Better Teaching: Only Stuff That Works

Gene Tavernetti: Welcome to Better Teaching, Only Stuff That Works, a podcast for teachers, instructional coaches, administrators, and anyone else who supports teachers in the classroom.

This show is a proud member of the BE Podcast Network shows that help you go beyond education.

Find all our shows@bepodcastnetwork.com.

I Am Gene Tavernetti the host for this podcast.

And my goal for this episode, like all episodes, is that you laugh at least once and that you leave with an actionable idea for better teaching.

A quick reminder, no cliches, no buzzwords.

Only stuff that works.

Joining us today is Robert Panio.

Robert is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a veteran educator and acclaimed author of How the Other Half Learns Equality, excellence, and the Battle Over School Choice.

Before becoming a leading thinker in education reform, Robert spent years in the classroom himself bringing firsthand insight to the challenges teachers face and the realities students live.

With a background in journalism and a passion for educational equity, Robert offers a unique perspective, one that challenges assumptions and sparks meaningful dialogue.

Today we'll explore his views on curriculum school choice.

And the role of civic education and what it really means to serve students in America today.

Whether you're an educator, policymaker, or just passionate about the future of our schools, this is a conversation you won't want to miss.

Good morning, Robert.

I am so pleased to have you as a guest today on Better Teaching Only stuff that works.

Thank you for coming on.

Robert Pondisicio: Thanks, Jean.

Thanks for having me.

Looking forward to it.

Gene Tavernetti: One of the reasons that I've got had so much interest in what you had to say is where you started in education, and that is teaching at a school in Brooklyn.

Robert Pondisicio: The Bronx actually,

Gene Tavernetti: The Bronx.

Okay.

In

Robert Pondisicio: small difference from the vantage point of Fresno.

Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.

In California there's hardly anything exists other than California.

So you taught there and I'm very curious about your experiences in that environment because my belief is that if we can take care of what happens in the toughest schools and districts, the rest will be a lot easier.

I think the answers.

What do you think?

You with me on that?

Or?

Robert Pondisicio: No I think that's.

Oh, okay.

Sure.

My, my brief backstory is I had a whole other life in in the media world.

I was, I worked for Time Magazine for many years and then business week I started my career in radio news when I was when I took a semester off from college.

Never quite found my way back.

But 20 years into my career at age 39 as I like to tell the story, I was seduced by an ad on the New York City subway system for a program called the New York City Teaching Fellows, which was for, mid-career.

Career switchers to become teachers in hard to staff New York City public schools.

I sometimes joke that my teaching career was what I call a mid-career impulse purchase.

It was, I was not one of those.

People who, at age seven or eight line stuffed animals up in my bed and pretended I was their teacher.

And if I'm being really candid, I was not much of a student myself.

I was a b student on my best days.

The idea of my going to teach.

In the New York City public school system, in a place like the South Bronx, as they say, would not have been on my Bingo card.

A and it was intended, if I'm being candid, to be a two year mid-career kind of, public service dt, at which point I'd go back, I assume, and, go back to the news business two years turned into five in the classroom, never quite left.

Educ educate, never left education after that.

Got very interested in exactly what you suggest Jean, like how do we.

Do right by the kids who are least likely to be served well by our public school system.

And that, led into to any number of avenues that, that we can discuss.

But having said that, I'm struck by the comment you just made if we could solve that problem, then we can solve all the other ones.

I, I think I might have given you a different answer 20 years ago than I'm going to give you today, which is, on the one hand, there's a surface.

Plausibility to that.

Sure if you can, reach and teach the hardest cases then the rest is easy.

But I think there's a fruitful vein of ore to, to mine in talking about how that idea may have led us astray.

In other words, it's not that we have figured out, obviously how to, close the achievement gap and reach the toughest to serve students.

A case could be made that in pursuit of that very good goal we have I don't wanna say undermined, that's too strong of a word, taken our eye off the ball about the rest of the kids.

In other words, the fact that I, and maybe you and many others have dedicated our work, our professional lives to underserved kids, does not mean that we do not as a country have an obligation to the rest of the kids.

So there's a there's a good discussion to be had about how those well-intended practices and policies may not have served 55 million as it were K 12 students.

At large.

Does

Gene Tavernetti: And I think that Yes.

Yes.

And and as we mine this vein, and I think that's one of the things that most of the schools that I've worked with as a consultant over the last 20 years have been struggling schools, underperforming schools poor communities, et cetera.

And, didn't really worry about the others, the other kids

Robert Pondisicio: Oh, they'll be fine.

Don't worry.

They'll be

Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.

And then of course, like many things my my abuse changed when somebody in my family, had a niece who had kids were very exceptional.

And they're trying to find places for them, to go to school.

And, and I understand that not every kid, the public school down the street is the place for your kid.

Robert Pondisicio: Yeah.

Gene Tavernetti: And we need to make that place as good as we can for as many as we can.

Robert Pondisicio: But that's well said.

No I think that's right.

And, sorry, go

Gene Tavernetti: go ahead.

No.

Robert Pondisicio: I was gonna say, that's exactly right and, could not have told you when I became a public school teacher what a charter school was.

I had no inkling about, school choice.

Milton Friedman was not a name I knew.

I consider myself to be a fairly staunch choice guy these days, but that said I, I don't view that as a panacea either.

Because, the public schools are not gonna go away, and I don't think it's a sufficient theory of change to just say, oh the free market and choice will create.

The rising tide that lifts all boats.

