Michael Hartney on the Federal Role in Education, Outcomes v. Totems, and Union Clout

President Trump’s signing of an executive order calling for the downsizing of the US Department of Education (DOE) raises concerns related to the federal versus state balance in K-12 policy. Michael Hartney, the Hoover Institution’s Bruni Family fellow, discusses the book he is currently writing on the 2020 pandemic’s lasting impact on schools, and then he examines Trump’s executive order on downsizing the DOE. Hartney talks about the lessons learned five years after COVID-19 temporary halted in-classroom instruction, and then Hartney discusses the potency of cultural issues in the greater education debate, plus whether teachers’ unions have the same political clout they enjoyed pre-COVID.

Recorded on March 20, 2025.

Episode Transcript

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[MUSIC]

>> Bill Whalen (00:03):
It's Thursday, March 20, 2025.
And welcome back to Mattersof Policy in Politics,
a Hoover Institution podcastexamining government, governance, and
balance of power here in America andaround the globe.
I'm Bill Whalen, I'm the Virginia HobbsCarpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow in
Journalism here at the Hoover Institution.
I'll be moderating this podcast, but
I'm not the only Hoover Fellow who ismoderating or taking part in podcast.

(00:24):
And on that note, I recommend you goto our website, which is Hoover.org and
go to this link in particular,which is Hoover.org and
there you'll see the wholelineup of what we have to offer.
Thoughts, insights from ourbrilliant Hoover Fellows,
including my guest today on the show.
So about today's show.
This is an interesting week in history,I think in this regard.

(00:45):
This week marks five years sinceCalifornia and many other societies went
into lockdown over COVID-19,the pandemic, businesses closed.
We had to wear a mask.
You might remember ifyou're a Californian,
the three words you learn todread what you shelter in place.
And this had a particularlyhuge impact on education.
Kids could not go to school, so they werereduced to learning by computers at home.

(01:09):
This has sparked all kinds of questions.
That's a learning gaps, emotional problemsfrom being at home, not being around kids.
We have very talented people here atthe Hoover Institution who are studying
the benefits.
I think we'll be studying thisoutcome from this for decades to come.
But there's a lot going on ineducation that I wanna get in today,
not just the COVID anniversary.
There's news out of Washingtonregarding President Trump and

(01:31):
the Department of Education andan executive order he signed today.
We have the issues of DEI and wokepolitics floating around schools as well,
the ongoing debate over who kind of callsthe shots in education, school boards,
what role do parents have,how this plays out in politics.
And helping me to unpack all this andeven more is Michael Hartney.
Michael Hartney is the HooverInstitution's Bruni Family Fellow,

(01:53):
his expertise lying in Americanpolitics and public policy,
with a focus on state and local governmentinterest groups in education policy.
You can read more about that in a terrificbook Michael wrote back in 2022.
Its title is How Policies MakeInterest Group Governments, Unions and
American Education.
Michael, thanks so much forcoming on the podcast today.

>> Michael Hartney (02:11):
Thanks, Bill.
It's great to be with you.

>> Bill Whalen (02:14):
So I referenced in the lead into this Trump doing an executive
order.
The symbolism, this I find fascinating,Michael, in this regard.
It's not like it's the firstexecutive order he's been doing
almost every day since hetook office two months ago.
Speaking of anniversaries, today'sthe two months of his second presidency.
But if you look at what he did with hisexecutive order regarding the Department

(02:36):
of Education, Michael,he did not abolish DOE.
Well, he can't abolishthe Department of Education, why?
It was approved by a law of Congress,
created by a law of Congress in1979 signed by Jimmy Carter.
It would take an act ofCongress to undo it.
But what Trump's executive orderdid was it basically said,
this is the beginning of the end forthe Department of Education.
The words from it, it says, he callson the Education Secretary, Linda Mann,

(02:58):
to, quote, take all necessary steps to,and I quote, facilitate the dismantling of
the department and, quote,return education authority to states.
Wonderfully vague is that,Michael, we could talk about that.
But also stands out here is the TrumpWhite House going out of its way to avoid
political landmines.
They pointed out, for example, that thisis not going to affect student loans and

(03:20):
Pell grants.
It's not gonna continue the Department ofEducation's role in terms of enforcing
anti-discrimination statutes.
So, Michael,let's begin with this question for you.
So the Department of Educationhas been around since 1979.
It's a very young federal department.
As of last September,it had about 4,200 employees.
So it's a gargantuan operation,if you will.

(03:42):
That's about 0.2% ofoverall federal employment.
And its budget's about $270 billion,give or take a couple billion dollars.
What the heck, it's Washington?
What's a billion dollars here orthere, but about $270 billion.
That's not quite 4% of all federalspending each year, Michael.
So what is it about the Departmentof Education that has
been deranging conservatives forthe better part of 50 years now?

>> Michael Hartney (04:05):
Well, I think for most of us in the policy world, we approach
this question a little bit differentlythan the average member of the public.
So I think among the public,it's very easy to sort of have
the debate boil down to whatshould the role of Washington be?
Shouldn't my local school district or

(04:27):
maybe my state be making key decisionsabout education policy issues?
And I think that makes a lotof sense to people, and
particularly people onthe political right.
As you say, going back to Ronald Reagan,it had been sort of a plain concern among
small government conservatives thatdepartment shouldn't exist because
the Federal role in educationshould be very limited.

(04:50):
But what you pointed out inthe intro here is very important,
that symbolically, I think that is true.
And the sentiment that educationought to be locally governed is
popular with ordinary people.
But at the same time, a lot of theprograms and things that the department
has been involved in, as you point out,civil rights protections, for example.

(05:13):
Student loan program, students withdisabilities, those are things that,
practically speaking, parents andconstituents care about.
So I think the devil's really gonna be inthe details here in that is this really
just shifting some of theseresponsibilities to other governmental
agencies?
Or will we discover new efficiencies by,say, reforming the Institute for

(05:35):
Education Sciences, which is the partof the department that is engaged in
gathering statistics andfunding education research?
So I think there are a lotof opportunities here, but
there's also the possibility of reallyfumbling the football politically.
I've heard other people describingwhat's going on here as a big risk,
akin to sort of, the Powell Doctrine,that if you break it, you own it.

(05:58):
And if suddenly, we enter the midtermshere in a couple of years, and
you get Democrats running campaignads with Elon Musk, Whee.
Building his chainsaw, and stories frommothers who say my kids couldn't get
the educational services they needed,that may be buyer's remorse there.
So I think what's really importanthere is not just to win symbolically.

