We'll have some Christmas music for you in a minute.
It's busted pencils, fully-led education talk, educated educators, talking,
education, and why it is Jacob the ninth.
Would you say we're there? No, I would say it's the tenth show of Christmas.
I would say it's the tenth show of Christmas for busted pencils. That's right,
right. Ten, that's ten, ten, and that would be, well you know what,
though Jacob, play that special Christmas music, though.
All right.
Oh, Merry Christmas, Tim.
Thank you, Jacob. I tell you that definitely, I plan to hear that, you know, 20 years from
now, you know, when you hear Nat King Cole doing chestnuts roasting on an open fire,
and you know, it'll be producer Jacob's busted pencils, Christmas music.
Well, anyway, though, Dr. Johnny Lupinacci, Jacob chairman of the board.
We are here on a Saturday. Love Saturday shows.
Always pointing that out because, hey, we know right now that there are people all
through Wisconsin, all over parts of Michigan, all over parts of Minnesota,
right now, listening potentially in their car to this show called busted pencils.
They're wondering, oh crap, my radio's busted. How do I change the channel? Don't do it yet.
It's okay. Trust me. You're going to enjoy this time, or maybe you won't, but give us a chance,
you know, education talk radio. If you're like, what is that all about? That's going to be about
a lot more than you ever bargained for. So we appreciate you out there listening truly.
Whatever radio station you are in your hometown, whether it's, you know, in Hayward, whether it's
somewhere in Madison, you know, even down there towards, you know, where Jacob is. Jacob, where would
that be? I'm here in racing. Beautiful racing Wisconsin. We've got WRJ and civic media network.
Very excited. And Tim, I'm excited because the busted pencils is the marquee show to go to, to
meet who's who in education. I think we've got a really great guest today. We do. We do. And in fact,
you know, always love when we get this guest. Just, you know, put out there. How did, how do we
come by this guest? Hey, you know what? Tim Sleeker doing his internet stocking. Typically,
is how we get most guests. And this is the same way. Saul, the Jonathan Gierko, our guest,
had a book out called Publicization was on another show. And I was like, you know, kind of cold.
I can't remember if it was either a Twitter or through LinkedIn or whatever. And I was like,
we have an education show if you want to be on it. And Jonathan, Gierko, welcome back to
busted pencils. You wrote back that day and said, all right, I'd love to do it. Let's get the
word out about publicization, right? What's the opposite of privatization? Tim, Johnny, Jacob,
great to see you. And to listeners, look, I can't think of an instance where government reaches more
deeply into your life than when it controls your children for six hours a day. So it's really
important talk about our future of our country, our democracy, our schools, our children, our
governments. So give us your, give us your half hour. Woo. And Jacob, make sure you cut that
check for Jonathan for that endorsement there a little bit later. But Jonathan, now welcome back
to busted pencils. I mean, a lot's been going on as you point out to, wow, to be an informed
citizen right now. And yeah, listener, that's what we're talking about here, busted pencils. It's
just show, yeah, it's about public education and education, but it's about democracy. And really
looking at as we like to point out, you know, the foundation of American democracy, our education
system. And yeah, we came, we came by Jonathan because published a book, Jonathan, was it a 2025
publication date or 20, 2024? It's been out for over a year now. And like I previewed, we've
been experiencing a lot of privatization, a private interest controlling education. And my
thinking was, you can't eat something with nothing. You got to have a candidate to, to be
the candidate. And why not create some language for it, some ideas, a framework, some ways to test
things that are more public than private. And that's all part of publicization. And that's on top
of my teaching teachers college, Columbia University, where I teach American politics and education
politics. Well, there you go. There it is, people out there, politics. But Jonathan, we don't want
to be mixing politics and education because that's not very academic. I understand nowadays.
That, that, that sounds like potentially, we might go in towards the indoctrination areas. And
I said, for anybody who, yeah, I'm more looking. I think you're being facetious.
Hi. It's funny. You say that because, you know, in my classes, I ask my students, what do you
think of when you hear the word politics? Well, they think it's just, you know, there's corruption
and it's a dirty word. And I say, well, what if we think about it as a way to make decisions?
And instead of making decisions like consumers in a market, buying and selling, there's a different
way to make decisions together through participation, through dialogue, through voting, through voicing.
