Kent McGuire and Zoe Stemm-Calderon on Building an Inclusive Public Education

Kent McGuire of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Zoe Stemm-Calderon from the Raikes Foundation sit down with Katie Hong to discuss their work on advancing equitable and inclusive public education across the United States. In this episode they share their foundations’ collaborative efforts as well as their own personal and professional experiences – both inside and outside of philanthropy – in the education space. 

Transcript

Kent
And here, I thought, Katie, the whole point of this podcast was therapy for Zoe and me. I was confused. [Laughter]

Nancy (Host)
From The Giving Practice at Philanthropy Northwest, this is Can We Talk About…?, a project to normalize the messiness of leading for racial equity in philanthropy and reflect on what it takes to create lasting transformation. In season two, our hosts explore what it looks like for philanthropy to advance racial equity on the ground, where the work can vary greatly depending on the context—whether it’s place, issue area, or the community served. In a world where our contexts are constantly shifting, we’re asking guests to practice vulnerability, explore sticky topics, and look for learning. What we ask of you is to do the same.

Please note that this episode was recorded prior to the 2024 elections and includes perspectives and lessons learned from our guests as of October 2024.

Katie (Host)
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Can We Talk About. My name is Katie Hong, and I'm a Senior Advisor with The Giving Practice at Philanthropy Northwest, and your host for this episode. For those of you tuning in for the first time, you're listening to the second season of our podcast, where we’re highlighting stories of what it looks like to operationalize equity on the ground in a variety of contexts, with today’s conversation focusing particularly on the education space. I’m so thrilled to be joined today by Kent McGuire, the Program Director of Education at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Zoe Stem Calderon, the Senior Director of Youth-Serving Systems at the Riggs Foundation. They are here to offer their perspectives on what’s happening today in efforts to advance an inclusive public education in the United States. Collectively, the two of them bring decades of experience working in education and philanthropy. These two are some of the most creative and inspiring people I know in this space, so you’re in for a treat. Zoe, Kent, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. I’d love to start off this conversation by having you both briefly introduce yourselves to our listeners, and as part of that, if you could share one thing that you most want the audience to know about you, that would be great. Kent, why don’t I kick it off to you to start first?

Kent
Well, Katie, thank you. I’m thrilled to do this with you and with Zoe. I can’t actually think of a better person to do this with than you and Zoe. And of course, I can’t give you just one thing—I’ll give you two. The first thing, by way of introduction, is I’m Kent McGuire. I’ve worked at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for almost eight years. I’ve done a bunch of things before that, too many to list, and it would date me in the worst possible way. But the first thing I want people to know about me is that I’m a nice guy. I’m a reasonable fellow. You’d like me if you got to know me and worked with me. That’s the first thing I want people to know. The second thing I’d say is that I’ve considered myself to have been in the equity business for pretty much my entire career, which means I’ve had no shortage of things to work on. I’ve done it from the government, from the academy, in the policy community, and through philanthropy. So, I’ve tried to work on this sticky, thorny, and enduring problem from many different vantage points. I’ve learned a little something from each one of those, and I’m still trying to figure out how to win. That’s what I want people to know.

Katie (Host)
Awesome. And I can definitely vouch that you’re a very, very nice person.

Zoe
Yeah, I was going to say, I’ll co-sign that. Kent is great to work with. I’m Zoe Stem Calderon. I’ve been working at the Riggs Foundation for almost nine years. I’ve had a long—though not as long as Kent’s—career in education. I was a teacher, an instructional coach, a district administrator, and I’ve worked at the state level in education. Somehow, I’m now on this relatively new journey in philanthropy. The thing I want people to know is that, underneath all of that, the experience that animates the work I do started from growing up in a family that told me education and working hard were my pathways to making an impact in my own life, in my family’s life, and in the project that is America. I really believed them because I watched education change my parents' lives, and it changed mine, and got me into good schools, changing what we were able to do in our lives. I became a teacher right after graduating from college and went to a Latino community in Houston as a teacher. That’s when I saw that the opportunity infrastructure I thought was available to everyone—because this is America, and that’s what we do—was not the same in my students' community, even though their brilliance, their potential, and all the hopes their families had for them were exactly the same. They were telling their kids the exact same thing: "Work hard, get your education, and you’re going to be able to realize your dreams." I think my career has been animated by that experience, and by a kind of searching that I think I see in a lot of other people: How do we make that true? How do we make that opportunity infrastructure that I thought was available to everyone a reality? I think a lot of my search, like Kent’s, has been about finding where the leverage is and understanding the difference between changing elements of the system versus really redesigning it so that it does what we want it to. I feel really grateful to be working on that now at Raikes, and certainly my experience working with Kent is often about learning from his insights and experience. How can we do this together?

