Episode 98: Pluralism in American Education. A Conversation with Ashley Berner.

We ask what it would take to stop treating public education as a zero-sum culture war and start funding many legitimate school models with shared expectations for quality. We trace how America became an outlier, then get specific about what knowledge-rich curriculum and real intellectual work can look like in classrooms and microschools.

• educational pluralism as a tax-funded mosaic of school options held to a quality bar 
• why the United States diverges from global norms in public education funding 
• the 19th-century nativist backlash against Catholic schools and the myth of “neutral” common schools 
• five philosophical arguments for pluralism, including justice, civic obligation, and the role of civil society 
• how pluralism differs from today’s school choice politics and zero-sum thinking 
• why skills-based instruction fails without background knowledge in history, geography, science, and literature 
• what “joyful rigor” looks like, plus examples from charter schools, IB programs, and curriculum-aligned assessments 
• why great materials often fail in practice, including low expectations and habit-driven lesson-making 
• how to balance core shared content with curiosity, discussion, and student-driven deep dives 

About our guest
Ashley Berner is Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and Associate Professor of Education. Palgrave MacMillan released Pluralism and American Public Education: No One Way to School (2017), and Harvard Education Press released her new book, Educational Pluralism and American Democracy: How to Handle Indoctrination, Promote Exposure, and Rebuild America’s Schools, in April 2024.

Ashley Berner has published dozens of journal articles, book chapters, op-eds, and a widely watched TedX talk on citizenship formation, academic outcomes, pluralism, and the political theories of education in different national contexts. She led the design of the Institute’s School Culture 360™ and ELA and Social Studies Knowledge Maps™. She represents the Institute’s work across the country and consults regularly with international, federal, and state-level agencies, non-governmental organizations, and school systems.

Connect with Ashley
Educational Pluralism and Democracy
Pluralism and American Public Education
The Myth of the Common School
Separation of Church and State

About the podcast
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.

Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.

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Transcript

Cold Open Culture War Roots

SPEAKER_02 0:00

There was a full-blown culture war of the 19th century that saw the post-Civil War Republican Party making common cause with the Ku Klux Klan and other grassroots. I mean, the Klan was firebombing Catholic neighborhoods.

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_04 0:16

Welcome to the Kindled Podcast. I'm Kelly Smith. I'll be your host today, and I'm excited to be talking to Ashley Rogers Burner. She's the director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Educational Policy, and she's also an associate professor of education at the school. She's the author of multiple books, many, many journal articles and book chapters, op-eds. Her latest book, Educational Pluralism and American Democracy, How to Handle Indoctrination, Promote Exposure, and Rebuild American Schools, just came out a couple years ago. It's really good. I'd recommend reading it. We're going to be talking about it in this episode, along with a lot of things that Ashley's brought to this conversation around pluralism and what that can look like, what how schools can be different, but all still part of a central tax-funded system. She's studied other countries and learned from them. Ashley holds a degree, degrees from Davidson College and Oxford University, and she's just an incredible person, excited about learning. So I know you're gonna love this conversation with Ashley Rogers Burner. Ashley Rogers Burner from Johns Hopkins University, thank you for coming to join the Prendic Podcast today. We're excited to talk to you.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Well, I'm excited to be with you. Thank you so much for the invitation.

SPEAKER_04 1:29

Ashley, you wrote a book. I'm gonna plug it right away. It's called Educational Pluralism and Democracy, which feels lofty to me. I think a lot of people listening have not heard the phrase educational pluralism. Can you just introduce us to this concept?

Educational Pluralism Around The World

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Absolutely. So, and I'm so glad you asked. So, educational pluralism is a different way to structure public education than we're familiar with. It simply is a way to structure public education in which the government funds a wide variety of schools and holds them all to a similar quality standard. So, what does this look like in practice? The Netherlands funds 36 different kinds of schools equally. And at least every few years, some of the testing has to be the same so that they ensure kind of common conversations across all kinds of schools. UK started funding non-state schools in 1834. They did not actually create state-deliberate education until 1880, 1870, excuse me. But Alberta, Canada funds a wide variety of schools, including Inuit schools, including homeschooling. Australia and federal government's the top funder of independent schools in the country. Actually, it's by far the norm around the world. So to give some statistics, I do work at UNESCO occasionally, and 81% of the world's school systems that UNESCO tracks have a pluralistic approach. There are philosophical reasons why pluralism is appealing. I'm happy to like list them, but that's the gist of it. It's a a kind of mosaic of school options that meet different families' needs.

SPEAKER_04 3:19

I mean, it's incredible. It blew my mind when you were explaining this to me the first time. And then as I I've written been reading your book, it's like, this is, I mean, like you say, it's the norm outside of the United States. So it begs the question, and I think people that are listening may know in varying degrees they're familiar with the US system, but why are we, which is known for pluralism in other contexts, right? Like multiple denominations, melting pot, you come here, abide by the values, work hard. All of that seems to say pluralism to me. And yet in education, it feels like we're kind of the least pluralistic or the bottom. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

You're a hundred percent right. I I myself had no idea that we were outliers until I lived abroad as a young mother, well, a single mom with two little girls. Um I did my my master's and then later my doctorate at Oxford, and my kids went to a Catholic girl school that was supported by the state. And I was like, what? And then I actually wrapped this kind of pluralism into my my doctoral thesis. So how did we end up being the outliers?

