This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.
Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker, and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci,
educated educators talking education.
Of course it is, Tim and Johnny busted pencils,
fully-ledded education talk, educated educators talking education.
Right off to bat 8557524842,
I want to make sure we give you that number.
Johnny Lupinacci, you know what?
I was thinking about right away tonight, if I had a beer,
and you know, if I wanted to have a beer,
I would have it to Monacoa Brewery.
You know why?
There it is, because Busted Pencils is sponsored
by the Monacoa Brewery Company who sued the state
of Wisconsin to end its parasitic voucher system
that hurts public schools.
Monacoa Brewery Company is making Wisconsin great again,
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Check out Monacoa Brewery Company dot com
to see where you can buy their progressive beer.
And man, right into it though,
I see our guests love that little promo right there.
You know what?
But before we do, though, we've got a great guest.
We're going to be talking about with Johnny,
and I always really, really the heart of democracy,
public education that word public.
We're going to talk about that.
Johnny Lupinacci, though,
I just want to tell great show last night,
Dr. Nancy Carlson Page,
just want to point out there, you know,
came in, talked about three queuing.
Tought us about this.
Tought us a lot about the three queuing system
about reading, and you know,
I put some of that stuff online
for the Busted Pencils listeners, Twitter feed,
you know, Facebook feed.
And there's a little bit of a controversy
that Dr. Nancy Carlson Page started up
because according to the science of reading people
that follow us on Twitter,
and thank you or X for following us,
we want you to keep following us on Twitter.
Nancy Carlson Page was bringing up something
that they had thought they had killed
and had put to death finally,
and how dare Dr. Nancy Carlson Page,
Matt Damon's mom, bring up the potential
that the three queuing system might actually be
of some use for helping kids learn to read.
So again, love that out there.
Have a great conversation.
In fact, highlighting the,
how do we talk about these things?
Our guests though, he's,
began his career as a middle school
and high school teacher in South Africa
right after the end of apartheid.
He is a nationally recognized education leader
and author of the groundbreaking book,
publicization or publicization, as Johnny says.
He has served as an official
in New York City Department of Education,
and it's president and co-founder
of the Association of College
and University Educators.
Welcome to Busted Pencils.
Jonathan Gerko, how are you our friend?
Tim Johnny, thank you so much for having me on the show.
I love your style.
I had an extra cup of coffee today,
so I could keep up.
I owe.
And I love how you are bringing progressive politics,
progressive points of view
to our critical work of schools, schools in America.
Yeah, so John, let's jump right into it though too.
I mean, title of your book,
right off the bat, publicization.
I've been practicing saying that
because yesterday it wasn't yet.
I'm getting there, publicization.
Jonathan, publicization, come on,
start off right away.
Give us, what do you mean?
What's the title?
What are we talking about here, publicization?
Yeah, well, what's the opposite of privatization?
Oh, crickets, crickets.
You need a word, we need a word.
And I think the word is publicization, right?
Like the old political adage goes,
you can't beat something with nothing.
You can't beat somebody with nobody.
And so I wrote publicization to put together
a lot of ideas old and new about what a new paradigm
and new agenda for the future of schools in America
might look like.
When you say that too, it's this idea to public schools,
is do we need then a redefinition
to put this forward, as you just said?
Because public schools, I think about, you know,
we talk about people in the community,
we take for granted public schools, I think, in this point.
And kind of forget that there are neighborhood schools
and public in this whole concept of public
and what does public mean?
Was that pushing some of the things that Jonathan
was thinking about doing in this book?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Look, I think the word public
and the expression public schools is like a Rorschach test.
Yeah.
You know, you read into it what you want
and it can mean a lot of different things
to a lot of different people.
And I experienced that firsthand when I came back
from South Africa, I was there in the extraordinary years,
95 to 98, Mandela had just been elected,
we were doing amazing things, bringing progressive quality
schooling to students who, frankly, had never had it.
Came back to New York and kind of fell into
the charter school movement.
Not out of any right-wing neoliberal markets competition,
but it was interesting, there was a lot of energy around it.
And at the time, people would say,
oh, charter schools, we're public schools, oh no, you're not.
Yes, we are, no, you're not.
And I use a line in the book.
I mean, it was kind of like rock and sock and robots
beating each other up and just as boring.
And I thought, well, what does this mean?
What does it mean to be public school?
