Conviction Without Contempt: Arguing About the Future of Education

School choice sparks some of the most heated arguments in education, and Shaka Mitchell, senior fellow at the American Federation for Children and the founder of the Come Together Music Project, lives them firsthand. From tense legislative showdowns to personal confrontations, he explains why the issue cuts so deeply and what’s really at stake for families. Drawing on his own upbringing, Mitchell makes the case for expanding educational options while engaging seriously with critics’ concerns about equity and community impact. But beyond policy, he reflects on what years of disagreement have taught him: most opponents share the same core values, even if they clash on solutions. The conversation ultimately asks how we can argue fiercely, listen generously, and build broader coalitions without losing conviction.

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Transcript

Michael Lee : [00:00:00] When we disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit. Why does this phrase from the OJ trial stick in our memories decades later? This is the rhyme as reason effect. Also called the Eaton Rosen phenomenon, and this idea has been studied and documented by rhetorical scholars tracking prominent rhetorical devices for millennia.

It basically shows that we judge rhyming statements or cleverness and rhetoric as more truthful than other kinds of statements. Our brains to some capacity mistake. Aesthetic pleasure for accuracy in disagreements. A clever rhyme can trump careful reasoning. Catchy slogans defeat complex truths. The rhyme as reason effect shapes, political discourse, profoundly campaign slogans, protest, chance and memorable phrases spread.

Not [00:01:00] because they're true, but because they're catchy. Fake it till you make it feels truer than pretend until you succeed. An apple a day keeps the doctor away, seems more valid than similar non rhyming health advice. A local car dealer near me has a jingle that goes, we want to see ya in a Kia. And I think about it far often than I'll ever admit.

We confuse memorability with reliability, letting our ears override our logic. And in personal arguments, rhyming comebacks feel like winning points. Your teenagers, my room, my rules, which is an alliteration, sounds more convincing than it should. Your partner's happy wife, happy Life seems to settle discussions.

These phrases feel like wisdom when they're really just word play and we let prody determine philosophy, allowing sound patterns to substitute for a sound reasoning. Marketing exploits the rhyme and his reasoning effect constantly. Once you pop, you can't stop. The [00:02:00] best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup.

These aren't arguments. They're just great jingles, but they shape behavior more effectively than logical appeals. And our brains treat rhyme as signals of truth, even when we consciously know better. Understanding this effect can hopefully immunize us against some manipulation, and sometimes the most important insights are the least poetic.

I'm Michael Lee, professor of Communication and Director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. Our guest today on when We Disagree is Shaka Mitchell. Shaka is a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children based in Nashville. He's a lawyer, facilitator, and national leader in education reform policy.

He serves as the co-host of the Quality Matters podcast and is the creator of the Come Together Music Project, which uses music to find common ground between people. Chaka, tell us an argument story. 

Shaka Mitchell : Hey, thanks so much for having me on, Mike. It's good to be with you. Yeah. If you wanna hear a story [00:03:00] about arguments and disagreements, I see these all the time in my line of work.

As you mentioned, I work in the field of education specifically school choice. And what that means for me is making sure all kids, regardless of. Income, regardless of geography, have access to an education that meets their needs. And so we call that school choice. That being said, when you say school choice, a lot of folks immediately think that what you're talking about is taking money away from existing zone public schools and people feel really strongly about that.

So I've been in lots of heated arguments. Hopefully those have gotten less heated over time. I think that's definitely the case, but it's a pretty emotional issue for a lot of people. 

Michael Lee : Is there a particular disagreement about school choice, either with an individual or a group or an organization that stands out?

Shaka Mitchell : I am based in Nashville, Tennessee, as you mentioned, and I remember just this year, in fact, [00:04:00] when, earlier this year when a law passed and the Tennessee General Assembly to pass what are called education freedom scholarships, these allowed kids to. Take a portion of their state money and go to the school of their choice.

And when that was on the floor being debated, there were members who were pointing and shouting at some of their colleagues because things were getting so heated and even in the gallery people were getting pretty spicy. I had somebody as. Just as I was walking past and going to sit in the public gallery that that got in my face and started shouting about who I was representing.

And he knew that I had done some work with a state based civil Rights Commission. I used to chair the state advisory Committee for the US Commission on Civil Rights. And I guess he knew this and he was. Just could not square these two things and was really upset and got in my face about it.

Michael Lee : Why do you feel so strongly about school choice? Tell us a little bit [00:05:00] about how you found your way into this space, and then we'll talk about this dis the dispute specifically. 

Shaka Mitchell : Yeah. So I wouldn't say that I started out feeling strongly about school choice. I'd say that I started out by feeling strongly that education was the surest way to climb the ladder for.

For many kids their zone public school works, but it doesn't work for every kid. It would not have worked for me and my siblings where I grew up on Long Island in New York. We then had to come outta pocket and my parents sent us to a local Catholic school. This is not some, elite school in Aton neighborhood is working class and low income families that had support from the diocese.

