journalist and former white house official examined the relationship between the press and the trump administration. at 4:00 p.m. eastern, congressional observers talk about the 1/16 congress and its congressness -- 116th and its effectiveness. -- at 8:45, an epidemic and substance abuse talk. and then a u.s. pro forma session. a look at the u.s. policy. in one hour, douglas harris and cato institute discuss the 2020 presidential candidates approach to education policy. then at 9:00 a.m., safe and sound schools, michelle gaye, who lost a child in the sandy hook shooting will talk about a

new survey looking at school safety issues. as always, we will take your calls and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. next. ♪ this good morning on friday, august 30. we will begin with the justice department watchdogs latest report that found former fbi director james comey violated agency policy by releasing official memos. your reaction to the report's findings in our first hour. republicans, 202-748-8001. if you are a democrat, dial in at 202-748-8000. and independents, 202-748-8002. you can also join the conversation if you go to twitter at @cspanwj and on facebook.com/cspan. we will get to your calls in a minute.

let's begin with june 2017. james comey had been fired a month earlier by president trump. he is summoned to capitol hill to testify and asked by senator susan collins about memos and releasing them. [video clip] >> did you show copies of your of theo anyone outside department of justice? >> yes. >> and to whom did you show copies? >> the president tweeted on friday after i got fired that i better hope there is not tapes. i woke up in the middle of the night monday night because it did not dawn on me, that there might be corroboration. my judgment was i needed to get that into the public square, so i asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. i asked him to because i thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel

so i asked a close friend of mine to do it. >> who was that? >> a good friend of mine who is a professor host: at columbia law school. later in the hearing, senator roy blunt follows up on the questioning of the memos. [video clip] a>> you said after you were dismissed, you gave information to a friend so that friend could get that information into the public media. >> correct. >> what kind of information was that? what kind of information did you give to the friend? >> the flynn conversation, that the president asked -- i am forgetting my own words, but the conversation in the oval office. >> you did not consider your memo or your sense of that conversation to be a government document? you considered it to be somehow your own personal document you could share with the media as you wanted to through a friend? >> correct, i understood this to be my recollection recorded of

my conversation with the president as a private citizen. thatre all of your memos you recorded on classified or other documents memos that might be yours as a private citizen? >> i am not following the question. >> i think you -- documents.classified unclassified. i gave them to the special counsel. my view was the content of the unclassified -- the moralization of those conversations was my recollection recorded. towhy didn't you give those somebody yourself rather than a third-party? >> i was worried the media was at the end of my driveway and i was going out of town with my wife. i was worried it would be like feeding seagulls at the beach. i asked my friend, make sure this gets out. host: that was the former fbi director james comey testifying on capitol hill about why he

released those memos he took after meeting with president trump. the inspector general at the justice department releasing a report found the responsibility to protect sensitive law enforcement response -- information falls to the fbi. former director calmly failed to live up to this responsibility -- comey failed to live up to by using itibility to create public pressure for official action. the over 45,000 current fbi employees and the thousands more who similarly have access to or access of public information -- nonpublic information. in a country built on the rule of law, it is of utmost importance that all fbi employees adhere to department and fbi policy, particularly those when confronted by what appeared to be extraordinary

circumstances or compelling conviction. comey had other several lawful him.ns before what was not permitted was the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive, investigative information obtained airing the course of fbi employment in order to achieve a personally desired outcome. that is from the office of the inspector general at the justice department. in joining us on the phone is morgan, the white house reporter with the hill newspaper. inspectorhow this general investigation began and why. comey, we listened to a clip a couple minutes ago, testified before the senate intelligence committee back in june 2017 about his interactions with trump.

that was public testimony and he disclosed he had given the contents of a memo to one of his friends to share with a reporter to get the contents of that conversation he had with the president about michael flynn february 2017 into the public sphere. that was the first time the fbi found out comey had shared his memos with people outside the bureau. he then recommended the inspector general open an investigation to see weather he shared classified information with people outside the bureau and get to the bottom of what actually happened. that triggered the inspector general's investigation and we finally have the conclusion to that. host: we heard the former fbi director talk about giving this memo to a friend. we find out it is daniel richmond. who is daniel richmond? guest: daniel richmond is a

columbia university law professor that comey knows and --he explained, gave this contents of this memo to the new york times, which was published may 2017 in an article on the 11th shortly after comey was ousted. host: what could be the consequences for the forming -- former fbi director from this inspector general report? >> i talked to a couple legal experts about this yesterday and there really aren't any. the big consequence could have been the justice department deciding to prosecute him for some sort of violation of the law and attorney general barr decided not to do that. i spoke to a couple people and they said that was the big question weather or not they sawd press charges and we that and i spoke to one person

that said he wasn't very surprised by this. i think from his perspective, people in the government often skirt policies with regards to keeping memos like this so it could spur more cases and it signals the justice department didn't really think they had a case against comey probably partly because this didn't involve largely classified information. there was one memo he gave to his attorneys that he did not alert the fbi after finding out a couple words were classified, but largely, the memos were found to be for official use only and not containing wide swaths of classified material. yout: -- host: that is why think the justice department declined to prosecute? guest: it is unclear. barr hasn't said information publicly about why he declined to prosecute, but that is what i have been told by people that work on national security cases,

that they probably would not have had a case and it is a difficult case to prosecute, as well. doj: what else is the inspector general looking into? guest: he is looking into weather the fbi agent followed proper protocol and procedures in applying for the surveillance warrant to wiretap carter page who you will remember is the former foreign policy aid to the trump campaign. he has been working on that for over a year and the report is expected to be imminent. we will probably see something about that soon and remember barr ordered a separate view of weather or not the intelligence community followed proper procedure in their intelligence collection on the trump campaign. that is different and being run by the u.s. attorney out of justcticut and that has

started, so i am not sure when we will see information from that, so president trump has given barr new authority in it. with white house reporter the hill, thank you for your time. your calls, your reaction to the ig's report on the former fbi director. john, you are up first. what do you think? comey -- whynk mr. he didn't put all his information out in the public unless he was trying to cover for himself. dragging onas been for ever and the inspector general, if he is not going to do his job, why is he overseeing it? doing anything't

but covering up stuff. blocking information, the truth to come out. the: john in georgia and former fbi director responded on twitter yesterday to the release of this report saying doj ig found no evidence quoting that comey or his attorneys released any classified information contained in any of the memos to member -- ambers of the media and he says, i don't need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a sorry we lied about you would be nice and to all those who spent two years talking about me going to jail or being a liar and a leaguer, ask yourself why you still trust people who gave you bad info for so long, including the president. from the inspector general's report he writes we found no evidence that comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained

in any of the memos to members of the media. your thoughts this morning on findingsreport and his against the former fbi director. republicans, 202-748-8001. democrats, 202-748-8000. and independents, 202-748-8002. we will go to perry in bellflower, california, republican. caller: good morning, greta. host: good morning. caller: i was not surprised by horwitz's determination because i remember during fast and furious when he was sitting by and eric holder was saying the same thing and when he came to testify, it was this cover-up. a blind man in a dark room could see what was going on with fast and furious and it is kind of the same thing, we are covering up for the swamp.

the obama administration was state done owners -- gun store owners. it turns out they were honest people who called the atf and the atf said just go ahead and let this happen. if it wasn't for a handful of whistleblowers, it would have worked. iss determination by horwitz no surprise to me at all. host: you are referring to michael horowitz, the inspector general. caller: correct. host: do you think mr. comey should have been prosecuted? caller: absolutely. when you played that short tape where you said he wanted that stuff leaked and when we look at the end game, they were

obviously trying to get trump out of the presidency. it is very clear that it was a rigged game for the inside people at the department of justice and the fbi. he wasn't their cup of tea and they were after him. host: you don't believe he had concerns and that these were honest concerns of the way the president was conducting himself, asking for loyalty and asking him to let the flynn matter go? you don't think he had honest concerns about that and/or before he takes the oath of office, looking at the dossier and following up on that? do you think the fbi should not have done that? caller: they should have investigated it, but if they

could see and we could all see that dossier was very flawed, i don't see how it ever got this far. mueller really looked kind of bad when they did this. strange, all the effort that has been going forward and all the stuff keeps falling by the wayside so they keep moving the goal post to try to get this president. thoughts ins california. do you agree or disagree? robert. caller: hello. host: good morning to you. your thoughts on the ig report. caller: comey cost hillary .linton the election host: we are listening, he

caused her the election? robert, good morning, go ahead. caller: yeah. i said comey cost hillary clinton the election. host: you have got to turn that tv down. turn the tv down, talk and listen through the phone. comey cost hillary clinton the election. caller: yeah, by announcing he was going to reopen the election 10 days before the election, he did more to hurt her then trump. then he gets in and finds out trump is a -- i don't think he ought to have been prosecuted. you don't? caller: no. host: william in ohio, what do

you think? caller: i think it is a shame we comeyough this because would not cover-up for trump. i think it is a shame the country has to go through this. st, racist, idiotic, , more on. bigot who you have moscow mitch is so stupid. host: let's stick to the ig report and not name-calling. what do you think? caller: i think comey did a good job himself, he would not cover-up for trump, grant people all the pardons and this stuff, he is just a crook. the response, reaction

from republican lawmakers on capitol hill. doug collins, the top republican of the house judiciary committee tweeting i am grateful to inspector general horwitz for his thorough and professional work. comey was dishonest about how he handled classified material and cements the need for us to get to the root of how the russia investigation began. jim jordan tweeting out now we know why comey did not want to prosecute clinton, he did not see a problem is handling sensitive information. after clearing her, he did it, too. the topgraham, republican on the senate judiciary committee, the inspector general's report is a stunning and unprecedented rebuke of a former director of the fbi. your thoughts this morning.

greg, do you agree with those republican congressman? caller: yeah. turns overeneral, he information he uncovers, but he doesn't really prosecute. comey's prosecution is coming later because he has done a lot more than this. host: what are you referring to? caller: the leaking not to the media, but his buddy, that is illegal. authorizedat he reportseports -- fisa as legitimate and he knew they weren't. mccabe did the same thing with two or three of them. they backed all this up and they knew it was not right. how can people do this in this

day in age with electronic coverage everywhere, you think you are not going to get found out? hiding behindtill it, that blows my mind. it.: he testified behind he admitted to it in public testimony under oath. caller: yeah, right. he doesn't care about testimony under oath. they don't honor no subpoenas. they don't honor congress, they don't tell the truth, they have been doing it for years and getting away with it. senator was asked by susan collins about releasing, leaking memos to his friend. this is what the ig, the inspector general said about that. comey told the office of inspector general he did not tell senator collins about sharing four of the memos with his three attorneys, this is

beyond his friend because comey was "trying to answer the question he was asked and not reveal confidential communications with my lawyers." comey told the oig he referred to richmond as his friend rather than his attorney in the senate select committee testimony because comey did not consider what he asked richmond to do privileged. from the office of inspector general report on that testimony. did you give these memos to anyone? he says yes, a friend, but he does not say he gave memos to his attorneys as well. you can find this report if you go to c-span.org. joseph in virginia, independent. caller: thank you.

i am a retired naval officer and i know if i had a meeting with a senior person and had released to that information to a third party or the public, i would have been crucified. i would have been fired. same thing happens with a career civil servant. if they had revealed a conversation, they would have been disciplined, possibly fired. i think the oig report is correct saying this is not acceptable behavior for someone to reveal information that they should not have done so. host: comey's actions violated department or fbi policy or the terms of comey's fbi employment agreement. we conclude comey's attention, handling, and dissemination of memos violated policy and the employment agreement. this is the relevant statute and policies.

