a Platform For The Possible
In the premiere episode of Strictly Education with Dr. Tahira, Dr. Tahira Dupree Chase inaugurates her new platform not with spectacle, but with something increasingly rare in public discourse: a measured, intelligent, and deeply human conversation about the present and future of education. Her guest, Dr. Miesha Porter, former Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education and a formidable advocate for educational equity, proves a fitting choice for such an opening. What emerges is not merely an interview, but a colloquy—frank, occasionally personal, and richly textured with the experience of two Black women who have spent their careers navigating and reshaping American education from within.
The conversation, while warm and collegial, is underscored by a sense of urgency. Education, after all, remains one of the most contested and consequential arenas of public life in the United States. But rather than succumbing to the polarized talking points that often accompany such discussions, Dr. Tahira and Dr. Porter manage to do something harder: they listen. They reflect. And they resist the easy packaging of complex problems into soundbites.
Dr. Porter, whose administrative experience spans the full range of New York City’s sprawling school system, speaks not in abstractions but in specificities—about leadership, mentorship, policy, and the structural forces that shape educational outcomes before a child ever steps into a classroom. She is candid about the systemic inequities that persist, but she also insists on the capacity of local leadership and community engagement to drive change. It is this refusal to relinquish either critique or hope that gives the episode its quiet gravity.
For her part, Dr. Tahira is not merely a host, but a curator of perspective. Her questions are not confrontational, but they are not deferential either. They prompt reflection, even reevaluation. There is a distinct generosity in her approach—an intellectual hospitality, one might say—which allows Dr. Porter to be expansive in her thinking without retreating into platitude.
The episode touches on themes that will be familiar to anyone who works in or around education: the challenges of teacher retention, the persistent opportunity gaps faced by students of color, the emotional labour of school leadership, and the often invisible work of care that sustains so many educators. But what distinguishes Strictly Education is not simply the relevance of its subject matter, but the calibre of its conversation. It is rare, and perhaps increasingly rare, to hear two educational leaders speak without performance, without spectacle, and without a predetermined conclusion.
One might expect an inaugural episode to trade in introductions and framing. Instead, what we receive is something fuller: a sense of intellectual positioning. Strictly Education, if this first installment is any indication, will not be a series of promotional interviews or pedagogical glosses. It aims to offer something deeper—a public space for thoughtful, long-form engagement with the moral and political stakes of education.
What it ultimately reveals is that behind the bureaucracy, the funding debates, the curriculum wars, and the legislative skirmishes, education remains, at its core, a profoundly human enterprise. And in the voices of Dr. Tahira and Dr. Porter, we hear what that enterprise can sound like when handled with care.
