K–12 education

And so...

For me, the teaching side was, I really wanted to be able to grab these students after they've completed that K-12 journey and before they find themselves into whatever that career is going to be.

So I wanted to be able to take those opportunities adult, almost adult learners, right? You know, and that's sort of like the final little piece, you know, before you launch into your career in the world.

And so that piece was really of interest to me.

You know, colleges and universities.

Oh, no, no, no.

This is a K-12 problem.

K-12 is not doing their job.

Everyone says we need a new party and everyone says, no, it's just you need to remove control of the primary system because we have a very small percentage of people basically determining the final candidates, which determine the election in most cases.

Yeah, I was referring to the primary education side, the K-12.

No, K-12, because K-12 is a very strange thing.

I would almost say it's un-American because I always admired America for the flexibility.

If you look at the great people in the past, you know, they never went to K-12.

They found their path.

even when an education system was very undeveloped and when they didn't have money for it.

I mean, it found that public confidence in public schools is dipping to all-time lows.

Only 35 percent of Democrats and 32 percent of independents said they were satisfied with K-12 education, and the number was even lower for Republicans at around 25 percent, one in four.

And I want to connect this conversation we're going to have about graduate schools to what Matt Nicotinetti and I were just talking about, because I think the perception that public schools are not available for all children and that parents need to look elsewhere and pay out of pocket for their children's education, I think that feeds the family affordability issues that are at the forefront of our political discussion.

So Matt and I were talking about, you know, new subsidies for families.

But all that to say, I think one constructive angle here that you've looked at is what are the teachers learning these days? What do we teach the teachers? And so you put out an editorial about a new report from the American Enterprise Institute that looked under the hood of some of these graduate programs for teachers and said, what are they learning there? What are these programs providing? So why don't you tell us a little bit out of top line what the value of this report is and what it found.

Thanks, Kate.

Yeah, so this report absolutely, I think, connects to what's causing parents frustration with the K-12 system because kids are learning what their teachers are learning in grad school or other education schools.

And we know from declining scores in reading and math that they're not getting basic education that they need.