the statutory definition of federal records is broad and includes all recorded information regardless of form or characteristics made or received by a federal agency under federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business or -- and preserved or appropriate for preservation by the evident -- agency as evidence of the organization, function, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the united states government or because of the informational value of data in them. this definition includes any act of creating and recording information by agency personnel in the course of their official duties, regardless of the methods or the medium involved. working files such as preliminary drafts or notes may qualify if they were circulated or made available to other employees for official purposes and contain unique information

that assists in the understanding of an agency's policy, decisions, or actions. the former director tells the oig after meeting with the president, he made -- wrote these memos quickly after and shared them with fbi personnel. the oig when he was at dinner with president trump, as an fbired himself employee and also a human being and that is why he said they were his personal -- these memos were his personal property. virginia, you are next in the conversation, good morning. go tot did joseph, let me loretto. you are next. caller: good morning, greta. how are you? begin. know where to people need to be thinking about

what they are cosigning on calling in saying comey was wrong. if they see anything out of line, illegal, or crime their job and here comes the boss and they want everybody to know and they turn around and fire everybody instead of trying to figure out what the crime was and what saidlly happened, the ig nothing at all about the actions of the president. justice, thating was the reason for the memo and memos belong to people. that is your personal work product. he did not even have to write a memo. . just because you work for a

company and you take your own notes, they do not belong to the company. people need to think about that before they start calling in talking about how wrong comey was and not looking at what the president was doing. thank you. arizona, republican. what do you think? caller: good morning. welcome to c-span. thank you for c-span. here is a scenario. way timeline goes back before the election and -- host: we are listening, way before the election. caller: i did not know if you were hearing me. justice under the law. he and loretta lynch on the tarmac with bill clinton, when

you go back to that and even before that, they were setting up that hillary would always get off. they were already playing the of all the justice for hillary clinton and they were rigging the election. this whole thing was a rigged down.rom barack obama on he had to do this kind of investigation, spying against foreign enemies. it had to be approved by barack obama. this goes way back. where is the equal justice for trump? there was not any. theye trump towers, literally set him up to try to catch him in anything they could find that they could hang him

with. host: explain a little bit more what you are talking about for viewers who might not have read that part of the report or know what you are talking about. to trumpomey came over wasrs before trump andgurated and sat with him told him, we are not investigating you when they already had the investigation full-blown going forward. the investigation is where? it is across the world. they have australia, they have people in england and other countries going after certain people on the trump campaign, and all papadopoulos the rest of the guys. think about all the people had

to spend billions of dollars defending themselves on a lie. hillary bought and paid for the lie. that is how they perpetrated it to set him up to do the crew -- coup and they want to take out trump anyway they possibly could from brennan, klapper, they released every possible nsa scenario going forward to stop trump in any way possible. it was a complete set up. inller already knew going when he started the investigation, exactly what was going on, which everybody knew it was a lie. fisayou go sign off on the court and it says you cannot

withhold information on what you -- it is a complete set up. what youon york echoes are talking about, an opinion piece in the washington examiner. a new report shows comey -- aovides new details on january 2017 plan by then fbi james comey to spring a scandal on president-elect trump, use a prearranged video conference to discuss the information and fit it into the ongoing, but unknown crossfire hurricane investigation. the allegation came from the steele dossier about trump in russia compiled by the former british spy. the story was in a moscow hotel

room, trump watched as a prop to perform a kinky sex act. comey and other officials -- credibly -- opinionbyron york's piece in the washington examiner if you want to read more. let's go to john in colorado, independent. what do you think? caller: i have noticed a trend with fbi personnel. host: you are breaking up, john. fbi personnel are able to deem -- caller: what is personal under notes. comey found it interesting to take notes at this dinner with trump, but not with hillary clinton in her interview with their investigation of her. host: okay. what are you driving at? fbier: i am driving at the

seems to have a little bit too much freedom with their decision-making in what is personal and what is government property. host: from the oig report, you might find this part interesting. hisay 14th 2017, comey used personal scanner and email account to provide memos -- copies of the memos to his personal attorneys. three days later, that attorney provided copies of the four memos to other attorneys who were part of the legal team. of the memos shared, memo 2 contains 6 words the fbi classified atbe the confidential level. they contain information the fbi determined to be official use only, but did not contain classified information. memo 7 was redacted before

transmission, which obscured the -- information determined to be classified. comey did not seek authorization before providing the memos to his attorneys. miles in paterson, new jersey, good morning. to you,good morning too. i think comey did the right thing. when is it against the law to tell somebody i want you to start an investigation. i am a cop, you are going to tell me to stop an investigation? that will make me curious. if he didn't put this down, it would be his word against the president and because he did what he did, you would never know this stuff coming out now. all the people involved with trump are going to jail, but republicans don't see that. when barr turned around and said

the president wasn't guilty for probablythat, he was celebrating. now he is saying comey did not do anything wrong, all of a sudden, there is something going on. this president is doing things that are way out of control and we would have never gotten a handle on that if it wasn't for what comey did. toi am a cop and you tell me stop an investigation, i am going to get proof that you are trying to put me into a situation i have to do what you say. the man got fired, so he kept his property. that doesn't belong to him. ex-cop, so he let the public know. if he would have given that information to donald trump, you would have never say -- never seen that document. host: harry litman, a former

u.s. attorney and opinion writer for the washington post writes this, but because the context as extraordinary, when president summons the fbi director to demand loyalty and urges the director to drop a criminal investigation against an ally, we are not in the normal territory of fbi rules and procedures. he writes in that setting, memorializeinct to the conversations and written memorandums were spot on. the inspector general argues the scene was not the creation of the memos, but the handling of them. hisy could have served purpose by leaving the memos at the fbi, but making public statements about the belief they should lead to the appointment of a special counsel. comey stayed on the straight and narrow path as insisted,

there is a real possibility the public would still not have seen the memos and from the standpoint of american democracy, the prospect of keeping the memos hidden from public view must be taken as intolerable, particularly as the president was characterizing the account of private conversations .s a lie from the beginning that is harry litman's opinion in the washington post justifying the release of those memos. do you agree or disagree? your turn, robert, go ahead. caller: good morning. comey wasasions mr. asked by two different senators, did you ever leak any memos or documents to the media? he was no, never to read asked again, did you ever order anyone to leak any memos he said

of never, that is two counts perjury right there. askedt to the fisa court, for a warrant based on false information, the dossier, which -- herom hillary clinton signed that warrant saying under the penalty of perjury, i affirm all the information given to be factual. another count of perjury. we could go on for days. fisa warrants were signed under false pretenses, that is perjury. host: the inspector general is looking into those as well. this is june 2017, the former fbi director has been fired a month earlier he -- called to testify before the senate intelligence committee and asked by senator susan collins did he release any memos. [video clip] >> did you show copies of your

memos to anyone outside of the department of justice? >> yes. >> to whom did you show copies? >> the president tweeted on friday after i got fired that i better hope there is not tapes. i woke up in the middle of the night monday night because it did not dawn on me, there might be corroboration, there might be a tape and my judgment was i needed to get that into the public square. i asked a friend to share the content of the memo. i asked him to because i thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. i asked a close friend to do it. >> who was that? >> though good friend of mine who is a professor at columbia law school. host: he is asked by susan collins if he released the memos and to whom. this is what the former fbi

director tells the inspector general, comey told oig he did not tell senator collins about sharing memos with his attorneys because he was trying to answer the question he was asked and not reveal confidential communications with my lawyers. as hisrred to richman friend rather than his attorney because comey "did not consider what he asked him to do privileged and did not intend to assert privilege about the direction to richmond. later in the hearing, senator roy blunt follows up on the memos. [video clip] >> you said after you were dismissed, you gave information to a friend so that friend could get information into the public media. what kind of information was that? what kind of information did you give to the friend? >> left lynn conversation -- v conversationflynn

in the oval office. >> you didn't consider your memos to be a government document, you considered it to be somehow your own personal document you could share with the media as you wanted to through a friend? >> correct. i understood this to be my recollection recorded as my conversation with the president. ita private citizen, i felt was important to get that out. youre all your memos recorded memos that might be yours as a private citizen? >> i am not following the question. >> i think you said you used classified -- >> not the classified documents. unclassified. i don't have any of them anymore, i gave them to the special counsel. the memorialization of those conversations was my recollection recorded. >> why didn't you give those to somebody yourself rather than through a third party? >> i was worried the media was

camping at the end of my driveway and i was going out of and iith my wife to hide was worried it would be like feeding seagulls at the beach if i gave it out. in 2017omey's testimony about releasing those memos to a friend. the wall street journal editorial boat -- board rights he also deceived the fbi he claimed to review. his top staff didn't by the personalmemos were property and not the federal government. and fbi agent came to his home to retrieve fbi property. mr. comey did not tell him he had copies of 4 of the memos in his personal safe. three agents and the deputy director and chief of staff came to the house to retrieve government material and he failed to tell them about the memos in his safe, nor did he tell anyone he memos copies of

you -- memos to his personal attorneys. good morning. thank you for taking my call. there were two signs of renewals that happened in the same exact month and year that comey met with the president. one of the meetings or i guess you could say two of the meetings happened in january in7 and there was a renewal january 2017 on the fisa and another meeting in april 2017 of 2017.ewal in april we don't know the dates because the dates are, of course, redacted for whatever nefarious reason that maybe they don't want people to know what date it was because it may look bad for

the fbi or doj. the last thing i want to say is, i hear a lot of folks saying what should comey have done? he was feeling queasy, he wasn't feeling right about what trump was asking him for, loyalty. what i would say to the people who hate trump or wanted hillary to win the election is that what would happen if you were in that position and someone was going after you trying to set you up or frame you with a crime? what we have watched for the last two or three years was an that wascam perpetuated on a president of the united states out in the open, out in the public sphere and yet no one seems to have a

problem with it, especially when it comes to the liberal media. i think when the dust settles, i hope people will be able to understand that this isn't just about weather or not you can't stand trump or you are anti-trump or can never vote for him, you need to look at this and the point of view, what if this happens to your son? what if this happens to your daughter? what if they get in a situation such as any of the people who have been tied into this mess all because this man felt queasy because he felt he needed to do something about false information and things that he felt he should be looking into when he knew good and well the information was false. that is all i have to say. host: the president yesterday reacting to the ig's report on twitter, perhaps never in the

history of our country has someone been more disgraced then james comey. himself. be ashamed of the white house put out this statement from the press secretary, james comey is a proven liar and leaker. --lated the most basic in order to achieve a personally desired outcome. comey shamefully leaked information to the press and blatant violation of fbi policies, the nation was forced to endure the baseless, politically motivated two year witchhunt. this report further confirms that fact. stephen in michigan, what do you think? think james comey is an honorable, respected

republican i trust. he is not my party, but i trust him. i don't trust that lying president. i can't even call him president. trump.him donna anyone who has 5 deferments from the military should be called a woman's name. host: cj in louisiana, good morning. caller: good morning. ais started as counterintelligence situation -- investigation and the president of the united states is the only person that can authorize this to be done. i want barack hussein obama before congress to testify. i want him before the senate, not the house because we know

what democrats will do there. we want the senate to and mr.ate esther biden obama and like the caller before me, i can't call him president because what was done to mr. was a conspiracy by a bunch of leftist bolsheviks that need to be stopped at any cost. host: cj in louisiana. susan, west virginia, republican . good morning, your turn. caller: i was just calling because i don't think american see the whole problem when it started was -- with the trump campaign. look how many is in jail. gates andort and flynn hasn't even been tried

yet. the whole thing was russia interfered in america's elections and they are still doing it. it is fox news. they watch fox news constantly and they lied to them. they lied about james comey and they are lying to americans because they are trying to cover trump. james comey was investigating trump campaign pretty stopped him -- that is obstruction of justice. that is the whole purpose of what he did, to see if he obstructed justice. this is what he is trying to do, stop the investigation and russia is interfering in our elections and no one is stopping it because republicans think it helped them win and they don't care. if you are democrat or independent, you are not upset about that because it should not matter if you are republican, democrat, or inter-.

