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Richard Helppie
Hello. Welcome to The Common Bridge. I’m your host, Rich Helppie, and we are continuing our limited series on Substack writers. Today we have Shaka Mitchell. We’re going to be talking about education. We’re going to touch on music and whatever else comes up today. Shaka, welcome to The Common Bridge. Thank you so much for joining us.
Shaka Mitchell
Hey, thanks so much for having me, Rich. I’m really looking forward to it.
Richard Helppie
Our audience likes to know a little bit about the folks that come on the show. If you don’t mind, where were your early days, your life arc, career arc, and what brought you to this point today?
Shaka Mitchell
Sure, well, I’ll try to keep it brief, because my bio is probably the least interesting thing that we’ll talk about today. I was born and raised in New York. I went to high school in Georgia. So I’ve got a little bit of the north/south thing going on, which I appreciate. I now live in Nashville, Tennessee with my wife and three daughters. I’m a lawyer by training, but I don’t practice. We’ll get into this, but I work in education advocacy, and I’ve got a sprinkling of some other things that I work on, but that’s really been my career arc. Spent a little bit of time in Washington, DC, but like most people, I didn’t really love Washington, DC and so we’re back here in Music City now.
Richard Helppie
Beautiful. Well, it’s not exactly the real world there, and we keep pointing out places where they’re disconnected and we’re not getting listened to. I think the idea is we get lots of people on Substack and on other platforms talking and maybe they’ll pay attention at some point. But let’s talk. You write a lot about education, so maybe let’s go there. What are some of the key themes that you’ve been writing and speaking about? And if you don’t mind, just tell our audience how to find you on Substack and other platforms.
Shaka Mitchell
Thank you. Well, you can find me on Substack at Shaka’s Substack. Pretty easy to remember. I do a lot of writing about education. That’s where most of my career has been and specifically, I write about educational choice issues, primarily. What that means is making sure that every child in the country has meaningful access to an education that fits their needs, irrespective of geography, irrespective of family income. I just believe that education is still the surest way to climb the ladder to the American dream, and just want to make sure that that’s a reality for all kids.
Richard Helppie
I heartily agree with that. When we talk about education, it’s the ability to communicate: reading, writing, computational skills, and in today’s day and age, absolutely at least one second language. I’m a big advocate in this hemisphere for Spanish, it’s about 50-50 native English speakers and native Spanish speakers, and the globe is getting smaller so I think that needs to be there. Of course, history, geography, biology, we need to make sure we’ve got all of those in there. Are we at a crisis in education, any place in the United States or around the world, and if so, how do we know that we’re doing well or whether we’re in a crisis?
Shaka Mitchell
It’s a great question. I’d say that we do have areas of crisis. It’s not all doom and gloom—there are some real bright spots as well—but we’ve definitely got a lot of areas of crisis. To give you a snapshot: on nationally norm-referenced tests—these are academic achievement tests that kids across the country take in every state, Washington, DC, Puerto Rico, Guam, etc.—on those tests, routinely only about 35% of school-age children are on grade level. Thirty-five percent. I would say that’s a crisis. I’ve got three kids of my own. Imagine if you told me only one of those three was going to be academically on grade level. Well, that wouldn’t do. I would say that’s a crisis, as a parent. And if we think about all the skills that are going to be needed both to compete and even just for people to live their best lives, we’ve got to do better than 35%. So that’s really what we’re working to change. Unfortunately, you see stats like that in every state—some places are worse than others. I just read a book that said Baltimore City Schools, for instance—unfortunately, I mean—you’ve got schools where not a single senior class member was proficient in math. Not a single member. That’s just unconscionable.
Richard Helppie
Well, look, those are clearly systemic failures. In your research, as you begin to pull this apart, the huge question is why? Look, I’m a baby boomer, and we benefited from robust public schools staffed by teachers on a mission to prepare us. We learned the basics, and we needed to make sure we were at grade level before we moved forward. We memorized our multiplication tables. We learned to do long division. We learned to listen, to read, to write, to speak - there’s so much more out there. What’s taking up the school day? The kids can’t be any less intelligent than we were.