SPEAKER_04 4:29

Exactly.

How America Became A School Outlier

SPEAKER_02 4:30

So we used to not be outliers. Okay, so between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, those who were allowed to be educated, I always have to bracket that, were educated in very distinctive schools. So we funded Lutheran schools, Catholic schools, congregationalist schools, Unitarian schools, secular schools, and in New York City, even some Jewish day schools that were funded by taxes. And when Horace Mann, whom everyone's heard of, talked about one common school model, he was rejected because people liked the distinctiveness. After all, if you assume education can't be neutral on value, there's always some value being embedded, even if it's thin, even if it's implicit, we need to have a variety. So Horace Mann did not win, win the vote during his ele his lifetime. But in the middle of the 19th century, so many million Catholic immigrants came to the United States. And some Catholics was fine, some Catholic schools were fine, but eventually the numbers reached a tipping point in some places, like Boston, where 50% of the kids were Catholic and expecting Catholic schools like mo Europe had, and like we'd always had.

Nativism And The Myth Of Neutrality

SPEAKER_02 6:03

I mean, the Klan was firebombing Catholic neighborhoods. And so in the 1870s, 80s, and 90s, almost every state legislature in the country defunded Catholic schools. There's a lot of technicalities to that, but they defunded Catholic schools and and created the district school model that we have today.

SPEAKER_04 6:23

It's amazing because people are gonna, you know, when people say, okay, we don't fund religious schools in the U.S., I think we think of it as virtuous, right? It's like separation of church and state. We want to allow everybody to have I mean, I've heard that was how I grew up believing this. Yes. And to learn to learn this history is act is nothing short of shocking because it wasn't at all this high and mighty ideals. This was your standard, like xenophobic backlash to people that are different.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

It was the nativist movement. It was the nativism of the 19th century. And it gets even worse because those same legislatures that said, we're not funding sectarian education, which was code word for Catholic, turned around and required Protestant Bible readings, Protestant prayers in the public schools. So when my mom went to a big public high school in the 50s, they had prayers. They were Protestant prayers. But if you were Jewish, Catholic, atheist, or Jehovah's Witness, by the way, the Jehovah's Witnesses were the most suing community before the Supreme Court in the 20th century, you knew this was normative values. This was cultural majoritarianism. And it's interesting because when the Supreme Court, I think, very appropriately secularized the public schools, evangelical Christians took that as a huge loss.

SPEAKER_04 7:42

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

And that's why we have some of this get the Bible back in schools, get the prayer back in schools. You know, actually the real mistake was the culture wars of the 19th century.

SPEAKER_04 7:53

Yeah, it's almost like we're still shaking from that. And to align it, I mean, this is serious accusations. I don't think you would do this if you weren't carefully on the scholarship. To align this, the the know-nothings and the nativist movement of the 1850s with the Ku Klux Klan. I mean, this is documented. This isn't just speculative stuff on the internet. I mean, there was an actual attempt to harass, to hurt, to exclude, to diminish, take away from groups of people from, and and we're we're talking about Ireland and Italy, I think, a lot of the Catholics at the time.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

And some Germany also. But you know, that it's really quite shocking that there's a big fat book by Philip Hamburger, who's a constitutional lawyer called The Separation of Church and State that charts this. And of course, Charlie Glenn, who was a civil rights activist himself, who wrote the The Myth of the Common School, talked about the nativist influence on this. The Kindled Podcast is brought to you by Penda. It makes it easy to start. As you said, it shakes us out of all the ideas we did here on the Kindle. This is the norm. Don't forget to follow us.

SPEAKER_04 8:58

And if you'd like more information about starting, okay. So now I've got a picture of what it happened in the US and how we got to where we are. It's sobering and sad to recognize that there's some hate and some darkness behind it. Um, because I think me and and most people listening to this are gonna say, I would love to live in a world where choices are generally trying to be made to lift people up and support them. And that's what education, of all things, education should be that way. So to try to keep people out or keep people down feels dark. And and that's a part of our history, I think we have to acknowledge. But also, I I love what you're doing now. You're saying, okay, what could it, what could it look like? What was the alternate history? So give me some of those. You said there's philosophical reasons for pluralism. I think what you're saying is instead of just there's one white Anglo-Saxon Protestant school, uh, obviously I think we all feel wrong about racial discrimination, but maybe there's a Protestant school. There's different values. And now we say there's there could be a Catholic school, there could be a Muslim school, there could be a Jewish school, and they all have different values, different theologies, but they're all funded by the government. They're all supported in a way that they're kind of part of a pluralistic ecosystem. I mean, g give us that vision and why you feel so driven

