 Of all the dislocations caused by government responses to COVID, arguably none were more disruptive to everyday life than the shutting down of in-person education for the country's 50 million K-12 students and their parents. Teachers' unions fought to keep schools online, even as evidence piled up that remote learning was disastrous, especially for poor kids and as the experiences of other developed countries which mostly continued to operate in person demonstrated that schools weren't a major source of infection. The results were easy to predict. Historic declines in reading and math scores. Major school districts continued to alienate parents with Washington D.C. recently decreeing that kids ages 12 and older would need to be vaccinated even for remote learning, a measure that would have barred 40% of the city's black teens from getting in education. The policy was thankfully pushed back until January of 2023, but it's still on the books lurking like a bully at the far end of the whole life. More parents than ever have exited major urban school districts and school choice proponents are building on recent policy victories such as Arizona's new law in which money follows the child with up to $7,000 that can be used at any public or private school in the state. The politics of school choice are already a major issue in the midterm elections and will be again in 2024, especially as internal polls conducted by the American Federation of Teachers find for the first time that voters in battleground states are more likely to agree that Republicans are better on education than Democrats. So what happens next? At Freedom Fest, the annual July gathering in Las Vegas, Reason talked with Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Federation of Children, and a senior fellow at Reason Foundation, which publishes reason.com. Corey DeAngelis talked about how COVID has permanently reshaped the education landscape, why top-down bans on critical race theory are ineffective and anti-freedom, why some red states like Texas are terrible on choice, and why all of us, whether we have kids in K-12 schools or not, should be invested in radical reform. Corey DeAngelis, thanks for talking to Reason. Thank you so much for having me. There is a leaked poll that is really kind of talking, you know, that sheds a weird light and a kind of wonderful light for school choice people on, you know, school choice issues coming into the midterm elections and beyond. It was commissioned by the American Federation for teachers. So this was a poll that was supposed to show one of the biggest teachers unions, how well they are positioned going into things. What's the poll say? And, you know, what's the fallout? Yeah, it doesn't look good for the teachers unions. It's essentially an epic self-own by Randy Weingarden and her union, the American Federation of Teachers. So this is a poll of likely voters in battleground states like Pennsylvania and others conducted by or for the American Federation of Teachers. And the top-line finding was that likely voters in these battleground states were more likely to support Republicans on education as opposed to Democrats. And so that's big finding itself. Usually Republicans are leaning on things like the economy and jobs, not so much on education. We did see this happen with Glenn Junkin when he won the gubernatorial race in Virginia against Terry McAuliffe, who was a former incumbent in the state. In a state that went 10 percentage points to Biden, Glenn Junkin won by two percentage points. And according to Washington Post exit polling, he won with education voters by about six percentage points. And education was the number two issue in that election. Yeah, now that was schools coming, really coming directly out of COVID and lockdowns and just arbitrariness and a broad sense of teachers not caring about education during COVID. They were more, you know, so now, you know, we're, you know, 10 months past all of that kind of stuff. What are the complaints that parents have about educators right now? So parents had their eyes opened wide because of the pandemic school closures, the union-induced school closures. They got to see what was going on in the classroom. And the problems, as I see it, are just symptoms of the larger issue is that we force millions of families to send their kids to a one-size-fits-all government-run school system that by definition isn't going to work for families who disagree about how they want their kids raised, how they want their kids to be educated. So whether it's mask mandates or not, whether it's remote versus in-person instruction, whether it's this curriculum or that curriculum or anything else, by definition, if families are paying attention to what's going on, there's going to be a large segment of the population or at least a sizable part of the population. It's not going to be happy for whatever reason, just by definition. And I want to also point out that this poll also found that Randy Weingarten has been saying that it's been the Republicans' stoking, bringing politics into the classroom, but they also asked in their own poll, what's the biggest issue with public schools? The number one issue was overly politicized classrooms, but then they also asked, who's more responsible? The Republicans are the Democrats, and by about five to six percentage points, these likely voters were saying it's more likely to be the Democrats that are creating the issues with politics in the classroom as opposed to Republicans. In a weird way, the classroom is always hyper politicized, because everybody's anxious about