Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 279 ｜ The Corruption of Public Education & the Need for School Choice

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Friday. So we are having another mind-blowing conversation

00:00:16.360 today with Corey DeAngelis. He is going to talk to us. He's an expert in school choice. And so

00:00:22.000 he's going to talk to us about the public school system, the importance of school choice,

00:00:25.920 why it predominantly affects vulnerable Americans, and why it is so important for

00:00:32.720 matters of justice, for matters of equity and equality, for us to care about, know about,

00:00:39.600 and support school choice. I learned so much from this conversation, and I'm really excited

00:00:44.400 for you two as well. Without further ado, here is Corey DeAngelis. Corey, thank you so much for

00:00:49.460 joining me. Hey, thank you so much for having me. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?

00:00:54.540 Corey DeAngelis. Yeah, I'm Corey DeAngelis. I'm the director of school choice at the Reason

00:00:58.680 Foundation. I'm also affiliated with the Cato Institute as an adjunct scholar. So I do a lot

00:01:03.320 of research on school choice programs, whether that's, you know, charter schools or private school

00:01:08.560 voucher programs, or even things like education savings accounts, which we could talk about in

00:01:12.580 a little bit what each of those are. But I do research on these. I debate the topic with others

00:01:17.380 and do a lot of myth busting, because there's a lot of myths in the school choice debate. I actually

00:01:21.980 have a co-edited book coming out with Cato Institute's Neil McCluskey called School Choice

00:01:26.780 Myths, where we tackle 12 of the biggest myths in the debate. So that's essentially my background.

00:01:32.660 I have a PhD in education policy, where I started all this research. And I particularly like to look

00:01:37.540 at non-test score outcomes, because people, when they're using these programs, are choosing schools,

00:01:43.040 private schools in particular, for a lot of different reasons. One is academics, but it's also safety,

00:01:47.560 character, skill, development. And, you know, I've actually looked at things like reductions in crimes

00:01:54.360 and teen pregnancies as a result of these types of programs.

00:01:58.320 This might be difficult to do, because it's such a big subject. And you kind of just did it just then.

00:02:02.280 But for people who have no idea what we're talking about, when we say school choice,

00:02:06.420 can you kind of concisely summarize what the idea of school choice is?

00:02:11.300 Yeah, the most concise way I can summarize it is anything that allows the family to escape the

00:02:17.660 residentially assigned government-run monopoly system. Or another way to think about it is to

00:02:22.800 allow the money to follow the child to wherever they're receiving an education. That's the most

00:02:27.020 basic way to think about it. So that could be a charter school, which is a public school that's

00:02:32.280 independently operated. It could be a magnet school, which is another government-run option, but that

00:02:36.880 you're not residentially assigned to. It could be the voucher idea, where if you aren't satisfied with

00:02:42.340 your residentially assigned school, you can take some of those dollars in the form of a voucher

00:02:46.220 and use it to pay for private school tuition and fees. This is the idea that Milton Friedman

00:02:50.520 discussed in his 1955 essay, The Role of Government in Education. And then there's also things called

00:02:57.440 education savings accounts, which I like to refer to as universal basic education income, or UBEI,

00:03:04.520 where instead of that money coming in the form of a voucher, it goes into a savings account that

00:03:10.260 families can use those dollars for different providers of educational services. So you can use

00:03:14.980 it for homeschooling expenses, micro-schooling, these pandemic pods that people are talking about right

00:03:20.300 now, you can use it for that. You can use it for private school tuition and fees if you want, but it

00:03:24.380 really takes us from school choice to education choice, since it allows for a whole bunch of different

00:03:29.560 options to be leveraged. And where there aren't these school choice programs and options,

00:03:35.320 kids are simply assigned to a public school based on their zip code, correct? And if there's no option

00:03:43.040 for school choice, that's where they have to go, even if the school has terrible teachers and they're

00:03:48.060 not having a good experience there. Is that correct? Yes, Allie, and that's what I chalk up a lot of the

00:03:54.160 problems of the public education system too. It's this problem of residential assignment. In most

00:03:59.480 places, if you don't have these school choice options, the default is you live in a particular

00:04:04.020 zip code, you live in a particular residence, and you're residentially assigned to a particular public

00:04:09.440 school. And if you're not satisfied with that school for whatever reason, you don't have a lot

00:04:13.940 of options. And each option that you have is extremely costly. You can move to another house

00:04:19.200 that's residentially assigned to another government run school, or you can pay out of pocket, which is

00:04:24.260 essentially the equivalent of paying twice paying for two schools, one through tuition and fees,

00:04:29.840 then the other through the property tax system. Just imagine if you didn't like your nearest

00:04:33.480 neighborhood grocery store, and you had to move houses to get to get to access to another one that

00:04:38.980 would be extremely costly. And that grocery store that you live next to wouldn't have any meaningful

00:04:43.740 incentive to do a really good job. And this is another reason why I think there's so much

00:04:48.580 contentious debate around schools reopening right now, because, again, the funding goes

00:04:53.720 to the system, the school instead of the family. And so just imagine, again, if your neighborhood

00:04:58.840 Walmart got your money each week, regardless of whether they reopened and regardless of whether

00:05:04.660 they even provided you with groceries each week, they would have very little incentive to reopen

00:05:09.720 in a timely or effective manner. And so I think that's one of the big problems with the K-12

00:05:14.420 education system that the money goes to the schools instead of the individual students.

00:05:19.600 And so the families don't have a lot of power in this relationship. And they're kind of getting

00:05:23.960 left out of the conversation with the reopening debate.

00:05:26.880 How did this system start where we said that kids are assigned to a particular school based

00:05:31.920 on their zip code and that the money goes to the school rather than the child? And why has no one

00:05:37.380 changed that in so many years? Well, our compulsory education system, the first compulsory education

00:05:44.260 law in the United States was in Massachusetts in 1852. And it was advocated for by Horace Mann. He's

00:05:51.300 the quote unquote, father of American public education. And the argument was to make people more

00:05:56.580 alike, to make people more uniform. And this actually came and was adopted from the Prussian

00:06:02.180 education system, which is in current day, modern day Germany, which was created for the explicit

00:06:09.220 purpose to make obedient soldiers and then, you know, clerks for industry to create people who could

00:06:17.840 be managed. So that's where we got our education system. And it was, you know, if you look at all the

00:06:23.360 rhetoric from Horace Mann and others in the 1800s, it was about, you know, making those Catholics more

00:06:30.620 Protestant, making the immigrants more, quote unquote, American, whatever they meant by that

00:06:35.080 at the time. And so we still have that system in place today. And obviously, there are special

00:06:42.020 interests involved that keep things from changing. Because if you have a monopoly on any type of good

00:06:47.880 or service, you have a strong incentive to keep it that way. So with this residential assignment and

00:06:53.100 compulsory funding through the property tax system, you create a huge monopoly system that doesn't

00:07:00.560 really have to respond to the needs of their customers. And that is the government-run school

00:07:04.860 system that we have today. If your customers have to pay you and they're compelled to use your service

00:07:10.360 and they're, you know, they're residentially assigned to you, you don't really have a strong

00:07:14.680 incentive to listen to them. And that's good for the producer, but it's not so good for the families.

00:07:20.540 Just imagine if you had to pay Walmart again, you know, if you had to pay Walmart each week

00:07:24.760 and, or let's, let's just take another taxpayer funded initiative like food stamps. Let's say in

00:07:30.940 order for a family to use food stamps, you had to use it at your nearest residentially assigned

00:07:35.820 Walmart. Walmart would like that. And they would probably, you know, some, some producers would

00:07:41.540 probably fight for, to keep things that way. So that's probably why we have that special interest

00:07:48.020 involved in the school system as well. For the people who say that the reason why some public

00:07:55.740 schools are failing isn't because they're basically not incentivized at all. They don't have any

00:08:02.300 incentives to have more competent teachers or have higher standards for their administration or whatever

00:08:08.780 is because they are lacking funding because they might be in areas, in a poor area. And so the property

00:08:17.340 taxes that are funding that school are going to be a lot lower than they would be in a rich area.

