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tv   After Words Betsy De Vos Hostages No More - The Fight for Education...  CSPAN  October 31, 2022 2:20pm-3:18pm EDT

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with great internet should. >> he's been to as a public service. ♪♪ should. >> a joy to be with you, congrats on the book hostages no more. y the fight for education, freedom and the future of the american child. let's start with the title of the book, how did you come up with the name hostages no more? >> great to be with you as well, thank you for doing this. the title is provocative and it's meant to be. hostages no more is a direct reference to a quote by horace mann, considered the father of our education system, 175 years ago he said educators are entitled to look upon parents as having given hostages to our cause f should. i think last two years have given people across the country a front row seat into how many ways their children should really have been held hostage to
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a system for too many of them is simply not working so it's a book about what we do to fix the american education and that is the reason for the title the subtitle about education freedom should which i'm sure we are going to talk about. >> absolutely. before that, you talk about your childhood in michigan, tell us about growing up in holland, your family. were you should inspired by a mentor or teachers that got you on your life journey? >> i was born in raised in michigan, both my parents should are children of immigrant families from the netherlands and started with virtually nothing, myen parents mortgaged everything for hours a young child for my dad to start a business, he is an engineer and
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a better way of doing things so they mortgaged everything in raised the money from family and friends and started a business when i was seven years old and remember helping my dad paint the first building should and working throughout the years. the fauci line, one of the products he developed and created was a lighted sun visor for cars. i was involved as a middle school on the first production line packing, inspecting and shipping the sun visors and later working third shift in the fauci. a great experience, very hard-working and entrepreneurial and always gave my siblings and me should the messages we could do and be anything we wanted to become an they provided amazing role models for me as it a number of teachers i had growing
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up. my mom was a first grade teacher and i recall my second grade teacher should regularly held up my penmanship papers because i am a left-handed individual and it was tough for me to learn m cursive but always encouraged me and i remember that about her. i also remember my high school government teacher who helped instill in me a love for politics and policy and american government. >> in the book you mentioned your dad passed away suddenly in the business was sold and your mom -- tell the story your mom decided to make sure the employees were taking care of, uniquely american exceptional act. >> my mom and dad were
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examples -- my mom is still living, she's just about 90. most of them were committed to giving back and they instilled in my siblings and me a love of giving and philanthropy and they gave in many different ways but what you referenced, my mom took oa significant portion of the proceeds had a given to the employees of the company in the form of unanticipated bonus. it's been interesting to see the results of all the opportunities of the individuals in leadership positions, they went out and started businesses of their own in michigan and it's been exciting how the proceeds they received in the form of bonuses
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seated additional opportunities and new businesses and growth opportunities for others in atmichigan. >> that is fantastic. you dedicate the book to your husband, a phenomenal guy. can we dig deeper and give us a rundown on the rest of your family and grandchildren? at least in my particular life is the most important part of family these days. >> exactly. we have four children all grown with families of their own. we have ten grandchildren and three step grandchildren so life is full. the newest ones are two months and six months and it's a blessing to have the voices of use and energy abuse around very regularly. i'm looking forward to seeing almost all of this weekend. >> you and i share a common passion for education reform,
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freedom, school choice, parental choice. we've had this for at least 30 years. m what drove to make this your life's calling as an adult? clearly one of the leaders in the country and you stuck with this through thick and thin over many years. >> it originated our oldest son, rick,ta now 40 was starting in e garden. we knew we would have our children go to school where we thought was best for them. i researched the area to find the best setting for him. in the process, i discovered this amazing christian school in the heart of grand rapids serving the community around it and began to get involved as a volunteer. the more i volunteered, the more i realize for every child and
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family represented that the school there was probably ten or 20 others in the community that would love to have the opportunity for their kids but couldn't because i couldn't afford tuition, the families and the school couldn't afford tuition and the school regularly still has to raise 90% of the operatingts funds outside from benefactors in the community.at the more i got involved, the more i realized the way we fund or provide education in michigan at the time was not fair, not right i could make the decisions and choices to have my child in a faith-based school but those in the community if they couldn't get into that little school didn't have that option so i began working in a 5o1c3 nonprofit type effort to make changes and you will recall early on we thought through
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emotional arguments, stories of people whose lives were impacted were logical arguments, legal arguments we can make the case and compel policy change but became clear quickly the policiesco were often controlled by politics so it led me into more efforts around the political peace that started working nationwide and targeted states we tried to make the policy should to help policy changes come about through getting involved in the politics. >> that is reallyou important, your motivation was driven by yyour family and moral implications of some children should having parents that could choose a school and others not
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but your civic and political involvement was melted into this policy advocacy, tell us about that because i don't know if people know how active you have been historically should and local policy realm as well as the political realm you talk about in the book. >> some people would think my first form into anything regarding education was when i went to washington to be secretary but it started 35 years ago when rick was going to enter kindergarten. and i established soon after that scholarship organization should that help students and families first in west michigan and then all of michigan to help families access the education they wanted for their children and in 2000 we tried -- we were involved with an effort to
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change michigan's constitution has a high amendment, the supreme court case yesterday has a significant impact on blood we tried to change michigan's constitution to allow for kids in failing schools and school districts to access other choices and was not successful in 2000. we may have been a bit premature but energy of those who supported was distinct, we can't let this energy go away, we have to help harness it and do nosomething good and make changs we need so michigan had a cap on the charter schools you could establish in michigan, theth ony way to get the legislation passed earlier.