Five Principles Behind Pluralistic Schooling

SPEAKER_04 10:12

by it.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, so so the principles of pluralism, if you were to kind of step back and say, well, how do you justify this? Like make the case. I would say the first, the first point is that education simply can't be neutral. That you know, the Protestants thought they were doing something neutral with the district schools, but they weren't. The secularists thought they were being neutral, but they're not. Even the questions that we don't ask in a school are instructive for kids, not talking about God. Well, we're teaching kids something. So if it can't be neutral, and our Supreme Court has said that the government cannot establish orthodoxy, then it's right to fund a variety of schools that reflect different values. So that's point number one. Point number two is that we have to make that justice requires equal access to schools that meet your family's needs. So we have in this country school choice that's called having the money to move to a suburb or enroll in a private school. Uh, we make it very hard for low-income families to exercise choice under the zoned residential assignment approach. So the second principle of pluralism is this is justice. And you mentioned this earlier, Kelly, that our other public benefits aren't controlled in that way. We don't say we're giving you a snap for to support nutrition and you have to buy this you have to buy butter and you have to buy this brand of peanut butter. No, we there's there's some guardrails, but we we don't control people's choices. It's about agency. But the third the third principle of pluralism is one that a lot of a lot of libertarians struggle with, which is that education isn't a market like other markets. It's not like going to buy a pair of jeans. Why? Because what you end up with affects me and my future. And so it matters to me that your child knows how to read. It matters to you that my child knows the three branches of government and can can you know articulate that. And so it's about the shared obligations that we have, the reason we tax people for other people's children. And the notion of a of a shared good is the reason that justifies some government oversight of academics. Now, we can disagree about what oversight looks like, but that's the justification for it.

SPEAKER_04 12:30

Well, no, I appreciate it. And I want to, I do want to get into that. I think there's there's places to look. But I think it's helpful to have made the case, right? Here's three reasons why uh this is a sensible. All right, I have two more.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

All right. All right. The fourth one is that pluralism brings civil society into the picture. So De Tocqueville, who was a first observer of American democracy, said there's a tyranny of the state and there's a tyranny of the individual. Democracy is at risk of both of those. But what will save Americans is their use of voluntary associations, the church, the synagogue, the bowling league, all those things. And we know from political science that those institutions are protective of democracy. They stand between the state and the individual. So pluralism says non-state actors, voluntary associations matter in delivering education. So that in and of itself, pluralism says, is a good. And then the black.

SPEAKER_04 13:28

Before you jump onto the fifth one, that to me sounds like the argument for microschools. So thank you for making that argument. You know how I feel about microschools.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

I do indeed. And so you're living it. You're living pluralism where you're actually, you have created a model of education that it doesn't work for everyone, but it needs to be part of the fabric because for some families and some students, it changes their trajectory, their learning, their learning capacity, their interests, their engagement, and we hope their long-time outcomes.

SPEAKER_04 14:01

And for a non-state institution that wants to bless the lives of their children in their community, I mean, we've seen, I've been shocked with like the diversity of groups that come to us. Say we've already got a group. We've got an indigenous community, we've got a HOA, we've got a workplace with people with kids. I mean, you can imagine different ways people come together and there's kids, and we love our kids, and we have a set of shared values. So we want to do our microschool, right? And so just to see that sort of emerging just exactly as you're describing, it's it's fascinating to watch the you know, the theory and the practice kind of meet meet in one. But hit us with the fifth one, Ashley. I want to- I didn't mean to.

SPEAKER_02 14:41

Well, the fifth one will also be music to your ears because it is that there are two, there educational pluralism works. When you balance that agency and mission-driven schools and a high regard for academic quality, those two things do good things for kids.

SPEAKER_03 14:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

And it's a careful calibration and balance. My my friend Charlie Glenn put it this way: that you you separate the ethos of the school, which need not be shaken, from the academic content of the school. I mean, there's obviously overlap, but those two things are different.

unknown 15:16

Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:17

Being able to pull back enough to say, as I the subtitle of that book is exposure is not indoctrination. So, but we are more comfortable with our kids being exposed to ideas we disagree with if they're in an environment that helps them make sense of that.

SPEAKER_03 15:31

Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

So all of that, and my institute at Johns Hopkins consequently has a huge focus on distinctive school cultures and rigorous academics.

SPEAKER_04 15:41

Yeah. Well, let's get into that. I think that's the part that I think listeners are going to be because uh everything you've said so far, I think aligns basically with with what you're hearing on this this podcast. And if you're following Prenda, you kind of know. Um, I guess maybe before we do, talk talk to me a little bit about how pluralism, this pluralistic vision would differ from what we're seeing right now in what we're calling the school choice movement. And and school choice, as everyone listening knows, is having a heyday. I mean, this is the strongest period for choice. Because, like you point out, rich people have had school choice forever. They can just pay tuition or move somewhere, but everyone has school choice, at least in some states, uh, and it's growing. Yeah, what what are you seeing? How does that differ from this pluralistic vision that you're talking about?

Why School Choice Turns Zero-Sum

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Yeah, it's a really good question. So I think the biggest difference is that a pluralistic system doesn't contest people in it do not contest the presence of other providers. And in fact, they're not competing with one another, and they are not zero-sum gaming it. So right now, you listen in on our education policy debates, and whether a state has school choice or not is largely a matter of political power. And you have the legitimacy of non-district schools attacked. You have the any alternative to the district norm is taking money away from district schools. It's a zero-sum competitive game. You have on the other side people talking about failing public schools and just deriding teachers and you know what a huge, horrible amount of energy is wasted on the the on slogan slinging and even weaponizing our research. And living in and operating in other countries, many times they actually have an aversion to comparing academic outcomes between different sectors. Um their purpose is helping all schools be as strong as they can academically and culturally. So it's it is a it's a much more generous space.

