Season 6, Episode 1
A discussion of the executive order to end the Department of Education and what it means for education freedom.
Topics: AZ/state policy; parental rights
Transcript
Auto-generated transcript with light cleanup. Words may be imperfect; policy names and guest names reviewed where noted.
Okay, we're live right. Yeah, so I guess we'll wait for some people to jump on but Yeah, so I was in Phoenix. I didn't see you, Matt. We can't talk about why I was in Phoenix.
Yeah, that's a bargoed for now Not yet anyway. Yeah. I saw Jason Bedrick for a little bit Oh, did you did you get to touch them?
Yep. Yep So yeah, we have a lot of news today For everybody tuning in I can't see how many people are on by the way I'm not logged in the stream yard, but hopefully we have plenty of people on by now are the numbers High enough Matt to kind of get into it Yeah, I think we should I don't I can't oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we got a hundred and twenty people and we're in going up one thirty Okay, cool, so I mean my my Twitter's caption basically sums up what we want to talk about most is that Trump is expected to have an executive order to abolish the Department of Education or at least take steps in that direction in doing so It looks like Christmas came early this year Matt I haven't read I haven't read the order yet But this has kind of been circulating through media for the past month or so, right people have been saying that Something is imminent. It's coming At the time CNN and others were reporting that They were going to wait until after Linda was confirmed Before they go forward with this executive order and the rumors at the time was because it would be very awkward to issue such an executive order to a abolished a department before the votes were actually there to confirm the Department of Education Secretary who would be in charge of abolishing her own department Linda has since been confirmed by a party line vote of 41 51 to 45 All Republicans in favor who are there voting and all of the Democrats against it was the same day or the same night that the Democrats unanimously voted against the protecting women and girls in sports acts So hopefully they lose some seats over that I mean it's gotten so ridiculous that they can't reach across the aisle on some common sense stuff like Keeping men out of women's sports but This executive order still hasn't come out CNN was reporting that it was going to happen today So we scheduled this live stream thinking it was going to happen today and The press secretary Carolyn actually responded to that article saying this is quote unquote fake news is not happening today Never the Lot of people are saying that it's still imminent it's coming and Yeah, what do you what do you think of this news Matt when you heard about this today?
Yeah, well we got all excited like you said right like all right good. It's time to hollow it out like you know and anyone that knows anything about this already knows that Just the way that the this is all set up in the way that departments are created or or folded we all know that an executive order from the president Trump would not actually Yeah, completely dismantle and and do away with the department but if we could get as close as we can with an executive order by just whatever it is But you know reassigning staff or cutting its budget by 90% or you know whatever it is hollow it out completely if we can take steps in the right direction You know as long as it's as long as whatever decision comes down through this executive order is directionally correct We should all be cheering right we should take we should take the w take the step in the right direction That's exactly what I was going to say and look this this department's unconstitutional we all know it's a violation of the 10th amendment the word education is not in the US Constitution therefore it should be Women it would it should be operated by the states which the word education is all in all of the state Constitutions that's why we already have state departments of education We don't need another one in DC thousands of miles away wasting money on useless bureaucrats they have like what the 4,500 useless bureaucrats at the federal Department of Education They the bill in Congress right now so what you're pointing out is accurate from from everywhere that I hear that you need an act of Congress to get rid of the department because an act of Congress Created the department back in 1979 when Jimmy Carter Created as a payoff to the teachers unions or specifically the NEA the largest teachers union in the country Which as we talked about on a different podcast has a federal charter that has been in existence for over 100 years the only union that has a federal charter in the backing of Congress We should probably get rid of that too or use it to our advantage to get some reporting from that teacher's union which is the largest labor union in the country But that money in the in the acting Congress in the bill in Congress that has actual An actual plan be besides the talks of the executive orders that it's a bill by Mike rounds a senator from South Dakota a Republican And it's called the returning education to the states act it would block grant the money using the Treasury Department back to the states based on the number of students that are there Like in my home state of Texas we have 10 of the nations gave to 12 students we get about 10% of the money I think you'd actually have more money for education than you had before because you want to be wasting it on paper pushers in DC who aren't really doing much much of anything so we don't have 60 votes in the Senate we have 53 Republicans it requires a two thirds A three fifth super majority of 60 votes to invoke closer which means to stop a filibuster And I don't think we have seven Democrats to cross the aisle and do the