Producers’ Pick | Dr. Todd Rose: States are realizing college degrees are a barrier

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Sign up for a one dollar per month trial period at Shopify dot com slash offer 22 all lowercase. Folks, we all know 12 years of education is not enough to win the economic competition of 21st century. You want to have the best educated workforce. Let's finish the job by providing access to preschool for three, four years old.

Let's finish the job. It connects students to career opportunities starting in high school, provide access to two years of community college. The best career training in America, in addition to being a pathway to a four year degree. That is the president last night, a State of the Union address to a period where he's talking about education.

You can see what he's saying here. He's talking about the high school that you can go to. He's got to get the best education in the world. And that is one thing Republicans probably led with it if they were writing a speech like that, because that's how Glenn Youngkin got there. That's one thing about the pandemic exposed a lot of this left wing bias with the school boards. And then we find out what kids are actually learning in school and how does that apply to colleges? the co-founder and president of populist so great to see you you to your thoughts on the speech the education portion what he just said well look I think it's his part about saying look we've got to make high school prepare kids for careers is definitely in line with what we're seeing in in the research but the idea that it really means funneling more and more kids to college and trying to subsidize that is just out of step with where the public is so you're talking about vocational I mean if you want to learn a trade that's just your ticket it is and the thing is is what we're seeing is you know we just we just published a four-year study of the trade-off priorities the American public have for k-12 education biggest study that I know of ever and let me just point a couple things out one is the enormous appetite for change that the public has 71 percent of Americans say more things need to change than stay the same about their local schools never seen that kind of appetite for change second and I think this is the really big one the role of college prep which is basically the point of k-12 right now going into the pandemic it was ranked as the 10th highest priority for the American public out of 57 things now it has plummeted to 47th and in its place they want careers they want career prep and practical skills very interesting because you said now the states are combining that with taking out the college requirement for a lot of these jobs how does that fit into the puzzle well I think this is really important right because right now colleges have a monopoly on opportunity and there's a stranglehold and so there's the truth is is look some jobs do require a college diploma but the vast majority of them it's just decorative and so you're seeing state after state like Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro just gutted 93 percent of the jobs didn't actually require a diploma and so he's taken that requirement away you're seeing company after company all around the country realizing this is a buried opportunity not an enabler so if it's a if they do that then people turn around go yeah I'm not going to pay that state school fee I'm not going to pay the tuition for a private school because it's not really hindering me that'll cause these colleges maybe to drop their price or change their curriculum look I went to college I think it's good for some people but they've got to prove their value right they don't get to just force us to send our kids there and do whatever they want because they can't get a career any other way this will force competition and the best colleges will survive and the ones that can't offer value will go away right so when you see eight separate states now are going to provide the money that would go to private school to the individual and say you can use it for private public school you can use it for private school if you want whether it's charter or just a catholic school a parochial school what do you think about that trend and what it's going to produce well for me I'm a big believer in free markets and in competition and right now public education is simply not responsive to the priorities of the public and there's no better way to force them to respond than to increase competition put them in a game yes and so the thing is is look it's the taxpayers money to begin with so let the taxpayers make the choice on behalf of their own children I trust those families to make those choices and it's time that our our leaders trust them as well right and if you put them there and every day is an open house and the public school does what the private schools does they try to unless it's one of these elite schools that have trouble even uh have to turn a lot of people away like what's happening in New York there's about 11 charter schools all queued up ready to go with teachers they can't get part of the funding that's right because teachers unions don't want these charter schools out there yeah of course they don't right like I mean again if you're a monopoly you don't want competition so it's on us as the public to demand that because it is a better reflection of the will of the people right now than the way the system is operating is it because of the quality of the education the curriculum in between what is it well when you look at what the public says is it's no longer practical they just they're the American public is deeply pragmatic they just want their kid to learn to think for themselves to have some practical skills get out of the basement be a productive member of society have a meaningful career and they have lost faith that that is the purpose of our education system now and what is the what is the pandemic done for your cause look the pandemic completely reordered the public's priorities uh before the pandemic they were like largely going along with what their sort of benevolent overlords told them they should want they got forced to watch their kids learn online and and weren't very happy with what they saw and now parents are demanding more of a say and that's not going to go away and you're seeing smart politicians realizing that and leaning into it enabling parents rather than teachers unions to decide what kids learn so what happened with glenn youngkin he really won on that issue and then governor disantis has taken on african-american studies for ap exam saying that i'm all for it but not if you're going to bring up things have nothing to do with this that seem to be pushing a crt agenda right and i think what's really important there is he's not saying let's not talk about african-american studies and let's not talk about things like slavery but we don't need to inject a particular view like crt and overlay that over a discussion of something as important as that topic so you said the top five privately held priorities tell me if you agree with this uh five all students receive the unique support that they need throughout their learning students can demonstrate basic reading writing arithmetic students demonstrate character honesty and kindness they were able to think critically to problem solve and make decision as soon as develop practical skills uh prepare a meal make an appointment you work a checkbook have a bank account these are things that people want from school yes and what what is really important