Good Vibes Episode 1: Miracle Children

Principal Scott Conti interviews the journalists and authors of Miracle Children: Race, Education, and a True Story of False Promises, Katie Benner and Erica L. Green ahead of their book talk at Seward Park Campus Library at New Design High School.

From Macmillan Publishers:

"A riveting investigation into a school, a scam, and a notorious college admissions scandal that exposes the inequalities and racial segregation of American education, from two award-winning New York Times journalists

T.M. Landry College Prep, a small private school in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, boasted a 100 percent college acceptance rate, placing students at nearly every Ivy League university in the country. The spectacle of Landry students opening their acceptance letters to Harvard and Yale was broadcast on television and even celebrated by Michelle Obama. It became a national ritual to watch the miraculous success of these youngsters—miraculous because Breaux Bridge is one of the poorest counties in the country, ranked close to the bottom for test scores and high school graduation rates. T.M. Landry was said to be “minting prodigies,” and the prodigies were often black.

How did the school do it? It didn’t: It was a scam, pulled off with fake transcripts and personal essays telling fake stories of triumph over adversity. Worse, Landry’s success concealed a nightmare of alleged abuse and coercion. In a yearslong investigation, Katie Benner and Erica L. Green explored the lives of the students, the school, the town, and Ivy League admissions to understand why black teens were pressured to trade in racial stereotypes of hardship for opportunity.

Gripping and illuminating, Miracle Children argues that the lesson of T.M. Landry is not that the school gamed the system but that it played by the rules—that its deceptions and abuses were the outcome of segregated schools, inequitable education, and the belief that elite colleges are the nation’s last path to life-changing economic opportunity."

Produced by: Spark Studio

Original Beat "Beethoven" by Benjamin Lewis

Transcript

SCOTT: Three, two. Hi there. It's Dr. Scott Conti founding principal of New Design High School and welcome to the Good Vibes podcast. What an honor today. 

ERICA: Thank you for having us!

SCOTT: I haven't even introduced you yet! Katie Bennett, Erica Green New Times. Journalists, and authors of a wild wild book that I just finished last night. So good. Do you want to give like the two minute overview of the story? And then you want to go ahead 

KATIE: Erica should do this, because I said, I was having a problem, condensing it into just a short overview. And she said, this is easy. I can do it. Erica, I cannot I can't. 

ERICA: TM Landry. College preparatory was a school that we embarked on. 2018. We reported a about the that the seemingly miraculous college acceptances that they were achieving among their students predominantly Black students getting them into Ivy League schools and was in fact riddled with fraud and the school was abusing children, it scamming their families and falsifying their way into the most elite colleges in country. Miracle Children is based on that story but a much more expanded version where we tell everyone all of the questions that they had after the story, which is, you how did this happen, how did get away with it? We very much tell you how team Landry came be how they achieve these Miracles. But what the book does is tell you how, you know, TM Landry did not exist in a vacuum, TM Landry was born out of a system, ripe within justices and inequities that date back to, you know, Brown V Board when the country decided it would provide An equal shot at opportunity through education in this country. And we show you how you know ever since then Black children have always had to trade some sense of their dignity for opportunity in the country. It is a racial transaction that the country has demanded and it's one that we just saw completely exploited by the school. 

SCOTT: Yeah. I think I Well, I'm curious. What was your like when you heard about the story? What was the attraction for you folks? Because obviously, there to be a second traction. We were like we had for write a about this story, right? So what was the initial attraction for both of you the initial story because there you could have just done the like look this guy scammed. A bunch of kids in was really abusive to people and he's just horrible person but I think at some you also took that last turn where you're okay but right. Like is he right? I think all these other people are also scamming the system. So what was the initial attraction and then what was the turn to like we've got to on a book because it's Katie's found out. Books are a of work. 

KATIE: You I think that the initial responses actually horror. This is a this school had these viral videos of people getting into college. That were very they seem very inspirational and we've them and we'd them. So many other people had Michelle, Obama had, Jeremy Lin Ellen, Show, Ellen, show, you know. This, this is like a nationwide, like, exercising of hope and nationwide exercise of hope and and see where still provide opportunity for Black America. However, you as we talked about that, the idea that the country celebrates so hard, once somebody who has gets into an Ivy League school but would do that for. Almost anyone, really? Anyone else? It's it said something really important about the country and where we're with race and I think that we felt that needed to be explored. 

