Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 428: What Good is the Department of Education?

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Episode 428: What Good is the Department of Education? · Words & Numbers

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Hi, I'm James and I'm Anthony. And this is words and Numbers
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brought to you by the good people at KHAKI, the Center for
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American Culture and Ideas. And by the time anybody hears
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this podcast, it will be known as Polyhymnia.
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Oh, are you changing the name officially?
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We are changing the name officially.
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We got a website that's just about finished and all the
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exciting things. Polyhymnia, for those who who
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don't know, was the the ancient Greek muse of rhetoric and
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music. Kind of a perfect representation
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of what we do. And for those of you who haven't
0:38
heard, James is writing the What is the words here?
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Libretto. Libretto.
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An opera, That's the funniest thing.
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Yeah, it's pretty funny. I haven't gotten an answer yet,
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but I don't. I might be able to say mocha in
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an opera, I don't know. You could say it in Italian,
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it's fine. Yeah, I don't know how we'll
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figure it out. What's new and exciting in your
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world this week, Aunt? I'm going to start off with
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apologies to listeners who have sent us mail.
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We're always happy to receive your e-mail and I do read it
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all. James likely ignores it all, but
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my apology is I have not written back because I haven't written
1:18
back in the past couple of weeks.
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So specifically too, Gabriel Hanson, Edward Widow, Timothy
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Abraham, Mike Tonks, Rich Mendoza and I'm sure several
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others that only takes us back two weeks.
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So yes, I'm reading your e-mail. I just haven't been getting to
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respond. And and now here's no, no, no,
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no, you don't get to say all that.
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And then? You're not going to let me get
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away with that? Not get a rejoinder.
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Little known fact, I actually respond to more e-mail than
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Anthony does. Do you really?
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You don't do reply to all, so I have no idea.
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A February survey of more than 1000 people found that around
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70% of us are polite to artificial intelligence when we
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interact with it. Well, that's interesting because
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12% of those polled said they were polite because they were
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afraid of a robot uprising. Yeah, I'm really not afraid of
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that at least. Why are you polite?
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Not yet. I don't know, it just seems like
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the way to be. It it does, doesn't it?
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Although I have to admit I I call my various AIS baby.
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Really. Yes.
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So I said yeah, thanks baby. Why?
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They say in response. You're welcome, you're welcome,
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Daddy O, you're welcome, James. OK, well, it turns out there's a
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cost, as there's a cost to all things.
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There's a cost to being polite. Every word you type into an AI
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has to be processed, and it ranges.
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I'm looking at ChatGPT numbers. Depending on which version of
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ChatGPT you're running, it ranges from a fraction of a cent
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to two cents per word, which experts say adds up in the case
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of ChatGPT to 10s of millions of dollars per year in computation
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costs just from us being polite. This seems a small price to pay.
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I would think so, but I'm I'm waiting for some dogmatic
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environmentalist to say we need to stop being polite.
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And we're going to listen to them about as often as we ever
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listen to them. The thing is, is the companies
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have all budgeted that in they they know that's a cost.
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Oh, they know. They know it's a cost.
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I'm interested in the resource thing because you know, it's a
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cost means that there's electricity being burned on the
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back end, which has all kinds of implications.
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I'm more interested in in finding out how the companies
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get around that cost right, how they program out our ability to
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be polite. Now that's interesting.
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I wonder if that happens. Of course they filter it out.
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Wouldn't you? I don't know if it was in the
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case of AII, don't know. If it were a massive cost, you'd
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find a way because it's an unnecessary cost to the product.
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I don't know. Again, if it weren't AI, I'd
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agreed with you, but I don't think the people who designed AI
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understand how it works. Yeah, I, I think that's probably
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a pretty good criticism given everything that I've read, the
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development of these various models.
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And I'm a little concerned about that actually, that they don't
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know enough about what they have made.
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I think they've probably made a terrible, terrible invention
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that will really be a problem later.
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I wanted to bring us a little more to the here and now.
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Did you hear that in February our foreign travel was down 2%
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into the United States? Yeah, I read something about
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that. Well, did you hear in March that
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it was down 12%? No, really.
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Really. That's.
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That's a huge Ding. Yeah, that's a lot.
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And this is year over year, not month over month.
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This is the correct comparable. I'm a little concerned that
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foreigners are going to stop coming here altogether.
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If you were a foreigner, would you want to come here right now?
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Well, there's that. There's also can you afford it?
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Because as we slap on these tariffs, they're now earning
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less money. Well, yeah, I'd be, I mean, not
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yet, right that that's going to take a minute to trickle into
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their to their bank accounts. But I look, there's a non zero
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chance that if you're a foreigner and you come here,
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you're going to be detained. It's not much of a chance, but
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it's not 0. And to those who are skeptical,
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I've seen 2 reports in the news of Americans American citizens
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being detained because they couldn't immediately prove they
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were American citizens. I was a little surprised I
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didn't get the business coming over the Canadian border.
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I almost always do. Getting into Canada is very,
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very simple and straightforward. Getting home, on the other hand,
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can be a disaster. And I was sure, given the number
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of disasters I have had at the Canadian border, that I would
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surely have one. This time I didn't.