-- or independent. we want free elections. thank you. host: democratic caller in detroit. caller: i don't understand why people think comey was wrong when he had no one to go to. could not get information to the general, hettorney told a lie about the truth, what the government was doing wrong in office. donald trump has lied over 10,000 times plus and they are trying to keep the american people -- this is our government, not donald trump and the republican party, this is the american people's government. democratic, independent, republican. what is wrong with him coming out with the truth about trump

and this administration doing wrong? trump won't go before congress and the senate and tell the american people what is going on, if he is telling the truth? host: i want to follow up on what you were saying. there was a piece online with the same argument. it is hard to imagine the alternative the report suggests, contacting congress or independent offices within the justice department would have had anything near the galvanizing effect achieved by comey's decision to publicize --weather comey's decision to blow the whistle on trump was good. justice department inspector general michael horowitz is not tasked with making those calls, but americans believe comey made the call. comey did what he did because

the president was trying to actively dismantle the normal way of operating. .his is from matthew miller he tweeted the attorney general and deputy attorney general were both complicit, so comey had nowhere else to take concerns, it must be nice to live in the context free world inhabited by the ig. .omey acted as a whistleblower like other intelligence -- comey employees seems to have felt he had to .reak rules we are getting your thoughts on that. agree or disagree. richard in alabama, republican caller. caller: i appreciate you taking the call.

i am a disabled veteran. i served 8 years in the military. military, in the went to discuss something in a meeting with one of my superiors . there are certain things you don't do. loyalty is a given. when you serve in an office under somebody's administration loyalty iscapacity, something you are supposed to give. if you cannot give it, get out. york,joe, hudson, new independent. what do you have to say this morning? caller: i want to correct some of the misinformation those folks were giving to the american public. if you read the mueller report, and i can tell they didn't, you will see the investigation

started not because of a fisa warrant, but because of a guy with papadopoulos speaking diplomats in great britain and mentioned the trump campaign had been contacted by the russians and had dirt on hillary clinton. you readtigation -- if it instead of reading this doctored report, this biased report being put out by the inspector general who was appointed to do this, if you read the mueller report, you definitely took part in a scam to try to undermine our election on behalf of of trump. trump people were notified about it, they met with russians, stone and with them, manafort refused to give the

information to the investigators, to mueller's team and that is why they are in jail right now, both of them and both of them have lots of cases against them because they obstructed justice. there are 10 clear accounts of obstruction of justice written into that report that trump committed. people who think he did not commit obstruction of justice and the reason he got off the russia thing is because he did not do anything. mueller clearly states the reason he could not indict trump was because of a doj ruling and that trump clearly committed obstruction of justice and that his team knew about russians trying to interfere in our election and did not report it to the fbi until it was out in the public. until the investigation, none of them even admitted they knew about it. the republicans in the trump campaign were undermining

american democracy in hand with the russians and the only reason all of them are not in jail is because manafort and stone refused to talk or in trump's words, did not turn into rats. read the mueller report because document.e important led -- read have that report and said this guy should be indicted for obstruction of justice and he should. people should value democracy instead of political parties and these people from arizona and alabama are living in another world altogether. host: joe's thoughts in new york. if you want to read the office of the inspector general's report, you can find it on our website, c-span.org. 61 pages.

carol in missouri, democratic caller. caller: i was wondering if you could have a show on exactly what was presented to the fisa court. it wasn't just the dossier. that was just part of it and trump never denied he said that to comey about don't check into the general. i don't understand where everybody is coming from and did you ever have a show on just what was presented to the fisa court? host: i don't recall and it is a good suggestion. to the office of the inspector general at the justice department has a separate investigation into those fisa warrants and how they began. perhaps we will learn more when that release -- report is released. ivan in texas, republican caller. caller: howdy, howdy. host: good morning. caller: i don't know where we

find all these democrats that call and say donald trump did this, did that. we already know the fbi was crooked trying to get donald trump impeached before he was president. why would they even let of the -- any of those people stay in office? againste it was a coup donald trump after he became president. in other countries, they would execute those people. i believe donald trump needs to stand up and do some of these things himself. host: turning up next, we will turn our attention to campaign 2020. this week, we have been focusing on issues important to the campaign. we will look at education today with doug look -- douglas harris and neal mccluskey. and later, a woman who lost her child during the sandy hook

shooting is working to make schools safer. we will be talking with shall gay,founder of -- michele founder of safe and sound schools. we will be right back. ♪ americanslate 1850's, generally trusted their congressmen, but they did not trust congress as an institution, nor did congressmen trust each other. routinelyessmen were

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journal" mugs and see all of the c-span products. >> "washington journal" continues. talk aboutto education and campaign 2020, douglas harris, who is economic chair at tulane university, also brookingst institution with a focus on education, thank you for being here. here from catois institute as well. thank you. how much information they are giving to education, do you think it is enough? guest 1: probably more than have ever been given to education, especially primary education. is it enough? that will be coming up in nearly all of the debates. it is a question about what they are talking about and why they are talking about it.

why is it bubbling up to the federal level at this point? i think there are a few reasons for that. one is that education has always been an important issue, but now the state is being squeezed. we see cuts and higher education. the broader problem that the democrats are focused on right and inequality by rights income, gender opportunities for women, all of these are connected to education, the central solution to those kinds of problems. i think all of those are combining, becoming more important, not just national but federal issue in this case. host: mr. mccluskey? guest 2: certainly it is a little different. for a little different. free college, student debt, things like that. you can go on the website, certainly, there is a lot on education. at least watching the first two double ground debates. i did not feel like k-12 got as

much attention as i thought it would. it is certainly the case that states, some are still recovering on education since the recession. k-12, certainly higher red gets it. host: let's talk a little bit about k-12. from whats out to me you are hand -- hearing these candidates on the proposals for k-12? guest 1: a lot of it is increasing funding across the candidates,veral what a here is the main source of federal funding for k-12 education. there are plans about whether we will increase teacher salaries, which means more funding, and a few have talked about welcome of

the federal government will give states money so statement up spending more -- states end up spending more. is a discussion about equity and spending more, but i think what we are seeing, certainly for 10 years now since the recession, we have seen sort of stagnant funding. it has gone down a come back up, but what we after record levels of spending before the recession. that and teacher salaries have definitely been stagnant, and that is driving a lot of it that we have seen. enough is enough. we want to get more funding and paid more. host: are those coming, those proposals? guest: a lot of them are aspirational in what you see in the -- say in the campaign. realistichink it is that you will triple, for instance, title i funding. i think some of the rhetoric is a little bit over-the-top in

saying, well, we have never spent enough. we always underfund our schools like this. we spent more than almost any other country on k-12. we have a lot of spending increases, really for decades, prior to the great recession. but it is also true that teachers' salaries have pretty much stagnated for a decade. so i think they are onto something, but there is a tendency to exaggerate, i think. host: you disagree? guest: yeah, i disagree on the funding side. how much you are's ending as a spending as a potential of gdp. about the world average, 73 countries spen more than we do in terms of educationd spending, the percentage of gdp. that continues to grow. if you look at the lost spending adjusted for inflation, not really record levels, but the spending is really lower than it

has been a non-recessionary periods. if you see other periods where it is the slow, we are in a recession. thet of that is coming off great recession. i want to invite our viewers to join in on this conversation. what is education like where you live, and what changes would you like to see, and what are you hearing from the candidates yourself that you like or dislike? republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. let's take teacher pay. nationaluly, the educators association, representative bernie sanders, discussed his land on improving teacher pay. [video clip] goes without it saying that we are going to have teachers who receive the respect and the remuneration that they deserve for doing some of the

most important work in america. [applause] and it means that when we talk about teachers in the proposal, let proposal,mprehensive every teacher in america should year.t least $60,000 a applause] sanders: and also, another proposal we brought forth, which impacts 45 million americans, is thatg many teachers, it is absurd to have so many of our people struggling with oppressive levels of student debt. we have got to cancel student debt in america. [cheers & applause] host: doug harris, let's take

teacher pay. each teacher, $60,000. guest: well, he is on the right track here, teacher pay is low, it is at its lowest level in 40 years. there is really a gap that is speeding into what neal said earlier about strikes and the concerns that teachers have themselves. they debate the specific approach he has taken, too. host: neal? guest: i think it is important when we talk about anything the federal government does come of the constitution does not give the federal government the authority to do these things. obviously there is some disagreement about this, but one of the reasons we do not see the federal government take this over is a lot of people do not think they should. but, given that, it is certainly true, if you look at the numbers, adjusted for inflation, that the average salary has been about $60,000 for several decades now. so there is no question there has been a of stagnation and teacher salary. can the federal government

-- well, how would it work for paying teachers more? explain. guest: it is not always that easy to tell, and sometimes the plans are not all that well fleshed out, so i think that probably the approach that would popular is the idea that the federal government would offer a certain amount of money -- i do not know what it billion -- say it is $1 per state, and it would usually be adjusted based on the demographics of the state, how many students, but basically per state -- and then the offer is we will give you the money if you increase your spending. one, it is difficult to massively increase spending. and then there is a pretty big and it doesal debt, not usually did her federal government from doing things, but we do need to keep in mind -- where does the federal government get the money for these things? host: ok. guest: the state and local

governments are strapped. they cannot do it right now. they cannot borrow the way the federal government can't. as a national issue, if the federal government does not set then, we will see more sliding, that will be bad for us in the long-term. host: elizabeth warren also at the national educators association. she talked about how the wealth tax that she has proposed will help pay for education initiatives. [video clip] here is what we can do with two cents. we can provide universal childcare for every baby and child in this country, age zero to five. universal pre-k for every three-year-old and four-year-old in this country. [cheers & applause] raise the wages of every preschool teacher and every childcare worker to the professional levels they deserve.

invest in our infrastructure, so we have good, clean schools, state-of-the-art for all of our kids. [cheers & applause] sen. warren: universal, tuition-free, technical schools, -yearnity college, and four college for everybody who wants to get an education. [cheers & applause] warren: and there is more. we can same two cents, make all of these investments, plus we can cancel student loan debt for 95% of the people who have's student loan debt. mr. mccluskey? guest: yes, this sounds like promising everything you can think of. we will pay with everything -- pay for everything with one big tax.

do, people will find out ways not to pay it. that may mean companies and wealth taking it somewhere else. and the increases we have in the inflation forn adjustment, people basis, and they were pretty constant until about the great recession. it is only after the great k-12sion we saw, at the level, it is different at the higher education level, but we have actually seen bigger increases in what is spent in iraq. the problem -- in higher ed. the problem does not seem to be a lack of money, certainly not across the system. there is too much of a tennessee to say "oh, we will spend, and that will fix it." guest: you do not want the fixral government to everything. we do not want to be too directive from washington, but resources of this is something that the federal government is best at.

they can come up with revenues and support initiatives in the national interest. a lot of these proposals, certainly doing all of them would be difficult and probably not the best record, not the right track in terms of a lot of these things, and they are very popular ideas. republicans support a lot of these ideas, if you look at the support for polls, pre-k and free college, a liar good ideas. there's a good chance we are in a shift. host: let's hear from our viewers, if they agree with the proposal being put out there. host let's go southern tallahassee, florida, a democrat. . caller: thank you very much to c-span. this is a good topic, the intersection of education and politics. and benjamin franklin had a quote of "tell me, and i will forget. teach me, and i will remember. involve me, and i will learn."

