Inside the Department of Education (with Kirsten Baesler)

A

Welcome to the Report Card with Nat Malkus, the education policy podcast from the American Enterprise Institute. The Department of Education has said it's trying to return education to the states, but what does that mean in practice? What is the department doing now to scale back the federal role in education? How does the department think about its own education agenda as it tries to return education to the states? And are states ready to have education returned to them, whatever that might mean? To discuss these questions and more, I invited Kirsten Basler onto the podcast. Kirsten Basler is the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education at the Department of Education. Previously, she served as the North Dakota Superintendent of public instruction from 2013 until 2025. Kirsten Basler, welcome to the Report Card.

B

It's great to be here. Thanks so much, Nat.

A

All right. So Kirsten, you're the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. Basic question to start out with, what is the Office for Elementary and Secondary Education?

B

I get asked that question all the time, so it's a great one to start with. So I say I do everything, kindergarten through 12th grade, Office of Element and Secondary Education, everything that it says in its name.

A

And what are the kinds of things that people might think, oh, well, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education at the Department of Education, they must be responsible

B

for X curriculum, teaching licenses, teacher pay, all sorts of things like that. And as you know, that's not what we're responsible for. That's not what we do. But you have that conversation, you explain to them what you do. Federal responsibility, state responsibility, then of course, local responsibility.

A

So you're over the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. People think, well, they must run the schools.

B

Yep.

A

Don't run any schools.

B

They don't. We do not run any schools whatsoever.

A

So on a day to day basis, what is your work at oese? That's the abbreviation, oese. What's it look like?

B

So obviously we work closely with the Secretary's office and she has a set of supplemental priorities. We embed those supplemental priorities as we provide. It's basically the Office of Elementary Secondary Education is basically split into two divisions, if you will. One of the divisions deals with our formula grants and those are the by formula grants. That's our title one, our title two. And for those that aren't in education or not really education, wonky. That's the funding that is appropriated by Congress on a formula basis for states to be delivered out to the state education agencies and then they in turn deliver them out to their local education agencies. I think the only exception to that is impact aid, which I've learned is very important to almost every member of Congress, because every member of Congress seems to have some federally used land within their states. And so the impact aid we deliver directly to LEAs for those local education agencies. So that's one side of the House, and then the other side of the House is what we call our discretionary grant side of the House. And so those are our competitive grants where we run competitions. Congress has appropriated some funding and dollars to ensure that certain activities or initiatives that they believe are going to be helpful to improve student academic outcome in this nation. And so we run competitions, and with that, we run competitions to deliver the grants out to our applicants. We have slates of awardees, if you will. We run those on a cyclical basis. Generally, those grants are good for five years and have the opportunity to be continued. But part of that then is part of the responsibility is to, once we award the grantees, we have to monitor, ensure that that funding is being used in the way that it's intended to be used. And most important to me, and I'm adding additional emphasis on that, not is it being used on allowable uses, but it's getting the impact that we believe it should be making on improving student academic outcomes.

A

And so the formula grant side is sort of like, well, this money's supposed to go out, and you need to make sure that states get their checks and the right amount and so forth. So that's a lot of money. And then the discretionary, that has more work to be done, but it's less money. Am I getting that right?

B

That's true. It's still a lot of money. Relatively speaking, it's less money than our formula grants, but. But, you know, to the average taxpayer and the average household, it's still a lot of money. And on both sides, both the formula and the discretionary, it's important to note that once we deliver it out, there's the responsibility of monitoring as well, because it's very important that we are ensuring that that money is being used as it is intended to be used.

A

So previously you served as the North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction for over a dozen years. That's a long time. As a state chief, you were also president of CCSSO's board of directors for a bit. So that's the sort of state chief's organization. You've had a career as a state chief. What's something being in the department you now understand that you might not have understood as well when you were a

B

state chief, I never understood the level of work and the amount of work that it took to run the competitions for our discretionary grants. There is first the notice of the proposed priorities that we must decide upon within the Office of Elementary Education. And then that goes out for public comment. We collect those comments, we answer each of those comments, and we publish that. And then we make our final notice of the priorities. And then we open the grant competition. We receive the applications, we set up and solicit for reviewers to review the application for each of those discretionary grant competitions. We run the review cycle. We determine the points that each of those applications have garnered. We announce a slate of awardees that gets approved by me. It goes up the chain for approval within the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. It has to go to a secondary office, which we call opepd and they approve it. And then it gets finally approved by omb and we then are able to release the funding and announce the award winners.

A

So lots of machinery, lots and lots

B

of work, lots and lots of layers of review. Eyes on calculations. And I suppose you know, that makes sense when you are awarding the people's dollars, if you will. You want to make sure that you're doing due diligence. But it truly is why I think the majority of us had always supported block grants within this. As a state chief, as I formerly was, we believe that a block grant combining some of those discretionary competitive grants would be a good idea for simplicity. On side. And now I have a whole new enlightenment of how it would really reduce the bureaucracy and the red tape on the federal administration side as well.

A

And flipping the question, oftentimes a state chief gets to be put in the department and leading these things? Not always. Is there something that the department may not always appreciate that state chiefs understand? I mean, what does the department need to learn about state chiefs and not just this department, just generally speaking, you

B

know, actually, I think that's why I said, yes, I want to do this job is because I think it's very important for the Department of Education in general and particularly the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, because that is the office that works most closely with all of our state chiefs. Some of the state chiefs have both post secondary and elementary and secondary, but all state chiefs have elementary and secondary. And so I knew it was important for the department to have that understanding of what it's like to be a state chief, what it's like to be overseeing 168 different school districts, different leas. As I was with a very small staff oftentimes. And then how do we in turn monitor our leas to ensure that we're collecting the appropriate reports and the information that we can then send up to the Department of Education at the federal level. And so I think one thing that is very important that I'm, I think, bringing to the Department of Education right now is how, how instrumental and how critical it is to include the state education chiefs in these conversations. They will get behind whatever is required of them. They just need to know what the mission is, what the goals are, and then they will take that and ensure that they are working closely on that with their local education agencies.

