Season 2, Episode 15: Who’s driving the narrative anyway?

Foreign.

Hey, Michael.

Hey, Diane. I hope you're doing well. We got to celebrate Passover the weekend, and it was yet another reminder of how long we've been holed up during this pandemic and yet how almost, I mean, dare I say, like normal some of this feels. Whereas last year, I remember Passover, there was so much uncertainty and fear of the unknown. We were trying to just get food to, you know, do a very isolated Seder and, you know, just basic rhythms of our lives. I remember our kids last year couldn't be on playgrounds. They were all taped up. And this year, after the Seder was over, we just ran out to the playground and they got to play for an hour. So it was very different.

Well, Michael, I completely resonate with that experience. We had a pre Easter celebration with my son, who was home from college for a short bit, and my mother in law, because we won't be together next weekend, but she is fully vaccinated. And, you know, some of us are on our way and we're having some spectacular, spectacular spring weather here. And so being outside is bringing a lot of hope and optimism. So I agree with you. The feeling is really different. And hopeful.

And hopeful. Well, it's certainly important. And obviously we launched as class disrupted in response to the pandemic. And, you know, at the time we wondered if we'd finish a first season before the pandemic was over. And now we're well into the second season. We're cranking along and it feels like we're starting to circle back to some of our main themes over and over again, because while new stories emerge, Diane, some of the underlying issues feel the same from my perspective.

I think that's right, Michael. And it really gets into this first topic I wanted to bring to you today because it's only, it's. It's one we've certainly addressed before, which is the CDC guidance. And now we've got new guidance again, revised guidance. And, you know, there's some interesting reactions from the union leaders to it and a whole set of dynamics going on here. I'm really interested in your take.

Perfect. Well, the topic I want to dig into is the announcement from Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona about the Summer Learning and Enrichment Collaborative and how summers are used in education is something we've certainly talked about before. But I think there's like a bigger story here, and I think it's actually a bigger story in both of these stories, which is who is driving the narrative around how schools reopen and how they will serve Their students and their communities.

Michael, I love this, I love both of these topics. Let's dig in. So important. And let's start with that CDC guidance. The big headline here is there are now over 130 studies that suggest three feet is a more appropriate distance for spacing children out than six feet. And the CDC acted in accordance with that and issued new guidance. This matters because the agencies previous 6ft guidance effectively meant that most schools would be unable to open fully because there just isn't space to have all the students in person and spaced out that far. That caused a backlash by folks wanting students to be in person. I will tell you Michael, that our buildings barely get above 50% capacity with the six foot requirement in place. This revised guidance caused the unions, which had previously been praising the CDC guidance, to say effectively they weren't convinced it was safe for teachers. And now, you know, questions are emerging and whatnot. And so we're at this really interesting juncture where the federal government has basically paved the way for almost all schools. You know, there's definitely some nuance here with high schools like I run and whatnot, particularly you know, and in high Covid transmission areas, but basically pave the way to full fully open most schools. But it's unclear if the teachers in some locations are in accordance with this depending on their conversations and the guidance they receive and the dialogue that's happening. And so there's still a significant amount of uncertainty that is reigning this conversation, Michael. And you know, I am, I am really close to this on the ground and so I am very curious to hear your perspective.

Yeah, so I'm obviously a layer up from where you are and I'll be really curious to hear how it is operating with this whiplash I think we could call it. But in my mind this macro issue, if you will, raises a few questions. First, it raises the questions we posed a few episodes ago, which are our teachers essential workers and isn't showing up in person and taking care of children part of the job for parents struggling to work themselves? I think they certainly expect that it is and numbers seem to be rising that way. Second, though, I think it raises the question of trust along two different avenues around whether we trust the CDC guidance. And the first, from my perspective is that I do think we need to delve a little bit deeper into the quote, listen to the science mantra that a lot of us have used throughout the pandemic. Because the reality is that science isn't a static field, it's one that thrives on. I mean, you Teach this observation and categorization, hypotheses and then experiments to prove or disprove the hypothesis. And then consensus eventually builds around a theory which society largely accepts until enough anomalies to the theory emerge that we realize the theory has to be adjusted or scrapped altogether. And the reason I bring that up is I think we get into a bit of a trouble when we say the science says because things are never decided and actually so clear cut in science, they, they, they are always changing. And a better and more honest phrase might be our current understanding from the sciences. Yes, we're actually seeing this play out right now, by the way, in this very issue, because scientists are trying to figure out how do the new, more transmissible variants of COVID impact children. Right. And play into these recommendations. So there's no question our understanding is going to continue to evolve, particularly about something that's so new in our lives. Second, I think this gets to the issue of who do you trust and who is being asked to do the trusting, if you will. And so, you know, do people trust the, quote, preponderance of studies, the cdc, which itself, you know, as you pointed out, it's changed guidance rapidly for a variety of reasons over the past year, some for political reasons, some based on new evidence. And so, you know, I think, I think there's questions there. Where do you trust the unions in this particular case? And who is trusting, you know, just to call it out. We know that many black families feel scarred by the pandemic, the economic challenges that have disproportionately hit their communities. A legacy more deeply, you know, than the pandemic of being poorly served by public education. And they have considerable lack of trust in, quote, the system, period. But not just like schools, like institutions. Right. Organizations. And when authorities have changed guidance on a lot of people through this and things that we thought were true have proved not to be. I think there's a lot of lack of trust in authorities, institutions, and that produces a lot of fear and understandably so I think now just last sort of, last couple thoughts, which is I do think that there's one more piece to this, which is that when schools were let out about a year ago, a little bit more, there was a tremendous outpouring of goodwill toward teachers as parents realized all the value that they contribute and how hard the job is. And I just have this worry that the unions are systematically burning through that goodwill over the past 12 months because. And I worry what it's going to do to schools over the longer time horizon. But I also think it's fueling the desire for school choice over a longer time horizon. I kind of think they've overplayed their hand because most parents are so desperate to get their children back in school and they see schools around them that have, in many cases, safely reopened and they're seeing the headline about these studies. And a while back you asked, why is it that education is sort of the low end of the totem pole, so to speak, in government and society relative to other fields. And I guess I worry that all the realizations so many of us had about the value of educators last spring, and I hope I had, that it would elevate the field. I guess I worry, Diane, that they'll get erased a little bit by bitterness and distrust if the unions aren't careful in playing some of these political hands right now. Your thoughts?