00:08:22.600 So people who use that argument to say, well, that's why schools are failing, not because of

00:08:27.940 this lack of incentive that is inherent in a kind of system where the money has to unconditionally go

00:08:36.160 to the institution instead of the students. What do you say to that? Yeah. Money doesn't matter if you

00:08:40.820 don't have an incentive to spend that money wisely. You can spend a billion dollars per student and get

00:08:45.060 the same results if you're just allocating it to administrative blow and just hiring more people

00:08:50.360 instead of allocating those dollars into the classroom towards the student. So I would argue

00:08:54.460 the incentives are more important. And look, we spend a lot of money in the United States since 1960

00:08:59.320 in real terms after adjusting for inflation. We've increased real education spending per child

00:09:05.780 in public schools by 280 percent. Since 1990, we've increased it in real terms by around 40 percent.

00:09:13.480 So each decade, we've increased spending in public schools year after year. Our results are about the same

00:09:19.080 over the time since the last half century. So look, again, money doesn't matter if you don't have any incentive

00:09:24.420 to spend that money wisely. And just think about it from a recent report by Kennesaw State University's

00:09:30.280 Ben Scaffidy. He looked at funding from 1992 to 2014, and he found that real education expenditures

00:09:37.080 per pupil increased by about 27 percent. But he actually also found that real teacher salaries

00:09:42.900 dropped by 2 percent. And so we're pouring more and more money into the system, but it's going into

00:09:49.340 just putting more people into the system and increasing administrative blow and bureaucracy.

00:09:54.800 And so, look, I mean, again, this isn't benefiting the teachers either, the current system.

00:10:01.640 And we've also found with studies of school choice programs, I think there's about five studies on this

00:10:06.340 that I've seen, when there's school choice competition involved, more dollars start to get allocated to the

00:10:11.400 classroom and the teachers start to get higher salaries because the producer starts to see that, well,

00:10:17.320 if we don't spend our money wisely in the classroom on the teachers for the students, we're going to lose

00:10:22.620 our customers. And so competition works in education just like it does in any other industry.

00:10:27.740 And I want to point out that, you know, in other taxpayer funded systems, the money does go to the

00:10:34.100 family. It doesn't go to the system. And here's some examples really quickly because I forgot to

00:10:38.220 mention them earlier. One is the food stamps, which I kind of mentioned earlier. The money doesn't go to

00:10:43.360 the Walmart that you're residentially assigned to or even a government run grocery store. It goes to

00:10:48.260 the family and the family has a choice in the matter where to allocate those dollars. They can take it to

00:10:52.400 Walmart, but they can also take it to Trader Joe's or Whole Foods or Safeway or Harris Teeter or

00:10:56.780 wherever they want to get those grocery services. But we see this in other industries as well,

00:11:01.380 including education with Pell Grants at the higher education level. With Pell Grants, the money doesn't

00:11:06.980 go to your nearest community college and the government doesn't say you better spend those

00:11:10.440 dollars at the community college or you're going to lose them. No, it goes to the student. The student

00:11:14.160 can choose to spend them at the community college, but they can also go to the state university

00:11:17.660 and they can even go to a religious private university. You could take it to Notre Dame,

00:11:21.960 for example, or other universities as well. We have the GI Bill for Veterans. The same thing,

00:11:27.740 you know, the money goes to the individual student. You can spend it at private or public universities

00:11:32.300 if you're choosing. Pre-K programs as well. A lot of people on the left support pre-K programs

00:11:37.300 in Pell Grants, but they don't support K-12 vouchers, which is, again, the same kind of idea here.

00:11:42.840 If they support these other initiatives, they should certainly support K-12 vouchers.

00:11:46.620 But with pre-K programs, the money goes to the family. You can choose a public provider of the

00:11:51.000 pre-K or you can choose a private provider of the pre-K. The difference is the power is in the

00:11:57.400 hands of the families when you're funding the students directly, not the system. And so the

00:12:02.120 only argument that I'm making when it comes to school choice is we should just do it the same

00:12:05.220 way. If we're going to have a certain amount of taxpayer funding for whatever initiative it is,

00:12:10.240 it should go to the people. It shouldn't go to the system.

00:12:13.100 And the ones that are standing in the way of that, I know you talked about, of course,

00:12:17.980 if you have a monopoly on something, you're going to want it to stay the way it is. But

00:12:24.000 you mentioned that the system, how it is now, yes, more money is going to the institution,

00:12:30.880 to the public school, but actually teacher salaries are going down. I had assumed it would be the

00:12:35.880 teachers unions who are trying to keep the system the way it is so that the money doesn't follow

00:12:41.020 the child. But if teacher salaries are going down, now I'm kind of confused who is standing in the

00:12:46.760 way of more school choice. Yeah. So this is one thing that is good to clarify because being,

00:12:53.300 you know, skeptical of the influence of teachers unions, is it the same thing as being anti-teacher?

00:12:58.900 They have two different incentive structures. So the teachers union, think about the data that I

00:13:05.440 showed you or talked about earlier, 1992 to 2014, increase in spending for people by 27 percent,

00:13:11.360 decrease in teacher salaries by 2 percent. That benefits the teachers unions because what they

00:13:15.840 spent the money on was increasing the number of people in the system. So they increased the number

00:13:20.600 of support staff by a ton. I think it was by about 700 percent or some huge number. I'd have to pull up

00:13:26.600 the report. And so that money is allocated to hiring more people and putting them to the system.

00:13:33.600 What does that do for teachers unions? That increases the amount of teachers union dues

00:13:38.140 and revenues that goes to the union bosses. So that's beneficial for the unions. It's not beneficial

00:13:42.760 for the individual teachers, but it also benefits the unions in that it gives them more political

00:13:48.180 power by having a bigger voting block. Yes, as well. Yeah, that's exactly it. So yeah, I mean,

00:13:55.320 the teachers unions can keep saying that they're helping teachers in X, Y, or Z way and that they're

00:14:00.160 doing these things. But when you look at the actual data, the money isn't going into the pockets of

00:14:04.580 the teachers. And that's why you have so many teachers complaining nowadays that, look, they're

00:14:08.720 having to pay for their own supplies out of pocket. We spend over $15,400 per child per year in the

00:14:15.800 United States in our public school system. And we still have teachers having to pay out of pocket for

00:14:21.440 supplies. It's because the teachers unions aren't advocating for the right policies. And it's because

00:14:27.420 the monopoly system doesn't have the right incentives in place. And so they spend it on

00:14:31.660 administrative bloat instead of on the classroom. What we hear is that, especially in the conversation

00:14:38.540 surrounding a lot of the talk of systemic racism and disparities and things like that recently,

00:14:47.000 we've heard a lot of Democratic politicians say, OK, well, we're giving too many funds to the police,

00:14:55.140 we're giving too much to the police, but we've been defunding education for years. I've heard this

00:14:59.240 line over and over again. We've been defunding the education system for years. And every time we hear

00:15:05.360 this, what I think is a very sad story of a teacher saying, I have to pay out of my pocket for markers

00:15:10.880 and paper and workbooks and all of this stuff. The assumption behind a lot of those stories and

00:15:17.180 accusations is that it's just America. Our priorities aren't in the right place. And our government doesn't

00:15:23.380 prioritize our teachers, our government doesn't prioritize our school system. But it seems like

00:15:29.640 those Democratic politicians, when they're making those assertions, they never point to the teachers

00:15:33.980 unions that are standing in the way of some of these teachers getting the money that they need. So they

00:15:39.400 don't have to pay out of out of pocket. So like, where's that? Where's the disconnect happening?

00:15:45.160 Yeah, I just want to point out really quickly on this conversation about defunding the police versus

00:15:49.160 the education budgets. I looked up this data. It's available by the Urban Institute, actually,

00:15:54.740 which is, I think, more of a left-leaning institution. And they found state and local

00:15:58.520 governments allocate about 4% of their budgets towards policing. And for education, they allocate

00:16:04.140 about a third, I think 31% of their budgets are allocated towards education. So this whole idea that

00:16:10.100 we're spending more money on police than we are on education just isn't factually true.

00:16:14.180 It's a talking point that sounds good, but it's just not factually correct.