And not in any negative sense, but what if we call participation, politics? And the whole idea you
get it is to start to reclaim that word not as a, as a four letter word, but as a legitimate way
for us to come together and decide how we want to live together.
Johnny, well, I love that. You know, that's partly one of the big things. I mean, listener,
if you haven't gotten a chance to hear Jonathan's scroll back through, you know, our podcast,
download some of those episodes, we'll elaborate a little bit more on it on today's broadcast,
but man, the whole, we vibed with you, Jonathan, when we read your book, when we had you on the
publicization, you know, thinking about the education landscape that we're in and reclaiming
political from, you know, the left aiming at the right, the right aiming at the left and
everyday people, families, kids in schools, teachers, our communities sort of being in between that
and the battleground for ideological differences. Meanwhile, we're still in our classrooms. Kids
are still going to school and we're trying to make schools better. And I love that your book and
the whole concept you gave us to put some language around publicization rather than marketization,
right, or privatization. Really, what does it mean to come together in our public spaces
around shared goals and common interests like our democracy, or even more directly,
like what's happening in our schools, or what can and ought to be happening in our schools.
And, and listener, one of my favorite parts about this, and then we'll turn it back over to Jonathan
to kind of elaborate on this. But, you know, as somebody who's taught in our public schools and in
our charter schools and worked together with public charters versus private charters and kind of
been teaching teachers since then, that there is a sort of vast typography of the kinds of schools
we have in our communities. And listener, you're probably familiar with this. You're like, well,
we have our traditional public school. We have our traditional private schools, which tend to be,
you know, Catholic or religiously affiliated or like, you know, kind of expensive academies.
They've been around forever. And then in the last 20, some maybe even longer. Now, I'm getting older,
years we've had, you know, a variety of charters, of different types of charters that have popped up.
And there's been this sort of consumer responsibility mapped onto families. We're like, hey,
you got to shop for the right school, or you got to pick the right school. And this is really
different than a strong public education system that most of us, you know, if you're listening
and you grew up in the era that Tim and I and Jonathan grew up in, not Jacob's era, he's a young buck.
But if you grew up in our era, it was more common like where you lived sort of for the most part
mapped where you went to school. And that wasn't exactly perfect, but it was kind of understood,
you know, public schools were a local pathway to furthering your education. And it's certainly
more complicated than that. We could get into it. But in the last 20 plus years, maybe even a
little longer, not forgetting to older, I mentioned, you know, there's all these different options.
And Jonathan, your book really was one of my favorite reads in the last couple of years,
is someone who teaches future teachers to understand these differences that weren't always the case.
But they were sort of growing. And these options are more and more common across our country and
communities. And that's political. There are different interests involved. There are different
folks, you know, influencing the decisions being made that are oftentimes anyone but our families
and local community members. So I really liked how you kind of you didn't say, hey, this book is
anti charters or hey, this book is pro public schools. It's really this idea that says, hey,
every, every where we are, we can do better in education. And one of those areas is to come to the
table to make those decisions locally around accountability. And what truly is public, whether you're
already a public school or whether you're a public charter, whether you're a private charter,
whether you're for profit, non profit, there's all these different types. But you call for this
level of transparency and accountability together and local decision making that resonates not only
with civic media's mission, right? But with what we're all kind of constantly saying here on
busted pencils, public education is the better off of a democracy. It's where we come together to
make decisions together to strengthen our civic responsibilities, our understanding of those
responsibilities. And there's a long tradition in public schools of that. But there is a real change
in the landscape. So that's a lot, that's a lot Jonathan. Just want to give our listener sort of an
overview of how you've influenced my thinking in teaching and your book being part of what I share
with future teachers. And they really, they really love it, man. They really get into this
concept of publicization and what you're calling for related to their own school experiences,
to the ways that they're seeing things happen in their school communities, and to this energy they have
to be involved locally, whether that's school boards or within their own school systems.
So Jonathan, a little bit like as we head into the break shortly here, a little bit about where
kind of things are at for you in publicization. And what you're thinking about in terms of where
things are going in 2026. Yeah, two small questions. Thanks, Johnny. You know, you know, how we do it.
