← The Report Card with Nat Malkus
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- [00:12]
A
Welcome to the Report Card with Nat Malkus, the education policy podcast from the American Enterprise Institute. Historically, many didn't consider Alabama to be at the forefront of education. But Alabama's pandemic recovery may be among the best in the nation. Perhaps most impressively, Alabama was the only state whose fourth grade math NAEP scores were higher in 2024 than in 2019. And Alabama reports a chronic absenteeism rate that's the lowest in the nation and the closest to its pre pandemic levels of any state. I think these results may be part of a broader story about how Alabama has changed the way it thinks about education. So to better understand what is going on with education in the Yellowhammer state, I invited Alabama State Superintendent of Education Eric Mackey onto the podcast. Eric Mackey, welcome to the Report Card.
- [01:09]
B
I'm glad to be here, glad to talk to you about all the good things going on in Alabama and all the good challenges and opportunities we have as well.
- [01:17]
A
So, Eric, you're the Alabama State Superintendent of Education. I'll call you the state chief because it's just easier. A lot of people know about this position, but probably don't understand it on a day to day basis. What does it entail? I mean, you know, what fills your day?
- [01:35]
B
Yeah, well, it entails a lot and it's a lot of meetings. You know, my job, it does change from state, state. Different chiefs have different responsibilities. So I have responsibility for K12 public education, about 725,000 students. And we're really in charge of everything from their funding to their accounting to their school buses. But of course, the most important things that what happens, you know, bail to bail during the school day, the academic part and, and that's the part I enjoy the most. That's the part I wish I spent all my time on. The truth is, of course that takes probably, you know, maybe 50% of my time on a good day. But on most days it's a lot more administrative things because there are all these other things that, that have to happen so that schools can, can function. You know, we also do some extra things in our state. For instance, I'm in charge of all the food bank funding in the state. So not just for kids, but all the food banks run through us. We're in charge of Social Security disability for our state. So all the Social Security disability claims flow through our department. And I say that only to say that I've learned every single state has something like that. Like there's something else, the department of Education that people don't think of as education, but, but you know, we try to, to roll with those things and, and focus on students learning in the classroom.
- [02:57]
A
Well, Eric, you've said before, it's important not to lose sight of the main thing. And as state chief, I'm sure there's, like you've already mentioned, there's a great many things competing for your attention. How do you manage to keep your attention on the main thing?
- [03:13]
B
Hire good people to focus on the other things. So, so that, you know, my strategy is you hire good people and get out of the way and you keep people focused. I talk about three words all the time and that is strategy, focus and investment. So we have to have the right strategy. We think we've adopted the right strategy in Alabama. We focus intently. The tip of the spear. The top of our strategic plan is academic achievement and growth with a special focus on early reading and math. Because we know we have to get early reading and math right and for anything else, fall in place in a student's life later. So, so I spend as much of my time as possible focused on those things. Early reading and math, again, they can't take everything. But, but we have to have the right strategy and I have to have the right people implementing strategy. Look, we tweak our strategy every year. We are constantly looking at are we doing it right in literacy, what should we be doing differently? What did we miss last year that we need to be doing next year, in the year after? But, but overall we think we've adopted the right strategies for, for really literacy, for numeracy and mathematics, algebra readiness and then science, engineering, computer science and those kind of things that feed into that. Then we had to focus on those things. So again, I try to hire people. Like I mentioned, you know, we're over disability determination for our state. I spend very little time on that, even though most of my employees work on that. I have a very good person that manages it. If something rises to the level I need to get to involved, involved. He knows when to bring me in and when to leave me alone so I can focus on the things I want to focus on. And then the last thing, of course, is investment. Where do you put most of your time and resources? And, and even though there's always something tugging at us, you know, everybody knows as much as possible. I'm going to be visiting schools. I'm going to be talking to the right people who are focused on the things that I'm focused on and, and trying to make sure that that's the, you know, the Core mission of the department. But that's a constant struggle. Like that battle is never won. And it's almost like weeding a garden. Like, if you, you quit weeding the garden, the weeds will take over. So every day we have to come to work focused on the most important stuff.
- [05:32]
A
So what do you think are the main keys to success in leading a state's education system? And I mean, more specifically, you've been a state chief. You've been the head of ccsso, which is the association of State School Officers. I mean, if you could only get three things right, what would those three things be?
- [05:54]
B
A great governor who believes in the mission and supports you. I mean, I have had strong support and leadership from governor Kavi. She's our state's longest serving governor ever.
- [06:07]
A
She.
- [06:07]
B
I've been with her almost all of that time, you know, and, and she's just been very supportive now have. Behind closed doors. Have she and I always agreed on everything? No, no. Sometimes she says, mackie, I want to do this, I want to do it this way. And, and sometimes I've had to push back and say, well, I understand that, but, but here's some other facts. I need to bring the table. But I'm going to tell you, she's 100% on board for do what we need to do to improve achievement in Alabama. So that means my number one, you got to have a strong governor who understands the mission and supports the mission and, and then alignment with the other folks above and below you would be two and three. So above me, obviously there's the governor. There's also my state school board. I, I'm an appointed person to work for the board. The governor is chair of the board. So I have nine member board and the governor's the one of those members. So I need the rest of the board too, or at least the majority of the board to go along with the kind of strategy the governor and I lay out. I need the legislature, and my legislature has been great in this state. They've. They have funded our initiatives in literacy and numeracy. They funded our initiatives to get better and more of science, engineering, math teachers in the classroom. They funded our initiatives to take over principal development and say we're going to pay principals a big bonus, but you're going to have to do it our way. They funded our initiative to spread national board certified teachers. So we've got a lot of initiatives in the legislatures funding those. So those folks above me and then below me, like, you've got to have superintendents and Local school boards and, you know, principals and teachers, like, they all have to believe in the mission, too. If you got those three things strong governor, good people above you who support the mission, and then good people below you, I mean, below in this, you know, chain who also support the mission, you can get a lot done. But again, that. That is constant work to make those people not just tell them, you know, you can. There's some people in the chain, you can tell them what to do, and they're, They're. They're beholden to do what you ask, but most people don't have to do that. Like, you have to make them believe in the work.
- [08:15]
A
So when you're state chief, how does change actually happen? And you mentioned one of these. Take the Alabama Numeracy act, for example. I mean, you just can't proclaim it from the mountaintop. There's a lot of work that goes into implementation, but I want to know what does that implementation look like? And on the Alabama Numeracy act, for example, how's the rollout? Like, that happened through your office.