Katie (Host)
Yeah, that's great. Well, thank you again for that introduction. And really, what's going to be so great about this conversation is having both of you here speaking side by side about your different experiences together and your collective work. So actually, let's get into that. I'm curious if we could first set the context to help the audience understand where we are today, but within the long arc of the history of public education, inclusive public education here in the United States. I know in our planning calls, we talked about how there's a lot going on in the education space today, particularly what feels like attacks on inclusive public education. So activities like book bans or policies that dictate what kind of curriculum can be taught, including, sadly, what curriculum cannot be taught. So, Kent, can you start us off by reminding us how we should understand this current moment, and how and why it's important to understand today's challenges in the long history of public education here in the United States?

Kent
You know, Katie, I do think there are some things that are unique and different about this moment. And maybe the best way to see what's unique is to give you a bit of an arc. I mean, the thing that people take from this moment, you know, I see it all the time. I have to help my board grapple with this. Sometimes I have to help my colleagues grapple with this. The sense is that it’s as if we are seeing something we have never seen before, and in some ways, without help, we’re inclined to conclude: "Oh my goodness, we can't make progress on anything given the kind of prevailing conditions." Right? The strong headwinds and the dark clouds that seem to be hanging over us. If—my goodness—we took that view, you know, the chilling effect that that represents, that's exactly what I would argue folks want to have happen. And I think Zoe and I, each in our own ways, are actively trying to persuade each other that this is not the right way to think about the moment that we're in. So having a chance to say, "Okay, what is the right way to think about the moment we're in?" is a good thing to wrestle with and talk about.

But what I'd say is that education, specifically public education, has always been contested ground. It never hasn't been. Right? You know, the fights have been about different things, and oddly enough, to some degree, they've been about the same things over time. Right? There was the Jim Crow era, where the fights were about whether kids could or should go to school with each other. In fact, it was codified that separate could be equal, right? I find elements of that tenor in efforts these days to want to privatize things, right? "Well, we can do this, and people can separate and go their own ways, and we won't have any equity problems. What are you talking about?" There was Brown v. Board of Education, where we sort of made the case that who you go to school with actually matters, in part because there's a certain public commitment that comes along with that, and that public commitment helps us with issues like resource equity, which again is, you know, something that is alive and well today, as we talk about it. There was the War on Poverty in the Civil Rights era, which was really, in my view, following Brown when we came to understand or appreciate that the politics may be hard at times, but it isn't rocket science. What actually gives rise to the kinds of schools all parents want? It helps if we have quality teachers who are actually prepared, you know, to teach in the subject they’re assigned to. It helps if we have supports for groups—special populations, to think of it one way. English language learners, kids from low-income and underserved populations, special education, right? These were things that the first Elementary and Secondary Education Act actually, in 1964, endeavored to do: level the playing field and respond to the emerging diversity in our public school enrollments. Right?

Then we got into arguments about minimal competency standards. Those gave rise to discussions about common standards, and here we find ourselves. You know, today, I think one or two important differences between these ongoing struggles and the moment in which we find ourselves would be this. We've had debates and book bans in the past. It's been unusual to find our political leaders, some of them on the forefront in legislating them. That hasn't been something that public officials have been provoked or inclined to do, and nor do I think we've debated about who ought to have access to what kind of public education. But I'm stunned by the sudden willingness to debate whether public education is what we should actually have. So those would be two ways of distinguishing the sort of story I've told you with the moment in which we find ourselves and and I think that, to me, should suggest that there's a new kind of urgency that we should bring to the work that I expect we'll talk more about as we continue with this. This conversation.

Katie (Host) 

So helpful. Yeah. Zoe, what would you add to that?

Zoe
Yeah. I mean, well, I think, to build into this moment, one is a reminder to all of us that what is happening in our public school system always affects all of us, all the time. It builds the communities we want. It builds our economic prosperity. Ultimately, it builds our democracy because 90% of the 55 million school-aged children in the U.S. are attending our public schools.

The other thing to acknowledge is that those kids are becoming even more diverse. So, when Kent said in 1964, when we passed the first big federal law around public education, we were calling out that different students had different needs, and we needed to attend to those. And today, we just have much more diversity in our public schools.

So, I think it is not a wonder then that, coming out of 2020, capitalizing on the maybe legitimate concerns parents had about what happened during COVID and their frustrations with the public education system—but also intersecting with a rising racial reckoning in our country—we saw this emerging backlash that really centered on public education.