I do know how you do it. And thank you so much for being such champions of book and the ideas and
we'll get into it after the break. There's a brand new article in school administrator, the
American Association of School Administrators Magazine in December, which summarizes some of
the big ideas in four nice pages, 1600 words. So for your students, that can be the cliff notes version.
Cliff notes. I love those, man. That's how I got through high school.
Well, hey, publicization, new, a little bit more expanding. Our guest, Jonathan,
Gerikov, busted pencils, fully-led at education talk. Hey, 10 lords of leap, and I heard.
Well, we'll see if they're leaping when we get back.
Yeah, welcome back. Busted pencils, fully-led at education talk, educated educators talking
education Saturday show one full hour. And yes, I know people, you still download it because
you're like Saturday, I can't make it all the time. That's okay. That's why hey, go to civic
media's website. You can download our show and all kind of other shows if you'd like. And that's
the best thing about it if you're not listening. At the time, the show is coming across your local
radio station. You can always go and download the show. Our guest is Jonathan Gerikov.
Johnny, long, big question setting up Jonathan, but kind of pivot into Jonathan wrote the book
publicization with different way to potentially frame what it is about public and whether
schools, not just public schools, what makes them more public? Jonathan, you got to have a
piece in the school administrator that, you know, talking about this, particularly though too. And
I really like, you know, the exclusion test. And I was wondering if maybe that's the first way to
kind of come into from privatization to publicization. What do you mean exclusion test?
Great question. So Johnny set out the growing typology of schools, private district, charter,
you name it. And the idea of my book is whether or not regardless of the type of school, whether or
not the school is serving public purposes or private purposes, full stop. Are they catering to the
private parochial interests at times of their parents? Or are they engaged in the larger conversation
of a school district of a community of a state of the country and bringing that into the schooling?
To me, that's the distinction between a school that is more public,
regardless of what legal type it is or more private. And, you know, to kind of suck that out,
the book proposes an exclusion test. If there are exclusionary practices by definition,
that school is operating in more of a private way than a public way. And once you start looking for
exclusionary practices, we can find them kind of all over the place, right? Are the board meetings
open to the public and well advertised and participation encouraged and people
given good reason to come out because they'll be heard and they'll be heated?
Curricular decisions. Are they made by the experts and sort of a trust us and excluding parents
from those decisions about the books we're assigning? Well, if that's happening, then those
decisions are more private than public, versus leading into participatory decision making
at all different levels of a school and a school district and a state. Now, we can't take everything
to a vote and that's not what this is recommending. Experts have special knowledge and we need
expertise. But experts should be explaining their decisions to parents, bringing them in so families
don't feel excluded. Same thing for attendance and attendance zone. Am I excluded from a school
because I live on the wrong side of an attendance zone line? And just because of that geography and
the real estate I can't afford, or can we find ways to better include students and families into
into different schools? That's the nugget of the idea and it comes from public goods theory,
right? A private good, private good is excludable. That's a very academic economist definition,
but we can apply it to schools. A private education is excludable from others versus a public
unexcludable education. So using that then too, and this is where I kind of like this is,
we could then potentially be quote, looking at a traditional public school and a traditional
private school and kind of create a, a vent type of diagram looking at. So what are, you know,
the exclusion tests? And so because maybe the name itself isn't necessarily pointing out then
what you're saying, the maybe more a commitment to being more public.
Well, that's exactly right. And I wrote the book and developed the concept over lots of years
of thinking because I got pretty tired of the fight between the left and the right conservatives
and liberals, privatization advocates and district advocates. And how can we open the aperture
a little bit? And I'll close with a little story. The superintendent of Chicago, our
styacy schools, Greg Richman is a 25 year friend of mine. And he says, look, I think we do a better
job educating some of Chicago students than the district schools. And we don't charge tuition,
we wave it. And all these ways, we feel, he feels as if they are pretty publicly purposed.
And in some ways, they are. And in some ways, they aren't. But it allows us to have a, I think,
a more productive conversation about how we educate children in all different types of ways.
You know, and you've told us that story before and for people just hearing it for the first time,
it kind of like, wait, what? Oh, wow, that's potentially kind of like I didn't think about that
because, yeah, a full scholarship to a private school, but then looking at the purpose and the
education actually actually received in that. Go ahead, Jonathan, quick, 50 seconds.
