Eliza Shapiro on School Closures, the Big Picture -- and Probably Getting Coronavirus

boyfriend lives in that apartment. Don't let the charm fool you. In this year's one hundred Most Powerful People in Education, Shapiro ranks up with senators and ceo s, and her listing there reads no one on the education beat is a sharper or more effective thorn in the side of city officials. Plenty of us take our school systems for granted, but we owe it to ourselves to know what's going on.

Like many New Yorkers, I get overwhelmed trying to understand the network of exams, state and local laws, charter schools, racial politics, and labor issues that make up the New York City school system. A conversation with Eliza Shapiro is a great way to start untangling it all. Under Bloomberg, there was a lot of change what had he wrought. Bloomberg completely transformed the education system in New York and

many people feel for the better. Yes, so much change happened that the record is mixed, but there were some really controversial changes that were met with a lot of resistance that research has borne out were quite successful, even if quite painful. So, for example, no one likes to have their neighborhood school closed for low performance. It's incredibly

emotionally painful for people who have memories of the school. However, one of the only ways that research has borne out to improve schools that have resisted improvement and changed for decades. Sometimes closure really is the difference maker, and Bloomberg cast away the politics of it, which are really nasty and not easy and said, tough nuggies, we're going to do this.

And in some not all cases, but in some cases, it really helps schools get better in places where kids have not had a good option for a long time. When you get to the point where it's that bad that you're actually going to close a school, you disseminate them among adjacent school districts. I'm assuming or you entirely

recreate that school. It's maybe it's in the same building, but there's a new principle, there's a new theme, there's new teachers and new everything closesn't mean you shut of the building clothes, means everybody gets fired and you start over again, potentially pretty much. To me, that's one thing

I'm always I mean, I'm very pro union. I'm in a union, but the the proprietary nat ture of the teacher's union, it reminds me of the police where they kind of build a moat around their fiefdom here and they want to be completely self regulating, which is ridiculous to me. I mean, you are an employee of the

City of New York. You work for the taxpayers. Yes, And one of the biggest changes between the Bloomberg approach to education and to Blasi's approach to education is to Blasio has a very very accommodating relationship to the teacher's union, which is incredibly politically powerful here. Every year more and more so, even I would say, I would say the election of Donald Trump has created a much more passionate membership, and many teachers feel that public education is under attack.

Teachers all over the country feel that way, and that's why they gone on strike. If you're a teacher in New York, you happen to be a part of one of the most powerful unions in the country, and so you have a lot of leverage and power. What it hasn't meant on the ground is that, yeah, it's a lot harder to close the school. It's a lot harder to come up with education policy that could be disruptive

without the union signing off. And Bloomberg just at a certain point, for better or worse, gave up on that. And that's not part of the de Blasio calculus. Blasio began to dismantle much of what Bloomberg had done. Is that correct? Yes, I don't think you could find two people who disagree more on foundational aspects of what public education should be. I mean, de Blasio said, we're not going to close schools anymore. We're not gonna embrace charter schools.

We're not going to be as focused on tests or on sort of what data tells us about how schools are doing. We're not going to create smaller schools from large, underperforming high schools. But the problem is, over the course of the de Blasia administration, more and more research has come out that backs up some of the controversial, really really hard fought Bloomberg policies. We know that some of that stuff was working. What's one that de Blasio has

tripped away that people have said was a mistake. Yeah, so I think there's one really important example. So, you know, there is nothing harder in public education than figuring out how to take a catastrophically under performing school and somehow make it okay for kids to go to. There's no silver bullet. This is the hardest work in public education. Bloomberg, you know, broke up schools, made them into smaller schools, close them, tried to get teachers out, tried to get

principles out. But this made people in the communities really angry. And to Blasio came in and said, don't worry, guys, We're not going to do all that stuff that made you upset. We're not them. We're not going to do all that stuff that made you upset anymore. We're going to take an entirely non controversial approach to school improvement. It's a program called Renewal and ended up costing the city almost eight hundred million dollars and it just uh

largely did not work. So do Blasio said, We're going to flood under performing schools with resources and money and coaches and after school and that's all great, there's nothing to say that more money. In most it did not.