Suddenly, as Kent mentioned, we had legislators across the country passing these censorship and gag order bills that were limiting how and what could be taught about an honest history, as well as how we represent young people’s and families’ experiences across race and LGBTQ status. Ultimately, this created a massive chilling effect that isn’t just operating in the states where these laws have passed, which is now over 50% of the young people in our country. These students are going to school every day in a state where we’ve limited this major way that we build a sense of belonging and connection. Frankly, it also affects how we build the skills our young people need to succeed in the economy and in our democracy, which is: How do you get along with lots of different people? How do you understand different people's perspectives? How do you understand the road we've traveled to build the America that we have today, and the road we have left to go?

All of these are things we do because we build communities of belonging and connection, but also because we're honest and clear about the history of our country. And so much of that is under attack today for a really politically motivated reason.

But I think sometimes people think, well, that’s a core set of states. It’s now, I think, up to 17 states—it may even be higher—but the chilling effect is much more profound. So in surveys of teachers, what we’re hearing from teachers across the country is that they feel less comfortable talking about these issues of race, identity, and dealing with current events related to them. I think that diminishes everyone's education quite substantially, and it diminishes the role that public schools can play in our lives as Americans.

And I'll just say one thing. I mean, the people behind this effort have been really clear. They're not hiding the ball on their strategy. So people may not follow folks like Christopher Rufo and others who have articulated this strategy. But I encourage folks to go read articles about what they're up to because they've said: "Our goal is to erode people's trust, create universal distrust in public education in order to create universal support for choice and privatization in public education."

So, there’s a political project happening here. I often go back to Heather McGee's concept of the dynamic of drained-pool politics. If folks haven’t read Heather McGee's book The Sum of Us, I think it really effectively describes the dynamic we’re watching in our country right now, and that we need to really contend with. Is this the direction that we want to go? Heather uses the metaphor of drained pools and says:

"In the post-Jim Crow desegregation period in our country, cities and towns all over the country were in an arms race to build the biggest, most fabulous, luxurious community public pools. Of course, they were only accessible to white people in our country. Once they were forced to make those community pools—those community assets—accessible to everyone, places where everyone would be welcome and supported, suddenly many cities and towns across the country sold those pools for $1 to turn them into private pools that only certain people—largely white, affluent people—could access. Or they filled those pools in with concrete in order to eliminate that asset rather than share it."

I worry quite a bit about the fact that this is the underlying dynamic happening in our country. If we have to share this resource, if we really have to make it work for every American, if we have to tell everyone's story in our history, if we have to make everyone feel welcome and like their story belongs here in America, then we’d rather dismantle this institution that educates all of our children. I think we will all be deeply diminished. Just like if you don’t have a great, fancy pool in your community anymore, I think we’ll all be deeply diminished if that is really successful.

The good news is, I think, that we know from public polling this is not the direction that parents want to see us move in America. They want a place where all students are valued and accepted in our public schools. They want a curriculum that teaches their child how to interact and understand the perspectives of different folks. They know that that matters to their growing up and succeeding in their lives, and they don’t want politicians dictating what is taught in their classroom. But it's a distraction from the things that I think parents really do want us working on.

Katie (Host)
That’s such a good point. I really appreciate both of you laying out, again, understanding current challenges within the long arc. There’s a history of what has come before, and at the same time, the stakes couldn’t be any higher. I love, Zoe, that you referenced Heather, and really just this point that we all suffer—not just some of us, but all of us.

Now, I want to turn to that. As education funders and funders in the philanthropic space, how are your institutions responding to the current set of challenges? Can you talk about some of the efforts that you both have been involved in together that required shifting strategies as the context shifts? Maybe this is where you two could talk about the many ways that your two institutions—and the two of you—are working together to respond.

Zoe
I mean, first, I'll say I spend a lot of time listening to and learning from Kent, and I think this is an important part of doing this work. Like, when I first met Kent 10 years ago in my own philanthropic journey, I think one of the things he really imparted to me—and then I think I've even more deeply recognized—is that this history really matters.

You know, I started my career in education in 2000 when I graduated from college. Kent can tell that story because he lived through multiple chapters before that. And I think sometimes in education philanthropy—and frankly, in education change broadly in the field—we can be ahistorical and fail to recognize that whenever we came into the conversation is not the beginning of the conversation.

I think one of the things that makes Kent and my work together—and just, you know, has enriched my work so much—is recognizing that we are part of this long effort, this long project, to build opportunity structures into America that really deliver on the American promise. It's an imperfect project, and it's hard and slow. There are champions and opportunities, and there is opposition. I think just acknowledging that has been really critical.