Yeah. And I just want to, you know, I think what it also helps us do is keep the focus on the ends,
a great education, flourishing kids for all rather than just the means, this type of school,
or that type of school. All right. And with that, just set this up.
Jonathan, though, what about people that say you're muddying the waters intentionally?
And then, oh, New York City, new mayor? What's going on there? Well, you got to come on back.
Don't be more when we get back.
No, no.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Spusted pencils fully, let it education talk educated educators talking education, Dr. Johnny Lupinachi Jacob chairman of the board me, Dr. Tim Slecker and our guest, Dr. Jonathan Garco, publicization, talking about, you know, could you be a way to frame or are actually even kind of test what's more public and maybe finding out that, you know, potentially,
and Jonathan, you gave us a great example. Could there be some Catholic schools that have scholarships for kids, but then the education and the outward, as you said, the focus on the end that the kids really did experience a grounding in in the public civic values of what it means to exist in this country, and it's like, whoa, but I want, I know somebody out there has gone, oh, good,
great, right now with all the attacks on public schools, Jonathan, you're going to put this out there now, and muddy the waters, it's not that you're wrong, but do we really need you giving a little bit of potential to some private schools to say, yeah, I might be more public than people thought, Jonathan.
Well, blind loyalty to defend something I don't think is the hallmark of educators or skeptics or how we move the country forward past some of these political fights.
And in the Catholic school example.
Oh, criteria, if I have a non Catholic faith, I may feel excluded from that schooling and that makes it a whole lot less public than private, but the point is, let's stop fighting about types of schools and focus on where we can expand the public commitments to students.
In every school and particularly the district schools, I think district public schools will be even stronger.
The more they root exclusionary practices outside of outside of out of their work, and that's another purpose of the book. Let's be as public as possible to live up to our commitments and our vision to students.
And maybe that's what's going to happen in New York City now that we have a social democratic mayor.
Well, nice pivot, Johnny, jump in there. I see you ready.
Well, I was going to say I was excited to hear about this because we've followed it from afar.
We've seen it through national news coverage and discussed some of the education implications of a new mayor in New York City.
Jonathan, being there and being close to that work, talk a little bit about what's happening on the ground, what's the vibe, and what does this mean for public schools for not just public schools, but for the publicization of education with the social Democrat in office.
Yeah, well, let's start. I think there was very little radical about candidate, Mamdani, and now, Mara, elect Mamdani. Let's take free buses. For example, I ride the bus.
If you people actually pay the fare today, and second, you're riding the bus to work or to go to school or to spend your money in a different part of town, hardly a radical public service to support these other parts of the city in your life.
I think what is radical is he led a brilliant participatory people-powered Democratic campaign.
And it is a radical notion if you're used to being a power broker to see actual grassroots campaigns win, and he did it.
So what does that mean for the public schools? We're not really sure. So I had a piece published at the end of November in Ednext, which comes out of the Kennedy School at Harvard, and it had a clever title.
Mamdani's education plan, ask around, find out.
But I mean that sincerely. They ran such a phenomenal campaign of door knocking and canvassing. Why not turn that organizing infrastructure would still exist, because they still have a lot of volunteers who want to be part of a movement, not just get a job in an administration.
But sustain the movement and ask New Yorkers, what do you want in your schools? Full stop.
And ask every corner of the city and then start analyzing the data and geo mapping it and seeing what co-op city and the Bronx wants and the South Shore of Staten Island wants and everything in between.
There's going to be a lot of variation, but there'll also be some themes.
And to me, that's how you start to construct a school policy that is actually responsive to New Yorkers in a very, very diverse city and very different neighborhoods versus what I think we've seen for 40 years.
The right saying markets, markets, markets, just let parents choose.
And that has worked in some places and has failed in some places.
Or what I think Democrats tend to lean on, which are the experts. We know, we know, trust us.
Well, both are exclusionary, right? If I'm the expert and saying, trust me, I'm excluded.
Or if it's the market, I have no say in what's happening with my neighbors or my community.
So let's really bring around, bring about a publicization project in the very early stages of this administration to be responsive to what New Yorkers want.