A

So, Kirsten, since Trump took office, there's been staffing cuts at ED and at oesc. Roughly how many people worked for OESC in the last administration? And roughly where is it now?

B

I believe we're about half. I don't know the numbers exactly, but I think somewhere around the number of 300. And I believe we're at like 163 at this point. I had not joined the department until after the reduction in force had happened and we had all of that action. I joined in, I was confirmed on October 7 and then joined in November after the shutdown was over. And I was able to come fully on board. And so this is the team that I've always had. This is the number that I've always worked with. And I will share with you that it's an extremely talented team. And I think we're at a good number. We have not we've had some amazing accomplishments where we have gotten all of our impact aid out money out before September 30th last year. And that had never happened in the complete history of Impact 8. And so we got it out before September 30th. It's been delivered out already, earliest that it's ever been delivered out. So I don't really know what it was like for having more people in the office, but I will tell you, we work with 50 states, DC and the jurisdictional territories. And so that's about 58, 56, 58 different entities that we work with. When I was in North Dakota, we had a staff of 82 and we were working with 168. So I think more is not always a positive thing. I think that we are really getting some great wins with the staff that we have. All I can speak to is who we are. And I will say top to bottom, both our career staff and the political appointees, our extremely effective team that we have in OESE and, you know, there

A

was lots of folks sort of for cuts, staffing cuts, lots of folks saying, I don't understand how the department's going to operate. And, you know, when you take a big staff cut like that, you gotta think, well, something must suffer. What's your theory of the case? I mean, how are you pulling it off if your staff's been cut in half?

B

I would say we're pulling it off because the people that we have at OEs are really committed, dedicated people to one to ensuring that our students in this nation have what they need and that their teachers and their families have what they need. Again, it was really important for us to get our competitive grant applications out. So the states would have or eligible applicants would have at least 45, 60, you know, 90 days sometimes to complete those applications that we. That's what I had heard before, was that the window to apply was so short. We have all of our grant competitions out. We had them all out before the end of May, which means that we'll have plenty of time for potential applicants to apply, submit their applications for us to review them, and we plan on awarding all of our slate of discretionary grants by September 30th as required. So I would just chalk it up to the same reason that we were able to do what we needed to do in North Dakota is when you hire the right people and you retain the right people to do the work, they're committed. One thing that is very similar to being a state chief, as it is at being at the federal level, the assistant secretary at the federal level, early on in my career as a state chief, actually early on in my career as a school board leader, and I started as, you know, as a teacher's aide and then became a classroom teacher, library technology specialist, district technology integrator, and then a district leader as well. Across the river in Mandan, someone shared with me the story of Kasserion and Gara. And I'm not sure if you've ever heard that, but Kasserian Angara translates into, it's a Maasai of the Maasai people. It's the way the Maasai greet each other, and it translates into, how are the children? And the answer, the typical answer, is the children are well, all the children are well. And even warriors with no children of their own greet each other in this manner. Maasai have existed for centuries, and today they still greet each other in that manner, with or without children. And it's because they measure the health, wellness and vitality of their entire village on the wellness of their most vulnerable, the children. And it means that there's enough food in storage. It means that there's no disease in the village, and it means that they're not under threat of attack by another people, by another village. And so when they measure the health and wellness of their entire village based on their children, that means that they are actually keeping the most important thing, the main thing. And I asked the question early on in my career, how might we operate as a community, a state, and a nation if we greeted each other in that way? I'd shared that story at every greeting, every team that I'd ever led at a building, at a district level. And then when I was running for election for the first time in 2012, I shared that with. It was our nominating convention, so There are about 3,000 people in the auditorium. And I shared that story and I said, if I'm elected as your state superintendent, that will be the question that I ask. That will be the mission and the guiding question that will guide me every day.

A

And what's the question again?

B

Ksarian Angara translates into, how are the children? So then between March of 2012 and when I was elected and sworn in at the end of 2012, a woman in the audience at that convention had traveled over to Africa, visited the Maasai village, and had seen a woman crafting a warrior shield from leather hide from a cowhide. She bought that shield, brought it back to North Dakota with her, asked if she could come see me in my office. And the day that I was sworn in, initially, the very first time as a state superintendent, and she brought it to me, and she said, you go be a warrior for our children. And so I mounted that shield in my office in North Dakota at the state capitol, put the words how are the children? Underneath it. And every time I had a budget meeting or a staffing meeting, and we would be talking about what I call big people problems, adult issues, I would point to that and say, how will this impact our children? How will this impact our students? I brought that shield with me and the lettering with me and that hangs in my office Today at the U.S. department of Education. And although we're talking about staffing issues and budget issues, it is the same question that guides me in Washington, D.C. as we make decisions about our discretionary grants, our formula grants, as guided me in every role that I'd ever. And so I think that is where there's similarities and there's differences. But that is the most significant distinction of same question, same Mission, same North Star.

A

I like that. That's great. Tough shift from that to interagency agreements. But that's the next topic I want to bring up. There's been a lot of talk about these interagency agreements. For those who don't know what are interagency agreements and how have they affected oesc.