It will be better than what we have now in all likelihood.

But I do think there's a certain, blitheness that some choice advocates promote a about that.

But the, where I thought you were going with what you just said but you went in a slightly different direction.

It's not merely the gifted talent, the exceptional kids.

It is the competent kid to coin a phrase.

In underperforming schools that I also worry about.

I wrote a book about Success Academy some years ago, which is this, high performing network.

Extraordinarily high performing network of charter schools in New York City.

And as I like to say, the.

The central, to my mind, the most important character in the book is not a central character, but she haunts it like a ghost.

It's this young lady named Tiffany, and I describe her both the beginning and the end of the book, and I describe something that I call the Tiffany test.

Just to to retell the story.

In my second year at PS 2 77, which, for the benefit of our listeners, it is, was still, is the, literally the lowest performing school in New York City's poorest performing school district and poorest congressional district at the time.

So I had this young lady my second year teaching, her name was Tiffany.

That was her actual name.

And by the debased standards of standardized tests at the time is the early aughts, she was what we called a double three.

Meaning she got a three on grade level.

Again, debased standards punitively on grade level in both math and ELA.

And she was also, I'm bearing the lead here a little bit, just an unusually diligent, dedicated rules following kid.

We all know this kid, we've all, we've taught in these kind of settings, we've all had this kid, who the building could fall down and she'd be scribbling away, at her homework.

That kind of kid.

And the way I tell the story in the book, I describe her earnestly as the most important figure, influential figure in my career.

Perhaps somewhat by accident.

One day I described to my special ed supervisor, I said, Hey, I've got Tiffany and I'm not challenging.

I'm not doing anything for her.

What should I do?

And she, she said something that stopped me, my tracks and changed my, my, my career.

She said, quote, she's not your problem.

And what she meant by that is, um.

You've got classrooms that are filled, your classroom panis is filled with kids who are below grade level and way below grade level.

You've got behavior problems, at the wazoo.

Why are you worried about Tiffany?

She's delivering the results that you need.

She's a double three.

She's on grade level.

And when I say it changed the trajectory of my career because to be blunt, who the hell says that to me about my kid?

If we are well off, who said, how dare a school or, view our 10-year-old who's, merely on grade level as a finished product who we don't need to concern ourselves with.

So when I say she haunts the, my book like a ghost, when I wrote this book about Success Academy, more than a decade later.

Every kid that I saw at Success Academy was Tiffany.

Not literally obviously, but that kind of kid.

The rules follower, the parent, deeply invested in education, ambitious just buying what we were selling, so to speak.

So those are the kids.

Even though they may not be the majority of kids that we're concerned about, if you're really committed to equity in its best sense, then, what's best for the cause of equity?

Is it to regard a kid like Tiffany as a finished product because she's, again, delivering the results that the system says we need to deliver.

But what could she have been?

If she had gone to my daughter's elite private school to a high performing public school, if her mother had the wherewithal to move to, the leafy suburbs, where she would've been much more a culture keeper than an outlier.

So when I say she haunted like a ghost, that's what I mean, like we've gotta solve that problem too.

How dare we say to, to any diligent invested kid?

Oh, I'm not worried about you.

Gene Tavernetti: So let's go back to the Bronx and now that you've had Tiffany haunt you all these years, what kind of changes would you make to that school?

What suggestions would you make to them to get out of this mess?

Robert Pondisicio: Okay.

There, those are two different questions.

One, what would I suggest for Tiffany and what would I suggest for the school?

My suggestion for Tiffany is school choice.

How dare we keep her in that school?

Because we have bigger problems to solve, that, that's step one step or the other part.

What do you do about, struggling public schools?

My answer is not gonna be terribly original or surprising.

I think it's curriculum.

I became a slavish devotee of the work of Don Hirsch, Edie Hirsch, Jr. In core knowledge at pS 2 77 because, and again, this is a story I told a thousand times.

His work was the one body of work that described what I saw in my classroom every day.

Kids who could decode but struggled with comprehension and we were, by the way, Lucy Calkins, teacher's college classroom.

So everybody's familiar with, with Lucy Calkins now courtesy of Emily Hanford and her fantastic podcasts, hard words and sold a story.

But it's funny when those podcasts came out.

I heard from grad students that I'd had 20 years ago saying, oh my God, did you hear this?

This is the stuff you were talking about in ed school.

Yeah, it's about time.

That's that somebody's getting, giving attention.

So that would be my prescription is look, there's a reason there's.

Kids are decoding and it's more complicated than that I grant you.

But there's a reason that kids are falling behind in reading and it has nothing to do with the stuff that the Lucy Calkins of the world talk about.

Student engagement and curriculum that looks like you and on.

If Ed Hirsch had been in my classroom, he would've said no.

It's background knowledge.

No, it's vocabulary.

Look, there are things that, that literate speakers and writers assume their audiences know, and that if they don't know it then the comprehension falls apart and he's exactly right and she's exactly wrong.

Gene Tavernetti: I think you're the leading, I think I'm gonna know part of your answer to this then my question is, because I get this a lot parents will ask me what's a good school?

Robert Pondisicio: Yeah.

Gene Tavernetti: I have no idea what even they're asking.

So what do you think, because we want to create good schools and schools of choice, so what, how would you define a good school?

Robert Pondisicio: Yeah.

Oh boy.

How much time do we have?

'cause this is not an easy one.

I

Gene Tavernetti: Robert?

I didn't invite you here for easy ones.

I

Robert Pondisicio: Okay.