00:16:17.180 Yeah. And as far as defunding education, it depends on what you mean by that. If you mean that,

00:16:22.700 you know, we have decreased per-pupil spending, that's just not true. You look at the data. I

00:16:27.540 actually got the Washington Post to correct a statement on this just a few months ago. It was

00:16:32.460 actually the dean of the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education actually made the argument

00:16:37.700 that we have decreased funding per-pupil in real terms since the late 1980s. There's no way that you

00:16:43.120 can slice the data to even torture the data to make it say that. Federal, local, state, total,

00:16:48.140 whatever. However you look at the data, it's not true. So the Washington Post had to make this

00:16:51.780 embarrassing correction of a dean at the UVA's Curry School of Education for saying this. But yet,

00:16:57.400 we still have people like Joy Behar on The View repeating this claim just a couple of weeks ago.

00:17:04.260 So people should stop saying that. But I think what they mean is they're talking about how

00:17:07.860 these teachers are having to pay out of pocket for supplies. So sure, maybe we're defunding

00:17:14.020 education in the sense that we're not spending the money wisely. But if you're going to call to

00:17:17.900 add more money into that same system, why are you going to think that it's going to be allocated any

00:17:22.340 more efficiently if we don't change the incentive structure inherent in that system? So I would argue

00:17:27.380 the best way to do that, again, is to advocate for school choice options and allow the money to

00:17:31.960 follow the child to a charter school or a private school. If you look at charter schools, for example,

00:17:36.200 they get about three quarters of the amount that the traditional public schools get and they get

00:17:41.640 about the same or better outcomes. So it's not about money, right? They use a lot less money and

00:17:46.740 they get about the same or better outcomes. And in D.C. here where I'm located, they have the D.C.

00:17:51.840 voucher program that's targeted to very disadvantaged students. I think the average household income,

00:17:58.440 even being in here in D.C., it's about $27,000, the students that are using this program. That's

00:18:03.440 their average household income. I think 95 percent of the students are Black or Hispanic using this

00:18:08.600 program. And the most recent random assignment evaluation of that program found that although

00:18:13.580 the students using the voucher only get about $9,500 per pupil, whereas the public schools get

00:18:19.360 about $30,000 per pupil, they get about the same math and reading outcomes, but they get much higher

00:18:24.380 satisfaction, reports of safety, and they're more likely to show up to class each day. So they're doing

00:18:30.200 about the same academically for a third of the cost as the traditional public school system.

00:18:35.040 And this is a random assignment evaluation, so we can be pretty confident that it's the effect of

00:18:39.880 the program and not the background characteristics of the students. There's no selection bias

00:18:44.440 problems to be worried about with this kind of evaluation. So look, it's not the money,

00:18:49.780 it's the incentive structure. Right.

00:18:51.840 And I do want to point out that you pointed out some Democratic politicians are more likely to

00:18:56.720 oppose school choice initiatives. Joe Biden's Biden-Sanders unity, quote-unquote unity task

00:19:03.260 force laid out some recommendations recently, and they actually called to end this D.C. voucher

00:19:08.760 program here that's serving 95 percent Black and Hispanic students and students from households that

00:19:14.720 are earning only around $26,000, $27,000 per household. And that's here in D.C. where we have a high

00:19:20.940 cost of living. And so it's serving very disadvantaged families that are really enjoying having this

00:19:26.000 empowerment to be able to choose their schools to get a better education for their children.

00:19:30.180 Yet we have the Biden unity, Sanders unity task force actually calling to take these options away

00:19:35.580 from these families. And Biden actually voted against this very program back in 1997 when he

00:19:40.480 was a senator. He called to end the funding for the program. And I also want to point out for the

00:19:45.520 listeners real quick, it may seem like this is an additional program that costs taxpayers extra money

00:19:49.800 because, but it actually saves taxpayers money because, look, you're spending a lot less than you would have

00:19:55.220 spent on the same child in the public school system. And so whenever a child uses this kind of program,

00:20:00.880 it actually saves taxpayer money. I just want to clarify that for the listeners as well. So it's

00:20:04.840 literally a win-win on every front when it comes to school choice. You're saving taxpayers money and

00:20:10.400 then you're also empowering families to have more options, just like the more advantaged families

00:20:16.580 already have in different locations. So for people like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and really a lot

00:20:25.300 of people on the Democratic side who talk very often about economic disparities, particularly between

00:20:32.580 different ethnicities in the United States when it comes to education, when it comes to graduation rates

00:20:38.580 and then going to college and income rates, all of that. They talk about the disparities very often. Well,

00:20:46.660 we know that one of the possible solutions to those disparities are these charter schools, are the

00:20:53.920 ability for these families to be able to take money from a voucher program and to be able to go

00:20:59.460 somewhere like a charter school. So they are in charge of their child's education. And if you're against

00:21:06.020 the disparities or you want to try to close those outcome gaps, why in the world, why in the world

00:21:12.900 would you oppose programs like this? I mean, what is their at least stated justification for saying

00:21:19.180 we're doing away with charter schools and attempting to do away with school choice?

00:21:24.680 Yeah, I mean, they lay out a lot of different arguments here, but I just want to point out that

00:21:28.440 it's logically inconsistent for you to support school choice when it comes to pre-K and higher education

00:21:34.240 when it comes to pre-K programs and Pell Grants. Those allow families to choose. So there's some

00:21:39.780 type of disconnect, and I think it has a lot to do with power dynamics. You have much more of an

00:21:44.080 entrenched interest in the K-12 system with the teachers unions and other interests that want to keep

00:21:49.800 it that way. Whereas when it comes to Pell Grants and pre-K programs, you don't have the same kind of

00:21:55.220 power dynamic because relative to the status quo, giving more choice to lower income families for

00:22:01.980 pre-K and Pell Grants doesn't destroy any monopoly or reduce the power of monopoly. Whereas at the

00:22:09.380 K-12 level, since the status quo is this huge behemoth government monopoly, allowing people to

00:22:15.640 leave that monopoly creates a lot of problems for these special interest groups, and they want to

00:22:19.840 prevent that from happening. So that's why there's this disconnect. But they'll lay out some arguments.

00:22:24.140 They'll say, I mean, some people will say that parents aren't education experts and that they

00:22:30.240 shouldn't be able to choose because of this. But look, advantaged families are already choosing their

00:22:34.380 schools for their kids. They choose by their residents, and they choose through private schools

00:22:40.600 or other means. So why has it become such a big deal when low-income families are trying to choose

00:22:45.320 schools for their children? I would say that low-income families have a lot of information about how to

00:22:50.340 make good decisions. And the evidence supports that. When you give families the opportunity to choose

00:22:54.960 their schools for their children, they look up a lot of information about these alternatives, and they do

00:23:00.420 make good choices for their kids if you look at the evidence on these school choice programs. So it's kind of an

00:23:05.720 elitist argument that, you know, for some reason, people who are just not fortunate enough to be able to

00:23:11.120 afford a private school, they argue, might not be able to make those choices, which I think most people find

00:23:16.420 ridiculous and an elitist argument to make. And look, families have a lot more at stake here. They

00:23:22.840 have a much more interest in getting the decision right when it comes to their own children than a

00:23:27.720 bureaucrat sitting in Washington hundreds and hundreds of miles away. And they just have more

00:23:32.020 information on the ground about what their children need. These legislators and bureaucrats don't even know

00:23:37.800 what the child's name is. The family knows much more about the needs of their children, and they have

00:23:43.720 a stronger incentive to get it right. It doesn't mean that the bureaucrats don't care about the

00:23:47.540 children. They're just not in the right position to be able to make these choices for everyone else.

00:23:53.520 And so I will also point out just real quickly that school choice is an equalizer, too. So the left,

00:23:58.320 the right, everybody should be supportive of school choice. It should not be a partisan issue. And when

00:24:03.360 it started in Milwaukee, but, you know, three decades ago, it wasn't a partisan issue. The left and the

00:24:08.140 right came together to support school choice because they saw that it was an equalizer. Rich people

00:24:12.520 already have school choice. They can already afford to live near the best public schools in the best

00:24:17.840 neighborhoods, the most well-funded public schools. They're much more likely to be able to do that

00:24:22.500 than low-income families. And they're more likely to be able to afford private schooling. And then also

00:24:27.860 we're seeing, you know, these things called pandemic pods, where families are coming together almost

00:24:33.080 organically and spontaneously to find alternatives to the school system because a lot of schools just

00:24:38.500 aren't reopening right now. And families are coming together. And Washington Post and Good Morning

00:24:43.760 America recently argued that this could lead to inequities. And that's true, but they're somehow

00:24:49.600 missing the obvious solution to allow the funding to follow the child so that less advantaged families

00:24:54.720 can seek out these alternatives as well. Just think about it. We spend about over $15,000 per job per year.

