What Three Red States Can Teach Democrats About Education with Nick Kristof

0:00Nick Kristof:The new Mississippi miracle, what blue states can learn from their red counterparts when it comes to education.

0:07Carlo:This country was stone cold dead.

0:10Nick Kristof:Hello again, everybody from the top of the World Trade Center in New York City. I am Carlo Versano, and this is The 1600 on another snowy day here in the big town. Before we get into it today, just a quick reminder, please subscribe to this on YouTube using the little subscribe button below. If you're listening on the podcast platforms, give us a rating. Five stars would be nice. Four would do. Anything lower than that, maybe think twice about it. There are some people in the world of opinion journalism who kind of sit back and pontificate about matters of the world from their air-conditioned offices in Manhattan.

0:44Nick Kristof:I don't know who I could possibly be talking about here. And then there are others who go out into the street and they pound the pavement and they do real shoe leather reporting about various issues to buttress the actual arguments they make. And one of those journalists is my guest today, a man who actually needs no introduction, but we'll give him one anyway. I'm speaking with Nick Kristoff. Nick is a two-time Pulitzer-winning journalist, a longtime op-ed columnist at the New York Times, and the author of the recent memoir, Chasing Hope. Nick, thank you so much, sir. I really appreciate you joining us.

1:17Nick Kristof:Great to be with you. So I'm a longtime fan of your work. There's about a million things I'd like to ask you today about various reporting that you've done across the world in your career. But there's one particular thing that you wrote that you're here today to talk about, and I want to focus on that. It's a piece that was in the New York Times earlier this month, the headline of which was, these red states are the best hope in schooling. And the way you lead this story is by saying, quote, a ray of hope is emerging in American education. Briefly, what is that ray of hope?

1:49Carlo:It's that three states that we tend to associate with dismal outcomes, and justifiably, I mean, with high child poverty, terrible health outcomes, and so on. Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana have managed to turn around failing education systems and are now doing really well in education by multiple metrics, by getting kids to read, to do math, to show up at school, to graduate from high school. And if these states can do it, then none of the rest of us have an excuse. These show what can be done, even with limited resources. And I hope that there'll be a spur to the rest of the country to do better.

2:35Nick Kristof:Well, that's, yeah, that was my takeaway from the people. We'll link to this piece if you haven't read it. It's a great piece of opinion journalism. And you traveled, as I mentioned, you traveled to Alabama and Mississippi to do the reporting for this story. What is the thing that took you by surprise the most after talking to all these various students and teachers and administrators in these states that many of us in, you know, the coastal elite, if you will, don't think much of? at least when it comes to education?

3:03Carlo:So I had been to Mississippi reporting on what was sometimes called the Mississippi miracle three years earlier. And look, I tend to be a liberal columnist. I think a lot of my readers are liberal. And there was this deep unwillingness on the part of, I think, a lot of my readers to think that Mississippi could possibly do anything right, that we could possibly learn anything from a state like Mississippi. And so I wanted to go back to see if that progress could be sustained. And it certainly had been. But more than that, what was really striking to me on this trip was that states like Alabama and Louisiana had been a little discomfited that all of a sudden Mississippi was rocketing forward.

3:52Carlo:And they applied some of the same practices and tools, which largely, I think, have to do with accountability. And they, too, have seen extraordinary progress. And to me, that's so important because one of the fundamental questions about Mississippi is, is this replicable in other states? And what is unfolding, I think, in Alabama and Louisiana shows to me that it is replicable if we just have the moral courage to progress and try to learn these lessons.

4:26Nick Kristof:So before we get to those lessons, I wanted to, I lifted a couple of these statistics from your piece that I just want to read off because I think it's important for people to really understand this recovery in terms of the numbers, right? So Alabama now ranks number one in math recovery from the pandemic from COVID. Louisiana ranks number one in reading recovery from the pandemic. Alabama now has the lowest chronic absenteeism in the country. Is that true? That's unbelievable.