right thing even if they I think if they read the bill by mic rounds they think it was a little bit more reasonable because You know all the fear mongering you hear on MSNBC in the left wing news stations is there saying that well we need money for education the federal government gives us tons of money and oh what about the special needs kids what about the civil rights protections and all of that is addressed in the bill the money goes back to the state so you have more money than you had before And when it comes to special needs students those programs all move under the Department of Health and Human Services and you think about things like the civil rights protections that enforcement moves under the Department of Justice so there's a plan for all of these concerns The thing is the Democrats see this as an opportunity to use the proposal as a way to invoke fear mongering and to try to spread their trumped arrangement syndrome to the rest of the country And so this is more of a political play by the Democrats than anything else hopefully they lose some elections on the issue especially after voting against the protecting women and girls in sports act in in unison recently so we'll see what happens but Yeah that to me was unbelievable Well and you know and just a quick little detour off of education policy but to see the night after they take that vote they is all the Democrat Congress members show up in pink and it's like wait are you really stand with women or only when it comes to abortion issues and killing babies Right right it's like I don't understand it and and do you actually know what a woman I mean I love that you're here supporting women anyway quick detour Well it's more virtue signaling than anything else and so like with I haven't read this executive order Matt you haven't read the executive order we're all getting kind of these third party accounts of people sources familiar with what it looks like And to me it needs to it almost needs to be kind of a high level blueprint from what I've read basically just saying these are steps we can take to to shut it down and it seems like more like a death by a thousand cuts then killing it all together because that requires an act of Congress the things that you were talking about limiting the budgeting for certain things they and they've already released press releases from the department Even before Linda was confirmed on you know getting rid of millions of dollars and funding for DEI programs and things like that so you know that's a that's a drop in the bucket of total funding but you know hey any like you said step in the right direction is is what we should be focused on and yeah I don't know what the timing for this is going to be maybe it's tomorrow maybe there was some last minute hiccup and maybe it was supposed to be today and maybe it'll happen tomorrow at the end of the week maybe they'll wait till next week I'm not I'm not sure but it's a regardless of what it actually does and regardless of how how soon it happens this is a time to be to celebrate oh totally yeah and you know it makes me wonder and it seems likely at least to me that what the executive order is again most likely to do is something similar to what President Trump did with the office of digital services where he turned that into doge right so it already had it was already set up it was already a structure like I think that step one step one probably is cut a bunch of staff cut a bunch of budget reassign thing you know and and basically hollow it out and just perform absolute core functions and you know back to your point you made a good point earlier Corey and and I'll get people from time to time walk him to me say well this is a bad thing you know and how could he do this and it's going to harm education and and all of the money is going to go away what about title one what about IDEA what about title two three four you know and and here's the answer to that like you said earlier none of that goes away yeah it's not like IDEA is no longer a law because the Department of Education has gone at the federal level that's not what happens the money will still at least for now and I have my own opinions on yeah we can we can talk about whether we should still have hell grants or whether we should talk about the federal government being involved in student loans but the bill that's on the table right keeps those things in place those those two things in particular would would move on the Department of Treasury as well so there's a plan that I'm really because they have an actual bill in Congress right now a lot of the fear mongering by Democrats should should be dismissed is just that because you know if they didn't have a bill and we were just talking on at a high level you know maybe they could get some believers and I think they probably do get some believers with with their fear mongering but I think it's great that the Republican side has something to point to to say no actually those things will and Linda's talked about these things in her in her confirmation hearing saying that the funding would not go away it would go back to the state. So right right and yeah we could talk about whether you you want that funding to go away or not but that's not the proposal before us and the quick answer to that is yes all that should go away it should be no federal funding of education don't take it from us in the first place yes right and so you know that's just a much more difficult proposal if there is one that has any legs I would support that one too right of course but I'm sure you get that you must get that where because I mean I think it's general knowledge that you and I both are I think pretty well aligned on on our libertarian principles and the way that things should operate generally but I think we're also aligned in that we'll take steps in the right direction even if it you know if it's