ERICA: Yeah. And and there were no, you know, the out, pick up on the taking the turn and to a book and the but, you know. We one thing that we we knew as we were reporting the story and his after we published it and we saw a of the commentary coming in. We, you know, we did, we all had to, as the reporters, the readers, the public, the families had to grapple with this elephant in the room that, you know, the Landry's were rigging. Um, they were playing a and a rigged system and that was kind of the that was kind of the unspoken, you know, reality there. And you know, the colleges themselves also had to reckon with that that, you we that it always felt like Mike was not, you the biggest villain in this story. There were a there, a of people who are responsibility for what happened there and so we in addition in addition to wanting to tell, you know, about the complex nature of all of these families, like journeys, two and through TM Landry, because it just, you I think a people came away, wondering, you know, how could these parents do this? How could they not know what were these kids thinking? And we thought that they deserve to have their say. But also, you know, we also thought that we had to Grapple with, like the elephant in the room and that, you know, everybody was responsible for what happened to TM Landry. I as a reporter, we we shared those videos. I mean, I shared them, I was thrilled on Facebook and that that any anybody uses that anymore. But Twitter, so, you know, as Katie said, we just had to go a more deeply into why? And also, you know, check ourselves on what were we actually outraged about. 

SCOTT: I this point that you've written the book. I I've always say this, when you write something, you have to get away from it a bit to a full perspective. Like, we're we're where's your most outraged at this moment of time about the whole situation? What you just still blown away it by because it's one those situations as you read the book, you like it again and again and again, there's just layer after layer like You the morning meeting the, like, the dean's visiting, right? Like, you're like the how, like, the just like, making him into hero that we all wanted, and it seems so simple. I that's the thing as a principal for 23 years. It like, it was that simple. Right working so hard, right? So we're just like, where's your, where's the most outraged for you and... 

KATIE: I think I have burned out my outrage. But I like I've feeling so crazy for so years that I have outrageous. Even emotion, I feel anymore but I think that the thing still think about all the time is the that even when Some parents found out about what the founders of school were to their kids, the abuses, and the fraud, the deception, the lying, they still felt that no other system would ever support them in their dreams. What is never support their students and felt still wanted to stick with Mike. Because as they said, he's not the one. Like cutting corners and cheating. There are kids who buying their way into college. There are kids, who having, you hiring tutors, who write their essays and applications like we are not going to walk away just because he got caught, we don't have a lot of other options. I think about that all the 

SCOTT: Yeah. Well I think they're like we've we don't. I'm I've at a public school for these years and I'm not like, I'm not an anti Catholic school or charter school and just kind of like I believe in good schools, but I for so years people raged about charter schools and then, but like, you're a parent and you have any other options, right? And you go into that charter instead of that public school just that sense empowerment about having a choice, right? Or even I mean got a charter schools here that are pretty big in the and if go there and not agreeing with what they do pedagogically, but if you walk in and see that clean space and well-dressed kids and teachers, like, Why wouldn't you want your kid there? 

ERICA: You know me, right? I thought a lot about KIPP when we were writing this. Yeah, that I'm sorry. I'm gonna say, I mean, I covered them for years and I, you it's so I I for obvious reasons, I covered when KIPP Schools open and in Baltimore City, and visited and there were kindergarteners in college sweatshirts because that was their thing. Right? Like there was there were college Flags everywhere and and in babies like saying like I'm going to Harvard or I'm going to Spelman or I'm but you that was like celebrated and okay, right? And and I'm not, I'm not passing a judgement either way but I will say that, you know, Mike Landry was able to borrow from a places. Charter school private public school. He was able to you know, borrow from whatever the grab bag of the reform movement which I thought a about. And, you know, he came up with all of these terms that didn't really mean much. and so as I look back even over my own career, you know, I'm mad at everybody. I'm mad at myself? No, because I can't, I will not comment on whether or not I ever bought in, but I will say that, you as a reporter we published the test scores of every school in the city for and went through them and rank them. And, you know, celebrated some, and shamed others and accused, know, they're cheating scandals, that ruined people's careers. And you know, branded a of kids, a bunch of cheaters for a measure that today, no one even remembers because it's literally outlawed. And I just keep thinking about like the cycle that we keep putting particularly young children of color through. for a solution that the like, for a that country has never been ready for and so I just, you know, I had to grapple with the fact that I remember I call Katie and I was like panicked and said, what's wrong? I like What if Mike isn't the biggest villain in this story? Because obviously what he did was so, 

KATIE: It's egregious, horrible? 