I think because Kent and I were in that conversation, and we were already thinking together and funding together around things like, "How do we support bold coalitions in states who are fighting for full and fair funding of public education?"—which is an underlying root cause of why we don't have that opportunity structure across our country—when we saw this backlash emerging, I think we had already been doing work together. We were very proximate to leaders who could tell us, "This is what's happening."

We heard at the very beginning of the legislative session in 2021, and we had relationships with each other and with a broader group of funders. So we could lean in and say, "Well, what do we need to learn? What do we need to understand better? How do we listen to our partners in the field and begin to think about what the field needs now?"

If, you know, a political strategy is being driven to build fear and aim for a broader kind of privatization effort in public education, what do we need to know and understand? I think then we had a lot of partners across the field who could help us understand that better.

Initially, we launched a community of practice—a group of partners who were just coming together to hear from our partners from lots of different perspectives. Superintendents who were leading to try to make their education systems ones that worked for every kid in their community were up against this kind of manufactured political attack on them and on public education.

We were hearing from legal scholars and litigators, understanding what’s happening with these laws and what can be done. Folks were helping us think about narrative—what’s happening in the misinformation being driven about public education, and how do you counter it? To raise the voice of the majority of parents who, you know, want an inclusive public education system but don't know how to get their voices heard as loudly as, perhaps, the Moms for Liberty chapter in their community.

So, you know, we spent a lot of time listening and co-constructing strategy. Today, we've got a fund called the Ed Future Fund. It has a broad community of practice of funders who come together to keep learning, keep aligning our strategies, and then we pool funds. We fund a growing strategy that is really raising the voices of the parents, young people, and advocates who want to see their public schools focus on the most important things for their kids and build inclusive environments for their kids to go to school.

And so, that's a bit of what we've been doing. I'll hand it over to Kent for more on that.

Kent
Well, let me see. Let me add around the edges of that. I mean, the first thing I need to say, just to make Zoe's opening point, is that Heather's mom and I are friends.

Zoe
That sounds right.

Kent
So I lived the experience Heather's story tells. If I had time, I could tell you about trying to buy a house in Lansing, Michigan. We could send my very light-complected mother in one day, and the rest of us would show up the next and get a very cool reception to whether or not this was something we could do. Or I could tell a story—my mother could for sure—about whether it was easy or not to get a loan, you know, to get a mortgage, right? Etc., etc.

So I remember reading that book and going through the conversations with this community of practice with other grantmakers, you know, feeling like, struggling to figure out how to bring my own truth into that conversation just because I had history other people in the conversation didn’t have. It means that I've probably been playing a bridging function some of the time, you know, between people in philanthropy a long time to folks more recently arrived, between actors in the civil rights community, where I have deep ties. But there are intergenerational dynamics that are alive and well there, which is both important and complicates the work.

We may see the same problems, but we bring different theories about how we ought to work on them. At a time when we desperately need to be more aligned, more unified, better at what to argue about, and much better at consolidating our energies and our resources, I have found that that takes work—helping people overcome different ideas about what to do and how to get something done.

Part of your question was about, you know, what journey was Hewlett on? And, you know, it was interesting to me. I went there questioning the extent to which I could be in the equity business I had long been in. When I got there, I questioned whether or not I ought to go there. I'm glad I did.

I seem to understand that this is a place that places bets on the people, you know, that arrive, and they give you lots of space to do what you think is best. And still, 2020 changed something at Hewlett. You know, there was a kind of soul-searching that occurred. There were conversations in the staff that you had to hear, you had to put—you had to make room for them. And there were conversations in the board, you know, a sense-making about the moment. Katie, the work you came to help us with, I would argue, was a byproduct of that moment, as the whole foundation decided that, you know, we needed to think not just about, well, do we deal with equity over here in this program and racial justice in that program, but rather, how are these questions of social justice and equity present across the programs and initiatives in the foundation?

I think, as you would agree, that's a journey that we’re very much still on. The point I want to make about it, though, is that it gave me more license. I could become substantially more efficient and direct about how to talk about this, about what to do. I felt like the memos—let me tell you—if you know that rates, I think, you know, that's a very efficient place. I mean, I think they use decks, you know, and they just get the stuff out there. And they, you know, you know, our board books are like dissertations. You know, they’re 3,250 pages each one.

So words are our currency. You know, memoranda is the coin of the realm. I'll just say it this way: writing them in certain ways became harder because I wanted to use my license well and powerfully. I wanted to be clear. I wanted those memoranda to be educative, right? And in some ways, writing those memos became easier because I didn’t have to mince so many words. I could get right to the point.