a step in the right direction right we you always say the don't let the perfect perfect the enemy of good exactly you got to take the incremental win or else you're going to be stuck with take the W or you'll be stuck with the L you're going to be stuck with the status quo which is nowhere near utopia and so yeah we should we should take anyone we can get especially with that question right Corey like people must say well you're you claim to be a libertarian and then you're out here advocating for the continuation of taxation for for education like that doesn't make any sense yeah which that that would require a constitutional amendment at each state level to get rid of taxation for education so I'm with you philosophically right I think it should be funded privately and if anything if we were to have any funding for education extorted from us through taxpayer dollars that should be for the least advantage kind of what we do with food stamps we don't have food stamps for everybody regardless of it's it's it's you know that there's an understanding that some people might not be able to afford food and so we have it targeted we could do the same thing with with public education funding the thing is that's in the that's in every state constitution so when people fight against school choice and sale we can't have that because and then they point to their utopia it's like I'm with you but don't don't stop the incremental victory because you have this pie in the sky dream that I actually agree with that is not going to happen anytime soon like in Texas we we have an education clause in our Constitution you're not going to abolish all taxes that fund those institutions and do so without a constitutional amendment which would require a bunch of Democrats to vote for it's just not going to happen you're not even going to get all the Republicans to vote for it at this point so why reject a proposal that allows for an escape valve out of fully control the government run institutions failure factories that we call schools and that were assigned to based on our address that were forced to fund through the tax system that were compelled to attend in a way through compulsory education laws you're just going to let people sit around for a couple more decades all their kids are being churned through this system which by the way they turn out to become more likely to become Democrat voters who like big socialist policies you think they're going to have any chance at passing a constitutional amendment in the future it's probably not likely to happen the more that you have millions of kids being funneled through this system run by the government that teaches kids that big government that's the solution to all their problems you're not going to get it it it might not ever happen if you let the status quo continue it might not be that you're waiting 10 years 20 years it might be that we're stuck in this in perpetuity right that you never get so so this is why those arguments regardless of what political party you signed up for when you filled out the form when you got your driver's license or whatever if you have any libertarian leanings when it comes to and we don't have to use the word libertarian if you're limited government intervention right yeah if you're if you're like generally speaking I don't want the government involved in every aspect of my life but you know you and I know people some better than others but we know we certainly know of a lot of people that have an R after their name and parentheses and we'll go out and claim that any education funding through taxation is counterproductive to whatever like they're this is part of the global what are we calling it the the argument is that with government shekels comes government shackles and the reality is you can get the shackles without the shackles so you might as well give families the choice it's all voluntary to make their own cost benefit decisions for their own kids if you don't want to take the funding that's totally up to you but you shouldn't tell other families that they must continue to take their kids 15 or so thousand dollars that's allocated for their child and to force them to send that money to a government run institution that's because that's that's the alternative there is no other option that's available on the table right now the alternative is that you're telling other families whether they send their kids there or not all the money that's meant for their kid is going to go down that bottomless money pit but light it on fire basically because you're putting it back into the government school system and that should be up to the parents not you it should be up to each individual it shouldn't be up to me it should be up to you Matt should be up to that parent for their own child and so I mean you look at regulations across the nation right now the states that have more regulation of homeschooling at least have less school choice to choose this Rhode Island New York you have to take a standardized test by the state whether you take any school choice money or not in New York and they don't have any private school choice programs that's because they have authoritarians in office who want to control the minds of other people's children they even have in their law that the that private education must be quote substantially equivalent to the public schools that's not because of a school choice program and the Jewish schools in particular having some trouble with this even though in the public schools in New York city you have some that have a 0% math proficiency rates and what is their solution to that problem to throw more money at it instead of spending 40,000 a kid they want 50,000 60,000 a kid per year it's absolutely ludicrous but then you look at states like Oklahoma Iowa they have the best homeschooling laws on the books in terms of not having a lot of regulation