ERICAL Right? Um, but I it was yeah, it's the worst but in there's no but about it I do I did understand that people were going to come away, you know. you know, thinking about outraged that much understanding that the outrage needed to be pointed at more than like one man. 

SCOTT: Because I think at some points, I'm at least for me like, I've that's so I mean, basically, I hard 23 years ago to start school in building, right? We had I think for the Black and brown population, there a below 30% graduation rate in the Seward Park High We weren't up 96 or 98. We've had to work very hard to get there, but there I felt every emotion, Mike felt right. Like the over pride about myself as a leader, faking things to want kids to get. But, you know, like I felt every emotion at times I like Mike, you don't don't throw the kid across the room, right? Right. Like get the elementary school kids a teacher, right? Like, like I to believe in you. Like we need. You might like, we need this. But just so many layers to work against, you know. 

ERICA: Yeah, and he didn't. Yeah. getting them a teacher and...and throwing kids across the room. I you demonstrates what the Landry's any, any any reasonable person can conclude is that, you while they may have started with the right intentions. It became about, you know, money. which is, you know, why they didn't spend on teacher and why they had a bunch kids there bringing in tons of tuition money, but not teaching them and power, which the way, you the physical and mental abuse, that they exerted on the students to them to comply. And so, you know, we a lot of educators who have read this could of a of different people they've seen over the years become, very prominent, and famous, and wealthy, using very similar tactics. The dancing with students, the college prep even. I mean, my my favorite chapter and grateful to Katie for doing the research is the Joe Clark chapter. Yeah, you So, so yeah, we we always want root for The grand reformer. But you know, some work out and some don't well. 

SCOTT: So I think it's the grand reformer. The system needs reform. I that's the big thing, right? And then we need people inside the systems to reform the systems. I've that's always hard trying figure out. He's like you're constantly working to to figure out the College Board that's at prep, right? Like you guys just met a of our kids who want be right or right? They're wonderful kids but navigating all that actually like got to really thoughtful, you need, you need money for things, like, we've we've spent the two raising crazy amounts of money. Just so can, like, do things with kids, you don't have those. Yeah. Okay, so it this TM Landry definitely doesn't want wasn't about kids. which kids story got to you the most or the one. You think about the most, or you just so attached to...

KATIE: I can't answer that question, right? So different and they're all you this is one of the things that think we talked a like we don't we definitely didn't want this book to be like pity p*** you we didn't want people to read this book and like who feel the worst for and we didn't because one the things Mike did he convinced these students that unless people could feel bad for them. Yeah, they would be worth anything it's society. Society only wants broken black people that can fix. So that we can make excuses about why. Black and brown people are not seeing the same financial success as other people. We can blame it on them. so like really hesitate to even think about, like, I that each student has their own reality subjectivity and I respect them I again like the there things that really stuck with about. I that the things that really struck me where their observations that thought were really brilliant. The observation. Yeah, I like and each one has a different observation than I has resonance and power. Beyond the book, you Raymond understanding, as young kid. That the country said, one thing and another around race. You know, that says we're all created equal but he watches people. Like perishing after Hurricane Katrina and he knows they look like him and he's like he that observation is so powerful you Dorian's observation that one of the reasons why people wanted cover up the scandals because they don't want to be responsible, they want be Black, people responsible for taking down on Black man and how that creates, internal trauma that will last forever in communities. Like I thought that was like a brilliant observation and one that was hard to say, you know, and every student has comes to their own life story. With an ability to see the world more clearly than I'll just say than I was able to see. I think the most people are able to see because they're stories, so I guess like their, their thoughtfulness about how the world is each one had a way of thinking about the world that has stuck with me. Yeah. 