Shaka Mitchell
No, in fact, kids are able to process things faster today than even 20 years ago, 40 years ago, etc. What I would say is a big difference probably between when you were in school and now, and even when I was in school and now, is that the public education system, for the most part, has not been nimble. It doesn’t keep up with the rate of change, and in many places it’s a system that benefits the adults and not the kids. And so the question is, if you think about being in a business situation, you would say, all right, we’ve got to make sure this is working for our end user, our end customer. Who is that? Unfortunately, in many school districts, the end user is the people with the jobs. It’s folks in the central office, it’s lots of administrators, and it’s not the kids. So we’ve got to flip that in order to get the quality back up.
Richard Helppie
I have made note of that, that central office, there are assistant superintendents of this, assistant superintendents of that, and that money doesn’t go into the classroom, and that’s really the point of decision is in the classroom. Are the teachers equipped? Are the students coming to learn? I know there have been strides made in lower income areas, where students get breakfast, lunch and dinner at school, and they get food to take home on the weekend so that they’re not trying to learn while they’re hungry. I just wonder why is it that we seem to be falling short, and kids are not only falling through the cracks, but maybe two thirds of them just aren’t getting there.
Shaka Mitchell
One of the things that I write about a lot is the impact that voluntary choice has on quality. If you think about things that you’re forced to do, none of us really like to be forced to do anything, and when we are, we grumble about it. It tends to be that the things we’re forced to do are lower quality. Well, unfortunately, in our system of public education, most kids go to a school that they are forced to attend, meaning they’re zoned based on where they live to go to that school. They don’t really have a choice in it. That’s why I think parent choice is so important. When you give parents some ability to say, Oh, that’s the school that I think is going to work best for my child, you see a different kind of agency. You see quality lift. There’s been some great data out of Ohio where there’s a school choice program called the ED Choice Program, and low-income students who participated in that program were much more likely to go to and graduate from college than their peers. So choice really has some big impacts.
Richard Helppie
Wouldn’t the fact that choice exists by definition mean that there are schools that are failing that a parent says, I’m not choosing that because I need to get a more basic education, versus back many, many years ago, when I was being educated the neighborhood school model worked really well. That’s where you went to school, and they figured out a way to educate nearly all of us.
Shaka Mitchell
I think that’s right. I mean, almost by necessity, if you’re choosing one thing, it means you’re not choosing something else. But again, one of the perspectives that I have on this is that our education system should really be in service of the students and not in service of the buildings. Nobody wants to close a school—it’s like closing a post office. Nobody wants to close their local post office, even if they don’t really love the institution. Nobody wants to close a local school. That being said, I would much rather see every student in a seat that works for them, even if it’s on the other side of town, even if it’s in a smaller model, or a private school, a micro school—who knows what. I’d much rather see that than have them sitting in a big brick building that’s not working for anybody.
Richard Helppie
That’s great perspective. I’ve often said that bureaucracies, whether they’re public or private, ultimately look inward and begin serving the bureaucracy instead of serving the constituency they were designed to service. I’m sure that there are school systems that do that, and that causes me to think - with the kind of research that you do - if we were going to design a school system for America in today’s world, 2026, what would it look like if we didn’t have all this established infrastructure and school districts and boards and buildings? What would we do differently today?
Shaka Mitchell
That’s a great question, and I think the word you used there is absolutely the right word: infrastructure. We get so locked into the fixed costs and the fixed elements of big buildings and parking lots and all this stuff. If we were establishing something today, in 2026, I think one thing we know is that it would be far more customizable than it was when you went through school or when I went through school. You can pick up your phone right now and probably by the time we finish this conversation you could order a custom-made suit for yourself and apply for a mortgage. Meanwhile, we’re going to schools based on where our mailbox is. We would have a super-customizable system. That’s not to say it would be all online. I think kids still need to be together. I think they want to be together in community. But it would look much more tailored to the end user. We’d probably have smaller sizes and different-size models. Some kids would go five days a week. Some kids would go one day and then do different things around the city. It would just be much more nimble and flexible, and I think the dollars would follow the scholar instead of just getting funneled to a building.
Richard Helppie
I like a lot of those concepts, and that we’re talking basically about customized education. And look, to be fair, a lot of burdens have been put on the public school system, like nutrition, like mental health services, like support for students that might have a physical handicap. Beginning in preschool the school systems were set up to do that. I am sympathetic to all of the agendas they’re trying to deal with, versus again, a time when all that was outside and the instructor’s job was to teach you mathematics or social studies or history or whatever, and then you ended your day and went back into the world. Are there things that are going on inside the school systems that perhaps need to come off of their agenda?