Wow, there's a lot there.

Yeah,

no, it's good to hear your thoughts. And my gosh, that last piece is something I worry about and think about every day. I'll loop back to that. You know, it's the profession that I'm in that I love, that I care about. And like I said, I'm really close to this issue because. And so I appreciate your sort of knowledge and balance and your parent perspective. And you are someone I trust. So there you go. Let me, let me offer a slightly different viewpoint on the CDC guidance shift from my seat as a school systems leader. I haven't actually read or heard much coming from people like me out there about this right now. And I will just say our schools in California and Washington are both in states that have been later to open schools. You know, that said, our schools, which are middle and high schools, will open for the first time this week in over a year. Yeah. And as many, literally to this point as many others have described who've gone before us, there's incredible amount of joy coming from students and families and teachers and school leaders. Not all of them, but from some of them at this opening. And there is some simultaneously a persistent and palatable fear from many of these people. And it is a fear, Michael, that it is hard to describe how deep and real and persistent it is and just really resistant to conversation and dialogue and, you know, any of what we're talking about here. And so, you know, our approach has been really to focus on personalization and choice. Not surprising to you in this process because everyone, you know, it's who we are at the core, but it's also, you know, a huge part of our reopening. Plan because we know everyone's different. They all need something different. They want something different. And so speaking of that plan, we have been working on our reopening plan for months, literally, Michael. And so this is the part that I think gets like missed a little bit here. When the CDC announces the new guidance on essentially the eve of our reopening, I must admit I did not welcome it. And the reality is that, you know, I've been bargaining with our union for this return, which was an incredibly difficult process and has been for so many, as we've seen a lot of those stories play out in the media. And part of that agreement, which we logically built on guidelines from state and federal, includes the six feet distancing. And so the idea that I would have to go back and rebargain that, honestly, I just, I can't even fathom that idea right now. Add that to the idea that all of our buildings are set up for the 6ft distance. Every plan is built around it. Every plan we've submitted to the state, we've shared with our families. This is just one component of the layers of safety measures that are in place that are all intertwined with each other. This is months of work that have been centered on this guidance that we've worked incredibly hard to build community confidence in and trust around and understanding for. And so, you know, the idea that we would switch on a dime with pretty fundamental changes, it just doesn't feel realistic to me as a systems leader. You know, maybe I would feel differently if I were in a state where my schools had been open for some time and we had sort of gotten used to it and maybe in a comfortable place and would be looking to iterate on our plan and, you know, shrink those distances, bring more kids back. But for us to have such a significant piece of guidance, change overnight without warning and under circumstances that honestly feel a little bit political, I don't know if they are. I read the studies, I get that part, but it still feels a little political. I will just say it did not feel supportive of the work that, that my team and I and our community has been doing. And it didn't seem to acknowledge the reality of what this day to day experience looks like right now. And so let me just sort of lead back to where you left off, because, you know, this in some ways is the story of the pandemic in schools. The narrative of what's happening in schools has been essentially controlled and told by the media. And the media's incentive is to get the big headline and scoops, you know, and so quite frankly, you know, them scooping this and getting, you know, I'm waking up and reading this, it's just not the way to build trust and confidence and lead communities. And so in my experience, you've got a ton of strong educational leaders who are literally working around the clock in their communities to bring people together to build trust, to have an asset based approach to our students versus all of the deficit based doomsday predictions that we read about every day and at every turn we're having to respond to and address the next big headline. And so one of my hopes is that between the White House and the new Secretary of Ed, we're going to start seeing a more thoughtful, hopeful, coordinated, trust building narrative about education that will be supportive of what we're trying to do on the local level. And that might be an interesting segue. Speaking of the new Secretary, Michael that's perfect.