this is not a conversation about some radical change but rather a whether orn about not we as a nation are going to have some common sense and repair the damage of a lack of investment that we have for our country's value, which is to give our people a civic/social understanding and education. here inright now florida, at the epicenter of this discussion. we have a playing field of republican rule. in and started this conversation that we are going to take our public tax dollars, property taxes. could the gentleman please answer the question about property taxes primarily find the bulk of local school boards to our constitutionally elected

school boards? but here in florida, what they have done is taken the autonomy of locally elected school board's budget, from our local property taxes, that go to our local elected clerks and tax collectors -- this has nothing to do with the state -- i mean, the federal government, my understanding, is that they are now utilizing here in florida -- and this started with jeb bush some the koch brothers, the cato institute, betsy devos, the murphy family, the waltons, started this conversation that is a political conversation, actually. education is not about politics. education is about a social/civic,, and value society. we are in a global society. in a global society, we have now china and india providing their

valueen with the common respect. the equity and parity issue in our country regarding funding is s sincet has plagued u the beginning, because we are not a homogeneous nation, like china, we are a diverse nation. us get a response. neal mccluskey. you go first. guest: sure. if we have the federal government in charge of the education, we cannot remove it, because politics is how we operate. that is how we decide who is in charge. i certainly think it is a problem, if the state level, state or local governments, this is how you really will not use your money. certainly it happens all the time. constitutions, look, the state is in charge, and we will decide what the local governments do.

it is important that communities, it is important that they have autonomy to do what they do, but this is a lot of the reasons that places like cato is mentioned for school choice, we think families know their kids best, they have different values, different things they want, and we want a liberty,ere there is where people who want something different can get it for their kids, although absolutely understand people who say look, we need to balance that with cohesion in the community, so there is a lot going on in that call, a very important topic of a but i do think it is impossible to remove politics from education if government is in charge of it. guest: i think with the caller is talking about if equity, and one of the reasons why the state governments get involved is to utilize funding across districts, when you have wealthy dusters and poor districts. if you do not get the money to

the poor districts, you will have a lack of access as well as economic benefits that do not areas.hose poor also, the main role of the federal government in some cases, supporting equity. host: let's listen to education secretary betsy devos talking about the administration's approach to school choice. [video clip] devos: the administration is developing the establishment of a federal tax credit, and annual fund, that would be opted into by state, so not a mandate, it does not departmentw federal or program or new bureaucracy to administer, it simply is a vehicle or a mechanism for individuals to redirect a portion of their federal tax to aannually scholarship-granting organization that would then scholarship out to students to make choices in their home state

that is going to suit their needs and their purposes. ofdoes face a lot opposition, because the status quo to protect what is at the expense of what could be. host: doug, the outcome of that? guest: there are two issues here. one, when the federal government steps in with a new initiative, it is because a state has wide tried it, and the evidence is not yet supported. a lot of the students use these vouchers to go to private schools. it has actually been negative. students do worse than they would have done otherwise. likenly place where looks some success is florida, where we have the most positive evidence. given the track record of those

when she was nominated for secretary, she had a lot of ideas that were not known for improving quality. supporting that is a problem. guest: well, there is a track record supporting it. some of the newer programs have had some problems, especially if you say that test scores in the short term is what we care most about, and we have been saying that across education for a long time. showing, education is the long-term outcomes we are looking for -- college going, earnings to make whether you are school choice programs, private school programs actually appear to have good and specifically significant good outcomes in those areas. none of these show there was an overwhelmingly big test score effect, but to say they do not seem to be working out of not think is quite accurate. this is sort of a

unique proposal, because what they are saying is if you are a state that already has a tax credit program, then you will get a federal tax credit, although the intention from what i have heard is is that will push states that do not have programs to do it. it probably does not have any support in the house, and actually cato and some other groups who do not think the federal government who should be involved in these things have come against it, and that includes me. host: we will go to lawrence in st. paul, minnesota. caller: good morning. thank you for the opportunity. i will hang up and look forward to your responses. rather than talking about funding, i want to talk about costs, from the perspective of someone who has worked these issues for decades now. we have a problem with an increase in single-parent child associatedthe costs

with taking care of kids in the schools is really taking away from parents who are doing the right thing. we do not talk about that, but if you look at the numbers, particularly in areas that are not doing well, poverty and single-parent homes, single-parent children have a direct correlation. we have got to get our arms around -- how are we going to it isrents involved and the parents and community responsibility, so that others do not pay the price? thanks for the opportunity. host: doug harris. guest: i do not think there is any question that parents are important. poverty is a key driver. i think there is a larger social inue in trying to put kids a better situation, families and a better economic situation, that they have better opportunities, but part of that is education. opportunities for early childhood education would make it easier for a person in that position to provide for their children.

that is one of the big drivers behind the federal push right now for increased funding, that they do not have those opportunities. the early years are really important years, and if you do not get the resources to students at that age, then it can become too late. h, there is a limit to what resources do, but there are a lot of things that we sort of blame schools for a long time. the out-of-control schools, this is one of the reasons it is good, we had no child left behind for a long time, a federal law that provided some -- require some pretty blunt labeling of schools, essentially failing, but we did not use that term, though a lot of people did. we have these schools labeled as failing when often it was the schools, and i do think we need to come in education, say schools cannot fix everything.

there are a lot of things happening before school and outside of school that we need to deal with, but it may not be an education priority. host: our caller in georgia on the line for republicans. caller: yes, ma'am. i used to work at the school system, and i have no grandkids, but yet i have to pay school taxes. free health care and free schooling, free tuition, that is just another way of the government trying to control us. like elizabeth warren, she got fraud, and in think she should have to pay that money back. and one more thing, my sister ,hat works at the school system i have nothing against spanish or anybody else, but they sit there, and they know good and well that their parents are illegal aliens. she tells her boss, and he says,

"oh, don't say anything. it might make somebody mad." so we are not executing the laws that exist in this country. host: ok, peter, neal mccluskey, on immigration, having students in the classroom as parents are not legal. guest: yeah what it sounds to me like is the caller is concerned about, yes, immigrants, and paying for kids who maybe not here legally, but it sounded like a much bigger issue of should the people who are benefiting from the education primarily be the ones who pay? about collegeked at the k-12 level, and that is a very important point here we can use money that is our own or that we get from other people voluntarily give them a more efficiently than we use other people's money, especially if we do not know where it comes from. when we all pay into a pool, it is hard to know exactly where is that money going? how is it being used?

if you ever try to pick apart a school district's budget, that is a very difficult thing to do. so i think the more we move consuming people education, especially at the but even at the k-12 level, we will have more transparency and more schools responding to the people they are supposed to serve. host: doug harris, a good idea? guest: no. education is a public good. everyone benefits from education. there is not much disagreement about that. milton friedman, the godfather of cato-like thinking also supported federal -- not federal, but government funding for education. one person who gets educated benefits everybody, and that is the whole logic behind why the government is involved to begin with. guest: can i just say that milton friedman changed over time. you talk about neighborhood affect, my neighbor gets educated, and is less likely to commit crimes.

over time, he changed his views that he did not think the neighborhood argument was effective for funding. a did say look, it can be public role, but and that money to the students, the educators' autonomy, as opposed to federal money. host: we will go to m michael, grand rapids, michigan, democratic caller. caller: yes, i would like to point out that the federal 's role in government, i feel strongly, is to provide equal education for all students. but right now, with the school choice program, as was with the states' rights programs, schools were allowed to saturday, according to states rights. and look at the south. school choice is re-segregating schools in michigan. for example, here school choice means you have to provide transportation for your child to school. around theu ride

schools here in michigan, you will see lines and lines of people providing transportation for their kids to the school of their choice, but not everybody has that choice, because not everybody can provide a way toation, re-segregated schools in america. host: ok, michael, let's take your point. school do not think that choice was intended to resegregation schools. one of the arguments as you were no longer assigned to a school based on your zip code, based on your home address. it is certainly not perfect, but the fact of the matter is lots of rich people exercise school choice by buying a home in an expensive district, and there is a school district should be the choice behind buying a home. the intention is to empower people to find schools that they want for their kids, and get the power that you got a school

based on where you bought a home. host: this idea based on segregation, the segregation in public schools, back in july. he, too, was speaking at the nea. here is what he had to say. [video clip] >> we also need to do things>> like tackle housing segregation. when i was housing and urban development secretary under president obama, we had fair groundbreakingst rule since the fair housing act to further desegregate our country. i would also invest in more housing opportunities in hire opportunity areas, so we have students' ability to go into school district that traditionally they could not afford to be in. in addition to that, i would invest in tools, like voluntary busing, so that within school districts, folks are able to go to different schools. and i would make sure that we invest in fair housing enforcement, because too often times, when a family of color

goes and they look for an apartment or a house in certain neighborhoods, they are still turned down simply because of the color of their skin. we need to do all of those things if we are going to tackle the continuing segregation that too often times limits the ability of our students to achieve their dreams. host: your reaction? guest: sure, segregation is certainly a problem in society. that is probably what castro is getting at here. i think the argument for choice proponents is it would allow the segregation and allow students to escape failing schools. that is not seem to be happening. it seems to more or less stay the same when you introduce school choice policies. it needs to be tackled in the larger sense of housing policy and in other areas that end up

promoting segregation, but we need to be thinking more broadly about other ways in which we can increase equities, so segregation is one contributor to the equity problem. going back to the cover station about finding and making sure low income families have opportunities. there are other ways to tackle that, and education is part of the solution. housingeah, i think the issue is a really big one, because people still primarily choose a school by where they buy a house. to seeery hard, though, that there is a federal solution where you can stop people from buying houses if they have means, or even to require that you build low income housing to balance that. i am not an expert. i just know that the education literature will show that people will move to wherever they think -- the mel wealthy will move to where other wealthy people are. i do not know how easy it is,

but it can be done, to say if you are wealthy, you cannot spend more on your schools, but that is a problem. the government can fill in for low-income districts, and the wealthy can say, "well, we can spend more," not that they are competing, but how do you stop it? host: tony from colorado, independent. caller: good morning, greta. you opened the discussion about the question -- how much are the candidates focusing on education? and i would argue i do not think enough. but michael bennet, the senator from colorado, who started his career running the denver public school system before he ran for senate, he made a really interesting, that i think ties back to what your guests have talked about. i cannot remember the stat, but i think it was like 70% of all the people in prison today did not complete high school. an example, is while not a direct causation, is certainly a strong correlation,

it shows how important education can be, and the cost of a failed education system, what it will cost us down the road. and so i think my comment for the -- and i would like to hear your guests speak to this -- are we focusing enough -- is education important enough in society? i look at families to have a lot of money, and my daughters have a lot of money, and educating their kids in private preschools and so forth, these kids are light years ahead of people who do not have the same benefit, , oni think our system property taxes come of this unit, is failing us, if we do solved, in case you have higher costs down the road, other costs coming to light, if our people were educated better,

we might not even elect somebody like donald trump, if they were educated better. just areally asking not political question, but are we even focusing enough on education, as critical to a democracy survival? i will leave it at that. guest: it is a great question, and it is hard to peg. it isct of the matter is actually pretty high high school graduation rates, 90%. we have this idea of sort of universal high school for many decades. more than almost any other country, at least in the wealthy countries, on education. we spent more than anybody else on higher education. i do not think actually the evidence says it is a lack of funding, and if we think funding as a demonstration of our commitment to education, then we seem committed. but i think it is different from us and a lot of other countries as we tend to have a different

culture. our culture does not focus so much on academic achievement, is actually on things that are easily tested. there have been studies that show kids who go abroad from the , those kids in other countries spend a lot more time in school, a lot less time on sports and afterschool jobs. and kids who come here s american kids spend a lot more ony sports and afterschool jobs. it is not whether we spend more money but it is about what we think is important. guest: i do not think it is just about funding, either. the reason we spent more than anybody else's we are the wealthiest country in the world, and that is the cost been that hiring people is higher, so teachers can then go do something else. college-educated people have more job opportunities, because we are very wealthy country. evenu do not spend more, to keep up with other countries in terms of hiring the highest quality teachers, you have to spend more just to keep up. that is why when we look at spending as a percentage of the

gdp and the fact that that number is so low relative to other countries is a problem. the second issue goes back more closely to what the caller was talking about, all of the other benefits of education to society. he referenced the dropout rate and the percentage of prison. these are exactly the kinds of benefits that make education a public good. it is why everyone should want to fund education at a high level. host: kingsport, tennessee, ashland is watching there on our line from republicans. welcome to the conversation. caller: hi. thank you. we have foud kids in schools. we have our fifth on the way. we have been in public and private schools. the really huge difference i've noticed between the two was the amount of parent involvement that was encouraged. private schools, the parents were invited to look at throughoutk, everything, to go in and volunteer, field trips, anything.