- [08:42]
B
Okay, now you're speaking my language. So first, let me go just slightly before the Numeracy act, when I came in, identified three things that had to be done. I mean, in my interview, three things that had to be done immediately. And fixing our math struggles was one of them. Alabama had always, always. I know we, We. We were at the very bottom of the NAEP math scores in fourth grade for the last cycle before I came in. But, but really, we had always, if you look historically back to 1969 when NAIP started, we'd never been below the bottom 40s. We're always just struggling at the bottom. So we had to systemically change the way we do math. That was one of the things identified. So first thing we did is we, we broke our standards down. We rewrote our state standards. We, We. We got rid of the old Common Core Align Standards. You know, they were called something else. But, but we, we rethought about it. We looked at the best national research that. What the best states were doing, but also what our teachers were telling us. And we adopted totally new standards. We, we then developed a new test. We worked with a vendor to develop a new test that would, that would match to our standards, that was all aligned to the NAEP framework for the first time. And then we did an intensive dive into teaching materials, and we really narrowed down what school boards could use as their textbook, basically. And so we got most of our school boards on one page now. All this happened in the two or three years before we got the Numeracy act because the legislature, the next thing we wanted to do was to hire coaches and we wanted to go, we wanted to reform colleges of education and we wanted to do more work like that. But the legislature, I think, you know, speak for other bodies, but I think they were like, look, this is a lot of money. It's a lot you're asking us to do. You got to demonstrate first that you're down the path. So we did all this other work, alignment first and we began to show improvement and we used our federal lesser dollars to hire some math coaches to show what, what we were talking about, how we put math coaches in our elementary schools and help our elementary teachers be better math teachers. Just because you can do math doesn't mean you can teach math. Same way it doesn't. Just because you can read, it doesn't mean you can teach reading. So, so we began that process and the legislature came along then and they gave us an investment that's eventually going to be about $110 million a year to put a, a math coach in every elementary school. So that's for us, it's about 900 math coaches across the state to completely reform the way we teach teachers of mathematics for elementary in our colleges of ed and to, to make sure that we had better, you know, through your formative assessments and better instructional materials, both tier one classroom, what we call textbooks and tier two and tier three materials and screeners. So all these things, we have a, we have an elementary mathematics committee, we have a higher ed math committee that are working to give us recommendations and then we feed these things through. We are still in implementation. We have two more years of adding coaches in, in tiers and then we'll have every, every, every elementary school have a coach. Our colleges have had about half of them, more than half of them are going by this summer will have revamped the way they're going to teach mathematics. Some of them are still struggling with that. We know that's, that is not something that can be done overnight. Like this is a multi year investment. But we're already just in our early work. We are seeing great gains on our state test. We have seen some gains on naep. NAEP as you know, is a very hard, it's an impossible test to manipulate. Anybody who says they manipulate them, they doesn't know what they're talking about or just 3% of students. But what it should tell us as states is whether the work we're Doing is validated, okay, we get state results, we should know where we are and then they validates whether that work is going the right direction. And we think it is going the right direction. But now we're still, as I said, two years from full implementation. And then once you like change the way you're going to teach teachers, you, it's five, six, seven years out from that before those people graduate and they're starting to get in the classrooms. So we're really talking about a, a generational change because in Alabama we talk about the2030s and2040s like we are. We want to change our economy, we want to change our education outcomes for the long haul. In that. I want to add this because I knew coming into this job there were some tricks. There are tricks to the trade. Is there tricks to all trade that, you know, it's like somebody comes in, they take over. At an investment firm, you can either, you can either invest for the long haul or you can probably make some short term investments and make your portfolio look really good for six months and then use that to jump to another job. And one of the things I again told this board when I interviewed was I didn't want the job unless they were willing to do an 8 to 10 year commitment. Because what we needed to do in our state after 50 years of being on the bottom is to, to systemically change things so that for the 2000-30s and beyond we would have a completely different educational system. And, and I, you know, got the job and I think they were very committed to that. So now we're eight years into that and I think we're making that we're turning the ship. But I, but I just want to make, I, I just want people to understand it is a long haul investment. If you see huge short term gains, you probably haven't really done anything to change the system.
- [14:37]
A
Eric, you're talking about a bunch of particular points throughout a large pipeline, but it sounds like you're focused on the full sort of pipeline of the, the production of education, which makes sense when you've been president of ccsso, you know, other state chiefs and you've seen other states work. I'm not asking you to evaluate those. But how common is it to have state chiefs that have a long enough tenure to really rebuild a pipeline?
- [15:06]
B
Yeah, I, unfortunately, and I mean I won't obviously call out any individuals. I think there are a lot of great people who come and go. I don't think it's common enough. I want to, I will Pick on in a good way. One of my neighbors here. So Tennessee, I think is a state done a lot of good work. And we've watched them because they have. They've done this systematic improvement over three governor's administrations, including Democrats and Republicans. I think during that time they've had five state chiefs. So what they've. And all of them have had now we're talking about, you know, period of a couple of decades. So they have shown that you can do it like it can continue from administration to administration. And I think that's one of the things we're looking for. And I'm not ready to leave yet, but I'm in like the top five, you know, term length state chiefs. And so you do have to be thinking about where Governor Ivey's term limited. We know we'll have a new governor this time next year. How do you make that transition from administration to administration? Alabama suffered from that in the past. We would have a new administration come in. Whatever the old administration did, they didn't want to do that just because they wanted to do something new. And of course, education doesn't work that way. You know, we got, we got to have a plan. We have to stick with that plan across multiple years. And, and I think, I think we are seeing that in Alabama. I tell you, our legislature sees that. Um, you know, we'll have a primary and then the election coming up soon. We're already working with those, those folks that are, that are wanting to be governor, their campaign people to say, look, let's talk about what's already going on. So when they come in, they're aware of what we're doing and what the next steps need to be. I mean, we've identified steps that need to be taken into the2030s. We know we are not there yet. We have, there's the next step in the plan and the next step in the next step.
- [17:04]
A
Eric, you have been state chief for a long time, right? I mean, definitely in the, in the upper end of things. Have you improved over your tenure and how have you improved? I'm assuming you're going to say yes, not no.