B

So interagency agreements. OESE has three interagency agreements with three different entities. We have an interagency agreement with the Department of Labor, the Department of Interior, and the Department of Health and Human Services. And so, again, this is a concept that I'm quite familiar with. We didn't call them interagency agreements in North Dakota. I called them memorandums of understanding. And so what I saw when I was in North Dakota is that we are asking teachers to do more and more and take on more and more on their plate. And what I would say in North Dakota and what I say here is we cannot be the Batman on every mission. We have sister agencies that are actually more skilled and have more expertise in some areas of our mission. Just because we have students for six and a half, seven hours a day does not mean that we can be completely responsible for everything that happens in their life. There are communities, there are neighborhoods. There are preschool programs. There are, you know, school safety programs. But teachers go to school, they go to college for 4, 6, 8, 10 years sometimes to become better teachers, to become better educators, better instructional strategists, better assessment directors, better school leaders. And when we have other people within our states and within our nation that go to school for 4, 6, 8, 10 years to be school psychologists, to become school safety experts, to become career specialists, we must let our teachers be the robin on some of our missions. And so with that, we entered into memorandums of understanding in North Dakota. I entered into them with the Health and Human Services commissioner for some of our 0 to 5 special education 0 to 5 entities for our 0 to 5 preschool in North Dakota. We have a bank of North Dakota, and they were experts in financing and lending. We were not experts in scholarship granting or in any type of lending that we had to enter into an MOU with an expert in banking and lending and finance. Same thing with our Health and Human Services. We did the same thing with some of our corrections for our juvenile justice. And we didn't do investigations because our attorney General had the investigative arm of our, of our. Of our state. And so again, allowing the Department of Education to do what it does best and bringing to the table the expertise in education and really allowing and with the interagency agreements, allowing the other sister agencies that we have at the federal level do what they are doing and partner with us. It's all the same taxpayer dollar and we should become more effective and more efficient in using those dollars and letting our teachers, our educators be batmans on the mission that are germane to education.

A

So there's skeptics out there. Some of them will say, look, the agency agreements, they seem like a way to fill a campaign promise. President Trump promised to close the department. He was not keeping it a secret. Interagency agreements, they're a way to fulfill that promise without changing much about how things are actually done. What do you tell the skeptics?

B

I would say that I'm the living example of that. I did not have a campaign promise during my nearly 13 years in education, leading education in the state. I just saw that there were inefficiencies and better ways to make more effective use of our dollars. And our people in North Dakota, we're very low population state and we were competing for the same great people to do the same work. That's not effective and it's certainly not efficient. And so with that being said, I would say there's not a population scarcity within this nation or within the D.C. metro area. But still the same idea of being a conservative Republican has to come true, has to ring true. As I said, I'll repeat myself, but it's that dollar, that single dollar comes out of somebody's paycheck in somebody's pocketbook. And so we have a responsibility to be more efficient with the use of those dollars and be more effective for coming back to the reason we exist, better student academic outcomes.

A

So I want to shift topics. NAEP scores came out last week, 2025 long term trend assessment results. They showed gains in reading and math for 9 year olds, not a lot of progress for 13 year olds. What do you make of these results?

B

So I don't think the long term trend results are anything that I don't think they're surprising to any of us. I think everybody expected that that's likely what the results would be. We know that COVID 19 was a seismic event in this world. It's going to take the same seismic effort to ensure that those 13 year olds that were at really formative developmental years for both literacy for reading and mathematics during those Covid years, it's going to take a seismic shift and a seismic effort. And so we need to really commit to them. They deserve no less, really excited and pleased about the progress that our nine year olds have seen. I think that that is a piece of evidence that lends itself to prove that the policies on science of reading that the states are leading and the investment in the science of reading, both not only in policy but in professional development for their teachers and for investment in high quality instructional materials that it's paying off. And again, Louisiana, what a great example of states leading. And so I think there's more of that to come if we empower states and really hold, you know, provide the accountability and transparency that the federal government should ensure, but let states empower to be empowered to lead in that way.

A

One of my hobby horses, one of the things that I've been focused on concerning US Test scores is that they've been declining for a long time. It's not just, I mean, the pandemic was no doubt, I think you said seismic event, no doubt about it. But it's been since around 2012, 2013 that the downturn has started, especially for the lowest performers. And in my view, there's no easy story that just explains this. It's vexing at the department how much of the discussion is on, well, you know, long term trends since the last test two or three years ago versus this sort of decade long timeframe.

B

I think that's really important to note and I'm glad you did. And I'm not anybody to shy away. I've never shied away with saying we weren't doing great before the pandemic hit. I think a lot contributed to that. I think that, you know, for the good part, up until 2016, we had a lot of signals that were coming from the federal government about this is what you should do, this is what you should do, and this is the money that we will incentivize you to do it with. It didn't sit very well. But in the absence of that, there was a vacuum for many of us in the red states like mine that weren't going to take advantage of Race to the Top because there were so many strings attached to that they were explicitly telling you what to do. But yet we were left in a void of not being able to do what we knew was going to be good for our children and good for our students. We've flipped that now. I also think that the reading wars did not help at all really. I would say just not making really good use of our time with those preschoolers and early elementary students as we were fighting over whether it was whole language and or explicit direct instruction on phonics and exposure to A wide amount of vocabulary and deep rich curriculum. Those are the things we weren't talking about and we need to be talking about those things. There's a whole conversation that is being had out there about the impact of social media right around the impact of the proliferation of cell phones in every student's hand at that point. How did that impact things? I do believe that that was an impact. Again, lots of studies out there, not conclusive, but enough for us to give pause to say, what about social media? What about Bell to Bell phone bans? And so I'm, I'm pleased to see those sort of things. I don't think there's any single issue, but the important piece is now is that we are seeing that when we are returning education to the states and we have consistent continuity of leadership working with from consistent continuity of leadership within our state education departments, working with legislatures that are willing to be brave and courageous and get behind this and the governors that we're seeing that it makes a difference. We weren't seeing any of that before and we were getting the same results. And so now we're seeing some of it. And we should take note of returning education to the states and doing more to lift up those successes.