and they have universal school choice policies you look at places like Ohio just in 2023 they went all in on school choice they have universal school choice regardless of income you can take your kids funding by the state to the school that works best for them whether it's a public school a private school or otherwise and at the same in the same session guess what they didn't know how they deregulated homeschooling you can walk and shoot gum at the same time you can advance freedom in both directions at the same time look at other states where in Illinois they got rid of their school choice program and those same authoritarians who hate school choice in Democrat Illinois guess what they did they're proposing this year a serious proposal to regulate homeschooling more of course are you are you sensing a trend here it has nothing to do with school choice has everything to do with who's in power and you're more likely to win the fight against those authoritarians if you have a school choice program enacted because you'll have a bigger coalition to fight back against any calls for government over each in the future because some people might say well yeah look you know this red state has Republican control right now what a Democrats come in charge well my first response is well when Democrats come in charge in the future they can regulate your homeschooling in private education without without the school choice program that happens today and so but you're more likely to be able to fight back against them if you have people benefiting from private and home education who say to hell with this you're not going to regulate me and they go at look Matt you're in Arizona yeah in Arizona they actually expanded their GOP majority's most recently and they have universal school choice that passed before those majorities expanded and Arizona initially had a program that had testing involved I think you got to pick your test but there was still testing involved which is the case with with other choice programs too but most recently Arizona went the other way and got rid of that testing requirement why because they had people benefiting enough people to say you know what this works for us we like it but we don't need you to tell us what to do and to test and so Arizona got rid of and Arizona is not a deep red state it's a very very purplish state it's a purple state and Kentucky of thecampus and Kentucky of the same European majors and has a democrat governor at the moment so on that note and this is important because all during this time you know this it wasn't that long ago that the ESA program only had about 7000 kids enrolled you know I mean this is you don't have to go back more than 500 meters 100,000 for all the all the scholarship programs and almost 100,000. And so, but the point here is that homeschool families and ESA families and charter school families and STO families, whatever all these school choice programs that are available in these different states, you should be advocating for every other school choice program that comes up for a vote on the floor of your senator house and your state legislatures because together to your point they're going to have a much harder time going after like right now Katie and the governor of Arizona and not right now this isn't new but certainly right now it hasn't changed she is you know very vocal about being anti ESA she does not like and she went to private school herself she's a total hypocrite and her daughter went to a charter school so this is this is the thing like she she can talk a big game and people in state white offices like that the whether it's the attorney general or the lieutenant governor or the governor they can talk a big game but if there's a big enough constituency that's participating in this programs that's where they have to stop and this is up at the talk.
This is why air is on a beat the unions at the signature gathering initiative when they tried to put it on the ballot to get another bite at the apple to get rid of school choice. Players don't already had a lot of families from different backgrounds a broad coalition to fight back show at those signature gatherings locations and the union backed group save our schools air is on it should be save our students by the way they're so concerned about the buildings in the system they don't give a crap about the kids but they told the secretary of state who was Katie Hobbs at the time that they had like 52% more signatures than they actually had they were either doing common core math or they're just very in unintelligent people who don't know how to count which they shouldn't be teaching our kids either way whether they're liars or whether they just don't know how to count or I think they were liars because they knew that the longer they could delay the implementation of the program the less likely they're going to bleed students to the private sector because they wanted to delay it until after count day and after the school year started so it became as painful as possible for parents to leave there there are hostage takers and that just goes to show you another example of them holding children's education hostage but one other example from Missouri Missouri just passed a private school choice program that was universal all families regardless of location I think it used to be targeted before they expanded it to the rest of the state recently and in the same session in Missouri guess what they did well actually not in the same session only but also in the same bill they included a provision to deregulate homeschooling and how do they do that what they had a provision in previous Missouri law that said that if you're a if you're a school district you could weaponize the police department to go check in on the kids that are homeschooling nearby their competition was allowed to weaponize the government to go to go take a