and then when we got to the public school, there's, you know, there's quite a bit of restriction on parental involvement i as far as going in, doing things, being involved in that way. something else i noticed is it seems ever since elementary school, almost every teacher has an assistant. when i was in school, i do not remember any of my teachers having assistants. i want to know -- what has changed in the way our educators are educated? you know, as far as discipline, because discipline in life is rather important as well. is thisher concern phenomenon of the private sector affecting the curriculum, whether it is in geo's, affecting textbook choices in the classroom, or technology being available in the classroom through grants or whatever. i just wanted to see what they thought about those things.

and for the record, i think that as a society, all the kids will eventually grow into adults, and they will be -- they are our teachers. i do not care to pay into education, and i think everyone should look at our kids as our future collectively, so we need to invest in them, whether that is timer money. thank you. guest: i think the biggest difference between public and private schools is who attends them. in private schools, families tend to have more money. it is easier for them to be able to participate, to go to the schools, to see the teacher, to be there on parents' night, to attend theater and sporting's events. . they havit is easier. they had the opportunity to do that. public schools and private schools do things differently, and a lot of space on the opportunities that the families have. guest: there is no question that the families that go to schools -- i do think private schools, they have to earn the business. they have a stronger incentive

to say "we're going to work with parents, we will incorporate parents, because if we don't, they will go somewhere else." what i thought was really interesting about the caller's discussion, though, is she minted teachers aides. we have got to spend more so we can pay teachers more, but if you look at the data, staffing to notols, we tended increase teachers so much, we drastically increased teachers aides, and we also sort of increased administrators, although those are much smaller part. there is a good argument to say is noe spent more, there question, we have increased a lot, if you look at the data, but we do not seem to be focused on the teachers, because absolutely, as you become a wealthier society, you need to pay people more, so we can keep the same relative space, but we are not spending it, it looks like the aggregate, on teachers, it is other things. host: the caller also talked about the influence of others on education policy. i want to show our viewers with the former vice president joe

biden had to say at the nea in july. he talked about the role that teachers have to play in developing education politics. [video clip] biden: i would expect to put them in a position where they can find everything -- look at has beenrogram that cut, look at the afterschool program that has been cut, look at the job training programs that have been cut. how many of you have shop in your school anymore? how many of you have art programs in your school anymore? how many of you are in that situation? so teachers should have the ability to puhave an input. i will put a lot of pressure to make sure teachers are in on deciding what the curricula is, what you are going to teach, because you know better. you know the response to it. and lastly, pokes, the things you have to do the most is we have to elevate teachers as the professionals they are. [cheers & applause] mr. biden: no, no, my time is

running out. it is all about being treated with dignity. host: we are talking about education and campaign 2020. our guest, doug harris, is the economic department chair at tulane university, and neal mccluskey, the director at cato at the center for educational freedom. doug harris, when you hear from the former vice president, do you agree with him? guest: i think the larger context here, over the last 16 years, really since no child left behind and continuing into the obama administration, there has been a more focus on standards, and that has had more than influence. i think that is sort of the undercurrent of the conversation. there has been pressured to have more aggressive teacher of valuation's and teacher accountability. i think the teachers are feeling that as an attack on them. at the same time, it is also affecting the curriculum and extracurriculars, at least that is the story. there is not a lot of data about that. teachers feel like they are under attack and at the same

well,ot being paid very so they are not feeling so good about where the profession sits. host: we will go to michael, deerfield beach, florida, democratic caller. michael? caller: yes, hi. i wanted to share with both of your guests something that happened down here in broward. msd.st 17 people at the shooting was a direct result of the -- superintendent. they came in and they charter is ized the schools from the inside. principal to create a economy, from inside the school a free market, laissez-faire system, as you had with private schools, but it is within the public school system, because the individual principles make a decisions. you have have the schools reporting zero cases of

bullying, even though there is 1500 students, so there is no record-keeping, it all of the management was a direct result of the failure to understand that the free market, laissez-faire competition is not science, it is politics. in fact, if you know that caged fish that goes blind, evolution it leads to optimal minimums, meaning you have an needum just minimum to survive, which is exactly what we ended up with in our school system, and eventually, the absolute bottom was reached with the 17 deaths, ok. and people do not realize, 40 or 45 of the main school district in the country are now implementing this exact same system through the efforts of superintendents, where the local district are not even aware. we are trained at the academy, was specifically has as it is chartered come on his website, to replace, when it comes into a school system, it sure raise

superintendent specifically how mera of halftimchi public schools in half also subject to principal and autonomy, which, again, i ask from your speakers, are they aware of something called tragedy of the commons? what happens if you have a common area that everyone shares under rules and regulations. rules and regulations are what evolution produces, ok. if you get rid of rules and regulations, you have chaos, which is what the law's love a fair, free market promotes -- is what the laissez-faire, free-market promotes. host: we will leave it there. guest: it is not free politics. based on the is idea of liberty. families should be able to make decisions for themselves, and that is not lawlessness, you cannot post your cell phone other people. real,olves building a

sustainable -- and i am not an expert. i have gone there. i have read the materials. but if they have focused on how to better manage the public system, whose definition? the public system is not laissez-faire, it is capitalism. there is some research that shows schools can be more successful when they have a fair amount of autonomy and the leaders have autonomy, and they can make decisions based on knowing that community better than, say, the state or even the district,nd have the say no, you cannot do this because we have all these rules and regulations that you have to follow. host: so charter schools are able to do that. guest: yes. that is the idea of charter schooling, and it varies from state to state some the various regulations you have to follow, but the idea that this will be a public school but sort of an autonomous public school where decisions commitment more quickly, tailored to the needs of the school, and people choose it. but i do not think the academy

is geared specifically to charter schools. i am an economist. i support markets. in the vast majority of cases, that is the best way to organize things. education is unique and how it violates those conditions. i will give one example, and i think the caller was alluding to this. a difficult student dealing with many challenges in school, a school in a free market will push that student out. where is that student going to go? this is where you run into, this is how they will run into prison. this is where the long-term problems go. the market is not designed to serve that population. we need to educate everybody. markets are not very well designed to do that. there are lots of other problems with mark if option, and this is why we need the government involved, and this is also how charter schools of vouchers are different. charter schools have more oversight and more regulation. the voucher approach, the

government is just giving the money to the school. host: doug harris, by the way, has a forthcoming book, "charter end ofcities: what the public schools in new orleans means for americans' education." david in anchorage. caller: good morning, greta. i get up very early every morning in alaska to listen to "washington journal." i just love listening to people across the country and their valued opinions. when the segment started, both of your guests seemed to talk about funding of k-12 education and possibly how it would improve the k-12 system in our nation. a goodet me give you data point. in the state of alaska, we spend nearly $22,000 per student. in the national testing, alaska in fourth grade reading, therefore it does not appear that there is more funding that improves educational outcome. the other point i would like to

make is that you are talking about increasing teacher salaries. anchorage school district, the average teacher salary and benefits, when you talk about teacher salary, you have to talk about the total compensation package. in the anchorage school district, it is over $100,000 per teacher year. bottom line is we need accountability for results and what happens in the classroom. and finally, the other point i would like to make is, what do your guests think about quality control of the teacher workforce? i am more than happy to pay more for a good to excellent teacher, but i do not want to pay more for the mediocre or worse teacher. thank you very much. host: neal mccluskey, why don't you go first? guest: i think that is a great questionguest:.

the problem is, i do not think we have a universal agreement on what constitutes a good teacher. saya well, we said we will you are a good teacher if you see the test scores of your students rise by a certain amount, but as we talk about, a lot of things happen is it isn notents' lives that do affect the teacher. another, taking outside the box is hard to capture in a test. people who value different things, whether it is educators or families, have the economy autonomy to set of that creative thinking. others may be focused on test scores. we have got to have that autonomy. historically, public schools kind of replace a lot of the private schools, bu historically, people get an education very broadly without government intervention, and we had this mass incarceration problem largely during the time

when 90% of people pretty much went through public school. i think we have got to really understand the power that comes with giving educators autonomy and then letting them voluntarily work together. a very unusuals state, a beautiful state, a wonderful place. everything costs more there, so i think the numbers that the caller was talking about, while i am sure our true of alaska, are not representative at all of the rest of the country. point aboutr's spending, the evidence is clear, increasingly clear, spending does increase outcome. there is no debate about that. even though you do not necessarily see it when you look at correlation between state school and state spending. again, alaska is an unusual state. host: we will go to bill in mobile, alabama, republican. caller: the greatest single predictor of failure a school

an in terms of conservation -- of incarceration rates are people born in single-parent households, meaning the mother did not get married or establish a relationship before having a child. are y'all aware of any program, test, marketing effort as an intensive program in public schools to teach these girls -- and voice, too, for that matter -- that it is extremely important, vital to establish a family before you start having children? so that there is a support system. otherwise, everything you are doing is just a waste of time. all statistics you want to quote isnot cover the fact that it the failure of the establishment of a support system that keeps these children either within or without the success track. host: dr. harris? guest: again, the family situation does matter a lot.

it is more difficult for single-parent families, more challenges. they end up with less income, and that makes it more challenging for the kids. again, it comes back to -- what are we going to do for them? do you want to punish children in that situation by not finding them because their parents are in a difficult situation? no. we want to make sure that the kids in those situations have an opportunity. it is a much larger social question about single parent households that we should be thinking about. but again, the topic here of education, if we are going to allow opportunities for those kids, then we need to provide funding and our schools in ways that are not there now. host: let's go to jeff in auburn, new york, democratic caller. caller: good morning. yeah, i would like to bring up a point about for-profit colleges and that we need to rein them in -- they need to bring back the opportunity for thestudent to control

outcome by allowing discharging bankruptcy court of fraudulent loans and fraudulent schools that are for-profit colleges, that are just interested in anything for a buck. and they will promise you, like i went to the artist to the pittsburgh. they promised 80% to 90% of their student graduates were involved in the arts, in the fine arts, and that they were employed him and they also recruited, and the art institute is bankrupt. why not allow the art institute victims of this fraud to also go bankrupt? and stop guaranteeing student loans, federally guaranteeing them, to people who go to for-profit colleges? because my school was sued by the federal government and the department of justice. the only representative that i have is gillibrand.

senator gillibrand helped me get a deferment from betsy devos. she had stonewalled me for over two years in getting my loans deferred because of the hardship that i was defrauded. of thousands pool and thousands of people that are victims of this corporation dnc corporation that owns over 100 for-profit colleges, and the art institute of pittsburgh is bankrupt. lifetimeised employment furthers students. i graduated dean's list four times. i am not a stupid person. i was a draftsman, in the navy, old-school, on t squares, and in order to be a draftsman, i took b+ts, and i scored a's and