And that fight is still going on through advocates
of district schools and defenders of charter schools.
And I don't think the fight is doing anybody good.
It means we are a divided house in tax-funded education.
And that's not going to take us forward.
Think about the way he just said that,
Johnny, tax-funded education.
We're looking at you, John, for a little connection there.
I see your eyes going back and forth.
Well, yeah, I think this is a great conversation to have.
Jonathan, thank you for your work.
Thanks for being a guest on the show tonight.
And to teach here tonight for listener out there
who's hearing this, I think, really, brilliant use of language.
We start with, we talk about, we have all this conversation
about privatized privatization.
And it's created this house divided,
this rockum-sockum robots, either for privatization
or against it.
But how it plays out is we have this,
like you said, charter versus public school.
And I think, especially as reading your book
and thinking through, we'll get to that piece
because you really propose some rethinking.
And I think a nice way of reframing that moves us away
from the blow for blow, rockum-sockums,
to where do we go from here?
And so we can get into that.
But I love this far listener.
And it's a sad day for us to have to do this.
But it's not to talk down to anybody.
It's sort of to clarify.
And I actually have to do this regularly myself
when I'm teaching the landscape of education.
And by public, starting back, what
doesn't even mean to be a public school
or have something be part of a public institution
or a public good?
Jonathan, for our listener, how could you give a 101?
What constitutes something as public?
Yeah.
So super fast, rather than defining it
by the kind of institution, this is a government thing,
which is often used in a pejorative way.
That's no helpful.
The book uses a very classical definition.
You want me to go now or you want me to hold?
OK, let's do it.
So in economics, it's a very simple idea.
If you can exclude something from somebody else,
it's a private good.
Think of an apple.
If I eat this apple and I don't share it,
that's my private apple, my private lunch.
If I can't exclude something like the air we breathe,
that's a public good.
And the book, Readers Will Find,
develops that into this notion of an exclusion test,
where we can find exclusion in schooling.
Parents, students, families being kept from something,
it's a little less public than it could be.
And that's an opportunity to strengthen
the publicness of something.
So super quick example, think of attendance zones.
If I live on this side of a street,
and I have to go to that district school,
instead of this other district school,
I'm excluded from that other district school
by a line on a map.
That feels like an expression of privateness
and an opportunity for us to make schools and attendance
and where you go, a little more public.
I like that the way you put that there, the difference there,
the private, though, too, the idea.
Yeah, this is my apple.
However, the air we're sharing
it's something in common.
If you're out there, too,
and you have a definition of public schools,
give us a call, you know, talk to our guests right now,
855-7524-842, what does public school mean to you
out there?
Tom from Newbur, Lynn out there sending some love
over a text, thanks Tom Love to see that.
But yeah, this idea of public education,
our guest Jonathan Gerkho is new book publicization,
you know, is exploring this concept
and how many people have thought deeply to say,
oh, I know what public schools are,
I know what that means.
And Jonathan, I think what you just ended with,
potentially, is even a little bit kind of gone like,
oh, wait, wait, so you mean my district public school
because I exclude the district on the other side
of the line, my district public school
might not be totally public.
Well, that's right.
And the book takes this exclusion test
and it applies it to six major domains,
what I think are the, what makes for school operation.
Funding, the underlying philosophy,
how schools are governed, the standards we're trying to meet
and how we test against them,
accountability is the fifth and equity is the sixth.
And readers will find the book
when you start looking for exclusiveness
in those six areas, my goodness,
there's a whole lot of opportunity
to make schools more public,
both district and charter, and in some cases,
we can learn from the charter school sector,
which in some ways is more public than district schools.
Oh, I could see that raising a couple of eyebrows
and some hackles out there.
Our guest is Jonathan Garco,
his new book publicization is out.
He's talking to us right now,
given us some truth about this,
the idea here, though, too, if you want to jump in,
if you have a definition of public school,
and you potentially are saying,
I don't necessarily agree with that.
Give us a call 855-752-4842
because one of the things we do want to do
on busted pencils, when we say bust pencils,
we mean we like to do that together,
break them up, tear them apart, have a discussion,
potentially even sometimes disagree,
but then also, hey, you know,
do what it is that we do best,
which is educate everybody.
Busted pencils fully let it education talk.
When we get back to Jonathan,
I want to know more about charter schools.