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B
I have definitely improved. I definitely understand the system better. I will tell you, as, as in all jobs. If only I knew today, if I'd known when I stepped into the role, what I know today, I would have been able to hit the ground running much, much better. So, you know, one, I, I think I did not understand. I thought I did, but I really did not understand the complexity of running a state government. Agency, I think they're all this way there. It's no state governments or they're somewhat bureaucratic. Things do not move slowly. I was shocked. I'd been a local school superintendent, I had run a professional association and I was used to being able to call the shots. And then people moved very quickly. State agencies don't work that way. Like it is a slow process. Once you say we need to do this to get it done. I'll give you a perfect example. In our mathematics work, we've recently identified that there's a certain section. We don't have enough people. We can hire a couple of retirees, not have to pay them benefits. We've identified the people and you know, we need to, we need to get these people on board so we don't lose any momentum. In a local school district, I could have done that in probably two weeks, one week or two weeks. When I was running a private association, I could do it in a day. And in state government that will take me a few months. I mean, once I identify what I need, it takes time because other state agencies have to approve it, not just my agency. Like we have a, you know, we have a state personnel system and there are all these other people. And so you have to be able to see. And this is where I've gotten better at seeing further down the road sooner. Like you can't wait until you need it to act on it. You gotta be thinking, what am I going to need six or eight months from now and go ahead and start moving on those things. And I was not good at that when I first came in, or not as good as I should have been. So I've gotten better about that. I think I have gotten better about listening. So, for instance, working with legislators, we have 140 of them in Alabama, we've got some great legislative leadership. And I say that with all sincerity. I've enjoyed working with our policy chairs, our budget chairs, work with three speakers of the House, have enjoyed working with all of them. Our current speaker is amazing. The pro tem, the Senate. I've worked with multiple pro tems, current one is also them. And it's really good people. But I need to not just go in. They want me to come and tell them what's needed and I do that. But I also need to listen to them like they're hearing from their constituents, they're hearing from parents, from business people. And a part of my job needs to be not just to go over there and talk in hearings and talk in their offices. But just say, well, what are you hearing and what are the concerns that are being raised to you? And so I think I'm becoming a better listener and need to be a better, you know, spend more time listening to constituents. So then we can make sure that what we're doing aligns with what people need. Okay. And sometimes what people think they need is not what they need. But I still need to hear what they're saying. So I can say, I hear you, but actually that's not what we need. Like we don't. I hear you're saying that you've got all these vendors coming to you that didn't get approved, didn't get their textbook approved. And so you're saying, how do we get 12 textbooks on the list? But I'm telling you, we really only need two textbooks. And, and this is why. But see, I have to hear what they're saying so I can help them understand why we only need to.
- [21:22]
A
Eric, I don't want to assume, but you've got that accent of someone who's a long term Alabama. Am I correct on that?
- [21:30]
B
Seven generations my family has lived in the same county. Grew up on Lookout Mountain in northeast Alabama. Very proud of it. Appalachian culture runs deep in my family who immigrated here from Scotch Irish in the 1740s. And yes, I have the accent to prove it. First person in my family to finish college, and I taught high school chemistry and physics for a while before going into school administration. But very proud 7 generation Alabamian.
- [22:05]
A
So I went to college on Lookout Mountain. So we got that in common. I ask when it comes to education, because historically Southern states kind of have been viewed as an education backwater. I mean, 20 years ago, Alabama wasn't sort of the shining star of across the country. Do you think education leadership back, back then was embarrassed by that state of affairs? How'd that come across?
- [22:34]
B
You know, I think that attitudes toward education have changed in Alabama over time. First, again, I'm very proud Alabamian. And people in Alabama do a lot of really good things. And one of them is we believe in really hard work. And. But historically we've been a state where that hard work was true. You know, it was laborious work. So whether that was the timber industry, farming, you know, building ships for World War II, like we were the people who put on their gloves and got it done. And you could do that with limited education for a long time. And so we were able to provide people with, you know, really pretty good standard of living, low cost of living, and the things we Talk about, you know, raising educational levels and all. They weren't as important. I mean, I'm not saying people didn't want their kids to be educated. They didn't. They certainly wanted their kids to do well. But for the most part, you could do really well and you could just. You worked hard to do that. I think people in Alabama probably in the 1990s began to realize, and you know, I was a young teacher in the late 80s, early 90s, in college in the 80s. I started teaching in 92 or something like that. And I think we began to realize that the economies of the future might leave us behind if we didn't catch up. And so we began working really hard. They rewrote our funding system in the 90s. Some things changed to try to move us forward, but. But it was in fits and starts, as I said. It didn't always translate from one administration to the next. And so it has taken us a while to, to get our flywheel turning maybe.
- [24:29]
A
And Eric, a lot of people will think, oh yeah, that's. I kind of get Alabama as, as a state and an economy. But Alabama was also, you know, Huntsville's rocket city. Right? I mean, this is like a major sector of the Alabama economy, particularly around Huntsville is stem, and not only stem, but space focused. That's been that way for a long time. So that tech economy has been part of Alabama for longer than many people will think if they're just leaning on lazy stereotypes.
- [25:04]
B
So Huntsville is a great example. It's obviously been very engaged in the mission to the moon, the Apollo and now the Artemis mission to go back to the moon and eventually to Mars. But a lot when you look at what were native Alabamians doing, were native Alabamians were working on Redstone Arsenal. They were a part of the system. But these main engineers who were coming in to do the work that von Braun brought in, most of them weren't from Alabama. And so I think that's the change. The shift in our mind is like we want to provide the workers, but we also want to provide the mine workers. And that's why we are now talking about embedding computer science. You know, we're going to require every student have a computer science credential or credit before they graduate high school in the2030s. We're giving ourselves our own ramp for that. We're the first state to embed artificial intelligence fully through our computer science program. So we're really the first state that said we're going to require artificial intelligence to Graduate high school according to code.org so. So we're thinking about what are the things we need to do to make sure our students prepared for the future. And we still are preparing people for work. So, again, let me go back to, you know, the Huntsville and Mobile, the far north, far south part of the state. Those two towns largely drive a lot of our economy, and they're doing a lot of building. But what are they building? They're building rockets and they're building submarines and warships that are highly sophisticated. I mean, these things are. They're computers on the water, are computers in the air. And so it's a different kind of work now. Even maintenance work is a different kind of work because it requires a level of computer and engineering sophistication that it did not require 40 or 50 years ago. So we're trying to get ahead of that curve. And again, I think Alabama has always been a good place for businesses to come and invest, but we know it's going to be a different kind of business 10 or 20 years from now, and we want to make sure that we still have the people that they're looking for to invest in.
