Hello and welcome to another episode of The Learning Curve.

I'm Helen Baxendale, your guest co-host today, and I'm joined by Shaka Mitchell.

Shaka, nice to have you with us.

Hey, Helen, it's great to be here.

Shaka, will you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

I know you've been a guest

host once or twice before, but just for anyone who's not had the privilege of your company before,

could you tell us where you're based and what you work on? Sure thing. So I am a senior fellow at the

American Federation for Children. We are the nation's voice for school choice, and I'm based in Nashville,

Tennessee. And we really just

spend every day thinking about how we can make sure all kids have meaningful access to the

educational fit that meets their needs. That's what we're about. Thanks, Jack. It's great to be with you.

Let's start as we customarily do with our review of the stories of the

week. And I came across one by a guy called Joseph Fideriti, who I believe is a, I think he's a

city of New York public policy professor, but it looks like he's got a forthcoming book tracking the

history of charter schools in

school choice and is a little bit despondent, particularly about the support for the charter school

movement, which he sees is kind of fracturing both on the left and on the right, which I think

as advocates for school choice broadly probably concerns us

both. But I'd be interested in your thoughts on this. For those interested in both the story and the

book, the story I'm mentioning appears in education next and starts off with an interesting kind of

recounting of how the Democratic coalition and support for charter schooling

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