Do you think that that could be a potential opening or are you wishing because, you know, I think going back to your piece in November, the, you know, part of the issue was, is that at least my memory was, is that there wasn't a lot about public education from from from him.
But, but the one thing that got put out there was, you know, his potential to eliminate the gifted and talented kind of practice that was going on in New York City, which was, of course, very offensive to.
We, we kind of had a little bit of fun with it because I was kind of like, well, I don't see any reason to quote have such an exclusionary practice as New York City's gifted program that ends up being, as you said, you know, the lottery for such a small percentage that it created its own kind of little mini privates, you know, bastion where the privilege
really continued to maintain their privilege.
Yeah, I, I thought it was an odd issue to, to pick up during the campaign, he got lambasted by his opponents at the time.
On principle, he's actually, he's absolutely right to think that we can identify and separate the wheat from the chaff when a child is four years old is nonsense.
Right separating socioeconomic status and other operators of privilege, as opposed to saying, we genuinely believe every child has innate God given talents.
We're not going to start picking winners and losers at age four. We're going to enrich all of the kindergarten and all the pre case and all to let those talents further develop.
So right on principle, probably a stumble out of the campaign trail, they didn't say a lot on education because they didn't have to affordability was the winning issue, a livable city and a positive message, you know, let's have a positive narrative for New York City.
There's a lot of people living here. Millions of people of living here. Let's have a mayor who loves the city too.
He also talked about ending mayoral control and the piece that I wrote cautioned that the mayor elect to end mayoral control as we know it, not in total, but as we know it.
And if he is unhappy with how that authority has been used in the past, it is a management tool. It's an accountability tool that he and his team can deploy in different ways.
For very important reasons, we know from the research on equity, that the more local a decision, the more opportunity there is for mischief.
And yes, it's responsive to local preferences.
The localization can also reinforce local prejudices and the great steps forward we've had to help every child get a great education has happened at a more centralized government than you be at the courts or or the state level or the federal level or the mayor of what is effectively a city state of eight million people.
So better to decide issue by issue. Where should decision making reside? Then simply say I'm giving up mayoral control. I think there would be more harm than good if that if that happens.
Man, I love the way you even just put that out there because as we know it because yeah, I think to what what he and his campaign were probably responding to was, you know, I'm going to give up mayoral control from the framework of as they they knew it and not realizing that the reality is is said, hmm, you know, what is it specifically about mayoral control that was problematic in the past.
What is it about having some central authority that actually can continue promoting publicization for more people in New York City, more children, more opportunities, Johnny, I'm going to let you finish up the last little conversation with Jonathan here.
Well, I mean, I love all this and it's great to hear Jonathan from you on the ground there and and provide that overview of things, you know, but as we wind down on time with you, I'm also just going to come back to that big question I threw out earlier in the show and just kind of your hopes what you think, you know, you see coming, you know, in 2026, what's the forecast looking like for things coming from your perspective.
Well, it's been an eventful year. We last talked some time ago. I want to quote I want to quote something. Yeah, quote the experiment of controlling American education through federal programs and dollars has plainly failed our children, our teachers and our family.
I think many of your listeners would describe no child left behind that way.
They probably would describe race to the top that way.
And they may be surprised to learn that that is straight from the White House's executive order last year ordering to shut down the Department of Education.
Yes, Trump said that long preamble to an answer to your question, Johnny, if in fact,
the feds want to improve education by empowering parent states and communities. Let's see states step up.
Let's see states enter that vacuum around testing around standards around district lines around funding.
The feds saying we're done with it. Let's do it. Let's do it at the state level.
Wow of that. Yeah, man, Jonathan, how is it that it just goes too quickly with you, my friend.
Yeah, I think you're going to have to check out the book publicization. We'll have a link in the podcast description so you can get it.
Yeah, that's fine. We got to get you back though. Let's I want to do more with this. Trump and the Department of Education because I hear where you're going.
Great. Busted pencils. Johnny and I will be right back.
There it is.
Some hospitals fully let it education talk educated educators talking education. Yeah, you know that music last segment. Wow.
So quickly love spending time, particularly with everybody right now, I said, listening in your car, listening in your workshop, listening in your house, wrapping those last minute presence for people celebrating Christmas.