- [27:17]
A
So, Eric, I talked about how maybe historically, Alabama wasn't a shining city for education America, but there's been a lot of talk about Southern surge, and Alabama's been a big part of that. How much of that do you think is attributable? I mean, the Southern surge itself is attributable to specific policy changes. How much do you think is attributable to this sort of refocusing on academic achievement that you've been discussing?
- [27:49]
B
Yeah, I'm so. I've changed some of my viewpoints to a state chief. I'm much more focused on state directive and less local control than I was when I was a local superintendent.
- [28:01]
A
What do you know?
- [28:02]
B
In my face now, they would see that I'm laughing. I mean, as a local, I was all about local control. Local control. We want to do our own thing. I see from this vantage that we can't move the whole state forward unless we. We have a state plan and we get our locals to buy into it. Does every means. Everybody has to do all the same thing? Of course not. But like we. So for instance, with literacy, we've talked a lot about math. I love to talk about it. But literacy, we, you know, 99% of our districts now, I'm not. I'm making that up. It might be 95%. The vast majority, they use one of two elementary reading curriculum. And. And we don't have 12 curricula out there. We, you know, we've narrowed the focus. We at the state did a, did a double vetting and we came up with, we said these are the two best, these are the two best reading programs out there. They're aligned with the science of reading. And if you're a full supporter, limited support school, you have no choice. You have to buy one of these. Other schools can buy something else, but we highly recommend you don't. Now how that works with alignment is, is now I've got all these, these reading coaches around the state that we're training every summer. I've got regional staff. So when they go into a school, they can go into one of our high, high performing, you know, wealthier schools. They can go into a school in one of the poorest counties in the state. They're going to see teachers with the same textbook, the same teaching material and should be the same quality of professional development behind it. Like they don't have to learn. You know, if I go, I'm going to say 12 different reading programs. There are two reading programs. If I had it my way, would it be one reading program? But I, I'm enough of a free market believer that I don't, I don't think we probably really ought to get down to one thing, but we need to limit it. And then when the vendors and some of them, you know, some of them are my friends that didn't win contracts and some of them were not happy, but like, okay, you gotta, you gotta step up your game then like if you want to, you want to be a part, you have to bring us a better product. We have seen that. We have seen people go, vendors go to the drawing table and say, okay, we're going to come back and re bid on this thing with a better product. And then some that were rejected got improved later in math and reading. So I believe in more state directed, I think, and I think you will see the same thing in Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee. States saying no, we, you know, yes, we value local control, but no, you can't just do what you want to do at the local level. We have to have a state plan. Now here's the thing that's interesting with that. I think most local superintendents and school boards want that too. Like they really do want you to give them a plan, but, but you got to demonstrate that it's the right stuff and how to do it and to give them the money to buy. Don't just say, oh, everybody needs to go buy ABC program, go figure out a way to do it like they want state money to do it. But, but I have found very little pushback. Some pushback, yes, but most, most of our folks want to be a part of a statewide initiative and then I want to stop and say, I do think it stops at the state level, though. I truly don't believe we need to be doing that where we have two textbooks in the whole United States that everybody's using. I don't think that's the right role for the U.S. department of Ed. I think it should be state directed, so have, there's some limit to that. I don't think we need a federal federally directed reading program.
- [31:46]
A
ERIC on the Southern Surge, Alabama's fourth grade math trajectory on NAEP has been, in a word, impressive. Scores rose from 230 in 2022 to 236 in 2024. Six points might not sound like a lot to a lot of folks, but you and I know that's, that's no small feat. What do you think is responsible for that improvement?
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B
But it's that we aligned. I'm telling you, it comes down to, we wrote new standards, we aligned our standards to the NAEP framework. We got a really good assessment that was honest with parents and we still have a gap between, you know, NAEP proficiency and state proficiency. We're aware of that. We want to over time close that too. But we, we give parents a more honest picture of where their students are, give teachers a more honest picture of where their students are. And then we aligned all of our resources to that. We came along, you know, we didn't hire our first statewide Math coaches until 20 for, I guess 24, 25 right after we were giving the last night, last round. So we, we give this next round, we'll have some more benefit. We think we're going to see good results. I cannot predict the results. You know, you may have me back on next year and said, what happened to Alabama? But I think our state data show that, that we're still making pretty good gains and they're steady and they're headed in the right direction. I think we're doing the right things, but I think it's about alignment, we making sure that you have the right alignment. When I was a classroom teacher, I was amazed that the level of autonomy I had to do what I wanted to with my students. And I learned that, you know, if I wanted my students to do really well in state tests, that was back in the days we gave the old Stanford Achievement Test 9 is I needed to know what was on the test and I need to know what the state expected me to teach and how those things were lining up with, with my day to day instruction and I changed my instruction. So I'm going to give you a quick example back then, this is a long time ago, but when I was teaching middle school science, I did my own research. I was in grad school and looking at these things and found out that I needed to be spending. My students were not doing well in reading, reading charts and graph interpreting data in the representative charts and graphs. And that that was heavily tested and it was a big part of our state standards and my students weren't doing well at it. So I made a consistent choice that every week we were going to do at least one activity where my students were putting information in charts and graphs. They were looking at charts and graphs and interpreting them. They were answering questions based on charts and graphs. So I, I'm still teaching science, but I work, I'm adding these things in as methods and, and my students saw remarkable increases through the year because I focused on that. The thing is, a lot of our teachers don't know what they need to be focusing on. So again, alignment, alignment, alignment and helping our teachers get the right resources. Teachers want students to be successful. They just sometimes don't know that what I, the lesson plan I've been using the last 15 years is actually not aligned to what the stakes measuring.