(06:21):
I think symbolically thisis important to Trump and
a lot of his supporters because he's beenable to sort of slay the dragon that even
Ronald Reagan couldn't get rid of.
But now the tough work begins, andSecretary McMahon is really the buck is
gonna stop with her, andshe's gonna have to figure out,
how do I preserve a lot ofthese popular programs and

(06:42):
make sure we don't end up in a politicallydisadvantageous place down the road.

>> Bill Whalen (06:48):
Okay, let's go back to 1979 for a minute, Michael.
I wish I was in 1979.
I was in college in 1979.
It'd be nice to be 19,20 years old once again.
But let's go back to 1979, Michael,and let's address two questions here.
Number one, should there bea federal Department of Education?
And then secondly, if Michael Hartneyis designing the federal Department of
Education, what does it do andwhat doesn't it do?

>> Michael Hartney (07:09):
So, historically, one thing that's important to know is, so
this was something thatJimmy Carter was lobbied for
by the National Education Association, oneof the nation's largest teachers unions.
There's a little bit of irony herethat listeners might find interesting,
which is that the American Federation forTeachers, the other union that back then
fought with the NEA, actually opposedthe creation of a standalone department.

(07:34):
So I think that's sort ofinteresting historically,
because today the AFT president,Randy Weingarten,
is saying this is the end ofthe world now that we're doing this.

>> Bill Whalen (07:41):
Right. >> Michael Hartney
didn't always think that way about this.
So I think the argument, the best caseargument for why it's useful to have
a federal Department of Education,I'll sort of steel man that case,
if you will, is that the federalgovernment has a role to play, perhaps.
Now in terms of the bully pulpit,presidential agenda setting,

(08:03):
rhetorical influence for what shouldthe nation's educational goals be.
And we can think of that in terms of likeEisenhower might have, with competition,
sort of with foreign powers today,
the debate over will our students beable to compete with the Chinese.
You can also think of it thoughas a bulwark for equity.
I know that's a sort of difficult wordin conservative circles to use, but

(08:25):
what we really mean here is things goingback to the enforcement of Brown versus
Board of Education,all the way up through concerns that low
income students are notgraduating from high school.
And so at its best, I think historicallythe department has not wielded so
many sticks, but it's focused more onthe bully pulpit reports like A Nation

(08:46):
at Risk that came out and wereinfluential during the Reagan presidency.
And financial incentives that it can giveto encourage states and localities who
retain the actual operational control tomake good decisions that are in the best
interest of kids and balance the equityagenda versus concern for local control.

(09:07):
Right, that's a question that intrigues me, Michael.
Look back in the 1990s, I was working forthe California governor at the time.
Pete Wilson and Bill Clinton andAl Gore were quite involved in education.
And especially the very symbolicthing of coming out to California and
other states andwiring classrooms with the Internet.
It just seemed very cutting edge.
On top of that, having the President,vice President, a classroom.
Wow, this is interesting.

(09:28):
Fast forward to the next President,George W Bush.
Where was he on 9/11?
Reading to kids in a classroom in Florida.
These are symbolic thingsat the end of the day,
maybe the federal government will givesome money away for wiring classrooms.
The President was talking about reading,
which is part of his buildup to no Child Left Behind.
But this gets back to the question,Michael, of should Washington be driving
education policy or should Washingtonlet the states drive education policy?

(09:50):
Which is gonna lead toanother question to you,
which is the idea of money tothe states and block rating.

>> Michael Hartney (09:55):
Yeah, I mean,
I certainly think the best case forgutting the department and pushing for
reforms is that there's toomuch red tape when it comes to.
Again, keep in mind this is 10% on averageof the commitment to K12 education that
the country's various governments make.
The feds are only kicking inabout 10 cents on every dollar,
though I will note thatvaries a lot by district.

(10:16):
So if you're in a place like Detroit orparticularly places that have a lot of low
income students, that could be 30 or40 cents on the dollar.
So there is variation there, butin general it's a small amount of money.
However, one of the problems here isthat it's the fact that Congress, and
this is true in a lot of policy areas.
Hasn't revisited a lot of the legislationhere to look at to how it could strip

(10:37):
away various rules and red tape thatexist that make it difficult for
principals and superintendents onthe ground to spend dollars in
an efficient way that's best fortheir kids.
And obviously they know better how tospend money to address the particular
needs of their community.
And socurrently it's not functioning well,

(10:58):
my worry is that we needto have a plan in place.
So if we're gonna radically cut the numberof employees in the department,
there's probably a lot ofinefficiency there and
there's probably great opportunities forcost saving.
My question is, what comes next?
Where are we gonna move these programs to?
I'm not an expert in higher education,but I'll just give you one example.

(11:19):
It's not a crazy idea to move the studentloan program to the Department of
the Treasury.
Some people support that.
Maybe that's a reasonable thing to do.
It's not a crazy idea to move Officeof Civil Rights within Education,
maybe to the Department of Justice.
So some of these thingsare not unreasonable but
I think it's a little bit unclearwhere we're going here, and

(11:41):
it would be nice to have sortof a theory of action laid out.
I think the administration, though,
to sort of offer the strongestdefense of what they're doing.
I think they might say, look,how many people have come into this
chair before and promised to sort oflean out government or to make reforms.
And then three years later when they'rea lame duck in the administration,

(12:04):
maybe the courts have looked at a fewpositions that they eliminated.
And so the administration here wasa little bit hamstrung with the fact that,
for example, civil service rules makeit really difficult to just go in and
evaluate each employee individually andsay, these employees are performing well,
these aren't.
We're gonna sort of be surgical andeliminate underperforming employees.
They can't do that unless theywanna get tied up in litigation.

(12:26):
So they, instead,went through with a bulldozer and said,
we're just going to eliminatecontracts where the language gives us
the authority to eliminate the contractwith a supplier for education research.
Or we're just gonna get rid ofwhole units within the department,
because if we do that,we can get away with It.
In some ways, the structures orconstraints that they're operating in
kinda dictated the extremeapproach that they took here.

>> Bill Whalen (12:46):
30 years ago at this time, Michael, the federal government and
state governments werecaught up in welfare reform.
And what happened wasa Republican Congress came in,
Bill Clinton was open to welfare reform.
And what you had was block grants forwelfare reform,
where states would getmoney to address welfare,
states would design their own programs,and then you would have welfare that way.
What kept works in California doesn'twork in Florida and so forth.

(13:07):
So legally designed products butthere was a catch here, Michael.
It wasn't as if the states could justtake the money from Washington and
go spend as they wanted to.
Washington had to take a look atthe program and approve of it first.
It had to come back andget approved by the federal Health and
Human Services Agency.
So I had this thought in lookingat education, thinking, okay,
this is pretty simple.
You take the money out of DOE andyou just block granted out to 50 states.