A

I just want to push a little bit more and I don't have the answers to this question about this, what I would call sort of 12 year, 14 year decline or so on. Some of the things that you mentioned are definitely in the school, in the policy framework. It's right, right in there. Their accountability, what we should be focused on as the school production function and then other things. Well, not necessarily right. You have social media that's not really under the Department of Education's control. You know, the proliferation of cell phone bans. What's your take on how much of this is sort of within that schoolhouse and outside of it.

B

It really speaks to the question of where are we at on this mission? Right. Are we the Batman or are we on the Robin on this mission and in my case, the Batgirl. But with that, I would say the answer to that is truly the fact that we need to maximize when they are with us for six and a half to seven hours a day, depending on your school schedule. We have to maximize the efficacy of what we are doing with those six and a half and seven hours a day. We need to ensure that the professional development that our teachers are being given that it is maximizing their time with their students and any tools that we're using, and I will say paper pencil tools or ed tech tools, you can have a really ineffective paper pencil lesson and you can have a really effective ed tech lesson. We need to be asking those questions and I think that that's an opportunity for our education research to say not only what works, but, but who does it work for, why does it work, under what conditions does it work? And really be giving our school leaders, the decision makers out there, that information because right now we are really having them wander around, if you will, in the wild, wild west of this marketplace. And fun fact, I think I may have shared this with you before in, in North Dakota, 98% and I'm going to say, I would say that this is probably the same or similar statistic. I think it might vary by 5 to 10% in other states, but 98% of all school funding, federal, state and local were delivered directly out to school board members to decide how to spend. And with very little professional development, with very little support. A friend of mine has done an analysis of school board meetings across this nation over a five year period. I believe it was less than 2% of school board meeting minute time is being spent talking about student academic outcomes. Now imagine if you are a for profit board or even a nonprofit board, but if a for profit board comes in and has their meeting and less than 2% of the time is being talked about what their goals are, or even worse, what their balance sheet is because they're for profit, what would that be saying? And so again, I think that we have a responsibility at the federal level to truly work with our providers, our vendors, work with our philanthropy, work with our organizations, work with our state leaders to really come together to provide everyone in general better information and better research about what works, why does it work, who does it work for and under what conditions, and then provide additional support to our elected school board leaders and helping them understand, number one, assessment literacy, which is another, another issue that is important to me. And more information about exactly how their students are doing and asking the right questions at a board meeting.

A

Yeah, I'm, I'm really, we've talked about this. I'm really interested in school boards and I think it's a key office to bring up in large part because these are elected positions. I think it's great that people are serving on school boards, but that doesn't mean that everybody who serves on school boards is great. How much upside do you think there is on school boards if we could improve school boards? I mean, is there a lot of leverage there? How much focus does it deserve?

B

There's a lot of There's a lot of leverage there. There's a lot of uptick. And again, we start to see that when boards spend about at the tipping point, when they spend at least 50% plus 1% of their board meetings talking about student academic outcomes, expecting that their superintendent, the CEO of the company, is providing reports on both the inputs and the outputs that lead to student outcomes, on what they're doing. At every board meeting, you start to see those scores go up and there's data. There's a gentleman, his name is AJ Kreib, that has been collecting data on this for over a decade, and he will show you the specific data. Commissioner Rath is doing this in Texas. We have started the program. We're in, I think, our fifth year in the program in North Dakota. You will see the tipping point flip. And suddenly, when the board is talking about how our students are doing, everyone in the system is talking about how our students are doing and the alignment that is necessary. But as one superintendent shared with me, after going through, it's an initial mindset shift, and then it's two years of ongoing coaching. And after two years, the board understands how they need to operate on its own, suddenly the community begins to ask the question of, have you gone to school board candidate school? As you're going door to door, as you're going door to door as a candidate, they want to know which candidates have been trained on this before they will get their vote so they don't have to spend time acclimating them to the new mission. They don't care about getting the football coach fired. They don't care about chocolate milk on Fridays and Mondays or just Fridays. They don't care about those issues. They care about, have you gone to school board candidate school? And are you focused on how our students are doing in math and reading? And so I think that there's a definite upside to it. The data is there to share if we want to dig into this. But another question is, if we do nothing, then we have 98% of federal, local and state funding going to superintendents that happen to go to a conference, and they go into the vendor area and it's got really great marketing about efficacy of results, and they slap a label on it, say it's, I'm aligned to X, Y or Z standards, and that becomes the product that is in schools. And you mentioned, as we talk about the policy that is, you said, you know, we've got the policy, it's a good thing to focus on, but it can't stop with policynet it, it's only one leg of the stool. If we are really going to effectively have the impact. The stool of policy is great that this is a requirement and an expectation that states are going to set. But you also, I mentioned professional development. States must invest and then school boards must invest in the professional development of those teachers to learn the best and most effective way to be an instructional strategist in that area of math or reading. So the professional development of the existing teachers, the expectation and the support for our colleges of teacher education so we don't have to keep retraining and the third leg that I think is often overlooked and this is where school boards have so much authority of purchasing power, the high quality instructional materials. I think that is the biggest missing piece that we have and we're not seeing the gains that we could be seeing in reading because. Because even if you're trained, even if you're professionally developed to use the strategies that are aligned to the science of reading, if you have teaching resources and materials in front of you that are still urging you to do three cueing or that's the way that the students books are laid out so they can actually look at the picture on the page without using the fundamentals. That's what they're going to be drawn to. And so we need to eliminate those materials that are in our classrooms right now. And that is why I think the purchasing power, the appropriations of state legislatures and the purchasing power decision making of school boards. I don't want to take away that local control. I'm not advocating for a national curriculum or even a state curriculum, but I am advocating for informing and providing our school board members with the professional development not to do the superintendent's job, but to arm themselves with the right questions that they should be asking their CFO and the CEO, the school business manager and the school superintendent.