Shaka Mitchell
Absolutely. I mean, listen, I think that most of those things you mentioned are really well intended. If a child is hungry, it’s going to be hard for him or her to learn, to focus, and to sit still—that’s just a reality. That being said, I’m a big believer that an organization—whether it’s a private-sector organization, a government entity, or a nonprofit—needs to figure out what it’s good at and be good at its mission before it starts adding other elements. If you don’t do that, if you don’t have that focus, you end up in a downward spiral. You weren’t great at your mission, you weren’t achieving it, you added more things, you’re not great at those either, it distracts you from your mission, and it continues. So yes, absolutely, I think we need to take much of that load and burden off teachers and faculty so they can focus on core academics. We can figure out the other stuff—whether it’s other nonprofits, faith-based institutions—we can get kids fed, we can get doctor visits, we can make sure that stuff is happening. But let’s make sure our kids can read.
Richard Helppie
That’s, I think, one of the dilemmas. So, for example, a child born with cerebral palsy, spina bifida, Down syndrome, et cetera. I think beginning as early as infancy, and certainly by age three, it’s incumbent on the school system to provide them services for physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy and the like. I guess the question would be, is that the right mechanism to deliver those services, and does that come at a cost to the academic mission? Schools have been a central part of communities. People would probably say, I go to XYZ elementary school. That’s where I go. I went to XYZ Middle School and ABC High School so there is a sense of identity, a sense of community. We see high school reunions getting posted all over social media. How do we get the educational mission done and not lose those special services that are so vitally needed and that sense of community?
Shaka Mitchell
Well, I think one concept—and you’re actually seeing this a little bit in your state, Florida—is that some forward-thinking districts are embracing the idea of educational freedom. One of the things they’re doing is instead of thinking of themselves as a system—kind of like Monopoly, where you have the little houses and the houses eventually become a hotel—instead of a system of a bunch of little green houses or school buildings, they’re thinking of themselves as an education service provider. They’re providing services not just to kids who would have attended their schools, but even to kids in the neighborhood who are homeschooling, and they’re partnering with private schools. There’s a thing called education savings accounts that allows parents to use funds in a more portable way, so they can put together an education à la carte. In that regard, I think schools can still be places of pride. They can still be places that provide services in the communities and neighborhoods they serve. But it doesn’t mean they have to do everything. Instead, they’re doing the things they do really well, and they’re doing them for more kids.
Before we dive back into today’s enlightening discussion, we have a quick message for all you Common Bridge enthusiasts out there. Did you know that you can find this episode and over 300 more on Substack as part of the Common Bridge series. You can also find written columns and opinions as well. Subscribe at TheCommonBridge.substack.com for a full Common Bridge experience. There you can comment and express your opinion on all the topics we cover on this and the past seven seasons of our podcasts. If you’d rather support the show without subscribing, you can do so with Zelle at Rich@RichardHelppie.com or use Venmo at Richard-CBridge. Thanks for listening. Now back to the episode.
Richard Helppie
When you look at the United States and you look around the world, I looked up something that I’d never heard of before, called the Program for International Student Achievement, or PISA. Are you familiar with that measure? (Shaka Mitchell: Yep.) All right. It says that they want to measure school achievement around the globe. I found it really interesting that these are the most recent top performing countries: Singapore, Macau - which is China, Taiwan - again, better not crack that egg open, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, and then it drops down to Estonia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Ireland and Belgium. I’m wondering if there’s something culturally there in setting expectations or within their education infrastructure that’s allowing these students to flourish?
Shaka Mitchell
It’s a good question. A lot of folks have looked into this. Two things come to mind to me, and I forget where the United States falls in the most recent rankings but...
Richard Helppie
18th, according to the data I looked up, for what it’s worth.
Shaka Mitchell
I know we’ve been as low as 30 or 31 in recent years. A few things come to mind. The first is that I know I’m beating this drum, but I’m going to come back to this element of choice. Most countries in the world—East Asian countries, European countries, South American countries—actually allow the government to pay for whatever school parents want their child to attend. The United States is actually different in that regard. For the most part, we say the government will provide funding if you attend a government-operated school. So again, this element of voluntary choice is big internationally. The other thing I would point to is that, unfortunately in the U.S.—and I just don’t know how these numbers shake out internationally—we’ve seen a real erosion of trust. That erosion of trust in institutions, I think, has a big impact on schools. Trust in schools, including trust in teachers, was at an all-time low. Obviously COVID was really rough on families, especially. And so you’ve got this situation where a lot of people are frustrated with maybe the curriculum that’s coming out of certain schools, and that’s across the ideological spectrum. You’ve got a lot of folks who may be frustrated with their school boards. I think that has a lot to do with it. If you don’t trust an institution, if you don’t really value it, our kids pick up on that and you’re not as invested. Maybe you’re not as engaged as a parent anymore, and that has a negative effect.
