GO Tutor Corps’ Michael Duffy on Charter Public Schools & High-Dosage Tutoring

The Learning Curve Michael Duffy

[00:00:00] Alisha Searcy: Welcome back to the Learning Curve podcast. I’m one of your co-hosts and senior fellows, Alisha Thomas, and glad to be back with my other co-host. Welcome back, Dr. Cheng. What’s going on, Alisha? All is well. It is spring and I’m so pleased that the winter is gone. It’s beautiful outside and my daughter graduates from high school this weekend.

[00:00:42] Albert Cheng: All right. I guess there’s, it’s a big weekend with celebration.

[00:00:46] Alisha Searcy: Yes, absolutely. We have almost 20 people coming to the graduation and a nice party afterwards. We’re just super excited for Layla and glad that we made it to this moment.

[00:00:58] Albert Cheng: That’s right, that’s right. And correct me if I’m wrong, this is your first right that’s gone through?

[00:01:05] Yes. Yes. Alright. Congratulations on on making it that far. I guess I’ve got a ways to go, but I’m pretty sure you’re gonna tell me time is gonna fly.

[00:01:14] Alisha Searcy: Yes, it does, but it’s, it’s also, you put the time and you put the years in it, you know? So I definitely can feel both. And I will tell you, Albert, I’ve been making a list of all the things I don’t have to do anymore.

[00:01:27] At least for her. At least for her, yes. I’m looking forward to, and I’m very excited for her and just. Congrats to all of those parents out there who have kids graduating from going from elementary to middle school, middle school to high, leaving high school, going to college, college graduation, all of the things.

[00:01:44] Congrats to all of the graduates of class of 2025.

[00:01:48] Albert Cheng: Well said, and And that’s such a great reminder, I think. Yeah. We really gotta mark these moments for our kids and just kind of pause and and reflect. Yeah,

[00:01:57] Alisha Searcy: we do. And so speaking of that, let’s jump into our stories for the week. We’re talking about schools, and it made me think of the story that I wanna talk about.

[00:02:08] A Missouri study shows nearly 80% of teachers consider leaving education in the last few years. And I saw another story sometime this week that that number may be going down since Covid, but I think the bottom line is that 80% is pretty staggering. And so as we celebrate all that students are doing, I think it’s a good reminder of how we cannot forget.

[00:02:34] The people who are the closest to students and on the front lines in education, we talk about this stuff, you know, weekly, daily. Mm-hmm. But I don’t think we talk enough about what teachers are experiencing in classrooms these days. I’ve never been a teacher, but I have led a network of public charter schools, and so I’ve been in the business of hiring teachers, hiring principals, making sure that teachers have what they need and.

[00:02:59] For me, teachers are at the heart of so much of what we do, and in this particular story, it’s talking about some research that was done. Most of the respondents were from Missouri. But I think it’s, you know, I think we can safely say that teachers all over the country are feeling this, but overwork, underpay student behaviors and the lack of administrative support are the top reasons for leaving the field.

[00:03:24] Mm. You know Dr. Cheng, what’s interesting to me is that I served an office many years ago, but I don’t feel like these issues are vastly different than what they were in the early two thousands, mid two thousands. This is not anything new, and so the question that I have is like, why aren’t we doing something about it?

[00:03:46] I will say that something new that this article does point out. It’s talking more about mental health, that if teachers’ mental health is not in a good place and they’re feeling stressed and overburdened, that it has an impact on, of course, how they’re connecting with students. I don’t think we talk enough about that.

[00:04:08] How they’re managing the classroom, if they have the ability to have relationships with students, and that then has an impact on whether students want to come to school. Yeah. And so I think we really need to pay attention. Yes, we’ve gotta pay attention to the instructional pieces that those are critical, but we also need to think about.

[00:04:27] What teachers are experiencing every day, if they are stressed out. If they are overworked, how is that impacting their ability to provide high quality instruction to build relationships with students? And so, you know, I could go on and on and on. I think the bottom line here is we need to pay attention to what teachers are saying.

[00:04:47] If 80% of them have thought about leaving the profession, that ought to sound the alarm for us. The question is, what are we going to do about it? Yeah.

[00:04:57] Albert Cheng: Well, you know, it’s funny, you, you bring this story up. I was just actually just reading Robert Pio, you know, our, our friend Substack and he talks exactly about this and so, well, in the interest of time, I guess we can’t get into the whole Substack, but he was talking about a recent exchange he had with a few teachers about the need for support and how it’s, it’s not an impossible task.

[00:05:17] But it is very hard and all that to underscore the need for, for lots of support. You know, I’ll say just to, you know, brag a little bit about some of the stuff that’s going on in our state here in Arkansas. I mean, probably know, you know, we’ve got major education reform that’s been underway under our Secretary of Education, Jacob Liva, and this is Governor Sarah Sanders is.

[00:05:36] Big education reform plan, the Learns Act that she put together. And you know, one of these things, I mean, talk about being underpaid. One of them here, you know, we’ve raised the minimum teacher salary to $50,000 with uh Oh, that’s great. Increases and, but you know, also talking about supports and anyway, we’ve talked about literacy instruction a ton.

[00:05:53] You know, that’s another centerpiece of. What’s going on here in the States. And so there are resources to hire many, you know, an army really, of literacy tutors and coaches. And so, you know, we’ll just have to see how, how all this investment pans out in the next few years. But yeah, anyway, as you were talking it.

