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 is March 26th, 2020, and my guest is journalist and author Sarah Carr.

She writes on education and is the education team leader for the Boston Globe.

And she's the author of Hope Against Hope, three schools, one city and the struggle to educate America's children,

which is our topic for today.

I want to thank Plantronics for the Blackwater 5220 headset that Sarah's using for this interview.

Sarah, welcome to Econ Talk.

I'm really happy to be here with you.

In November of 2019, I interviewed Terry Mao about how Hurricane Katrina brought change to the New Orleans school system,

creating a network of charter schools, and Terry was very supportive of that change, thought it was very effective,

although fell short of what it could be, but he's definitely a champion of that change.

And more recently, I spoke to Robert Pondicio,

for Econ Talk about his book, How the Other Half Learns, which is the story of Eva Mosquitz and the Success Academy in New York City.

In a few weeks, I'll be interviewing Diane Ravich about her new book, Slane Goliath.

And I hope that these episodes with your Sarah and maybe some more down the road,

will give listeners of myself a rich set of perspectives to consider when thinking about charter schools and education reform.

So let's start with what you did to write your book Hope Against Hope, which you wrote by the way, I think around 2012 and began writing in 2010.

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