(13:29):
But the problem's gonna bewhere's that money gonna go?
And depending on what administrationsin Washington, what entity is reviewing
the money, A conservative administrationmay hate what California is doing.
Conversely, a progressive administrationwill hate what Texas is doing.
So I'm trying to figure, trying to get myhead around if you did block grant money
for education, how it'd get reviewed inWashington, what entity would handle it.

(13:50):
Would you have to then have a Departmentof Education still reviewing this money?

>> Michael Hartney (13:55):
Someone would have to review it.
And we're already getting a preview ofthe difficulty of going down that road,
which is, I read a piece in the Hill,I think it was yesterday.
Where you already have governors chompingat the bid to get the federal department
or the administration to grant itwaivers to be able to pursue sort
of the education policiesthat are of interest to them.

(14:15):
And maybe there right now, school choiceis popular, especially in red states, and
maybe the Trump administration iswilling to make that exchange.
But I think that even if we might say thatsounds great, one needs to be mindful
of the fact that the other teamis going to be empowered one day.
And we saw the opposite happen under theObama administration when they decided to

(14:36):
use federal education law to grant waiversto states that were doing things that
they like.
So I'm not a big fan of kindof policy making via waiver,
I don't have a good solution for how weget Congress to be responsible again and
actually legislate in a waywhere they kind of own it.
And so that we end up in this worldwhere there's political pressure or

(14:56):
political incentives foradministrations to do something.
And so they end up going off and usingexecutive power, as we saw with Biden,
on student loans.
And no doubt we're seeing thatwith President Trump, too.
I do wanna back up,though, just for a second,
because I think there'simportant context here.
The secretary said today in the brief clipthat I saw when saying she was gonna back

(15:18):
what Trump's goal here to slim down,eliminate the department eventually.
She made a point that'sgoing around a lot, and
I want people to think about ita little bit, which is this.
The point is, look, the departmentonly came into existence in 1980.
And, if you took a look atthe National Education Assessment of
Educational Progress orthe nation's report card recently,

(15:38):
American students aren't doing so well.
Something like 30 or 40% of studentsare reading below basic, for example.

>> Bill Whalen (15:46):
Right.

>> Michael Hartney (15:47):
And sort of the what's being insinuated here is that,
we've gone one direction,we've had a department,
we've had a robust federal government,and results aren't great.
And I think there's some missing contextthere that's important to unpack.
And that is this, that we had a moment for10, 15, maybe more than that,

(16:07):
years of bipartisan consensus around theimportance of setting high standards and
then holding schools accountable forresults.
That was a consensus that pretty muchwent from the Clinton administration all
the way to the Obama administration.
So you had both Republican andDemocratic presidents who supported that.
And sort of like zenith of that movement,of course,

(16:29):
was the no Child Left Behind law.
And for all its flaws,the research is really clear.
My colleague here atthe Hoover Institution, Tom D,
has the sort of canonical study on thisthat shows that actually when you had
a federal government incentivizing statesvia the fact that it provides funding.
And says, if you don't do what we want,we're going to take away the funding.

(16:52):
It incentivized states to set standardsand hold students accountable, and
that led to improvementsin student achievement.
Now, did it solve everything?
No, but Congress in 2015, with thissort of strange bedfellows, the strange
political coalition of sort of Tea Party,small government, conservatives.
And teachers unions ultimately ledCongress to abandon this era of

(17:15):
accountability in 2015.
Well, most of the decline instudent achievement that we've seen
in recent years since started beforethe pandemic, only got worse,
escalated after we turned back moreauthority to the states under the law.
That came after NCLB,the Every Student Succeeds Act.
And I'd also remind folks that they onlyneed to look back a couple of years to

(17:37):
what we did during the pandemic.
Where the federal government gavealmost $200 billion to states and
local school districts to addresslearning loss, to get schools reopened.
And we didn't exactlysee a lot of bang for
the buck when we sort of handed off thathelicopter money to states and localities.
So I just think that'simportant context to say,

(17:57):
is the department operatingat chief efficiency?
Is it doing all great things?
Absolutely not.
It would be great to really do someserious redesign, but the alternative of
just sort of sliding everything back tostates and localities sounds appealing.
I don't think the historical recordbears that out as sort of a panacea.

>> Bill Whalen (18:15):
I'm glad you mentioned No Child Left Behind or NCLB for short.
It was passed duringthe Bush administration.
Now, seeing George W Bushcomes in office in 2001,
he doesn't wanna abolishthe Department of Education.
He leans into the education establishment,if you will.
And the signature move in hisfirst year is to get NCLB through
an otherwise hostile Congress.

(18:35):
What NCLB did was to call for standardizedtesting to gauge students in reading and
math from the third to eighth gradeswith the goal of making every student
proficient in those subjects by 2014.
As you've mentioned,at fell very short of that goal.
And then along comes the everystudent succeeds at 2015.
Here's what's interesting, Michael.
If you look at the politics back then and
the synergy behind going from NCLBto ESSA Every Student Succeeds Act,

(18:58):
you had Republicans wanting what moreautonomy for states and school districts.
And you had Democrats wanting what?
Protection for racial minorities andlow income families.
Well, that's really not a lot differentfrom what we're looking at in 2025, is it?
But it seems to me the one big differenceis it's Donald Trump, not George W Bush.

>> Michael Hartney (19:15):
I push back in one sense though, Bill.

>> Bill Whalen (19:17):
Okay. >> Michael Hartney
seems to have really sucked up a lotof oxygen in the last couple of years,
the last five years, especially the lastthree years, are cultural issues.
We're getting to that next.

>> Michael Hartney (19:31):
Yeah, we're getting there.
But I just think that's important becausewhen you use the word George W Bush,
let's go back to him, used to talk aboutthe soft bigotry of low expectations.
For example, when talking about the racialachievement gap between black and
Hispanic students andtheir white counterparts or
just low income students andhigh income students.

(19:53):
In many ways though,NCLB fell short of its goals and
was obviously had some major flaws.
And we could get into those details.
But what it was good at doing was ingetting states to do one simple thing
which is just, I think we shouldall support, which is transparency.
Prior to No Child Left Behind,
a lot of states didn't evenrelease honest graduation rates.

(20:15):
They didn't release test score data thatwas broken out by high income kids and
low income kids.
So you had a lot of states wherethe powers that be politically could thump
their chests and
say we're number ten in the nation becauseyou didn't see what was under the onion.
And so I do think the best thing thatNCLB did was it shined a light on
a lot of that.
What we never really came up with wasa good solution on how to address it at

(20:40):
scale.