And at a certain point you have to say, we're spending eight hundred million dollars and we're sending thousands of vulnerable kids into schools after year that the city knew vulnerable and described vulnerable so low income kids, homeless kids, black and Hispanic kids, kids who in other words, deserve a lot better from their government. And you know, it was clear, i would say, from the first year of this Renewal program in that it just wasn't coming together.

Principles were confused at what to do. A lot of schools were not improving. Some did, some that were on the bubble of actually being functional did, but a lot of them didn't. And that meant that, you know, you could have gone your whole way through high school in an underperforming school that the city knew wasn't actually going to be acceptable, and that has been a big black mark on this administration's education policy, and it's really reverberated

across the country. People are saying breaking up schools is tough, but a renewal like model that could even work. Um does the New York City school system spend the same amount of money per student system wide, so there is a baseline per pupil. New York City spends a fair amount of money on on a paltry amount of money. No, it's not the problem. That's not the problem. I mean, I think everyone who works in the school would say

we need more. And there's every year in Albany, enduring sort of the state legislative session, there are advocacy to say we need more, we need more. Governor Cuomo has added more money. I think what's really hard is that in New York City we have a massive bureaucracy that oversees by far, the largest school system in the country. It's one point one million kids, and the bureaucracy has basically never really functioned properly like ever in the last century.

And every few years there's a massive reorganization and we think we're going to streamline it and get it right this time. But it's really hard to build a system around the huge variety of types of schools, types of kids, vast needs in the system, and it's sort of this constant bureaucratic project. And you know, Bloomberg recognized that, I think pretty early, and he got rid of this system where there were thirty two separate districts within the school

district that we're all making their own decisions. He standardized. Again, that was like a very hard fought win. It's sort of like six to one, half a dozen the other I mean, it's almost impossible for this bureaucracy to effectively run a system of schools. On the other hand, when there were thirty two elected school boards, there was all this corruption and patronage because know, you sort of do neighborhood by neighborhood politics in New York and that gets messy.

So your cousin becomes the accountant for the local school board. I mean, it's all vastly exactly, and that's New York and that's bureaucracy. But you know, I think there's no denying that more money would be helpful, But in a lot of cases it's leadership, teacher quality, organization, figuring out also how the money is spent right for renewal. It's like, well, you know, maybe school A needs a new guidance counselor, but School B just needs like a math coach because

this math teacher is not getting it. And sometimes more money can lead to sort of a one size fits all, So there needs to be more money with better planning, and those two can be really tough to get together. My dad was not in the teachers in my town. In fact, when he crossed the picket line, some of his own friends and colleague through things at him, and they threw objects that you like, batteries you put into

a toy. And I don't mean to sound too libertarian here, but it's like, why doesn't the union want there to be some oversight by the taxpayers, by their duly elected officials of their rank and file. Why, I mean, do they have a point that there's some politicized filter that's in place when when teachers and people are not promoted or they're fired or whatever. Has that been proven? It's a great question. I think, as with all things in this system, there are two genuine sides to the issue.

So I think it is true that in the past and I'm sure today there have been documented incidents where principle throughout a teacher because they didn't like them. Has my reporting shown that that is like a rampant crisis. No, And I think that, you know, the New York City Teachers Union. Only in the last decade or fifteen years have groups really gun to question their power and say, why is it that we have this group that you know, city Hall has to do a handshake with them on

every education policy. Uh. You know, the teachers union has a job which is to protect the teachers. The people who lead the teachers union genuinely care about children and want the school system to get better. I don't think there's any question about that. But there are different priorities when you run a school system as a chancellor, as

a mayor, and when you run a teacher's union. There are some very valid questions that have been raised about can we get rid of a teacher who's really demonstrated themselves to be not qualified sooner. That's different from a teacher who you know, maybe had a tough first year teaching. This job is enormously difficult and really wants to get better and need some coaching from a teacher who you know has it, just doesn't have it, can't control classroom