Richard Helppie
I strongly agree with you, and the institution is something we need to separate from the people in it, because, my experience, the teachers, the front-line people, and many of the good principals are equally, if not more, frustrated. They are sometimes doing a great job on behalf of students by sheer force of will and just going over the top of rules that might come their way, and they are burdened by the bureaucracy which, of course, ties back to the funding system. It’s an interesting concept to fund the education and allowing not only schools of choice, but education methods of choice. When I was going to school, there was always a program called building trades, and these guys went out and built a house every year. I don’t know how to build a house, I knew how to program computers, but I could not build a house, but somebody taught me how to program computers, which I was very grateful for. Maybe we need people out there building houses, some doing computers, others really getting deep into biology, and those will be our doctors of the future. Who knows?
Shaka Mitchell
Absolutely. I mean, there was—and listen, I am a big fan of education and of being a lifelong learner, I think we all have to be lifelong learners today because technology is changing so quickly. That being said, we’re not all going to be interested in learning the same thing. I mentioned that I’m a lawyer by training—God forbid we have a world full of lawyers. We need people who can actually do things as well. Whether it’s agriculture, industrial trades, high-tech jobs, or biological services, there are all types of things. The question is, can we have a system that taps into the interests of kids—this diverse group of 50-plus million school-age kids? That should be really exciting. Our human capital is our biggest resource in this country, so let’s tap into that and get those kids excited about what they’re learning.
Richard Helppie
Absolutely, and engineering and physics have to be part of that. We’ve had Professor Rick Geddes from Cornell University on the show several times talking about infrastructure. During one of the early interviews, I asked him if we funded these infrastructure projects and we were able to get the right kind of contracts in place, do we have the right people who can do the work? His answer was very reassuring. He said, absolutely we’ve got the best material engineers, the best structural engineers, the best civil engineers. This is something we can do. Why not have a track in structural engineering, where somebody could come out of high school with at least some understanding of how to put together a building, a bridge, a dam, something like that, or understand water management? We just had Kevin Greene on the show, who is an entrepreneur talking about water conservation. Are you familiar with the term IEP, the Individualized Education Plan? (Shaka Mitchell: Yeah.) So for the listeners, readers, and viewers, my lay understanding is that this is for special-needs kids who might have a learning disability or a physical disability, and that the federal government mandates that they receive an individualized plan and accommodations that make sense to allow them to advance academically. What you’re talking about would be almost like a universal IEP, where if a child were, say, gifted at math, their plan might say they’re ready for algebra in the fifth grade—let’s give it to them.
Shaka Mitchell
Absolutely. In some ways our orientation in how we think about educating students with special needs is the right orientation. In practice, the IEP process can be really cumbersome. When you talk about bureaucracy and just checking boxes, it’s a lot of box-checking. But the intent, I think, is the right intent, which is to take each child where they are and say let’s make education work for this child. You bring up that math example. One of the things that is so confounding to me is how we organize classes. We organize classes by whether or not a child was born between this month and this month, and we say, we assume that if you’re born within this 12-month cycle, you are going to progress at the same pace in every subject. That’s crazy. We can build a system that is much more nimble and flexible so that we say, you know what? Rich is great at math and hard sciences, so let’s just keep feeding him content in math and the hard sciences. But maybe he struggles in grammar and literature.
Richard Helppie
Art. I would be in the whatever the lowest class is remedial, two rungs below that.
Shaka Mitchell
Okay, and listen, that’s a pretty typical child. All that means is we have different interests and we have different strengths. I think we can do better. In some ways, it’s a failure of imagination. That’s how I spend a lot of my time writing on Substack—just trying to cover those issues, trying to bring them to light, and talking about what some of the solutions are and some of the bright spots around the country.