So now what I'm doing is I'm sort of juxtaposing Hewlett’s journey and Kent’s. Right? It’s the ability to sort of bring myself more fully and completely into Hewlett’s work, at least with regard to our own program, and I think to some degree with regard to the larger community inside the foundation. My ability to talk with candor and ease and humility, I think, made it easier for my peers to do the same. You know, what they understood, what they didn’t understand, what they’re trying to figure out, so forth.

Finally, I had to work with Zoe because, you know, I needed a partner. I needed a partner out there who had the time, energy, and sophistication to get people organized. And if I could bring resources to all of that—and I committed to bringing as many resources as I could to it—it was a good way to sort of collaborate and help get the field, you know, better put together.

Zoe
Yeah, I mean, and I'll say Kent is really masterful at both of these things. I mean, managing the internal working environment—is that a master class or what? But also in working with me, you know, I'm kind of like the workhorse—I’m going to do the deck, right? And move the things. What I really appreciate is that we can have a relationship where Kent's wisdom, analysis, and lived experience shape so much of what I can benefit from. Then, by extension, the way our ED Future Fund strategy has emerged is smarter and more strategic because everyone at that table is contributing a superpower, right? We are able to drive a more sophisticated, field-wide strategy that bridges different people's perspectives, expertise, and lived experience, and that makes it really unique. It's something I don't think we could do independently. There are so many places where, you know, I didn't fund civil rights organizations and legal challenges until, you know, it was needed and required for some of this work. Kent, did you know we have partners sitting around our table who've really thought about narrative shifts, and how do we measure it, and how do we drive it? I think we all benefit because we bring those different perspectives to the field, and I think that has made the work so much better. Yeah.

Kent
I try, Katie, to work in the background. I mean, there are lots of folks I'll go and talk to, you know, and I'll tell them, "Do what Zoe does," yeah, don’t struggle with this. You don't need to struggle with this.

Katie (Host)
You're such a good team. Well, I just so appreciate the story that you're telling. I know we're talking specifically about the education space, but I think there are so many practical applications for funders working in other aspects of racial justice or equity issues. So a lot of the themes that I'm hearing from you are that these are much larger issues. History matters. The current window of opportunity matters. And working in the ecosystem approach, where, you know, you're not treating these as almost technical problems—like I know when I entered philanthropy two decades ago, a lot of funders were treating this as, "What’s the most strategic lever, and how do we balance that?" And then if we do that, it almost seems like treating a lot of these problems as technical or even complicated problems. I think what the picture that you're painting is that it’s a lot more complicated. It’s, you know, it’s the adaptive challenge of the problem statement, always changing depending on current context. So what's really important is proximity. What's really important is relationship. What's really important is emergence. And so I’m wondering if you both can talk about that—like, what have you seen as the shift in how funders have had to respond, given the nature of the challenges today? And while it sounds great, it could also be really hard because now you're talking, you know, the kind of work that's required, the kind of collaboration that’s required is so much bigger than just even your own institution. So, I’m wondering, what lessons learned have you observed? Yeah, what advice would you have for other people, even in other spaces, who are trying to do this adaptive work?

Kent
You know, I do think that the longer pattern has been for us to work in our own buckets, our own silos. There's a certain foundation tendency to push us in that direction. Maybe a better way to say it is we all have our own accountability structures. We all have our own origin stories. Therefore, we all have a set of things that were commissioned, you know, by mission, to do. Learning to hold those dear and also learning to work with each other—that’s a new muscle. The muscles that I think we’re getting better at. I’m not suggesting it has never been true; that’s certainly not the case. But if one thing the pandemic taught us, a racial awakening brought you, and a profound and sustained backlash to all of that taught us, it’s that whatever our particular strategic interests and priorities might be, the idea that any of us are going to achieve them by working in isolation is not going to work. I think that’s an important and, hopefully, increasingly shared insight.

In fact, Hewlett has a fund called the Fund for Shared Insight, based on the very premise that we’re much more likely to create the world that we all want to live in and achieve the things we want to achieve and solve the problems that are important and dear to us when, a) we have a healthy respect and understanding of what each other aspires to do, and b) we dedicate more time and energy to appreciating the connections between and among those things, and c) we actually create time, space, and resources to come together around things that contribute to our individual and collective impact. And so I would say that’s a work in progress. It’s not guaranteed. People like Zoe view what I just said as steady work.

Zoe
Right? Yeah, we just keep at it.

Kent
And you’ve got to keep at it and get better and better at showing the return.

Zoe
Yeah, that's right.

