New WonkyFolk - Live From Arizona!
With special - off the record, sorry! - opening act former AZ Gov. Doug Ducey!
What's something the world might not need? How about a live recording of WonkyFolk where Jed and I do it as a keynote and take questions? Probably. We did it anyway.
Last month we went to Phoenix and helped keynote a Charter School Growth fund summit with a great group from across the country. You can listen below.
We had an audio issue the first few minutes. There is a bit of cross talk/music with the techs, but it's only for the first minute or so.
Otherwise the meat of the discussion is there. We screwed up a question at the end from a fantastic New Orleans charter school leader because we could not hear it well. We'll get to that on a later episode with guests in a month or two. It was our first live one, so be gentle. But we covered a lot of ground on politics, policy, school choice, and why the Dems are so out of position on an issue that should be a layup. Jed was throwing Aristotle references like darts. More notes below.
You can listen or read a transcript here, below or wherever you get your podcasts:
At 3:15, Jed responds to a question from Andy about school choice and how we break the link between place of residence and access to educational opportunity.
At 5:38, Andy provides some historical context about where the left and right used to be on matters related to school choice and attendance zones.
At 7:54, Jed talks about what Aristotle teaches us about how to drive a narrative for charter schools across a landscape as vast as the State of California.
At 10:05, Andy talks about how counter-productive it can be for some education reform advocates to embrace conflict for conflict's sake.
At 14:26, Jed describes the two great forces that support and defend the public education status quo.
At 17:11, Jed asks Andy whether he had overstated the charter school momentum story in his recent article at Education Next.
At 20:46, Jed shares his view that charter schools' standing varies greatly by states, even across red states.
At 27:37, Andy shares thoughts about how charter schools can best navigate the red/blue divide happening across the country.
At 32:16, Andy responds to a question from the audience about prospects for school choice in Virginia.
At 38:30, Jed answers a question about where the charter school movement should be coming together to develop a shared agenda for the future.
At 44:00, Andy and Jed take a question about school choice and charter school developments happening in Florida.
At 50:38, an audience member asks Jed and Andy to share thoughts about what are the kinds of school choice that we should be embracing.
At 58:48, Andy and Jed take a question about what we need to do to improve the charter school narrative in Black communities across the U.S.
At 105:38, an audience member asks a final question about what advocacy organizations need to do to increase the number of charter school parents who are voting.
Show Notes:
Previous episodes of WonkyFolk can be accessed here.