Hello and welcome to a special episode of the Pioneer Institute's Learning Curve podcast.

My name is Ian Rowe. I am a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,

and also a founder of Vertex Partnership Academies,

a virtues-based international baccalaureate Public charter high school in the Bronx.

This is a special episode because I get the pleasure of interviewing Stephen Wilson.

For those listeners who haven't been familiar with Stephen's work, Stephen, a true pioneer.

For those of us who have worked in the school world for many years,

Stephen was a trailblazer and made it possible for many of us to be able to do the work that we have done

in launching public charter schools and learning from his work.

Stephen is a senior fellow at the Pioneer Institute, and he is the founder and former

CEO of the Ascend Charter Network, which he grew into a network of 15 schools of more than

a hundred million dollar organization, educating primarily low-income students, more than 5,000 students in Central

Brooklyn, and Stephen graced us all with a new book entitled The Lost Decade,

Returning to the Fight for Better Schools in America.

Stephen, welcome.

I'm so excited to be able to talk with you about the book.

Yeah, and it's wonderful to be back with you. Excellent, excellent. And I've had the pleasure of

actually speaking with you about the Lost Decade before. For those of you who have not had a chance

to read it, I strongly encourage you to do so because it takes a very sobering look at what has transpired in the education reform movement, particularly the No Excuses movement that unfortunately went down a path of woke ideology and anti-intellectualism.

And Stephen, maybe, you know, spend just maybe 30, 60 seconds on just the quick synopsis on the history.

Because my hope actually is for this conversation to pivot a bit, not only to look backwards of what we both experienced and I can share my stories as well,

of looking at some of the downfall of some of the best institutions, best charter school networks

...