kids, and when you decide on one curriculum versus another, it's not partisan politics, but there's an ideology embedded in that, whether it's pedagogical or political or both. Is it accurate? Are American classrooms K through 12 classrooms, are they more politicized now, or are they more ideological than they were 10 years ago or 20 years ago? Or is that kind of a culture war fabrication? I mean, it's hard to tell the trend on whether the classrooms are more or less political. I think it's more so families can see what's going on in the classroom and because of the remote instruction. Schools didn't realize like when kids were learning at home on the kitchen table or in the living room and parents finally saw what was going on. They're just like, what am I paying for? Yeah, and so I think a lot of families just thought that the schools were focusing on the basics, just math, reading and writing. And then they started to see things that they disagreed with in the classroom. And that's kind of the silver lining of the past couple of years is that families are paying more attention. They're pushing for things like transparency bills. Some states they're pushing for CRT bands, for example, but I think these top-down solutions, although they might be a step in the right direction towards achieving that group of parents' goals, I think the better solution is from the bottom up, allowing for school choice, allowing each individual family to take their children's education dollars to the education provider of their choosing, whether it's a public, private, charter or home-based education option. That's the only way forward through freedom rather than force. And especially because like a CRT band, for example, even if your sole goal is to get rid of CRT in the classroom, it doesn't even achieve it. We now have a lot of undercover journalism from Accuracy and Media, for example. They've gone to states like Tennessee, Idaho and Iowa, states that have CRT bands. These are not left-wing bastards. No, yeah. They have CRT bands and they have administrators on camera admitting that we're just going to call it something else. We'll call it social-emotional learning or maybe we'll just call it student mental health. And by the way, there's a very low likelihood of any of us being caught for doing these things and we can always just weasel our way out of it. So the better solution is to just give the money to the families. And then you don't have to force schools to do anything and you'll have an organic competitive response. And I think schools would just have an incentive to focus more on the basics going forward if there was school choice, because you don't want to upset your customers, whether it's on the left or the right. And so it'd be in their best interest to focus on education as opposed to political condemnation. Obviously, I agree with you. Reason agrees with you. I think all libertarians agree to the extent that they'll even say, okay, the state should have a role in education. It should facilitate individual choice in education. Is there good data that the public is there or are they more like, I don't know anything about education, but I want my kid to come out smarter and being able to read, write and do math. I don't care how you do it, but just do it. I mean, is school choice, you know, post pandemic, post shutdown, are people embracing that affirmatively? Yes, the latest nationwide polling from Real Clear Opinion Research has found an eight percentage point jump in support of school choice since April of 2020, where it was 64% support in April 2020. The latest polling was from February 2022 showing 72% of Americans supporting the concept of the money following the child or school choice to a public private charter. Does it have to get to, I mean, you know, those are huge numbers and any politician, anybody, anywhere would take those numbers. But with education, is it something like where it's really got to be about 90% because it's true. Most students would, you know, like 90% of students basically still got a traditional assignment in residential assignment schools. And when you look at parental satisfaction of people who have kids in school, they're like, you know what, like two thirds or higher, like, yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah, but at the same time, there's tons of polling that has come out showing that, you know, about 82% of families have kids in government-run schools. But then you ask them, well, if money weren't an issue or if the money followed the child, where would you like to send your kid to school? And it's typically less than half of that amount, about 30 to 40% say that they would like their kids in their residential assigned government-run school. So I don't think people are as happy as what some polls would indicate just based on their preferences on these other surveys. And I unfortunately think it's not only about logic. I mean, we have the logical arguments down against the education establishment. The teacher unions don't have any good arguments. They just repeat the same thing over and over again. You're stealing our money. They're just trying to protect their monopoly. The money doesn't belong to the government schools. The education funding is supposed to be meant for educating children, not for propping up and protecting a particular institution. And by the way, if you're doing a good job, why would you lose any money at all? It has more to do with power dynamics, I think, is the problem is that people from Democrats, Republicans, independents, they have their super majority support on this