Charter school definition, public schools,
more on busted pencils.
We so cease to see our truth,
our days are precious and so few,
we know, we know we are the truth.
Under this sky, no longer blue,
we bring up to a lot of old ideals,
we drown, we drown.
Busted pencils fully let it education talk, educated,
educators, talking education, our guests,
Jonathan Gerkho's new book, publicization,
talking more about it, definitions.
Johnny Lupinacci, during the break you and I were,
you know, we were talking about that,
you had a question for Jonathan,
I'm just gonna let you go with it, man.
Yeah, and I like what we're talking about here, Tim.
And Jonathan took us up into that set,
the last break there in a really,
I think a really honest moment that he said, you know,
like maybe some people might disagree with,
but I think it's a real important one.
When we start to think about what it means
to be a public school can mean different things.
We could take it as the label of our traditional,
sort of historical knowledge that, you know,
as far back as we can remember, there's private schools,
there's often reserved, you know, for the elite,
the elite or, you know, the wealthy,
there's a tuition sort of system
and there's private education and there's public schools.
And by and large, mostly historically,
we understand public schools is our neighborhood schools,
right, our local school system.
And, you know, where you lived kind of gave, you know,
pointed to where you would go learn.
And we know that that has still by and large
some implications about like social class
and racial divides in our country.
I mean, certainly isn't as simple as to say,
well, we just need, you know, strong public schools everywhere.
We need a lot of work on like zoning
and a lot of different things to address free
and quality at the point of access.
And, you know, Jonathan took us up to that messiness
that a lot of states are pretty far and deep into
at this point where the landscape of free
at the point of access has changed.
And there's a sort of need.
I've always been kind of, you know,
looking for this.
And I think Jonathan's book publicization
is a great start in companion to this conversation.
In a sense, what is like a typology?
You know, like almost like a legend on a map
to give us a key for understanding where are kids?
When I say are kids, just children in our community
can go to school.
Where we educate the future citizens of this country?
It's not as simple as the history it used to be
where it's like, oh, private school, you know,
you want to enroll, maybe they take a test to get into it
or you pay a lot of money and they go to this private school
or they go to the local neighborhood school
with school choices and different things started
to change that landscape.
Flash forward, enter charters, right?
And I think some of the myth of the debate
is charters are private schools and public schools
are public schools and there is some truth to that
as in the book Jonathan lays like privatization of things
but blips it and talks about what about the publicization?
So I think it's really insightful and it's honest
and sometimes it takes us being open-minded
about those sides that we're often on.
But thinking about like a typology,
there's different types of schools
and kind of, Jonathan, can I ask you just for a listener?
I think we've shared it a little bit
but I think clearly like you lay it out in the book
but you're inviting folks to sort of unify around,
let's understand what the choices are,
not advocating that there should be choice
because that school choice thing is reserved
for sort of the argument for privatization.
When we start talking about public school on the ground,
you know, parent out there in the community
who's seeing the billboards, looking at the schools,
driving by and now there's like this market
for like where to choose to go to school
which kind of by and large part of a larger problem.
But some of our charter schools are public
by the definition of being free at the point of access.
Can you give us a little brief typology?
I hate even using that word, I know what to call it,
give us a legend to the key of what we mean by like,
there's, it's a little more complicated
than just private versus public.
Johnnie, you've put a lot of strands on the table
on the tribal, I'll try to weave them together.
This is a colorful tapestry here.
You know, I like to think about it less as a typology,
types of schools and take the pragmatic
in the conventional sense and the philosophically
pragmatic definition of let's judge something
by the outcomes, right?
So if a school doesn't exclude, right?
No admissions test, which is a form of exclusion.
And no tuition, even with scholarships,
which can be a form of exclusion.
And if you add to the exclusion test,
the classic historical goals of schooling,
of preparing citizens, productive workers,
good neighbors, and I think we've got to add
a fourth public goods stewards of our planet.
So if a school is doing those four things,
producing public goods and not excluding,
I'm hard pressed to see how that's not a public education.
And I'm prepared to look at a charter school,
a district school, a proprietary school,
a nonprofit private school,
and judge it against those outcomes
and the exclusion test to say,
hmm, are they delivering a public education?
And in the case of Charter's, look,
it is a lot older than the late 90s in Minnesota
when the first charter law was passed.
Going back to the 19th century,
chartering has been used in this country
as a way to deliver education for a very long time.