SPEAKER_04 17:48

Yeah, it sounds beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

Yeah. I mean, there's still fights and there's still backs and forths, but it isn't about legitimacy. Yeah. It isn't about weaponizing our words and our research.

SPEAKER_04 18:00

A default assumption that, look, we're all here for kids. Kids need different things, different value systems. It's okay. We don't have to fight. I don't have to do, you know, school for for you and you don't have to do school for me.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

That's right. And putting it and put it in a different way, educational pluralism means we're going to be tax paying for schools that we wouldn't send our own kids to, but that meet somebody else's needs. And as my as my colleague Angela Watson, who studies homeschool, has found a lot of families are sector switchers anyway. Right. With homeschooling for one year, going back into public schools, having two kids in very different sectors. It's absolutely because kids are different.

SPEAKER_04 18:39

Kids are different. And parents know that best of all. They're they're seeing it firsthand. You mentioned you have two, you know, these two daughters that I would imagine came different.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

So very different. You've got four.

SPEAKER_04 18:50

I've got four, yeah. And they're uh they're different people, I will tell you that. Yeah, well, fascinating. Okay, so let's talk about, yeah, what if you were then now the czar? Let's say we waved the magic wand, we've eliminated all rancor and pettiness, everyone's everyone's in it for kids, and we we agree to this pluralistic approach. Schools can emerge from various non-state communities, from groups of individuals for whatever reason. They can have different value systems. Saying, I don't think I hear you say, and I definitely didn't read this in the book, like just do whatever you want in all of those settings, right? You're saying there is a role of government in this, and it's it's mostly focused. You just used the phrase educational content. I know you guys study curriculum. Give me that case, because I I want to hear you sort of argue for what is it that you're you're really promoting here? It I feel like it's an elevated look at accountability around what content is transmitted to kids.

SPEAKER_02 19:49

That's really good. Good question.

Knowledge Rich Curriculum Beats Skills Only

SPEAKER_02 19:51

So if you read the book, you will know that I am not happy with the skills-based approach to the humanities subjects in particular. And this gets back to history in the early 20th century. As our school systems were expanding, we had a choice about the content. We made the choice about structure that we were gonna fund one kind of school, but we made we had a choice about content also. Will we democratize the liberal arts so that every kid has access to deep, meaningful content in the major subjects? Or that was option number one, or option number two, we're gonna focus on the process of learning, the skills of learning how to learn, the kind of process over content. Suffice it to say that the latter view, the process, process view one in our educational establishments.

SPEAKER_04 20:39

So I should think of like this is how to write a five-paragraph three-prong essay. It doesn't matter what you're writing about, as long as you get the right words and sentences in the right order, you'll sort of learn the formula. That's how I wrote in high school. I did that.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Yeah, but but but but the question would be were you reading things that were really worth reading? And what we find in our country is a consequence of the skills approach. Kids are reading bits of anodyne texts. They are disconnected from history and culture. There's I've taught kids in college, not at Hopkins, but in a large public university, who didn't know that Mexico was contiguous to the US. When you consider the percentage of 12th graders about to launch into adulthood, the 12th grade percentage of kids who are proficient below bar in US history is 13%. So we are not teaching content. We have adults who did not learn the continents or who understand photosynthesis. Now, I'm I I hated memorizing the periodic charts. Okay. One of the reasons I I'm not a chemist, I didn't like it, but it was still important that I know what chemistry does. And so, so anyway, so so back to what What happened when we focused on process? We now have generations of adults who never had a Socratic dialogue. They never had a conversation that said, What is, I don't know, you make it, you know, what is Kendrick Lamar saying about the human person? You could take a rap song, right? What the big questions of the human experience, which connect us to other people and other times and other places. Do you know that a majority of young people don't know which century the Civil War occurred in? I mean, this is the obverse of what a liberal arts curriculum would give you. And you know what? Skills-based is boring. It is just plain boring. I've looked at so many published curricula where it's, you know, again, an anodyne passage with find the main idea, provide evidence of who cares? These are not rich characters, they're not engaging, they're not inviting kids into competence about something. By contrast, when my children were in kindergarten and first grade in the UK, every kid in the entire grade in kindergarten had to know about the Egyptians. But it wasn't just fact, fact, fact. They knew about the pyramids, they knew about the terminologies. And the Greeks and Romans, when they got to that, they knew more about Greek and Roman culture than most college students. That's the knowledge-based approach.

SPEAKER_03 23:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

This is a struggle. It is countercultural in our country. The easy thing is to say skills, skill, skilled. And now we hear even the governors, the NGA talking about durable skills. That is the easy default in our country. The hard thing is giving rigorous and engaging content for teachers who had who didn't have it themselves. I mean, my institute spends a lot of time working with systems saying, great, you can adopt this great curriculum, but you gotta give teachers the support they need to actually make it live.