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It was just as smooth as smooth could be.
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One time when I came back from Iraq, we were, we had to stay in
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Canada to play out some tax time.
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You can only be in the United States so many days if you're
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declaring income from another country.
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And I had to stay in Canada for six weeks.
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And on the way back, we pulled into the the border crossing and
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they said, who are these other people in your car?
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And I said my children. And they said, do they have
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driver's license? Do they have identification?
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Do they have identification? And I said no, they said why
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not? And I said because they don't
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drive and they didn't like my flippant approach.
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And we? Imagine that.
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We we got served up the business for the next hour or two at the
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Canadian border, though that woman was incredibly unpleasant.
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Meanwhile, the Canadians, they just kind of wave their hands
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and say, go ahead, this is that easy.
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But what can you do? Anyway, this brings us to the
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foolishness of the weak. And you know, a couple of
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things, right? You know, I don't like to pull
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the wood out against foreigners. Other countries.
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I don't really, I don't really dip into foreign culture all
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that much. I don't think it's mostly out of
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bounds, right? And I also don't, contrary to
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some of the hate mail I got this week, I don't say horrible
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things about the religious, but I'm going to say horrible things
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about religious people in foreign countries right now, or
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at least a foreign country. I have only become aware of
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this. It's apparently a 136 year
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tradition in Greece, in a village that I can't really
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pronounce. Rhonda Toss.
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There are two rival churches in this town and they engage in a
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rocket war every year by which people in town make homemade
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rockets in the 10s of thousands. And then at Easter, they shoot
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them at each other. You're kidding.
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No. And if you if you want to have a
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look at what this looks like, I'm going to put a link in the
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show notes to a story last year in the Atlantic that has some
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beautiful pictures of just how horrifically dangerous this
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nonsense is. I mean, so these are like big,
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not, not military rockets, but substantial, no?
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It's, it's more like, it's more like they're making fireworks
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and shooting at each other. OK, OK.
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And, and I have to admit, when I was a boy, we occasionally had
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Roman candle fights. Yeah, yeah.
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And those things burn like you wouldn't believe.
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Yeah, either you or the thing behind you that it hits and
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ignites. Yeah, we didn't care about that
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so much. Right.
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Yeah. Anyway, these people and
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apparent and I tried to get to the bottom of this because this
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is world class foolishness, right?
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I mean, world class. It turns out that the tradition
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might have started in the Ottoman Empire when these places
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were taken over and apparently one church would fire literal
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cannons at the other to create a distraction so they could
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celebrate mass. What?
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Yeah, not what you expected, right?
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Yeah, there I have so many questions.
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Yeah, but that's as many as I'm going to answer.
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So you just have to read up on it in the in the show notes like
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everybody else. Get more Aunt and James buy a
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copy of our excellent book Cooperation and Coercion.
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You can find the paper and electronic versions on Amazon
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9:48
For all things James and Aunt, visit our website
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wordsandnumbers.org. Nikki Neely is the president and
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founder of Parents Defending Education, a nonpartisan
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organization devoted to providing parents with the
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resources and support they need to advocate for their children's
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educations. Nikki also founded Speech First,
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a nationwide organization that defends college students free
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speech rights, was president of the Franklin Center for
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Government and Public Integrity, and served as executive director
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and senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum and at
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the Cato Institute. Nikki, thank you for coming
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back. Thank you for having me.
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You were on words and numbers. Was it 2 years ago?
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It was a long time ago, yeah. So I'm, I'm honored that you
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brought me back. The funny thing is, James and I
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keep mentioning that, oh, we have to have Nikki on to answer
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whatever it is, and whatever it is just goes out of our heads
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then. But anyway, I made a note this
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time. I realize I'm the less important
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Neely, so to be fair. I don't even know where to begin
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on that, but no, no you're not. What?
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Prompted all of this is my wife ran across an article about
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President Trump and the cuts to the Department of Education and
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said, look, this is really fascinating.
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You should get Nikki on to talk about this.
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I said, yeah, you're absolutely right.
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So I'll start at a very high level.
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On the one hand, people have said to me, well, this is
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unconstitutional, these cuts that Trump is making to
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Department of Education. But then people on the other
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hand say, yeah, but the Department of Education itself
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is unconstitutional. Therefore, by definition, any
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cut he makes to it is constitutional.
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So at a very high level, let's just start there.
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What's your opinion of what's going on over there?
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Yeah. I mean, so certainly this was a
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major or this has been a major talking point because Trump,
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who's going to sign the executive order shutting down
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the Department of Education? When you actually read the fine
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print of that executive order, it directs the department to
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come up with the plan within the bounds of, you know, what is
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legal. And much of shutting or even
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offshoring some of the different functions of the department to
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other agencies has to be done through an act of Congress.
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I mean, like, let's look at Congress right now.
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The House can barely agree on naming a post office, right?
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I mean, they can't, like, strategize.
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They're out of a paper bag. And even though the Senate has a
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Republican majority, you need 60 votes and you're certainly not
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going to get 60 votes to actually really do anything in
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the Senate side either. And so I think this is a lot of
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Sterman dronged right now. That being said, certainly there
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have been significant reductions in force.