sneak peek at the homeschooling families whether they were taking education savings account money or not and this bill removed that provision so that they can't go spy on parents anymore and so that again you can walk and chew gum at the same times and the other thing I'd like to point out is if you want if you're in a purplish state and you're afraid that there's going to be a Democrat takeover which will lead to regulation in the private sector in the future one way to stop that from happening is to give Republicans something to win on school choice this was what happened in Florida used to be a purple state to Santa's barely one in 2018 but his opponent Andrew Gillum he was a black Democrat actually called to get rid of the school choice program that was disproportionately serving non-white and low income families at the time over 100,000 families at the time and see in the next appalling found that black moms in particular showed out and forced for DeSantis and the headline in the Wall Street journal the next day was that quote unquote school choice moms tip the governor's race in Florida and so this is something that Republicans can build inroads with constituencies that they historically didn't do a good job with and if you fast forward to 2022 DeSantis won by 20 points only four years later now you have over a half a million kids using scholarships from 100,000 over to over half a million in the state of Florida and guess what yes and they have super majorities in both chambers of Republicans whereas it was a 50-50 state before school choice probably had a lot to do with that look at West Virginia West Virginia is a rural state that went all in on school choice in 2021 actually a little bit before Arizona Arizona implemented universal school choice first and has a better program I would say but West Virginia actually passed the bill first even though it was kind of an incremental three-year phase and thing right right so it's a little bit of a nitpicky kind of distinction whether Arizona or you know West Virginia was first but West Virginia the unions threatened them they said oh you're gonna lose your seats over this but they didn't kill the kink and they showed themselves to be paper tigers not as powerful as they pretended to be and now Republicans in West Virginia have super majorities in both chambers they expanded their majorities after going all in on school choice and so look if you're gonna fear monger about Democrat takeovers we can fear monger the other way and it's more likely to be the case if you don't have a constituency to fight back and if you and if you yeah if you don't do anything about it and kids are being brainwashed today to be to turn out as Democrat voters when they're 18 after they exit the government school system if they exit it at all they even graduate they're gonna be more likely to vote to take away your freedom in the future for that we have the deal in reality we can't just look at utopia and what we'd like the world to look like that's right that's right and what what's interesting is that time and time again you know what we have 15 states now we're up to yeah i just i just put a map out on x um too bad we didn't upload the image to stream yard before but if you get you look at my pinned tweet actually it's Wyoming became the latest state to go all in on school choice and there's 15 of them i colored in red on that map but then i replied to my tweet with another map that has green as well because there's a little bit of a disparity going on with the quote unquote universal states when i say 15 universal states i mean that everybody's eligible to apply and we've got 15 of those but only about six of them i believe six at this point we'll have more this year are truly universal in that there's no cap on the number of scholarships so Arizona's highlighted as green as being one of the best florida's highlighted as green is what being one of the best we have iowa arkansas west virginia and there's one other i don't know if you're looking at the map right now Matthew but there's there's one other that i missed but they're all red states that have gone all in on school choice and i expect New Hampshire will be one of those gold standard you know green states in the future too oh there you go so i named Arizona arkansas florida iowa west virginia oh the other two so we have we have seven i went to government schools but i can count Matthew where there's seven green states and so indiana oh and ohio the pair that i forget about too often indiana jason bedrick will tell me is not universal but uh 98% are eligible i rounded up on that one but the house i believe already one of the chambers already passed their proposal to make it fully 100% from 98% to 100% it's kind of like nitpicking at little things there in indiana but jason is correct in that 98% does not mean all so we he would dispute this map but the next one i i see coming onto the map as a green which is the better color is New Hampshire New Hampshire their house education committee ten eight vote party line universal school choice their senate education committee just yesterday three to two vote it looks close there but it was a party line vote all republicans in favor looks like we have the votes on the house floor little birdie tells me there might be a vote passing it out of the house floor very soon and the senate expanded their majorities of republicans this year as well so New Hampshires got it in the bag basically my home state of texas will pass uh either house bill three or senate bill two senate bill two already passed the senate 1912 vote all eleven democrats voted against it and a majority of them most of them sent their own kids to private school the total hypocrites on the issue and the house has 76 co-sponsors on their version of the bill and they only need seven to six votes yeah so and the and Dustin burrows he said he