SPEAKER_04 24:01

Okay, so I gotta ask. I mean, well, basically, you're saying we're doing terrible at getting historical facts, scientific facts, geographical facts into kids' brains. That's that's failing. We're we we really haven't prioritized it. I mean, I felt like a lot of my school was remember these things and then regurgitate it back on a test. So part of my brain is like, well, I I think it was there, but I was definitely disengaged. I did the minimum amount to get an A and I got A's, and then I shot off my brain. I, you know, as I think many people do. Yeah, I guess I'm curious, like, are we are we even doing the the skills part well? Because math and English proficiency are also low, right? No, we're not.

SPEAKER_02 24:40

We're not. But you know, when you consider this, the biggest driver of all those skills, comprehension skills, is background knowledge about the world.

SPEAKER_03 24:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

So this again is an equity issue. If you are from a well-resourced family, your family reads to you, they talk about current events, they take you to museums, they play games. If you're from a first generation family, you've got two jobs, you're working, you know, you don't have it's the background knowledge piece. Yeah. This is and so schools aren't giving that to kids, they don't have it. Now, here, let me just say one more thing that's really interesting about these systems. It is about making sure that kids can make meaningful choices. So most of these countries have a very small percentage of kids who graduate high school and go to university. Why? Because they've all had a high bar and they've passed exit exams in, say, 10th grade, ninth or tenth grade. So they've learned the major subjects and then they can say, I know enough about these subjects. I want to be a master welder. So I'm gonna spend the next four years of my life being exquisitely trained, or a watchmaker, or an engineer. They're very aligned to the business community. So essentially, what our school systems do is we foreclose any of those options because we've underchallenged our kids.

SPEAKER_04 26:00

Right. Yeah, I see. Okay. Well, I want to just get into there's so many things I want to talk about. Let's let's make let's make this live, Ashley. Here we go. I can't see it. I can't see a way that school could possibly have instilled in me um a love of, you know, an awareness of Shakespeare and an appreciation of uh where countries are in the world. There was a level that was met, there was a bar set. It wasn't, and and I think you would say teachers weren't prepared and there was no real structure around it. Uh I don't know. Like, how do you actually do this? Like, give us like the case of what it what does good look like? The best case, and then I definitely my follow-up is going to be okay, how how in the world could we expect that from like everyone? Uh these are these are the questions.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a good question.

Models That Combine Rigor And Joy

SPEAKER_02 26:54

So the best case for me would be in the UK, where they actually have some required content that's um every few years assessed. And so they actually have exams that are content specific, unlike ours. So they keep kids in the in the real meat of it. But in our country, I would say the the best case scenarios are some of the charter schools like Success Academy, which talks about joyful rigor. And if you have never been in a Success Academy classroom, you should go because those kids are doing really rich investigations and they're engaged. They talk about joyful rigor. And the kids are outperforming the wealthiest districts in the state of New York.

SPEAKER_04 27:39

Both on skills and on content.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, they actually we don't test, well, the regents, some of the regents' exams test content, but we don't, we don't test content sufficiently. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

Um, but but and and the uh okay, here are some other examples. When Chicago public schools put the international baccalaureate program, four years of the IB diploma program in their lowest performing high schools, the kids who went through four years of the IB, even though they, even though only 20% of them passed the exam, and by the way, the international rates are 80%. Wow, they still had a 40% greater chance of going to college than their matched peers and persisting in college because of the peer effect, the rigor, and and the teachers were given the IB's preparation. The last, the last two examples are from Louisiana and Mississippi. Mississippi made a huge bet to push out high-quality materials. So when they did the science of reading, it was living on top of norms that were built about high quality. Louisiana started the high quality instructional materials trend. I don't think everything that's called high quality is high quality because not all of it's knowledge building, some of it's just skills. But John White actually, by invitation, was not required, had because they invited teachers into the review process and into the content institute. About 80% of their teachers are using either guidebooks or wit and wisdom in some books, CKLA and ELA, and then Eureka Mass Squared and Math. But here's the thing that he did that was a game changer. And my team helped with this. Designed four stakes assessments in ELA, grades five through eight, that were aligned to those two highest use curricula in ELA. And it was so wonderful to see because teachers loved it, but they were actually doing the Socratic seminars instead of saying, Oh, we're gonna prep for skills tests. The tests were less took less time, and the kids were actually actually asked to think. We had them writing. They were actually based on what you've read, what do you think about justice?

SPEAKER_04 29:52

And they did it. They were in it. They did it.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

They did it, they did it, and we saw a gap closure. So that and I think I think other states should do that. Should say you can choose from these five tests that are aligned to the highest quality curricula.

SPEAKER_04 30:08

Yeah. Okay, this is good because one of my questions for you is I hear curriculum content. We want to make sure these facts get into kids' heads. And I just basically picture longer lectures with more material and longer worksheets that already were pretty disengaging anyway. And you're just sort of stuck into a teacher-led kind of framework. I mean, you like you have certain curricula that, and we should link to it. Uh, I know you talk a lot about Wit and Wisdom and Eureka and some of these others. You know, there are curricula that that are thoughtfully designed and they're good, um, good programs. I are they harder to run as a teacher? I guess what I'm trying to figure out is, yeah, why doesn't if if they're this much better, why doesn't everybody just do it?

SPEAKER_02 30:54

You know, that's maybe my Yeah, it's it's it's that's a really good question.