00:25:00.580 If you got 10 students together in a household and in this kind of pandemic pod, kind of homeschool,

00:25:07.180 quasi-homeschool, quasi-private school initiative that we're seeing throughout the United States in

00:25:12.200 big numbers, that would be $150,000 in revenues for that one 10-student micro-school. And let's say

00:25:20.160 only two-thirds of that went directly to the teacher. That's still $100,000 going directly to the teacher,

00:25:25.720 whereas in the traditional school system, you see teachers making far less than that. And they also

00:25:30.720 have class sizes that are much higher than that, about 20 to 30 students in the traditional system.

00:25:35.260 So you can have more autonomy for teachers in this system. You can have more funding for teachers in

00:25:39.500 the system. And you can have smaller class sizes, about a half or a third of the size with these

00:25:44.920 pandemic pods ideas. And you can have more equity by allowing low-income families to have the means to

00:25:51.260 forward these alternatives that advantaged families are already going around and forming for their

00:25:56.800 students.

00:25:57.540 This might be a... Sorry, go ahead.

00:26:00.680 I was going to say another argument. I think we're transitioning a little bit to miss a little bit

00:26:04.900 that the other side makes about the school choice idea. And they'll argue that school choice defunds

00:26:09.680 public schools. They'll argue that school choice siphons away money from the public schools.

00:26:13.640 That's actually exactly what I was about to ask. So go for it.

00:26:15.960 And so here's my response to that. The reality is that the public school system is what defunds

00:26:22.120 and siphons away money from families. School choice just returns that money into the hands

00:26:26.400 of the rightful owners. The money doesn't belong to the school system. The money belongs to the child.

00:26:31.160 The money is meant for educating the child. So school choice, as I said, returns the money into

00:26:37.100 the hands of the rightful owners. And then I have another response to that, which is if your public

00:26:41.820 schools are doing such a great job and they're providing the meaningful education that you say

00:26:46.220 to the students, then the families wouldn't leave and they wouldn't take their money elsewhere to a

00:26:51.560 private school or some type of pandemic pod, micro school environment or to a homeschool environment.

00:26:56.560 So a lot of people in the school choice debate will try to say two things at once. The defenders

00:27:01.100 of the public school system will try to say two things at once that are logically inconsistent to say

00:27:05.720 at the same time. It's kind of like the two button meme. I'll bring that up if you haven't seen the

00:27:10.360 two button meme, but they try to say two things at once. They'll try to say, our public schools are

00:27:14.180 great. We don't need school choice. We don't need other options. But then they also try to say,

00:27:18.160 oh, school choice will defund the public education system and destroy public education. Well, which

00:27:23.720 one is it? If your public schools are doing a good job, there wouldn't be any change. Families

00:27:27.500 wouldn't voluntarily leave your school system if they're satisfied with the services that they're

00:27:31.900 provided. I think the reality is, though, that they understand that a lot of families are not happy

00:27:36.900 about the services that they're being provided in the public education system. And I have another

00:27:41.560 response to that, which is public schools are funded based on enrollment counts in the United

00:27:46.240 States. So if you have more students, you get more money. But they're not completely funded based on

00:27:50.220 enrollment counts. I think it's about 60 to 80 percent of the funding is tied to students.

00:27:54.860 So mathematically, if you lose some students to school choice programs, you actually end up with

00:28:00.080 more money per child left behind. Public schools actually benefit from losing students to school

00:28:05.220 choice programs. And most people don't want you to know this. Most people don't talk about this.

00:28:08.800 But let's say, you know, in Texas, 66 percent of the funding is tied to the student. So what does

00:28:14.080 that mean mathematically? When a student leaves using a voucher program to a private school, the public

00:28:19.160 school gets to keep 33 percent of the funding. So on a per pupil basis, they actually end up with more

00:28:24.040 money per child left behind. Just imagine if that worked out that way with food stamps. If I went from

00:28:29.420 Walmart to Trader Joe's with my food stamps each week, and what if Walmart had to keep 33 percent of my

00:28:34.260 food grocery bill each week? They would be super happy about that. It's not really a good thing

00:28:39.880 for families because they don't get all of their money. But the public schools should similarly be

00:28:44.000 happy about that for getting to keep 33 percent of the funding or however much it is in your state

00:28:48.580 for not having to educate those children. Why should the public schools get to keep money that is meant

00:28:53.760 for educating children when the child is no longer there? And same thing with food stamps. You get to

00:28:58.800 take 100 percent of that funding elsewhere. We should be able to do that with school choice

00:29:02.180 programs. But the reality is how it plays plays out on the ground politically is that the public

00:29:07.740 schools get to keep a lot of the money when when students leave. So they financially benefit. They

00:29:11.720 should be happy about that. The problem is they're not happy about that is because they don't want just

00:29:15.900 20 to 30 percent of the funding. They want 100 percent of the funding for students who are no longer

00:29:20.140 there, which just doesn't make any sense. It's the money should follow the child. And they want 100 percent

00:29:26.160 of the funding, not necessarily so they can increase teacher salaries or they can make the schools

00:29:30.860 better, but so they can either hire more personnel so that the union itself has more voting power and

00:29:37.080 has, you know, more people power in general. So maybe they can get higher salaries. It's not they

00:29:43.740 don't want 100 percent of the funding necessarily for the benefit of the students, which is what which

00:29:48.820 is what they argue that we need more funding for these low income students, because if you take money

00:29:54.060 away from our schools and the people that are left, the poor kids that are left are going to be

00:29:59.720 negatively impacted because we don't have as much money. But that's just not true, because that

00:30:05.200 money is not going to the benefit of the students in the first place. Correct. Well, and if they if

00:30:10.520 they're arguing to increase per pupil spending, that's what school choice does. They end up with

00:30:15.440 more money on a per pupil basis in the public schools. So they should be embracing school choice

00:30:20.060 if it's really all about the money and having more money per pupil. But then also, yeah, they make a

00:30:24.860 related claim, although they'll say, you know, the least advantaged students may not take advantage

00:30:29.040 of the school choice program. I argue it's probably the opposite, that one school choice programs are

00:30:33.080 targeted to the least advantaged populations. But then also the least advantaged students who are not

00:30:37.920 being served by the public school system have the strongest incentive to get out because they're not

00:30:42.040 being served by the by the system. If you're already doing a good job in your public school,

00:30:46.640 why go through the the trouble of switching schools? You already have like, you know, a peer group that

00:30:51.640 you've established. And, you know, switching is just a highly costly endeavor, even if you have

00:30:56.240 funding following the child. So the people who are most likely to be motivated to leave are the

00:31:01.220 least advantaged students. But look, there's there's 28 studies on this topic about what happens to the

00:31:06.080 children who don't exercise school choice programs who remain in the public schools for whatever reason.