A

Yeah, lots more work to do there. But I'm a sympathetic listener when you talk about school boards. Let me ask you about the federal role in education. Sort of what it can do, what it should do. Again, in reference to these, these long term declines or declines of student performance. Do you think the federal government should set and push an agenda? Do you think the federal government should just make recommendations to states? Do you think the federal government should supply and track student progress with assessments or NAEP and let states do what they want with those numbers? Does the federal government have no role at all when it comes to these declines? What's the road the federal government should be traveling down?

B

So I'm very very clear on where I think federal role, state role and local role is. Federal role is returning education to the states, but with transparency and accountability. I said it in my op ed last week. With returning education to the states, there comes more flexibility and more autonomy. But with more flexibility and autonomy comes more responsibility. And so very, very clear that we absolutely, at a state, at a federal level should be ensuring that our states are transparent with how their students are performing and accountable to high expectations at the state level. The state level should be setting the vision and the goals for improvement, the goals that need to be met, measurable goals that need to be met. States should be using needs assessment. They should be using data to identify which areas of the state need what. What is a state as a whole do we need? Using data to set those goals that are measurable and they should be monitoring progress on towards those goals and expecting that their local education agencies are reporting to them the progress. They should also be supporting states. There's a role to play where legislatures invest in the state education agency to provide funding that can be used for statewide initiatives. You saw what happens when the legislature did that in Mississippi, in Louisiana and Alabama, they didn't just provide. Texas has been doing it for a long time. I think too many states just provide a per pupil funding formula out to the districts and hope that they're going to do well by it. There are some districts that have real high capacity and some districts that don't. And it's important that the state has provided the opportunity to lead. So that's also. So then at the local level, local level, it is squarely on their shoulders to implement day to day strategies that are going to make progress toward the state's identified mission and measurable goals. Report to the states how they're doing so the states can then in turn provide that information to the federal government.

A

Kirsten, I want to ask you about the tension again with President Trump. Again, he's made it plain he wants to eliminate the department. Of course, without Congress you can't do that. And now you're sort of in this, in between, right? Sort of. Well, we may close the department. Until then, the department is not eliminated. How does it responsibly pursue an education agenda that's transparent and clear? And how does it do that when at the same time there's sort of this, well, we should get out of this business.

B

So from our perspective at the Office of Elementary Education, the agenda is to return education to the states. And so every day we are working on that effort, as you know, with our discretionary grants, every one of our competitive grants came out with either a absolute priority or competitive priority points of returning education to the states, meaning that state education agencies, if they were the applicant themselves, received additional points that no one else got if they weren't an eligible applicant, if they partnered with with an eligible applicant or gave that specific eligible applicant a letter of support, that entity, that applicant got the additional points. So every day in our day to day work, we are embedding returning education to the states. And while we are supporting students, so we are returning education to the states in this way, in these four ways through the Secretary supplemental priorities, the returning education to the state waivers, two of which we've awarded and we're in conversation with 10 others. And I think you'll see some more information on that very soon through the interagency agreements. And I think that is the effort that we that speaks directly to your question. So through these interagency agreements with Interior Health and Human Services and Labor, we are providing a proof of concept to Congress to say this actually works, it actually works well. And with this, this is the evidence that you need to be able to take that step. So that's part of our day to day work at the department as well. The fourth very concrete action that we are taking, and I think this might be the most important to me coming from my previous role and a lot of what inspired me to say yes and go through the arduous confirmation process was something called the learning agenda. Creating with eight pilot states what we need to do as we return more authority and responsibility to our states, we need to be there to support them and help prepare them for more autonomy, more flexibility and more responsibility. I pointed out as a state leader, there's so many lessons that I learned as a state leader that transferred to this role as a federal leader. As a state leader, I learned that not all LEAs had the same resources and capacity of people and or time. That's the same thing that I know and am learning about and actually learned while I was a state chief working with those colleagues for more than 12 years is that not all seas are created equal. And some seas just wait for the recently elected administration to set the direction and tell them where to go and what to strive for. And the resources, what resources are available. Others have been clawing to get more of that autonomy back. And so we with, in partnership with the National Comprehensive center, the Office of elementary and Secondary Education, Department of Ed, have partnered with them and we have eight states that are creating a learning agenda and this is essentially creating, helping them get very clear about how to use research, how to use data, identifying within their strategic plan which goals they want to work on first. And we've selected one of their goals with each of those states and really providing them the resources that are necessary to help their SEA team, their staff operate differently and function differently using data and research and then applicable strategy. These eight pilot states can use that same learned process for their three or four other strategic goals simultaneously while we're helping them. So we've got the regional educational laboratories and the comprehensive centers working in partnership with these states. So again, it's OESE and the National Comprehensive center that are organizing, orchestrating this, but bringing in lots of players. At the end of this, we will have a playbook that, that the other states can then use to build their own capacity and have that operational strategy, if you will, of how do we do this using data and evidence and reform and retrain our state staff.