's, i was the top at my class in high school, and yet i could not get a job in graphic arts, after graduated from the art institute of pittsburgh in 1985. host: i am going to have neal mccluskey jump in. guest: yes, we certainly have a problem of people who take on big debt -- or sometimes actually very small debt is the one at leads to the most default, but they take on debt, usually federal loans, to go to college, and they find college is not work out for them. wrong to thinky it is restricted to for-profit schools. community colleges have that outcomes, lots of four-year public and private schools have that outcomes, and we have to look at for-profit schools tend to work with people who have the most obstacles in life, so i think what we need to do is re-look how the federal government doe student aids. butwill give you money," they do not look at what they

are appointed do, where their they are going to study, there is basically no underwriting, like you see in other loans, and we need to have the federal government either start to do that, or they should get out of the business of providing loans. and i think the evidence is very clear. that the federal government has been heavily involved in funding students, and what we have seen is huge increases in the costs of college. for-profits are a problem, but the whole system is a problem. show our viewers what education secretary betsy devos had disabled the administration's approach to the high cost of student loans. [video clip] tookdevos: in 42 years, it 42 years of student lending to get to a $500 billion level. six years from then to go to what trillion dollars, and five years from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion or $1.6 trillion, and the numbers continue to grow. governmentderal became the sole provider of student loans, essentially the

sole provider of student loans, there has been no governor on the cost of education, and it has been -- my observation, and many others, is it has been an arms race for higher education institutions, building swimming pools and climbing walls and toer infrastructure to try attract students in a declining student population. faceted is not a one- issue to deal with. but what we are doing, from the department's perspective, to help students in their decision-making again goes to the framework on which federal student aid is administered. it has been an antiquated system, one that has been very convoluted and complex, for anyone who has participated in it. the average student has 4.6 different loans, and they are working with, you know, multiple providers. we are moving -- we call it the

we areinitiativgen, moving from t convoluted platform to a single facing, very simple platform for students to be able to navigate in their student lending process and one that will keep them there in form from what they are actually taking on. host: doug harris. isst: i think that statement perplexing on several different levels. the idea that swimming pools and all of these investments are driving up the cost of higher education is nonsense. that is not at all what is going on. the cost of higher education has been going up some. the price has been going up a lot faster, because states are moving their funding, so there is less support, so to make up the difference, they are having to raise the rates. the idea that you can solve the problem by simple fighting and reducing the number of providers, so having only one company that is giving the

loans, is going to be cold comfort to families who have $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 in debt. they will not say "thank you" for having only one person to write a check to instead of three people. we do have to do something about affordability. there are lots of things we can do within the loan system to address that. one of the early callers talked about allowing student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy. a pretty simple thing. companies when they go into bankruptcy could discharge their loans and their deaths. students can't. why not? that is an easy fix. the for-profits is a key driver of why loans are going up, partly because of the lack of accountability. again, it is a perplexing statement when we have a pretty good idea of what we can do to address that quickly. have accountability. the obama administration tried to do that, and secretary devos just removed those rules and

removed accountability on for-profits. they're talking about accountability, but the solution is not there. guest: arts colleges say we are preparing you for a job, but it is nebulous. that is all targeted. it is clear that one of the reason to see the climbing walls and water parks -- they are not the driver of the costs. they are a symptom of people pay for college more and more with money that comes from other primarily those other people are federal taxpayers. look at those climbing walls and don't say, "that's why it is so expensive." why are they here? they are here because a somebody else's bank so much of the bill. -- theow does the fund-raising, and all of that? guest: it is only a handful of colleges nationally that have endowments.

a tiny fraction of students. endowments are really not part of the story. host: let's go on to joanna, damascus, maryland, independent. i have a couple of observations and want to preface k-12 saying my own experience -- i went to public school in grammar school and private school in high school. number one, private schools are exclusive. private schools don't have to take handicapped children or any kind of special needs students. i don't have to take students that need remedial work. they don't have to take students that may have some behavioral issues that need to be worked on. public schools have to take everybody. observation.rst the second one is if you look at the statistics, most of the kids that are in private schools come from higher income families. most lower income families have to send their kids to public schools. thirdly, private schools are

expensive, even if you get one of betsy devos's vouchers. if you have a school that costs $20,000 a year and you are getting a $12,000 voucher, you have to come up with the other $8,000. so it benefits mostly people who are a little bit higher income than people who are lower income. host: joanna, we are going to get final thoughts from both of our guests. mr. harris? guest: that less topic is a good one to end on. the use of markets in education is a big part of this debate. we allow for profit charter schools, for-profit colleges. we require this conversation. we have not talked much about charter schools. a lot is that same debate. i think neil would argue to let people choose. that is a good starting place. i think the question here is what is the role of government. what can the government due to step in and address these problems?

is an important role on the funding side, but also on the oversight role. the news to be account ability, especially at the k-12 level. we can do more at the college level to make sure we do not have students being defrauded. we can make colleges more affordable. the democratic proposals, i think they are on the right track, addressing the right problems. we will see what happens in the election. the firstean, i think thing is to understand that actually there are expensive private schools, but many private schools are not all that expensive. most private schools are religious, and most religious schools were started because people did not fit in the public schools, and so they are a low-cost model so that regular people who did not feel a public schools were serving them -- sometimes they felt they were hostile to them -- to get education without was consistent with their values and was not hostile to them. it is also important to note the

reason we want school choice is because all people are different , unique. they have unique problems. when theyools, encounter often kids who have very specific needs, very specific disabilities -- they will actually send them to private schools. the reality is you may have populations that need very specific assistance, and it only makes sense, it is only practical, if there is a particular place people go to for it, as opposed to every school being all things to all people. host: thank you for the conversation. appreciate it. coming up next, we are going to turn our attention to school safety. we are going to talk with the cofounder of safe and sound schools, and effort she began after losing a child during the sandy hook school shooting. we will be right back. announcer: sunday night on q&a, university of pennsylvania law school professor amy wax on free

expression on college campuses, and the conflicts surrounding an opinion piece she co-authored in the philadelphia inquirer." amy: this is what ruffled a lot of people, that not all cultures are alike. we were trying to tout the code of behavior as one that is particularly suited to our current technological, democratic, capitalist society, and comparing it to other cultures which are not as functional. we gave some examples. that immediately caused a firestorm. announcer: sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern, on c-span's q&a. booktv forwatch coverage of the national book festival. our coverage includes author interviews with justice ruth bader ginsburg on her book "my own words." "the heartbeat of wounded knee."

"child of the dream." "the british are coming." minds." ook "super booktv on c-span2. announcer: "washington journal" continues. host: 20 us from baltimore is the cofounder and executive director of safe and sound schools. why did you start this group? guest: i started safe and sound schools very much in honor of our children. my cofounding partner, alyssa parker, and i both lost daughters in the tragedy at sandy hook school. they are very much a driving force in everything we do, especially at safe and sound schools. they loved school. they left their friends and

teachers, the wonderful community it was and is today. important to us to honor the positivity and help others move forward following the tragedy. we realized it was not just us. we were trying to figure out how can we send our surviving kids back to school. we realized it was across the nation that people were fearful about sending their kids back to school, teachers going back to work. host: sorry for the loss of your daughter, josephine. can you talk about surviving ,hat loss and when you decided ok, i need to start this group, and how you came about that? guest: very incrementally, i guess i would say. i firstling, that pang, noticed in the parking lot the day of the tragedy. i did not yet comprehend what had happened. i did not know yet that i have lost a child that day. i was still waiting for her to

come out of the building with her classmates. my middle daughter had evacuated safely and i knew my oldest daughter was on another campus in town. but i remember sitting there and just having this moment, thinking, here we are, all these years after columbine, and i am sitting in the parking lot, realizing that something like that has happened here. the unthinkable has happened here. and we really are not as well prepared as i had thought we were. do you hope to accomplish with this group? guest: what we do at safe and sound schools is try to source and curate the best resources, programs, and tools. we certainly create a lot of our own as well, in order to engage the whole community, all stakeholders. parents, students, safety professionals, educators, mental health professionals.

really get everybody on board with this, and on the same page, working toward the same goal of safety in communities. what we hope to accomplish is ultimately to empower a nation of safer schools, so that folks like us, in the wake of a tragedy or fearful of a tragedy, can get there resources on the tools they need. host: who are you working with? guest: we work with all the folks i just rattled off there. it is a large undertaking torque with so many varied stakeholder groups, but we really believe fundamentally that that is the way to make positive change in our communities. you know, school safety and where it is today, what it is today, is not what it was when i was a student. it is certainly not what it was when i was a teacher. it is evolving and it is very complex today. or are a lot of issues are schools are facing that are coming in from the outside world.

rather than overwhelm people, rather than leave it on one person's shoulders, like the , it isal or the police important we all chip in and work together. host: how much has changed since sandy hook? guest: you know, i think immediately following the tragedy -- we took some time before going out and visiting and listening and learning and speaking, sharing our story in community groups and professional groups. seen over thee years is that the conversation is certainly elevated. there is a greater general knowledge, even among the public, about the types of things they need to be seen and looking for in their communities, and certainly we have conducted a survey and report for the past two years. same kind of findings in that report that we are seeing anecdotally out in the field.

parents are becoming more involved. students are becoming more involved. they are learning what to ask for, what types of things are working in other communities, so they can advocate for those things in their communities as well. host: we want parents and educators to join us for this conversation. what do you think needs to happen, or what is happening in your schools and your communities, keeping students safe? educators, please call in at 202-748-8000. we are talking with the president of a sandy hook victim and the cofounder of safe schools. report, a 2018 safety and i was interested in -- this is from safe and sound schools people, a survey of "my school has a false sense of

security." what did you find there? guest: our server report has real for the past two years a persistent fear, especially among students and parents, that there exists a false sense of security, that folks are looking the other way or putting their head in the sand, not willing to confront some of the issues that are really ultimately undermining the sense of safety in the school, is not the level of preparedness for some type of crisis event. host: in the top three concerns about school safety -- what did you find? guest: mental health at the top of the list. mental health followed by active shooter and concerns for bullying still persist, coming in at number three. these are three big issues. we found across the board with our stakeholders that these were scoring high. these were coming in as top concerns. host: how do you address these top concerns? guest: you know, i think the

survey helps us identify these trends, these commonalities in school communities across and among stakeholder groups across the country. the point of conducting a survey and issuing a report like this is to get conversations like this going nationally, but also at the local level. as we found last year, following our state of school safety survey and report, conversations began at the national level, but also at the local level. lots of our school communities began conducting surveys of their own, targeting specific questions or concerns or worries that they felt they might be experiencing in their community. that is where we start to see things change, when the conversation opens up, and people are invited to talk about these things rather than hide from them, avoid them. that is when we see people start to push up their sleeves and get to work together. local level, once

they saw the survey results and started doing their own, what are some of the actions that local officials started taking? guest: so, one of the things that we saw in this year's survey and report was a trend toward social emotional learning. this is a positive sign, because we advocate for social emotional learning and curriculum and programs in our school communities. but the fact the conversations have risen to the level that students and parents are now using that vernacular -- it's more of an educator term or a mental health professional term. that shows is that people are becoming more educated and more involved, and they are also recognizing that school safety is not just a matter of locks on doors and alarm systems and security, and involvement with safety and police professionals. ofreally does involve a lot

underlying issues, family issues, social issues, mental health issues, of course. and ensuring that our students are coming to school in a culture --imate and all of those things are supported by programs like social emotional learning. to see that stakeholder groups, including parents and students, are beginning to become aware of those programs and advocate for them in their communities is for us a positive finding. host: what do social and emotional learning involve? guest: that is a great question. if i could give you a nutshell version, it is really advocating for positive interactions, values, positive culture and climate, teaching our students and our staff members and families how to deal with and process emotions, complicated emotions they might have in any given day. so really teaching more positive

interactions, and those types of things we believe will have a positive effect on issues we are still seeing today, such as bullying. a parent inis frankfort, kentucky. good morning to you. caller: good morning. you are so beautiful. think you for your work. i am the mother of four and grandmother of seven. when i was growing up, we had the draft. i had an idea about ak-47s. schools,alking about or we have a problem with churches and theaters and bars, and all these public places. everybody always talks about the second amendment, and i have read the constitution, but nobody speaks of the third amendment. the third amendment was the

congress being able to put troops in your home. that is the draft, which we got rid of, mercifully. but i think we should draft ak-47s into the pentagon, where they belong, because people are committing a new form of warfare. ak-47s are being used as warmaking. and if the police need to get an ak-47 from somebody because they could shoot a hundred rounds, or maybe they need to take it off someone who has someone hostage, the nra needs to build a new type of gun that can put people to sleep to take their ak-47s. -- gunfireichele gay fire ants -- gun violence. the caller brings up the issue of should we have guns in school as part of the protection it should they be banned?