4:54Carlo:It's incredible. And they work really hard at it. I've got to say, once you're there and talking to these school administrators, you sort of understand why they are number one, because they work a lot harder at it than I think most places do.

5:06Nick Kristof:So hold that thought for a second, because I want to come back, because I think that is the crux of so much of this, is the absentee issue. And it is a big issue. Nearly a quarter of American students are chronically absent. That was at least as recently as 23-24, according to the American Enterprise Institute. I just looked at, I pulled up the statistics for New York City, where my daughter goes to school. Last year, 33%, a full third of students are chronically absent. It's hard, you know, if you can't get the kids into class, it's going to be hard to teach them. But a couple more statistics here.

5:40Nick Kristof:Mississippi ranks ninth in fourth grade reading levels now. That's up from 49th, I think, as recently as maybe a decade or so ago. When you address for demographics and race, Mississippi is now number one and Louisiana is number two. That's according to the Urban Institute, at least when it comes to fourth grade reading. And forgive the sort of obtuse question here, Nick, but what does it mean when you're saying that, you know, adjusting for these demographics like race and poverty? Can you just explain that a bit? Sure.

6:08Carlo:Yeah, absolutely. So, look, there are a bunch of gaps in education outcomes. There are race gaps. There are English as second language gaps. There are class gaps. And so Mississippi kids, for example, do better. For example, white Mississippi kids do better than white kids in other states. Black kids in Mississippi do better than black kids in other states. High-poverty kids in Mississippi do better than high-poverty kids in other states. But because Mississippi has a lot of high-poverty kids, a lot of kids of underrepresented minorities, including African-American kids, so if you don't adjust, then it ends up being number nine.

7:00Carlo:But if you adjust and try to hold these things constant, then it's number one in the country.

7:07Nick Kristof:Again, astounding. And I feel like this is something that a lot of people just don't really understand has happened. Here's another one of these statistics that I pulled from your piece. Black fourth graders in Mississippi are now reading at a higher level than their counterparts in Massachusetts. Massachusetts is considered one of the better states when it comes to education, at least it used to be. And also, they spend twice as much per pupil in Massachusetts than they do in Mississippi. I pulled up per pupil spending. This, again, is as of 2023. This is based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

7:42Nick Kristof:So New York, California are among the top of the list when it comes to per pupil spending. Louisiana and Mississippi are closer to the bottom. So New York, it's almost$30 ,000. Mississippi, it's about$12 ,200. Now, in some ways, it feels like that might be a little bit misleading because labor costs are obviously much higher. That's right. And it costs much more to pay a teacher in California than it does in Mississippi. But at the same time, even if you zero that out, the fact that these states are better performing than the states that we all consider to be the sort of the top of the tops when it comes to American public education is itself astounding.

8:22Nick Kristof:Yeah, they get more bang for the buck. Right. That's a much better way of putting it. So what are they doing? Right. I want to get into sort of the nuts and bolts of what you saw on the ground there. And you spoke about this a little bit already, that this is a no excuses attitude that a lot of these teachers and administrators have. I'd just like you to speak a little bit to that from what you saw there.

8:46Carlo:Yeah. You know, there's no single thing. It's a bunch of things. So, and I think a lot of it has to do with measurement, with metrics, with constant evaluation, with an iterative approach, with holding kids accountable, teachers accountable, schools accountable, and the entire state accountable. And so what does that look like? So, for example, these states have moved toward a third grade reading requirement, and they have multiple tests. And at the end of third grade, if you can't pass that reading test, then you were held back. And that lights a fire under the kids. And, you know, indeed, the system then, beginning in kindergarten, tries to get them prepared for that third grade reading gate, it's called.