I'm a lot.

No, it's something else I say all the time, like every good conversation about education either quickly gets to it's complicated or it's not a very good conversation.

And this is one of the most complicated.

I'm not a technocrat I am not eager to be prescriptive.

And despite the fact that I've obviously have very, well-defined beliefs about good, better, and best in, in terms of things, school culture and curriculum.

But I have no desire to impose my, my, my priors on you or anybody else.

So the answer of what is a good school is it's complicated and it depends.

And there, there are things that I do not care for.

That I, the last thing I would wanna do is ban them.

And there's things that I love and the last thing I would wanna do is impose them on teachers in schools and parents who don't want them.

I, man how do I even enter into this?

Um, there's, there's I don't think that I, look, I think my ed reform credentials are in pretty good order, right?

I started teaching in 2002 when, this was this moral crusade.

So I'm, I'm not anti-testing, for example.

But I don't think that testing is a sufficient lens into what is or is not a good school.

I mean that, that said, I'm not sure you can have a good school with bad test scores.

But I don't necessarily care for the effects of testing on, on, on school culture or whatnot.

I guess to, because I'm challenging myself to give you a definitive answer, my answer to what is a good school is probably an ecosystem that would allow all of us to have.

The range of choices and options and discernment that well off parents have.

My daughter went to a pair of, frankly, elite private schools in New York City.

Not because I frankly valorized or valued that form of education, but as I like to point out, I was a public school kid.

My wife was a private school girl, and private school was the price of peace in our marriage and what a price.

But I do think she got a fantastic education.

Not necessarily if I'm being, if I'm being really honest about it, but I do remember.

Because this I shouldn't admit this that whole world of elite private schools in New York City was completely foreign to me.

I had no idea these things even existed until I was well into my twenties and started working alongside people who'd attended them.

The joke I've told for years is if you'd having, been a blue collar kid from Long Island.

If you'd said to me private school, I would assume you meant Catholic school.

If you'd said to me boarding school, I would've asked, what did you do they that your parents sent you away?

Because my dad was forever threatening to send me the military academy and maybe he should have.

But I just did not know this world existed.

But, sorry, I'm drifting myself from the main point, which was that parents who wanted their kids to attend these schools who were well versed in them.

Could parse the differences like Talmudic scholars, a as, as if the difference between a Brearley, a Chapin and a Spence was the difference between walking on the moon and looking at the moon and it was just inscrutable to me.

As I remember saying to one parent.

'cause I was teaching in the South Bronx while my daughter was, looking for admission to these schools.

Said, here's the difference between our kids and their kids.

The, for our kids, the difference is that we have to choose between good, better, and best.

For my students in the South Bronx, they have to choose between bad, worse, and holy shit.

Forgive my language.

So you know that so what is a good school?

It's it's a good school when everybody has the choice between good, better, and best.

And I don't necessarily need to be prescriptive about what that is.

That's up to you as the parent to decide what is good, better, or best for your child.

Gene Tavernetti: I like that.

The last part of your response there.

I did graduate, I did some graduate research and I was at a visual and performing arts magnet school,

And the only requirement to get in was you made it through the lottery.

Robert Pondisicio: Wow.

Gene Tavernetti: the parents wanted their kids there and it was K eight.

So here's what the results of my study.

If you were a and we're asking them about the importance of the arts to them, the upper income parents didn't care about the arts at all.

If they wanted their kids to take classes, they'd send 'em to classes after school.

Okay.

And then the other thing that those parents wanted, they just didn't wanna send 'em to a middle school.

That K eight environment was a softer environment.

Robert Pondisicio: I see.

Gene Tavernetti: The lower the middle income, they wanted their kids to get an art education.

They wanted what we provided, the lowest socioeconomic, they wanted their kids there because it was a safe school, and they heard it was good.

That's all that safe equated good to them.

And what was interesting, getting back to something you said about the academy that you studied, is that parent choice.

For some reason it got out in the, in our community from our school is that the kids could get kicked out.

Know that, there's somebody that wants your spot.

We couldn't do that, but we didn't dissuade them of that notion, because that parent support, for whatever reason, they all had the reasons for them to be there.

And and they were all different.

And so to them that good school meant something completely different.

Robert Pondisicio: I guess I would I'm not pushing back.

I would just add some nuance, I don't entirely buy the idea, but I don't want to, I can't gain say your empirical data that, that affluent parents.

Quote, don't care about the arts.

In my experience, the well off parents want a setting for their kid where they can be the star at something, so to speak.

In other words, either you're a standout student or you're a standout athlete, or you're a great musician or actor or whatnot, and we wanna find the setting where you get your, you're best chance to shine.

Look, my, my daughter was an example of that.

She went to, what was maybe one of the more elite academic schools in New York City.

To the school that had the reputation as being the athletic powerhouse.

'cause she was an athlete, she was, she is six foot two and she's an athlete.

So she wanted to be I think she also wanted a co-ed setting, if I'm being really honest, as opposed to the old girls school.

But that was a chance for her to, to, to shine in a school where the one she left, she was more of a face in the crowd.

So I think that's probably probably one thing to it.

But look the point that you made that really resonates with me is the point about safety.

I think this is an open secret among urban charter operators, for example who really would.

Prefer that parents come to them because, they want a classical education if you're a Bronx classical or they want, college going, if you're a Success Academy, or kipp, or Achievement first.

But at the end of the day, charter tends to be synonymous with safe in, in inner city environments.