[00:06:13] These other things are happening in my stay here came to mind. And so we’ll see. I mean, a lot of resources are being put to help and teachers and support them. You know? I hope it works out.

[00:06:23] Alisha Searcy: Yes. And I appreciate you mentioned that. ’cause I think it’s so important to highlight where things are going. Well, and to your point about resources, one of the things that the article points out is that teachers do have access to resources.

[00:06:35] The problem is do they actually take advantage of them? Mm-hmm. When they’re overwhelmed with so many other things, so. That’s right. That’s right. And

[00:06:43] Albert Cheng: that’s exactly a note that Rob CIO wrote his substack, you know, he was talking to a teacher who was, you know, was making it. And you know, in, in his exchange with her, he’s basically, you’re validating my point that you’re making it and you’re here at this event, but how many other teachers aren’t able to make it to this kind of an event To get professional training?

[00:07:00] To get support. Yeah. So it’s who we don’t see that. I think we need to take a closer look at, I think. Exactly. Well, actually, let me real quick go over the story that I found. I know we’re, we want to get to our guest here, but speaking of resources and support, I think a lot of you who listened to this program are probably paying attention to everything going on at the federal level.

[00:07:20] I, we know we’ve got a huge bill being debated with, with lots of budgetary and financial implications. Certainly they bear on education. The article I, I found was Charters pressed for Space in the Reconciliation Debate. And you know, Alisha, we’ve talked a bunch about the challenge. Challenges that charter schools face in terms of accessing resources to get capital, get buildings right to seed, to see big projects that are really gonna help them be sustainable over the long term.

[00:07:49] And so anyway, just to give a brief rundown, the US Department of Education, they’re gonna. Pump an additional $60 million into the charter schools program. And so this is gonna kind of expand the, the resources that are available to do those kinds of big kind of capital projects. But there’s still more, I mean there are a lot of ideas out there.

[00:08:08] There’s a push for tax credit program to just as a way to, to kind of seed more money to help charter schools even moscowitz. I think what we’ve had on the show before, if I’m not mistaken, is um. Those who are familiar with her? No, she, she runs a, a Success Academies, you know, high quality charter network in, in New York.

[00:08:27] Mm-hmm. So she’s kind of been involved in pushing for some of this as well. So I just wanna give a, a brief update on just some of what’s going on in our nation’s capital that might have some bearing on education reform and what’s going on. So, anyway, I’ll throw it back to you.

[00:08:42] Alisha Searcy: That is so important and I’m glad to see that schools are getting more resources.

[00:08:46] It’s certainly, I think with charter schools the biggest challenge that they face, either access to facilities or the resources to pay for those facilities. Yeah, so that’s a huge boom. So thank you for that story. Great stories, great discussion, and I’m excited about our guest for today. So stay tuned.

[00:09:04] We’ll hear from Michael Duffy. He’s the president of Go Tutor Corps in New York City. We’ll be right back.

[00:09:23] Michael Duffy is a president of Go Tutor Core, whose mission is to give students access to a quality education through high dosage tutoring. Duffy had previously worked at the New York City Department of Education under the leadership of Chancellor Joel Klein during the Bloomberg administration. Prior to that, he worked in Boston at two different high schools, one startup the other, a turnaround of a troubled school.

[00:09:50] I. Duffy also served in the governor’s cabinet as the director of the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, where he oversaw the division of Banks, the division of Insurance, and the Department of Public Utilities. He earned a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government and Harvard University, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Trinity College in Connecticut with a degree in economics.

[00:10:14] Michael, we’re super excited to have you, so thank you for joining us.

[00:10:18] Michael Duffy: Great to be here. Thank you for having me.

[00:10:20] Alisha Searcy: Sure. So let’s jump in. In the 1990s and early two thousands, you worked in Massachusetts State government under Governor Bill Weld, and then in Boston Charter Public Schooling. Would you talk to our listeners about some of your background, your formative education, and how you became interested in public service, public management, and then K 12 school reform?

[00:10:43] Michael Duffy: Sure. You know one thing like you, I was a candidate for office in 1998 and also in 1990. In 1990, I ran for state rep. In 1998, I ran for statewide office in Massachusetts for the position of state auditor. The idea of public service has been, you know, something that has attracted me since I was a kid. I went to the Kennedy School.

[00:11:10] And received a Master’s in public policy degree and loved the idea of a place that you could go to that focuses on these kinds of questions. My, my default would’ve been going to law school, and I remember being in college and my advisor told me about this program at Harvard. I thought, oh, that’s, that’s exactly what I want to do.

[00:11:32] And, you know, I was in, in school. In higher ed in the late 1980s, early 1990s, and there was just a lot bubbling around in terms of the energy in choice and free markets and reform in education. And it’s when the idea of charter schools was born. And I remember being really compelled by the idea that the state shouldn’t have a monopoly on running.

[00:12:02] Education and that parents should have choice and that the act of choosing could be a powerful engine for change. So that’s a long-winded answer to your question, but I hope that it’s responsive to what you wanted to know.

[00:12:15] Alisha Searcy: Absolutely. It’s perfect. Helped us. Helped us to understand, I couldn’t agree with you more during the early 1990s, the book Reinventing Government, how the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector by David Osborne and.