these are important conversations. thatusly we know firsthand gun violence has made its way into our school. but it is coming from outside. it is being experienced in other public forums and public places throughout our country. while our organization does not specifically tackle legislative solutions surrounding gun rights or gun restrictions, it is certainly something that many other groups are working on. several of our sandy hook parents are on that in other organizations as well. in your survey, you have asked if people would like to choose one safety area you would like to see more money allocated to out of your school budget -- when you look at mental health experts, parents, educators, and the community, many of them say that is where money should go for school safety. you talked about putting more mental health experts in

schools. who are these people? what role do they play in the school? such a great point. it was a fascinating revelation for me this year reading about the data we were receiving on that particular issue. whereed our stakeholders you want to see the money go. as we talked about, in dealing with a comprehensive approach to school safety, we are not talking about alarm systems and hardware type things. we're also talking about programs, about staffing that addresses mental and behavioral health. you know, actual, physical health and wellness, culture, climate, and community. those types of things. what we found in the survey when we asked the question to our stakeholders, parents and students rank physical safety as their priority first, number one priority. we had staff really targeting .ental health

and both parents and students were ranking social emotional learning as the number two. ,t is an interesting difference that we have the parents and students really focusing on a particular type of safety, physical safety, and we have our educators focusing more on the mental health needs. -- we canr educators hypothesize they are seeing on a day-to-day basis the variety of different mental health issues and supports that are required to support our students safely through the day and get them home safely, and help them to grow and learn as we are all hoping for. i think that when we talk about the needs of more mental health in schools, for the most part, we are talking about those programs and school-based mental

health professionals. those would be school psychologists, school social workers, and school counselors. those are three of the critical roles, and the each comprehensively really serve the mental health needs, the programming needs, and the individual student and staff needs of the community in a way that we know supports safety very well. will go to georgia. amy is a parent. actually, i am a grandmother and a guardian. i have two girls living with me. one in middle school has had issues with some students or someone claiming or threatening, and in some instances being caught on the premises with a to othersaning harm they are going after. i was going to ask you if you

were at all involved with any of the -- if you thought that gun legislation may be have been something that you would be talking about also. but it appears that is not what you are targeting, but more of the maybe mental issues, which i am surprised that the u.s. has so many kids with so many mental issues. i do not see this in other countries, so why is this country so different? if this is the land of weortunity for everyone, and have a lot more -- you know what i am saying? we have a lot more things going on for our country. why do we have such a huge problem with our kids? it's a great question, and you are right. we do not specifically focus the organization on gun legislation restrictions or any of that side of the issue.

but in terms of what we are seeing -- this report reveals as stress management and trauma coping skills -- those are things that our parents and students are identifying as needs for support. we just talked about our school staff noticing really strong needs for mental health support for our children and families. i don't have the answer. i agree with you there is a lot going on today that maybe was not going on when we were kids, when i was a teacher. the world is a complicated place, and we are certainly finding that people have a need for more and more support, and they are looking to schools to help them find that. host: jay is next, in massachusetts, and educator. what do you teach? caller: good morning. ay.nk you ms. g

this program is important. i am actually a retired educator. my concern is i think in the line of the emotional social component which ms. gay alluded to earlier. i wanted to say briefly that i so appreciate her efforts, given the trauma she herself has son.ienced, having lost a it is a very difficult thing. of toxic was that idea masculinity. in this society, it seems that we as parents and educators have to try to inculcate in our boys that there are other ways of being besides this dominating, weressive masculinity, which see emblazoned across the screen on a daily basis. how do we begin to tackle something which is so fundamental, but is wreaking such havoc? you are pointing back to

social emotional learning programming and supports for our families and students. and that -- if we are to try to some of what our , aresters, our young males experiencing, and perhaps even being encouraged to be part of, via tv, video games, and today's culture -- the antidote we see is to provide and to counter that with positive instruction and positive activities that social emotional learning programs provide. host: bruce in pittsburgh. good morning to you, bruce. caller: good morning. the easiest way would be to gear up on the security in these schools, and only teach education kindergarten to

fourth. have them learn the computers. put the computers in the homes, and teach them from the school to they are. we could cut our education bill in half, because we would have computer education. we could monitor it closer. we could take politics out of our school, and with the remaining buildings that we have left that are not occupied by students, we could take half of the education budget and renovate them for the people in the streets that are living there. host: bruce, michele gay is a former teacher. howdy respond to that? -- how do you respond to that? guest: those are fascinating points and i entertain some of those ideas immediately post-tragedy. we had lost a child and we had to school-age children that wanted to go back to school, which was very surprising to me. but they were adamant about

being able to return to school. i was thinking maybe i am going to homeschool them. i am certified. i can do this. there are any number of programs where students can be lurking using a computer at home, as the caller is describing. there are certainly lots of alternatives to sending our kids to the school building and experiencing that school community. but what a loss, you know? to deny our kids the chance to socialize, to make those lifelong friendships, learn the lessons of getting on with one another, connecting with other people, facing challenge and adversity, and doing it together thatlearned from my kids it was very important to them, even immediately following the tragedy, having lost their younger sibling, that the school

friendships, the adult relationships that they had with their teachers and school staff -- they are priceless. so although those alternatives are great and served a lot of families across the country in --ferent substances circumstances, part of our mission at safe and sound schools is to ensure that we are not closing our school buildings because of this form of terror that is taking place nationwide, that we are holding firm to our values and the socialization and cultural experience that our students and our staff, our theunity, experience, with model of having these community-based schools. host: how are you funded? get donations. we have individual donors right off of our website. a lot of people utilize facebook in the same way. we have sponsors as well. we have some corporate partners

and sponsors that contribute. -- most ofst of our the funding for our organization comes from the speaking and training that we deliver nationwide. from central city, kentucky, a parent. good morning. caller: i know you are not talking about legislation today, in ourhave a group community called paradise friends of nra. they are being led to hold a banquet/fundraiser at one of our local high schools. now that is totally inappropriate to me, disrespectful to people who have lost kids in these shootings and elsewhere. it is telling our students we don't care about you. the school board and the school has approved it, and there are excuses. the students won't be in the school at the time it happens. maybe not, but our kids go to

school, and they do not need to wonder if they are going to live long enough to walk out at the end of the day, both parents and grandparents are home thinking the same thing. where is the love for our kids? i know people love their guns. but i will choose my child over a gun any day. this is so inappropriate. this has me so -- i am just outraged at our community for even allowing that. host: michele gay? guest: there are emotional issues, without a doubt. park amenities across the -- our communities across the country are navigating the fine line. i think a lot of the emotions that, unfortunately with anything that relates to guns -- i understand and i see there are a lot of community struggling with how do we approach these. our schools, public schools at

least, are open not just for kids during the day, but they are open to other community groups in the evenings. it can be a struggle at times for communities to figure out what is appropriate and what is fair, how to handle the emotional side of different groups that come into schools. i understand. host: for viewers who want to learn more about school safety and the group, you can go to safeandsoundschools.org. follow them on twitter. thank you very much for talking to our viewers. guest: thank you so much. -- coming up next, we are going to turn our attention to public education and ask all of you, how would you improve it? what are your ideas for making it better? educators dial in at 202-

748-8000. 202-ts, dial in at 748-8001. we interviewed the speaker of the largest super pac, which is raising money currently to elect a democrat for president, and working on senate races as well. what the leader had to say about both of those efforts. guest: the most undervalued thing about running for president is knowing and being able to explain why you are running for president, which sounds like a basic criteria, but it is really important. one thing elizabeth warren has going for her -- if you ask elizabeth in 30 seconds, two minutes, five hours, why she is running for president, she has a clear case, and it is consistent with her life's work. that is an important facet. cory booker is building a really strong operation on the ground.

i think if there is a chance for that second tier candidate to move into the first tier, corey has shown a strong ability to enter into these debates. a strong organization. i expect we will see him doing better. given how late joe biden got namethe race, he has high i.d., but he is building a strong operation. how do you balance the national needs of a campaign with the fact that so much attention is on iowa, nevada, south carolina? the campaigns that figure out how the balance that the best are ultimately going to be the ones that are successful. host: if you look at the map , are there states that could be unexpectedly in play, given the areas you see the campaigns focusing on? guest: arizona -- i do not know if it is unexpected anymore, but we have obviously had some success there been 2018.

i expect that mark kelly will be the next senator from arizona, which only helps us continue to put that state in play from the presidential perspective. north carolina is always on that margin. president obama was successful in 2008. another senate race there is to be important for democrats to have the majority on our side. georgia and texas continue to move more into the democratic direction. those are states we can to keep an eye on. journal": "washington continues. host: how would you improve public education? that is the question for you. educators, parents, all others, go to the phone lines. we will begin with elizabeth warren in july at the national educators association, talking about how she would use a wealth tax to improve public education. warren: here is what we can

do with two cents. we can provide universal childcare for every baby in this country, aged zero to five. pre-k for every three-year-old and four-year-old in this country. raise the wages of every preschool teacher and every child care worker to the professional levels they deserve. invest in our infrastructure so schools,ood, clean state-of-the-art for all of our kids. universal, tuition free technical schools, community college, and four-year college for everybody who wants to get an education. and there is more.

cents, we canwo make all of these investments, plus we can cancel student loan debt for 95% of the people who have student loan debt. host: we will go to ronald first in louisiana. ronald, how would you improve education? number one, i would improve education by getting rid of 11th and 12th grade. i do not think 11th and 12th grade for young american males -- i think it is a waste of time. i think we do better allowing especially young men to graduate high school at 15 years old. at 16, they can start a trade, a skill, and apprenticeship, whatever, or start college. 16 and 17 years old i think are some of the most innovative years, especially for american young man, and i think this would curtail a lot of

negativity that young american males are involved in. i would say a limiting 11th and 12th grade. host: edward is in little neck, new york, and educator. caller: thank you for this discussion. it is a pleasure listening to other educators. i worked in the new york city public school system. my job was to help schools implement online education. allink that it would serve of our schools, all of our districts across the country very well to put together a program, a national program, to help schools learn about online education and offer that as an option to all of their students. almost every corporation known uses online education for their benefits packages. i am sure many people have experienced sitting down with hr to learn about their benefits by looking at a screen. our services, institutions, organizations -- everyone is

using it to some degree now. that is not easy to take on. online courses require a special discipline, and a good educator who has been trained in order to lead a class like that. so i think i would start a national program to make sure that every student has access to and participate in an online class at least once in their career before they graduate. a parent in west virginia. kathy, how would you improve public education? caller: well, we have taken the homes. of our there is no one home for the children. you want to put them with strangers, and it scares us all. i think children should be kept at home. host: and be educated at home? caller: they can go to school, but a parent should be there when they come home, and a parent should be there when they

leave. north oxford, massachusetts. james, your turn. caller: i think the problem is that we have drifted too far away from what the founding fathers of this country proposed for education. if you take the letters that they begin with, you can spell it out as hell. the helm guides the ship. history,es your ethics, which is the most lacking, language, your language, and the only science there was- in mathematics. host: we are asking your thoughts of how you would improve public education. the 2020 candidates went before the national educators association in july this summer and talked about how they would improve education. harris was kamala