real clear opinion research polling over 66% in each category. Public and Democrat and independent supporting school choice. And by that, when you say school choice, you're talking about money following the kit. Yep, to public, private or homeschool. And we have super high levels of support, but the thing is we have a special interest that fights tooth and nail to keep the status quo and to fight against any notion of the families having more of a say. And they know how to wait. I mean, they know how to wait it out, right? Because they've been doing this their whole life. I always think about it like, I've bought maybe, you know, four or five cars in my lifetime, but I'm always going to a car salesman who sells like, you know, 20 or 10 cars a day. Like I'm a sucker. I'm never going to be able to get the best deal. So the teacher unions have been really successful at mobilizing their numbers. They have a vested interest and I think that's why they've been able to block school choice for so long. But the power dynamics have shifted over the past couple of years because families aren't just thinking about supporting change in the education system. They're actually mobilized to do so and they're banding together. They're creating parent organizations and they're pushing for change. So in a way, for far too long, the teacher unions have essentially been the only special interest group when it comes to K to 12 education. They've been able to get what they want. But now there's a new special interest group in town, which happens to be parents who want more of a say in their kid education. And they're not going to unsee what they saw in 2020 and they've become this new vested interest that's pushing for change. And I think that's why we've seen so much of victory over the past couple of years in 2021. We were calling it the year of school choice because 19 states expanded or enacted programs to fund students as opposed to systems. That's a huge monumental win nationwide for school choice. And we had the number of states with education savings accounts, which is essentially the money goes. If you want to take it to the government school, you can. But if not, the funding would follow the child to an education savings account directed by the parents, which you could use for private school tuition and fees kind of like a voucher mechanism. We could also use it for micro schools or pandemic pods tutoring. Pretty much anything you want. Exactly. So the number of those states doubled from five states to 10 states in 2021 and the wins aren't stopping there. Let's talk about the biggest win probably in school choice history, which is in Arizona, which has been a leader in charter schools and things like that. What happened in Arizona? Yeah, so Arizona just passed the first state with a universal education savings account. Every single family, regardless of income, will be able to take their children's state funded, taxpayer funded education dollars to the education provider of their choosing. How much is that? It's about $7,000 per student, which is about half of what they spend in the government-run schools. So the public schools actually get to keep the local and the federal funding. And so on a per-people basis, they end up with actually more money. I mean, just imagine if you stopped shopping at Safeway and started shopping at Trader Joe's and Safeway got to keep half of your grocery bill or funding and perpetuity. It'd be a good deal for them. I'd argue this is actually a good deal for the public schools and the families at the same time. But they recognize that if there's a bunch of students leaving, eventually that money's going to run out. But so right now then, when does this start that Arizona students and K-12 parents will basically have $7,000 that they can direct to do whatever they want with their kids' education? Yeah, and I'll just reiterate this. When is the biggest school choice victory in U.S. history? When does it kick into, you know, when does it start in the fall or when does it start? It should start, I believe, next year sometime. It's not immediately, but I think families can start signing up this fall. How does that, you know, $7,000 is a lot of money. Does that cover, you know, save with like parochial schools, you know, Catholic schools or private schools, will that cover all or most of tuition for the average private school? Yeah, so in Arizona that is about the median tuition of private schools. So it's not going to be enough to cover the top, the highest cost private schools. But, you know, some options is better than none. And this is pretty good. The teacher juniors might come back and say, oh, well, you know, this isn't enough to afford the $20,000 private school. So this is an actually school choice, they'll say. But then I'll respond by saying, well, do you want the full amount of money to follow the child? Do you want the local funding to follow as well at the 14 or so thousand? And then they'll say, oh, no, we don't want that, then you're defunding the public schools. Well, that's your real argument. It's not about. And this will allow, this also can go to charter schools and things like that. You know, one of the kind of critiques of what happened during COVID was that there was suddenly the surge in demand for school choice for alternatives. Because people are like, you know, my traditional residential assignment public school shutdown or is shutting down and opening up or just doing bullshit. But one of the critiques that I've heard, which seems pretty on point was that there was not a supply of, you know, alternatives. So