[00:12:30] Ted Gaber became almost required reading for reform oriented governors like Bill Weld in Massachusetts, bill Clinton, Arkansas, and Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin. Can you discuss the spirit of state driven reform and innovation during this period and what we can learn from it today?

[00:12:49] Michael Duffy: That book was a Bible for me.

[00:12:50] I had two roles working in part of the Weld administration in Massachusetts during the nineties. The first was as the chair and commissioner of the State’s Civil Rights Enforcement Agency. The second was as the director of the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, and in both positions.

[00:13:13] Reinvented Government was a reference book for me to come back to time and again. The lesson that I remember the most clearly from that book was that the role of government was to steer and not ro. And that government could set the broad parameters and that there are a lot of ways to achieve objectives.

[00:13:37] Public-private partnerships, privatization, incenting people in various ways that they describe in that book. And I tried to incorporate those. In my work, both at the Civil Rights Commission and at the Office of Consumer Payers and Business Regulation. So one of the big sort of initiatives of the Wealth Administration when it came to business regulation was deregulation, was applying those concepts to the regulatory framework for public utilities, for banking, for other areas that came under the umbrella.

[00:14:13] Of consumer affairs. It was exciting times. I think, you know, specifically for education reform, we saw what was coming outta the Midwest, out of Wisconsin and Minnesota, where the first couple of reformers, mm-hmm. In Milwaukee and in the state of Minnesota with a, a charter statute. And it was one of the things that really inspired.

[00:14:38] I think Governor Weld and a lot of us who are a part of that administration, it led to the elements that got captured. I. And were incorporated in the statute, the language for the statute that created charters in Massachusetts. It was, you know, Steven Wilson, who’s very much was one of the intellectual sort of leaders of the administration and may have even drafted some of the language, you know, former Pioneer Institute staffer and then weld administration exec.

[00:15:11] And so the idea of saying social entrepreneurs of Massachusetts, teachers, parents, business leaders, if you’ve got an idea for a school that’s different than the alternatives that you currently have and you think you can do better, here’s the process you can go through to get your school approved, created, and funded, and so that the funds would follow the kids.

[00:15:40] So that if a child was at, you know, a Boston Public School in Dorchester and they enrolled at a charter in the same neighborhood, the dollars that would otherwise have gone to that school would then go and follow that child. Very exciting idea and created what I think is arguably one of the best, strongest charter sectors in the country, given the, the strength of that statute and the real support that the sector had to grow and to get off the ground.

[00:16:11] But I think to go back to your original question, reinvent government, what can we learn from it today? I think that that admonition to steer and not row is a good one. There is a role for the government to sort of set the parameters, but to the extent possible to try and tap and unleash energies. Of others, the private sector in particular, to serve and to allow choice and competition to be drivers of excellence.

[00:16:45] Because as those of us who subscribe to cable and don’t have. You know, lots of alternatives. We know what kind of service you get when there’s one cable provider.

[00:16:56] Albert Cheng: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:57] Michael Duffy: We also know what happens when there are multiple choices that people have. All of a sudden, folks get on their toes. So at one point I left Massachusetts and went to work for the administration of Michael Bloomberg.

[00:17:12] When he was the mayor of New York City and Joel Klein was his school chancellor, and I was head of the charter school office. And one of the things that Klein and Bloomberg were very clear on, they were agnostic as to what form a school took. It could be a charter. It could be a regular district run school.

[00:17:36] The prime consideration for them was meeting parent choice and demand and performance. And if a regular New York City public school was underperforming, they would close it. And if a charter school was underperforming and as head of the charter office, I closed. Or performing schools, so I know this to be true.

[00:17:59] I participated in that. And so their idea and their interpretation, I think of the reinventing government mantra was a portfolio of schools that included both charter. And district run schools and government sort of setting those conditions saying, we’ve got these assets, we’ve got these school buildings.

[00:18:22] They should be available to any school in New York, charter or district. So some of the. High performing networks in New York have very much taken advantage of that did in the two thousands, 2000 tens during Bloomberg’s tenure as mayor to grow a network of schools. So Success Academy is probably the best known among them, but Uncommon Schools Achievement first all took advantage.

[00:18:50] And we saw at the charter school office an interesting thing happen. When you had a building that was a large building built a hundred years ago for a thousand kids or 1200 kids, and you split that building between a regular district school and a charter school, all of a sudden the district school had competition and it upped its game.

[00:19:16] I watched it happen in terms of the responsiveness of the principal in that school to parents. In the programming that they offered to their students in an effort to try and better serve kids and families. I hope that answers your question, but that’s what I think we can learn from reinventing government and how I think it lives on and is relevant even today.

[00:19:41] I.

[00:19:42] Alisha Searcy: Yeah, you definitely answered, and I think you also took us back to the purest form of what charter schools were supposed to be about. It feels like maybe politics or other things got involved and we’ve had different iterations of them, but you grounded us in the why, so I appreciate that and we certainly can be reminded of that as we move forward today.

[00:20:05] I also wanna refer back to an older program providing students of all backgrounds access to higher academic quality liberal arts, and the humanities and the STEM fields was a key element of the Landmark 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act. Can you talk about the public policy outlook and academic expectations of the co-authors and how it contributed to the Bay State’s historic successes on NA and with charter schools?

[00:20:36] I.

