And do we know if kind of this amount of tech exists? is supporting learning, or is this part of the reason for the declining scores, too?

Well, of course it's part of it.

I'm not sure it's the biggest part, and that, frankly, just gives me an opportunity to plug federal research around education practice.

You know, we too often just wander in the wilderness about, well, what are the facts? How do we parse those things? How do we fully understand why kids aren't showing up? What is the effect of screens? And so forth.

And, you know, we can't expect individual school districts or even states to mount a fulsome gold standard research effort.

That is what has long been a big part of the federal government's role and why I believe, and we'll get into this, that we do need that federal role in education.

So, yes, screens have to be part of it, or that's a good thesis, I think.

And again, it feels really controversial, all this, you know, maybe it's always been, but I would just be curious your thought about how does the school choice, the public vouchers for private school, how does all of this fit into the landscape of the main thing about how do we improve student achievement scores at school?

What about holding schools, school districts more accountable when they don't meet those measurements?

Well, that, uh, uh, that's what parents need to do.

That's where school choice comes in.

That's where charters come in.

That's where changes around teachers and teacher assignment comes in.

You have to use that data then, uh, on the what are we gonna do about it.

But really things often are pretty upside down in education, where we have our best people doing the easiest work, and our most inexperienced people doing the hardest, most challenging work, and then we're surprised by the results.

So talk about the role of AI, the good and the bad.

What about holding schools, school districts more accountable when they don't meet those measurements?

Well, that, uh, that's what parents need to do.

That's where school choice comes in.

That's where charters come in.

That's where changes around teachers and teacher assignment comes in.

You have to use that data then on the what are we gonna do about it? But really things often are pretty upside down in education, where we have our best people doing the easiest work, and our most inexperienced people doing the hardest, most challenging work, and then we're surprised by the results.

It doesn't make sense.

So talk about the role of AI, the good and the bad.

What will these deep cuts mean?

Well, I have a lot of questions, as you might imagine, as school districts and universities and governors and attorneys general, uh, also have questions.

Uh, if we eliminate half the workforce for the Office of Civil Rights, for example, what's their case log? I mean, how are they gonna get through the work that they're required and, and Secretary McMahon took a oath to preserve.

And so I think The Hill is gonna, the Congress is gonna have questions about these things.

I'm concerned about, uh, the accountability and transparency-

What do you make of that argument, that it puts states in charge?

States and local school districts are in charge.

In fact, the Department of Education has expressed prohibitions to mandate curriculum, reading lists, tests, any of it.

How different to you is this particular moment, what the Trump administration is calling for, from what we've seen for decades?

Well, you're right.

I mean, it, it's been sort of standard Republican orthodoxy, except for my former boss, George W. Bush.

Uh, a- and, you know, is it right for us to, to calibrate the right role between the feds, the states, and the locals? You bet, and we've been doing that over the many decades, uh, from very, uh, minuscule to more muscular as we've had in, in the time with more accountability and more attention around student achievement.

And that's the other thing that I worry about getting lost on the cutting room floor is transparency around, uh, the quality of education for all kids, and the accountability muscle that we have through the National Education Report Card, and requirements for assessment in reading and math in a disaggregated way.

Yeah.

And, you know, John just mentioned the data.

That data is particularly troubling for low income and, and special needs students who really have not recovered at all from COVID.