or or or isn't showing up every day. You know, these are these are different types of cases. It's like the police would you would you would have No one would want to get rid of bad cops more than the good coups. Totally. But I would just say in an ironic way, the teachers unions got a boost even though Trump and the Admistration have gone after them. There is this profound sense of unity, rallying cry, which is

what a union needs to be powerful and strong. That Trump has helped in gender and politically, it's actually a pretty good moment for the teachers. Who wants to be a teacher today, I would imagine somebody who is a glad for punishment. I mean, listen, this job is so so hard. I spent a lot of time in classrooms and probably in a school one full day a week, and I mean just the behavioral stuff, just like getting

used to learning how to control a classroom. You can't just like sort of be a badass and walk in and you do it in a chair any chance, certainly not. Um. You know, I think there's a lot of new younger teachers I'm meeting who really have like a like a social justice point of view, who want to teach in underperforming schools or schools a lot of homeless kids and really feel like this is the best way, which I

certainly don't disagree with. This is a really good way to make a difference in your community if you're concerned about the state of the world. So there's a lot of young teachers who say, like, I'm going to give it my all in this school in Brownsville where thirty percent of the kids are homeless. Um, there's a new trend of having more cultural responsive education in school. So that's you know, more books by authors of color, or when we learn math, can we look at how you know,

the ancient Egyptians approached it. And I think there's a lot of people who are coming out of school who have learned this and it's not mumbo jumbo. I mean it's real. Who want to bring it into schools and modernize the schools because you know, if you walk into like sort of a typical New York school, it's still like a relatively can feel like, um, it can feel a little bit trapped in time. What change would you

like to see. I mean, my pet obsession right now is homelessness, and I sort of don't understand why the d o E continues to plot along sort of having a broad, unofficial office that looks at student homelessness. How can it possibly be that there's a hundred four thousand homeless kids and it's not really clear who's responsible for

them at the central office level. If there's going to be a central bureaucracy, how can it be that one of the most powerful offices in that bureaucracy is not the one that deals with the single most vulnerable population in the city. So, you know, I and I talked to officials about this, and I just say, like, how have you guys not gotten it together organizationally on this. You have a large bureaucracy with a lot of money.

What else can you do? Um? But I mean to your point about schools and poverty, I mean, I think in the sort of charter school movement and education reform movement of the last two decades, there has been this hope and somewhat call it a fantasy, that schools can trump poverty, and it's just not really true. Schools are

being asked to perform tasks that are impossible. What I find very often when I go into high poverty schools or school a lot of schools with lots of homeless students, or schools with a lot of kids who are just struggling academically, is that the principles are highly organized. Actually, some of these principles were appointed under Bloomberg's reign because he was very very focused on high quality principles, which I think has worn out successfully. Who runs a school

really really matters. But you go into these schools and you spend hour in the principal's office and you just watch a highly affected person who's spending every forty seconds putting out a different fire. And then people ask, well, like,

why aren't the test scores of this school higher? But if you have a parent coming and saying I just lost my housing, or we still haven't gotten a shelter placement or um, you know, we don't have enough food, it's really hard for these schools then to both essentially act as social workers and case managers and you know, be instructional leaders. We're asking a lot of educators in schools that are segregated by race, poverty, housing status, and the best principle in New York City can't do all

of it. New York Times Education reporter Eliza Shapiro. One of my other favorite conversations with a journalist on Here's the Thing was with the New York Times Stephen Lee Myers. He wrote the excellent English language biography of Vladimir putin the News are and is now the Times Beijing bureau chief. There's no question that the biggest challenge to the United States now is China. It's the economic challenge, it's the

military challenge, it's the trade challenge. I mean, it's it's the issues that you're seeing this administration deal with, and and Obama administration was dealing with it as well, and whoever comes next going to be dealing with because China is a country that really firmly believes in its destiny and um and it's a system that is even more authoritarian than Russia is, and more efficiently authoritarian than Russia is,

and that makes them more powerful. To hear my interview with Stephen Lee Meyer's text Myers, that's m Y E. R. S. Two seven zero one zero one. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the thing the Eliza Shapiro told me that one of the most controversial proposals floated under the Deblasio administration is the outright elimination of gift didn't

talented programs in the New York City public schools. So Blasio, facing pressure, as he so often does from his left flank on social issues, He's been facing all this pressure from advocacy, you have to do more to integrate the system. So kind of as a way to get people off his back, he said, Okay, I'm gonna you know, classic government. I'm going to create a task force. They're going to study integration, will get back to you in three years.