Why Teachers Struggle To Implement

SPEAKER_02 30:57

And it is again, it's cultural and historical because our teachers, educators were by and large informed by their education educator preparation programs that they a good teacher creates your own lesson plans.

SPEAKER_03 31:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 31:10

And so even when systems adopt a really great curriculum, which does to answer your question, yes, it requires support for teachers to deliver it because it's more challenging than they think the kids can do. They really don't think the kids can do it, is the real problem.

SPEAKER_04 31:24

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 31:25

So we systematically underchallenge our kids. I mean, that's uh if you look at there's a 20 a 2018 report from TNTP called the opportunity myth shows that we are underchallenging our kids chronically and systematically. And then uh an SRI report came out this past year saying the same thing from a different lens. But anyway, I lost your I lost a train of thought. What did what was the question? I get why don't we do it? Oh, oh, yeah, yeah. So so even when a system does all those things, right? Teachers' habits are still to go to Pinterest, teachers pay teachers, and cobble together their lessons and or dumb the lessons down. We've this is nationally known, and we've seen it, our our team has seen it in the field. So it is a I would say it is countercultural. And you have to, and in my experience of working with, we work with a lot of publishers, we work with a lot of systems, it takes experiencing it to see the difference.

SPEAKER_03 32:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

You know, you can't it's not, you can't think of it in the abstract. You have to say, oh my gosh, I've been giving this kid these boring texts, but look at what they're doing with, you know, the Canterbury Tales. Who knew?

SPEAKER_04 32:31

I'm having like flashbacks to the most boring possible lessons about the Canterbury Tales.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

Well, but Kelly, but Kelly, you were super smart. Let me I'm gonna push back for you on you. You went to MIT. You went to MIT. You know, kids who have intellectually engaging fam engaged families don't need uh, you know, a lot of education is really boring.

SPEAKER_04 32:52

Here's the thing, Ashley, we didn't talk about Canterbury Tales at home or any of that. I mean, there were books in my home, and I'm grateful for that. My parents, you know, believed in education, but I was very much playing the game. What the when I say it was boring, I later went back and read some Chaucer and I was like, holy cow, this is great. It like took me deciding to care about it. But I definitely had English teachers, maybe they're listening right now, that were like, we introduced that material. I assigned that reading. I didn't read it. Sorry, sorry, guys. I didn't read it. I was like, I'm gonna do the minimum. You know what I mean? Like I it was a sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

Yes. I mean, I mean, you would have done well with a flipped model, right? Where you showed competence and then got to go play sports all day or carpentry or whatever else you wanted to do. I mean, the seat, the Carnegie seat time is a real problem. And and um, and and gosh, I I've been in so many mind-numbingly boring classes and classrooms. I don't disagree with you. Right. I don't disagree with you. But I think the I think the the risk of saying it all has to be driven by students' interest is also leaving too much off the table. Yeah. Because part of part of trying on like my experience with chemistry, I it was good that I tried it on for size. It was no stakes at all. I had to take it. I didn't do that well. I hated it, and I didn't become a doctor. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 34:16

But but that wasn't chemistry's fault, is my point. I think I think if chemistry had been done better for you, you might be you might have been more interested in chemistry.

SPEAKER_02 34:25

I was actually interested in an awful lot of things. And I was actually and and and and I ended up having to weigh which one of these things do I want to pursue. But I I don't I don't think being wildly excited about everything that we learn is required.

SPEAKER_04 34:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:41

I think I don't think it's required.

SPEAKER_04 34:44

So engagement's not necessarily Well, let me just share two stories from my childhood, and this I wasn't planning on doing this, but as you talk, I'm like, there was one in seventh grade, I was in an honors English class, and most of the days it was had the formula for writing an essay that would get a five on the AP test, and I learned the formula and I got ASON on my papers, and I spent very little time. Anyway, I did all of that. But one day my teacher had gone to a workshop somewhere, I don't know, and she came back with the Socratic discussion. She said, Socrates used to do this thing. I was like, Who's Socrates? I you know, I didn't know anything. And um, we sat in a circle and she gave us the rules. It was the best day of seventh grade.

SPEAKER_03 35:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 35:20

Had a great experience. We never did it again. It was a really, really cool thing. In eighth grade, I had a teacher that wanted us to appreciate poetry, and she let us use lyrics from Simon and Garfunkel songs. And I was like, This is this is so different than how I just to really think about experience. I mean, to this day, I listen to that music and I'm like, this is beautiful poetry, and language can be powerful. It's like, I got something, it hit. Those were the two times, though. Really, I mean, I I don't want to there there must have been other times.

SPEAKER_02 35:50

But that's terrible. I mean, that is terrible. That is terrible.

SPEAKER_04 35:54

So why didn't they do that every day? And why don't more people do it? And are they not allowed to be able to do that?

SPEAKER_02 35:59

Very few, no, no, no, very few of our teachers have ever experienced that. Very few of our teachers. This, to me, this goes back to the legacy of the decision. It's all about process. And, you know, it it was a terrible idea. Right. And it has been a it has devastated generations. Right. And so when I've done professional development with teachers, one of the most obvious things is sadly, they can take a rich text like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and make it boring.