>> Bill Whalen (20:40):
Yeah, okay, culture wars.
Let's talk about culture wars andeducation.
So we ask how does thisplay into politics?
I point you to the Commonwealth ofVirginia, which holds governor's races in
odd years 2021,they have one coming up this year in 2025.
Back in 2021, Michael,the controversy of Virginia was what?
A father in Loudon county waswrongfully prosecuted and

(21:01):
convicted for standing up forhis daughter at a school board meeting in
Loudon county after she was allegedlysexually assaulted at the school.
And now the issue of education exploded,and
it exploded in terms of parentsrights versus school board rights,
and it got a Republican,Glenn Youngkin, elected that year.
We see cultural issues standing oneducation these days just go back to

(21:23):
Trump's executive orders, for example.
So, yes, he does the Department ofEducation executive order on day 60 of his
presidency.
He wastes no time coming to office anddoing executive order on what?
Men, biological men andwomen's sports, an education issue.
Just as he has wasted very little timegoing after universities not K12, but
still education related on issueslike antisemitism as well.

(21:45):
This is the culture wars, if you will.
So is this here to stay the culture warsis an element of the education reform
debate?

>> Michael Hartney (21:52):
I mean, I think so.
These issues are somewhat cyclical, but
I think someone like me who came ofage studying these things during
the aforementioned bipartisan era that wasfocused on testing and accountability.
Folks of that era, I think a lot ofus were lulled into complacency and
thinking that was kind ofthe normal politics of education.

(22:12):
But if you go back before that,to the 80s, of course,
there was a whole debate over how theChristian right getting involved in school
board elections, abstinence onlyeducation versus sex education.
So these issues have existed fora very long time.
I think, though,
that they're particularly challengingin the education space right now.
Because I would argue that inthe aftermath of the pandemic,

(22:36):
given poor policy choices that were madein states that kept schools closed for
a very long time.
That it's sort of a triage situationon the learning loss issue, and yet
kind of what came out of that pandemicmoment when a lot of parents tuned in.
Or went to school board meetings forthe first time,
kind of sort of spent a lot of timemarinating in local education politics.

(23:00):
That what really sort of drove peopleto get engaged was not sort of
rectifying Johnny's learningloss in reading, but
was rather taking sidesin the culture war issue.
Because, of course,we had a presidential election.
The famous ad that Trump ran thatthe folks think was very affected,
that she's for they them, he's for us.

(23:20):
It's good politics for
the Republicans in many ways certainly thesports issue is good politics for them.
But the unfortunate reality is itthen sucks up a lot of oxygen and
minimizes the willingness.
I think, for the two parties to worktogether on areas where I think there
is some agreement if we can get backto talking about that, the core issues.

(23:42):
But part of the argumenton the culture war piece is
integrated with the issuesabout student achievement.
And that is the point to be made that.
Look, I think I saw Governor DeSantis'sop ed in the Wall Street Journal praising
the Trump administration's decision hereto go all in and trying to get rid of DOE.

(24:03):
And Desantis made the point that, like,look, one of the things we're doing
here in Florida is we're actuallyasking schools to go back and
put their focus on mathematics and
reading and science instruction and notall these other politically laden topics.
So, I think you have tototally sever the two.
But I sure do wish we could get back tosome of that bipartisan focus on learning

(24:25):
outcomes, because we're going topay a price for it if we don't.

>> Bill Whalen (24:29):
Well, this seems to me to be a fundamental challenge when we talk
about education.
You should have a very seriousdebate about outcomes.
You can look at a city like Los Angelesand California where what's happening to
kids in public schools thereis just a modern day tragedy.
But media being what it is today, socialmedia being what it is, we tend to go for
kind of the quick headline.
And that gets us into boysplaying women's sports and

(24:50):
that gets us into school prayer andall kinds of hot button cultural topics.
So how do we propel our heads at thinktanks, get the public to look at outcomes?

>> Michael Hartney (24:59):
Well, I think one of the most important things that people in
the research community andthe think tank community can be doing is,
we need to get beyond sort of dunking,if you will, on social media or
putting out the press release.
We don't do this here at Hoover, we'rea serious scholarly enterprise, Bill.
We don't chase the headlines,as our director, Dr. Rice likes to say.

(25:21):
But I think that a lot of thinktanks out there, a lot of people in
the policy space, they're really excitedabout sending out that press release,
that we got the votes, we got the win.
And I think, I think the best example ofwhere this falls short is school choice,
because I think it's an excitingtime in the world of school choice.
And if you're a fan of customization,
let's go even broader thanschool choice in education.
One of the positive things of the pandemicis that it unleashed micro schools,

(25:45):
learning pods,all sorts of new models of education.
Not to mention some old models likeCatholic schools getting a lot of
attention for punching abovetheir weight during the pandemic.
But I think that with the choice thing,for example, it's easy to get caught up
and say, look at all these red statesthat passed choice bills, victory.
We did it.
The serious work beginswhen we then go in and

(26:07):
we look at how different choicelaws were structured differently.
Some states went with education savingsaccounts, some states went with universal
vouchers, and they structuredthese programs differently.
What we can do as researchers is now divein and see what worked and what didn't
work and then engage with people in thepolicymaking community and legislators.

(26:28):
And have serious conversations with themabout how can we sort of modulate things
to make sure we build on the momentum.
Because my worry is that if weget all caught up in cheer and
sort of partisan cheerleading here,when some of these laws don't work out and
they flop, it's actually gonna hurt theschool choice movement in the long run.
So I think it's really imperativethat we get this stuff right and

(26:51):
going to be diving intothat sort of stuff.
My colleague here at Hoover,Paul Peterson, and I are gonna be hosting
a research conference atthe Kennedy School this spring.
With some of the most prominent educationeconomists and researchers in the country
who are coming in to report on theirfindings on what's been working and
what hasn't been working inthis new choice landscape.

>> Bill Whalen (27:10):
Yeah, Paul, by the way, is a Harvard professor, and I would refer our
listeners to an excellent podcast hedid not too long ago at Checker Finn,
where he talked about whatit is to teach at Harvard.
And the idea that Harvard has,in essence, remedial classes for
kids coming in, learning about history,for example, example,
which is this kind of most prominentcollege in America, has remedial learning.
Good Lord, what's going on here?
But is anybody in Congress talkingabout school choice, Michael?