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when it was meant, there was little political will to change the cap at the time so we started focusing on those who were either supportive of or not supporting that and began political efforts to ensure legislators were elected to office support expanding opportunities for charter schools so it was the first effort bringing the political peace into the policy piece. because of the success we had, awe moved on. at the time i was serving on a couple of national boards advocating for school choice but we didn't have that political peace in the effort so that began a move toward that and since organizations started
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doing that advocacy group work, we've had more success in helping families have that power to find the fit for their kids education. >> a lot of people probably watching our conversation here probably think good ideas, policy that makes sense, it just happens but what you learned firsthand over many years similar to my experience, the unionized bureaucracies don't go quietly matter how logical your arguments are, you have to win politically and i think that is an h important lesson to people who want to make sure there child gives the highest quality education, they have to be engaged physically and politically. >> absolutely. ntparticularly important today s more families have had a front row seat to their children's
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education the last couple of years and a whole host of reasons, many are disappointed with what they have experienced. rightfully so. we see parents at school board meetings asking questions. we see school board membership changing as a result. i would urge and expand that request to get involved making sure you are paying attention to who you vote for for state legislatures and members of congress because these are individuals who will ultimately decide policy around education now and in the future and where we want more opportunity, we need to support those individuals who will support that themselves. >> yes. but talk about your nomination to be secretary of the confirmation process.
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as a friend watching not near the area code 202 but in miami, it was painful to watch because of the vitriol and ugliness -- i know you are tough, really tough but it was hard to watch, can you share some experiences duringwe that time? were there any lessons learned? >> i obviously went into the auprocess not knowing exactly wt to expect because i had never studied the process before having never anticipated the opportunity to serve in a role like that so i didn't have anything to compare it to but upon flexion and having lived through the whole experience, i think hindsight i would have been a lot more assertive speaking of during the time in
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whichnd i was waiting for the confirmation hearing and very little support pushing back against the vitriol and i also had folks trying to help me prepare. the department of education or what i might anticipate in terms of k subject areas to be addresd in the process so hindsight i have a lot of great ideas how to do it differently but i did my best gettingvi through and thankfully vice president pence could cast that tie-breaking vote which was a historic moment, there's not been another cabinet member having to be confirmedd by a tie-breaking voe prior to that.
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>> there haven't been many cabinet secretaries so unfairly treated as well and you handled it with grace. then the first day you show up to work was amang, share that with us do not think we are referring to the second day when i went to visit a school in washington d.c. >> we could talk about that, tob i was talking about the department of education has three buildings and you shook hands with every person in the building. >> i walked throughot every flor and shook hands with everyone there. to be fair, these are large buildings with a lot of workstations and many of them were activated at a hefty number that worked. i shook hands with every staff member there and every employee and introduced myself and went to the auditorium and did brief remarks of the whole group and
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that was great, fun. although as i mentioned in the book i did where heels in that particular case and that was not a good idea. >> so the second day on the job go to the school, is that right? the mexican day on the job i went to a middle school in the district and we were intent not making it a big deal, we did not inform anyone of the visit. i just wanted to go quietly and meet the students and teachers, someone on the other end, school and apparently released the fact that i was going to be there more broadly and there were many protesters, a lot of media and the encounter was unpleasant, literally barred from entering the school and was pushed down
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the stairs and physically confrontedea so i had to leave with the security department from the department of education, driveway and he said ma'am, i don't think we should go back. i said we have to go back and find a way. we did. we got into the school and i had a great visit, a wonderful visit with the teachers meeting a lot of the students and any parents who had come. it was a great visit but the result was because of -- the way i was confronted and barred from doing my job, i two days later, on a friday -- monday when i returned to work i was now protected by a full 24/7 u.s.