That's perfect. But thank you first for those thoughts. I think getting that perspective and what it feels like on the ground is really important because you're right, the viewpoint of a school system leader has not been represented terribly well or at all often in a lot of these media stories, which is also says something, I think.

Yeah.

So but let's dive into this next topic and perhaps it'll sound confusing to someone listening that I see a natural segue here. You know, why an announcement around Summer learning would connect, but I'll get there in a moment. But just the story itself is fairly simple. Courtesy of the 74 Secretary Cardona announced a new Summer Learning and Enrichment Collaborative, which is a partnership between the Department of Education on the one hand, and then the Council of Chief State School Officers, which is basically the heads of state education associations, and the National Governors association, which is obviously the association for the 50 governors, to help states use the recovery funding to develop high quality summer learning and enrichment programs for all students, with a focus on addressing the needs of student groups disproportionately impacted by Covid. Now, on the one hand, there was something discordant about this. I'll confess where my cynical side went up, because it feels like a bunch of loosely facilitated professional development conversations that won't have any real action items to them or any true north, when in fact there were some really great things done last summer, you know, the National Summer School Initiative, for example, that worked really well for a lot of students. And I guess my first reaction is why wouldn't we use the bully pulpit speaking of narratives to highlight those and push the narrative in the direction of something high quality at the same time and at the exact same event. Cardona said that educators, and he specifically said this should not just replicate the traditional school experience. And this is a quote from him because I thought it was pretty powerful quote. Any summer learning enrichment experience really needs to be re engaging students in a community of learners that's done through experiential learning, getting outdoors, doing projects while maintaining the health and safety standards that are required to really re engaging them with experiences. End quote. Now, I think those are the exact right things we ought to be talking about, in my humble opinion. And I think it points to this larger vacuum right now or uncertainty, which is there's really no one driving this narrative in a consistent way that allows us to frame a creative way forward or, you know, or with any consistency outside of sort of top level messages of reopen or don't reopen, which. Right, Diane, Aren't particularly helpful in getting the deeper substance we need to address right now. Your thoughts?

No, they aren't. And you know, I think what you're pointing to, Michael, is one of the things we were both really hopeful about with Michael Cardona's appointment. And that is that he's an educator. And so when he, when that quote, you read like he's been in summer school just the same way I have, he knows that it's not good. You can't just do what we've always been doing. That's not good. And so, you know, we have, I think, entered this with hope that he could maybe carry an important narrative. Unfortunately, we haven't quite seen it yet. Not only is no one driving a clear, coherent, consistent narrative, but perhaps equally important, no one really has good ideas for what to do or capacity to work on the good ideas. Michael, like I find myself in some of those meetings that you're referencing, and I think your kind of worst fear about them being these lofty conversations that don't really lead anywhere, you know, is not an unfounded fear. I can tell you from firsthand experience that while most people, you know, for most parents and families, the experience of school this year has ranged from abysmal or non existent to subpar, with some notable exceptions. For the people running the schools, it has been exhausting, expensive and literally all consuming. And for most, there just simply has not been time or capacity to, to plan for a completely different and responsive summer experience that even begins to approach the vision, which I agree with you, is the right one and certainly aligned with what we value. And so I think it comes back to the reality that we don't. We have a serious design problem in our education system. And in general, we don't invest in or prioritize R and D to improve. And when we do that, R D is happening to schools and their communities instead of with them, which means it doesn't stick. I mean, some of those great things we saw last summer were outside of schools in, you know, other people doing them. And they don't stick because they're not coordinated. And they, you know, and, and this is a challenge we keep seeing. And so, you know, at the risk of being really down here, we both were so hopeful when the pandemic began that it could be the catalyst to really change this dynamic. But so far I don't think we're seeing a ton of it. But we are committed to finding the hope. And that's how it happens.

We're trying to be about the hope.

Let me just share this. I actually am really interested in see a window of hope in some of these conversations that you're pointing to that could potentially open with the opportunity for innovative assessments and accountability this spring. We've talked about this previously and I just want to come back to it again. I'm generally the one who doesn't like these big standardized assessments, but because I think they haven't done well. And I have been in some inspiring conversations with state and local leaders who have some really good ideas, ideas on this front and are doing some really good work. And as we know, assessment literally drives everything that happens in a school. So if we can get some improved design here, it could really matter. And I point to this example because it's also the place where the public, parents in particular continue to line up against standardized assessments, which is providing that persistent public demand for change in the realm. And for me, that's one of the necessary ingredients for redesign of our school system that we often don't see that public pressure around many of the other elements, for example, summer school. And so, you know, I love this high leverage opportunity with assessment. I'm curious if we're going to get more parent pressure on some of these other fronts, which I think is a needed ingredient in order to get better design.