00:31:10.780 26 of the 28 studies that exist on this topic, and I can send you the link for the show notes if you

00:31:15.300 would like. 26 of 28 find statistically significant positive effects of school choice competition on the

00:31:21.060 students who are left behind or who remain in the public schools. So you can benefit from school choice

00:31:25.780 programs without actually even using the programs because of these competitive pressures. And again, it's

00:31:30.800 because the public schools start to realize like, well, wait, we could we might lose some money if we if we

00:31:35.920 lose our students. So we better shape up and up our game so that we don't lose students. And that's what we see in

00:31:40.700 the literature. 26 of 28 studies positive. The remaining two studies are not statistically

00:31:46.040 significant effects. So none of the studies find negative effects on the students who are, quote unquote,

00:31:50.060 left behind in the public school system as a result of school choice competition. Most of the literature

00:31:54.960 suggests that these kids are better off as well. And just think about the logic behind this. It's not

00:32:00.320 very thorough or legitimate to prevent people from choosing schools based on what happens in the public

00:32:07.420 school system. So let's just imagine the studies were negative. They're not. They're overwhelmingly

00:32:12.740 positive on this question of what happens to the children in the public school system. But let's say

00:32:17.180 when I choose to take my student to another school, let's say the competitive response isn't positive

00:32:22.700 by the public school system and maybe the outcomes get a little worse. But that's not a legitimate

00:32:26.860 argument to take my freedom away from me and my and my families, particularly if it's a low income

00:32:31.540 family from being able to exit that school system to go to a private school that's working better for

00:32:36.920 their children. This doesn't stop advantaged folks from from leaving the traditional public school

00:32:42.800 system. They're allowed to leave and choose elsewhere for their children. Why is it only a big problem

00:32:48.040 when low income families are making these choices for their children? So this evidence, you know, our

00:32:52.720 freedom to choose our children's schools should not hinge on these, quote unquote, scientific studies

00:32:58.280 in the in relation to this question of the competitive my my freedom to choose my child's school

00:33:06.900 should not hinge on the competitive response of a government run school system. Same thing. Let's let's use an

00:33:12.580 example for for the listeners to make it clear with the food stamps. If I took my food stamps from

00:33:19.740 Walmart to Trader Joe's and for whatever reason, we found that there was a negative impact on the

00:33:25.080 shoppers at Walmart because of less funding in Walmart, that would not be a legitimate argument to

00:33:30.560 prevent families from taking their food stamps to Trader Joe's. The government should not be able to say,

00:33:35.500 oh, look, we did this study and we found that Walmart didn't respond positively. And, you know,

00:33:39.980 since Walmart may serve more lower income families, we're going to force you to take your money back

00:33:44.740 to Walmart. That would be absolutely outrageous. Same thing with Pell Grants. If we moved from our

00:33:50.040 community college to a private university and we found that the community college was less well funded

00:33:54.840 and we found that, you know, the community college students started to do worse, that would not be a

00:33:59.720 legitimate argument to force low income students using Pell Grants back into the community college

00:34:05.760 system. Right. And so similarly, this isn't even a good argument at the K to 12 level. But aside from

00:34:11.240 that, the evidence is positive. So, you know, you can't really make that argument. Theoretically,

00:34:17.240 it's not a good argument. It's not a legitimate argument. But then when you look at the preponderance

00:34:21.140 of the evidence, it's overwhelmingly positive that the children who don't even use school choice programs

00:34:25.640 benefit from competitive pressures. And just to reiterate this again, I remember I was reading a few

00:34:30.860 years ago when I was learning about these school choice programs. I read a Washington Post article,

00:34:37.780 which is actually really hard to find. I'm not going to state a conspiracy theory and say that

00:34:41.900 it's purposeful, that it's hard to find, but it's a little bit hard to find. It's a Washington Post

00:34:46.100 article. I think it was written in 2017 that talked about how the Obama administration spent millions and

00:34:52.560 millions of dollars on failing public schools, chose, I think, the worst performing public schools,

00:34:57.780 maybe specifically in Chicago it was. And what they found was that there was no positive results,

00:35:04.080 like test scores for student satisfaction, for the performance and satisfaction of these students

00:35:11.020 at all. There was no positive result after millions and millions of dollars being pumped into these

00:35:16.920 schools. So I just want to reiterate again that I think bust so many myths about the so-called

00:35:21.860 dangers of school choice is that it's not necessarily a lack of funding. That is not why would you say

00:35:29.640 the majority of schools are failing, if any schools at all. It's about incentive structures. It's about

00:35:36.680 power dynamics. It's about really the efficiency and effectiveness of the spending of the money that

00:35:42.600 they do have, correct? Yeah, that's absolutely right. And Eric Kanyshek, a Stanford University-based

00:35:48.400 economist, did a meta-analysis. And this was from a couple decades ago. So it's kind of outdated.

00:35:54.100 But he looked at 400 studies on the topic relating, you know, increases in spending in the public

00:36:00.480 school system to outcomes. And he found no significant relationship between the spending and the

00:36:07.820 outcomes. So it looks like, you know, from Eric Kanyshek's work published in Educational Evaluation

00:36:14.100 Policy Analysis Journal, that there isn't a significant relationship between funding and

00:36:20.360 outcomes. And look, we shouldn't even need studies to realize this, right? If you don't have a strong

00:36:24.420 incentive to spend money wisely, you're not going to spend it wisely. And if you don't, people should

00:36:29.520 be able to leave. And look, if they were spending the money so wisely in the public school system,

00:36:33.880 families wouldn't voluntarily opt out when given the option. I mean, you look at the wait list in

00:36:39.020 charter schools. That's evidence of, you know, families really wanting something else. And I

00:36:43.200 think in 2014, there was a estimate of about a million student names on these wait lists trying

00:36:48.840 to get out of the traditional public school system. And look, if you're spending the money wisely,

00:36:53.040 then why are so many families wanting to leave to schools that receive a lot less funding per child

00:36:59.100 in the charter school sector? Why would, if money was so important, why are families voluntarily

00:37:03.920 selecting into schools that get a lot less money? And same thing with the voucher programs.

00:37:07.400 You know, here in DC, they get a third of the funding that the public schools get. Public schools

00:37:11.800 get over 30, 31,000 per child. The DC voucher program only gets around $9,500 per child. So why

00:37:17.960 are they voluntarily leaving in large numbers to only get a third of the education funding for their

00:37:23.220 child? It's probably because the public schools aren't spending the money as wisely.

00:37:27.180 Right. I mean, these are just free market principles. When you create competition between multiple

00:37:31.920 entities, then the best is going to rise to the top. They're going to do whatever

00:37:37.380 it takes in order to get the business that they need and get the money that they need. When there

00:37:42.500 is a monopoly, people get swindled. People are negatively affected by that because there is no

00:37:47.140 incentive by the monopoly to make their clients and customers happy. And so that is one of the

00:37:53.800 principles behind school choice. Now, this is a big question that I have to ask you. In an ideal world,

00:38:00.000 like if you could come up with Corey DeAngelis, you decided this is what the school system in America

00:38:05.720 is going to look like. Here's how schools are going to be funded and here's how it's going to work,

00:38:10.400 how parents get to choose their schools. How would you describe the ideal school system in the United

00:38:16.040 States? Yeah. So if we started from scratch is essentially your question, correct? Yes. I would

00:38:22.320 structure it like the food stamp funding system where government doesn't run any grocery stores or

00:38:28.500 runs very few grocery stores. And we can still provide families with the means to purchase an

00:38:34.600 education, just like we do with groceries, with the food stamp system. But we don't fund it for

00:38:38.960 100 percent of families. We only fund it for the very least advantaged. So just like what we do with

00:38:43.860 food stamps, we target it to the very least advantaged, give them some money. We don't have

00:38:48.320 the government run all the grocery stores and we don't residentially assign people to grocery stores.

00:38:52.280 We give some people some money that who could otherwise not afford it. And we allow them to shop with

00:38:57.200 that money. Same thing with the education system. We can structure in a way where all the schools are

00:39:01.820 private. Maybe there are some public schools that arise that are government run, but there's no

00:39:06.300 reason why the government needs to run any schools, just like there's no reason why government needs to

00:39:12.420 run any grocery stores. And we can put the money into the hands of families directly, particularly

00:39:16.760 the least advantaged families, and we can let them choose between different private providers of the

00:39:20.760 service, just like what we do with groceries and the food stamp system. But I know that's not going to

00:39:25.840 happen anytime soon, right? We're not just going to restart the education system overall. And so what

00:39:31.780 I argue for is something I like to call universal basic education income or education savings accounts

00:39:38.180 or education scholarship accounts, whatever you want to call it. But the basic idea is to take the

00:39:42.940 existing funding system that we already have. No need to uproot everything. That's never going to happen.

00:39:48.260 So like property taxes?

00:39:49.480 Well, yeah. So we already have the funding allocated on a per-people basis in the United States to

00:39:55.460 different students. Take that existing funding, don't change it, and just tie it to the student

00:40:00.000 instead of the school system. And we can allow the families to send all that money back to the public

00:40:05.720 school system if they think that's doing a good job and they can enroll their children in the public

00:40:09.520 schools. But they should also be able to choose a charter school. They should also be able to use that

00:40:13.760 money to attend a private school. They should also be able to form these micro pandemic pods or micro

00:40:19.140 schools and be able to use that money that way. Or they should also be able to use online virtual

00:40:24.260 education. Or they should also be able to use it for home-based education and homeschooling if they

00:40:28.620 would like. So again, I think the politically feasible thing to do, which is not to uproot the

00:40:36.140 entire school system and to restructure the entire thing, but just have the money follow the families.