They see those uniforms, they see the well ordered, run schools, and they think, okay, my child is gonna be safe here.

And look I saw this, frankly, getting back to my own.

Experience teaching in the DOE, the Department of Education schools.

I'll never forget this, the principal who was, I don't wanna be unkind.

I liked her quite a bit.

I don't think she was, even by her own definition, a great instructional leader, but she was, a public figure in the community.

She was like the mayor of the school.

She had in gigantic letters painted on the back of the school.

The three rules of PS 2 77.

Rule number one was keep everyone safe.

Rule number two was get a good education.

Wait a minute, like why are we saying that?

But look, and also the original KIPP school was just a few blocks down the street from us, but I was never able to persuade more than one family to,
to enroll in kipp even though it was the highest performing middle school in the city, because it was almost like they'd be thinking to themselves.

What are you nuts?

I'm gonna have my kid walk a half a mile down 140 ninth Street before, before it gets slide out.

What the hell's wrong with you white man?

No, they're not gonna do that.

So I, again, what's a good school?

If safety's an issue, then the safe school is the good school.

Let's be honest.

Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.

It's interesting the, I wanted to ask you this.

I'd heard you tell that story about your daughter before, getting into a, because she was an athlete,

Robert Pondisicio: Yeah,

Gene Tavernetti: and what.

You obviously knew her, you listened to her and,

Robert Pondisicio: once or twice.

Yeah.

Gene Tavernetti: yeah.

And she got to go to her school and she became, live up to her potential as an athlete.

But how do we do that?

How do most parents do that?

You educ educated professional.

No

Robert Pondisicio: me.

I didn't graduate college until I was 39.

Gene, that's my, my, my

Gene Tavernetti: I wanted to say nice things before you, I asked you the question, so, but how do most parents deal with that?

Because it's, okay, so thinking about schools of choice these days, let's talk about some schools of choice.

One of the things that the smaller schools, the charter schools give up by necessity is all the extracurricular activities.

Robert Pondisicio: Yeah, I think that's probably I, maybe less true than it used to be, or at least in big cities.

But I my, my experience is not.

It is not, and again, I, one should not generalize from one's personal experience.

But I actually think I'm you're making my point.

You're not gain saying it in other words true or false.

We tend, as teachers, as educators to valorize the academics.

And, I'm certainly guilt guilty of that, but there are many paths to success.

It's not just academics.

And to your point about, at least I'm anticipating where you're going with this, that smaller schools d don't have the resources to have, great sports programs or what, whatnot.

Here's something else.

They don't have the resources to do that public schools do have, which is a vo-tech, voc, which is I live in a rural rural community in upstate New York where a, disproportionate number of the kids are interested in CTE career and technical education.

No charter school or micro school is gonna be able to have the kind of resources, that a regional school district can have in terms of vocational education.

But this to my mind, is still making the case for not against, let's call it a robust ecosystem of opportunities.

Again, I have, very firm ideas about academics, but I have no interest or desire.

To impose those upon any child or any parent.

Hey, if you want your kid to get a, a HVAC certificate and that's what the kid wants to do, then who am I to say, oh no, you must go to college.

For example maybe that wasn't where you were going with

Gene Tavernetti: I, I'm with you and I don't know.

Again, there's gonna be an n of one.

This was my experience, but actually I think, where I grew up they had vocational programs, but they were regional programs.

Robert Pondisicio: Yeah.

Gene Tavernetti: So we had kids from other districts come in to learn how to build houses, construction tech.

Robert Pondisicio: same.

Same here in New York.

Gene Tavernetti: And I guess as, and I think you had just mentioned this, is that maybe we need a system.

Of schools and I don't know how complicated that would be, you mentioned, we met so far, we mentioned sports and we mentioned vocational ed, but we also have, I don't wanna say the specter, the special ed.

How do we deal with special ed in

Robert Pondisicio: No, I'm not an expert on special ed and I don't pretend to be, but be but before we leave, the resources of the public school system wherever you are and this is obviously gonna vary from state to state, but I see no reason.

Why let's call them non-traditional students, whether they're charter, homeschool, micro school, et cetera, why they should not have equal access to, what we call Bo Cs here, those regional, vocational technical training centers.

Sports teams, orchestras et cetera.

We, the, those parents are paying their taxes, their, and their school taxes just like the rest of us.

So I don't see any reason why their children should be denied the opportunity to play on teams participate in bands, on and on.

Gene Tavernetti: I'm just laughing about the we have a was a football coach.

I was a football coach at a public school, and I lost what would've been six of my starters.

So that's not six outta 22.

They probably would've gone both ways to the

Robert Pondisicio: Yeah, that's happier.

Happier team.

Gene Tavernetti: To the private school.

And it happens, it happens in the public schools, and they're, they're decried.

Oh, oh no, they didn't come for sports.

They came for, whatever purpose.

So I guess it's, I don't think it's insurmountable, but it certainly becomes, more complicated.

Like I, I'll give you an example of the special ed.

Uh, you have kids going to an elite private school that have some legitimate or possibly legitimate needs.

And so they send 'em to the public school down the street to get them assessed.

And they have to assess it.

They have to assess them, and they're not really happy about spending their resources because these kids aren't local kids that are paying property taxes.

These kids are from Asia and new England, and they're not from California.

So I just, I'm not saying it's unworkable, but there are issues, and I think you brought it up in the beginning, that.

That we need to think about those things when we talk about school choice.

That there are issues to be worked out.