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There have been different programs that have been cut.
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I mean, there are about a zillion lawsuits flying back and
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forth from be it the states, be it from activist organizations
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like the N double ACP teachers unions, trying to keep the
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staffers in place, trying to keep the programs and the
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funding going. This is to borrow a line from
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300. This will not be over quickly.
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You will not enjoy this. I think I will enjoy it,
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actually. I know.
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Look, I've been, I've been wanting to see the Department of
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Education disappear since the early 1980s.
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There's a chance that might actually happen now, isn't
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there? Yes, I think it is.
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I mean, again, like much of this is going to have to actually be
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done through Congress. But there are, I mean, that
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being said, you look at some of the cuts to the grants that were
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made. I mean, my organization
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identified a billion dollars in grants that were made over 4
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years during the Biden administration that went to DEI
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focused programming. We then followed it on and
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looked at other sort of education related grants that
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actually went out through other cabinet agencies.
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DOJ used $100 million worth of school safety grants, again for
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DEI programs. I mean, we found one that was
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related to knitting circles and yoga.
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But you know, when you think about school safety grants, you
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think about maybe stopping shooters, not yoga.
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There were ones through HHS that were to teach school counselors
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and social workers, but you look at what the actual programming
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was that the social workers were encouraged to do.
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And it was a lot of equity and identity politics focus things.
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And so is this money that is being spent to help children
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learn better. I mean, let's remember the big
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backdrop of this is how are children doing in school?
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NAEP scores fell off the Cliff and even frankly, before the
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pandemic were nothing to write home about.
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And so we have a Department of Education and States and
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localities that are spending more money than ever on
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education. Children are doing objectively
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worse than ever. And so to the extent where stuff
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is not going to be taken out of my pocket, sent to Washington,
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have the cream skinned off the top, sent back to the States and
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the cities with strings attached.
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I mean, I think a lot of people are kind of like, well, what can
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it get much worse than it is right now?
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And so I think, you know, Trump is able to tap into real public
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dissatisfaction with the state of education.
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That being said, you know, we have seen this administration
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sometimes in their execution be not 100% perfect.
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And so I think at this point they are maybe kind of their own
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worst enemy as they try and make some of these things happen.
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I want to back up a minute. The Department of Education
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didn't exist prior to Carter. What was the incentive for
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creating it in the first place? What was it supposed to fix?
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It was supposed to fix making the labor unions happy.
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I mean, it was in 79. It was just a big handout to
15:06
unions. And so, again, all this money
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has been collected. You think?
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I mean, I think Bill Bennett had like ran the numbers and he said
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it was like a trillion dollars has kind of run through
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Washington and the Department of Education since its inception.
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And I mean, aside from the fact that, like, you know, scores
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have fallen off a Cliff, you look at the amount of money
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coming in and, you know, it's it's it's like kind of
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frightening. And then to hide this very
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obvious decline. I mean, you know, you know, and
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I know you have kids, right? I mean, it's kind of obvious
15:33
that children today just generally know less than
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children, you know, 30 or 40 years ago knew.
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You know, I mean, you compare what a third grade test was in
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the mid 80s versus what a third grade test is today.
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And we see a lot of, you know, the federal government as well
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as frankly, the states top standards to kind of hide like
15:50
amassed that decline. And so we're all sort of being
15:53
actively gaslit in real time. And, you know, we saw this
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certainly very vividly during COVID when we were told
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certainly there's no learning loss being taken place.
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I think about the Super brilliant head of the Los
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Angeles teachers union who said, you know, our babies might not
16:06
have learned timetables, but they learned the meaning of the
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word resilience. I mean, just like insane things
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that are happening right now in the in the name of like, you
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know, just, you know, do we actually care about kids
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learning or not? I was in McMahon of confirmation
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hearing for, you know, very, very long period of time between
16:22
two professional wrestlers. So I kind of had to sit
16:24
diagonally for four hours. And I was looking at the
16:27
questions that the different members were asking.
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And almost every single question that came from a Democratic
16:32
senator was about the bureaucracy.
16:34
It's what's going to happen to these federal workers?
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What's going to happen to these, you know, to the like, you know,
16:40
officials in the States and the cities, very few questions about
16:44
the kids. And to me, that was really
16:45
telling because at the end of the day, do we really care about
16:47
the kids? They're only in the system for
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12 years or is the bureaucrats are there for life?
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And that was something that I found really kind of stomach
16:54
churning. Let me follow that up with a
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what I think is a very difficult question, and I've asked it to a
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number of people. I've never gotten an answer.
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I don't have an answer myself. Maybe you do.
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Has the Department of Education ever done anything that's worth
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doing? I mean, I think this has become
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obviously a very partisan issue right now.
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But, you know, for the most part, no.
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I mean, we look at even right now, the fact that Trump is very
17:21
robustly exercising his executive power to try and rein
17:25
in civil liberties and injustices that he has perceived
17:29
have taken place over the past couple years.
17:32
You know, has there has a school ever lost federal funding under
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Title 9? Actually, no.