SPEAKER_04 36:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 36:32

Because they they have not been given that capacious understanding to say, wait, this thing was finalized when? 18 um 1948? What had just happened in night, you know, in the 1940s that we had to argue for universal human rights. Right. Who disagrees with that? Who does disagree with that? Who how is it not ironic that we in our country were signatories when we had racial segregation in our country? Like all those connections, those are the questions you want to ask kids.

SPEAKER_04 37:02

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

Instead, it's find the main idea.

SPEAKER_04 37:05

Okay, so what's your describing to me sounds like what I'm trying to build with Prenda and with these microschools. And when I read your book, I'm kind of like, I think she's saying I want to add academic standards, like increase the scope of things that are mandatory that people that every school must have. But it sounds like as you talk about it, that's not really what you're saying.

SPEAKER_02 37:25

I do think there's a think there should be not standards, but some common reference points.

SPEAKER_04 37:31

So what is that? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_02 37:33

So what does it look what it looks like? Well, I in in in ELA it would be, you know, you need to read fairy tales in kindergarten. You need to, you know, you know what folklore is. You need to know Aesop's fables. It doesn't exhaust the whole list, but in history, you know, you need to know a lot about your state's history in fifth grade.

SPEAKER_04 37:50

So you would basically say, we're gonna re-redo your curriculum. Teachers stop doing Pinterest and teachers paid teachers. Here's the curriculum. Everyone's Well, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 37:58

Not necessarily a curriculum. Content. So, you know, in the UK, there's the there's content standards. And the teachers have the background that they can say, okay, my kids need to know about the Greeks and Romans. And so these are the projects I'm gonna do, these are the books I'm gonna read. They have that background. You should provide those resources as options for teachers. Um so, so, but, but the reason, and it should not exhaust the school day. It should not take up every bit of a kid's time. I'm a big believer in content-rich competency tests as long as they're content-rich. But the reason for that is that you want a a democracy needs a common speech community. You need to know, you may hate the Declaration of Independence. You may think it's a racist document, but you need to know what it says. These are, these are about, and and there's a there's a matter of equity. Again, if you believe that knowledge is the key, actual background knowledge matters. You've got to give, you gotta tell kids that Mexico is contiguous to the US. I'm sorry. I mean, how can you even contemplate the Iranian, you know, the war in Iran if you don't know where the Persian Gulf is? And if you if you don't have those reference points, you are not, I guarantee you, you're not gonna stop and say, hmm, I wonder where the Persian Gulf is. Very few people are gonna do that.

SPEAKER_04 39:19

But they never, you think they never saw a map somewhere in one of their social studies classes and they just for like I'm sure I would bet you lots of money that they that it's it was included somewhere and they just didn't learn it because they didn't care one bit about it.

SPEAKER_02 39:34

But if you look at state standards, even in very few states require knowledge of the of of um geography. It's all map skills. You don't have to know where California is.

SPEAKER_03 39:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

It's really important to have a picture of the world in your mind. And that isn't just geographical, it's chronological.

SPEAKER_04 39:54

I mean, I 100% agree. We we pull up maps all the time with my microschool kids, with my own kids. I'm doing this instinctively. I guess what I'm wondering is trying to drive change from I don't know how you would possibly do it in a system that and this is maybe okay, let's let's talk about what I I think both of us agree with, because it is a cultural thing first, right? Which is we're saying what you want at the core is uh an adult in that room who not only cares deeply about the kids, but cares about learning the wonder thereof that actually believes that these kids are capable of learning and being fascinated with hard questions that are willing to elevate, take them seriously, advocate for their future selves in a way that's like inspiring and excited. There are adults that can do that. Prenda calls it start with heart. We we have one of our core values, which is we start there. That's the core thing is can you actually see a human being and honor their humanity by treating them in this way? And really, it's not just treating them behaviors, it's like you have to actually believe something that, like you pointed out, many, many people in education don't believe, right? And I I felt that my whole my whole time as a kid. My kids felt it. Okay. So we agree with that. I think we both agree. And beyond that, we want learners, right? I want I want the adult in that classroom to model what it's like to be a learner that will be fine not knowing something.

SPEAKER_02 41:10

Curious, curious, yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 41:14

And just go out there and get answers and ask questions and open questions that they don't know the answer to.

SPEAKER_02 41:19

And so you've created a school model that does that.

SPEAKER_04 41:23

Yes, right. Although I think you would hate my school model because I think you would be able to find some content that you know you could test our kids and they might not know, you know, oh, the capital of Missouri is Jefferson City. Like if they don't know that, is that a bad thing? Like I'm kind of like, I don't know if I care that much, but they they're capable of learning that if they want to, you know.

SPEAKER_02 41:43

I mean, there are ways to make learning the capitals and learning the names of the states really fun and easy.

SPEAKER_03 41:48

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 41:50

And, you know, um I do think there's some there, I do think there is a I I would not be extreme on either end. I would not say that we never, never, never memorize. I think learning by heart can be really powerful. And for kids, it's a real accomplishment. You know, in the UK, they had in my little girl's school, and most schools were like this, they had poetry reciting contests. And it was absolutely thrilling for these kids. Yeah. They cared about it. You know, not every kid cares about everything. I hated sports, right? You can't possibly get every kid excited about every single thing.