Robert Pondisicio: One of the knocks you hear on school choice is exactly that.

They can kick kids back into the public system.

They can counsel them out, whether it's for, they have, special education needs or other issues that, that, quote, we can't serve here.

I suppose that's true.

On the other hand, nobody ever talks about how this works in the other direction.

Look at the budget of almost any decent sized school district.

You'll almost invariably see some sums and sometimes substantial sums for out of district placements where the public school system decides, Hey, we can't service this child's need.

We're gonna send them to a, a $70,000 a year private school or a boarding school or whatnot.

That is expert in, in, in this.

Now, to be blunt, often you find, you, you interrogate that data and you find a pushy parent with a lawyer.

Behind it who's, looking to play the system to get that that opportunity for his or her child.

Here we go again.

Gene, like every good, conversation is, it's complicated.

That one's complicated too.

And, I also, I'm not expert on school finance.

I don't wanna pretend to be, but I it strains my credulity that we could not in the move to create tax credits and ESAs and whatnot.

Why would you not wanna create special financial incentives for private schools to, in fact serve special ed kids?

If the ESA as I'm making this number up, $7,500 a kid, then why shouldn't it be 15,000 for the special ed kid?

Create the market incentives that would incentivize private schools who are gonna operate increasingly on public dollars to, to take those kids and not reject them.

Gene Tavernetti: Yeah, it, you're right.

It's a complic.

It's a complicated issue.

And I think your example of the the $70,000 kid, the low incidents.

They're, you're in a, you're in a school district of 2000 kids and you've got this kid that's gonna cost, a hundred grand a year for their, their fair and appropriate education.

So it's not simple.

It's not

Robert Pondisicio: Yeah.

No.

None of it's simple the activist class likes to pretend that it is.

Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.

And the other thing that I wanted to get your opinion on, I think for school choice to happen, equitably for everybody.

Is that the, like the school that you worked in needs to be better?

It we want our

Robert Pondisicio: no question.

Gene Tavernetti: We want our choices to be a choice of good schools.

Not, I just, I need to get outta here.

Robert Pondisicio: No, tha Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

And, and thank you for teeing up my current favorite subject, which is, I said before that my ed reform credentials were in pretty good order,
but I've also been, I think about as critical of the ed reform movement as one can be and still, be welcomed into the club, so to speak.

And I used to say this.

Quietly, and now it's a flag I've planted in the ground that look, this has just failed.

Most, most reform efforts have simply failed, testing.

And I'm not against testing and accountability and standards.

I'm very much in favor of those things, but it's dishonest to, to pretend that they have had anything like their predicted effect and the reason in my diagnosis.

Is simply because it makes assumptions about the work that, that we do as educators that are simply demonstrably false.

In other words, and I'm gonna oversimplify here, what's the internal logic of test driven accountability?

It's this.

Hey, teacher, Hey school.

Hey district you know what to do.

We don't need to tell you what to do.

We're just gonna hold you accountable.

And we are going to, either reward you or punish you based on your results, but we're not gonna tell you what to do.

And for years I've said in in, ed reform gatherings, like you have this idea that we know what to do.

What?

Where'd you get that idea?

That there's all this competence, in, in K 12 just, that just needs to be properly incentivized.

Have you not been to ed school?

Because if you had been, you would not have these ideas.

And now I find myself Gene saying the exact same thing almost the exact same thing in among my school choice advocates.

Hey, you have this idea that there's all this dynamism and excellence, just waiting to be, unshackled from bureaucratic regulations or union dom.

Where did you get that idea?

'cause it's still not there, in other words so when I say, this is the flag I'm sticking in the ground, it's this if we'd spent, the last couple of
decades trying to improve practice as opposed to assuming it's sound and trying to incentivize it with policy levers, I just think we'd be further along.

For whatever time I have left in this business, that's gonna be my laser-Like focus is look we have the teachers, we have we're not gonna radically transform the 3.7 million teachers.

We're not gonna lure boxcar numbers of the cognitive elite into classrooms.

I like to invoke Donald Rumsfeld and his, offhanded remark about you go to war with the army you have not the army you wish you had.

The same thing is true with school.

We're gonna go to school with the teachers.

We have not the teachers we wish we had.

So therefore, the question, the only question I think that we should be asking is how do we make them better?

How do we make this job doable by those men and women?

'cause the cavalry ain't coming, and all we've done for the last 30 years.

Is, like the old joke about beatings will continue until morale improves, is we keep putting more and more on teachers' plate and say you're just gonna have to walk and chew gum at the same time.

We're not gonna do that.

Okay.

That is not gonna happen.

We cannot continue to put every problem in American life on the backs of teachers asking them to be everything from, pedagogues to curriculum creators,
to, to mental health professionals and expect to get good outcomes at the basic functions of getting kids to, minimal competency in reading and math.

It's just that is a clearly bad idea.

Gene Tavernetti: We're gonna back up a little bit to something you said earlier about curriculum,

Robert Pondisicio: Yeah.

Oh,

Gene Tavernetti: CU curriculum

Robert Pondisicio: word for me.

Gene Tavernetti: Embedded in a lot of your answers, that's a baseline for you.

We have to have, we have to have a good curriculum.

And

Robert Pondisicio: good Hirsch guy.

That's that.

I said before that he's my guru and my disciple and I meant it.

Gene Tavernetti: so how do we.

If you're a teacher, you go to work at a charter school, let's say Robert, we're, we'd like to hire you.

Let it, let me tell you how we do things.