[00:20:37] Michael Duffy: Yes. I think that when the statute was enacted in the early 1990s, you did have this wonderful confluence of support from the Republican Governor, bill Weld, as well as the leadership of the. Legislature, which was then and as it is now, controlled overwhelmingly by Democrats. And they came together and enacted this reform.

[00:21:05] And the basic idea that they put at the heart of it was autonomy in exchange for accountability.

[00:21:13] Albert Cheng: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:14] Michael Duffy: So we’re not gonna tell you how to do things. We’re not gonna get into your business in the way that you organize your program. To get a charter, you’re gonna have to show us that you’ve got a capable team.

[00:21:28] You’ve gotta show us where you’re gonna operate. You’re gonna show us a five-year plan for how you’re gonna do this, so that we’re convinced of your viability. But once granted, we’re gonna step out of the way and allow you to do and execute on your idea. And so I was involved with a charter school called the Match School, which launched in 2000.

[00:21:56] I was one of the founding board members for the school. I did this as a volunteer. I. After I left state government and we knew that we had to demonstrate results from our students as exemplified by the scores they achieved on state tests. So that sort of gets to the second element of this experiment that was launched at that time.

[00:22:23] It’s this autonomy for accountability, and you had to show with hard data. That your kids were performing and that was essential. At that same time, at the national level, you had no child left behind. You had a drive towards parents and communities and the business leaders, really citizens in general, understanding better how students were performing nap, you know, being another sort of measure of student performance.

[00:22:59] So. At Match, we knew that we had five years and we knew we were a high school at that time. We were getting kids who were three or more years behind grade level when they entered ninth grade, and we knew that our ambition was to get them ready for college success that was written into our charter, and we knew we were gonna have to face the State Department of Education and account for.

[00:23:26] Our progress at the end of five years, and that really focused our attention in very important ways every year. And we started to see, you know, some of our early ideas not really having a lot of traction in terms of moving student achievement. In measurable ways. So for instance, we thought we were gonna get kids excited about learning with experiential, hands-on media projects.

[00:23:56] When you have a kid in ninth grade as a freshman in high school, reading at a sixth grade level, that feels like a nice to have rather than a need to have. So it was at that time that the executive director, the founding ed of that school, Michael Goldstein, sort of stumbled upon tutoring as one of the few things that we were doing that seemed to really move student achievement in ways that could be measured.

[00:24:26] And out of that was born. The idea of high dosage tutoring that has become such a important part of the education landscape in 2025. Certainly since the end of the pandemic and research done by Roland Fryer and others has sort of born that out. But that, I think, Alisha, this gets back to. Another part of the rationale for charter schools at the time is the competition and the effect that that would have on regular city run public schools.

[00:25:03] But second is charters as laboratories of innovation. Yes. And I don’t, I don’t think that the sector gets enough credit for the innovations that we’ve provided. So high dosage tutoring today. There’s a through line from what’s happening today in 2025 with tutoring, not only here, but in DC and in cities all around the country.

[00:25:27] The state of New Mexico, state of Texas have had, had a c, have had big initiatives, all of those. Can trace their DNA back to that experimental model that Michael Goldstein had matched and Alan Safran pioneered in the 2001 2002 timeframe.

[00:25:49] Alisha Searcy: Hmm, that’s helpful. Very good context. For nearly 20 years now, researchers from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Duke, al documented that the Boston Charter public school sector is the best in terms of bridging class and race.

[00:26:04] Based achievement gaps. Can you talk about the Boston charter schools, their formative leaders, and you’ve mentioned a couple of them, and what made the Bay State’s charter landscape so conducive to great outcomes for students and where are they now? Why can we get more?

[00:26:22] Michael Duffy: Yeah, I think, great question, and I think oftentimes adversity.

[00:26:29] Will breed people to really have even greater strength and resolve in order to achieve. And when I talk to friends in the black community who’ve achieved in their own professional lives, they talk about expectations that they’ve had to overcome and obstacles that they’ve had to overcome. And the degree to which.

[00:26:56] They often feel like they have to be that much better, smarter, stronger, well prepared in order to achieve. I think that’s true of the charter sector in Boston. So despite having a really powerful statute that was enacted in the 93, 94 timeframe, you had a landscape politically in the city of Boston. The mayor of Boston and in philanthropy and to a certain extent, the business community at that time, that was very hostile to charters.

[00:27:29] I remember conversations even when Match was getting off off the ground and we were seeking philanthropic support for the. Facility that we needed to house the school. And so many doors from the Blue chip philanthropy, both in Boston and New England were really slammed in our face of people who said, Nope, sorry, don’t believe in charters.

[00:27:54] Think it’s a terrible idea, not willing to get behind it, not willing to support it or fund it. And so we dug deep, we red redoubled our efforts. So on the rocky soil. Upon which we were planted, if you were gonna survive, you had to be good. And so you get these amazing school leaders mm-hmm. Who’ve come out of Boston.

[00:28:21] So Brett Kaiser, who’s currently the leader of Uncommon Schools. Was the leader of a charter in Dorchester, Boston Collegiate. You have John King, later, the Secretary of Education for Barack Obama. And now the head of the State University of New York came out of City on a Hill charter school and later one of the co-founders of Roxbury Prep Charter School.

[00:28:48] And there’s just Evan Rod, so many really talented people cut their teeth. And I think that the thing was that in order to survive. In that environment, you just had to be good. Or your school A wasn’t gonna open its doors and B wasn’t gonna keep those doors open very long unless you were able to really thrive in the face of adversity.