Gosh, I always learn so much from you, Diane, on this. I think we need to do a deeper episode also on design and what that looks like in a schooling community with right folks. But hearing you just sparked a couple other thoughts. And then I want to end where you ended. The first one is I, you know, I wrote this piece for Forbes a week or two ago basically saying that a lot of schools were suffering from what is is called threat rigidity response, where you get paralyzed basically. And part of that is to overcome it is you actually really need to separate a team that is completely separate, that is not thinking about the day to day response that can view something as an opportunity but is also tasked with resources. And I don't think we do a good job of that in education. To your point, the second thought I had is around communication and on my other podcast, future you, we got to have my old mentor David Gergen come on the show. It'll be out in a few weeks. But. But something he said around this was interesting where he said at the White House they have the press secretary who responds to the day to day, but then they have a director of communications who in the ideal White Houses is focused on the long term arc of narrative and communication and sort of planning for the bigger picture. And just listening to you, I was thinking we need some more of that in our schools that have this dual track of being able to respond and have a direct access to parents and the communities that you don't have to communicate through the media, but also this other perch, if you will, that that is more long term focused. And then the last thought just on your assessments, look, I think you're exactly right and for so long I think in education we sort of forget what drives behave and that incentives do have a powerful impact. And you know, we fund seat time, not learning. We measure point in time assessments that can at best give only a high level sense of what's taking place on the ground and at worst are totally untethered from the work a child may have actually been based on where they entered in any given year. And so I like this possibility and I just hope we see some real narrative shaping and driving from the secretary. But then each of the school system leaders around embracing this opportunity and so that it doesn't just say, hey, we're giving assessments because data is important. That's what we're hearing right now. We need it to be much more specific on these are the possibilities for how you could use those assessments.

Yes.

And get a, a much fuller picture around how children are doing on the ground. And here's a suggestion for where we might start that narrative research reset. As you know, I think it was on Friday, Beverly Cleary, the children's author who for me was just a, you know, her books were a wonderful inspiration. She passed away at age 104, which is incredible, incredible life. And in her obituary I was reading that she was held out for significant swaths of her early schooling because of a bunch of illnesses. I think there was smallpox maybe or chickenpox or things like that. And as a result, when she came into her school, she didn't know how to read and she was put and labeled as a slow reader and things like that. But somehow she was able to sort of, as she described it, have it all come together when she was in third grade. DIANE so she was very far behind. She didn't really start reading in third grade. And today we would call that learning loss. But holy cow, if Beverly Cleary at, you know, third grade can put it together and then make the contribution to literature that she did. If we don't use that as a point to say, hey, who you are at a point in time is not who you are, you can use education to drive mastery and build your passions and contribute in this way to society. I don't know what we're doing, so I just think it's an opportunity. So with that as a segue, what are you reading or watching right now?

DIANE well, yeah, what a great point on how learning needs to be fixed and time needs to be variable. So thank you for that. MICHAEL I am sticking with fiction right now. For my own sort of sanity and mental health. I'm doing that. So I picked up the Four Winds by Kristin Hannon, like so many, I loved her best selling novel the Nightingale, that was set in World War II. And this newest novel is set in America during the Great Depression. And one of the things that great fiction does for me is it pulls me into history through a personal story. And it's fascinating to be reading about the hopelessness and suffering caused by the great droughts of the 30s. And impossible not to consider the parallels to this pandemic, not to mention the economic and immigrant debates raised in this novel that are as real and present today as they were nearly 100 years ago. So I'm deep in this story and I got a bunch of history books.

Very cool, very cool, very cool. You're coming into my world. I finished Kissinger, by the way, so I'm taking a little break on my end and probably reading some education books for the next few weeks. But my wife and I finally saw A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. And I'm just whenever I watch something about Mr. Rogers, who I got to meet as like a really little child cause my dad worked for pbs, I'm always struck by how ahead of his time, in many ways he was just, you know, the recognition of how you talk to kids and that you should discuss tough topics with children directly, and you should respect what they bring to the table, and you should listen carefully to them and not brush them aside. And you should remember what it's like to be them, to see the world as they do. And, you know, even as you take on these topics directly, do so at that right level. For a child, knowing it's the first time, they've often engaged with some of these weighty things. And, you know, his fundamental decency in such turbulent times would be a nice way for for for all of us to march forward. And something we certainly took took away from it. And now, you know, I think that's a good place to leave this episode. And, and to everyone out there, thank you again for joining us once again on Class.