ERICA: Yeah, I mean I had no yeah. I love. All of them and their stories resonated with me for very, very different reasons. I won that. I I will highlight, though is Dorian and for a couple of reasons. The first is, she's a now, she's a Black woman. But at the time she was a Black girl when we think about these, you know, when we when we think about celebrating successes that seem out of reach is usually about boys, because Black boys have had such a terrible trajectory in this country. And so you rarely ever see young Black girls highlighted in these conversations. And when you do you, they usually are not Dorian. Who comes from a like a formidable family, educators academics. Just like I mean HBCU educated business owners, strong deep roots and family, and the South and in success and excellence. And that is what was always expected of her. And I also just love that we have her in this book because she was so incredibly audacious. I love that. She always thought that she was gonna be great. It was instilled in her, it was what was expected of her. And that is what she came to expect of herself and she never backed down from that even when she was being screamed at or you know, told by the one person who she believed believed and her that she wouldn't actually be able to achieve her dream. You know, I just, I just, I just love the, she got to, you know, give voice to a group of a population of students that we don't hear from very often. Or don't hear about very often when we're talking about educational, you know, successes are, you know, miracles, I mean we and that's just, you know, data-driven too because you know, girls have historically. And outperformed boys, on. Some measures the measures that we all became obsessed about but I just, I just love that. She also has this full circle moment where she realizes that she's gonna be who she is. And that no one can take from her, what was instilled in her. In the end. Like I just I I'm not gonna give away the ending, but I just that one. It just, it's slaps. Like for a different reason, you know, it's it's just, it's very distinct. 

SCOTT: So, It was so impressed that some of these kids. So I mean, if they were at a different institution, they probably wouldn't have gotten into these schools but, you know, some of them didn't make it, but some of the kids did, which was all so such a statement to his, why the system needs to change. Yeah. Right to go into a school supposed to be so challenging with the preparation they got. And just to let, you know, the TM Landry was very much about ACT prep. That was the big thing. We have some charter schools here. I'm not going to mention success who just do a lot of test prep with kids. Very young age, right? They think that's gonna make a change, we know doesn't, but to see some of those kids get through just that, that was the thing. I was like, we got to change the system because we can get these kids. These schools. They could have these amazing opportunities. 

KATIE: Yeah, it's like, perverse incentive on, perverse incentive, but also like, even the idea that a college is good and successful. If it only takes 6% of the students who apply is one of the most insane things ever. I'm really interested in Arizona State University's model. We will take you, I, you know, the University of California system used to be this way as well. It's like if you have if you can basically get a C come on by and we'll get you in because we're here to educate all who want to participate in higher education. Now the pressures were lower than we didn't need to have go to college in order to have a middle class life. That's a new phenomenon as of this century, you know, kind of starts in the late 80s 90s. But you know, so there were different. So there's different pressure on higher, ed. And even the idea that we allocate money based on grades as the measure of success and test scores, you know, I my friend Joe, he speaks to a lot of college students. He works and tech now, but he was, he's his family's from Ghana, he was supposed to be a doctor, he got to college and his biology classes of science classes pre-med classes were actually pretty easy for him but the classes he loved were psychology, sociology, anthropology. He felt like he was learning so much in those classes and he got Cs in them because they were very hard for him. Now, when you ask him, what made him a good learner and what made him smarter and better, it would be the class as he got Cs in. It would not be the class, he got As in and when you ask him, how his career has gone and why he's been able to pivot into all these different things, you know, it's because he knows how to learn and he learned to learn because he did stuff that was hard for him. We're incentivizing students to not do things that are hard because what if you get a B or a C? And that how do you learn? If you don't run up against something that is hard, how do you learn how? 

SCOTT: You talk about that with the Varsity Blues Scandal, where you're like, you can't get at B. Yeah, yeah. Like you can't write like yeah. Yeah. 

KATIE: And those those families were gaming. They were where they gaming the system where they're playing the system as it was meant to be played. It's like you have wealth. You're gonna trade wealth for your spot. You have your race and you're going to debase yourself for your spot, like, but everybody is using the tool that society is told them, they have. 