I'm thinking of academies and the academy movement.
There were thousands of academies
that had permission, a charter from the state
to run a school.
Now did those academies pass the other measures of publicness,
not so much, but as a mechanism to promote schooling,
we've been doing for the chartering for a long time.
And I point that out because take somebody like Diane Ravitz,
she's been on your show, she's a champion of district schools.
She is a foe of privatization, but she knows that history.
And she should be looking at our history
to find different ways to promote public education.
Johnny Lupinacci, what do you think of that?
Well, I love it.
I love it, John, because it helps.
I think like no good discussion has one side
and versus the other side.
Like nothing good or real ever comes from that, right?
I think it's, if we're drawing some starwares here,
only sits thinking absolute, right?
And so assuming that none of us are Sith Lords or the Sith Hill,
then we have this kind of, we have this civic duty,
especially as educators and advocates of,
that definition of public, John,
and that you gave that resonates with me really strongly,
especially as a Detroit teacher,
who sort of went through a real shift in change
of what a neighborhood school looked like,
and both certainly experienced exploitive charters
and then some really great local neighborhood chartered schools
that built on that tradition of university schools,
of lab schools,
and that as a very principal,
refused to be exclusionary.
And so.
Well, that's right, Johnny, let me interrupt you for a second.
When I was the authorizer in New York City,
a lot of people that came to my office
wanted the freedom to try something different.
Yeah.
They weren't competitive ideologues
trying to put district schools out of business,
and they picked up the chartering mechanism to do it.
Not unlike the way the small school advocates, Debbie Meyer
and Ted Seizer did small schools in the 80s.
Yep, I love that, Jonathan,
and we're gonna dive back into that.
When we come back,
callers, you can give us a call if you want to.
We are here, 8557524842.
Join us when we come back.
I never gave a said this all I left for you.
Too much of what the work's done me.
Yeah.
One, two, three, four, one, one,
by one, by one,
by like an army.
Falling?
There it is.
It's busted pencils, only let it education ought.
Educator, educator's talking education.
Bumper music of any talk radio out there in the nation.
You know it.
People are listening and going, Hey, Tim and Johnny, why don't you just let
the song play and then start talking?
Well, hey, check it out.
The busted pencil soundtrack, something we could do.
Onions, Jesse, we put together a busted pencil soundtrack for people so they
can check it out.
Playlist and yeah, playlist.
It's just these days calling playlists.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, you mean they don't put it on a cassette tape and, you know, I mean,
that's coming back to you, though, like the analog always makes its way back.
But Tim, if you want to make me a mixed tape, I'll take it from you.
I was going to say, thank you, Jonathan, a mixed tape.
That's what we used to play down in the, the basement of the fraternity house.
Jonathan Gerkko is, is our guest, his book publicization, talking about it.
And it's, we were taking behind the scenes during the break, getting our brains
scrambled a little bit because yeah, man,
well, I, I thought I knew what I was talking about.
And Jonathan is potentially stirring up my brain, making me move in a direction
where I'm kind of feeling uncomfortable, but that's okay.
However, we've got Joanne, Joanne on the line, Joanne, what's happening, our friend?
Great show.
I just got a question about accountability and transparency when we're dealing
with the difference between public schools and charter schools.
The author paints a really roasting picture of some of the early days of charter schools
and good intentions and stuff like that.
But what we're not seeing is the accountability and transparency
that makes public schools so effective.
We can look right in there and see what's going on.
And almost to a fault, almost to the point at which those private, those public schools
have so many examinations and so much accountability that they're tied down.
So again, that, that, that very important word, accountability.
How does that relate to this, this concept that the author is trying to get across?
Thank you, Joanne, Jonathan.
Yeah, Joanne, so nice.
I've heard you want on previous episodes and love your questions and love your passion.
First, I take a very critical lens to how accountability has been construed in American education.
There's a whole chapter on accountability.
I think it's way too top down and it's not mutual.
And, you know, by way of a little story, I've been running a professional development company
for the past 10 years and, you know, I had to unlearn my public sector ways
and learn some private sector ways, which was when a new idea comes up, we say,
well, can we resource this?
Do we have the resources to do this or what resources would it take?
Or is this farther down on the road map?
And I share that in that particular way because I think a lot of
this is asked of schools, but we don't pause to ask the question, have we resourced this?