A

So there's a couple of examples that have already come up. One is, well, we cut our staff and we got impact aid out on time, which hadn't happened. You can look at the FAFSA which came out on time despite staff cuts years after. It was kind of a disaster for a while. And now we have some interagency agreements and maybe the theory looks good, it looks good, but we haven't seen yet sort of numbers that are like, yeah, it totally worked, or something like that. At the end of your term here, what are the proof points that you would want to have, that you hope to have? So you can say to the skeptics out there, no, we weren't just trying to fulfill a campaign promise. We're trying to show that this can be done better, cheaper, more leanly, and that these interagency agreements are part of that. What should we look for?

B

So I think successfully providing the grant funding to our SCAs, both the formula and the competitive grants. I have always said that everything comes down to student academic outcomes to me, right? Everything. That is the only reason I had a job from my very first teacher aide. If I wasn't making a difference and improving that student's excellence in academics, then I had no reason coming to work every day. Same thing was true when I was an elementary teacher and a building leader and a district leader and then a state leader. And now here I'm a little bit more removed than I've ever been before from student academic outcomes. And so I wish that I could say that we will see a rise in student academic outcomes but given that it's a, you know, three years left, essentially, you know, just a little over three years, I'm not sure that I will see that the change in student academic outcomes that I would want to see. So then I have to go back to something that I've always said, especially since being on a school board myself and then providing training to the school board members in North Dakota. Student outcomes will never change until adult behaviors change and until we change the way that we think about things, until we change the way that we operate, until boards change the way that they are spending their money, our student outcomes will never change. And so now I really am focused on the adult behavior changes that can be impacted at the federal level. So I think it will be a successful term for me if we can provide our states with the support that they need to really feel empowered and capable of creating their own vision and their own measurable goals, setting their own measurable goals, and using the data to set the agendas within their own states. I don't want to return to a time where even a handful of states are waiting for D.C. to set the agenda for their students in the middle of America. That will be a successful term for me.

A

All right, let's take a break for a minute. It's time for Grade It. I'm gonna give you some topics. You gave me a grade and a brief explanation. Are you ready?

B

Yes.

A

The accuracy of the movie Fargo's depiction of North Dakota.

B

I would say a D. And I will tell you that, yes, it is named Fargo, but the majority of the movie takes place in Minnesota. Fargo is right on the Minnesota North Dakota border. Probably an accurate description of those that live in Fargo, but again, I come from Theodore Roosevelt country out, but in western North Dakota, in the Badlands. So not very accurate at all. Your listeners might disagree if they heard some of that twang in any of my answers.

A

Civics education in American schools today.

B

B, but not where it needs to be. I think that there is a lot of effort in some states are really doubling down. They understand the importance of it, but I think we must move from. I would say B, because I think we've got the basics down of memorization, but we need to move into and get to A, into the real understanding of what that means in implementation for the next 250 years of our country.

A

You've seen a lot of schools around the country. I mean, at the bicentennial, which was, you know, I was born, but I wasn't that old. But it was a huge. It was A huge deal. It was a phenomenon in America. Doesn't. Is it a. Is the 250th getting the same treatment?

B

Would you say so? It's. It's getting there. Boy, we could talk about this. We could talk about this for a long time. It's getting there. But there's so much more demand for our citizens attention. I remember, I can't remember what news station it was, but I had all of three channels to choose from. Growing. I remember it. I was in early elementary school and I was like just super excited about it. I mean, as soon as the calendar turned on January 1st, there was everybody. Towns all over this country were having competitions for who could grow the best Abe Lincoln beard. And it was so much fun. Every pageant, every musical in every elementary school was about this. So it was a big, big deal. But I also remember that it was abc, CBS and NBC. But every night, maybe it was Walter Cronkite came on and he gave like this day in history and what's happening. And everyone was sitting around the nightly news listening to that. And we are not as. We're not as centered on who it is, who we are as Americans as we should be. But I'm seeing again, you have to remember where I'm from. And I go home at least once a month. I'm from the upper Great Plains. I am from the middle of America, right. And we're excited. We are really excited. There's flags everywhere. There's 250t shirt, 250 year celebration t shirts. And so I really, I know that there's a lot of discourse that we hear about, but I really hope that people go to these hometowns, you know, where they grew up, and really take America in its totality of where we're at and not be so caught up about how disjointed we are or how divided we are.

A

School cell phone bans.

B

Boy, we are at a B plus. Not because we're where we need to be, but everybody's talking about it. And a lot more states expanded their existing no cell phones during class time to Bell to Bell. We've got a lot more states. I never thought it was going to happen this fast. So B. But we've got to get 50 states on the bell to bell and we actually have to be very clear and explicit about what the local responsibility is for implementation. Because again, you can have a policy, but if you don't have the enforcement of it, then we're going to have some mixed results.

A

Related screen time bans in Schools.

B

So with screen time bans in schools, I'm very concerned. The conversation that is occurring right now about screen times, I'm going to give that a C minus because it's important to have the conversation. But we have to be very clear about what is effective use of ed technology and not just lump it all together.

A

Theodore Roosevelt National Park A One of

B

my most favorite conversations. It is happening on the 4th of July grand opening July 4th. It's been a long time in the coming. I served as an advisory member of the original group of people that was talking about a TR collection of library in western North Dakota. And here we are. Today it will be opening and I invite everyone to Medora, North Dakota to come see it.

A

The average school library,

B

that's an A. That's a solid A. Again, coming from where I'm at. I'm a school library media specialist. I see a lot of school libraries. I believe, interestingly, one of the most trusted sources during COVID for accurate information was your librarian, your local librarian. And so I think that that's saying the same holds true for today. I think that there are some things that are happening around the fringes. That's why I'm not going to give it an A plus, but I'll give it an A.

A

Education policy during the Bush administration.