(27:32):
I remember again, going back to the 90s,30 years ago, it was a hot potato,
it was a hot topic.
But even back then they were talkingabout it in such tiny little terms like
a demonstration project in Washington,DC public schools and things like that.
But why doesn't Donald Trump,who likes to go big,
why doesn't he go big on school choice?
Or does this get back to our question ofdoes the federal government really have
a role in school choice?

>> Michael Hartney (27:53):
Well, I think you're gonna hear about it rhetorically down
the road.
I think in one respect, something thatthe administration did that so far,
anyway, they could change their mind.
But something that they've done so farthat sort of hints that they're going to
be serious advocates of charters andchoice is that they so far have decided to
keep the office on charter schoolsin the Department of Education.

(28:15):
This is not a big office, it's fairly new.
But it didn't have supportfrom the Biden administration,
who turned very hostile away from theObama agenda of supporting charter schools
to becoming hostile toward them.
So I think that sort of is a bit ofa tell, if you will, because it suggests
that the administration realizes thatwhen it comes to its priorities,
having some sort of institutionalcapacity at the federal level.

(28:38):
If for nothing more to act as a bullypulpit or sort of a signposting place for
folks in the charter orthe choice community out in the field,
has some value to it.
In terms of, if we go back and look atNo Child Left Behind, it was the dream of
the Bush administration and conservativesto have one of the consequences for
schools failing to be that you wouldvoucherize money that would go to kids.

(29:00):
There weren't the votes forthat in Congress.
I don't know that there would be the votesfor such a thing today, although I would
say the problem there is, again, becausethe amount of federal dollars is so small.
The amount of money is not enough toreally spur some sort of great stimulus of
new schools, if you will, in a choice.
So you're gonna have torely on state laws there.

>> Bill Whalen (29:18):
Yeah, well, he could, for example, if he wants to take away taxing
on tips, he could allow tax credits forsending your kid to a private school.

>> Michael Hartney (29:26):
Yes, there are.

>> Bill Whalen (29:28):
But now this will get complicated.
Boy, they'd have to be an income limit and
things like that because now you'regiving tax breaks to millionaires.

>> Michael Hartney (29:34):
Yeah, I mean, again, I think that most of the action is going to
be focused more on this rhetoricabout giving it back to the states.
I mean, how many times have weheard Trump say that already?
I think that's gonna be, in some waysit's attractive thing to do, right?
Because politically it divestsyou of responsibility.
I said earlier in our conversation,once you break it, you're gonna own it.

(29:56):
Well, maybe the way around that is to say,well,
it was in much the way that Trumptalked about Roe versus Wade.
We sent it back to the states,everybody wanted it back to the states.
I wouldn't be surprised if he leansinto language on that here, too.

>> Bill Whalen (30:09):
But, Michael, do you send it back to the state in terms of the state
government, or do you send it backdirectly to school districts?
Because let's useCalifornia as an example.
There's a world of difference betweensetting money to Sacramento versus sending
money to a conservative school districtin the big empty in the northern part
of the state.

>> Michael Hartney (30:24):
Well, I think they're gonna have to involve the state education
agencies andone of the serious questions there is,
not all state education agencies.
One of our policy fellows here atthe Hoover Institution used to head
up the state agency.
This is Steve Bowen I'm talking about isto head up the state agency in Maine.

(30:45):
And I think Maine has about fivepeople working in that building.
I'm being a little facetious, but
it's not this great amount ofcapacity in a lot of the states.
And so one of the things that could beinteresting is if some of the functions
get returned to states or you send dollarsback, and those states end up needing to
build out more of their own capacity,well, who's gonna pay for that?
Presumably then the state governments aregonna have to come up with money for that.

(31:08):
So, I mean, I do think atthe end of the day some of these
things are going to involve real trade,and
there's not a tight linkage here betweenthe politics of what works politically.
And maybe the policy ofwhat is most effect for
driving good decision making aroundthe allocation of federal dollars,
research, protecting civil rights,so on and so forth.

>> Bill Whalen (31:30):
Let's tap into your excellent book, Michael.
How Policies Make Interest Groups,Governments, Unions and
American Education.
That's the title and the word thatsticks out there to me is unions.
You wrote this as it cameout in the fall of 2022,
here we are in the spring of 2025.
Has it been a good run or a bad runthe past couple years for unions?
Cuz I am leaning veryheavily on the bad run side.

>> Michael Hartney (31:51):
Well, the best thing for
them is the fact that the reformmovement decided to cannibalize itself.
So in some ways the only thing.
Thing that's helped them is thatthe reform community is very divided.

>> Bill Whalen (32:05):
Explain that a little bit.

>> Michael Hartney (32:06):
One of the things people don't appreciate very well.
Rick Hess at the American EnterpriseInstitute has done some great work on
this, diving into sort of like,
who are the people inthe education reform movement?
The unions, of course,we always talk about them.
They're the education blob.
And we know the people that are inthe education blobs or the establishment
associations, the unions, these peopleare all committed on the political left.

(32:28):
They're sort of part andparcels in the Democratic party.
But I think a lot of people assumethat because of the reform movement,
people driving for incentives,
accountability, more school choice,at least in the charter sector.
They assume that because they opposethe unions, that that was a really blue,
I'm sorry, that was a really red movement.
But in reality, these people who createdorganizations like Teach for America,

(32:49):
a lot of the charter school incubators,a lot of the best,
no excuses charter schools,these are not Republicans.
They're folks who are blue too.
And so I'll just say that when the culturewars come to dominate the education issue,
one thing that's interesting isit really makes it awkward for
a lot of those ed reform groups.
Who on the cultural issuesare still quite progressive, but
they were also doing work againstthe teachers unions with conservatives who

(33:12):
like school choice andmerit pay and those things.
So the politics are very complicated.
So going back to yourquestion about the unions,
the thing that they do have going forthem right now is the public absolutely
bought into the narrative thatwe were doing too much testing.
That accountability was becoming mean,
especially they leaned intoit during the pandemic.

(33:35):
We need to have a pause on test scores.
I think some of the sanityis coming back there.
But look, Massachusetts, which, yes,it's a blue state, but remember,
this is a state that has veryhigh ranking public schools,
a lot of affluent communities thatcare about their public schools.
They just went to the ballotin the last election and
decided to get rid of their crownjewel assessment in the MCAS test.

(33:57):
They didn't get rid of the test,students will still take it.
But you used to have to pass that test tograduate from high school in Massachusetts
and that went down andthe unions were pushing that.
So I think the one thing the unionsare winning on still is that the reform
movement cannot get it together when itcomes to focusing on student achievement.
Where they're very obviously losing ison what I said earlier referred to as

(34:18):
educational customization.
And obviously the centerpiece of that areall these school choice laws being passed
across the states.
The fact that you are slowly butsurely giving more parents,
more families, becoming constituentswho have now not a policy, but
they're able to use state laws to changethe type of education their kids getting.