[00:29:13] Alisha Searcy: That’s super helpful, very thoughtful. It makes me think about what’s happening now in the charter space, but I’m gonna turn it on over to my co-host.

[00:29:22] Albert Cheng: Yeah. And, and Michael, thanks for sharing your tidbit there about, you know, the importance of leaders coming out of, you know, the Boston area. You know, and then earlier you, you’ve held up charter schools in Boston as exemplary in many ways Now.

[00:29:35] In the early to mid two thousands, you know, New York City started to kind of make its name and then start to assume the mantle of having excellent quality state and local school level leadership as well. So now some of that is, maybe it’s folks like you who made their way over from the Bay State to the big apple.

[00:29:52] If we, we might put it that way. Could you talk about how did New York get their influx of leaders and to really change the culture there and, and bring about the same kind of culture of achievement that you saw in Massachusetts? I.

[00:30:05] Michael Duffy: So Albert, just at the outset, I’ll say I am a Red Sox fan. Okay. Yeah, that’s important.

[00:30:13] Just so for all the, the listeners in Massachusetts, I do not like the Yankees. I was crushed when the Celtics Loft at the Knicks, so I just want my, my sports allegiance to be clear. But when it came in the two thousands to where the action was, New York City. Was the place. And honestly, I think it came down as it often does in education to the leadership that was coming from the top.

[00:30:42] So you had for a while, George Pataki as the governor who helped to enact who New York’s charter statute. He was succeeded by Elliot Spitzer, who also was supportive of charters and then Andrew Cuomo. So you had these reform-minded Democrats who were willing. And, and Republicans in Pataki who were behind charters.

[00:31:06] But most importantly, you had Mike Bloomberg who took office in 2001. I think he was actually sworn in January of 2002. He was elected in 2001 right after the nine 11 attacks, and he made education and reform of New York schools one of the signature issues of his tenure as mayor. And he embraced this theory of creating a portfolio of great schools of all different stripes.

[00:31:38] So he hired incredible talent. Joel Klein. Was such an inspiring leader. So much so that all these years later we still get together. Just a few months ago, there was a reunion of all of the people who worked for Klein and it’s a sort of who is who of education leaders in the United States. It was such an incubator for talent at the time, and you know, Bloomberg was great in that.

[00:32:11] He would hire great people, give them broad direction and say, you know, don’t mess it up. He used more colorful language than mess and let us do our job. So you didn’t have city hall micromanaging. You had this broad direction. He was clear with. With me, with Chancellor Klein and with others in the department, parents are demanding charters.

[00:32:37] We need more high quality charters.

[00:32:39] Albert Cheng: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:40] Michael Duffy: Go out there and get ’em. And so I went around the country to high quality operators and I. Encouraged them to open schools in New York. I recruited people from Chicago who were running great schools from Philadelphia, who were running great charters from Massachusetts to come and open a school in New York City.

[00:33:04] I let them know that the city would be supportive with buildings in order for them to operate. One of the biggest obstacles, as you guys may know of getting a charter off the ground is often capital. And finding the resources when it comes to where are you gonna operate, how are you gonna find a facility, where are you gonna get the dollars in order to raise the money needed in order to outfit a suitable school building?

[00:33:31] So we had the advantage of saying, you know, if you can get a charter, we’ll get you a space in which to operate and, and to serve kids. So that was a, a powerful catalyst. So I’d say, Albert, to answer your question, why did New York, how did the New York sector become so strong? I think it really came down to the leadership.

[00:33:53] That was provided and then the very practical things that we would do to attract talent here. I think both Bloomberg and Klein really got an incredible group of people working for them. I remember I was, I was in Massachusetts when I was recruited to come down to New York to work at the Department of Education, and I never.

[00:34:16] Thought that I would work for a big city school system. I just thought they were so hide bound and. Slow to innovate and change. I just could never see myself as a part of this big blob. And I came down, I took the meeting. I met with some of the people who were key deputies to the Chancellor, and I just thought, this is a good group of people.

[00:34:40] I can learn a lot, and I could most importantly make a difference here. And so we doubled the size of the sector from I think about 60 schools when I started, and then three or four years later, it was 120 charters that operating in the city. Currently, charters enroll, I think north of 125,000 students, so that would make it among the biggest school districts in the country if it was on, its.

[00:35:10] Uh, good. Yeah. On it, on its own. And there are some great schools and so the strategy was both to recruit. High quality operators who existed elsewhere and had a track record. And then another thing that doesn’t get as much attention is going to solid community operators who were at community-based organizations, faith-based organizations.

[00:35:34] So for instance, there’s a mega church in Brooklyn. Called the Christian Cultural Center, and their leader is very dynamic, charismatic preacher. So we went out and he submitted a charter and was eventually granted a charter to open a school that he and his congregation got behind. There were.

[00:35:55] Community-based organizations that got in the act as well as just social entrepreneurs who have had success in other business ventures who wanted to turn their attention to opening charter schools so that it was this. This wonderful portfolio of different kinds of people and the winners I think were parents in New York City who now had a choice and didn’t have to just be resigned to one place that they could send their kid with no other options.