But, families still believe that education is so important. And and if you don't come from wealth, if you can't move to a better neighborhood, then what do you have? You have education, right? And so that's something that sticks with you to me. There are many different things that need to be fixed about our education system, but [00:06:00] school choice, in my estimation, is the most powerful lever to do these things quickly because a lot of the times when we talk about education solutions, we're talking about things with a 20 year timeline, school choice works almost immediately.

Michael Lee : And what does that entail in terms of pulling that lever to make a school choice and a doable, achievable option for most students in America? 

Shaka Mitchell : Yeah, great question. What it takes really is laws that get passed at the state level primarily. There's a lot of noise in education, particularly in the news now about the US Department of Education, but the federal government only accounts for 10 or 11% of all education funding.

The vast majority of laws and policies are set at the state level. So what we do is we work to pass laws that allow parents to. Have some choice beyond their local school. And so what that would look like is we say, Hey, Mitchell family, if you don't want to send one of your kids to the local school, instead of [00:07:00] us still allocating.

15, $16,000 to go to that local school, which is the case by the way, where I live. And it's a low performing high school. Instead of doing that, why don't you take some of that money and go to the school that works better for you, the one that you actually choose. And so it takes state laws to make that happen.

And so I think right now you've got programs like that in 32 states. 

Michael Lee : And what arguments do you hear most often against your position on school choice? 

Shaka Mitchell : I would say most often folks who talk about their opposition to school of choice focus on money, and they talk about doesn't this mean less money for a local public school?

And on that front, I would say they're right and they're wrong. It does mean less. Money, but it also means fewer students. And so there are less students to educate. It's also the case that in every choice program some money [00:08:00] remains. So we actually don't send all the money over dollar for dollar with the student to another school.

We only send a portion and so some money stays with the state. But I would say money is where you tend to see folks focus. There's also a psychology here. A lot of people are just really attached psychologically to their. Their local kind of community school, and so there's some nostalgia that comes with that I think we're often fighting against.

Michael Lee : I imagine, and just to be clear, I grew up in exclusively public schools. I've been a public school kid my whole life as the neighborhood school, and then went to public colleges and universities and now teach at one as well. And so I have a kind of in experiential investment. I'm realizing as you're narrating this, I have an experiential investment in.

What you might call neighborhood schools, but I'm not deeply researched in this debate and I'm cur approaching this with a lot of curiosity. Yeah. Other arguments I've heard as a casual observer against some school choice, just to hear your answers on these are, one is that a kind of [00:09:00] brain drain, those who with the resources to leave will leave.

And those with the seeking quote unquote better schools that are more quote unquote challenging, we'll leave and then third, that creates a kind of. Striated space, a hierarchical space of schools that just get that start off bad and get worse and worse. And then schools that start off well and get better and better.

What are your responses to those two? 

Shaka Mitchell : Yeah I think the concerns are totally valid. Meaning we ought not want any kinds of systems that, striate our communities or further strike them. I do think that we are better when we are in community with folks from all different backgrounds, all different socioeconomic backgrounds and and ideologies, et cetera.

But what I would say to counter some of those concerns or address some of them. I would say let's look at a state that doesn't have a school choice program, or cities that don't have school choice programs. And so New York would be a fantastic one to look at or Baltimore, Maryland, would be a fantastic [00:10:00] place to look because they don't have choice programs. And what you see there is that we spend an enormous amount of money on zoned public schools that in fact, the families who can afford to do something else do. So what do they do? They actually move out, right? They leave city schools, they go to a surrounding county, or they pay exorbitant amounts.

They practically bankrupt themselves to send their kids to private schools. And many of the concerns that people have for, oh, what might happen if we don't give all of our attention to public schools? What I would say is actually those things are happening and they actually tend to happen in places where that is the only viable option for people because you end up with a system that kind of lacks accountability and innovation, and it's not nimble to what parents actually demand.

So I, I think the concerns are valid, but but we actually see those in places without choice programs. 

Michael Lee : Yeah. Are there good examples? Not being familiar with the debate. Are there good examples of zoned schools that are [00:11:00] successful for the vast majority of students? 

Shaka Mitchell : Oh, yeah. You definitely have zoned schools that, that work.

Just south of Nashville where I live it's Williamson County and Williamson County goes back and forth with another county in the state for, either the top or the second best spot for public schools in the state. But. What I would say is that will, Williamson County is also a bedroom community of Nashville, right?

And so that is where lots of folks who work in downtown Nashville, whether they're lawyers or in some other professional setting, many live in Williamson County. And so they don't they actually don't live here. So they go back there. Their tax dollars are going to fund those schools.

These are families that. Many times have two parents who both have advanced degrees, right? And so there's a whole lot of things that happen when you only have zoned schools because people segregate themselves by real estate. And since I'm not smart enough to know how to fix real [00:12:00] estate, we, I focus on some education policy and those are some levers that we know we can tinker with.

But yeah, definitely there are public schools that work for a lot of people. And choice programs don't really alter any of that. They say, if your school is working for you, awesome. Stay there. Go there. 