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marshall detail. they'd done a threat assessment and found viable alarming threats against me so as regrettable as it was, i am thankful men and women, they in short i could visit and see places and do things i needed to as secretary. >> these are examples of ugly political culture and culture in general we have where you may have a disagreement with or the enemy, there's little effort to understand the other side because why would you want to understand the enemy? it's personal and ugly and increasingly violent. washington life the nature of
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bureaucracy and you tell two stories in the book that i thought were great examples of this institutionalized entrenchment that exists much more in d.c. like local and state government out of the cab the same degree of craziness protectingct people that are serving, they are there to make a paycheck and not necessarily do their job. , youla talk about books in the closet you wanted to donate and you could share with the otreceptionist to share those stories because it gives a sense of how frustrating it must have
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been someone coming with this desire to empower parents are not a hyper politicized environment but also bureaucracy. >> the story was frustrating because we learned early on there were thousands of books stored down in the basement of the main building of the department so we tried to get them outd of the storeroom to bring them to school when i was visiting and anybody else on the team was visiting schools. we found out there was only one key, one individual who had control of the key and she was only in the building occasionally so we had to figure out when he was going to be there. got it figured out and when he went to open the door but you can't take the books out
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yourself, you have to get someone from the union staff to move them for you so i'm not going to allow you to take the books out today she so that's another process or maybe the one man with the key, union staff that have their own unique schedule to unlock and unload books out of the storeroom. an example of it efficiently, bureaucratic processes that made no sense. before i tell the reception story, there's one other one to me is appalling that can allow this to happen. two say whose job required her to be on a computer all day long and it washa discovered should t log onto the computer for over two years yet it was impossible
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to fire that person so another example. the receptionist story inside the end of the building where my office and those on my team, 0several probably 20 some people that worked on the end of the building should, it was a reception area that two individuals sat at who received to meet anybody at the end of the building, again very early on one morning my deputy chief of staff want to ask the individuals questions and neither of them were there and he was puzzled by that, rightfully so and learned both of the individuals, it was there date. their job was to receive people so we were puzzled how and why
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they telework the position like that so quickly we righted the situation with individuals who would bein there but again, another example should of the impediments and bureaucracy on a regular daily basis. >> my blood pressure would have been way too high to experience that. >> as a governor i w appreciate that but tell me what it meant and how used your position to shift power back to the states. >> everything we did, everything we need to do to follow the law the from washington in
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department as possible. and that was difficult for some republican friends on the hill to understand. i understand the propensity in a place where you have a majority to influence policy, you want to influence it in the direction you want to take it but my intentions particularly with education is it's primarily the role of the state and department of education in my view probably should not exist and never created. much power to the states and give them latitude around decision-making is allowable by law. it started with implementation of the every student exceeds
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that which there were all kinds of regulations ready to go should, i think law passed assuming hillary clinton would be elected president and add-on rules and regulations. congress quickly pulled those back thankfully but it allowed us to look at the plan for every student succeeds act and turn them around back to the states as quickly as possible as long as they were following requirements of the law like i said, there were a lot of republican colleagues who like s to see their own special provisions out of in and/or applied when itos worked for thr philosophy. >> probably the more transformativeve event in the lt 20 years has been the pandemic.
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you were secretary when the pandemic hits. people are scared, very little information to start with. tell me what your role was, i know you created a task force. kind of go through that process of what washington was like dealing with the unknowns and if you could explain to me which states you think have done better than others and why. >> obviously march of 2020 the work a lot more questions than answers. initially it was to paul's payment on student loans which we did immediately and make ourselves available in any way possible to state leaders knowing they would have to navigate.
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as the spring moved on, kids were not catching the disease or spreading it like adults did, the opportunities getting back into classroom settings were very real and it happened for most kids, if not all. we tried and did everything we did to support states making that decision and call and when the initial covered relief package past, we got that money out to states available in the time period by congress which was no small feat. every state and district had the
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opportunity to access funds for whatever they needed to make their schools safe and healthy for their kids to be in but it was amazing of the goal getting back in class and in person. as it wound on through the summer and there were so many states and urban areas with no plan getting kids back into the classroom, itt was very concerning. we did everything we could to urge and encourage them to do just that and pledged support in any way we could give it to ensure they have the resources they need but it was frustrating and that kids were kept out of the classroom more than they ever should have been.
