Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

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Today's February 18, 2020, and my guest is journalist author and former teacher Robert Pondissio of the Thomas Before to Institute, where he is the senior fellow.

He is the author of how the other half learns equality, excellence, and the battle over school choice. Robert, welcome to e-con talk.

Thanks, Russ.

This book is about a controversial set of charter schools in the New York City area under the direction of Eva Mosquitz called the Success Academy.

And I just want to say up front that I was deeply moved by the book. I learned a lot from the book. And most of all, I thought it was just wonderful how thoughtful the book is in finding nuance and how.

And what we can learn from the experience that you had spending a year in a particular school in this chain of charter schools.

But I want to start with your story first, a little bit about it. You used to be a school teacher, how did that happen and what happened?

I still am. I teach part time to this day at a charter school called Democracy Prep in Harlem one day a week. I teach civics. But no, I was a mid career switcher. I had a whole other life in the magazine business that worked for time and business week.

And what I now describe candidly as a mid career impulse purchase. I signed up to be an inner school, an inner city school teacher in the South Bronx under a program called the New York City Teaching Fellows.

How old are you?

I'm 39. So so genuinely mid career, not like the 24 and 25 year olds who were in the program who had one other job out of college.

But no, I signed up to do two years of teaching fifth grade at a school called PS277 in the South Bronx. Two years turned into five education kind of became unwittingly my second career.

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