it's like parents were willing, but there was nowhere to go. Is there, you know, how long will it take in Arizona for that supply of alternatives to traditional public schools? How long will it take for that to ramp up? Yeah, I'd say it's a good problem to have and it's better than the status quo, obviously. But it is a good reason to have education savings accounts because with the voucher mechanism, for example, which is a step in the right direction, you have to use it at a private school, which has large fixed costs. And if there's not enough supply there, you might have to build another school, which could take a while. But with education savings accounts, you could use it for private school tuition and fees, but you could also use it for these lower costs. Startups like a micro school or pandemic pod where you don't have to build another brick and mortar school. You could use it for virtual learning. So nobody knows how long it'll take, but there is some excess capacity in each state. And then also there's already a micro school group that's been accepting ESA funding for a while called Prenda Micro Schools in Arizona. And they've been successful. So I think when the demand's there, the supply will come. When you put the funding in the hands of enough families, well, then you're going to have operators coming in to provide the services. So in a way, I mean, it's kind of like COVID testing sites. Like there were literally zero before January of 2020 and then suddenly they were all over the place. Schools are arguably more consequential, but supply can expand pretty quickly. Yeah. And we don't know how many people are going to use the program, for example. So like a lot of people do like their public schools. Right. So there's high transaction costs associated with switching schools. So if you're in a school that's working for you, then you can stay. And we don't know how much of a max exodus this will be. And even if the polling I cited earlier where half of the people would rather send their kids to private school rather than the government run school, we don't know if that's going to happen immediately. Right. People start to think about things and then it might take some time. Do you think it will happen? I'm thinking back to work. This has got to be almost 25 years old by Carolyn Hoxby, who also showed that, you know, the threat of competition. She looked at urban school districts that had Catholic schools in them. You know, and the threat of losing students to an alternative up the game of the existing public schools. Yeah. There's actually now 28 studies that look at the competitive effects of private school choice initiatives. And 25 of the 28 studies find statistically significant positive effects of private school choice competition on the student outcomes in the public schools. Right. So school choices are rising. Right. The fear of exit actually, you know, not surprisingly, it makes people up their game. Right. Yep. And we saw this with COVID as well. There's a study by Michael Hartney and Leslie Finger. It's now peer reviewed. I don't remember the name of the journal, but they found that that public schools in places that had more Catholic schools nearby, which happened to be lower cost private schools, they were more likely to reopen their schools in person, the public schools. Right. And that means that there's a competitive pressure if families have a low cost exit option in the area, the public schools might have to say, oh, well, maybe we should open too so we don't lose enrollment. Yeah. Let's talk about the politics in Arizona. Arizona, you know, is a, you know, it helps define what conservative means in American politics. The Republicans, there's a Republican governor and a Republican, the slimmest of Republican majorities in the legislature there. How did that play out? And why is that important in discussions of school choice? Yeah. So Arizona, House and Senate each have a one seat majority. And so every single Republican had to show up on the day of the vote and vote for it. They had to have 51% of the chamber, not just 51% of those present and voting. Right. So literally they all had to be there to show up, vote for the expansion of school choice, which is a Republican party platform issue. You would think it shouldn't be an issue. Right. But I would say that you have a majority in each of the chambers and the governor's office. And actually last year they tried to do something similar. They were going to expand it not as much, but it was going to be from like 20% of the population to like 70 or 80% of the population as opposed to what they did this year, which was 100%. And with that bill last year, they passed it through the Senate, all Republicans in favor, all Democrats opposed. And then it got to the House and there were three Republicans who joined the Democrats to kill it last year. And there was backlash after that for them, one, going against their party platform and coming out against parental rights and education after two years of school closures. You had the teachers union groups out there sending fake obituaries to the governor for reopening schools. And actually one of those three Republicans who originally voted against the expansion to kill it last year actually cosponsored the bill this year. So the political winds have changed in Arizona and nationwide. And I think some politicians are starting to realize that it could be a form of political suicide at this moment to come out against parental rights and education, particularly as a Republican. We've seen a lot of success with elections when it