, like, you just
32:33
Speaker 2: can't make people say things that they don't want to say.
32:35
Speaker 1: Yeah.
32:36
Speaker 3: Well, good on you guys.
32:38
Speaker 1: It's at Defending Ed if you want to follow them.
32:40
Speaker 1: They do a lot of the hard work of suing,
32:43
Speaker 1: of foyeying, of getting these school districts and public universities
32:46
Speaker 1: to cough up the goods and then, you know, have
32:49
Speaker 1: some accountability. OK, before we leave, I want to shout
32:52
Speaker 1: out because Carol and I sometimes do a little. uh,
32:54
Speaker 1: relationship segment at the end of the show. And you
32:57
Speaker 1: and I have talked about this before. Um, someone tweeted
33:01
Speaker 1: the other day, this.
33:03
Speaker 3: Is Serena Shahidi.
33:04
Speaker 1: And she says, low key, when a woman talks about
33:06
Speaker 1: her incompetent idiot husband, he always sounds like me. And, uh,
33:13
Speaker 1: I don't know if you follow, uh, at cartoons, hate her,
33:16
Speaker 1: but she writes essays often about cultural issues and relationship issues.
33:20
Speaker 3: And she says, uh, that she.
33:22
Speaker 1: Always reacted so negatively to the mental load discussions where
33:26
Speaker 1: women are like, I have to do all of the
33:27
Speaker 1: mental load and remember all the things for the family
33:30
Speaker 1: and the calendar and the stuff for the schools, et cetera.
33:33
Speaker 1: And I couldn't really figure out why until I realized
33:36
Speaker 1: I actually identify with the incompetent husband more.
33:40
Speaker 3: How do you feel about that, Erica?
33:42
Speaker 2: So it's funny that you say that, because when I've
33:44
Speaker 2: had a conversation with friends of mine where the husband
33:46
Speaker 2: is the one that's forgetting things and he's messing things
33:48
Speaker 2: up and everything's a mess and the car is like
33:51
Speaker 2: a thousand empty coffee, the whole thing. And I'll be like,
33:55
Speaker 2: it's not that I'm taking his side. I'm like, it's
33:58
Speaker 2: just that I'm him.
33:59
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
34:00
Speaker 3: So, yeah. So I am.
34:03
Speaker 2: I mean, technically, I guess one would call it ADHD
34:06
Speaker 2: and for sure. But and yeah. my husband is much
34:10
Speaker 2: more organized and very good at the administrative stuff and
34:12
Speaker 2: much more sort of linear sequential and the only person
34:15
Speaker 2: in the family that can manage a calendar. So when
34:17
Speaker 2: I hear these things, now what I will say is
34:19
Speaker 2: it's like, it's not that I do, it's like we
34:21
Speaker 2: just do different things. The idea that like I'm doing
34:26
Speaker 2: everything and he's doing nothing is like just kind of absurd.
34:30
Speaker 2: And especially in my case, because like we would have
34:33
Speaker 2: lost our house by now if I was in charge
34:37
Speaker 2: of the bills. Yes.
34:38
Speaker 1: So before we started recording this podcast, my husband is saying, hey,
34:44
Speaker 1: do you know where the keys to the blue car are?
34:46
Speaker 1: And I'm like, you know, there are two sets and
34:49
Speaker 1: I've lost both of them. I mean, there's somewhere in
34:50
Speaker 1: the house, but, you know, that's the kind of thing
34:54
Speaker 1: that I am not great at.
34:56
Speaker 3: And so there's one.
34:56
Speaker 2: It is true. Just so everyone knows, she was running
34:58
Speaker 2: up and you could hear running up and downstairs, up
35:00
Speaker 2: and downstairs, up and downstairs, trying to find these keys.
35:03
Speaker 3: Retracing my steps to the house.
35:05
Speaker 2: Yeah.
35:06
Speaker 3: So that's the kind of thing I'm not great at.
35:07
Speaker 1: Whereas my husband, I'll be like, where's the staple remover
35:10
Speaker 1: when I need it once every three years? And he
35:12
Speaker 1: will say, it's upstairs in my office in the left-hand
35:15
Speaker 1: drawer next to the watch batteries. And he's correct. Yes.