17:37
I mean, it's something that has been used to blackmail schools
17:39
for a really long time. Under the Obama administration,
17:43
it was threatened against the University of Montana because
17:45
they had a sexual assault issue. And it was so scary, just the
17:49
very, the mere thought of losing federal funding that it forced
17:53
compliance among America's 4000 colleges and universities, as
17:56
well as the 13,500 school districts.
17:58
And so schools made, I think what frankly, in retrospect, was
18:01
a rational decision to sacrifice the First Amendment on the altar
18:05
of Title 9. That achieved their political
18:07
aims. In my mind, I think that's
18:09
gross. Obviously, the Constitution
18:11
Trump's statutory things like that.
18:13
But that was political expediency for them.
18:15
And so we're watching the pendulum swing back the other
18:18
way. And so you know, we live in
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strange times. For our listeners out there who
18:22
are wondering why it is that every College in the United
18:26
States has a, a federal funding issue, it's it's because it goes
18:30
all the way down to student loans.
18:33
Yeah, every school, every College in the United States, I
18:36
think saved 3 accepts student loans.
18:39
So that that means functionally, every college is beholden to
18:44
federal funding. Yeah, and it's worse than that,
18:47
James. It was part of the, I remember
18:49
we talked about it back in the day.
18:50
It was part of the Affordable Care Act.
18:52
A line item in there took those student loans out of wherever
18:57
they were and put them under the Department of Education.
19:00
And I, I was terrified because I figured this is the foot in the
19:04
door for the Department of Education to start dictating
19:07
education policy to colleges and universities.
19:10
I mean, they've done such a bang up job on our primary and
19:13
secondary schools. Yeah.
19:15
And so, I mean, you know, this is as much, you know, right now,
19:17
obviously, we're sort of in the middle of this maelstrom around
19:20
Harvard, but there are so many different ways and, you know,
19:24
pipelines of money into universities and also to K to 12
19:28
schools. I mean, I think back a couple
19:30
years ago, the bite administration threatened to
19:32
withhold school lunch money. I mean, like literally food for
19:36
poor children from school districts that refuse to
19:38
implement their guidance document on Title 9.
19:41
Guidance documents are non binding.
19:43
I mean, you ask any federal agency, right?
19:45
And they sort of when you when you pin them down in court,
19:47
they're like, Oh, no, it's, it's just guidance, wink, wink.
19:50
But the Biden USDA was fully prepared to RIP food from poor
19:55
children to make sure that there were non binary bathrooms, which
19:58
is, I mean, I think that's a lot.
20:00
I think that's a stretch. But we're watching now with
20:02
Harvard, right? It's the international students,
20:04
it's the Student Loans, it's the research funding.
20:06
It's I mean, like any one of his like the visas, it's anyone of a
20:09
zillion things. And so this is one of those, you
20:12
know, you reap the whirlwind because you have been sucking at
20:16
the federal teeth for so long and it kind of sucks now.
20:20
I didn't know if I was allowed to say teet.
20:21
So you know, it is you can say teet, A biological term, but.
20:25
You can say, you could say whatever you want.
20:27
It's it's. The other guy here, we got to
20:29
watch I'm the. I'm the one being censored.
20:32
You mentioned the NAEP scores, which I, I want to tell our
20:37
listeners NAEP as I forget what the acronym is NAEP.
20:42
And these are the standardized, nationwide standardized tests.
20:45
And I used to, I haven't looked at the results for, good Lord,
20:50
maybe 20 years. I used to do some research on
20:53
it. But I can tell you from personal
20:55
experience is obvious to me in my last 10 years of teaching
21:00
that, that there's a decline and not a small decline, but a
21:04
gargantuan decline in the quality of student over the past
21:10
1010 to 15 years. And, and I, I can only attribute
21:15
that to what's being taught in the high schools.
21:20
You know, I, I hate to, I hate to throw off the blame, but I'm
21:22
talking about freshman students who come into my school.
21:24
So it's not, has nothing to do with our university.
21:26
They're coming fresh out of high school.
21:28
We're admitting the same sorts of students we've always
21:31
admitted. And yet the quality is so
21:33
incredibly low. I don't know how they got into
21:36
any college. No, I, I think that's right.
21:38
And I think it's, it's across the board, right?
21:40
It's reading, it's mathematics, it's science, it's kind of all
21:43
of the disciplines, which is something that's scary.
21:45
I mean, this year, a few weeks ago it came out that Harvard is
21:48
going to be introducing A remedial math class, which is
21:50
something that is ha, ha, right. I mean, you think you have to
21:53
how brilliant you have to be again to Harvard.
21:55
The remedial math class is going to be a five day a week class
21:59
for a full year. So it'll be both semesters, fall
22:01
semester and spring semester. I was just curious.
22:04
I ran the numbers. Base tuition at Harvard is
22:07
$54,000 a year. So that's without all the, you
22:09
know, the bells and whistles and housing and all that stuff.
22:11
So that's a quarter of your course load for your freshman
22:14
year. That's $13,000 on a math class
22:17
that you really should have known and taken into high school
22:20
and been proficient at. If you get into Harvard, I mean,
22:24
University of Illinois, of course, we're going to have a
22:25
remedial math class. But Harvard, I mean, come on.