And in the book, you'll find a lot of advocacy for the notion of mutual accountability.
It's what other folks have written about that unless the state, government, family, community
are going to uphold their ends of the accountability bargain.
Let's calibrate what schools can be held accountable to do based on what they're resource to do.
So that's generally on accountability.
Look, on the charter district question of accountability and transparency, I read a lot of more
of the popular political debate around charters.
And it's almost as if charters have, like Athena have been birthed from the head of Zeus
and sort of exist freely in the wild.
When, in fact, you know, we all know they have to be authorized by a public body.
And I'm not aware of those public bodies being elected, they could be.
And that could be a future of chartering.
But if they're appointed, they're appointed by public officials.
So that's an opportunity to hold authorizers accountability for the oversight they're doing.
It's an opportunity to elect leaders who have a point of view about authorizing
of what charters can and can't do.
And at least in New York, and I think nationally, charter board meetings are open to the public by law.
And in my course at in politics and at a teacher's college at Columbia, one of the requirements is go to a meeting.
Unless we're going to exercise the mechanisms of democratic accountability.
Sure, it can seem unaccountable and Joanne, you're right.
I've been and I say it in the book in way too many charter school board meetings held way
up at the top of a Midtown Sikaye scraper, office of some board member, totally exclusionary,
fails the exclusion test, not at the school at a time when parents, the public, concern citizens can attend.
But that's also a practical thing that can change as part of a publicization project to make charters more public.
As a person just saying, let's get rid of charters.
Busted pencils fully let it education talk educated educators talking education 857524842.
Yeah, our guest Jonathan Gurko, publicization is the book and the complicated definition.
We started the show with Jonathan.
Tell us what you're talking about.
Here we are into the third segment and going like, wow, it's complicated.
It's tricky.
I put though, you know, a question in the chat for the people behind who are looking at this.
Jonathan, though, okay, but you know, if we're going to complicate potentially public, right?
And that's okay because I'm working with it, but do we do so though at the point of
then emboldening privatizers to say, see, they don't even know what they're talking about in public schools.
This is why we need private education.
Yeah, look, this is why I wrote the book.
I think we are in between intellectual tides.
I think and I hope neoliberalism is going out to see, but we need language.
We need a framework so that we're crisp on what we mean.
When we talk about a public education, so we can advocate for it, build policies, build practices around it.
And I call that a publicization project, sort of the replacement, the successor to the privatization project.
You are absolutely right, Tim.
There are people in America.
It's a democracy.
We have a lot of different points of view who would like tax dollars to support private interests,
the private interests of a family, of a community, perhaps it's a faith-based community.
What have you?
They are unlikely to be brought into a publicization project.
My hope, and my intent in writing the book, was to paint a broad enough ecumenical part in the pun,
a picture to bring more people into this notion of let's pursue the publicness of education,
regardless of the type.
That is a stronger lobby and more in keeping with American traditions of schools,
preparing citizens, workers, good neighbors, and stewards of the planet.
Well, and there you're talking about, too, the idea of this kind of concerned, active,
participating citizen in realizing that the function of schools, while being, quote,
academic, is that actually, too, that commitment to civicness to democracy.
Well, but that's a choice.
I quote Hannah Arendt, the famous political philosopher towards the end of the book.
The right to have rights is by no means certain.
I'm paraphrasing her.
What a public education means in America is by no means certain.
And we live in a democracy as the phenomenal political philosopher Danielle Allen writes,
the only reason why we need democracy is because we have different interests,
but it requires us to be in dialogue, to persuade others,
that schooling that that overcomes our private interests,
to start defining and shaping and preparing people for what we can agree are our common interests,
but those are not only schools worth having,
we actually need them for a democracy.
Otherwise, it's a very different picture of schooling,
where schooling just supports the particular private interests of families and children.
That's a legitimate way to organize schools.
I don't think it works to sustain a democracy.
Lupinati.
Yeah, you know, Tim, I love this, Jonathan.
Thanks for being on the show.
I mean, we'll have you for a little bit longer, but this is really clear,
I'm really helpful to the messy argument about publicization.
I love it.
I love coming together in a unifying way to say,
hey, let's have this discussion, but it's also a movement around what does it mean to strengthen
our education system and really get back to what is the purpose of schools?
I can take a little right turn here on things,
because there's also some stuff happening at civic media that I want to get out here.