9:35Carlo:And, you know, especially in second and third grade, they were pulled out of class to make sure they can get there. And then in terms of getting kids to show up to class, for example, in Alabama, if a kid has three unexcused absences, the parents are hauled into the school. And I forget, I think it's at five, the parents get a warning that they may be referred to the court. And at seven unexcused advices, they are indeed referred to a judge. You may haul them into court and even threaten them with imprisonment, although that doesn't seem to happen. But it's a way of saying, look, this is a priority.

10:22Carlo:This is something we care about. Right.

10:25Nick Kristof:Whatever it takes, which is basically what you wrote to get these kids into class. And by way of example, you mentioned Marion County in Alabama, where they now have absenteeism down to 11 percent, which, again, incredible. And, you know, what struck me about this is a lot – you know, I think a lot of people in parenting communities at least or maybe in sort of, you know, the liberal ecosystem would say like, look, this – you know, you're talking about root causes here. like you can't solve absenteeism until you solve issues of poverty, kids going to bed hungry, broken homes. They're proving that that's just not true, I think, right?

11:00Nick Kristof:That you can, if not solve this problem, you can do a hell of a lot to mitigate it by actually just an attitude adjustment by the administrators almost.

11:09Carlo:That's right. Look, I mean, there's no doubt that child poverty matters, that parental education level matters, that chaotic homes matter. And those are all real, and we have to address those. But I think too often in my liberal world, we've allowed those to become excuses for third-rate outcomes. And I'll give you one example. In Mississippi, at one point, in the Mississippi Delta, one of the poorest parts of the country, I was in a school with overwhelmingly African-American students. and they had just had a young woman drop out of school early in the year. And she had to drop out because her mom was the only income earner for the family and the mom had a health crisis.

11:55Carlo:And so at that point, and this wasn't in this column, but at that point the school swung into action and assigned three people to get this girl back into school so she could graduate. and they worked on her family members, including other relatives, to try to encourage the girl to go back in school. And the daughter had taken a job to support the family at a local restaurant. They browbeat the owner of the restaurant to offer her a job in evenings and on weekends so she could still attend school. And they fought for this girl and it worked. They got her back in school and she was able to graduate.

12:37Carlo:And I see one in seven kids still failing to graduate around this country. And I think if only there were more schools willing to fight for those kids the way that school was able to fight for this girl.

12:50Nick Kristof:And you just imagine as that student what it must feel like. I mean, kids are smart, right? They know when the adults are paying attention, when they're a priority. and to have a community rally around you and say, look, no, we're not going to let you. You can't take hours that are going to interfere with your schooling. We're just not going to let that happen. There's another girl in the piece. I believe her name is Tatiana McCoy from Leyland, Mississippi. This was an incredible sort of story that you told here. This woman, girl rather, is a high school sophomore. She had to take a$12 an hour job working at a warehouse overnight, Monday to Friday.

13:31Nick Kristof:I mean, I read that honestly and I was enraged. I was just enraged. Like, how can that be acceptable in the richest country on earth? You know, it's like a high school sophomore having to work in a warehouse overnight to help her family put food on the table. But, yeah, I mean, just how can anything like that be acceptable to us in this country, right? Right.

13:52Carlo:And then the risk is that then, you know, we surrender and say, well, it's too bad, but that family doesn't value education or, well, it's too bad, but they're mired in poverty. What else can a family do or whatever? But that school was they were again, they were fighting for her. They were trying to negotiate to see what else she could do, what other hours she could work, ways she might be able to take classes on the weekend if and so on. And when I was there, the outcome was unclear. But considering their passion for getting that girl back in school, you know, I would bet on that school.

14:30Nick Kristof:Yeah. That would be a great follow-up column. Not that I'm your signing editor, Nick. I could only hope. But I want to go back to – so you talked about the third-grade gate, right? This is the idea in Mississippi that they're – basically you have to pass a basic reading test to advance to fourth grade. Like that's just table stakes. What's interesting to me about your reporting in this in particular in Mississippi is the reforms are very focused on reading. But they're also seeing scores in math and other subjects increase too, which suggests what I think a lot of us probably would intuit, which is that literacy is sort of the skeleton key, right?