Robert Pondisicio: Yeah.

Gene Tavernetti: Here's the curriculum.

Here's how you know the instruction.

Here's how we teach.

Um,

Robert Pondisicio: You've already got me Jean, because none of that was said to me when I was in the public school system.

What was said to me is Mr. Panio, you're the best person to know what every child needs.

Are you outta your mind?

No, I'm not.

Gene Tavernetti: So I can, that, can that message be spread like in public schools?

Do public schools need to have that identity so when a parent comes, they move into the

Robert Pondisicio: Which identity?

Jean?

Sorry.

Let's be clear.

What identity do public schools need to have?

Gene Tavernetti: This is how we do things here.

Robert Pondisicio: Oh, no question.

Gene Tavernetti: this is our instructional vision.

This is what you can expect when your kid graduates.

This is what you can expect when they attend our school which is the same thing.

I think any charter or private or, that's what they're doing.

That's why the tea, that's why the identity is why they were chosen by the parent.

Robert Pondisicio: I think that's probably right, although, never underestimate the ability of any school, public, private, charter, et cetera, to be lured onto the rocks by the, the siren song of, educational fads.

There's one in Texas now that's claiming to get the best results in the country with no teachers in two hours every day in front of, an AI program like that can't possibly be right.

So there's a lot of, there's a lot of froth in, in, in our world.

But I'm going to, I'm gonna assume I know what you're you're implying in your question like what would I. Routinize the content of public schools.

Would I, in other words, would I put less discretion in teachers' hands and more this is the curriculum, this is what we teach here.

Yeah, absolutely.

And less, this sounds somewhat contradictory with what I said earlier about I don't wanna impose my priors on schools there, there's an exception to that, and this is why I'm an Ed Hirsch guy, because, at the end of the day.

Language doesn't care what we think doesn't care about our ideas about, student engagement and culturally responsive pedagogy and, make it your own, et cetera.

Hirsch's singular insight unassailable insight to my mind is look, and I think I said it before, speakers and writers make assumptions about what their readers and listeners know.

So once you understand.

That's just a basic non-negotiable.

It's just simply the, the mechanics of language proficiency.

It's not a desire to impose, a dead white male curriculum or Eurocentric ideas on kids.

It's simply, it is just the way language works.

Once you accept that then you have an obligation to ensure that every child in front of you.

Leaves you with that basic array of mental furniture as I like to call it.

So if decide instead that, oh no, we're going to, let the child decide what he or she wants to read and we're gonna worship at the altar of student engagement, then you are literally in, imposing a kind of illiteracy on children.

My one non-negotiable, I suppose the thing that I would routinize is, yeah, you gotta have to have a.

Knowledge rich language rich curriculum from the very first days of schools school, that ensures that kids get to the language proficiency starting line.

It's not the alpha and Omega.

But if you disregard that then the kids will fall behind and fall further behind thanks to something.

That Keith Stankovich calls the Matthew effect, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

So that's again the one.

The thing that I would insist on every every school does is just simply recognize the mechanics of how language proficiency works and what it means to a child's education.

Like we have a moral obligation to get every kid to that language proficiency, starting line after that.

Go with God.

Choose your own adventure, but you can't be you can't be doing, choose your own adventure education from kindergarten on.

That's just a recipe for disaster.

Gene Tavernetti: Okay.

So I think we're clear about that.

Okay.

We got that checked off our list.

Now I think I told you my initial time that I reached out to you that I had asked my friend, Zach Gelle to introduce me to you.

Robert Pondisicio: Oh, okay.

Gene Tavernetti: of course Zach has all his fans, and it never happened.

But you were at research ed and so what that tells me is beyond curriculum, you also have an interest in instruction.

So is would there be any things that we would want teachers to be doing in presenting that curriculum?

Do we wanna go there?

You know what I'm asking?

We're going from curriculum and now because it doesn't matter if you have curriculum, if the instruction's not that good.

Robert Pondisicio: Yeah I think that's right.

One battle at a time, please.

I think right now the first battle is the language proficiency knowledge rich curriculum one.

So I, I'm I don't have a lot of hills or time left to die on those hills.

One is, and by the way, before we leave the subject of curriculum, let me say that, it's not merely my desire to impose a curriculum on people like it, it is also part of the banner.

What we discussed earlier is one of the ways to make the job doable.

By the teachers.

We have not the teachers we wish we had.

I dunno about you, but when I was a new teacher, I spent an ungodly amount of time preparing lessons from scratch because I was told that was a best practice.

I won't bore you with the research on this, but we, we know the teachers tend not to do it very well, not because they're, bad people or bad teachers, but it's just, is what it is.

We under, we undershoot what kids can do.

And it's also really hard to expect a teacher working in isolation, say in fifth grade, where I taught to understand the fourth grade curriculum, and what the prerequisites were and set kids up for success in sixth grade.

It's just one of those kind of design elements that it just makes more sense to have a coherent K 12 cumulative sequential curriculum and take that off the teacher's plate, so to speak, so they have more time for the things that they can only do.

Give feedback, develop relationships, get to know with, families, et cetera.

Nobody else can do that.

But the classroom teacher, you gotta take something off of their plate if you want.

If you wanna make the job doable by, by those teachers, curriculum is simply the most obvious thing to do.

Does that mean, handing, handing everybody a script?

Like I, and back to Zach?

I'm not anti scripts.

And if you look at the data, project follow through and whatnot, all direct instruction doesn't work.

Like, why would we wanna do that?