So the task force gets back to us and says, you know, get rid of almost all gift and talented PROGRESSI City. They said, because this Gift and Talented test, which is given to kids when they're four, they don't believe that that's a fair measure of gifts and talents, And because they believe that putting kids who are academically accelerated in different classrooms is inherently exclusionary and leads to segregation.

So they went. In fact, this group went much farther than the mayor and immediately the mayor, even though he commissioned and appointed this task force, said oh my god, I barely know them. I'll get back to in a year. I mean, I genuinely do not believe that to Blasio believes that the city should get rid of gift and talented.

But there is a new coalition of advocates experts, I mean, people who studied the issue, who say the idea of gift and talented is inherently exclusionary, and we can have more magnet schools, we can have more enrichment for all kids. But this is this is the third rail of education politics in New York City, and I don't know how far they're going to get. Where have you seen? I know,

I was we we in our research. We so that you mentioned Lawrence, Massachusetts and Campden, New Jersey's places where there was some real progress. Describe that for me. Well, So, Campton is a fascinating example because it is um one of the absolute poorest, most desperate, most dangerous cities in this country. It's sort of infamously a really really really tough place to live, violent, violent, and just incredibly poor and sort of sequestered and isolated, and kids have you know,

I have to deal with gun violence. You know, it can be really dangerous to walk to school. The schools have long been under performing. The school board there has long been played by corruption. So you know, I spent some time there recently to sort of say, like, how can the schools get better here? It's a little bit of like, if you can do it here, you can probably at least apply a lot of this stuff to other places, because Camden is really one of the roughest

places in this country. And what I learned when I spent some time there is that and this is sort of my answer to this question. I get of like, well, what works, right? So what I found there is what works is when you have people who run a school system who are not ideological, who say like, okay, so we have all these different reforms in different ways of improving public education. But the unions believe A and B, and the charter people believe X and Y and never

like to shall meet. Right. So actually there's good ideas on all sides of this issue, even though education policies and is so contentious. So let me give you an example in Camden Um there are some really high performing charter schools but they operate differently than almost any charter in the country. That is because they are zoned charter schools. So UM typically a charter schools what is ourship to

get an expert's opinion, what is a charter school? So a charter school is a is a public school that is privately managed and typically they are you get in through a lottery system that's open to um anybody in the city. So there's a lot of charter schools, for example in Harlem, but technically anybody can apply and if you are lucky enough you know, to essentially win a golden ticket and get into a good charter school in Harlem, you can go and who runs them? Who runs them?

So sometimes it's sort of what we call like mom and pop charters. Like one founder decided I want to start a charter for example, that helps kids with autism, which is a charter here. Yes, I mean they basically go through a process to get a charter and then they get typically they get public space in New York City, although some are in private space that they pay for.

Typically there they have this lottery system. So what it sometimes means is that parents who know about the lottery will sign up for the lottery, but many parents don't know or there's vulnerability where like you might not be able to just get it together to fill out the application and understand how it works, and sometimes you have to line up. I mean, there's all these sort of different ways that have benefited lots of poor kids, but

sometimes not the absolute needius kids. So, for example, in Camden, instead of having a lottery system, you'll have a charter that is open to kids um own in a neighborhood, so it sort of operates like a typical zone public school,

yet it's a charter. And so what that means is that kids with severe special needs, kids who live in incredibly tough homes, kids who are homeless, go into the high performing, excellent, well organized charter and they can't sort of be counseled out or kicked out or told maybe this charter isn't for you, go to the public school, because the charter actually serves that purpose. So it's incredibly interesting hybrid model between a traditional public school and sort