Michael Lee : I've noticed one thing, I love your line about people segregate themselves by real estate because I was thinking, and I bet you get this a lot, is that people segregate themselves by school and school choices as well.

And so one of the ways things that seems to happen as I've followed this is that we. Many people will try to segregate themselves by real estate and move into a particular neighborhood or region of a city, and then come to realize that region of the city is zoned for a particular school. And then we have these school secession movements pop up to create new and different schools, and it seems largely linked.

To a very American project, which is to design our own kind of bespoke realities. I don't like this particular ordinance. It shouldn't [00:13:00] necessarily apply to me. I don't like this particular taxation policy. It shouldn't apply to me in my class. I don't like this or that law. And so I find a way to get out of it and school choice seems like another way to engineer a reality that may not be what is publicly mandated, but what is privately useful for me.

Shaka Mitchell : Yeah, that's an interesting way to, to think about it. I love the concept generally speaking of bespoke realities and but I don't think it works so much in this context, in that when a choice program passes, it is a perfectly voluntary program. And one of the differences between that and say, when I think about bespoke realities, really I think about how algorithms feed you and I a totally different newsfeed and so we are never even seeing the same, the other person's perspective, right?

In a with a choice program. What we're actually saying is let's let's not narrow the [00:14:00] availability and the ideas that are available to one person. Instead, let's actually widen the aperture. So now a low income family who thought that they only had one choice, and by the way that they know that this choice is not working.

Now you say, oh no, that's not your only choice. You can actually go across the county to another public tool. You've got a charter school you can go to. Here's some money that you can use for a homeschool or even a private school. And so I would say it's actually broadening the aperture. 

Michael Lee : You, as you open the show by talking about being in lots of disagreements about that, and you could tell, because you're well spoken and have quick rebuttals on the issue.

What have you learned about not this particular disagreement, but disagreements, perhaps healthy or unhealthy disagreements from participating in this career long dispute? 

Shaka Mitchell : Yeah, so I'm. I'm gonna date myself here, but I mean I've been working in education policy and advocacy for now more than 20 years, and at the front end of that it was much more [00:15:00] emotional for me.

And I think I was also faster to demonize the other side. I think something that I've learned over time we might call that maturity but something that I've learned over time is that. People can have, they can disagree with you vehemently and it doesn't mean that they don't care about kids or whatever your end goal is.

I actually think we have a lot of shared values. But we have different ways that we think about approaching. Attained leading those values. So I and someone who is on the local school board, I actually think we both care about kids. I think we may have a very different read about economics or efficacy of, some government institutions or how parents parents' relative sophistication.

We can have differences of opinion, but I, but at. At its core, I think we both care about kids, and that's really important to keep in mind and to extend some grace when people disagree [00:16:00] with you. 

Michael Lee : What's interesting about your space too is that you are the founder of the Come Together Music Project, and you exist in the bridging space or dialogue space where we're trying to humanize the possibility of disagreement, humanize our many differences, and yet still maintain.

Body politic and love for one another, but you're also engaged in a very specific and strident policy debate about school choice, and presumably would like to win more often than you lose in that policy debate. How do you balance the debate part of Chaka with the dialogue part of Chaka? 

Shaka Mitchell : Yeah. Thanks for asking and I think that.

It's something that I do think about a lot. I think that we can have really firm beliefs and also seek out conversations with people who we disagree with. I think if you were to talk about religion, that's another aspect, right? Where there are lots of people now who are in [00:17:00] this bridging space but they have deeply held, religious beliefs how do they do these simultaneously? I would say in some ways probably the way they do it. And what I hope to do with the Come Together Music Project is to say, listen, the least productive thing is for us to be so dug in that we won't even talk to the other side. The whole goal whether it's politics or getting some public policy passed or whatever, like it's a, we like to say it's a game of addition.

You want more people on your side? How are you gonna have more people on your side if you are so hostile all the time. And so I think deaf to other people's perspectives that you won't even have a conversation. I don't have any delusion that I'm gonna convince everybody to, to be on my side, but boy, we've gotta have these conversations and be willing to tough them out.

And I need to be able to hear where I could be wrong as well. 

Michael Lee : You've presumably learned a lot about debate. You've definitely learned a lot about [00:18:00] disagreements, both healthy and unhealthy, and assumptions about the other side, and what motivates them. What have you learned about being persuasive in this pursuit?

Shaka Mitchell : Some of the things that come to mind are things that have been, documented really well by folks like say Jonathan, he. Or Daniel, Kahneman, right? Thinking about how we like to think of ourselves as these rational actors, but in fact, sometimes it's not the rider, the rational rider, it's the emotional elephant that is often the one leading us down a certain path.

And I, so I think about that. I think about whether or not. I'm addressing the rider or the elephant, and I do believe that both need to be engaged, but I try to be cognizant of that and not, I never lead with data and fact that is important, but it can't be the only part of the story. 

Michael Lee : Sa Mitchell, thanks so much for being an emotional element here on when we [00:19:00] Disagree.

Shaka Mitchell : Thanks for having me. 

Michael Lee : When we Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse k and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at When We disagree@gmail.com.