comes to school choice. For example, in Iowa, Governor Reynolds is a huge supporter of parental rights and educational freedom, particularly with she had an education savings account bill last year. Passed the Senate with all Republicans in favor except for one. And then it could not pass the House, even though the Iowa House had 60% of the House were Republicans. And so she went out and endorsed nine candidates and most of those races, a clear dividing line was whether they supported school choice or not in the primaries. Eight of those nine candidates won. So school choice is a political winner as well. And it shouldn't have to come to that for an election. But I think politicians like we saw in Arizona can change their mind and listen to parent concerns. But not in Texas, which is another Republican state or run by the Republicans. Talk about how Texas and Oklahoma as well are states which you would think would be either following Arizona's lead or leading in this type of issue. But Texas is kind of bad on school choice. So Texas has had a trifecta of Republican leadership in the House, Senate and the governor's office for about two decades now. And they don't have any private school choice programs. They have charter schools, which is a great form of school choice. But it's not what I would call funding students as opposed to systems with an education savings account or the funding following the child to private school as well. And they don't have any of those such programs. And in 2017, there actually was a big push to do a universal education savings account in Texas. It actually passed the Senate with all but two Republicans voting in favor. I think it was like, I don't want to come up with the numbers off the top of my head, but I think it was like 19 to 12. They passed it pretty easily in the Texas Senate, and then it didn't even get a House vote. They didn't have the votes in the House, even though Texas is what, 58% or so Republican in the House. And it kind of stalled there. And it kind of simmered out in 2017. There wasn't really national attention. But if that were to happen this year, the whole conversation has changed. I mean, you look at Texas Republican primary polling, for example, in 2018, they put in the Republican primary a question about school choice. And it was about 79% support, which was good back then too. But then in this latest March primary in 2022 in Texas, 88% of Republicans said that they supported school choice is about a 9 percentage point jump in support in just a few years. So the political wins have shifted in Texas. But then nationally as well, if the Texas Senate were to pass a school choice bill, there would be all eyes nationally on what's happening in the Texas House, unlike what happened in 2017. This has become more of a front and center issue nationally. It's become more clearly a Republican Party platform issue as well. And so I think the pressure to support parental rights right now for Republicans is higher than it's ever been before. But they don't necessarily have a bill on the front burner, which seems kind of strange because people like Greg Abbott and Texas Republicans, they talk a lot about grooming. They're worried about kids, all of this kind of stuff. But what is it about a state like Texas, which again, certainly Republicans in Texas pride themselves on being individualists and small government people, but they're not delivering on school choice. So I think in some deep red states, the teachers unions know that they have to play in the Republican primaries. And so they have to get someone who is Republican on everything else, but on education, they're going to protect the status quo. So you have the teachers, you have Randy Weingarten's AFT has a chapter there in Texas who play heavily in Republican primaries, particularly in the House. They know that they just have to get one chamber. And so that's I think what they've done in Texas. We had the Senate votes. We didn't have the House votes. The union did a lot of endorsements this past cycle as well in the primaries for Republicans who weren't in support of school choice, obviously. Abbott, though, this year just gave his most forceful support of school choice that that I've ever seen where he said very clearly at an event. I believe in May of 2022, pretty recently, that he wants to push for school choice this year with the funding following the child to a public charter or private school, not just public school choice, but all types of school choice. So that that shows that something has changed in Texas as well. And so I'm optimistic. There's not a bill right now, but also the session hasn't started. We're looking, I think it's not until January of 2023. Right. In Texas, the legislature only meets every other year. Yeah, exactly. So I think there's going to be a push and we'll see how that goes. To talk about on a broader national level, there was a Supreme Court decision coming out of Maine. That, you know, augurs for a different, you know, a kind of different legal framework for school choice. Can you talk about that? Yeah. So we knew along for a long time now, ever since the Zelman v. Simmons Harris case in 2022, for example, it was about an Ohio voucher program that basically said that such a program did not violate the establishment clause. There was no separation of church and state. So it was a publicly funded voucher. Yeah, publicly. To private school, to religious schools, private schools, public schools, whatever. Yep. The argument from the other side is that this is the government funding using public dollars to go to private