00:40:41.780 Same money that already exists in the system. Another way to do it, and you kind of alluded to

00:40:46.080 property taxes, is to not charge people in the first place if they opt out of the public education

00:40:53.660 system. And so you can still have them kind of subsidize other families, but you can still think

00:40:58.200 of a system to where you give them kind of a top property tax rebate. So let's say I'm homeschooling

00:41:03.100 my child or I'm paying for a private school out of pocket. And let's say you're charging me X amount

00:41:08.200 for the property tax system. And you can just not take my money from you away in the first place if I opt

00:41:13.420 out of the public education service. Maybe not take 100 percent of the, you know, maybe not reduce

00:41:18.440 my property taxes by 100 percent, but maybe you reduce it by 80 percent or something to help families

00:41:23.140 that way. So that's another way of doing it. But I still think the best way to do it that would cause

00:41:28.380 the least resistance politically would be just keep the system the same, keep the funding the same,

00:41:33.900 and just change the dynamic of instead of funding systems, funding the students directly instead.

00:41:39.160 That's a very easy way to change the system pretty drastically.

00:41:45.680 If we saw a more sinister motivation behind politicians and maybe people in teachers unions

00:41:54.180 to keep the existing structure as is and actually ban charter schools and try to diminish school choice

00:42:01.960 as much as possible, that motivation may be that it is much harder to control what students learn

00:42:10.520 if they are free to go wherever they want to, if they're free to go to a charter school,

00:42:16.160 if they're free to go to this micro school. And I'm not saying that's the motivation of all of the people

00:42:21.460 who are against school choice. They have their different political reasons. But I think one of the issues

00:42:27.740 that a lot of parents have with public schools is not necessarily just the quality of teachers,

00:42:32.480 but actually what they're learning as far as sex education goes, even as far as history goes,

00:42:39.420 civics, things like that. They're worried about their child being indoctrinated. And it makes it a lot

00:42:46.020 more difficult for a child to be indoctrinated if their parents are the ones who have authority and

00:42:51.700 control to send them to certain schools. Is that a concern that you see a lot?

00:42:57.740 Yeah, I mean, look, I don't like to question the motives of anyone. But if you look at the history

00:43:02.660 of the education system, that was the explicit purpose of the common school system in the United

00:43:07.720 States. You look at the words from Horace Mann and others, Benjamin Rush and others, and I can provide

00:43:12.160 you with lots of quotes outside of the interview, and I'll send them to you. But it was created for

00:43:17.480 the explicit purpose of controlling the masses and making them more obedient and making them more

00:43:23.180 a uniform population. And a lot of it was anti-Catholic sentiment, that they wanted the

00:43:28.020 Catholics to be more like Protestant Americans, and they wanted the immigrants to be more what they

00:43:33.000 thought would be proper Americans. So it was all about controlling the views and the backgrounds of

00:43:42.300 American citizens. And Horace Mann himself was reportedly homeschooled his own children and kept his own

00:43:48.360 children out of the public school system. So it's kind of strange. And it's always about everybody

00:43:51.880 else's children. And what we believe that, you know, we elites believe that they that they should

00:43:57.520 learn. And look, you saw some of this pushback recently by Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth

00:44:02.960 Bartholet, who called to ban homeschooling in the United States. And it was it came at a time when

00:44:08.640 everybody was essentially homeschooling during the lockdown. So it's kind of a, you know, a strange time

00:44:14.340 to launch this all out attack on homeschooling. But she called for a ban on homeschooling. She calls

00:44:18.560 it a presumptive ban. But what she does is change the definition of homeschooling, because she says

00:44:23.140 that even if you're deemed worthy of homeschooling your children by the elites, well, we're still going

00:44:28.140 to require you to send your children to the public schools for a couple of classes each day. I would

00:44:32.140 call that an outright ban. But she always backtracks and says, I'm not calling for a ban altogether. You can

00:44:37.000 still homeschool your children, but you're still going to have to send them to the public schools, which

00:44:40.980 most homeschoolers would call that an outright ban on homeschooling. So right. And she argued

00:44:45.780 explicitly that, you know, it's a big problem. She thinks that a lot of Christians and conservatives

00:44:51.440 are homeschooling their children. And she thinks that they're being, quote, unquote, in private schools

00:44:56.180 to isolated from, quote, unquote, public values, which are reflected in the public education system.

00:45:01.740 But we've seen over and over again, that there's a lot of leftward leaning bias in the public education

00:45:07.000 system, the Educational Freedom Institute, where I'm executive director as well.

00:45:10.980 We started something recently called the political indoctrination map. So you can hover over your

00:45:15.660 state and see instances of political indoctrination happening in the classroom in different states.

00:45:21.640 So that's something interesting that we're starting to track as well. And that's one of the reasons why

00:45:25.700 people are really wanting alternative options to the public education system, because a lot of families,

00:45:31.140 particularly conservative families that I've seen through social media channels are saying that they

00:45:36.020 feel like their children are being indoctrinated politically in the public education system, which

00:45:40.600 a lot of these families don't want to be forced to pay for that. And they certainly don't want to

00:45:45.400 be forced, particularly for lower income families, to send their children to these schools where they

00:45:50.780 feel like they're being politically indoctrinated. So that's another huge issue. And it's another big

00:45:55.760 reason why families are starting to open their eyes to the idea of school choice so that they can

00:46:00.620 have alternatives.

00:46:02.220 And Elizabeth Bartholet, we were talking about motives. I don't even have to suppose what her motives

00:46:07.300 are. And you touched on this, but she talked about how parents who homeschool their children, how it's

00:46:12.520 unfair and almost frightening that they get authoritarian control to indoctrinate their children from

00:46:17.800 kindergarten and 12th grade. That's what she said about homeschooling. Well, kids are going to be under

00:46:22.860 some sort of so-called authoritarian control. It's just, is it going to be the parents if they want to

00:46:28.600 homeschool? Or is it going to be teachers who do care about them in a sense, but can't ever care about

00:46:35.280 them in the same way that their parents do in the same individual sense that their parents do? So

00:46:41.100 the question isn't whether or not kids are going to be under some sort of authoritarian control or

00:46:46.760 whether or not they're going to be indoctrinated. Kids are going to be so-called indoctrinated,

00:46:51.420 whether it's by their parents or by the teachers that their parents choose if they have school

00:46:55.960 choice or if they have the income to be able to send their kid to a private school, or they're going

00:47:00.780 to be forced into a certain kind of indoctrination because of the public school system that their

00:47:06.320 parents might not agree with. So it's not a matter of which is authoritarian. It's which values do you

00:47:13.660 want your kid to be instilled with? And should a parent of a child who will love that child more than

00:47:20.520 it's just how it is, more than any other person, any other teacher ever will, should a parent of that

00:47:26.120 child get to choose which values their child is being instilled with on a day-to-day basis? Or does

00:47:32.680 the government get to choose that? Right now, where there's not school choice, the government gets to

00:47:36.820 choose not just what kind of teachers your kid has, but what kind of moral values and worldview

00:47:41.880 your child is being taught on a day-to-day basis. And the government is basically saying,

00:47:48.120 Joe Biden and that unity plan of saying there's not going to be charter schools, is basically saying,

00:47:52.180 we know what's best for your child. You as a parent, you don't get the choice. And I'm just

00:47:57.100 afraid. I've even heard a professor in this conversation about homeschooling. I heard a

00:48:02.740 professor say that, you know, this idea that the parent has primary authority over their child,

00:48:10.400 well, that's not real. That basically just exists because the state has conferred that relationship

00:48:15.180 upon them. But that's, but that's not real. And so I see, I see that worldview exhibited in the attack

00:48:22.800 on school choice, that it's much bigger than just teachers unions or education dollars or anything

00:48:29.180 like that. It seems like it's an entire worldview that's starting to dominate the education system

00:48:34.580 that is pushing the parents out and trying to create a stronger bond between the state and the

00:48:40.120 child than between the parent and the child. And that scares the heck out of me. And I think it

00:48:44.520 scares the heck out of a lot of people listening to this. Do you agree that that's on the horizon?