of a newer, innovative charter. And that's helped a lot of kids in Camden, and it could probably help a lot of kids in New York city. But you don't see that happening here. No, And that's because it's the union situation. What's the strength of the union situation across the river. It's not that far away. It's it's just just not as strong of a union. I mean, I don't think that's the only reason that they got it

together in Camden. But the politics of education in New York are so profoundly entrenched, and it's hard for that. I mean, I think I think there are two really powerful sides in New York. This is not the case in every city, but in New York, you have a really powerful union. You actually have a very strong mayor. We have mayoral control and he runs this system. And there's no school board, there's no powerful school board. You have a very powerful charter school sector that has a

significant lobbying arm. And sort of these three big groups are constantly fighting, and it has just become difficult, because of the complex, crazy politics of our city for these sort of three groups to meet and say, um, well, you have a really good idea about this, and I have a really good idea about this, and we can combine A and B to make a smart policy. See. But it just doesn't really happen. I mean, New York politics are really wild, and it's a hard place to

make hybrid policy work. And I found that sometimes in smaller cities, with um less powerful unions or less powerful lobbying groups, or less powerful charter groups and just a smaller centralized government, it's just easier to get stuff done. I mean, again, that's what we've been talking about. It's just really hard with the system of one point one million kids to make good policy for everybody. What about Lawrence, Massachusetts? What did you observe there? What they did was said, Okay,

we have this chronically underperforming district. Enough is enough. What we're gonna do is have somebody come and essentially take over this district, someone who's a really, really experienced educator, who has experienced in school improvement. We're going to take over this district. And here's kind of we're going to lay down the law. We're gonna say that we are

transforming the expectations for this district. We're bringing data to bear. Uh, we are adding community supports where they're needed, but not as in delas renewal, sort of a one size fits all. We're saying this school could use this, but that school could use that. And you know, just incredibly effective government and bureaucracy to say there's one person who's responsible for this, all of the work's going to come out of his office. You know. Sometimes I just feel with school improvement it

has to be small scale. To start with the renewal program, Delasi said we're going to turn around a hundred schools in three years. It's just not how this works. I think one of the biggest mistakes was not figuring out what worked well in ten to fifteen schools and then applying it to two hundred schools. But again, what you have in Lawrence and in Camden is this non ideological approach.

You say, yes, we're gonna have community services, which some education reform people scoff at and say it's all about the tests or it's all about high expectations. And we're going to approach education reform in a non ideological way and say we support charters and we support data, and you just have both because both sides have good ideas. It's also reflective of I'm not going to name them, but there were two public schools, one in my current neighborhood and one on the Upper West Side where I

used to live. That the parents have formed some parent organization and they've taken over the public school and they've really fluffed it up to a fairy well where the parents they want their kids to have new microscopes and some of the moms and dads are gonna front the money boom. They're ready to check. And their whole mentality was we got the dough and they didn't want their kids necessarily to go to private school. So they have kind of taken over these public schools and made them

like really pretty sweet. Have you observed that? Yes? Absolutely. I mean this is like it's like, why wouldn't you I mean, private school in New York City is really really expensive. So if you have a high quality yeah, if you have a high quality public school with a strong parent teacher association and a super powerful, active, you know, group of parents who can raise you know, literally as much as one million dollars annually at fancy auctions, why

wouldn't you save yourselves? I mean, but this is like where we get to the haves and have nots of this system. I mean, we talk a lot about resources and money, and that's a huge part of it, and PTA fundraising is a huge part of it. But we're

really also talking about is power. Which parents have power, time, connections, organizational prowess to pick up the phone and call your city council member, call your state senator and say, you know, our roof at ps whatever is leaking, or we really need some new laptops for these kids, and we're going to make a stink until we get them right. That is, that is a parent who inherently has a little bit more time, money, privilege, etcetera. There are parents with power

in the city and their parents without power. You remind me of when my daughter, my older daughter, Ireland, went to private school and we get there and we said, oh my god, I'm so sorry. I know we're coming to you to come in mid year. We're coming for the spring semester, and uh, I'd be so grateful. I mean, I'm really late. I'm not pretty thick. And then one said, well, we do keep a couple of admisitions mid year in our pocket distint case you never know. I mean, we