Sorry I'm giving you a windy answer here.

But the short answer to, to your question is, what do you do about pedagogy?

You cultivate a culture of education that has a healthy respect for evidence and data and not, preference and philosophy, which is what we run on now.

Gene Tavernetti: You talked about, you're heel to die on and I am gonna propose this to you, Robert.

You and I become Butch and Sundance jumping off the cliff.

Alright?

Robert Pondisicio: Who are those guys?

Gene Tavernetti: And and because, you've been talking, curriculum.

I get it.

That's important, right?

You can't argue that, especially with all the arguments that you bring up around language and understanding.

Can't argue with it.

Robert Pondisicio: You can, and people do, by the way, because we worship at the altar of student engagement, we confuse engagement with learning.

This is another, insight that Zach talks, quite eloquently

Gene Tavernetti: We can't, uh, forget the illogical arguments.

The fact, let's talk.

So for the past 20 some years, my focus has been on instruction on explicit instruction.

I don't think your previous comment was strong enough about teachers not knowing how to do that instruction.

Robert Pondisicio: No I don't agree with you at all, but I've, most of my work has been in the area of curriculum.

Obviously, it doesn't teach itself.

But the problem with direct instruction or, I'm meaning small d, small I, explicit instruction.

Is that we have raised not just a generation, but multiple generations of teachers who seem to be, who think it is.

It is either robotic unengaging, not best practice, boring for kids and ineffective, and in fact, it's none of the above.

It's the other stuff, that is this is the price associated with worshiping of the altar of student engagement.

Assuming that the engaged child is the learning child.

So you tell me since it's your field, but it seems to me the conceptual breakthrough has to be, look, are we gonna be an evidence-based profession or not?

Gene Tavernetti: Are we going to be a profession that actually teaches kids that are, that we're successful teaching?

Because I think one of the things that happens, the schools that I've been in I'm not there because everything's going great, and so when we talk about.

Explicit instruction embedded in everything that I talk about is all the research that you hear, but I don't talk about the research, talk about how these kids can be successful.

Because I think what's happens is something you said earlier, there's this vicious cycle of kids, not kids not doing well, and then our expectations are lowered.

Robert Pondisicio: Sure.

Gene Tavernetti: we and so instead of the answer being better instruction with better curriculum, it's those fads that you talk about that we know don't work.

But again, we get back to, uh, is that something that we can ask teachers to do?

In some districts, we can't tell 'em.

We can't tell 'em what to do.

They talk about they talk about academic freedom as if they're in a university.

My goodness they're your employees.

Robert Pondisicio: Okay you brought it up.

So you're gonna regret this because this is, this is kinda teeing up something on, down the heart of the plate here.

Where in God's name did we get this idea?

That there's a, this concept called academic freedom.

That is a higher education thing.

That is not a K 12 thing.

I'm not gonna bore you with the details, but there's a mountain of court decisions that functionally say, look, teacher, you are, you do not have free speech.

Your students have free speech.

You don't, you are hired speech.

And you are there to deliver a curriculum.

That the school board and district have hired you to deliver.

So this idea that teachers, their speech is being chilled or whatnot, is simply not, it's not a thing like, like the kids say.

And it bewilders me.

And again, I'm not a teacher basher, but this is, to me evidence of the brokenness of the culture of teaching.

I need to get data to back up what I'm about to say because I've made this point and I'd this is a studyable phenomenon, but I would wager, my
last dime that a vanishingly small slice of America's 3.7 public school teachers consciously think of themselves and their day-to-day work as.

I'm a state actor, I'm a public employee.

I am a, dispassionate member of the government, which is exactly what you are.

If you're a public school teacher, you are not a free agent.

You are a public employee and if you follow that idea where it leads.

It's, it suggests a certain humility, right?

This is not my performance space.

I am here to perform a role.

Now, I've made a, dark joke about this over the years, saying no bus driver ever wakes up in the morning and says, look, I didn't become a bus driver to follow a route.

I'm gonna drive this bus for social justice.

And instead of, driving up and down Fifth Avenue, you take your bus to, to Harlem or the South Bronx.

I grant you that teachers are different than cops and firemen and bus drivers and motor vehicles workers, but not that different.

In other words, we are, the behind me on the shelf, I could show you my master's portfolio in which, I had to demonstrate, as a condition of licensure and getting my master's that I was, prepared to be an agent of change to teach for social justice, et cetera.

At no point, Jean, did anybody ever say to me, what now?

And 20 years later, 25 years later, strikes me as being the most important thing I should have heard, which is, Hey, pio, you're not a free agent.

Okay.

You are a public employee.

You are a deeply influential state actor with a captive audience of 25 people.

Children who are not yours.

Behave yourself accordingly.

That is not a message that teachers, I think.

Want to hear, but I think it's one they need to hear.

In other words, that pendulum of no, I'm gonna bring my whole self to work.

I'm going to, I didn't come here to follow a curriculum.

I think we need to rethink that.

Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.

Yeah.

No, abso absolutely.

And the other thing is because I've worked in schools where there was a union and where there wasn't a union.

I understand why there's a union.

You have one

Robert Pondisicio: Yeah, I'm not a union bas.

Gene Tavernetti: ignorant.

No I'm just saying because that's usually where it comes up, it's like the contract says, or we don't have to do this and it's a misinterpretation.

I'm with you.

It's a misinterpretation.

And again, getting back to something earlier we talked about is hey, this is how we do things here.