[00:36:28] Well, you

[00:36:29] Albert Cheng: know, I, I really appreciate Michael, the way you’re recounting, you know, everything that’s happened. I mean, can you believe it 20 years ago? You know, I mean, it’s crazy to even say that. Right, right. You know, and I, and I find just, you know, whether it’s some of the, the new PhD students I have or just, you know, being around and folks that are kind of, should we say, new to ed reform, if you wanna put it in those terms.

[00:36:48] You know, a lot of ’em don’t know this history, so I really appreciate you telling the story here. You know, Joel Klein and, and Bloomberg, I mean, I don’t know how many of them would know all this. All the things that they did back in the day then. But speaking of it, I just want to ask you one more question about Joel Klein and Mike Bloomberg.

[00:37:04] I mean, you talked about the importance of their leadership. Could you just say a bit more about, you know, these two figures and really what was it about their leadership that really mattered in forging really kind of this entrepreneurial posture to policymaking and and K 12 reform?

[00:37:20] Michael Duffy: So for Mike Bloomberg, it’s undeniable that his.

[00:37:25] Status is one of the wealthiest citizens of the city of New York and the vast personal wealth that he had insulated him from a lot of the considerations that might have dogged another leader. So he was fearless and didn’t give a damn. Mm-hmm. Because he could afford to. And it was a, a great thing to see that I observed time and again where the teacher’s union I.

[00:37:57] Took aim at him where those who were kind of invested in the status quo would really push back, and when he thought what he was doing was the right thing, there was no deterring him from moving forward. So early on, you know, he had a test. This was not with regard to education, but when it came to smoking.

[00:38:20] And smoking in bars and restaurants in New York City. That’s right. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And it’s hard to remember ’cause there’s been such a sea change in the last 25 years, 30 years on this topic. But it was heresy. Yeah. In New York you couldn’t go to a bar and smoke and it was gonna kill nightlife and it was, you know, cramping people’s style.

[00:38:41] New York is this wide open, exciting, vibrant city that never sleeps. How could we, you know, have bars where people didn’t smoke And you know, he and the people who were part of the administration methodically let out the case. Like, well, you’ve got people, bartenders, cocktail waitresses, waiters. Matric Ds who work in bars who are subjected to secondhand smoke, it’s unhealthy and I think that the statistics in the time since are pretty, pretty convincing in terms of.

[00:39:13] The mortality rates for New Yorkers as a result of what that smoking ban has meant. And I think that you’d be hard pressed to find a person now who would like to return to the day. Yeah. Where you could light up in a, in a bar or a restaurant. I think that that same sort of determination when it came to schools and getting behind charter schools informed their leadership and formed.

[00:39:39] Bloomberg’s leadership. Joel Klein obviously didn’t have the benefit of Mike Bloomberg’s wealth, but he had and has one of the keenest, intellects and a moral compass that is so finely tuned. And you know when you are the school’s chancellor for New York City, you are in the newspaper every day. Whatever you do when you’re dealing with the lives of a million school children is gonna be covered breathlessly by the very tough New York press.

[00:40:18] So the New York Post, the radio, the TV stations, the bloggers, the social media, they’re all in your business every day, every moment. And his willingness to take on entrenched interests. So the, the reforms that they championed were called children first, and they wanted to signal that they were not going to put the interest of adults.

[00:40:46] First, they were gonna put the interests of children first. And there’s, you know, the apocryphal, and I don’t think it’s apocryphal, I think it’s an actual quote that Albert Shanker, one of the leaders of the teacher’s union in New York City in the 1960s and seventies is reputed to have said that when children start paying my dues, I will represent their interests.

[00:41:10] Until then, I’m gonna represent the interests. Of teachers, and that’s a, you know, a very telling quote. And that’s their job. That’s what the teachers union do. They do not represent the interests of kids, and it’s up to elected officials like the mayor, like the school’s chancellor, to really put those interests front and center.

[00:41:29] And so there was this provision of the statute relating to the citing of charter schools in regular. Department of Ed buildings that required a hearing to be held at that building in the community.

[00:41:45] Albert Cheng: Yeah. Right, right.

[00:41:46] Michael Duffy: You can imagine that those hearings oftentimes were quite heated, that the opposition from a lot of those who were invested in the status quo, including the teachers union, geared up and would come out, and those were.

[00:42:06] A brawl between those forces on one side, and then often parents and religious leaders, interestingly on the other side, who were desperate for better schools for their kids. Mm-hmm. And I, I saw and facilitated more than one of those meetings, and despite the intense heat that they generated. Both men, but especially Joel Klein for an unbelievable amount of time.

[00:42:35] I don’t know how long he was chancellor for, I think he was there for eight or nine years, but that’s an eternity among district leaders across the United States where they average 10 years, two to three years. So to be there for that long and to take the hits that he did day in and day out speaks to the sort of.

[00:42:57] Dedication that he had to trying to make systemic change over

[00:43:01] Albert Cheng: time. That’s inspiring and thanks for sharing your peak and your observation into their leadership. Well, so look, we’d be remiss if we didn’t ask you about Go Tutor Core. So I wanna ask you two questions about this. This is something, I mean, you’ve been doing for the past 13 years.

[00:43:15] You’ve been recruiting and training recent college graduates to intensively tutor and mentor students from low income urban communities. So talk a bit about your work at Go Tutor Core, how it fits to other things you’ve done in your career, and you know, what you hope. Other states and folks you know, passionate about Edward Reform might learn from what you do.