22:28
And so I think it is really, yeah, across the board, students
22:31
are just not being prepared not only for college but, frankly,
22:34
for life in K12. And so I think you're right to
22:37
pass the blame down a little bit.
22:39
And again, you know, many schools are trying to pin all of
22:43
this on COVID. Things were not great before
22:45
COVID, right? I mean, this was a real toxic
22:48
Stew before that. And I think that was one of the
22:50
things when I started parents defending education was, I mean,
22:53
I came up through Cato and everything, you know, I grew up
22:55
with the school choice, good teachers union bad kind of
22:57
heuristic. And I didn't realize until I
23:00
started looking at the Cato 12 that there is this, I mean,
23:02
education industrial complex. There is the BLOB of all of
23:05
these other the professional associations, the interest
23:08
groups. I mean, there is so much going
23:10
on because there is such a huge amount of federal money sloshing
23:13
around. I mean, as a parent, when my
23:16
kids had to be in, you know, school would be closed for a
23:18
teacher professional development day, you kind of assume that
23:21
your teacher is there to do like learn how to do phonics better
23:25
or something. It's not, it turns out that a
23:27
lot of the professional development is, it's kind of
23:29
it's, it's gender stuff, it's regulatory stuff.
23:32
It's kind of weird, like, you know, privilege walk type stuff.
23:35
It's not actually teaching teachers how to be better.
23:38
In the meantime, I, you know, since I have to pay $100 a kid
23:40
for a babysitter that day, I'm not super thrilled.
23:43
But schools have been filling up.
23:45
I mean, you have our children for 8 hours a day, They're not
23:48
actually learning for 8 hours a day.
23:50
They're filling it with like a lot of other weird garbage.
23:52
And I mean, I have a boy, he's like wiggly and has a ton of
23:55
energy. My daughter has ADHD, same
23:57
thing. The kids are not getting like a
23:59
lot of recess either. They're not getting like an hour
24:01
for lunch. They're getting a lot of weird,
24:04
like, let's talk about our feelings and like, it's OK to
24:06
sort of navel gaze. And I also think that that is
24:08
something that's really deeply unhelpful for kids because now
24:11
many people view themselves as victims.
24:14
And I think that also is something that doesn't set them
24:16
up for success just in interactions with peers.
24:19
By the time they get to college, they're so indoctrinated in that
24:22
way that if you challenge any belief that they hold, you're a
24:27
villain. Yeah, I mean, I'm actually, I'm
24:29
wearing a Gulf of America shirt right now and I was just had to
24:32
drop my son at a Dungeons and Dragons thing in downtown DC
24:35
this afternoon. I was like, Oh my gosh, I might
24:36
get like, assaulted on the street.
24:38
Because, you know, it's funny because people assume that they
24:41
can be surrounded by only what they like, and they support and
24:44
they believe all the time. Like, I don't freak out and
24:47
punch people in the face when I see them wearing a shade.
24:49
I find it deeply offensive. But like, I can kind of hold my
24:52
emotions in check. But we have not taught children
24:55
or teens or young adults how to do that.
24:58
And I think, I mean, I can't imagine what it must be like to
25:00
teach because what I hear from professors when I hear from
25:02
teachers is they're frightened of their students.
25:04
They know that the kids understand the system and how to
25:07
weaponize that and what words to say to, you know, work something
25:11
through the disciplinary, see hearing process, get extra time
25:14
for tests. And you know, this.
25:17
Most teachers are not paid enough to deal with this yet.
25:19
And then when you kind of throw in a lot of the discipline
25:21
issues where everybody gets to sing kumbaya, we're not going to
25:24
actually enforce any real lines in the sand because we don't
25:28
want people to feel bad about themselves.
25:30
You know, we don't want to, you know, we don't want the school
25:32
to prison pipeline to become a thing.
25:34
Yeah. You know what?
25:35
If I'm paid $50,000 to be a math teacher, I'm there to teach
25:38
math. I'm not there to be an emotional
25:40
support dog, gender counselor, punching bag, you know, all of
25:43
those things. That's too much.
25:45
And so I actually feel really bad for a lot of teachers that
25:47
are being put in a terrible situation.
25:50
And you have a lot of them brought it on themselves, right?
25:53
We have a bunch of teachers who can't stop and moding too.
25:57
Right. I mean, I think about that
25:58
Thomas Sowell quote when he said when he was a professor at
26:01
Stanford, he had a student that came up to him at the end of
26:03
some semester and said, I don't know what you think.
26:05
And he said that was my proudest moment as a professor.
26:08
I mean, now it's right. Like I remember thinking when I
26:11
was growing up that my teachers, like lived in the school and if
26:13
you'd see them in the grocery store, it was super weird.
26:16
Now your teachers, you have to know everything about them.
26:18
You know. Well, like so and so is like now
26:20
going by this pronoun or got married or it like, it's just
26:22
like, I don't, it's not about you.
26:23
It's about like teaching the third graders how to read and
26:26
like, this is what the, you know how a pupa becomes a butterfly
26:29
kind of thing. It's not about you.
26:31
It's like it's all very weirdly narcissistic.