religious institutions. This must therefore be a separation of church and state issue, which one, the word separation of church and state are not found in the Constitution. Right. This is not the government establishing a religion, but the reasoning of that case and the reasoning that makes sense to most people is the reason that case to 12 education funding following the child is not a violation of the establishment clause for the same reason that Pell grants are not a violation of the establishment clause. You can take your Pell grant public funding to Notre Dame or religious university. If you want to throw your dollars away, throw our actually throw my taxpayer dollars away. My sister works at Notre Dame, so I'm against it. But the reasoning is the funding goes to the student and they have a choice between religious and non-religious providers. The primary function of the funding is not to support religion, but rather to facilitate some other function for the person receiving it. And the same thing can be said for Head Start and other pre-K programs, which can be used at religious pre-K providers. Medicaid vouchers can be used at religiously affiliated hospitals. The list goes on and on. And nobody ever has an issue with any of these other programs. What was the program in Maine that resulted in a decision saying, yeah, voucher money can be used anyway? So after Zellman, Beeson and Terrace, I'm going to get to Maine in a second, there was the Espinoza of Yvonne Tana decision. They had a tax credit scholarship form of private school choice out there. And what they ruled in that case was that you don't have to have a school choice program. We're not going to say that all states have to have school choice. But if you're going to have one, you can't discriminate against religious families in schools. That you can't just only allow families to take the funding to a non-religious private school. The thing is, Maine had such a program called the town-tuitioning program. When it first started in the late 1800s, you could take the voucher. If you didn't have a public school in your town, that's why it's called town-tuitioning. You could take it to another public school in a nearby district or you could take it to a religious or non-religious private school. In 1981, for some reason, they switched the law and it started excluding the religious schools. And so this program clearly was in violation of the ruling from Espinoza just a couple of years ago. The circuit judge in Maine twisted the argument to try to say, oh, well, this is actually okay even after Espinoza because they were ruling that you couldn't discriminate against religious schools for being religious. But what we're doing in Maine is that we're discriminating against religious schools for doing religious things, which is a distinction without a difference. Part of what it means to be religious is to do religious things. And so that's what they were doing in Maine. We kind of knew all along there was going to be a slam dunk case. It ended up being 6-3. And now essentially this deals another mortal blow to the discriminatory anti-Catholic Blaine amendments that are found in dozens of state constitutions. It's ironic since Blaine was from Maine. So it comes full circle on a long-standing grudge against Catholic schools basically in the United States history. And this should only further embolden legislators and families to push for school choice initiatives because they don't have to worry about the teachers' union argument having any credibility. They've never had any credibility for the same reason. There are main arguments about the establishment clause, which was also mentioned in the Carson v. Makin case as well. But this should only further mobilize families to push even harder. Who are the main constituents for school choice? Because it seems like when we talk about red states, a lot of the rhetoric seems to be coming from families. They are white Christian families that are talking about things like parental rights and they want either religious freedom or they want to remove their kids from places where they're being taught CRT or they're being taught some kind of secular humanism. That seems to be a lot of the rhetoric. How big a part of the school choice movement is that? And then back in the day when you look at people, early on people like Milton Friedman who created the kind of modern concept of vouchers in the 50s, a lot of his energy was focused on minority families. Black, Latino and lower class like lower income families being freed from schools that were plainly not going to do anything for them. Talk a little bit about the breakdown of constituents and where is the growth in the hunger for school choice? Yeah, I think it's all across the board. I mean you hear rhetoric from certain states about certain groups, but if you look at who participates in private school choice programs and with charter schools nationwide, the students in charter schools are more likely to be non-white than government-run schools and they're more likely to be from lower income families than students in government-run schools according to National Center for Education Statistics data nationwide. And then also with private school choice programs like I'm from DC, we have the DC voucher program and it's targeted to low income families. I believe the average household income is less than $30,000 a year in the district and I want to say the latest numbers suggest that 95% of the students are either black or Hispanic using the program in DC. There's data from other states showing similar patterns