is that's not just parents that want that that's the general public wants that for other people's kids as well so we've got an enormous mismatch between the american public's priorities and what this system is doing and something has to give so when you see these teachers don't have a choice they got to join a union in most cities where they want to or not they watch where they take a lot of their money and they're voting for only a democratic candidate and they're frustrated they'll say to me well what do you want me to do if i don't become a member of the union i'm not going to get a job especially with this highly competitive places like long island yeah and look i actually think the biggest winner of competition is teachers because look they don't go in there to be just a union member or classroom management yeah i have enormous respect for teachers i'm not somebody who's critical and saying wow they get paid too much i don't think they get paid enough no and their union's failing them right uh they're not responsive to it and for example with the pandemic money comes into these districts how much money you think went to the teachers the ones who cared how hard it was for them to set up the zoom calls and curriculum to get them to pay attention to put their camera on to understand how you did that for a second grader so what they did is they put money out of their pockets ran to staples buy all this apparatus to try to get them you think they even got a thank you from their management they should have got hazard pay right absolutely they really are increase they really are heroes the individual teachers that move mountains on behalf of our kids and and the structure of that system and its political capture has is not serving anybody right not teachers not students not families not the country so dr todd rose is here todd tell me your background which led you to this my background so i was a previously a professor at harvard left before that but i will say i i care a lot about education even though it's only one of the things we do at populace because my own background is i grew up in rural america and i actually fell out of high school so i did 0.9 gpa so i feel like i might be the only one that's gone from that to harvard and what turned it around well i got married when i was 19 had a child ended up on welfare and realized that i had to change my life for on behalf of my children and went to got my ged and went to college at night at a local school in ogden utah and figured out about myself figured out what i do for a career and it really opened a lot of doors what did it do for you in your your quest to find out the perfect system for education well i learned that you know we're deeply individual and there's so much potential out there but it's about helping kids get a great fit between their individuality and their learning environment when you do that you unlock not only passion but enormous contribution that people can make to society right and that's how to reach a kid that sometimes the curriculum won't instead of just saying well that kid doesn't pay attention exactly well what's going on there exactly and so i'm excited about the future of education right now because if we get this right if we just lean into what the american public wants you're going to see an unlocking of unbelievable american capabilities that will set us up for the next century in a way that we are not right now but are you concerned that parents would so parents should weigh in on the goal yes but i think education is an expertise yes so for example i can't teach a class i know how to spell but i can't teach how to spell i can't i don't know how to keep fourth graders under control and get them to pay attention outside maybe the front row so that's a skill and that's something that has to be learned so how do you balance between what the parents want and what the educators know yeah well this is a really important distinction right parents by and large don't really want to weigh in on the how right they assume that the teacher understands and they should the teacher is the expert on the how but in terms of the what that's up to the parents that's up to the american public to decide what the goals of education should be that's not up to the teachers union that's not to politicians right uh but when you look at where it might have gotten off track there's a sense that conspiracy theorists whatever you want to call them that someone intentionally got schools off track and got them thinking a certain way and when you see cartoons roll out from disney which are blatantly anti-american and pro 16 19 they came out this week that you see on ulu people saying that's more proof there's somebody pulling the strings behind the scenes that don't want this country to be successful right but here's my thing which is i believe in bottom-up solutions not top down so when we enable parents and communities to make the decisions about what it is kids should learn we're not going to see a lot of that right because we know we know where the american public is again deeply practical they just want kids to be prepared to be productive citizens and make a contribution um through meaningful careers you know it's interesting i watched joe mansion yesterday say that i want people to have financial literacy in in k through 12 everybody should understand like what i never learned about the stock market in school if i was able with an elective to take a business course maybe i would have went there and i've asked kids they're going through now they go no i don't really know any of that which i mean well what was not interesting to be able to watch the the ticker every day and understand what's going on so then it begs the question like what are they learning right like this is the thing and i think this is what makes parents and the public so frustrated is we spend an unbelievable amount of money on education in this country and we have kids coming out that can't even balance a checkbook don't understand how the stock market works let alone we don't teach civics anymore we don't and we're not preparing them for careers the only thing k-12 does is prepare them to go to college where they have to learn for four more years on their own dime all right and what's next for you to examine if this is going to take place we've got eight states making their own choice when it comes to schools many more want to do it i don't know many democrat democratic states signing up for it what do you think look i actually think that that any politician with their salt is is reading the tea leaves and realizing this is the end of compliance culture in general parents want to say and they're very upset with what's going on in education so you're seeing a lot of that responsiveness i never imagined would have eight states wanting to give money directly to kids funding kids but here we are and that's not going to slow down what's interesting is arizona might be undoing what they did with katie hobbs yeah and and you know the the problem is is you'll see a backlash to that because parents want more of a say they they know a lot about what they want for their kid and they're just not going back to just turning their kid over to the system and trusting that they know what's best if people want to see more about your study where can they go uh populace.org uh the full report's up there all right great and that's by the way it's uh spelled uh just to make sure everybody knows p-o-p-u-l-a-s-c-e right it just means the people that got it understood uh dr todd rose thanks so much thanks appreciate it