- [35:05]
A
Eric, you, you seem to have a lot of things going the right direction in Alabama. Are there particular areas you are dissatisfied with that? You are saying, hey, this is our weak flank that we gotta shore up if we're gonna keep this going well,
- [35:21]
B
yeah, we gotta do more faster. So we, we have to. We still have a teacher shortage in many parts of the state. An example would be the city of Birmingham. Birmingham's inner city. They're doing some remarkable work. They've been recognized nationally for rising achievement and for lowering absentee rates and chronic absenteeism. But they have this huge teacher turnover and a large number of what we call emergency certified teachers. An emergency certified teacher is somebody who has a college degree, but what they are teaching may not line up with their college degree. So you know, I've got a degree in philosophy and they've hired me to teach, you know, middle school math. So we, we're taking those folks and saying, okay, if you really want to teach this course, then we'll get you back in school. We'll help you get certified in that area and be fully prepared it's obviously better than having an empty classroom or just a sub, but, but we've got to do a better job of getting highly qualified teachers in every classroom. And you know, we're working on that. It means paying better because it's an economic thing. It means recruiting better, trying to give teachers better benefits. You know, we, we've added paternal and maternal leave in the last year. We have added some new workers comp stuff to our portfolio. The legislature this year stepped up big and provided $190 million to in a shortfall for our 10 teacher health insurance program to make sure we had good solid health insurance that was affordable for teachers. So we're trying to think about that on the benefits and how do we bring people in. But a part of it is going to be just recruiting 18 and 19 year olds into public service again and getting our colleges of ed to get those people really prepared to go into the classroom and like families and school discipline and school culture has changed a lot since, you know, when I entered the classroom 30 something years ago, like social media, cell phones, that, that stuff has just changed the world. And so a lot of times we see that teachers step in and they know their subject matter, but they're not really ready to take on the challenges of dealing with today's young people and families. And so we've got to do a better job preparing them so that they don't come in for a year or two and say, oh no, I'm going to work in a bank. This is too much. We got to do a better job of bringing in more late year or late career people too. I do think there's a place we, we've recruited, we've worked on this, we have not found the right answer. But I think there's a group of people out there who realize now that, you know, life expectancy is gone from your 40s to 50s to 70s and soon into the 80s and they finish a career and they're 52 years old and they, they've got a lot left to give. And how do we bring those people in to teach for five years or 10 years? At the end of a career, it's a second career. And we talk about that, but we've not cracked that nut yet. But I think there are literally thousands of people out there that we could bring into the teaching workforce. We got to figure out how to make that connection for them though. And a part of that is, you know, teaching is really hard. They're like, hey, I've raised my own kids, I Don't want to raise other people's kids now, but then I think we can do that. And then internally, you know, we've, we've got to stay focused. There's so much more I want to do with incorporating data science and quantitative learning, computer science into everything we do. So if I can give an example, okay, we're investing a lot in career tech in this state and we're going to continue to do that. But what if a young man or woman goes to learn diesel mechanic? I was in a diesel mechanic classroom a few weeks ago. Boys and girls in there, they love their class. They're breaking down a diesel engine that has some problem, a real diesel engine. Like somebody's brought in a truck and, but I stand around watching them. They're using calipers and devices that you know, young people were using 30 years ago. But mostly what they're doing is running computer diagnostics like they are young computer scientists trying to figure out what's wrong with this truck and, and then fix it. And so we have to embed those kinds of skills into our programs more and more so that, that students are ready to, to, to be, you know, be ready for a future. And I'll give you one more example. You can cut me off. So I was in a machine classroom a few weeks ago, great example in Huntsville, Alabama, their new career tech center. So they, they have this old machine that's the, a metal turning lathe and the teacher has everybody make something on that metal turning lathe. And it's a little project I get to take home. And they know how a lathe works. But the real work they're doing is across the room in a half million dollar computer driven lathe that cuts, you know, tool dies overnight. And so, so the, you know, hand lathes are not much of a thing anymore in industry. Students need to know what the lathe is. But then what they really need to do is know how to program one to do the work. So we, we've got to do a better job of modernizing even those hands on kinds of classes.
- [41:11]
A
Eric, this brings me to something I wanted to ask you about. Alabama has been using the actual as its accountability test in high school. But you've proposed a waiver in which the U.S. department of Education would allow Alabama to use ACT workkeys test results alongside ACT scores to count towards the federal high school academic achievement accountability measure. That's a mouthful. What's the idea here?
- [41:41]
B
So what we are proposing is giving every student both tests. So every student now in Alabama Takes the act. We're proposing adding the work keys to that. And then every student will get an act college readiness score and a career work readiness score. Folks who familiar with workkeys are not familiar. You know, it's in seven levels. There's, they're color coded and numbered. So there's seven levels and, and they're bronze, silver, gold, and then multiple levels of platinum. So what we're proposing is we give everybody every test. Now, for the most part, the students who do well on the act, we've, we've seen this bear out. They're going to do well on workkeys. And students who do poorly on the ACT do poorly on workkeys. Workkeys gives three assessments in basically practical mathematics, a practical applied reading and documents review and answering questions about documents. Work documents. Okay. Now what we found, though, is there is a group of students that do poorly on the ACT, so they may make a 14 and they get no credit currently on our high school accountability, but they do really well on the workkeys and can do even better on workkeys. Workkeys, we know that if somebody graduates with a, you know, silver gold platinum score, they can go into 70,000 to $100,000 jobs. We already have 600 businesses in Alabama that use the workkeys as part of their, their determination system for, for screening and employment. So what we're proposing is give everybody the score. Give high schools some credit on their high school accountability for achievement if a student scores low in act, but they excel on workkeys. So now I've incentivized principals. Now I trust my principals. So I don't want to make them sound bad. But the truth is we all know what gets measured gets done. So what we're saying is, now I can identify this young man or woman who has a low ACT score. They're not interested in going to college. They're probably not going to raise their ACT score from a 14 to a 22. But you know what they're showing? They love their, their ag, their agriculture class. They're showing potential. They can go into a job. I can maybe raise them from a silver to a platinum on the workkeys. And now my high school gets credit for that. Currently, we don't give high schools credit for helping these students pursue their best path in life. And so we've proposed that as a waiver to say, let us add this to our achievement score for high schools. Now, it's important to know we are not talking about doing away with the act. We're still going to give the ACT to every child because we're also going to have that child out there who is in, you know, they're in auto mechanic class. They love working with their hands. Everybody thinks that, you know, she's going to be a mechanic down at the hardware store, which would be a fine career. But then she takes the act and my God, she makes a 28 on the first try. Like, like she's really got a college aptitude that maybe wasn't identified by her family or teachers. And so we want to get that child, we want to make sure that, that she or he knows that they can go to college, they can get scholarships with those kind of numbers. So, so we want every child to take. The ACT will still be our only growth test, by the way. So, you know, like all states, we measure achievement and growth. We'll give the early high school act, then give the full ACT and high schools. So high school, you can't say, well, those principals will quit worrying about the act. No, they can only get growth points if they can raise a child's ACT score and they're going to get the most achievement points by high ACT scores. So we're driving them toward traditional academic achievement, but we're adding onto it a workkey score. To me, you know, I was accused of, well, are you. Well, I went inside. Q's question, Are you just lowering the bar? No, the bar doesn't move because we're keeping everything in place with ACT just as it is. We are broadening the field. We are giving more schools and more children a way to demonstrate proficiency without lowering the bar. So we're very excited about it. We've not, by the way, formally we're working, we're negotiating with the US Department of Ed, but we've not like, formally filed for the waiver. But we do intend to do that within the next few weeks.