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today we don't even begin to know the scale of impact and harm that has befallen on kids across the country. >> on the public health side we know the upper two shut down schools the impacts -- i think it's got sicker at home than they would have in the classroom with schools are pinched but that's no clear, right? >> absolutely. >> hopefully will learn from the lesson that should apart from the obvious need to have kids in schools so moms and dads can work, there is no health impact for states like florida and others the state open for a long period of time.
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>> serving kids, again the pandemic and how the system handled it opened his eyes to lack of control and influence they've had. >> normally when there is massive destruction, coming from that, there's a surge of innovation that propels us forward. tell us about the innovations, you mentioned homeschooling through double digit across boundaries, hispanic families, white families all had double digit increases, some more than that ander private schools did t see a decline even though parents, pocketbooks are
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stretched, charter schools were up so one of the innovations you see there could be more sustainable and last for a longer pit of time post pandemic? >> a lot of these experiments out of necessity, homeschool distortions or families got together and hired a teacher upset how his or her district was handling the situation, they had a teacher for a handful of ten or 12 kids, seeing those solutions for many families working very well, the policy to support that is around these savings accounts that would allow families flexibly to address the needs of the children based on what they discovered worked for them. those innovations need room to continue too grow and more
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established if they are successful for some families, they would be successful for others. it's a great opportunity for teachers as well m because i thk many teachers were frustrated how their system and the system navigated and handled this. so for teachers to have the same freedoms and creative opportunities themselves is a real opportunity in silverlining from the pandemic as well. >> what you think of this explosion of what they call pods? >> pods, micro schools, call it what you want, what amounts to essentially is a handful of people getting together saying we are going to learn together, often multi- aged children, multi- level learning in onend
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room schoolhouse again and resources in terms of curriculum and ways to receive mastery -based programs suited for kids should but how much time they sit in their seat and how they progress through concept, pandora's box opened and now policy has to support families finding solutions working to find their children. >> the exciting part is parent now, i guess they were the teachers for months of their kids, they saw lack of response to their needs in some districts and got frustrated and it's a
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spark for significant parent engagement which is the way education freedom will move forward. >> exactly. parents sensed, they will be awakened to the need to be involved in their kids education in a way many of them had not realized before. it also realized they do have an important role to play and they can figure it out. they do have the ability to make sure their kids are in a place that is engaging them and they are learning. >> absolutely. we briefly mentioned learning losses, i haven't seen any studies, research-based data
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that suggests learning losses but anecdotally it appears losses are devastated particularly for younger kids, particularly kids struggling prior to the pandemic. is there data now collected that verifies what i think is likely to be a serious challenge? one of the recommendations you believe need to be made? what you recommend policymakers and schools across the country to to deal with the gap that's built up? >> the studies i've seen or references have been anecdotal as well but mckenzie even before we have come out of the pandemic estimated five months to well over a year learning lost depending on how long a child was out of the classroom and it
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will be a longitudinal issue, we will have to keep measuring. sweden released a study this week, other than two weeks initially, two to four weeks initially have not close down schools, they went back to school immediately and they determined no learning lost for students and it's concerning even more for students in the u.s. out for a year or more in many cases as we have talked about the ones out at last the longest or in person learning the longest of the ones who can least afford it, the most wevulnerable kids. in some cases families were able to find other options to other creative solutions but only with
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policies that support education freedom are we really going to see opportunity for many of these kids to catch up andnd surpass where they were because going back and doing t same thing will not bring about better results for these kids. >> you mentioned in the book education freedom, parental choice in the pandemic environment and post pandemic environment exploded across the country. i agree with you that these are state policy driving this and local implementation is the key. give us a rundown on the state your most excited about transforming the system where parents are given power as informed consumers where they get information and make choices best for their kids. >> i always reference florida which you read the way creating
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options and opportunity and education freedom. thankfully your successors and state legislatures continued to on significant steps you took now more than 20 years ago to provide these opportunities. as he florida continuing to push forward and make options -- i hope florida is the first state to offer universal education freedom. time will tell but i am encouraged by what governor doocy and legislators in arizona continued to push on and same for indiana. ... seen this this issue really inform many of the the primary races this year in states where
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there haven't been programs and where there's been there's been legislation introduced in the past, but there's simply hasn't been broad enough support, but this issue has really popped to the top of the list for many states and importantly so i think in this next year or >> i agree with you and i think if you look at this as both of us are veterans in this fight. some states started earlier on the journey but now many states are expanding charter schools, looking at the essays, aggressively pursuing parental options and states that 10 years agowould never have considered are starting to do it . and i think parents are the one that made that happen. that's the core elements of the book that you trust