Civic media is deep in it with what they call Scotty summer statewide.
Text-to-win contest is on now.
Listen throughout the day for a chance to hear the next code to text in for a chance to win.
New key words are announced at the top of the 7, 9, and 11 a.m.
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Tune in and text in for a chance to win prizes, include Wisconsin Dells,
prize packs, Milwaukee Brewers, club level tickets,
plus the chance to win a Scotty summer's staycation.
Chances to win are every weekday from June 3rd to the 14th beginning at 7 a.m.
and right through to the 7 p.m. hour.
Be sure to download the free civic media app in the Google player app store
and get ready to text in your chance to win in this statewide contest weekdays
until Friday, June 14th.
Man, so lots of opportunities for our listener out there to win some cool stuff
and support civic media.
Jonathan, too, lots of rich stuff.
This is just a sneak peek into the conversation that publicization your book invites us to.
And I think it's a really great read, especially listener out there
who's involved in these conversations in your community.
Jonathan, where can listener out there learn more?
You know, and tell us a little bit about the book.
Yeah, so while we're getting in promos, I will shamelessly promote.
Right now listeners can go to the teachers college press website.
They are offering a discount through the end of this month until June 30th
with the promotional code N-H-E-T-C.
That stands for the National Higher Education Teaching Conference,
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And it's an opportunity where we're strengthening the quality of college
education so that we can sustain the good work of K-12 educators.
So that's that discount code N-H-E-T-C
at Teachers College Press through June 30th.
Busted pencils, fully-ledded education talk.
So we got a little bit of time here, too.
I just say one of the texts coming in from Pat and Watertown.
Please discuss any difference between charter and parochial schools.
Jonathan, before you go.
Yeah, so charter schools are creatures of state law.
And to my knowledge, every state law with the exception of Oklahoma.
And this is a really important development in the past 12 months.
Every state law dictates that the charter school must be non-denominational.
So whereas a parochial school can express its privateness in all sorts of ways,
you have to be admitted.
You can be denied admission.
You have to pay.
Even with a scholarship, there's always the potential you'll have to pay.
Charters by comparison by law, non-denominational, free funded by tax dollars
may not charge above and beyond that tax work.
And may not deny anybody admission is by lottery.
Oklahoma is pushing the boundaries, because just recently, the public chartering authority.
So these are democratically elected leaders authorized a Catholic charter school.
That's kind of the boundaries.
Push in the boundaries.
Our guest, Jonathan Gurko, thank you for busting pencils with us, man.
Appreciate it.
We got to get on that Oklahoma and busting pencils, fully-led at education talk.
Tim and Johnny, break it down next.
Ah, there it is.
It's cools out, steppin' dust, busted pencils, fully-led at education talk, educated
education talking, education.
The number 8557524842, Jonathan Gurko, our guest, he hasn't busted enough pencils.
We decided, hey, Jonathan, you want to hang out for the last segment?
We got more pencils to bust here, because you had just started getting into this idea,
you know, Pat from Watertown, who put in the question, the difference between charter
and parochial, and you were really going into parochial, and this kind of, what's happening
in Oklahoma, and, you know, again, kind of, because it really pushed you on that to kind
of sum it up.
Give us a little bit more about, so what's going on in Oklahoma with parochial and public
and help us figure it out?
Yeah, so, as I said before we went into the break, the democratically elected or appointed
board of author, charter authorizers in the state approved a charter for a Catholic
organization to run a faith-based school.
Going back to my book, that fails the measures of publicness, right, and Johnny, to your
point.
I think this is where the book can be helpful.
What do we mean public?
Well, here are some criteria, and this is clearly, and this is why we oppose this action
because of X, Y, and Z.
How does it fail the exclusion test?
If I don't want a Catholic education, I may not go.
There may be a free lottery, but students may not apply, if so on and so forth.
Tim, you taught me that the state's superintendent may be getting some pushback internally for
proving this school, and by the way, it was the split decision by the state authorizing
charter authorizing board, isn't that Tim, an example of our democracy, working, that
we're actually voicing what we want and expect of our schools, and there will be political
consequences.
So far from Joanne's question, there's no accountability here.
Superintendent might lose his job, and if he doesn't, maybe the people of Oklahoma are
okay with it.
Yeah, and put his name out there, Ryan Walters, state superintendent of public instruction
in Oklahoma.