00:48:49.620 Yeah. I mean, it's a different mindset that instead of the families, you know, being the primary

00:48:54.620 decision maker for families, you have people like James Dwyer, who you were quoting a second ago,

00:49:00.580 William and Mary College. I think he's also affiliated with Harvard University,

00:49:03.640 who said that the state confers legal parenthood. And it's this idea that your children essentially

00:49:09.220 belong to the government, not to you and not to the families, which is totally ludicrous. And I think

00:49:13.580 most people think that's ridiculous. A little fun fact on James Dwyer is in 2014, I believe he wrote

00:49:19.480 a paper that's on Social Science Research Network. I think it's the Alabama Law Review it's published

00:49:24.520 in. But he actually made a crazy argument. In my view, it's crazy that if families are in a quote unquote

00:49:31.400 unsafe neighborhood, he argues that the state should be able to come in and take their children away from

00:49:36.560 them. And if they want to keep their children, well, then they have to move to a safe neighborhood that

00:49:42.260 they define as a safe neighborhood. So who is this going to, you know, most likely negatively affect?

00:49:47.040 And it's essentially, you know, the government, it's a way for the government to come in and take

00:49:51.160 children away from disadvantaged families, because the elites can say, oh, well, this doesn't seem like

00:49:56.000 a safe neighborhood to me, we're going to take your child away literally was proposed in this 2014

00:50:01.560 Alabama Law Review paper by James Dwyer. And I also want to point out something by, well, look,

00:50:07.460 the statement by Elizabeth Bartholet that, you know, homeschooling is quote unquote authoritarian

00:50:11.600 is just beyond parody, because her proposal to ban homeschooling using government force is the

00:50:17.780 very definition of authoritarianism. It's using government power to take away our individual

00:50:23.480 liberties, our rights that do not come from the government. They're inherent, they pre-exist the

00:50:28.720 government. So that is the definition of authoritarianism. And if you look at, historically

00:50:34.080 speaking, a lot of authoritarian regimes actually had similar proposals to ban homeschooling. In

00:50:39.180 Germany in 1938, the Nazi regime actually did ban homeschooling for families. And also you had

00:50:47.540 groups like the KKK in the United States in 1922 pushed to ban private education altogether. And they did so

00:50:57.080 successfully until the Supreme Court thankfully came down in 1925 in the case Pierce versus Society of

00:51:03.880 Sisters, where the leading justice famously said that the child is not the mere creature of the

00:51:09.500 state. More people should realize that that is the case today, that the child does not belong to the

00:51:14.820 government. They're not the mere creature of the state. And look, so we've seen some pretty negative

00:51:20.400 groups pushing to outlaw homeschooling before. And in Germany, they still have that law in the books.

00:51:26.280 Families are not allowed to homeschool. So I think we're lucky in the United States that we don't have

00:51:31.140 oppressive governments like that taking away that right away from our children. I will say

00:51:36.700 Elizabeth Bartholet actually did an extraordinary self-own if you compare two of her videos together

00:51:43.260 because she calls to ban homeschooling for a lot of different reasons. One thing is about the

00:51:48.920 Christians and conservatives homeschooling their children and her quote-unquote indoctrination that

00:51:53.360 she's talking about. But another argument she tries to use is that, well, we've seen some cases of

00:51:58.200 abuse in the home. And so since there are some rare cases of abuse, we should punish 100% of families

00:52:03.540 regardless of whether they're doing a good job or not or abusing their children or not. And so she

00:52:09.060 argues essentially that we should, everybody should be guilty until proven innocent and that we should

00:52:13.060 punish everybody for the bad actions of a few negative actors. So she uses these rare cases of

00:52:18.560 abuse to take away the rights of 100% of the population. So that's what she says today. That's what she

00:52:23.320 argues today. But back in 2014, she was caught, or I caught her, I found this video, on Russia Today

00:52:30.120 is the interviewer, the live interview she did with, and it was about international adoption.

00:52:37.220 And the interviewer from Russia Today was arguing that, she was arguing against international adoption.

00:52:43.360 She said, we shouldn't do this because look, there's these rare cases of abuse that we found in

00:52:47.800 this study in this household here and there. And so we shouldn't allow anybody to adopt children

00:52:52.120 because sometimes there's abuse. Elizabeth Bartholet correctly responded that we shouldn't use the

00:52:57.520 exception to prove the rule. We shouldn't use these rare cases of abuse to ban international

00:53:02.240 adoption for everyone. And she even got so upset that the interviewer was using this rhetoric, using

00:53:08.800 the, you know, kind of generalizing from extreme cases of abuse to where she threatened the interviewer

00:53:15.160 and said, I'm going to leave the interview if you continue using these rare cases to try to justify

00:53:20.580 her policy position. But that's exactly what she's doing today. So when you show those two video clips

00:53:25.520 right next to each other, it's an extraordinary self-owned by 2014 Elizabeth Bartholet,

00:53:30.720 owning the logic, quote unquote, logic of 2020 Bartholet.

00:53:34.960 Yeah. I just want to reiterate for people, too, everything that we're talking about, the importance of

00:53:40.100 school choice, the importance of allowing parents to have authority, rightful, responsible

00:53:47.580 authority over their children, whether they want to homeschool their kids or maybe they want to send

00:53:52.520 their kids to the public school in their area, whatever. Everything that we're talking about

00:53:57.200 disproportionately affects people who are in low income groups, vulnerable families. A lot of people,

00:54:04.600 it's weird how school choice has been associated with, at least on the left, they try to associate

00:54:10.900 school choice with elitism and not really caring about poor students. And so for all the people

00:54:17.420 who are listening to this, who talk about, you know, caring for what the Bible calls the least of

00:54:22.280 these, caring for the disparities that are happening, who care about so-called racial and social justice,

00:54:29.120 which I have my own problem with those terms. But if those are things that you care about,

00:54:32.800 and you want to try to even the playing field, and you want to try to narrow those gaps of outcomes

00:54:39.900 that are unfortunately are very wide among the ethnicities and among the socioeconomic classes,

00:54:45.600 then school choice is one of the ways, not the only way, but one of the ways to do that. And if

00:54:51.020 you have believed that it's associated with elitism, quite frankly, you've been duped. This is a so-called

00:54:57.140 social justice issue that people who say that they care about social justice, they don't advocate for.

00:55:05.480 And so I just want people to be clear on that.

00:55:09.780 Yeah. And look, and the best way to make this, to highlight this is to ask them if they think

00:55:15.580 families should be residentially assigned to government run grocery stores if they're using

00:55:19.380 food stamps. Most of them would say no, that families should be able to have the options.

00:55:23.260 And if you push against the other side and say, well, how can you support Pell Grants and pre-K

00:55:27.380 programs, which are essentially education vouchers for pre-K and higher education? Why are you against

00:55:32.560 funding families directly when it comes to K through 12? And there's no good argument against

00:55:36.180 that. There's no reason except for this entrenched interest of protecting the status quo monopoly

00:55:44.240 system in the K through 12 education sector that we have today. So that's the difference. And I think

00:55:50.900 most people, what's really elitism is not allowing disadvantaged families to choose private schools for their

00:55:57.040 children and not allow disadvantaged families to afford these micro school or pandemic pod

00:56:02.540 options. That's true elitism and preventing families from having these options and instead

00:56:07.540 prioritizing the protectionism of a, an establishment monopoly system ahead of the interest of the

00:56:17.180 students. That's true elitism.

00:56:18.500 Yes, absolutely. Um, do you know any Democrat, any significant Democrat who is for school choice?