26:34
The emphasis on feeling. I think the problems go deeper
26:37
than what you have described. Yes, the students seem fixated
26:42
on their feelings, but in my experience, they start to rely
26:47
on feelings as a tool. So I'm teaching statistics.
26:50
I say, OK, here's data on this and data on this.
26:52
And you know, are they positively or negatively
26:54
correlated? And I kid you not, every
26:57
semester I'd have at least one student who would say to me,
26:59
well, I feel that they're positively correlated.
27:01
I think there is no feeling here.
27:03
There's calculations. You run the calculations.
27:05
It is or it isn't. And that makes them very nervous
27:08
because they're, they, they somehow are tuned into using
27:12
that as the, as the go to tool of how do I feel emotionally
27:16
about this thing? As you're talking about $54,000
27:20
for Harvard, it suddenly occurred to me, we've gotten to
27:23
this weird space that we're asking taxpayers to pay for
27:29
public education. We're not delivering the quality
27:33
that we were even delivering 1015 years ago.
27:36
And with things like the remedial math that you're
27:38
getting in Harvard, and you're getting that at other
27:41
universities as well, I'm sure in effect parents are having to
27:45
pay twice. As a parent, I've got to pay the
27:48
tuition to have the university teach my kids things that they
27:52
should have learned in high school.
27:55
Which means not only am I out of pocket for that, but in effect,
27:58
if that takes, you said the remedial math is 2 semesters.
28:01
If that takes a year, then really we're graduating people
28:05
with four year degrees that are really only three-year degrees.
28:09
Yes, and that is frightening because I mean, college is the
28:13
most expensive thing that anyone will ever, you know, most
28:17
families will ever have to pay for aside from their, you know,
28:20
their house. And so to be out of pocket, I
28:23
mean $80,000 for I mean, look at Columbia.
28:27
Like for my child to not be able to enter the science building
28:29
because a bunch of kids are having a temper tantrum about
28:32
some foreign policy issue. What the heck is this?
28:35
And I just, I actually, I serve as a trustee on a public
28:39
university board. And what has been fascinating to
28:40
me as I have been digging into this is that there is no
28:44
oversight. I mean, the systems, and I'm
28:46
sure you guys have seen this from the inside, have been
28:48
hijacked by faculty Senate's and by administrators where even
28:53
something with that is ostensibly supposed to serve as
28:55
an oversight role. You know, it's a sort of
28:56
fiduciary backstop. I mean, being a trustee was
28:59
described to me as you're a mushroom.
29:01
They keep you in the dark and they feed you shit.
29:04
And yes, we are expected to rubber stamp, but we are not
29:06
supposed to ask any questions. I mean, the faculty Senate, I
29:09
just read our faculty handbook, usually allows themselves
29:12
significant control over all different kinds of curriculum.
29:15
I mean, ours even said admissions, which horrified me.
29:19
And so there is the inmates are very much running the asylum and
29:24
I don't, I don't know what to do with that.
29:28
In your organization, Parents Defending Education, I'm reading
29:33
some background to it, and you say parents are frightened to
29:37
speak out about their concerns about public education.
29:42
What be? Because if they did, that would
29:44
solve a lot of the problem I think that we're seeing at the
29:46
higher education level. Why are they afraid to speak
29:48
out? We have seen so many instances
29:51
of people who hurt districts in particular that have really gone
29:55
after families where they are trying to they will retaliate
29:58
against a parent for speaking out.
29:59
I mean, we had the whole instance in 2021 with the
30:02
National School Boards Association sending the letter
30:05
to the Biden administration asking for federal oversight
30:09
over school board matters, intended, frankly, to chill
30:11
public participation and things like that.
30:13
Parents were still mad about masking and school reopenings
30:15
and what their kids were learning on Zoom school or
30:18
weren't. But we have also heard stories
30:20
of different teachers were telling against children as
30:24
parents have tried to opt their kids out of for, say, like,
30:27
sexually explicit material. There's a Supreme Court case
30:30
that's happening in the next couple days called Mahmoud V.
30:33
Taylor with Montgomery County, Maryland, where it's actually a
30:36
group of religious and Muslim families that said, you know, we
30:39
don't really want our kids to be learning all the really explicit
30:41
gender things. And families are being, you
30:43
know, denied the opportunity to opt out.
30:45
Or if a family does, the teachers will shame the kid and
30:47
say, well, you know, Johnny's mom doesn't want him to learn
30:49
about this stuff. You know, And so there is kind
30:51
of that public pressure element. But I mean, in Scottsdale, AZ,
30:54
there was a Superintendent that was keeping a dossier of
30:56
families that spoke out and expressed dissent.
30:59
He just, it was just discovered because he kept on an unsecured
31:01
Google document, there was a district in Michigan that had to
31:05
actually pay a woman $160,000 because they did get her fired
31:09
from her job. I mean, I, I got, so there's a
31:12
lot of examples like that. And so, and even, I mean, I
31:14
talked to parents because we litigate under associational
31:18
standing. And so when we sue a district,
31:20
it's parents defending education versus Arlington Public Schools.
31:24
And so the families in our district are anonymous, but in
31:26
in talking to families, they say, you know, I have a small
31:29
business. If people decide that they're
31:31
going to black blackball us, we're going to lose our house.