Richard Helppie
Well, you’re pushing against a very entrenched bureaucracy. And of course, folks have nostalgic and romantic notions of it. Even in our discussion today, we haven’t come out and said, this is a solution for the 65% of kids that aren’t reading at grade level or aren’t performing at grade level. So it’s a big problem. One of the bureaucracies that was put in place during the Carter administration was the Department of Education. Has the Department of Education made an impact, and has that impact been in a positive direction? I don’t know if you’ve unwrapped that at all.
Shaka Mitchell
I would say, unfortunately, the Department of Education has had very little impact on the academic success of students. I think there are two things within the Department of Education that have been pretty valuable. The first is something you mentioned, and that’s actually IDEA—making sure there is a sort of backstop when it comes to ensuring that students with special needs receive services. That’s their role as the backstop. Now, a lot of reform needs to happen to the process, but it’s good to have that backstop. The second thing is the National Assessment of Educational Progress, called NAEP, which is sometimes referred to as the Nation’s Report Card. That’s a pretty valuable diagnostic tool. It’s not the only one, but NAEP is pretty important and pretty helpful so that we can say, for instance, how are kids doing in Florida and how does that compare with how kids are doing in Nebraska or Massachusetts? Because we are a very big country with a lot of students and a wide range of different communities. So those two things are helpful. Those are two of the smallest pieces of the Department of Education. Really, what it funds—and for folks who’ve been in DC, they’ll know this—it funds some really big buildings filled with a whole lot of bureaucrats and hasn’t really added a whole lot of substantive value to the everyday lives of teachers and students.
Richard Helppie
So a noble effort that did some good, but perhaps could move those good functions. Have you unwrapped anything at the state level, county level, local level, and said these are places here that have outlived their usefulness or need to be redirected?
Shaka Mitchell
That’s another good question. Frankly, one of the things that I think we’ve got to rethink—and this is going to be kind of a sacred cow for a lot of people—is that in some ways what I talk about as educational choice, school choice, has always existed. We just called it real estate. I mean, what do you do? What did my parents do? Maybe your parents did this, or maybe you did this yourself. But what do most people do when they are looking for a good school? They ask the realtor, what neighborhoods can I move into? What can I afford? What that has done is create a dynamic where a whole lot of people who can’t afford to move into those neighborhoods can’t afford to access a high-quality school. We can rethink that. Location-based school zones were not carved in stone tablets and given to us from on high. We can rethink some of that. That’s one thing I would point to and say, yeah, let’s do better.
Richard Helppie
I think about extracurriculars. Let’s look at sports. In other countries, Finland, if you’re a good hockey player, basketball player, volleyball player, you don’t play for your school team, you go play for a club team after school. I think about that model of recreation and exercise and competitive sports, or perhaps music coming outside of that school system. I understand the well intention to put those in for a completely rounded person. It’s not only academics, it is fine arts, it is musical arts, it is athletics, taking care of one’s body or letting folks compete. The other thing is that we’ve seen people cross into school districts to get into those programs because they’re a good artist or good athlete. Maybe we need to do that with academics too, universally.
Shaka Mitchell
I thought of one other thing that I might suggest to my friends in districts, and this is frankly something that I’m stunned more districts haven’t already done, but we’ve got to get kids off phones and off their smartphones during the school day. I’ve got friends whose kids are at schools that don’t have tech policies that address this and that’s just crazy. We are 15 years past the advent of the iPhone. There ought to be a policy in every district that says during the school day this is a no-go—you’ve got to focus. It is doing something to our kids, and even to adults, where we don’t have the attention span to sit, to listen, and to really invest in what’s happening. So that’s something that every district across America could do tomorrow.
Richard Helppie
I think some states are putting statewide mandates in place, much to the relief of the school boards, because now they don’t have to make the policy themselves. They can just say, hey, it’s state law, it’s what we have to do, and frankly I agree with that. The policy could simply be leave your devices outside, and then challenge the school system to show young people how to use the technology, because we are in an interconnected world as we’re demonstrating right here, with you in Nashville and me in Florida. We’re talking to Shaka Mitchell of Shaka’s Substack, and we are going to go deeper into education on some future episodes of The Common Bridge if we can entice Shaka to come back to us. But also, Shaka, I read about another interesting thing you’re doing. So in an abrupt shift of gears here, tell me about your Come Together music project. We’ve talked a lot about community and how education is part of that fabric, and I think I have a little understanding of what you’re doing, but tell us about it—what’s going on?