B

Solid A. One of my most favorite presidents. And I really, unfortunately 911 happened. And I believe if 911 hadn't have happened, I am in that camp that believes that we would have made a lot more progress on the reading efforts that we were making with President Bush. And I'm talking George W. When President George W. Bush was in office and his librarian wife, Mrs. Laura Bush, were in office. So makes me a little sad that we lost 20 plus years average teacher pay. See, we can do better, but it really isn't all about pay. It's about the respect that the profession of teaching deserves and the working conditions of our educators. Again, I'm going to go back to not requiring a teacher to be Batman on every mission. They need to be the Robin sometimes and they need our support. School safety, that's a mixed bag. So I'll give it a circle. In some places, I think our students are very secure and very safe and very loved and very protected by those adults in this school. But I think that there are parts of this country that they're not. Whether there's, you know, violence, threats of violence, or even just the physical structures of our buildings and the adequate ventilation. You know, you go to some parts both urban and in the middle of America, where the conditions of the actual building are unsafe, safe. And so we've got a lot of work to do there.

A

All right, last one. The level of challenge that students experience

B

in school, again, mixed bag. I think when teachers are given the right supports and the right wraparound services, they do a great job of ensuring that every child in that school is well and being challenged. But. But when those aren't the conditions and too many of our schools, too many of our students are trapped in schools that aren't meeting their needs, that don't have the access on both sides. So they don't have access to challenging or more advanced coursework or teachers that are really going to stretch them on the other side. They don't possibly have the special education services or they don't have the services that are. They're not in a school that is aligned to the way that they. That child learns best and they have no other choices. That's why education freedom is very, very important to me. Education choice is very important to me. So I think we have a lot of work to do on that area as well.

A

All right, thanks for playing great. You've been a state chief. You've talked about how important state chiefs are. So this is kind of a dual question. The first is how important is the quality of a state chief? And. And second is that even across all states, can a state chief that would just function well in a state that really empowers them work as well in another state, or does it differ?

B

So, obviously, yes, the quality of a person that's sitting in that seat matters very, very much, as does that's true for any position. I will tell you what their experience is. I don't think that that matters as much. I think that you can be a great leader and have a lot of educational experience. You can be a great leader and have minimal education experience, but surround yourself with your executive team or your advisors that have a lot of educational experience, you are going to need to know the business of education. And if you don't know it, you need to surround yourself with people that will help you learn it. But I think that. So that's an important factor. Another important factor is their ability to work with their legislature and their executive branch. So sometimes about a third, a third, A third. I'm really generalizing there, but a third of the state chiefs are appointed by the governor, so they're part of the governor's cabinet. A third are independently elected like I was, and a third are hired by the state board. And then the state board members come from a variety of different ways. Either they're appointed or they're elected by area. And so those are the three different areas or the three different routes to become a state chief. So I think being able to work with all of the entities, even if you're hired by a board, you must work with the legislature. Even if you're elected, you must work with your executive branch of the governor. So being able to work with people and earn their respect and the credibility that you need to earn for your agency to be the trusted voice, I will tell you that the thing that I've seen that is the most important as far as getting things done and really raising the bar and then raising the accomplishments, consistency and continuity. When you have a lot of state chief turnover, as with any sector, I would imagine when there's a lot of churn in leadership, you don't have what it takes and your entire enterprise is just being whiplashed back and forth.

A

So that brings me back to the returning power to the states. We want to return to the states, but maybe in many states they don't have the leadership or they don't really just have a coherent agenda. Maybe not all states have thoughtful agendas, and even if they do, maybe they don't have the tools to execute them. How worried should I be about this?

B

That is exactly why we are partnering with the National Comprehensive center to provide this learning agenda to assist our states. We have a responsibility to ensure that not only the state chief who happens to sit in the seat right now, but additionally their career staff, their senior leadership, they are the consistent, the constant ones. So not only is the state learning or the state chief using this learning agenda, but we really need to provide to them the operational guide of processes of data that can shift with goals. But career staff in states and the leadership need to have this tool for them.

A

When Carrie Wright, pretty famous and highly regarded state chief, was on this podcast a couple of years ago, she said, everybody will tell you they are a local control state. And I think what she meant was that many states will tell you that they kind of defer to district control over schools. Do you think most states want the control that we're talking about? Do you think they want to sort of take the baton and run with it? It

B

you're right, every state is going to tell you that they're a local control state. But the vantage point that I was at is the CCS is so president of the board. And now the vantage point that I have even more clearly, that's level, varying level of degrees, truly. Some really allow their state chief the authority to do things that other states aren't able to do. Some legislatures appropriate dollars for statewide initiatives, others do not. They're focused clearly on the per pupil funding formula. But the answer to that question is, do I think that all states want that? No, I don't. But I will tell you, I sure do. And after serving 13 years with, working closely with my fellow state chiefs and now still working closely with them, I will tell you that I've seen better results and better outcomes when states are leading.

A

And if you're able to do what you want in terms of returning education to the states, what should we look for? You already said, you know, it's not a turnkey operation where you just do that and then test scores magically go up. There's a long chain of events here. But what should we see? Should we see better functioning bureaucracy? Should we see happier students? Should we see higher NAEP scores?

B

All of that. Absolutely. All of that. That is what you should see, and that's what we should expect. We should expect nothing else. And to put that in a concrete way, we should have governors asking really good questions about education. We should have legislatures appropriating dollars and really expecting what The ROI is that. I had a legislature in North Dakota. I would come up and report on all the activities that we would do. And he would like, so what's the. So what? What did I get out of that? We should have more legislators asking that more explicitly. We should see school board meetings that are talking about student academic outcomes at least 50% of the time, ideally 60 to 70% of their time, should be doing that. And most importantly, we should see more productive, higher achieving students across the board. So if we, until we can say all the children are, well, our work is not done. And we need to continue to be working on these things to empower them.