- [46:35]
A
And so for, for folks who said, well, Eric, you say it's important not to lose sight on the main thing. How do you say, how do you respond to them when you say, well, you main, main thing is academics. I get that you're still pursuing the academics, but are you losing sight of the main thing?
- [46:53]
B
No, because the main thing is to make sure that all of our students are prepared for success in life in the2030s and beyond. And the act, a great test that I'm a strong supportive of, a supporter of. But it is not the only way to measure whether a student is being successful in high school, nor whether they will be successful after high school. I think that, I think we're using the best tools that we have today. I think if we don't have, and I've said this to act, I've said it to friends at the College Board and others, like, if we don't have better tests and measurements in this country in 10 years, we've, we've fallen way behind because we don't have the best tools right now to really measure student success. But, but we have the best tools we have today. They're certainly better than the tools we had 10 years ago, and they're the ones we're going to use. And we think this is the first step toward, I think, what we're going to see as a broadened view of assessment in the future. And this is, this is a way to take a step in that direction. Now. I don't think we've lost sight of the main thing at all, because the main thing is not just academic achievement. The main thing is success for students.
- [48:17]
A
Eric, the federal government has a choice on the waiver, but they, they could either grant the waiver or not. And Alabama could still require all students take the work keys. Would that be less ideal than if you got the, the waiver?
- [48:33]
B
You know, we might, we've talked about that. If we don't get the wax, we may move forward with our own thing anyway. But here's what I would say to that. I mean, we may do that. I think that there is growing concern among, maybe among state chiefs without speaking for, for others, but, but there's growing concern about there, about the federal role in education and like, you know, should. So very little of our money comes from the federal government. But, but education policy in every state is driven at its core by ESSA and, and Congress. When Congress passed ESSA, they said, oh, by the way, Secretary of Ed. Secretaries, not certainly not just Secretary McMahon, but like we're going to give you the authority to not implement all the things we're telling you. If you find a state that has an innovative idea, that may be something we want to try and experience, experiment with. No secretary has been willing to exercise that authority. I don't blame them because as a person who has waiver authority, I use it very sparingly here in the state. But I think there's more and more pressure to say, you know, we need to try some different things. And then my hope is that when ESSA comes up for reauthorization, and I hope it does, and that at least in the next quadrennial, that we will have some things to report and say, you know, hey, let's, you know, we can actually improve this law, not lower the bar on anybody, but we can do things better and more creatively. We can get better assessments for this country. We. We can measure more than just basic reading and math. So here's an example on that. What we've done here, the essay only requires you to measure reading. Just reading. In Alabama, when I came in as state chief, we rewrote. I told you, we read out standards. I wish I could go on our assessments. Wish I could go in more depth to it. I said, well, we're not just going to test reading. We're not doing the bare minimum. We're going to test English language arts. So we've added listening skills into our standards and assessment. We've got. We test grammar, we test comprehension. It's not just reading. We are testing the whole battery of English language arts. Writing also, all the way through. We do writing all the way through our grades. We added more years. We don't have to start testing till third grade. We started testing in second grade, and we added more science. We don't have to do science, but four times, twice, you know, in K through 8, and then. And then once in high school, we do it. We added another assessment. So we do it in all the even years. So second, fourth, before sixth, eighth grade. So. So not second, but fourth, sixth, and eighth. So we don't just have to do the bare minimum. But I think my recommendation when essa's re redone is we need to focus more on science. We need to have, you know, we have. Need to have actually more assessments now. We need to do it in a way that is as time sensitive as possible. But I think that's some things we've learned. So, you know, I'm hoping. I'm hoping for the best and hoping we get our waiver.
- [51:48]
A
All right, Eric, it's time for grade it. You were a teacher in middle school and high school. I need. I need a grade and a brief explanation. Are you ready?
- [51:55]
B
Okay.
- [51:56]
A
State. Cell phone bands.
- [51:58]
B
Cell phone bands. An A on cell phone bands. Cell phones should not be in school. Bail to bail. I'm for it all the way.
- [52:06]
A
And. And how's it been in Alabama? Alabama's got one. How popular?
- [52:11]
B
Easy. Yeah. Well received by teachers. Well received by students. Not as well received by parents.
- [52:19]
A
Theodore Roosevelt.
- [52:21]
B
Hey. Always one of my favorite presidents. One of my favorite things to do when I get 10 extra minutes in Washington is to take a cab to Lincoln or to the Kennedy center, walk across the bridge and walk around Theodore Roosevelt island and read his quotes.
- [52:38]
A
Amazing man, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
- [52:42]
B
Also an A Cousins, fifth cousins, great guy. And even though one was Republican, one was a Democrat, they both, you know, came of age in this kind of limited progressive reform. And maybe, you know, some of those reforms didn't work as well, but I think they understood the balance between maintaining free markets and a free society. And, but also having enough oversight that you made sure everybody could participate in the free markets and free society.
- [53:15]
A
I'm not trying to get you in trouble here, Eric, but state education board meetings,
- [53:22]
B
well, I will tell you that mine have gotten a lot better. So I'm going to say they've gone from, from a C, low B to an A because our board has gotten much more focused through the years. We used to have board meetings that would go on and on and on for hours. And sometimes at the end of the day, I would say, what have we accomplished? But it was nobody's fault. It was a system that I had inherited. And we, we said, you know, we got to have more focus meetings. We got to talk about the things that matter and then. And then go home. And so we've gotten much more concise board meetings. Our governor. I told you, Governor's president of the board that in, in Alabama in the past mostly that's been just kind of cursory passing governors. We come to a board meeting once a year or something, and this governor comes and she runs the meeting and she makes sure we stay focused and we move on.
- [54:17]
A
Civics education in Alabama as it is right now.
- [54:21]
B
As it is right now, I'm going to give us a C. I think we're average. I don't think we're where we need to be. I think we have really good standards. We adopted new standards last year. We're in the process now adopting new textbooks. There's some really good textbooks out there. There's some I still have some concerns about, but. But I think I give us a
- [54:43]
A
C.
- [54:46]
B
But I, I would give us an A for where we're headed. I really do believe we, we. We've got the right people in place and we're moving there.
- [54:54]
A
We're. We're at the 2 50th, just generally across the nation. Are we focusing enough on civics now? Are we just sort of letting that shrivel on the vine while we focus on other highly tested subjects? How would you handicap it?