in Florida for example. They have the tax credit scholarship program. Over 100,000 students are using scholarships to go to private schools which I think is another reason why DeSantis won the 2018 gubernatorial election as written in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece called making the case that school choice moms won the governor's race for DeSantis. He won by slim margins and his opponent Andrew Gillum had come out in support of getting rid of those scholarships for families and so Ron DeSantis overperformed with school choice moms as a demographic which led to that Wall Street Journal article. And so now you hear the arguments being laid out but the reality is school choice can benefit people from all different types of backgrounds and if you want to take your voucher to a school that has social emotional learning or whatever you want to call it even if I don't agree with it or someone else doesn't agree with that as what should be taught in schools it's better than forcing everybody to be in a system where everybody has to learn something that they don't want their kids to learn. This is really the only way forward to align families' values with their education providers and those institutions. But does it, given the fact that lower income voters, black voters, Hispanic voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic if school choice is seen as a fundamentally Republican issue does that cause difficulty in actually selling school choice universally? It could but at the same time I think a path to bipartisanship or nonpartisanship could be through partisanship. Whether we like it or not, what we're seeing right now is that Republicans are more likely to vote in support of school choice. It's on their party platform. The victories we saw in 2021 with the 19 states some were bluer states, Illinois for example saved their program but most of them were red states. I think happens, I mentioned this earlier, a lot of this is about political power dynamics more than logic. The logic is clear that it should be a nonpartisan issue and if you pull the constituents themselves it's a nonpartisan issue. If Republicans lean into educational freedom and the funding following the child we saw this happen in Virginia with Terry McAuliffe saying I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach and instead of back peddling he quadrupled down and had Randy Weingarten stump inform the night for the election I think everybody kind of agrees that didn't work out really well for him. If Republicans can start to lean into this as an issue and win on it like we saw with Randy Weingarten's own poll in the battleground states the Republicans are winning on education according to the Union's own poll Democrats might have to scratch their heads a little bit and say well maybe we should do this too and so you could create nonpartisanship through partisanship as a result of changing political power dynamics. So let's talk a little bit about Ron DeSantis in Florida and you know going back to Jeff Bush, Florida was always considered a good state for education choice and things like that and DeSantis on the one hand seems to be a proponent of school choice and then on the other he is a culture warrior who is constantly railing against left wing indoctrination he is an anti-CRT guy he wants things you know what the broad parameters of what is allowable to teach he wants to decide that and Florida Republicans at the state level which seems to be counter you know contradictory to the idea of now let's give education dollars follow the students but we don't want wherever they end up to be able to stray too much from this thing can you talk about that is that a misreading of DeSantis or kind of Florida Republicans or do they need to change the way that they're talking about education reform? I think the argument is that if we're going to have a top-down system of state control of education or through the school boards the left is pushing their political agendas into the school so the right counters that also with the top-down approach to put their political agendas into the schools or to take away the left's political agendas that are already in the schools and I think that's the argument for why it may be justified but again after this Arizona victory with Doug Ducey Arizona and Florida were neck and neck for a while it was a toss up who's the number one school choice depending on who you ask some people would say Arizona some people would say Florida but now Arizona just cemented itself as number one it's blowing out Florida in terms of the percentage of the population that's eligible I think DeSantis should pull a power move and come back and say okay well let's either call a special session or next session we'll really get it together and we're going to go all in as well because look we're already funding education for every single family and every single family should have a choice we shouldn't have these eligibility criteria I will say though to Florida's credit they did have a massive victory in 2021 they had their biggest expansion of school choice in Florida history in 2021 a state that was already doing a good job on school choice and they built in something called an automatic escalator where each year the percentage of students eligible for the program even without having to go back and vote on this again it will expand the eligibility I think it's by about 1% of this population will increase each year but that could take a while to make it universal so I would argue they should just blow off the cap as soon as possible do what