A

Kirsten, from what I understand, you're something of an accountability hawk. Is that fair?

B

That is fair.

A

Okay, that's fair. Why do you care so much about accountability?

B

It's the reason we exist. I probably said this 15 different times in this interview alone. The only reason that we're entrusted with funding from our state taxpayers and our federal taxpayers is to ensure that this is a nation filled with educated people that are able to govern themselves. And if we aren't fulfilling that promise and we are not ensuring that our children are being provided the education that they deserve, then we have no business being in this work. And if I am not able to provide the results in an accountability

A

way,

B

in an accountability metric that our citizens of every state deserve. I have no business being in this job. I should not be taking any money from anyone unless I can provide the results of that promise that we will be a nation that is providing the education to educate a citizenry that is able to govern themselves for another 250 years.

A

From what I understand, you're also interested in modernizing accountability. What does that entail?

B

So I think. I think the way that we are interpreting and the way that the law ESEA actually reads is that we're pretty narrow on our definition of academic indicators. And so I think that we can modernize knowing what we know. When ESEA was reauthorized in 2015, we were in an era of college for all. That's truly where we were at. And everyone was destined for college. I think we swung a little too far to that direction. And I think I don't want to swing way back to college for no one. But we have to meet in the middle and be a little more open to what it means to be successful in America and be able to achieve the American dream.

A

And where do you think accountability has fallen short if you do? I mean, have we had the accountability structure over the past 10 years or so that you'd like to see?

B

No, I don't, because I think a lot of that has to do with assessment, literacy, understanding what the summative assessment means and what it's supposed to be used for. In the absence of more modernization of accountability and a very rigid accountability system as it's interpreted currently, we've had states that have said, okay, we're going to do the federal accountability system, but we're going to develop our own state accountability system. And therefore, yes, we will meet the letter of the law. We'll check the box and we will provide you the information for federal accountability. We'll identify this tsi, CSI schools using that federal accountability. But here's our state accountability, because this is what really matters to the citizens of X state. And so all of the attention, all of the effort, all of the bully pulpit, all of the funding is going to support and improve progress, make progress on that state accountability system. And nothing is ever talked about. So you're having dual systems. And, you know, two things are going to happen in that situation. Neither are good either. The superintendent and board are going to be so confused about which target they should be meeting. Should we be, you know, aiming for the target of the federal accountability? So we're not TSI csi, should we be aiming for the target of our state accountability? Because that's what's going to be reported and that's what the press release is going to be about, and that's what our community is going to be asking about. And so the worst situation is that they're trying to be, you know, serve both masters and doing nothing well. And then the other alternative is that they're not even caring about the federal accountability, and they're TSI and csi. So we have a whole bunch of federal dollars that are being, you know, delivered to entities that aren't putting any effort into it. And so that's a waste of dollars. So I think if we get modernized and we become, we can bring closer together those two systems, we will be accomplishing two things, allowing our school leaders, both at state and local levels, to be actually concentrating all of their efforts on that same target, that same bullseye, and we will be making sure that dollars are being more effectively used on both sides of the coin.

A

Kirsten, last question I want to talk to you about. I spend a lot of time on chronic absenteeism. I think post pandemic chronic absenteeism is a big problem. What's especially concerning me over this is that our progress, it continues, but it's slowing down. How concerned are you about this problem?

B

So this is a very real problem. As I talked about earlier, we cannot, we have to maximize the amount of time that the students are with us, six and a half hours, seven hours a day. If they're not with us, we can't even start at zero to maximize our time with them. So it's very important that students attend. I think that there are some great examples of where there was great gains and there continues to be great gains. I was just in Ohio last week, and the Cleveland Brown foundation is partnering with the Ohio Department of Education on making sure that attendance matters. And so they got all the professional teams. The Department of Education and Workforce has just launched their attendance dashboard. And so you will be able to see the attendance of every school in that state and what it is that day. They weren't the first to do it. Rhode island launched the dashboard and you've seen what they've done. And what I thought was really cool. I haven't seen this personally, but I've heard that the governor has the attendance dashboard displayed in his office at the State House. And of all the things that he could be monitoring when he walks into work, he sees where the students are at in which school. And even more important, when he sees a high attendance. He'll call that building principal and celebrate their attendance that day. And I think that's really important that we aren't punishing students and their families for not attending, but really celebrating the attendance that is there. So I think more states need to do those things. And I don't think that, again, we can't do this alone. It can't be only on the back of our local leaders and our teachers. To do that, we'll need philanthropy, we will need state, we will need governors. I think, as I said, just great examples of really shining the light on attendance and specifically chronic absenteeism.

A

And from the federal role, I mean, there's a long distance between Washington, D.C. and trying to convince parents in Ohio to push harder on attendance. What can you do?

B

So I think, again, using the bully pulpit, really making sure that we're talking about it. There's an effort that we're working on so we can get more high level attention to this matter. As I mentioned, the Cleveland Browns foundation is doing it in Ohio. I think that there's a way that we could do that on a national level. We're working on projects like that, but it's going to take organizations and it's going to take philanthropy and state and federal government working together, boots on the ground. It's the local responsibility. But the federal government can truly play a role in drawing attention to this and shining a light on the examples like Ohio and Rhode island that are doing it. Well.

A

Thanks for listening to the Report Card with Nat Malkus. And special thanks to today's guest, Kirsten Baszler. Also thanks to our producer, Ellie Lucas. He makes this podcast possible. That's, that's all for this episode. I'm Nat Malkitz.