- [55:09]
B
Okay, well, that goes back to my thing about we need to rewrite essa. I think that going way back to no Child Left Behind. I think it was a mistake. No Child Left behind did a lot of great things, but it was a mistake to boil things down to testing reading and math because what happened is you saw other things start to fall away. And, and to some degree, maybe civics is one of those things. But. But I don't think that's. I tell you what. So civics is not where it needs to be in this country. But you can't blame all of that, not you. We can't blame all of that on public schools. We have a civic crisis in this country when we go to the, you know, we're talking about going the polls. We've got a primary election here May 19, and my friends that work in that industry tell me that we will be lucky to get 20 to 24% of eligible voters out to vote. I have never missed a vote. I vote municipal elections, runoff elections. If there's an election, I go vote and I tell young people that all the time. Like, like this is. Most of the people in the history of the world have not had the opportunity to walk into a polling place and choose their leaders and their policies. And most of the people in the world still don't have that opportunity. And when that use an opportunity, a right that you have, you should never ever choose not to do it.
- [56:36]
A
Squirrel hunting.
- [56:37]
B
Squirrel hunting was fun when I was a kid. I don't do it anymore, but I would give it an A when I
- [56:42]
A
was a boy and growing up. Was your family hunters?
- [56:46]
B
We were not. No. We would squirrel hunt. Take a.22 rifle in the woods. Mostly we just shot trees, but. But I've never been much of a deer hunter. It's a big thing around. My brother's a big hunter. My brother in law is a big hunter. I do not have the patience to sit and wait on a deer to cross my path.
- [57:04]
A
I admit I aspire to it more than actually achieve it. This is a tough one. Pretend it's the year 2031 grade. The effects of AI on high school education in Alabama.
- [57:20]
B
Ooh, God, that is a hard one. I think it's going to be a mixed bag, so I'm going to give it a C. I hope for more than that, but I think we're going to make the AI is going to give us an opportunity to do some things we've never done before. It's going to be very helpful to a lot of industries. But. But I think we're going to make so many state mistakes between now and 20, 31, to do things that, like bringing cell phones into school. I can remember when everybody thought, oh, my God, wouldn't it be great if every child has a cell phone they could bring to school every day? And now we're like, oh, no, no, no, no. Wish we hadn't done that. So I just foresee we're going to make mistakes and have to kind of muddle our way through this thing. So I'd probably say we're going to be average. See?
- [58:04]
A
All right. Thanks for the grades, Eric. One of my main interests is in research is chronic absenteeism. Post pandemic absenteeism. It's been rough across the country. During the pandemic in Alabama, your rates didn't go up nearly as much as other states. Last school year, Alabama's was by far the closest to its pre pandemic trends. Alabama, according to my numbers, has the lowest rate in the country. What's been your approach and how hard is it from a state to affect student attendance?
- [58:42]
B
It's very hard to affect, and our approach has been at best, scattershot shotgun. Do everything, do everything and, you know, see what sticks. So we, you know, the things that have been most effective, though, working really closely with our juvenile court system and district attorneys, actually, we've got some really good juvenile judges and district attorneys that have helped us. We have a program here called Helping Families Initiative that's actually run out of the DA's office as a state, state agency. We share data with them. It is one thing to get a call from your principal that says, hey, you need to get your kid in school. It's a different thing to get a letter from the district attorney telling you that your child's missing school too much and you need to come to the district attorney's office and explain why. Because I've talked to some of those parents and it wakes them up. And so we do that. You know, now we're not out throwing parents in prison or something, but trying to make it clear to them that it's important. We've, we've done some really good partnerships like Birmingham City to work with the housing authority. The housing authority doesn't want young people just sitting around at home during the day either. So they've done some light lotteries to say, hey, if your parent, your kids have perk attendance, then we will, we'll give you a door prize. You know, it's so. I mean, it's been scattershot. Like, what are all the things we can do? But the main thing now is I think that we are hammering the message home that it's important to be in school. It's important to be in school on time. And every day, every time I get on the air and they ask me, is there one other thing you want to add? You know, TV people always say, is there anything else we haven't asked you? I say yes, is parents need to be reading to their kid every night and they need to have their child in school every day on time. Those are important.
- [60:34]
A
Eric, you mentioned that when it comes to textbooks, you don't think the federal government should be leaning in much on that. As a state chief, how much do you depend on the U. S. Department of Education? I mean, just how much influence does the department have on schools in Alabama?
- [60:56]
B
Well, I mean, it's not as much as people would think, but we do come back to, you know, especially with ESSA and with idea, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. I mean, those acts have a lot of influence over what happens in the classroom each and every day. And they should, like every child obviously has a disability. We need to do extra work to make sure that they can participate fully in the school program and succeed. But at the same time, I think that one of the struggles with those two laws is that they are so huge, so comprehensive that at the school and classroom level, sometimes they get reduced to a check sheet because it's easiest to have a check sheet and to say, I have checked off all the things I'm required to do. So they're not, they don't always encourage innovation, they encourage compliance. And that's what I'm hoping we see as a long term change of the U.S. department of Ed is that it becomes a place that's more about innovation than compliance. And that's hard. And look, the further you are from the classroom, the more difficult it is. And that's why I think we need less and less and less federal education control. I mean, I would be all about if Congress ever really could say, we're just going to send the state's money and we, we trust you and we expect you to spend it to improve education, but we are not going to send a bunch of strings attached to it. I think that would be ideal. And let the states drive education. It is a 10th amendment issue.
- [62:37]
A
And so when President Trump's repeatedly saying, well, we got to return education to the states directionally, I hear you saying, that sounds great. How big of a problem does that solve? I mean, that's, that's part of my question. Like, is this.
- [62:53]
B
Yeah, so it doesn't change anything. I don't want to challenge the president too much on this, but so, so, like, part of the requirement, the waiver option, and then one of the things we're looking at is you can collapse title programs. Okay, so, so you can, you know, to put it in a very simple sense, like collapse your, your Title four and Title three funds into Title one. But all the rules, everything you're required to do under Title three and four and two, like, they don't go away. You still have to do all these things. It's just you've said we're not going, we're going to move the money somewhere else. Well, you know, what I keep getting back from local superintendents, federal programs directors, people from across the state and everywhere is like, like, we can't. It sounds good on paper, but as long as all the rules and the reporting and the requirements are the same, then what good does it actually do us just to collapse things? And probably it will do us some good because we'll, we'll. We're going to be able to get some efficiencies there. But that's where, I mean, I'm talking about rewriting ESSA and re, rewriting. Rethinking idea in ways that are more innovative, less compliance driven. I'm probably going to be in a lot of trouble after this podcast. I may be calling and asking you for a job. So.