(34:46):
And so to the extent that they like that,they then become a political constituency,
much like the left is particularlygood at getting with.
When you look at somethinglike Social Security or
other programs that thenbecame very hard to dislodge.
I think that's where the unions are in fora surprise here is if these programs
prove popular and the union's positionis we don't like customization.
We have to go back to standardization,where all the dollars flow into

(35:08):
a traditional district school whereyou only have unionized teachers and
you can't sort of hire out ofalternative certification programs.
The unions, I think that's the thingthat's hurt them the most.
And I think if that choice andcustomization movement sticks around,
then they're going tocontinue to lose influence.

>> Bill Whalen (35:26):
Two things about unions, Michael.
One is I think their messaging andtheir PR has been terrible for
several years now.
This is from, I think it was the unionmember from Chicago who decided that she
would do a zoom call.
And I believe she was inPuerto Rico at the time, so.
Well, that's a brilliant idea to justthings as simple as I remember during
the pandemic, just watching local TV hereand just the teachers who'd come out and

(35:48):
talk about being afraid ofgoing in the classroom.
They were just kind of the scariestversions of teachers you could see,
which is strangely colored hair andpiercings and things like that.
And just now, maybe I'm an old man andI'm kind of showing my age here, but
just not kind of an apple pie momkind of teacher you're used to.
Just you kind of think, my goodness,this is who's teaching in our school.
But you look at Washington right now,
Michael, and the unions do havepowerful friends in America.

(36:10):
You can point to Gavin Newsom inSacramento, a lot of Democratic governors
around the country, but boy,in the federal government,
would they rather have Kamala Harris orDonald Trump in power?
Would they rather have Kamala?
Would they rather haveHakeem Jeffries running the House?
Would they rather haveChuck Schumer running the Senate?
You bet, they don't have friendsin Washington right now.
I mean, when I see Randy Weingartner doingevents in Washington, she's standing

(36:31):
outside of Congress, and she doeslook kind of isolated in that regard.
So, that's why I think the unions havehad kind of a rough ride here late.

>> Michael Hartney (36:37):
Well, sure.
I mean, we can all remember among thefirst guests in the Biden White House that
first week were Becky Pringle, the head ofthe National Education association, and
Randy Weingarten.
And so, they've sort of gone fromthe penthouse to the outhouse here,
both in terms of optics,in terms of influence in Washington.
And it will be interesting to see whatsort of strategy they use going forward

(37:00):
because a lot of their locals in largecities, like in LA or like a Chicago,
have really doubled down on this idea oftrying to ensconce themselves in kind
of the progressive politicalelites of those cities.
To not somuch focus on education issues, but
to sort of say we wanna drivethe bus here on much larger policy

(37:20):
visions on issues like affordablehousing and Medicare for all.
And they don't really fancy themselvesas education first organizations in many
cases anymore.
They're trying in blue communitiesto really play up their progressive
bona feeds.
And that works to an extent in blue areas.
But my goodness, if the Chicago TeachersUnion decides to go on strike yet
again, I mean, one can think thatthere's only so much tolerance.

(37:43):
Especially in a city where the mayor thereof course is tied at the hip coming out of
the Chicago Teachers Union andhas what, an 8% approval rating.
So I don't know that it'll play sowell this time around.

>> Bill Whalen (37:54):
So, let's look at a red state and a blue state, Michael.
Red state Utah.
There, there is a ballot measure.
The unions want a ballot measure toreverse laws banning collective bargaining
for public employees.
We've had this debate in California beforeintroduced in blue state California,
the California Teachers Association,
the all-powerful teacherslobby here in California.
In February it launched collectivebarGaining campaign in 32 school districts

(38:16):
across the state to demand morestate funding, higher pay and
more generous benefits.
By the way, there's a budget coming upin June, so it's not a coincidence.
So what does that activity in the redstate where they want to ban collective
bargaining for public employees orwant to do that, I should say.
But then in California, where the CTAis pushing for more benefits for
teachers, what does that sayabout the great education debate?

>> Michael Hartney (38:37):
Well, I think in Utah, of course,
it's always hard to go against the statusquo, and now, is that you've had reform.
But even in a red state like Ohio,remember a couple of years ago when
Scott Walker was so successful inreforming state labor laws there and
really constraining whatunions could bargain for.
Ohio under John Kasich tried the samething, and the voters there repealed that

(39:00):
and restored collective bargainingrights to public employees.
So anything politically,sometimes that is a tough one.
A lot of voters just see that as an issueof, that sounds like it's pro employee.
I'm for that.
So, I wouldn't wanna placea wager just yet on predicted or
one of the markets for that in Utah.
I mean, California sounds likeCalifornia every year, right?

(39:22):
And every year, what happens?
75% of the union endorsed candidateswin their school board elections
going into office,pledging to increase teacher salaries,
usually to the teachers atthe top of the pay scale.
I don't know how much we'll seelabor strife, but it's effective.
Look, I mean, in my home state ofMassachusetts, where teacher strikes

(39:44):
are illegal, the union there has beeneffective nonetheless in going out and
engaging in illegal strikes andbringing the school board to their knees.
So I think we could see some ofthat in California here, too.
So these battles aren't going away.

>> Bill Whalen (39:57):
So actually, that was going on in California right before COVID,
remember LAUST,
Los Angeles school teachers wenton strike during the school year.
This was a generation ago, two generationsago, something teachers would not dare do.
The idea was you do not strikeduring the school year.
But now they're more than happy tostrike during the school years.
You've seen in California multiple strikesduring school years across the state.

>> Michael Hartney (40:17):
And what's interesting is the laws don't even seem that effective
in warding that off.

>> Bill Whalen (40:23):
Well, and also, the Governor never gets involved and
tries to call them in and settle it ortell them to go back to school or
anything like that.
They just let it drift on andso there you are.
And the only people losing this,I hate to say, the kids.

>> Michael Hartney (40:33):
Absolutely.

>> Bill Whalen (40:34):
Yeah, well, when in doubt, Michael, go to the Simpsons for
all sources of wisdom.
And there's a wonderful episode years agowhere Homer Simpson's accused of sexual
harassment, and he goes on a talkshow to try to clear his name.
And they go to the audience forquestions and comments.
And this very aggrieved woman stands up,she goes, I just wanna say,
I wanna see less of Homer Simpson andmore money for public schools.
And everybody applauds wildly.

>> Michael Hartney (40:56):
I think that's the sitcom that also has the famous line,
anything for the children, though.