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parents over bureaucracies and i wish morepeople did . >> i have great optimism also for my home state of michigan which is in the middle of getting an education savings account, a significant one established after the governor vetoed the legislation . we have a citizen led petition initiative to represent that same legislation back to our state legislature and that they said if they successfully passed it will be, long without her signature and this will provide opportunities for tens of thousands of kids in michigan . >> so let's switch to a place where the department of education has more of a say which is higher education but it has more of a say for a financial reason, not necessarily, well it's bad policy which is our student loan program. tell us about where we are with the student loan program
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. president biden is talking about granting immunity if you will for thousands and thousands of borrowers. what's the status of the student loan program and what would you do if you had a magic wand, what would you do differently? >> this is something i started sounding the alarm on early on in my tenure. the student loan debt at that point was just shy of $1.5 trillion. it's now grown to over $1.7 trillion and it is just inconceivable to see that we have not addressed the fact that federalizing student aid in 2010 supposedly to pay for amoment obamacare which it did not do clearly , was the start of more runaway costs on the part of you, tuition
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increases on the part of higher ed institutions and more students taking out student debt for higher degree. but where we are now is president biden's under tremendous pressure from the far left to forgive all kinds of student debt. not only is that ill-advised, it's illegal and also even if there was legal to do it has no merit. two out of three americans have not taken out student debt or attended higher education so the fact that we would ask two out of three of them to pay for those who knowingly made that decision is simply unfair and untenable. secondly what about all the students that basically have paid down their student loans or whose families saved for their higher education or for the veterans who heearned their higher education through the
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g.i. bill. nothing about this is right or fair and even if you did wave a wand and forgive a bunch of student debt where would that leave you? it doesn't change anything. congress and the president need to go back to the drawing board and i would argue wind down the student loan program and allow it to go back to the private sector as it was before and in the process of doing that, expect more from institutions on showing how their value matters to the students there supposed to be serving . >> it seems to me a bottom-up approach if you've faced down or phase out the student loan program, a bottom-up approach could create ulcers of interesting options. look at our friend mitch daniels who has completed his tenure at purdue, a great
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university . he has not raised tuition for eight, 10 years now y. >> is all-time in office. >> better outcomes, low-cost. state like tennessee are providing incentives for kids on a merit-based basis to earn credits in a very low-cost way. florida has low tuition. seems like you're punishing the people doing the innovative work by allowing the federal government's involvement in the student loan program to take away the incentives for innovation. >> absolutely, that's absolutely right and there is every opportunity to really support a lot of these innovations and in meaningful ways that are not going to penalize the innovation and are not going to keep rewarding those that keep doing the same things the same way and providing less results for students . >> so the term woke mrs. a
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term i didn't know until about four or fiveyears ago . is a very interesting topic in our ncuniversities today. the canceled culture, the liberalism of the institutions themselves. your secretary when this kind of took old and became much more relevant all across the country. how do we deal with wilderness, how do we make sure that our universities are places where there's inquiry, where your views are challenged, where you learn indoctrinated ? >> arguably much of this starts in the k-12 years where students today for by and large are not learning how to really debate ideas and to analyze concepts and are going into higher ed institutions of very malleable and then getting pushed by a far left leaning faculty and bent on so many
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college campuses. we were very clear to go and push back on those instances where the first amendments, the opportunity to speak freely about lots of different things would be ndabridged and we made sure that we would highlight those incidents wherever we could. this has got to be something that collectively we say enough. we have got to, we've got to change direction and ensure that first of all students arrive at college prepared for the experience of college. and i'll again, i would argue far too many of them are not prepared to do first of all the work of higher education and secondlycontend with a lot of different ideas . education is for holding your core philosophies and exchanging ideas and debating , debating the merits of
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different issues. and i think that the woke trend has certainly now gotten the attention being paid to them is good because i think common sense people are going to start to push back and say we don't, we're not going to sign up to this and be partof this any longer and that has to extend to corporate america as well . >> absolutely. you're actively reengaged in some philanthropic endeavors. what's the role of s philanthropists in this case? a lot of these universities receive hundreds of trillions of dollars from wealthy donors and lovely universities but is there a role for them to play to be able to kind of accelerate
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the purging of weakness? >> having a lot of philanthropist to for whom this issue is very important and who are paying attention are actually either lypausing or withdrawing their wisupport for these institutions that are not standing up and saying we actually support and protect the free and open exchange of ideas on our campus. and i think that this is not a light switch moment, it's real dinner moment or where where pwere going to see more pressure put on institutions if they do not readjust and take a different tack in this whole battle an issue. >> there's a growing awareness in our country that a four-year degree still has value but it's not the only path for people to live purposeful lives and to rise up. talk to me about the career pathway movement.