[00:43:35] Michael Duffy: I wish I could take credit for the sort of the intellectual property, the idea of the Go Tutor court, but really the credit is due to Michael Goldstein and Ellen Saffron and others at the Match School who really perfected the idea of high dosage tutoring and demonstrated and established a proof point.

[00:43:57] So I knew when I left the department that the Department of Ed here in New York City, I. And I wanted to do something that’s starting up, an organization that would provide tutoring was what I wanted to do. And so I’ve embarked on, as you mentioned, this journey over the last 13 years to create this organization.

[00:44:20] And Albert, I think what’s happening, what we’re doing. Is really helping to rethink what school can be and I’ll, I’ll tell you how that is the case. So public schools in the United States as they’re constituted today, were largely born out of the Industrial Revolution, 125 to 150 years ago. And the idea then.

[00:44:49] That was dominant. The paradigm that Henry Ford popularized of the assembly line was incorporated into the design of the modern American school. So you have a group of kids that entered the beginning of the day that grouped in batches of 30 or so, sometimes more, sometimes less. A bell rings. And they move to another class and it’s no accident that it mirrors the assembly line.

[00:45:21] Albert Cheng: Mm-hmm.

[00:45:21] Michael Duffy: And that what that kind of system does is it really inculcates, informity, and adherence to rules and can turn out people who will be excellent workers in that kind of a context. Today we are in a much different world, even for manufacturing manufacturing’s. Not that the dominant paradigm today I would suggest is not the Henry Ford assembly line.

[00:45:55] It’s more like a Steven Jobs like Genius bar where you walk in to an Apple store and someone says, Hey Albert, how can I help you? You get directed to meet with somebody who can help you with your particular need. I wanna purchase a new iPhone. My Apple computer, MacBook Air has been acting up. Can you take a look at it and somebody will sit and meet with you to help you solve your problem, to purchase your product, to do whatever you need to do.

[00:46:29] And so schooling similarly needs to break the paradigm of the assembly line and move towards the paradigm of the Genius Bar. And so what tutoring does and high dosage tutoring, it takes a kid and says, all right, what do you need? Where are you stuck? How can I help you? In particular move to where you need to go in your understanding of math.

[00:46:57] And for me, this is very personal. So when I was in seventh grade, my math scores and my math abilities were abysmal. My family had moved, you know, from fourth grade to fifth grade to sixth grade to seventh grade. I was in a variety of different schools over those four years, and by the time I got to seventh grade.

[00:47:18] When I took the diagnostic test, I was track into the remedial math class. At the end of that year, my parents were convinced that I could do more and they made the case to the school that I should be admitted to the algebra class in eighth grade and the, the administrators were like, lady, there’s no way your kid is getting into this class.

[00:47:43] He’s in the remedial math class.

[00:47:44] Albert Cheng: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:46] Michael Duffy: She made a pass to herself and eventually they relented to shut her up and said, okay, fine. Next year we’ll put him in algebra. So I said to mom, like, listen, I’m struggling in math. I’m really anxious about how I’m gonna do in algebra next year. In her response that summer between seventh and eighth grade was to get a tutor.

[00:48:10] Who came to the house every week and sat down and said, okay, Michael, you’re, you’re having trouble with adding fractions with unlike denominators. Let’s take it from where we left the last week. Let’s go over the sample lesson that I gave you and the computations that you were supposed to do and won’t show me your work.

[00:48:28] And I aced algebra in eighth grade. It opened up advanced classes in high school. And it permitted me to go to a competitive college and then eventually to grad school at Harvard. And honestly, that one intervention in the summer between seventh and eighth grade changes my life. And so what we’re trying to do is provide that same benefit to as many kids as possible.

[00:49:02] And then on the other side of the equation, when you look at schools across the United States in 2025, you see chronic absenteeism on the rise. In some states, like Florida, chronic absenteeism may be as high as 30%, so that means three outta 10 kids in public schools in Florida are missing more than 10% of school days.

[00:49:29] You see enrollment at many big cities, school districts like New York, like Chicago, like Los Angeles is dropping. You see the rise of homeschooling. You see the rise of micro schools. Students and parents are voting with their feet and they’re sending a message That school. Districts, school leaders, education leaders across the country need to hear that school right now doesn’t work for many kids.

[00:50:02] And my thesis is that it doesn’t work. ’cause we’re using the old industrial model and we need to shut that down and we need to replace it with schools that personalize learning. Now, there are a lot of education leaders out there who are very bullish on ed tech. And AI and what that can mean for personalizing learning for kids.

[00:50:27] I’m a bit of a skeptic. I wanna see proof points before I go all in. I know that there’s a lot of money being invested in this sector, so I wanna see more of it in action. I think it can be a super useful tool for a tutor or for a teacher to personalize the lessons that they deliver to kids. But I don’t subscribe to a notion where kids are gonna be in a building sitting at their laptops directed by an avatar.

[00:51:01] Mm-hmm. Who’s walking them through their lessons. I just don’t see that. But I do, I do think that there’s room for that, but the place where schools can sort of innovate is when they think about their staffing. And so tutors introduce. A new kind of staff person into the mix. So it’s not an administrator, it’s not a teacher.

[00:51:26] It’s somebody who is less skilled and experienced than a teacher and can be successful as long as certain conditions are met. So our practice and our research has shown that you need to have tutoring groups of four people or less in order for tutoring to be effective. So. All of which is to say schools need to be rethought fundamentally.