SCOTT: And they're doing it because they care about their kids, which is just this other, right? Like they like, that's their way of caring about their kids that was 

KATIE: And how devastating, was for those kids to find out that they hadn't earned their spot. I mean, some new but some kids didn't know. They actually thought that they had done well, And you know, that was a very intense thing to realize your parents don't believe in you. Yeah, they don't think you can do. Well, they're going to buy you in. 

SCOTT: So what's the process? 

KATIE: Yeah. 

SCOTT: What's next for you too? 

KATIE: Well, we're gonna go back to work. 

SCOTT: So is there anything from the book that you want to like walk into next? I mean no we're done. No, I mean you get away but is there anything like after the book is like, I want to like commit myself to or looking to more like you speak, very passionately about the system changing. 

KATIE: Yeah, I think I think that one of the things that working on the book gave me a real focus on was how quickly rights can be taken away, like, how fast that process works and we see it in education. You know, you can see the education does lead to power success stability. Respect a lot of wonderful things but you also see how it's used as a tool to decide who gets what and, you know before Brown versus the Board. You have this really intense moment after the Civil War or Reconstruction starts to create all these promises for people. You have Black members of Congress you have Black diplomats, you know, what are diplomats to the Soviet? I think so. Right to Russia, you know, in at the turn of the century was a Black man. Who was the first Black man to ever graduate from Harvard. Like you see the country moving, and what seems like an intensely interesting, new more progressive direction. It takes, not even really a generation to rip that away. Giving us the Jim Crow system that then takes 70 years, 60 years to fight against where you get Brown versus the Board. It is the rights go away quickly and they're rebuilt slowly. And I think that, I think about that constantly in this era, constantly. 

ERICA: Yeah, I mean look I, you know, I am watching closely and bracing for and anticipating exactly what we're seeing happen, which is a very, very intense retrenchment on civil rights in this country. And it started, you know, it is starting with schools. You know, one of the first places to get gutted and rebuilt in its image by the Trump Administration was the Office for Civil Rights at the education department. The dismantling of the education department in and of itself which is a Civil Rights era establishment is very symbolic, if not, you know, as dire as everyone says, because education department, really only does two things which is distribute, money provides some oversight of law, enforce of laws, and making sure that they're there followed with fidelity, but that's through the Office for Civil Rights. So, the Office of Civil Rights exist but has become a tool to actually undermine the very civil rights laws that it is charged by Congress to enforce. So it'll be interesting to see how that battle is fought. And then, you know, this idea that we're that that we are now giving power to the states to run their schools as they see fit. And that's another misnomer because states primarily run their schools anyway. But but we all kind of know what happened in the last time we had states rights. It didn't turn out well for certain groups of people and now we're in a position where we don't have. We don't have an agency that feels any responsibility for overseeing things, like desegregation consent decrees, or any real enforcement of laws. So we also don't have an agency particularly interested in measuring how children are faring in this country. So it's about to become, you know, the wild west and we're gonna be in the dark about how it's all transpiring, but for amazing journalists who will document it. And, and I think we're really headed toward a moment that we thought we were past. Just only like seven decades ago. 

SCOTT: It is the craziest of times, I don't know how the kids are going out into this future anymore without like just the fact they show up for school with, like, political climate, climate change. I don't. 

ERICA: Yeah, it's a lot. 

SCOTT: Yeah, I'm very impressed again. 

ERICA: We were putting the burden on them. 

SCOTT: Yeah. Yeah. Going into a world that they have. No, we don't have any idea, what it's gonna be like. Yeah, it's really crazy. Well I thank you for coming and for working with our kids, a pleasure you guys see a witness of these crazy times. Yeah, like, as I was reading, I was like, I've got to become, I've got to do I really was like. Inspired by the whole thing and by the kids to yeah, I want to thank you. They're here tonight with Yu & Me Books. Chris Emdin is going to be here so great. He might be one of the heroes like we can just put heroes status on the amazing incredible. 

KATIE: There's no two ways. 

SCOTT: Yeah, Teachers College professor. Anyway, you can pick up the book anywhere bookstores online bookstore. Yeah, I heard the audiobook so I could cook for those kids I have. I have anyway, but thanks so much and best of luck with the book. 

ERICA: Thanks so much. We really appreciate being here.