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is there a role for washington apprenticeships? how do we accelerate a logical trend to give different paths for the great diversity of young people in our country? >> this is something our administration really puts a focus on in an effort to help provide new vehicles and support for the industry recognized apprenticeship program which had has great promise for alternate career pathways beyond high school. it was ejust in the early stages of being in limited and end in partnership with enterprise and you know, many companies who on their own are actually addressing these issues and providing their own solutions but the iraq was actually going to help provide more robust and integrated opportunities and
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predictably divided administration canceled the program most immediately. that should be reinstated and expanded upon.and in concert with that, there needs to be more i think more research, not research, there's plenty of research done but there has to be more reports on what these four-year institutions that students are graduating from today with presumably not insignificant student debt. we added information to the college scorecard that will help provide data, will help provide meaningful data for students to look at down to the field of study at each institution to see importantly what you will make, what you will learn after you graduate from that particular program.
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previously it was reported as an average by institution which of course masks very significantly the highest and lowest ends of the spectrum. so for many of these graduate or undergraduatedegrees , there are, there is not a payoff. you look at it and you look at the cost versus what you're likely to earn and there's one, two, three and four and i hope that will help students become more discerning about the directions they take and to evaluate do i go to a four-year institution and take this area of study and look forward to earningthis or is another career pathway really something i should look at more closely ?>> so with the few minutes we have left i thought it would be appropriate to talk about january 6 . you were in dc and you talk about your experiences on that day and lessons learned
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on a really tragic day i think in american history. >> i was, i was in my office that morning and was urged to go to my home because there was rumors, there were rumors of reunrest and the more i saw and the more i thought about what children were seeing and viewing that day, the more upset i became. the president could have and should have done more to stop what was happening, to call people back and when that didn't happen it really was a bridge too far for me and as you know i submitted my letter of resignation the next day. i had come to washington to serve students and to serve the american people and it was an honor to have that opportunity from president trump but i have been frustrated after the election
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that we had a window of time by where we could have conceivably gotten the education freedom scholarship tax credit into the second covid relief bill. but there was so much chaos and not focused within the white house itself around what some of the possibilities were. waand that was you know, that was frustrating. i got to a point where we knew we had done everything we could on behalf of students so january 6 was kind of the lack of action there kreally kind of sealed things for me. >> i know you love the constitution and i think it's your career and hope that high school students particularly but across the
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country that we reconnect with our heritage, with that where understanding our history and respect the institutions that have created the greatest country on the face of the earth. that's one thing hai'm very optimistic about a lot of things but i worry about the disunity that exists because we don't appreciate our common heritage. >> that's another very good argument for why we need to ensure that all students have an understanding of the founding of our country. the founding documents, the you know, the history that we have continued to build upon and the constitution anchors at all. >> betsy, thank you so much. this is a great book, i really enjoyed reading it and i hope people will pick it up
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and read it. before i let you go, can you tell me what book you're reading right now? >> right now i'm reading a book called under money . >> i think i've read. it's a fiction but kind of not. >> it's fiction but kind of not, we'll leave it atthat . >> thank you so much. you served with distinction and honor and i admire you so much for all you've done's thank you so much, it's great to talk with you and i look forward to seeing you again soon . >> sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive the schedule of upcoming programs, author discussions, book festivals and more. tv every sunday on c-span2 or anytime online at book tv.org. television for serious readers. >> middle and high school students it's your time to
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shine you're invited to participate in this year's student can documentary competition in light of the upcoming midterm elections pitcher yourself as a newly elected member of congress. we asked this year's competitors what is your top priority and why? make a 5 to 6 minute video that shows the importance of your issues from opposing and supportingperspectives . don't be afraid to take risks with your documentary, be bold among the $100,000 in cash prizes is a $5000 grand prize. videos must be submitted by january 20 2023. visit our website at student cams.org for competition rules, tips, resources and a step-by-stepguide . >> every saturday american history tv documents america's stories and on sundaybook tv brin

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