>> Bill Whalen (41:01):
[LAUGH] Anything for the children.
And we could talk aboutlawyers on that show, too.
But let's wrap up the podcast this way,Michael.
So here we have Trump'sexecutive order today.
And now the conversation begins about whatexactly is gonna happen on the part of
education.
You and I are having thisconversation a year from now.
What do you think DOE willlook like any different?

>> Michael Hartney (41:18):
Well, I do have some hope that they are going to get
the Institute forEducational Sciences, right?
Remember, that's the arm that sort of doesthe research, collects basic statistics,
helps tell us how many teachers are there.
It helps administer the NAEP exam as well,
which we need to know how badthings are in recent years.

(41:40):
I think they already know that theygot out ahead of their skis a little
bit on that one by canceling some of thecontracts that are necessary to make those
programs run.
So I think we'll see that come back in.
I think we're most likelyto see essentially
the department not being eliminated.
I don't think the votes are there.

(42:00):
If they wanna do that,they're gonna need to do it soon,
cuz the votes are definitely not gonna bethere after the midterms, I would say.
And I don't think they're there now.
Which means that what I would predict isyou're gonna see a lot of programs being
moved into other agencies and thePresident declaring victory and saying,
I did what no other Republicanpresident had done.
I slimmed down the Department of Ed.

(42:21):
And in some sense he'llbe able to say that,
they will have slimmed downthe number of FTEs there.
Whether it means the service deliverygets any better or worse, I don't know.
I think that fora lot of the sort of functions,
we won't see things show up right away.
Certainly research isn'tgonna show up right away.
But I think on the other stuff that wetalked about, whether it's the student

(42:43):
loan program, that's the one thatcould really go sideways, or
the IDEA law forstudents with disabilities.
I think that could be a realwake up point that keeps
things from going too far in terms ofgetting rid of the department entirely.
But we'll have to see.

>> Bill Whalen (42:58):
We'll have to see.
DOGE is a fascinating thingto look at in its many forms.
On the one hand, it causes awkwardsituations for Democrats when you're
arguing about, for example, USAID andsome of the symbolic money they spend,
which really seems prettysilly on its face value.
But then that's a larger, more seriousconversation about what money we're
spending in terms of economic developmentin other countries, if you will.

(43:19):
And the Education Departmentconversations' very much the same.
We can talk about money that DOE spends,but the question is whether or
not DOE has to be here in this business ornot.
I guess in this regard, what seems smartabout today's action was that, yeah,
rather than try to abolish it,either sign something which he cannot do,
clearly, which is dumb on its face value.
And it looks like he is trying to atleast protect incumbents, if you will,

(43:42):
because this would be a difficult issueto come up if you did vote against DOA.
You could probably makea fiscal argument about it.
You could make the states'rights argument, but boy,
it's easy campaign shorthandthat Michael Hartney or
Bill Whalen just voted to abolishthe Department of Education.
What a savage you are?

>> Michael Hartney (43:57):
Yeah, I mean,
the other thing just zooming out herethat I think is so interesting is that,
to your point, it's easy to go outafter a lot of these sort of programs.
You could go into IES and find a studythat's like, are you kidding me?
We're doing an ethnography on lefthanded students in this school.
To its credit, though, I will say thatIES got a really good start under

(44:19):
the Bush administration andreally tried to bring education research
into the world of serious research wherewe did randomized controlled trials.
I would say, what's the alternative,to leave it to the schools of education?
So in some sense,
having a disciplined IES that's drivingresearch isn't necessarily a bad thing.
But I'll just say this,zooming out, that, look,

(44:39):
a lot of this stuff is going after totems.
And same is true forthose folks who tuned into the President's
address to the Joint Session of Congressrecently where nobody's gonna defend those
programs that are listedin those sorts of speeches.
And the same here for certain stuff at Ed.
But we need to keep in mind that this is,then, a symbolic feel good thing.

(45:00):
It's not an actual thing where inthe case of the larger budget,
we're actually addressing deficits,because nobody's touching entitlements or
the stuff that makes up most of it.
In some sense, I feel like it's a bit likewhen Democrats say we could really close
the budget deficit if wejust tax billionaires more.
It's sort of the conservativeequivalent of that.
We'll go get rid of the waste,fraud and abuse.
So I do think that that's an importantthing to keep in mind here with

(45:23):
the Department of Education reforms,that this is a drop in the bucket.

>> Bill Whalen (45:27):
The other thing, we have a president who just loves foils,
he loves getting into social media force,he loves finding people, entities,
individuals to pick on and go after.
In terms of education, Michael,there might be a bigger fish to fry for
him than K through 12,and that's universities.

>> Michael Hartney (45:40):
Yeah, I mean, I absolutely think that's true.
And you've seen it already interms of testing the waters with
Columbia University, where you've hadsignificant amounts of grants pulled, but
it can't go so fast.

>> Bill Whalen (45:52):
And he's going after Penn on women's sports, so.

>> Michael Hartney (45:55):
Exactly, but what's so fascinating here is that in all of that
sort of high level orsort of eye catching stuff,
the issue of NIH grants or grantsthat take large amounts of overhead,
if you go back 10, 15 years,this is a bipartisan area of concern.
People have said for a very long time thatthere is way too much overhead in a lot

(46:16):
of these grants and President Obamathought we should streamline that.
But I think the difference here is there'sa sort of sloppiness to the way that
Elon Musk and his cadre of 20-somethingyear olds on Twitter have gone about it
with the bulldozer, where you sayovernight we're gonna go to 15%, right?
So I think there'sresponsible stuff to be done.

(46:36):
Again, as I led off the program andsaying their best argument is, look,
if we went the responsible route,we weren't gonna get anything done.
So that's their strongest case fortaking the axe to it.

>> Bill Whalen (46:47):
Right, but Trump is very smart in this regard, Michael.
He is very masterful at taking socalled 80,
20 issues where 80% of the publicsees one way and 20% the other, and
he manages to get his opponentson the 20% side of the argument.
And you see that for example,with the women's sports issue,
you see that with the issueof anti Semitism on campus.
And maybe that's the way to tie this intothe K12 debate and the question of unions.

(47:07):
Will the unions at all timestake Donald Trump's bait?
And will they, when he does the executiveorder, will they go out full force crazy
on him about this orthey just let the process play out?
Cuz that to me is what's wrong withuniversities right now as well.
They just, when Trump says he's gonnatake away money, they go crazy,
they plead poverty, we're gonna haveto make cuts and things like that.
But they don't defendthe practice necessarily.
So that's what I'm curious about in termsof Trump and universities moving forward.