00:56:27.180 I know Republicans, some Republicans who are against school choice. Do you know any Democrats

00:56:31.540 who are for school choice? Um, I know, I, I know there are some, um, but I will say Republicans are much

00:56:40.460 more likely, uh, to support school choice today, uh, particularly when it comes to private school

00:56:45.740 choice options and expanding options to charter schools. Uh, I don't have a name off the top of

00:56:50.520 my head. Um, you know, Biden does not support private school choice options. He calls to ban

00:56:56.380 for-profit, uh, charter schools and in the Biden Sanders unity task force, they also call to, uh,

00:57:03.540 highly regulate even regular charter schools as well. So I wouldn't call that a pro school choice

00:57:08.900 position. Um, so yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm hard pressed to think of a, a, a prominent democratic

00:57:14.600 politician that, that does support school choice, but I know, and I've heard that some of them

00:57:18.740 actually do support, you know, freedom of choice for, uh, disadvantaged families.

00:57:23.820 Well, they definitely support freedom of choice for their own kids because a lot of these Democrats

00:57:28.520 in Washington DCs and their kids to private schools. So that's interesting. Um, what would you say

00:57:34.380 people who are fired up about this, because I'm fired up about this, it really makes me mad that

00:57:38.720 there are people standing in the way of low income families to get the best education for their

00:57:42.660 child. And by the way, it's not just about education. Sometimes a child might have special

00:57:46.920 needs. They're not getting the correct instruction or the attention that they need. So they want to

00:57:51.600 go to another school. Sometimes their child is being bullied. And so they want to go to another

00:57:56.380 school, the prevention of school choice or the powers that be that try to inhibit school choice

00:58:01.720 are also inhibiting victims of bullying, uh, special needs kids from getting the kind of education

00:58:08.340 and alleviation from bullying or whatever it is that they need. And so just think about all the

00:58:13.640 people that are listening to this, all of the vulnerable people that are, that would benefit,

00:58:18.560 um, from school choice programs. So can you tell people who are learning about this for the first

00:58:24.240 time, who want to get involved, who are just like, Oh my gosh, okay, what do I do? I'm overwhelmed.

00:58:28.800 What are some action steps that people can take?

00:58:31.240 Yeah. I want to, um, point out first of all, that, uh, uh, uh, a lot of families are,

00:58:39.520 are definitely choosing school choice for, uh, safety reasons and to get their children away from,

00:58:44.860 you know, gang activities or bullying. Right. And so the idea of trapping families into these schools,

00:58:50.020 I would argue is unethical and immoral because preventing families from having these options

00:58:54.580 is forcing them into dangerous situations. And so, uh, that's endangering students by not allowing

00:59:00.960 them to have these choices. So if you just kind of flip the conversation around a little bit,

00:59:04.340 preventing families from having options is arguably a more immoral and unethical. Uh, and also,

00:59:10.200 yeah, Biden, I just want to point out real quick that Joe Biden does, uh, did send his children to

00:59:15.220 private schools and he did attend private schools themselves. Yet today he, uh, fights to, uh, or votes

00:59:21.080 against, um, uh, private school voucher program for low income families here in DC and the Biden,

00:59:26.100 uh, Sanders unity task force calls to defund that program altogether. So that's

00:59:30.860 extremely hypocritical to, to exercise school choice options for your own families and then try

00:59:36.020 to prevent other families, primarily less advantaged families from exercising those options

00:59:41.000 as well. So I just wanted to point that out really quickly, but yeah, there's a lot of things that

00:59:44.920 families can do. Uh, you can support, uh, you know, my work by sharing it on social media. If you want,

00:59:50.860 you can follow me at DeAngelis Corey on Twitter. Um, I know you do a lot of sharing my stuff,

00:59:56.020 so thank you so much. But then also, um, there are school choice programs in different states

01:00:00.800 already existing. So if you want to find access to those options, there are, there's one good

01:00:05.380 website that I would recommend. It's edchoice.org, edchoice.org. You can find a map of all the

01:00:11.440 states in different school choice programs that are available and you can look at how other states

01:00:15.240 are doing it. And, you know, you could ask people in your state to expand these types of options in

01:00:21.200 your state as well if, if one doesn't exist at the moment. And you can call to expand these school

01:00:26.220 choice options that are already existing in some states. I think 45 states already have charter

01:00:31.300 school laws on the books, plus the District of Columbia. Um, so you can find a list of those at

01:00:37.040 the, uh, Education Commission of the States, I believe it's named. Uh, if you just type in

01:00:41.540 charter school laws on Google and Education Commission of the States, you'll find if your state actually

01:00:46.600 already does have access, uh, to charter schools in your area. So that's another way to do it.

01:00:51.300 And then also there's this extremely grassroots movement going on where families are seeing that

01:00:58.540 their schools aren't reopening and all across the United States. And they are getting really upset

01:01:04.640 about this because the funding is still going to the school buildings and they're still trying to

01:01:09.500 scramble to try to figure out how to get an education for their children. So a lot of families,

01:01:14.120 I think at least a thousand now have contacted from 22 or up to, I think I heard 30 different

01:01:19.680 states have contacted ACLJ. Jordan Sekulow is the executive director out there. And they've

01:01:25.820 contacted him to try to find a legal remedy to get their children's education dollars back if their

01:01:31.980 schools aren't going to reopen. And so then they would have real, um, you know, you wouldn't have to

01:01:36.440 go through the legislature to get your education dollars back. And, you know, I would argue that going

01:01:40.740 to the legislature is a good way to do it, but here's another avenue that parents can take to

01:01:45.120 contact ACLJ to try to get represented, to try to get your children's education dollars back

01:01:49.140 so that you can afford these other alternatives if your school isn't, uh, isn't going to reopen.

01:01:54.400 So I would recommend taking that route as well, because look, all 50 states have education in their

01:01:59.740 state level constitutions. And it's kind of hard for the state to make an argument that they're

01:02:04.940 providing an education if they're not even going to reopen their schools in the fall. So I think

01:02:10.200 ACLJ will have, and parents will have a strong legal argument to make, uh, primarily this fall

01:02:15.420 as well. So I would, I would say to go check out all those resources. I think that a lot of people,

01:02:20.320 hopefully their eyes are kind of being opened right now when you have teachers unions in places

01:02:26.680 like LA saying, okay, we're not going to go back to school in the fall. Uh, even though,

01:02:31.500 you know, the, the rate of infection and especially the death rate for these children is very,

01:02:37.600 very low. And even for most teachers will be low, but they're, they're saying that we'll go back to

01:02:42.160 school. Uh, if you agree to Medicare for all, if you agree to all of these leftist policy prescriptions,

01:02:48.420 well, if it were really about the children's health, that it wouldn't matter whether or not

01:02:53.180 you get your leftist agenda checked off. And so I hope people are starting to see that a lot of these

01:02:58.620 teachers unions, I can't speak for, you know, every single person in teachers union, but a lot of these

01:03:02.660 teachers unions are set up to preserve power, not to preserve a good education for your children and

01:03:08.540 certainly not to give you your money back. Um, if, if you're not getting the education that you deserve.

01:03:14.040 And yeah, that same teachers unions didn't just call for Medicare for all. They also called for

01:03:18.220 defunding police. So they included all these things that didn't really seem related to education,

01:03:22.140 but then most importantly, they called to, uh, close all the charter schools in, in the Los Angeles

01:03:27.240 area in order for them to reopen, which if you're talking about safety, that's the backwards thing

01:03:31.940 to do. Because if you have more schools open, you have more square footage, you can set, you can

01:03:36.240 spread children out more and have more safety that way. So if you're calling to close down a lot of

01:03:40.820 the school buildings, close down your competition, that actually is more harmful for students. So that,

01:03:46.480 that just makes it totally clear that some of these things is about preserving power and not so much

01:03:51.440 about serving families. Yes. It's so crazy. Well, thank you so much for this enlightening

01:03:55.660 conversation. I know people are going to learn so much from it. And you said everyone can follow

01:03:59.720 you on Twitter, any, anywhere else you want to direct people. Yeah. I mean, you can also look

01:04:05.400 up my work at the Reason Foundation. If you just Google Corey DeAngelis Reason, R-E-A-S-O-N, uh,

01:04:11.520 you'll find my pages there and you'll find my longer form articles as well, which I also share on

01:04:16.480 Twitter. But, uh, if you want to directly access those, it'll be at the Reason Foundation website.

01:04:21.520 Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk.

01:04:24.320 Thank you so much, Ali.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - July 24, 2020

Ep 279 ｜ The Corruption of Public Education & the Need for School Choice ｜ Guest： Corey A. DeAngelis

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