do have people who that this does happen. You mean you're not the first person. And I said, oh, thank you. There anything we can do, and the woman looks at me and there's a breath and she goes, we could use a new faculty parking lot. Oh my god. And I was like, I'm sorry, and she said yes, she said the parking lot and she points out the window of her office. She was we would really like to get that paved. And I was like, done, Oh my god. Done. I mean, wrap it up. I'm done. I'll do that

for you. I'd love to do that for you. And I paved the parking lot of the private school. Um, you don't have children. I don't. If you had children, where would just send him to school? Yeah? It's interesting. You know, I went to public and private schools in New York. So what I have thought about if and when I have my own kids is the culture of New York City p of its schools is a bubble.

And one thing I found with the kids who had gone to Sands the whole way through in Brooklyn is that a lot of them had absolutely no sense of the wider world. We didn't talk about you know, we're in this borough where there's like massive poverty. We just said, like, things are good for us. And I think you were like,

are you going to deer Valley this year. Yeah, I would also say that in some public schools that are sort of almost like referred to as some my private schools, there is probably a lack of understanding of the broader system in which your school sits. So whatever I would want for my kids would be like, Hey, you're part

of a system and part of a city. And that's what I see when I I would, I would, I don't know, like I mean, I mean, they I can't imagine how like I mean, that's how I just feel, Like, what do you do on Saturday when you wake up? You just stay home all day? I literally don't know. Um, I try to leave New York all the time, and then I do, and then I think it's awful. No, I mean, I would, I would like to raise kids

in the city. But but what I really feel is that, you know, this is like a broader theme of my work and my coverage is you know, when I cover tough fights about reasonings or integration or you know, admissions changes, there's a huge variety and how parents and families see

themselves as part of a city. Are you just about your school on your neighborhood and making sure your p t a is well funded, making sure everything's hunky dory there, or are you part of this massive system where if there are terrible schools or underperforming schools or cash strap schools on the other side of your district, how much do you care about them versus the school on your corner where everything seems to be fine. Um, what's the

best way of measuring student outcomes? Yeah, it's tough. I mean, test scores are a really blunt measure. There's been a huge political backlash to using test scores to make almost

any decision. Part of Deblasio is pitch as a mayoral candidate in there was a lot of frustration with how much Bloomberg had prize tests, and de Blasio said, Okay, like, not to worry, folks, I'm no longer going to make decisions in terms of promoting a student, in terms of assessing a school, in terms of assessing a principle primarily or mostly according to tests. So the stakes of tests were significantly lowered, but it is the single best diagnostic

tool we continue to have. I mean, graduation rates to tell us something, but of course they're only for high schools. I think part of the problem with the backlash against test scores is that if you don't use test scores, things get a little fuzzy. So you'll have people saying, well, what is the trust level at this school? That stuff is important, but it's very very hard to measure, and it takes a lot of time and in sort of deep connections within one school to figure out what that means.

How much do the teachers trust the principle, how much do the teachers do the kids trust? Of fiction between that between principles and teachers some I mean, they're all these kind of things that are really hard to measure from the outside. Like you walk into a building and you can tell it's functional by how the principle is interacting with the math teacher. Or you walk the hallways and you see is the writing and art on the hallways being updated frequently or is this from last spring?

I mean, there's sort of all these soft, soft measures. I mean, I learned to tour schools from the former chancellor, Carmen Fremia, who was spent fifty years in the classroom and had all these really amazing tips and tricks you

would never think of. But it is incredibly hard to go into one school and spend a day and assess it, because schools are these crazy ecosystems where everything is always changing and a kid could be disruptive on Monday and by Tuesday he's the smartest kid in the one person when he walks in the door at the beginning of that year, and another person when he walks out of it. You talked about very young people exactly, and it's constantly changing.