Well, I mean, he's pushing it out there and trying to get this forward, and using Jonathan's
book publicization and say the exclusionary test, I'm sorry, but in Oklahoma, if we're using
this much more inclusive definition of public that Jonathan gives us here, a state voucher,
and then the authorization of a Catholic school by the state that's going to be exclusionary,
yeah, that's not public, even though it's going to fall under the charter definition, and
we said the complications of charter being there, Johnny Lupinachi, you got the look
of going like, man, I got something more to say.
Well, no, I mean, just taking this in and grateful for Jonathan to stick around for the last
segment and be with us to keep bus and pencils here, because there's a lot, like, there's
a lot to chew on here, there's some really good stuff around this, and I want to look
loop back around that one of the things this does bring us back to, and I think it's
a necessary part of this political moment that we're in as a nation is coming back around
to just asking that simple, but complicated question, what's the purpose of schools?
And how does it fit together with our vision, our shared vision, which might be a messy
one, but our shared vision of what we want that purpose to be, right, what, and Jonathan
puts in the chat here, like, what does it mean to be an educated American, right, and
how do we determine that?
I mean, we can ask AI, right, Tim?
Yeah, yeah, we can, really, how do we want to get into that?
And before we even wrap up, though, I do want to, I do want to say, you know, one place
you can do that.
So you can have really awesome conversations down to Monaco Brewing Company, where bus
and pencils are sponsored by the Monaco Brewing Company, who sued the state of Wisconsin
to end parasitic voucher system that hurt the public schools, right?
Monaco Brewing Company is making Wisconsin great again, one beer to time, check out Monaco
BrewingCompany.com to see where you can buy their progressive beer, but, you know, that
brings us back around to this, this call, right?
And this concept, Jonathan, I'm going to put you on the spot.
We had a great conversation tonight, publicization.
Is it a verb?
Is it a noun?
Is it all of these things?
I definitely think it's an invitation to get some, get some work done.
Yeah, look, 40 years ago, nobody said the word privatization.
Yeah.
Now, it rolls off the tongue and everybody knows exactly what it means.
Let's co-construct that definition together, and I've put out a thesis as to what it means,
but this is America.
It is a democracy.
We need many voices in this definition and in the work, so, so bring it.
I, I welcome it.
Mm.
Busy pencils.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Education talk, educated educators talking education, great guests for the whole entire
episode.
Jonathan Gurko is book publicization teachers college presses where you can get it.
We'll have that actually, too, for anybody downloading the show as a podcast.
We'll have a link to that to make sure that people can actually go and get the book and
start having those, you know, kind of book reading sessions at home book, book clubs
and bring that together and start having this conversation because if you are a public
advocate, Jonathan, putting forward here, that exclusionary test, I think that, too,
is a, is a really nice way to help going, is it public?
Is it not public?
And we'll hear are some ways that we can possibly enter and say, here's a test.
Here's a, here's a, here's a, here's a, here's a, you know, so, okay, you want to be
classified public, okay, tell us this.
What do you do for that?
How do you do this?
Oh, you, you, you do say that certain kids can't get in because, okay, well, then sorry,
that's not because that's part of the exclusion test.
Oh, Jonathan, you, I saw, you're, Johnny, you're Jonathan, whatever, it's, it's just, it's
just put it out there.
Love your invitation, Jonathan.
You know, we're learners, leading learners and listener out there, you're a learner,
leading learners.
You're always learning, and Jonathan, I'm learning from publicization.
I'm here for it.
Tim and I are reading it.
We're talking about it with our students and getting to talk about it with you and our
listeners.
I think we're going to have to have a follow up.
So listen to it.
Get the book, give it a read, dive in, and let's have Jonathan back on and let's talk
some more as learners, leading learners, learners, and I love that too.
In fact, for the next shot, we could even do this, Jonathan.
If you're up or you said you, you would love to come back is that, you know, we can have
guests come in and say, okay, is this public bring you out there?
And bring us your examples of what you think are public.
And let's put it through.
Let's have an episode where we go through the exclusionary test that Jonathan puts forth
in the book, Busted Pen, or publicization, our show is Busted Pencils, fully-led in education
talk.
Jonathan, man, truly, now here.
Thank you so much for Busting Pencils.
Everybody tomorrow night, Educator's Amplified, see y'all tomorrow.