- [64:13]
A
So, Eric, you are president of ccsso. You have conversations, rub shoulders with other state chiefs around the country. How, how consistent is your view and your perspective across the country? I mean, is this a red state, blue state kind of divide, or is it actually something that all state chiefs are sort of singing from the same hymnal on?
- [64:40]
B
I think it's pretty consistent. And I will tell you this of state chiefs, that is that when we get together as a group and the doors are closed, it is the least partisan group I've ever been a part of. Like, it doesn't matter if you come from a red state or a blue state. Some are elected, so they're elected Democrats, elected Republicans. Some are appointed like myself. Some are appointed directly by governors and serve on their cabinets. So. So some have to be much more partisan at home than others do. But, but when we close the door, the discussions are not about partisanship. Like, it is the most bipartisan group I've ever been a part of. I would like to think that when you close the doors, the US Senate and the House are also very, you know, act that way, but I'm not sure they do. I, I think we need a lot more of that folks talking about solutions, not about problems.
- [65:37]
A
So I'm hearing state chiefs for Congress. Is that what I'm hearing?
- [65:41]
B
I don't know about that. I think our group, we're all like, hey, hey, just leave us alone. Let us run our, let us run our systems.
- [65:49]
A
Eric, you have a big data science initiative in Alabama. You've made mentioned it briefly. Can you just give us the 90 second pitch on what that data science initiative is?
- [66:02]
B
Does it matter if a child's going to be a diesel mechanic or a welder or a computer scientist or a physician in the future? They're going to have to be able to look at and interpret data faster than they ever have before. They are going to have new tools thanks to artificial intelligence. But we do not need artificial intelligence making final decisions for us. We need it to help feed in data, we need it to help filter data. But then we need humans who are able to interpret that data and make good decisions. And so that's why we want all of our students to have data science experience.
- [66:40]
A
And is the data science course content going to replace maybe some other science or math courses? Does it go alongside them? What's the vision?
- [66:48]
B
I think it goes alongside it. We're mostly embedding it into, into mathematics courses because that's, I mean, that's what math is. Math is a, it's a system of logic and we, you know, we sometimes like to reduce it to adding and subtracting and, you know, calculus and algebra, but it's really a system of logic. And when you understand what's behind the mathematics and you understand the data that are involved. And we're talking about, you know, I mentioned about charts and graphs. We're talking about students being able to read charts and graphs, being able to look at, you know, a stock market returns over six months and understand some things about what that actually means. And, and that's in everything. But I'm just saying those data are going to come at us so much faster in the future. We're going to have to make decisions about the data faster than we ever have before.
- [67:43]
A
What do you say to folks who, who might say, look, 10 or 15 years ago everybody was saying every kid needs to learn how to code. They all got to learn how to code. Now coding jobs are actually, you know, they're waning. Do you worry about something similar happening with the data science push?
- [68:01]
B
No, because again, even though, let's say coding is a, you know, AI does a lot of the coding now and it's going to probably do more and more, but still a young person or a person who's mid age who understands what coding is, they are going to be a better worker, a better, better citizen, better, you know, better able to contribute to their company or the society than somebody who doesn't even know what coding is like. I just know it's a word. So that knowledge base still matters. We, we need people who are understanding it. Here's a perfect example. I heard a statistic, but I'm going to repeat, but I won't say where I heard it because I don't, I haven't been able to verify it, but I heard it from a really good source that, that there's a huge group of young people age 20 to 35 that are in debt to some level with online sports betting. Now if you understand data science, and I won't give the number because if you understand data science, you will not go put a lot of money into online sports betting because I guarantee you the house is going to win more than you most of the time some people would be big winners, but if the house is not going to be the winner most of the time, the house will quit allowing people to bet. So, so just understanding what that means could maybe help a lot of young people not get involved in, in this kind of online gaming like we, they have to, I don't think sometimes they, they understand the data behind things like that.
- [69:36]
A
Yeah, indeed. They might just ask if, if a lot of people were winning a lot of money against the house, the house would close up. And so any houses that are still there, you're going to lose to. But I, I digress. You know, last question about this is about teachers. It's tough to get, you know, you have trouble attracting teachers in some places. Teachers have to learn how to incorporate this data science. How big of a hill is it to climb to get Alabama teachers to be ready to teach this data science in high school?
- [70:12]
B
Well, so our, our teachers, we're, we are embedding it in work that's already there. We're not asking people to go back and get recertified. And we actually have a waiting list. We teachers want this information. I think they find it helps engage students and it helps students again be more successful in, in math and science, but also in other things. I mean, understanding data makes you a better literature teacher. So I think that, you know, I don't think it's going to be hard to get most teachers to buy into it now to find time for it. That's a problem that we have. We've seen that because we've asked teachers to go back and be retooled in teaching reading. Now we're asking them to be retooled and other things. And especially if they're a middle school or elementary teacher and they have like, they're teaching multiple subjects. We are asking a lot of our teachers and I think that is a growing problem for educators, education leaders like myself, like, how do we not overwhelm people? But I think data science is something that if we give it a little time again, if I could snap my fingers, everybody would be trained by next fall. But, but that's not realistic. So if we give it some time, I think most people want to be trained in it.
- [71:25]
A
Eric, Alabama's had significant success on a number of measures. How much potential does the state's education system still have?
- [71:36]
B
We have a lot of potential because we, if we can keep it going, and we can, but we got to keep the political system focused on it. I think I'm going to make a prediction. By 2040, you're going to see Alabama consistently in the top 25 in academic performance. You're going to see Alabama consistently being a place where businesses want to locate because we're going to continue to have a really good business client climate, a really good tax structure, a great place to live, a place where people still speak to you on the street. They don't look at the ground. People go to church on Sunday and, and find that, you know, Rotary Club is important. I mean, we're, we're basic salt of the earth people. But we want a better future for our young people. And so I think, you know, 15 years from now, people are going to turn around and, and talk about wind. Now by then I'll probably be walking on a cane and I'll, I'll be glad to answer questions. But I, I am very positive and very robust and bully about Alabama's future.
- [72:46]
A
Thanks for listening to the Report Card with Nat Malkus. And special thanks to our guest, Eric Mackey. Also thanks to our producer, Ellie Lucas. He makes this podcast possible. That's it for this episode. I'm Nat Malkus.
- [73:11]
B
Sa.