Shaka Mitchell
Sure, thanks for asking. The Come Together Music Project is a passion project that recently—last year—became an official nonprofit, a 501(c)(3). This is a project where I’m using music to show how it can deepen existing relationships, create new ones, and build bridges. A lot of your readers and listeners of The Common Bridge would probably appreciate that. In a world that is so polarized, where everything—from the type of milk you drink to the Super Bowl halftime show—gets politicized, I actually think music can help bring us together again. What we do is interview guests and ask them to come up with musical selections associated with common experiences, and it’s really a lot of fun.
Richard Helppie
That is really, really nice, because I think people who are gifted in that way have so much they can do that can unite us—not to bypass the reality that there have been poets and singers who have sung about social injustices and things well in advance of them being within the public consciousness. Good for them—that’s a role they’re playing. But people also need to understand something: if you’re going to be a professional musician, you probably knew that really early on in life, and your life has been dedicated to creating that music. It’s a very, very steep pyramid, and you’re doing that to the exclusion of lots of other things. That means you’re probably not that good at history, economics, political science, the law, and broader context. So sing the song, and we promise not to let the economist record much music. I think that’s a fair trade. Let’s enjoy music, because we do have those common experiences about love and travel and exploration and excitement and new things and riding a motorcycle or seeing a beautiful sunset—those are things that bring us together. There’s so much good stuff written that way.
Shaka Mitchell
You’re so right. I mean, all those things you just named would, frankly, make for great song categories. One of the things we do is, I might say, Rich, what’s a song that reminds you of just being on the open road?
Richard Helppie
“Roll Me Away” by Bob Seger, from my hometown, all right, yeah.
Shaka Mitchell
Because that sort of experience is something that almost all of us have had. Music is also really sticky, so it helps us recall memories. I think it has a really special bonding quality. It’s been fun to do this both virtually and with live audiences and to see people enjoy this art form, but do it with people who are total strangers and then suddenly find that they’ve got something in common. The music really helps to grease the skids.
Richard Helppie
Yeah, and “On the Road Again” by Willie Nelson and several songs by Bruce Springsteen where he talks about being out on dusty roads and things like that. Folks have to understand that people who are talented like that are not writing biographies; they’re writing stories and singing them in a way that we enjoy and embrace. It’s not an agenda. It’s not something to vote for. It’s something to like because you like it. At my house, we have a tradition every Sunday—we play Hawaiian music. It’s about joy. It’s about dance, oceans, mountains, food, and family. That’s what we do, and it sets the mood on Sunday afternoons.
Shaka Mitchell
That’s great. I love that. Yeah, you’re absolutely right—music sets the mood. It’s why, in a locker room, a team will listen to certain music to get pumped up before the game. Likewise, music can calm us. It’s why we have lullabies and why we sing them to kids and crying children, same thing. So you’ve got this moment in your home and that will stick. People who participate in that—I guarantee they will remember it for decades to come.
Richard Helppie
Oh, when our kids’ friends come over, if it’s a Sunday, they’re like, you’re not playing anything else, because they’re used to it now. It shouldn’t be politicized. If the Canadian hockey team wants to play “Lose Yourself” by Eminem and so does the U.S. hockey team, so what? Let’s do this. How about the national anthem? That ought to be unifying. That would be a good thing—not something to vote for or argue about. Let’s just stop for a moment and be united, just for a moment. It could work. So this has been a great chat. Is there anything else on education or music, or any other topic that we didn’t mention today that you’d like the listeners, readers, and viewers of The Common Bridge to know about?
Shaka Mitchell
Well, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed this conversation and you had some great questions. We covered a lot of really good ground. One thing I might encourage folks to look into—and I’ve done a little writing about this—is something that is taking effect next year in 2027. It’s called the Education Freedom Tax Credit, and it’s going to be a new nationwide scholarship program. It will provide scholarships for kids in public schools, private schools, homeschool, and charter schools. It’s a really neat program. You can find some information about it on my Substack and online as well. Stay tuned for that, because it could impact millions of kids around the country.
Richard Helppie
Great, and I do want to again recommend Shaka Mitchell’s Substack. He writes about school choice, learning outcomes, music, and other education topics. Please check him out. It’s a great time to get on board with independent journalism. With my guest Shaka Mitchell, this is your host Richard Helppie signing off on The Common Bridge.
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