35:19
Speaker 3: And I just think... there's not.
35:22
Speaker 1: Enough look i do plenty of mental load for the
35:24
Speaker 1: kids and all that stuff right i think it's a
35:26
Speaker 1: nice pairing because as a woman i'm doing a lot
35:29
Speaker 1: of the the mom things so i'm carrying plenty of
35:33
Speaker 1: load but he is very good at certain things that
35:36
Speaker 1: i'm not including time keeping and calendar keeping that help
35:40
Speaker 1: me stay on track he's also good at tidying and
35:43
Speaker 1: has made me better at tidying um But I think
35:47
Speaker 1: this is not really a model in the cultural discussion.
35:50
Speaker 1: It's always like the husband can't get it together.
35:53
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I don't know.
35:54
Speaker 1: I have a very masculine executive functioning husband who knows
35:57
Speaker 1: how to do things.
35:58
Speaker 3: And I'm that's great for me.
35:59
Speaker 2: Oh, no. The one who has it together is in
36:02
Speaker 2: our family is definitely him. Just the other day, you know,
36:06
Speaker 2: we want to get together for dinner. Like, I'm going
36:08
Speaker 2: to give you some dates. I'm like, yeah, that's going
36:09
Speaker 2: to have to go through my husband. because I 100%
36:13
Speaker 2: cannot manage a calendar and make way too many mistakes
36:16
Speaker 2: when it comes to that. And again, like it's the
36:19
Speaker 2: administrative tasks and the executive function tasks. It's not that
36:23
Speaker 2: I can't do lots of things really well, but they're
36:26
Speaker 2: not really things that involve having like a neat house
36:29
Speaker 2: or remembering to do the things I need to do.
36:32
Speaker 2: You know what?
36:32
Speaker 1: Here's the other thing is when you're a laid back
36:34
Speaker 1: lady and a laid back wife, your partner can do
36:38
Speaker 1: more things because you're not, micromanaging the way that your
36:42
Speaker 1: partner does things.
36:43
Speaker 3: Like, I'm just like, oh yeah, have at that. That
36:46
Speaker 3: sounds great for you.
36:48
Speaker 2: That's so funny you say that because just yesterday I
36:49
Speaker 2: saw Dana Perino on Fox was talking about how like,
36:52
Speaker 2: she's like, whenever I try and do it, all I
36:54
Speaker 2: do is hear that I'm doing it wrong. And I'm like,
36:57
Speaker 2: there's no chance of me being like, you loaded this
36:59
Speaker 2: dishwasher the wrong way. Because if anything, I have no
37:04
Speaker 2: spatial reasoning skills at all. So like, if anyone's loading
37:07
Speaker 2: it wrong, it's definitely me.
37:09
Speaker 3: Yeah.
37:09
Speaker 2: Well, luckily, we're also delightful. So you can you can
37:15
Speaker 2: follow Erica at where? At eSanzee on Twitter X. I
37:21
Speaker 2: do have a sub stack called Sanzee Says, but I
37:24
Speaker 2: don't write really consistently there. And my organization is DefendingEd.org.
37:31
Speaker 2: All right.
37:32
Speaker 3: Check it all out.
37:33
Speaker 1: And I will let Carol have plenty of say on
37:36
Speaker 1: the Nicole Hannah Jones piece because I know she's going
37:38
Speaker 1: to want to. But I needed to get some things
37:40
Speaker 1: off my chest with Erica. So thank you so much
37:44
Speaker 1: for joining us.
37:45
Speaker 2: For having me. I was going crazy yesterday about it
37:48
Speaker 2: all day. That's probably why you invited me, because you
37:49
Speaker 2: were like, she has a lot to say about this.
37:52
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us on Normally. Normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays,
37:54
Speaker 1: and you can subscribe anywhere you get podcasts. Get in
37:56
Speaker 1: touch with us at normallythepod at gmail.com.
37:59
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. When things get weird, act normally.