Heck, I still got to go out and do a little bit more shopping, to be honest with you, you know, to the season of spending. They keep saying it's the giving season. I keep feeling it as more like the spending season.
You know, not that there's anything wrong because you have to spend then to well, you don't have to spend a gift, but you know, I've got an idea to him.
Yes, instead of you giving me a gift and me giving Johnny a gift and him giving you a gift, what if we all just don't do anything and it's about the same, right?
We've just passed the same money around. Let's just, you know, no, it's not doing it.
Yeah. Well, or we can, you know, each bring a 20 to the next time we're together and we can all just, you know, give each other a 20.
I think that's fair. I mean, unless your uncle is Scrooge McDuck, it's just passing the same money around. So.
Well, anyway, I, you know, it's so, so Jacob, Jonathan Garco, your first time producing with Jonathan, like, what do you think?
He was great. That was a lot of fun talking to him, getting to hear his perspective out there in the fancy big apple. So I thought that was great.
A lot of questions that that we had. And I think a lot of people have about Mamdani and the experiments we're going to see coming in New York City.
And there's one thing we love on busted pencils. It's people trying interesting new things and education. So I'm pretty excited to see it.
Yeah, a lot of content there should be coming out.
You know, yeah, instead, you know, his book came out in 2024 publicization, but we keep, you know, pointing it out there as something, you know, take a look.
Because, you know, yeah, people are like, I he's mudding the mudding the waters on, you know, the fight for public schools. And, you know, what though, again, if you're only looking at this from a, quote, teams perspective, you know, Republicans are this and Democrats are this.
And Democrats are that.
You know, as he pointed out at the end of end of the last segment, well, you know, just remember the 40 year war from 1983 of a nation at risk has been waged quite equally by both parties on public schools.
So, you know, let's start there and be honest about it.
And so having a conversation about what, quote, make schools more public, positive stuff, Johnny, right?
Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, there's the classic phrase, speaking truth to power, which is something Jonathan does in an era where it seems to be that power is spoken to truth.
And so it's really refreshing to have him on the show, but also like you said, publicization and these great articles, Jacob will include them in the podcast link. But, you know, if you're a teacher out there, you're a teacher educator, you're an education scholar, you're working on policy, you're a school leader, or you're a parent, or you're just any, any regular person thinking and listening to busted pencils about education, you know, his work is just phenomenal because he really truly breaks it down.
Tim, in a way, I think is anything but muddying the water, you know, it's really just clarifying what seems to be, you know, too muddy. Oh, that's too complicated. That's that stuff. I don't, I don't understand in everyday conversation.
But what he does is he breaks it down and say, hey, folks, this is what's going on. This is what has been going on and why it's happening. And here's what we can do about it together.
You know, we can get together to, you know, strengthen our local communities and an entry point to doing that, right, which side note is practicing our civic duty as democratic citizens.
That's not as Democrats. That says, you know, political people in a democracy, democracy, that's every one of us, right. So he says, you know, bring that together because an entry point is our education system is the schools, the places where children learn together.
To be citizens in this community and all the working parts to that, you know, he really dives into that in a way where, you know, we can continue to have these kinds of great conversations and roll up our sleeves in our communities and get together.
And Tim, if there's one thing that we've learned to in the last year or so, is that voters by and large support public education. I mean, we have the record. So again, I love this speaking truth to power in an era where power is spoken to truth, you know, power to the people speaking truth to power.
Let's get together. Let's understand what's happening in our schools and what can and ought to be part of the change to strengthen our democracies. Love having a mom love talking these conversations with you, Tim and Jacob.
So what a great broadcast today, my guys.
Woo, woo, woo, woo, and with that now it's time for your moment of sin.
I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate. Life is a gamble, not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning to play to act is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.
Hey, thanks for listening to Busted Pencil's broadcast today. Remember, all week long, you could grab great podcast, talk full of more fully-led education talk, an Apple podcast, Spotify, and of course, on the civic media website.
All right, BustedPensils.com and don't be late for home room on Monday and make sure you catch class and session next week on Wednesday and find us Friday for, of course, one of our favorite things, producer Jacobs choice.
And again, if you're so inclined, tune in at 3PM central time across all the civic media network stations for this one hour of your favorite blue collar scholars, Tim and Johnny and keep BustedPensils.
You