Kent
To working in these ways. And I think the more we can do, the more success we have at revealing the dividends from working together as much as we work independently. You know, that's what I talk about. Zoe documents it, but I think that’s an important pivot. And I think, you know, that’s part of what we're starting to learn as we make that turn.

Zoe
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I'd say, and why that matters is the framing of the problem of building a public education system that serves every individual student's needs really well, that fuels our economy when everything is changing, when we're going through this rapid kind of revolution that will be driven by AI. And also, when our democracy needs restoration, it needs remodeling, it needs reinvigorating. Our education system is such a cornerstone to that. I think when we define that project broadly versus narrowly—like, we all know we work in philanthropy—you can get some 100-page deck to help you identify the one technical leverage point that you're going to drive. I think this moment has revealed that that is insufficient, that there is something important that you can do with your technical contribution to the field. Rake still funds important technical things that we still need to figure out, but I think we’ve learned. And you know, and I'd say I’ve learned over my career in conversation with folks like Kent, who have helped me see that this is a much bigger project. We have an inequitable public education system because we have an inequitable democracy. We have a democracy where not everybody has the power to demand, and so you can’t overly narrow that.

Okay, so that’s true, but if we just said that, it would be insufficient, and then say, "Let’s sit around and talk about it." I think we've also realized there are a few things that we can do when we're working effectively together to move more resources towards the things the field says they really need. I think one is sense-making. You know, when this backlash emerged, there were some things that people kind of, you know, used as their go-to's. They were like, "Well, this will simmer down." Or maybe we went too far, maybe we worked too hard to make education too inclusive, or maybe the misinformation that’s being spread about what’s happening in schools is really true.

And this is not to say that I don’t think there were elements of practice that weren’t optimal for every student in classrooms. I am quite sure there were. But the level of misinformation about what was happening in schools, the accusations of grooming, when what teachers were really doing was reading stories in their classrooms about LGBTQ students, or they were teaching kids how to use proper pronouns for their friends—that is not grooming. But that is part of a project of making schools places where everybody feels like they belong. And I can understand why that might have made parents uncomfortable, but I think we had a sense-making job early on, which was, "Let’s separate fact from fiction."

So, let's listen to superintendents and teachers talk about the kind of practices they’re using in their classrooms, and then let’s talk about how those are being represented by political actors at school board races, in the media, etc. And let’s pull back the curtain on who’s behind this. What are the resources behind this? Who are the people behind this? I think we had to understand that together in order to actually move forward.

And then there was a bunch of sense-making that wasn't about where these attacks were coming from, but about what the field says they need. And the reality is, like, you can ask that Kent or I, as funders, can go and ask our partners that question, and they’re going to give us pretty good answers, but they’re going to spend more time on it and be more engaged with us if it’s a bunch of funders coming together and saying, "We’re actually committed to resourcing the things you say are needed now."

So, if you would just really be like, roll up your sleeves and be in a design stance with us and tell us what the strategy is that we really need to advance in order to make progress here, you know, we get a different kind of collaboration and support from the field when we’re all working together and really resourcing it. And then that has added up to, as Kent said, it’s not enough to just say the field needs more resources. We asked the field, in the first year, when we were like, "You had a whole set of plans for advancing education equity this year. I don’t think a massive political attack was on your bingo card, right?" How many resources would it take? And the field said back to us, "A minimum of $50 million a year."

It wouldn’t have been sufficient if we had said, "Okay, well, we’re going to try to raise that without being able to say back to our partners, ‘Help them say back to their boards, this is the strategy we’re going to advance, the strategy the field thinks matters in order to make progress. This is what we’re committed to, shifting narrative, changing outcomes for kids.’" And then we have to hold ourselves accountable to that.

I think we’ve been able to do that to where, you know, today you’ll see public polling that is very clear that parents understand this direction. They know what it means now to pass anti-critical race theory and anti-LGBTQ laws. They know it means banning books and limiting history, and they don’t like it. They’re standing up against it. They’re voting on it in their school board races. They’re voting on it in other races. We’ve got public polling saying that over 80% of voters in America won’t vote for a candidate who pursues these kinds of strategies.

But that took the field time to build a narrative strategy, an advocacy strategy, to actually shift that. And that’s not the end of the road, right? Because, as I said, 50% of students and their teachers are still living under these book bans and gag order bills. We still have a lot of work to do to continue advancing to an education system where, you know, young people can be who they are. They can learn a history that is accurate. They can be better prepared for, you know, a multiracial democracy. So we’re not done, but I think working together in a way that sense-made, that built a shared strategy, and helped us build points of progress—evidence of how things were working—has helped us keep momentum going and kept us all at the table. You know, it starts to feel like good work, and not like we’re just going to throw up our hands and kind of abandon our public education system to people who are driving fear.