SPEAKER_04 42:29

Nor should you. That would be a crazy goal.

SPEAKER_02 42:31

No, it's a crazy goal. That and that's not the burden that we're under.

SPEAKER_04 42:35

Yeah. Okay. So here's here's the part where I'm I'm still like looking for how we how we reconcile this.

Core Knowledge Without Killing Curiosity

SPEAKER_04 42:41

This podcast is called the Kindled Podcast. I wrote a book called A Fire to Be Kindled. You know this quote. This is Plutarch. This is thousands of years ago. The brain, the human mind is not a cup to fill up with water. It is a fire to be kindled, right? And and we've gone so far as to take that metaphor to an extreme. If you're trying to start a fire with no matches, it's hard, painstaking work, it's very delicate, you need the conditions to be just right. And if you start pouring water on that, that little fire, it's over. Like you've killed it. I think systematically that's happened for many, many people inside of a system. So, how does this emphasis on mandatory curriculum or content, maybe not curriculum, maybe it's content, how does that fit into this? Like, was Plutarch actually wrong, or do you agree with Plutarch and there's something I'm missing?

SPEAKER_02 43:27

I don't see it in binaries. I do not see it as a binary. I think for me, I think learning is something that kids want to do and that we are all designed to do. And I think learning is social and it's it's interactive. And so when so a good teacher is going to say, these are some things that you need to know, but you wouldn't put it in those terms. You would invite kids into the learning process and make it their own. So I don't see, I don't see core content as being Oppressive inherently. It's not oppressive. In fact, it's enlivening. When you, if you know where things are in the world, if you read an op-ed and you understand it because you knew you know what the axis powers are, you know what Jim Crow laws mean. Only 30% of our kids do, right? You know that you can connect to other human beings in time and place and current. So I think knowledge is power and it is enlivening. And I also think that part of the educative process is finding your own passions and being encouraged to act on these. So one of the approaches I love, and you tell me if you agree with this, is if you had core content, say you have to know about, let's just say broadly, the Greeks and Romans or the Roman culture, having basic knowledge that all the kids in the classroom learn and that they can talk about. But then saying, okay, pick an area of Roman culture that you think is fascinating, artwork, architecture, military, women's clothes, whatever it is, study that and tell us about it. That's the kind of model that I would be excited about because it's the both end.

SPEAKER_04 45:09

Yeah. Okay. Well, we're not that far off. That's close to what we're doing. And Ashley, as you talk, it's contagious. The joy, the energy you bring about not just school or education. It's it's a it's a way of life. Like being a learner and being curious the way you are. I'm just I'm I'm imagining a world where every educator in my life was that. Because I think I would have I would have approached things differently. And I'm feeling guilty now for being so cynical as a kid. I mean, I just jumped through every hoop and just kind of went through this.

SPEAKER_02 45:39

I'm sure you weren't wrong. Everybody's your spirit got crushed. And shame on those school systems. And the beauty is that you've created something that's different. Wow. That's actually bringing life and breath into the next generation. So thank you, Kelly, for what you do for those kids.

SPEAKER_04 45:54

No one was trying to crush anyone. And I I really do believe that all of the intentions were good and it's it's it's a it's a tall order.

SPEAKER_02 46:02

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Your teachers were not given the tools they needed to deliver exciting instruction.

SPEAKER_04 46:08

Except for that one, that one PD workshop with the Socratic discussion. I wish we would have done more of those.

SPEAKER_02 46:13

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 46:14

Ashley, as we wrap this up, this has been a fascinating conversation. I hope everybody listening just loves this. And please check out Ashley's work. I'm gonna try to hit you up for some links to some of the things you've been referencing because people need to know. I think there's gonna be a lot of curiosity raised about the history in particular and and and what you're advocating for. Um, but I'd love to end on this.

Who Kindled A Lifelong Learner

SPEAKER_04 46:32

Uh, is there somebody in your life that's kindled a love of learning for you? I mean, how did you become who you are, this person that we see here?

SPEAKER_02 46:40

Oh, I would have to say it's my dad. My dad, my first memory of my dad is his voice. I can still hear his voice. He's no longer with us. But he read William Blake's Tiger Tiger Burning Bright poem to me. I can still hear it. And I think he, in all things, he and my mom treated my brother and me as capable human beings who wanted to know about the world. So they you know they read to us constantly. We had maps on our wall, like taped up on our walls. And we they talked about current events. They really engaged us, got us, you know, they loved it. They loved learning. Wow. And and that they were my that was really what got me going more than school.

SPEAKER_04 47:17

Beautiful. Thank you for sharing it. Thanks for being here on the podcast. I really appreciate you and the work you're doing.

SPEAKER_02 47:22

Keep it up and let's Likewise, likewise, thank you for what you're doing.

SPEAKER_04 47:27

Thank you, Ashley.

SPEAKER_00 47:29

All right, talk

Prenda Microschool Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 47:30

to you. The Kindled Podcast is brought to you by Prenda. Prenda makes it easy to start and run an amazing microschool based on all the ideas we talk about here on the Kindled Podcast. Don't forget to follow us on social media at Prenda Learn, and if you'd like more information about starting a microschool, just go to Prenda.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep Kindling.