31:35
I mean, we'll be bankrupt. And so I think there actually
31:37
are very real world reasons for people to not speak out, which
31:41
is sad and tragic because we're at this weird kind of cancel
31:45
culture moment in time still that I'm not sure when it will
31:48
end. I would hopefully soon.
31:49
But it it's very, it's very dark at this moment.
31:54
So what's the answer? What if you could do anything
31:57
well within reason to to fix this problem?
32:00
What would you do? I mean, I, I do think there is a
32:02
role for, for people to start to speak up.
32:06
I mean, you know, it's funny because we have people send us
32:08
tips, we do public records. And then I am the bad guy.
32:11
I mean, we're the ones who get the hate mail and the death
32:13
threats, not like the parents who send us the stuff.
32:15
But I want people to see that this is the sky doesn't collapse
32:19
when you speak out. And in fact, it's actually kind
32:21
of empowering. I think for the most part,
32:22
Americans have sort of their civic engagement muscles have
32:25
atrophied. People have forgotten how to
32:27
engage with each other constructively.
32:29
You know, if I, if my neighbor has not mowed their grass, this
32:32
solution is not for me to call the the county and have, you
32:35
know, a cop come out and knock on their door.
32:37
It's for actually me to go knock on the door and say, like, hey,
32:40
dude, like, can you mow your grass?
32:42
Or like, you know, maybe I find out that like he broke his leg
32:44
and he can't do it and I help, right?
32:45
But it doesn't have to involve the government, you know, be at
32:48
the federal government, the state government, the local
32:50
government. We actually have to kind of
32:52
learn to talk to each other and to tolerate positions with which
32:55
we disagree. And that is not happening right
32:58
now. And so, you know, school board
33:01
members, you know, and I, as we sort of look at the, the whole
33:04
idea kind of what we started with, of closing down the
33:07
department, you know, moving things block granting things
33:09
down to the states, theoretically, you know, moving
33:12
things to the states will make education more responsive
33:16
because those people at the state level have to run for
33:19
election. You know, nobody at the
33:20
Department of Education really is, you know, they're not up for
33:23
election. They have to run into them in
33:24
the grocery store. But the state Superintendent,
33:27
the State Board of Education, the governor, you know, your
33:29
local school board members, they are people who really should
33:33
take into account what you care about.
33:35
One thing that I have kind of obsessed about for the past
33:37
couple years is there has been also massive consolidation in
33:40
school districts. In 1919, there were about
33:43
13,000. No, there were, there were about
33:46
141,000 school districts across the country.
33:49
Fast forward to now, there's about 13,500.
33:52
And so when you look at a district like, I mean, near me,
33:54
Fairfax County, it's the 11th biggest school district in the
33:57
country. They have a budget of $3
33:59
billion. They have 25,000 employees.
34:02
That's a multi. That's like a multinational
34:04
corporation. You know, that's, you know, I
34:06
mean, that's, that's insane. Of course, when you get up and
34:08
do your two-minute impassioned speech in front of the school
34:10
board, they don't care. So I think, you know, in my mind
34:14
there should be some things like that should be broken up so that
34:18
districts are smaller and they are more responsive.
34:20
So that's that's kind of one of my one of one of the things I
34:23
have been thinking about. I'm sorry, I'm blown away, $3
34:27
billion budget for a school district.
34:31
For a school district, right? And so you think about the, you
34:33
know, the, the volume of schools, the amount of, you
34:35
know, staff and, and just, you know, federal grants and
34:38
everything that's going through, that's like a lot.
34:41
And so when you are hiring someone as a Superintendent who
34:45
has done 10 years and APHD in an education school, that's, you
34:49
know, or is that, is that the right skill set for this job or
34:52
you need, do you need someone who was like, was the CEO of
34:55
McDonald's who actually understands supply chains and
34:58
things like that? I mean, to me that actually is a
35:00
more linear set of experiences than being somebody who has read
35:05
a real lot of like, you know, bell hooks.
35:09
What sorts of things right now is your organization working on?
35:12
We are working on, you know, just, I think trying to keep an
35:16
eye on what is happening with kind of all of the president's
35:20
priorities, which are occupying a lot of bandwidth right now.
35:24
You know, the executive orders are not law.
35:27
It kind of frames out the agenda of where the administration
35:30
wants to go to. But I think, you know, there is
35:32
going to be at this point, Sana, the ball has been passed at
35:35
Congress. There are laws that are going to
35:37
need to be passed. There are rules and regulations
35:39
that are need to be done through kind of the Federal Register and
35:42
the notice and comment period. And so I think, you know, then
35:44
that is kind of interesting to watch how these things are going
35:47
to unfold. DC is kind of an interesting
35:50
place right now because Congress is really not trying to lead on
35:53
any of these issues. They're sort of trying to follow
35:56
the president's signals. And so, you know, where does
35:59
that go? I mean, as we saw with kind of
36:01
the Harvard letter and stuff, not all of the impulses are
36:05
perfect. And so that is a problem in and
36:09
of itself because I think they're kind of undermining the
36:12
goodwill that they wrote into office on.
36:14
So I feel like for the next couple of months, it's sort of
36:18
hunting and killing mode to identify the different programs
36:21
that are in my mind unconstitutional.