It's really really hard to assess. And that's why, you know, unless you'd like to spend eight hours a day in schools for a year. Test scores do tell us something and test scores and evaluating teachers. So this is a part of the backlash to test scores is that teacher evaluations have been caught up in that fight. So the backlash to testing sort of advocates against testing and said, well, you can't possibly use the students test score to evaluate

how other teacher is teaching them. And I think there's probably an argument that if you're a gym teacher and you're student is not doing well in math, and maybe you're not a bad gym teacher, but if you're a math teacher and your kids are of them or more are not able to pass the third grade state math test. What's going on on in that classroom? And you know, we've had this saga in New York over the last

ten years, how should we evaluate teachers. We've gone, we've flipped the pendulum every which way you can imagine, and we don't really have a clear system today. I mean it's constantly being negotiated behind closed doors in Albany of what our evaluation system should be. So we don't have a coherent teacher evaluation system. But there's a strong argument to be made that strong evaluation systems that are not you can have a strong evaluation that's not a punitive evaluation, right,

but saying how are your kids doing on tests? How are they doing on internal quizzes, how are they you know, what's their portfolio of work look like? To take evaluation seriously and not say you lose your job if you don't have the rating we want in this semester. But to have a strong, comprehensive evaluation system, yeah, I think that's important. Well, one more quick question. Richard Carrnza, the

head of the New York City School System. I always feel like, and I mean always feel like that you're the person that's drafted to play quarterback, the most porous offensive line in the NFL, no matter how talented they are. That the number one pick, they won the Heisman Trophy, and they've got the shittiest offensive line in the world. It's just you're just going to get the crap beat out of this and be a political punching bag. Is that true? Yes, yes, you will be. It is really

hard not to be. Background. He is a New New Yorker, brand New Yorker. He'd barely been here before it took over the school system last year. He had been a superintendent in Houston and in San Francisco, and he had been administrator in Tucson, Arizona, and done well and done reasonably well, although I would say he didn't necessarily have sort of really clear, huge signature winds in those places. I mean, I think he did interesting work. But this

is his biggest arena. It is the biggest arena. And we're almost two years into Kranza's tenure, with only two years to go because de Blasi will be treum limited out and he does not have a signature initiative yet. One thing that I think is really challenging is that Karansa believes more in the power of disruptive structural change probably than to Blasio does. But de Blasio runs the school system. Kranza doesn't. And so I actually think there's a lot that these two guys don't agree on, and

so not a lot is happening. He's been doing a lot of ducking. He's been doing a lot of ducking. He's been doing a lot of talking. So he came in, guns blazing, saying, folks, I'm an outsider and I'm here to tell you your school system is segregated, which is correct, and there's a lot here that I'm gonna take some big swings at and we're just going to have to deal with it. And a lot of people said, all right, like show us what you've got, But we don't really

know what that is yet. That's the thing, I mean. To Blasi's biggest education initiative, pre K for All, all mostly tied up in a bow before Kranza came to town.

Renewal was created and failed essentially before Kranza got here. Um, and now we're sort of in this moment where you know, de Blasia ran for president, he came back home, we don't really know what his next big education thing is, and I think he has a limited amount of time again because implementing change is so i'm consuming and glacial. So if you've got two years left to say you're going to take big steps to desegregate, the clock is

really ticking. Yeah. And the and the last thing I want to say is that, to me, this is the problem is that in addition to STEM, in addition to you learning all the things we want you to learn and all the things you want to learn in school, I want you to learn how to think critically. And what we have now is a critical mass of people who don't know how to think critically. And they're the ones that got this guy elected president of the United States. Yeah.

I mean, what I think is really challenging and explosive about this moment in New York politics is that we are a liberal city and we are reckoning with oh my god, Donald Trump as president and all of these people the day after the election got involved in their p t a is in their school boards and their parent education councils. And three years later, what we see is some change, but a lot of conflict. And you know, people really wanted to get involved and make a difference

in their schools. And I think a lot of people have been frustrated and felt stymied and felt disappointed. And what I really feel I'm covering right now is like a is like a liberal city sort of at war with itself over at schools. And it is really just this singular, intense moment for the school system. And I think it's largely because of the broader political climate. Eliza Shapiro of The New York Times on the strange confluence of national and local politics and the kids caught in

the middle. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing for Fort