15:07Nick Kristof:If you want to unlock any sort of educational prowess anywhere, you've got to be able to read. And you've got to be able to read at a decent level pretty early on in your educational experience. And, again, it goes back to what you said. They're not trying to fix root causes. They're just trying to get kids to read by the end of third grade.

15:26Carlo:That's right. And, yeah, and I think they likewise had this intuition that if they could fix reading that other things would follow. But, you know, nobody was terribly sure of it. And, indeed, as you say, math outcomes improved just about as much. And I think that may also be associated with the improvement in school attendance, that if kids can read, if they're able to get through math, then they don't hate school. And they're less likely to just, you know, to announce that they're sick in the morning rather than to go to a class that they just feel lost in.

16:01Nick Kristof:Right. And you also make the point in the piece about how, you know, some of these schools, some of their students, maybe they're not going to school because they're, you know, they're anxious about how they look. Maybe they don't have clothes that they think are good enough for the other students or their teeth aren't good. I think we underestimate how, especially when you're a kid or in middle school, that kind of stuff really matters, right? And there's people in these communities that are trying to help these kids even at that level, right? Don't worry about your hair. Don't worry about your teeth, your clothes.

16:31Carlo:That's right. Right. And I think that one thing that we have underappreciated is that there are a lot of kids in low-income households who need glasses to perform in school. And look, if it's my kid or yours, that kid will get the glasses. If they break the glasses, they'll get a replacement pair. In a lot of homes around the country, that kid is not screened for vision problems. If they are screened, they don't get the right kind of glasses or they lose them or boys especially are afraid that they're going to be nerds if they wear glasses. And there are groups like Vision to Learn that do an outstanding job trying to address that problem.

17:09Carlo:We can solve that problem too.

17:12Nick Kristof:The other thing that – again, you have so many interesting points in the story. But one thing that you point out is that these schools did – made all of this progress without big budget increases. And that just struck me because there's sort of this canard on the left that I've heard many times, which is that the reason public education in America is a disaster is because the schools are underfunded. How true is that?

17:38Carlo:So funding matters. And more funds buy better resources. They attract better teachers. There's no question about that. But you can't pour more money into a broken system and expect better outcomes. And I think that what we've seen is that these states spend not very much money and, I mean, I would argue too little money on education, but they're still able to squeeze a lot better outcomes from that more limited amount of money. And they've also found that once they begin to get these better outcomes, that especially Mississippi, then the state legislature was more willing to invest more in education because all of a sudden it saw that actually Mississippi could be a successful state in K-12 education.

18:35Carlo:And I do think that that is one problem around the country, that there are a lot of taxpayers who don't really see a correlation between their high school taxes and outcomes, and they're not entirely wrong about seeing that disassociation.

18:57Nick Kristof:So this is where it gets a little tricky, but I want to – so you kind of make this point in the story, but I want to harp on it for a minute. it. This is obviously a big success story. I think anybody, regardless of your politics, would say as much. I understand why Democrats are kind of ignoring it, right? And it doesn't make them look particularly good. It's a little bit embarrassing if you're a school's chancellor in a city like Boston or New York City, and you're getting beaten by schools in Mississippi or Alabama. Not that those states or students are any worse or better, but it's just like that's a little bit humiliating.

19:30Nick Kristof:You're New York, right? You should be number one. You're Massachusetts. You should be number one. So I understand the Democrats, I guess. What I don't understand is why the Republicans don't talk about this. Right. I mean, so State of the Union was last night. I don't know if you stayed up for that or not. I didn't hear anything about education at all. Maybe I missed it. But I mean, you're right. Right. I mean, why wasn't Trump? Trump should be up there. He should have been up there pointing out the governors of these states and saying, you guys are part of an actual miracle that's happening in real time in this country.