Katie (Host)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I told you, I know we said this at the beginning to the audience, you're in for a treat with these two amazing leaders. But just the picture that you’ve painted of the collaborative effort you’ve been able to pull together with other funders and other stakeholders in the education space—like, yeah, I really think that is the work, and that’s what we need more of.

And, you know, another reason we want to do this podcast, besides highlighting just the really innovative and creative work that’s happening in the field as akin to what you both were describing, is to also have our listeners—right? We’re assuming that our listeners are other funders all across the country who are trying to do this really challenging and important work—to feel less lonely, you know, so that when they’re doing this in their hardest moments, they feel like they’re part of a larger community of like-minded funders and others who are doing this work.

So, I think before the two of you go, the question I really want to ask is, I don’t know—what’s a challenge that has come up for you in this work that you think is a common challenge that other people will likely face? And what personal advice could you offer people so that they keep going forward?

Kent
And here, I thought, Katie, the whole point of this podcast was therapy for Zoe and me. I was confused. Clearly, you actually think we have lessons or insights from others. I didn’t think this was about anybody. So, let me adjust to that new, revised mission that maybe I, I just didn’t understand when we got started. In fact, I might go back and re-answer a bunch of different questions with this new insight.

It’s a couple of things, though, that I will put in the category of ongoing challenges, right? Zoe brought them into view for us. First, she said, "Look, I think we're poised for new and qualitatively better relationships and interactions with our partners in the field, but our partners in the field will need to learn that we mean it, that we’re serious, and over and above, learning how to aggregate resources." There is also the need to get better and better at creating the space for the kind of candor we need from our partners in the ecosystem, as well as a kind of candor with one another.

You know, our ability to—you used the term in a different context—maybe it was you—I’ve been in a lot of different conversations, but, you know, about sort of radical honesty. The ability to talk to each other about where we’re struggling, and where we need help from one another. And so, it does seem to me that, you know, earning trust and building trust is part of what these structures we are creating are for. I’ll call those instrumental outcomes that sit behind the technical stuff and the political stuff that we might be working on. But the more we realize that we're also getting to know each other better, getting to trust each other more, and learning how much we can count on each other to do what we can do and say honestly what we can't, I think that just creates the kind of health, resilience, and durability that this work requires.

So, those are challenges. But the good news is that these are challenges that are easy to meet when we name them, identify them, and commit to working through them.

And I guess the other thing Zoe said, that I would say, is ongoing work. It’s this business of sense-making. The world is noisy. There's lots of information orbiting around us and the enterprise we’re trying to protect. We’re trying to protect an enterprise, and we’re trying to transform and improve it at the same time. Wouldn’t it be great if we just had to do one of those things? But we actually have to do both of them, and that enterprise remains a black box for many of us, right? It’s not a black box to Zoe because she worked in it. She’s lived in it. But for some, it’s continuing to demystify it, continuing to reveal how much it actually figures out how to do, even in the face of resource scarcity and inequality, even in the face of strong cultural and political forces determined to undermine its success.

So, I think we jump too quickly to the assumption that the thing is completely broken, when that's actually not true. It desperately needs to be remodeled and advanced in lots of different ways, but making sense of what it is doing well and how much more it could accomplish if we attended to the things it needs, garnered the kind of public support and investment required, and fended off spurious critiques and undeserved criticism—that’s a real challenge too.

Let me stop there. No, I—

Zoe
I mean, that was the first thing that came to me. Kent was like, I think the defense/offense frame. It comes up all the time, like, where, you know, and don’t get me into a football metaphor. My husband always cringes because he’s like, "You really don’t know football."

Kent
You don’t know what you’re talking about. He said, "You don’t know what you’re talking about."

Zoe
But it’s this issue that Kent is describing, which is that we have a public institution that I think is a bedrock to so much. It’s how we take care of all our young people. This is where 90% of kids go to school. It’s how we provision for many of their other needs besides what they’re learning. It’s the kind of cornerstone of our democracy—the fact that my kids go up the street to a place where all the other kids who live in our neighborhood, who have different backgrounds and experiences, speak different languages, came to America through different routes, and they go to school there because we built this institution that is so valuable and important.

In this moment, where our country faces a lot of challenges, if you look around the globe, you don’t see other countries thinking, "Oh, you know what we need to do right now in order to grapple with all the complexity and the challenges? Dismantle this institution." That’s not an evidence-based pathway forward for me, on multiple purposes for the public education system. And so there’s a tendency, I think, in response to this, for some of us to feel protective. "Let’s protect this institution." But that’s also insufficient because this institution has not served every learner well, particularly based on race, income, English language learner status, and many other things that we need to get better at in a very diverse America.