Arizona did empower all families immediately no one should have to wait any longer to become eligible for their kids education dollars and at the same time this should fix a lot of the CRT whether you want to call it an issue or just a disagreement in the public schools because again I think competition will lead to more of a focus on the basics in the public schools because you don't want to upset your customers just makes more sense to not alienate anybody but then at the same time if you want to specialize in that way and you want to build a market niche you could do that too and we want to be controlling what other people's kids learn but maybe that's the problem that people want to control what other people are learning and that it's more valuable some people talk about abortion politics like this the big problem with DOBS is that it actually forces the sides to do something where it was much better to just be able to argue over this type of stuff rather than actually have to do anything and I wonder if education is kind of like that Yeah but at the same time there could be some of that sentiment that some people do want to control what other people's kids are learning but just from an implementation standpoint the bills don't do that they don't actually stop things from happening that are going to happen anyway so we've seen these undercover videos it's still being tied even when you have the bands and it's essentially unenforceable and what I would say is it's a form of playing whack-a-mole there's always going to be a different battle in the schools whether the CRT battles of today are the common core battles of yesterday and it's going to be something else going forward in the early 60s like physical education stuff because we were a nation of fat slobs who couldn't beat the Soviets etc so it's always going to be something else like keep passing different bills and trying to top down manufacture what the perfect school should look like we don't do that in any other industry we let people choose based on their preferences and we don't really care all that much about controlling other people's choices when it comes to other things So let me ask you a question because obviously I care a lot about school choice I know the reason the audience does libertarians generally do but it's also true like for a lot of people it's kind of like the drug policy people who are into it it is absolutely important and it's central to everything that they do with school choice it's like that but for most people it isn't their top issue like how do you make we live in a country where there are fewer kids fewer households have kids or families have kids and this is fundamentally about when it's your kid in the K-12 system you care a lot about it I have two sons who are now out of K-12 education and I have to admit I'm kind of like it's fucked up but it doesn't hurt me the same way like how do you grow the urgency of school choice for people who are not particularly invested in the topic It's true that you're going to be more invested if you're kids currently in the system but at the same time everybody's paying for it through the tax system right through local property taxes federal revenues everybody has invested I don't want to go ably through shittier workers who come out who don't know how to read or write or do anything so having a well educated populace can lead to benefits and then at the same time that's basically it if you think that kids are being indoctrinated in a way that disagrees if you think that government schools are more likely to inculcate values of loving big government as a libertarian we have this very strong interest in allowing for school choice to even if your number one policy issue isn't school choice for example it's in your best interest to support it because this could lead to those students growing up and voting for other policies that might align more with your values in the future so we have more of a free market and more free market reforms in other areas let's make a day to talk five years from now what are the benchmarks that will show that school choice is not simply on the horizon but that we're living in a world of school choice how do we mark success there's a couple different ways you can look at the number of states that have different types of school choice do you have a program or not I mean right now we have about 31 states I want to say that have some form of private school choice almost all states have charter school laws on the books I want to say 47 of the states have charter school laws on the books but then also almost more importantly is how many people are eligible for such programs so just because every state has a private school choice program if only 1% of the population can actually use it that's not very meaningful to me what we're looking towards is like the Arizona victory the gold standard is every single family regardless of background is able to take their kids education dollars public private charter home school so that's the way to measure success is available to families other people might say well measuring success of school choice is to see if the program works but the program working is families using it and choosing a school and liking it for whatever reason that is a lot of people like to look at test scores that's part of the decision making process for families but we have values alignment that are important safety and other issues that go into the decision of choosing one school over the other alright we're going to leave it there Corey DeAngelis thanks so much for talking yeah thank you