there, the senator from california running for president. this is what she had to say about plans for special education funding. sen. harris: there is a mandate that the government pay for the percent of the special needs for our children, and they are not doing it. they are doing 15%. it is immoral, as far as i'm concerned. the weight is really plays out in real life is that states have to make up the difference, but they cannot, which means every day in america we have children whose iep needs are not being met, children who are placed in general education classrooms, children who are falling through the cracks through no fault of their own, but because the system has failed them and the federal government has not funded the states to meet the needs of those children. it is immoral and it is wrong and i will address it as one of the first orders of business. all of our children have the capacity to soar, but we have to give them the tools we know they need. that is what is most immoral

about the situation. we know we have children with these needs. we know that. and we have a system in place for assessing that. flawed though it may be, it is there. but once assessed, we still are not meeting their needs. it is wrong. we are failing our children. host: special education funding. do you agree with the senator that more emphasis should be placed on that is to mark dorothy in rocky mountain, north carolina, a parent. what are your ideas? caller: we need to allow the public school system -- there is truancy, compulsory attendance. i have a child that was enrolled in public school one of those years, and then they told me they had too many children that failed kindergarten and she could not attend school because they had to place the students back in place. at the state level, no these issues. they did nothing about it. office,o the attorney's

and they told me there is no law on the books, no law that they could file charges against them for. the state of north carolina found a school board member that was also a director of social services that created lies, malicious slander, and had my child removed from my custody so they could not be found accountable. the county that did the three years -- and then the federal government got in there and decided to put her in middle school so they would not be held accountable for having a special needs child every year. if the same thing would be on the loss for the parents and the -- it would be after her missing 10 days of school that i could go and file charges against them for truancy, compulsory attendance also

because it is a right to attend school. there was all this other stuff that took place. host: monica in texas, good morning to you. caller: hi, how are you? host: doing fine. what is the name of your town? caller: i am in the rio grande valley of south texas. we are by the border, about 15 minutes to mexico, close to south padre island. we have good schools here. we also have charter schools. good transportation. there are a lot of things like that. my kids went to private school through elementary and partly junior high, and now they moved over to some charter schools. my senior is at the regular high school. so some different things to look at. one is the charter schools are very good, but then you go over there and there is no extracurricular activities.

when i was in high school, that was where i grew the most, to my extracurricular activities. my kids are happier where they are at. but your question was how would you change the schools. i had a class and they said let's brainstorm curriculum and things we can do and our school system, i would like to see something along the lines of the renaissance, where we have schools of virtue. i do not mean religion, but going back to the value of virtue, so we are not sowing discord among each other. value doing things because it is the right thing to do. we don't have to argue. we should start treating each other right, and we integrate that into our belief system again. that is something i am worried about that we are losing across the board. host: monica in texas. more calls coming up. how would you improve public education? i want to share some other stories with you this morning.

from "the orlando sentinel" in isrida, hurricane dorian growing stronger. right now, it is looking like a very strong storm, category four. cnn reporting this morning that it could be the strongest storm that florida has seen since andrew. as you may know, the president canceling his trip to poland this weekend to mark the 80th anniversary of the beginning of world war ii. instead, he will stay back at the white house to monitor the storm. in his place, vice president mike pence will be going. news from overseas -- "the guardian" with a headline that a scottish judge refused to block boris johnson programming -- parliament, in a blow to anti-brexit campaigners.

the judge said he would not rule definitively, but the prime minister has the ability to act with the queen to suspend parliament until full hearing of the case. he rejected an application for lawyers asking for 75 anti-brexit members of parliament and peers for an emergency injunction requiring prorogation. the the judge said he saw no need for an interdict at this stage, but agreed the full case needed to be heard. this is an update in that situation. there are other cases happening in london and belfast as well. this is a continuing story over the coming days. another story from the des moines register has to do with campaign 2020. they broke the story that the

dnc will reject iowa's virtual caucus plan, throwing the first in the nation status into question. the committee plans to reject the virtual caucuses, a decision that complicates the democratic party's implementation of the caucuses and threatens their existence going forward. the decision was confirmed to "the des moines register" late thursday. the party unveiled the most substantial changes to the caucuses since their inception, proposing a series of virtual caucuses that would allow registered democrats to participate over the phone. issued a mandate after the 2016 election requiring caucus states to allow some form of absentee voting. but critics have campaigned that the iowa process make it impossible for people who cannot show up at a precinct location to make their voices heard, and critics have also complained that the process takes too long.

that is a developing story. "the des moines register" with that story this morning. back to your calls on how to improve public education. we will go to debra in new haven, connecticut, and educator. good morning. i have been doing childcare 2007, and i was raised in foster care. that since my time -- i will be 60 the end of this year. the education that we have, or we had, does not quite meet the needs. and i am being conservative. but it really does not fit the needs anymore. so for instance, to keep it short and sweet, we need to totally revamp our education curriculum. the curriculum has to include certain things. when i was in high school, i remember we took home economics.

there was shot. you could learn how to auto mechanic, woodworking. i took the lpn course, licensed practicing nursing. there was two years. you got a socio--- you got and associates when you got out and were able to sit for licensing. they do not do that anymore. children really need life skills training right now. they are not getting it, and they really do need it. when you get out, they do not go to college. you are considered an adult and you have to do adult things. we really need to learn how to open bank accounts. you need to know how to balance a checkbook. you need to know how to rent an apartment, how to buy a home, cut the budget. finance. we do not teach any finances. and yes, you can say we are going to put it on parents.

however, parents are so strapped .ight now for time most parents are working one or two jobs. they do not even have the time to sit like that. so the school, if they revamped it -- host: i hear your point -- if they revamped it -- host: i hear your point and want to get more voices. caller: we need to find a way to train children and young adults the opportunity to work in the newly emerging than really vitally necessary economy of sustainable food production. by that i mean growing, marketingng, and crops and pastor animus, things like animal welfare, nutrition, cooking, transportation logistics. it is not only a rewarding folks, but it is also

one that is going to enrich them and make them realize they are part of transforming their .ommunity including globally. they can impact big things like climate change and health care outcomes, health care and animal suffering, and keeping our drinking water clean. completelyy a ignored emerging economy, and i think it is really not looked on ag, -- by biggib ag, and they are fighting it. host: jim is a parent. good morning. caller: liquid to education is a think we are using an archaic system that was based on agricultural society from a couple hundred years ago, and i

think other countries have moved from this. i think another problem is that i have heard educators say this. you work with students for a couple of weeks. there is a vacation. you loose the momentum that you work. the couple weeks of coming back from a vacation, you feel you have to pick up the pace again. i think the unions are a stumbling block. this thing that the state -- you know,days that's a minimum. when there is a weather event or on, if thehat goes school opens for a couple of hours, they get credit for that whole day. and i think the kids get cheated right on, if the

school opens for a couple on thd in the educational process. host: kathy, also a parent, in cleveland, ohio. good morning. think youe way i should parent is the way i parented. everyone think their parenting skills are the best. no matter what my child asked me, i would always sit down, stop doing what i was doing, talk to them, sit down and explain to them exactly what was going on, to the best of my knowledge. if we had no idea what was going on, we told them, "i will get back to you. let me find out what the deal is." we talked to them. there were no televisions, no , nothing thatnes is more important to me than my children, my grandchildren, or my great-grandchildren. the thing that is lacking, i

find, in the society is that children need to be heard. somebody listen to them. we are very quick to say you do not know what you are talking about. a do know what they are talking about. what they are talking about is just as important to them as your job and your life is to you , but they need to be heard. i have had other people's children talk to me, and their parents don't have a clue as to what is going on in their life until i tell them. host: it has been brought up a couple of times today, the idea of school choice and if that helps or hurts education in this country. betsy devos, education secretary, recently spoke about the administration's approach to school choice. devos: the administration is advancing in the establishment of a federal tax , a fund that would be

opted into by states. not a mandate. it does not create a new federal department or program, or a new bureaucracy to administer. it simply is a vehicle or mechanism for individuals to redirect a portion of their federal tax bill annually to a scholarship-granting organization that would then scholarship out to students to make choices in their home state for an education environment that is going to suit their needs and fit their purposes. concept, butmple it does face a lot of opposition because of the status quo to protect what is at the expense of what could be. you: school choice -- do think that improves education in this country? that is the discussion on "washington journal." i also want to show you what the former

vice president had to say at the national educator's convention. he said you need to get teachers involved in the forming of education policy. biden: look at the art programs that have been cut. look at the after school program cut. look at the job training programs that have been cut. how many of you have shopped in your school anymore? how many of you have our programs in your school anymore? how many of you are in that situation? teacher should have the ability to have an input. it is a local decision, but i would put a lot of pressure to make sure teachers are in on deciding what the curricula is, what you are going to teach, because you know best. you know the response to it. folks, the thing we have to do the most is we have to elevate teachers as the professionals they are.

time has run out. it is all about being treated with dignity. presidentformer vice on his ideas of shaping education policy. from twitter, catherine parker, ,ne of our viewers, tweets in school voucher system. another says, get chronic behavior problems out of the classroom. i spent more resources on these four kids each year than i did all the other students combined. others could soar without these troublemakers. a tweet from quincy. a viewer says remove nonessential classes and focus on reading, math, english, civics. i would even promote home economics again, because kids are leaving school lacking a basic understanding of these things. schools should be about learning life skills. chuck in arizona, what do you think? caller: are you talking to me? host: i am. your ideas for improving public

education. caller: [laughter] caller: about 10 years ago, bill and linda gates gave $50 billion, half of it to go to improving education, half of it to improve world hunger. the half for world hunger has done tremendous strides. tremendous strides. when bill is asked about the two things, he will not comment about the improvement of education, because it cannot be done. not with the system that we have , where here where i live, we had two vacancies on the school board, and the county superintendent had to fill them because people would not run for the school board. to go to carolg next, in houston, texas. go ahead. caller: i am in houston and what i hear from my friends who are teachers -- there is just too

many students in the classroom. they need to bring in more teachers, and they need to have them be assisted with an aide. they used to do that. that is one of the things i think of. for watchingou all this morning. thank you for your calls and your tweets as well. we will be back here tomorrow morning, 7:00 a.m. eastern, with another "washington journal." enjoy your weekend. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] 1979, a small network with an unusual name rolled out a big idea, let viewers make up their own minds.

c-span opened the door to washington policy for all to see, bringing unfiltered content from congress and beyond. a lot has changed in 40 years, but that idea is more relevant than ever. c-spanvision and online, is your unfiltered view of government so you can make up your own mind. brought to you as a public service by your cable or satellite provider. fromncer: here is a tweet bbc news, sir john major joints to stop parliament suspension, leading the move by boris johnson is aimed at preventing members of parliament from opposing and no deal brexit. clive coleman, who said, you can scarcely have more heavyweight support in this go challenge to try and stop the suspension of parliament. we are in unprecedented times and this is an unprecedented intervention. that from the bbc. prime minister boris johnson will take questions from members of the house of commons next

week before parliament is suspended. coverage on live wednesday at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span2. andr today, journalists white house officials examine the relationship between the media and trump administration in a discussion hosted by the american political science association, live at 2:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, online at c-span.org, or listen live with the free c-span radio app. the wake of the recent shootings in el paso, texas, and dayton, ohio, the house to do chari committee will return early from summer recess to mark three gun violence prevention bills, which include banning high ammunition magazines, restricting firearms from those firearms from thoseto deemed by the court to be a risk to themselves, and preventing individuals with misdemeanor

hate crimes from purchasing a gun. live coverage begins wednesday at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span and c-span.org. if you are on the go, listen to our live coverage using the free c-span radio app. up next, a discussion on irregular migration, which is migration that takes place andide the laws international agreements. the center for strategic and international studies released a report on irregular migration, which looks at how the private sector can address refugee issues and smuggling concerns. erol: hello and