And the world is changing rapidly. Young people are grappling with so much more right now. They’re facing mental health challenges that we didn’t have to grapple with, you know, 10-15 years ago. They’re preparing for a world that they feel really anxious about for good reason because they’re like, "What will the jobs be?" And so this system has to transform at the same time. How do we hold the creative energy of that?

I think a lot of what Kent and I, and many others, have been thinking about is: What is the affirmative vision for our public education system that we’re building in our country, not just funders, but with all the stakeholders who have a stake in this education system really working and thriving? How do we not just feed the defensive, but really feed that affirmative vision that we all share?

And I think, you know, when we look at polling—because we look at polling a lot more these days—you know, that’s what families want. They want an affirmative, forward-looking education system that’s preparing their young people. And they’re worried we’re off track from that. So, I think we’ve got to work on that.

And then, I’ll just say, like, the other challenge is just that the stakes feel really high. I feel like I’m a school person, you know? I was trained as a teacher. I got my doctorate in education leadership. I feel like I’m always stretched into spaces now that are about our democracy, about narrative and communications, all these new realms that I’m always learning about—the legal infrastructure.

Most days it feels really exciting. It’s one of the great things about philanthropy—you can stretch beyond the institution you sit in. But some days it feels kind of overwhelming and beyond my experience and skill. And that’s where kind of learning with and leaning into all these relationships, trusting our partners, making sure we really are hearing what they think we need, and not just saying what we think should happen, are all so pivotal for how we move forward.

Katie (Host)
Yeah, oh my gosh. That was so great. I really just so appreciated that last comment about the importance of playing defense but also proactively putting out a shared vision of what you both want. And as you both were talking, I was just marveling at the amazing relationship between the two of you. And you know, in that quote, “everything moves at the pace of relationship,” and so it’s so obvious, the mutual admiration and respect that you have for each other. And so, on that note, really quickly, I'm just wondering if there's, you know, Zoe, what's one brief thing you would like to say to Kent, and then vice versa, just as a way to conclude our conversation? Well,

Zoe
I don’t think he’ll ever really retire, but you know, Kent has had this amazing career where he’s just built impact over and over. But he’s also built relationships that are transformative with so many people in our field. I feel really lucky to be one of those people, and he’s just left an incredible legacy. I’m grateful to have learned from him, but I’m just honestly grateful for the legacy that he’s left in our work and in our field. I look forward to continuing to celebrate that as he keeps evolving to whatever his next thing is. But, yeah, just huge. And then just for putting up with me, Kent is always like, he's so... I know, always that he has feedback for me, but he’s really gentle about the way that he provides it, like a good mentor. He lets me kind of fall on my sword plenty of times before... Or maybe that’s the wrong metaphor, but like, you know, learn from my mistakes. But he’s always there to help me make sense of them, and he’s taught me a lot about what good mentoring feels like.

Katie (Host)
Nice, nice. Okay, Kent, what would you like to say to Zoe?

Kent
I love Zoe. I mean, I think, you know, her energy—she’s described herself as a school teacher, but she’s really a community organizer. You know what I mean? And you know, I sort of marvel at her energy and passion, focus, and determination. Honestly, I’m working through Zoe, not just with Zoe. That’s what I want everybody who dares listen to this to hear. I’m literally working through Zoe, right? You know, because here’s what it means: at my age, and at this point, I get to go and write about it. I get to go think about it. Occasionally, I’ll show up someplace and talk about it. Zoe is doing it. And so mostly what I want Zoe to know—and actually, I love talking to people through somebody else, so this is great to be able to answer your question and tell Zoe this when you talk to her—is that I am rooting for her, and I will always be here for her as she proceeds with this important work.

Katie (Host)
Thank you, Kent. Well, I’m so, so grateful to the two of you for all of your wisdom and really for this rich conversation. So thank you very much. And yeah, I so appreciate our collective conversation.

Kent
Katie, thank you.

Zoe
Thank you.

Nancy (Host)
Can We Talk About is a podcast by Philanthropy Northwest, written and produced by Aya Tsuruta and Emily Daman, with audio engineering support from Jesse McCune at Podfly and graphic design by Asha Hossein. We'll be releasing season two episodes throughout the fall, so make sure you're following us on your favorite podcasting platform to stay up to date. A huge thank you to Katie Hong, Robin Martin, and Abby Sarmac for hosting this season, and to the Ford Foundation for making this project possible. I'm Nancy Sanabria, and we’ll see you next time.