>> Michael Hartney (47:30):
Yeah, I mean,
I was honestly stunned at how sort offlat footed a lot of these university
presidents seem to havebeen caught off guard.
It's not as if a lot of the peoplewho are now advising Trump or
being brought into the administrationweren't sort of laying out their cards for
what their plans werewhen they took office.
But it seems like a lot of theseuniversity leaders weren't ready for it or
didn't take it seriously,I'm not sure which.

>> Bill Whalen (47:52):
Well, that, and
also they're arguing in someregards above people's heads.
For example,you take a school like Stanford or
an Ivy League school that has massiveendowments 10, 20, 30, $40 billion and
you're gonna plead poverty if youtake away federal government.
The average person looking atthat maybe doesn't understand
the intricacies of endowment,what's touchable and what's not.
But this response is gonna be when Harvardsays, well, if you take away our money,

(48:14):
we're gonna have to lay people off.
Well, wait a second,you have $40 billion in your endowment.
What are you doing with it?
So again, it's just,it's very smart politics by Trump.

>> Michael Hartney (48:22):
Yeah, and it also underscores the fact that,
as everyone now knows, the shift insupport for the parties is the center of
gravity moving into the Republican Partyare folks without college degrees.
So, we're in a whole new world where weno longer have the folks without college
degrees allied with the left wingprofessors as it used to be.

>> Bill Whalen (48:40):
Okay, let's close out, Michael,
what are you working on these days?

>> Michael Hartney (48:43):
Well, I am working on a book,
Trying To Wrestle With The FalloutOf The Pandemic On Education.
It's pretty well established now,that kids who spent more
time not in a classroom that theirlearning doesn't look so hot.
But I think there's another story there,which is the danger of what we in my
field of research, and that's governmentpolitics, call follow the leader.

(49:06):
Which is that most responsible adultsknew that kids needed to be in school.
The American Academy of Pediatrics,most epidemiologists,
most experts andmost Democrats all said that we should
have the kids back inthe schools back in May of 2020.
But then, when Donald Trump came out, andyou talk about one of these 80 20 issues
and Donald Trump said the kids all have tobe back in school, you saw this partisan

(49:29):
split, and we've been paying a price forthat for five years.
So, I'm doing a lot of research tryingto understand how did that happen?
What could we do about that going forward?
Whether it's because of another pandemicor another big education issue that is
threatened to be brokenalong partisan lines.

>> Bill Whalen (49:45):
That is my last question.
In your conversationsin writing this book,
has anybody given you reason to believethat things are gonna be better
improved with regarding educationcome the time of the next pandemic?
Or are we going to go through more shelterin place, more learning from home,
more confusion over whenschools can reopen?

>> Michael Hartney (50:02):
Well, I certainly hope that the decisions are made based on
the facts about whatever particularnovel virus it might be.
But I think that we don't have goodreason, unfortunately, to believe that if
we get evidence, as we did last time fromEurope, from the private school sector
here in the United States, that schoolswere not a major source of spread.

(50:24):
That we could protect vulnerable adultsand still have children back in school by
the fall and certainly bythe time the vaccines are out.
We haven't done anything institutionallyto ensure that decisions are made in a way
that elevates the interest of childrenover the interests of adults and
stakeholder politics.

>> Bill Whalen (50:43):
So, what you're telling me is when it comes to learning in public
schools, that it has not necessarilybeen a learning experience for
the good folks who run our public schools.

>> Michael Hartney (50:50):
Yeah, that's the case.
And to tie it back to this thing about,should the feds be involved,
should the states,should the localities, I will just say,
if you look across the world, a lot ofthe countries that had more centralized
education systems, and look,I get that we're unique.
300 plus million Americans,100,000 public schools, we're massive.

(51:12):
But one of the prices you pay by nothaving some elements of centralization is
that you let all of the local districtsdecide whether to open or not.
And they pretty much did it basedon whether they were red or blue.
And if we had some more seriousleadership in governor's offices and
in Washington that had somemore strings and authority.

(51:32):
I wonder if we would have looked a lotmore like some of those other countries
that got kids back to school more quickly.

>> Bill Whalen (51:39):
That's a great point, because here in California,
so much power was given tolocal public health officials.
County officials decide when to open andwhen not.
And I remember the one here in Santa ClaraCounty where you, and I are at Stanford.
She would just drive you crazy.
San Mateo county, which is next door,would have a different set of standards.
You could literally walk in the samecounty and take your mask off,
have to put it back onin Santa Clara County.

(52:00):
Businesses would be open to San Mateo,close to Santa Clara County,
just because the health officialswere looking at different numbers and
reach different conclusions.
So, yes, I think it calls for tougherleadership higher up in the pyramid.

>> Michael Hartney (52:10):
Absolutely.

>> Bill Whalen (52:11):
Okay, Michael, enjoyed the conversation.
Thanks for joining me today.

>> Michael Hartney (52:14):
Fun as always, Bill, good to be with you.

>> Bill Whalen (52:16):
You've been listening to Matters of Policy and
Politics, a Hoover Institutionpodcast devoted to governance, and
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(52:36):
Michael as you might expect,T as in Thomas, Hartney,
H-A-R-T-N-E-Y @michaelt Hartney.
The Hoover Institution is also on X,
our X handle is @hooverinst,that's H-O-O-V-E-R-I-N-S-T.
We're also on Facebook andInstagram, we're all over the place.
By the way, when you're at the Hoover.orglooking up more about Michael in this
podcast, you should also sign up forthe Hoover Dale Report,

(52:58):
which keeps you updated on what Michaeland his Hoover colleagues are up to.
That's delivered your inbox weekdayafternoons, Michael's book, by the way,
I'm gonna plug it yet again.
Go get it, folks.
It's titled How Policies Make InterestGroups, Governments, Unions, and
American Education,when's the next book coming out, Michael?

>> Michael Hartney (53:13):
Goodness, it better be by next year.

>> Bill Whalen (53:15):
Before the next pandemic.

>> Michael Hartney (53:17):
Yeah.

>> Bill Whalen (53:18):
Hurry right fast, my friend.

>> Michael Hartney (53:20):
Absolutely.

>> Bill Whalen (53:21):
For the Hoover Institution,
this is Bill Whalen, we'll be backsoon with a new conversation.
We'll be talking California withmy colleagues Lee Ohanian, and
Jonathan Lovrotis.
Until then, take care,thanks for joining us today.

>> Presenter (53:32):
This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution,
where we generate andpromote ideas, advancing freedom.
For more information about our work,to hear more of our podcasts, or
view our video content,please visit hoover.org.
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