[00:51:50] And a part of what the Go Tutor Core is doing is helping our partner schools to rethink it. So it’s rethinking the school day, rethinking the school schedule so that instead of, you know, eight. 50 minute periods back to back of a teacher lecturing to 25 to 30 kids. Instead, you might have math tutorial as one of those periods or English tutorial.

[00:52:19] Or other kinds of things that break up the tyranny of the 30 kid classroom with a single teacher. Mm-hmm. Which I think doesn’t set the teacher up for success and certainly is not setting a lot of our kids up for success. And by the way, this is not just the kids who struggle, who are behind, but this is the kids who are ahead, who are bored.

[00:52:43] Not challenged, the school is not meeting their needs as well. So tutoring is, you know, there’s nothing new under the sun. Tutoring’s been around since Philip of Macedonia hired Aristotle to tutor Alexandria the great, so tutors have been. A part. You know Oxford uses tutors. That’s right. Yeah. That’s a key part of their education program.

[00:53:07] What we’re trying to do is find a way to scale tutoring so that more children can benefit from this. And by the way, tutoring in the United States is some estimates. I’ve seen a $70 billion a year industry, and it’s happening. It’s a shadow education. Sort of sector Yeah. That doesn’t get a lot of attention.

[00:53:30] Mm-hmm. But is a key part of what we’re doing. What we need to do is democratize that and bring that to, to more kids. Mm-hmm.

[00:53:38] Albert Cheng: Alright, so I’m gonna make you, I mean, you were peering into your crystal ball about AI just a minute ago and I’ll, so I’m gonna make you do it one more time except related tutoring.

[00:53:47] So tutoring is now being put forth as you know, one of the go-to interventions to address post pandemic learning loss. Alright. Your take, you know, quick take as we we wrap up here. Do you see the potential for tutoring to fix those losses? And how are you guys thinking about that, if at all? At Go tutor.

[00:54:06] Michael Duffy: Yeah, it’s a great question. I think that what happened in the wake of the pandemic is school leaders thought, oh no, I’m seeing the assessment data. My kids have fallen so far behind because they were outta school, or they had a poor substitute for school. When schools shut down. We need to make up for lost ground.

[00:54:26] And the research began to pile up that showed tutoring was the thing that could drive student achievement. And so I think savvy superintendents out there took a look at the research. You know, compared to extended day, extended year, summer academies, all of these things, tutoring by far has the benefit for kids and is worth the investment.

[00:54:53] So there’s a researcher. The last thought that, that I’ll leave with you is, um, really terrific researcher at a brown university named Matthew Kraft issued a white paper for scaling tutoring. And he issued that in like 2020 2021 in the wake of the pandemic. And he said individualized learning, including high dosage tutoring, is among the most effective interventions ever to be subjected to rigorous evaluation.

[00:55:24] So we know that this works. We know that it can provide a huge benefit for kids, and I think for principals, superintendents. And other education leaders out there across the country, they’re coming around to this and you, and you see this sector really taking off, not only in the United States, but in Britain, in Holland and other countries around the world.

[00:55:49] I.

[00:55:50] Albert Cheng: All right. We’ve been talking with Michael Duffy. Michael, thank you so much for your time. Yes. And sharing your, you know, your experience, the history lessons learned, your observations and your work at Go Tutor Core. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. Yeah, thanks

[00:56:03] Michael Duffy: to both and to Pioneer for hosting me.

[00:56:05] I really appreciate it.

[00:56:19] Alisha Searcy: Well, Dr. Cheng, as always, what a great interview that was. Michael is fantastic. Yeah, no,

[00:56:25] Albert Cheng: he’s got a great program going and

[00:56:27] Alisha Searcy: I wish it continued success. Yeah. Such meaningful work and so important. I hope that more folks understand the value, particularly of high intense tutoring and making sure kids have what they need and so he’s getting the job done.

[00:56:40] Good for him. Yeah.

[00:56:40] Albert Cheng: Yeah, that’s right. And even the bigger picture of let’s get out there, you know, everyone’s role and providing good education. You know, it doesn’t have to be becoming a teacher for your, the rest of your career. I mean, it’s like, Hey, let’s tutor, let’s volunteer. Exactly.

[00:56:55] Alisha Searcy: So much that can be done.

[00:56:57] Well, before we go, I want to talk about our tweet of the week. Very interesting story from education. Next, more than half of governors went to a public college and all of these went to a school in their own or neighboring state. Hmm. Fascinating. I wonder the background for the author of this story, though, he seems to be a little bit offended by all the talk of these elite colleges and universities and so went on his way to.

[00:57:24] Research state, government, state, Supreme Courts and other places. But anyway, very interesting story about half of governors and where they went to school. So make sure you check that out on education next. Well, as always, Alberta, great to be with you. Uh, yeah, likewise. So looking forward to seeing everybody next week.

[00:57:44] Make sure to join us. We will have Wilfred Prest. He’s the professor of History and Law Emeritus at the University of Adelaide in Australia, and author of Sir William Blackstone Law and Letters in the 18th Century. Look forward to seeing everybody next week. Hey, this is Alisha. Thank you for listening to the Learning Curve.

[00:58:05] If you’d like to support the podcast further, we invite you to donate at pioneerinstitute.org/donations.