36:23
So some of the title six violations where there has been
36:26
flagrant discrimination on the basis of race and national
36:29
origin and sex or or, sorry, race, ethnicity, national
36:33
origin. And Title 9 as well, with the
36:37
Biden administration's Title 9 rule that had redefined the word
36:41
sex to be gender. With the Biden rule paused
36:44
indefinitely, we now revert to Betsy's rule from 2020 that
36:49
still has some gaps in it, that has some due process issues that
36:51
need to be remedied. And so that's something else
36:53
that's going to need to be taken up.
36:55
But we are seeing many, many districts as well as many
36:57
universities and state agencies that are saying we don't believe
37:01
the presidency owes, we don't like Betsy's Title 9 rule.
37:04
We're going to #resist. And so there's going to be a lot
37:08
of showdowns about that. And I think something else
37:10
that's kind of interesting is even if a school wants to
37:14
comply, the public university that I serve on seems to want to
37:17
comply in good faith with the executive orders.
37:19
Because I do think there has been so much excess in, you
37:22
know, higher Ed in particular with a lot of the DEI stuff.
37:25
You know, I think a lot of universities and institutions
37:28
kind of want to back away from that.
37:29
And Trump can be the bad guy and the boogeyman and the reason for
37:32
them doing it. But it's sort of is what's in
37:33
their hearts anyway, that's running head on into what state
37:37
law is. That's why we're seeing the
37:38
showdown with Maine right now. Maine, Illinois, California, you
37:42
know, they have included gender identity as a protected class in
37:45
their states. A lot of states have minority
37:47
contracting laws or DEI reporting requirements.
37:50
And so all those state laws are going to have to be taken off
37:52
the books as well. And so I have been cautioning
37:55
people, I mean, dear God, don't hang your George Bush mission
37:57
accomplished sign yet. There is like a lot of stuff
38:00
that has to happen before we get to where we need to go.
38:03
I was at a university trust board meeting a few weeks ago or
38:06
trustee meeting. It was like a conference for
38:09
trustees and a lot of the advice that the speakers were giving
38:12
attendees was just wait it out, just keep doing your inclusivity
38:15
stuff. And so I think, you know, there
38:16
is a non 0 number of people are going to try and go underground
38:20
and keep doing their discrimination.
38:21
Just sort of, you know, taking the words off and say, you know,
38:23
it's the belonging department. Now we're cool.
38:26
And in my mind, they're the real bad actors because I think, you
38:29
know, that's and you know, like it's the men's Rea like that's
38:32
actually the guilty mind. They don't want to do what they
38:35
what the right thing is to do, like be it the more constitute
38:37
the morally correct thing or the constitutional thing.
38:40
And so identifying that stuff I think is going to be something
38:42
that's going to be very time consuming going forward.
38:45
While you were talking, I, I'm sorry I couldn't get it out of
38:48
my head. You said Fairfax County's school
38:52
district budget is 3 billion. The city of Pittsburgh, The
38:57
entire city of Pittsburgh is 1/3 of that.
39:02
And still probably too much. It's a mess.
39:06
I mean, that's why there are so many consultants that are out
39:09
there selling their services. You know, it's, there's a lot of
39:13
money to be made selling curriculum.
39:14
I mean, even, you know, you look at things like Southern Poverty
39:18
Law Center has had curriculum for decades.
39:20
They recently, they renamed it a couple years ago, used to be
39:22
called teaching tolerance. Now I think it's like learning
39:24
for change, but they have 10s of thousands of teachers in their
39:27
network that have, you know, lesson plans for every grade,
39:31
handouts, assignment. You know, it's there is this
39:33
whole, you know, this this whole business line of providing
39:37
things to make it turnkey for teachers to just push these
39:41
programs on kids and no one had any idea.
39:44
I think that is sort of the silver lining in a weird way of
39:47
COVID is that suddenly people had a window into what was
39:49
happening in schools because, you know, many of us dropped our
39:53
kids at the schoolhouse gates and assumed that everything was
39:55
fine and it was how it was when we grew up.
39:57
And it certainly is not. And it has been dismaying, but I
40:02
think it has given, you know, a lot of people a reason to get
40:04
involved in politics for the first time.
40:06
So that has also been something that's been kind of interesting.
40:09
Nikki, this has been fabulous. Thank you so much for joining
40:11
us. I am so long winded, I'm so
40:13
sorry. No, that's kind of perfect.
40:16
The more you talk, the less James talks.
40:19
And that's all the time we've got this week on Words and
40:21
Numbers. Until next time, be sure to
40:23
follow us on Twitter. Handles are in the show notes.
40:26
Join Words and Numbers backstage, the Facebook group
40:28
where the conversation continues.
40:30
And. Send us e-mail
40:31
wordsandnumberspodcast@gmail.com. Until next week, try to be nice
40:36
to one person. One person who doesn't deserve
40:38
it, Just one. And who knows, it may turn into
40:42
a trend. Give it a shot, you might feel
40:44
good about yourself. You could say you tried.
40:46
You tried. That's right till next week.
40:48
Can't take it easy. See you next week, James.