Not only you're a government employee, but we're gonna give you a help in telling you how to do your job and we're gonna assist you and we're gonna help you get better.

Robert Pondisicio: Yep.

Gene Tavernetti: but that's part of the deal.

And if not, no hard feelings, there's a school down the street Robert I really enjoyed this.

Anything any final thoughts

Robert Pondisicio: are we done?

I thought we're just getting started.

Wow, that was fast.

Gene Tavernetti: I'm, I know I'm not as entertaining as I think I am.

I don't know about.

Robert Pondisicio: I'm having a good time.

Oh I'll ask you the same question you asked me.

I already described what you know, my hill to die on.

Focusing on instruction.

And again I'm, I know I'm preaching to the choir here because our audience, I assume is mostly instructional folks as opposed to the policy people who tend to listen to me flat, my jowls.

But if I'm, my, if the hill that I'm gonna die on is.

Is preaching practice to policy makers and making teaching doable by the teachers.

We have, not the teachers we wish we had.

If that's, the hill that I'm gonna die on, what's yours?

Gene Tavernetti: Mine is effective instruction.

And you know it, and it's funny you mentioned all the pushback we get from it, but if you take a look at the people in the field, the thought, I hate the word thought leaders,

Robert Pondisicio: Oh goodness.

You know how you can tell it's not a thought leader because they say they are.

Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.

Yeah.

I I chose that over edu celebrity, but same, you get the idea, you get the idea who these folks are, and you ask them, were you ever an athlete?

Did you coach anything?

Did you ever perform?

Were you a and they all have some performance in their background.

And you know what happened when they learned how to perform?

It was explicit instruction.

Robert Pondisicio: Of

Gene Tavernetti: They're sold on it.

They're sold on it.

And it's not an intellectual knowing.

It's an emotional knowing.

And that's the way I am.

And so that's what I think.

I think teachers get it if it's presented in a way that makes sense to them.

And I'm gonna tell you, there has been so much sucky inservice and professional development.

I don't blame them.

I don't blame the teachers for their attitudes.

But if you show 'em something that works, okay I'm gonna try this.

Robert Pondisicio: We, we started this conversation with my, you asked me to reflect on my, my, my journey into education.

One of my very first days pre-service summer of 2002, I'll never forget this, a, some district puba in, the South Bronx District seven
telling us, brand new, not even, teachers would be teachers that making kids memorize their multiplication tables is quote, child abuse.

It's wow, I, that, that's interesting.

This is by the way, a nice thing about being a 39-year-old instead of a 22-year-old who was like, immediately ignored that advice.

Intuitive like that.

And I think about that now.

Millions of us have been hearing these things like, oh, drill and kill is terrible.

Don't kids memorize this or drill that, et cetera.

And now with the benefit of hindsight, I wanna say, to say to them, have you ever heard of cognitive load theory?

Do you know what that is?

Because, I'm increasingly convinced, to go into your line of work instead of mine, gene, that cognitive load theory is the skeleton key that unlocks all of this.

In other words, re remember what it was like when you learned how to drive a car and it was terrifying.

Death grip on the wheel, eyes on the road.

You didn't even want to divert your gaze for a second to look at the speedometer.

That felt like a reckless thing to do now, because so much of this is automatic.

You listen to podcasts, you talk to your wife, you're looking at the scenery, et cetera, because.

That's cognitive load theory.

You have internalized how to do the basic.

And now you're, you have freed up bandwidth to do other things that's how reading comprehension works.

Once you master decoding and phonics, that's how higher order math works.

Once you've got basic functions down.

So that's one of those ideas that like, wait a minute how did we go so wrong?

Or fall into the throttle of such romantic ideas that we say to new teachers that what you're implying.

Practice drill mastery.

Those are bad things.

No, they are absolutely not bad things.

In fact, you're not gonna get anywhere without them.

Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.

And I think that cognitive low theory I repeat talking about driving.

We live in a suburb in a pretty protected area.

And my daughter, I take my daughter out for her first driving lesson.

So she's behind the wheel, she backs out, she comes to the first intersection.

And because we're in a fairly isolated area, four corners, no stop signs.

She says, what do I do?

Robert Pondisicio: What do I do now?

Gene Tavernetti: What do I do now?

And I said, we'll talk about it later.

And that's when I decided, honey, we're only doing right turns today.

That's all we're gonna do.

That's all we're gonna do.

Robert Pondisicio: Somewhere Zig smiles.

Gene Tavernetti: How can you.

And it's the expert novice thing too.

You don't realize what's involved in all of these things that we're teaching kids and back off.

Back off.

I'm with you.

Robert Pondisicio: No, that's a great insight.

That's a really good insight because you, the story, the way I was describing it was, put yourself back in the position of being that terrified new driver.

Now put yourself in the position of being the terrified parent in the passenger seat, and then suddenly you're gonna see the benefit of direct instruction.

Gene Tavernetti: Yes.

Yeah, absolutely.

Robert, it has been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you for doing this, and hopefully we'll run into you soon.

Robert Pondisicio: I hope so.

Thanks for having me.

Gene Tavernetti: If you're enjoying these podcasts, tell a friend.

Also, please leave a 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

You can follow me on BlueSky at gTabernetti, on Twitter, x at gTabernetti, and you can learn more about me and the work I do at my website, BlueSky.

Tesscg.

com, that's T E S S C G dot com, where you will also find information about ordering my books, Teach Fast, Focus Adaptable Structure Teaching, and Maximizing the Impact of Coaching Cycles.