supports the proposal and so that's 76 doesn't even count his name yet it doesn't count Brian Harrison who's probably the strongest school choice supporter in the house and he hasn't put his name on it yet um probably some for some related issues about funding of the government schools probably funding them too much so that's 78 votes that i'm counting at least in the texas house and if you look at the house education committee you might say oh well what if it dies in committee it's not gonna die in committee the house education committee has 16 members and nine of them are already listed as co-sponsors as uh if you do the quick math you only need eight perfect we have we have nine and you know what even if it died in committee guess what governor Abbott would do he'd call a special session to create a different committee and it would pass anyway so it's it's gonna happen in texas but i will say it will be a red it won't be a green because it's it it is the both of the bills are universal eligibility everybody can apply but i've seen the budget proposals from both chambers a billion dollars sounds like a lot of money texas a big stake though and that's only about a hundred thousand scholarships so the bills are great but the the budgeted amount is you know i'd say that's not enough we have about 5.5 million kids in texas i'd like it to be for everybody but we've seen this math you happen in other states it happened in your home state of Arizona it was limited at first and then it then it busted the cap open for everybody even in places like on this map like Arkansas which is green Iowa which is which is a green state they did a three year phase it and said yeah we're we're gonna start just to show that it's gonna be things are gonna be fine and in texas what i pursue what i expect to happen they're gonna have a hundred thousand scholarships parents are gonna sign up and you're gonna have a lot of people on wait list and you can use those wait lists to pressure the lawmakers to get the hell get the rid of the get rid of the cap this happened even in uh north carolina where they have a democrat governor Roy Cooper who was a hypocrite on school choice he sent his kid to private school he declared a state of emergency over school choice what a total hypocrite yeah and they oak they had enough votes to override his veto though and supermajorities in both chambers yeah north carolina needed a three fifth supermajority in both chambers which was all Republicans they all signed on to the bill and so the democrat governor had no chance at stopping it but what happened in north carolina they also had this kind of they only budgeted a certain amount and they had like 50,000 kids on the wait lists in a smaller state like north carolina guess what they did they came right back the republicans cleared the wait list so we've seen this the movie before this is not new in texas look at look at uh Utah is on the map it's not green it's it's red because it has certain budget caps in Utah they only allowed for five thousand scholarships in the first year immediately ten thousand people applied for the scholarships yeah i just like to come back cleared that wait list of ten thousand and i think there's actually more people on the wait list now so that's a good way that this is getting back to again Matthew of this you know don't make perfect the enemy the good let's take the incremental win yeah both of us are on the side of let's have no caps whatsoever because the public schools are going to be fine and parents shouldn't be trapped any longer and they should have a choice immediately but if the choice is zero scholarships or a hundred thousand scholarship we're going to take the hundred thousand scholarships every day of the week and twice on sunday especially if um if getting the first hundred thousand makes it more likely that you get to two hundred thousand in the future that and it makes more likely that you get to five point five million in the future so well so that's what i was going to say this is what what we've seen in every case across the country is that once families participate in a new program that they do not want to have that freedom taken away ever again in the future so once you open it up and let them experience the the choice of going to this school or taking the money and and contracting the tutors or service providers or whatever it is whatever the program allows for that immediately they they want to keep that and so i you're exactly right that if you can get a hundred thousand kids if you can get five thousand kids like in Utah take the five thousand kids get it get them in there and and experiencing it because it you know i have i mean it's word of mouth moms talk to moms dads talk to dads and they say man this is great my daughter my son is is doing so well in this new program and we wish everyone could get it and they talk and and ultimately that makes it up to legislators who can actually move the needle and and make that five thousand turn that into a hundred into universal yep so we have 15 states here i think south carolina will also pass a universal school choice bill i believe their senate already did so south carolina will likely be red they had a fight in the courts last year because they had a judesck activist on the bench who basically they they said it was unconstitutional to state level and they said it was because you had you know that they require a public school system well guess what every single state that's on this map that's that's shaded in has a similar education clause. They do this in Texas too. They say, oh, we have an education clause and that means we have to have a public school system.
Okay. School choice bills do not completely abolish the public school system. If anything, it actually makes it stronger for the competition. And every single state has very similar language just saying you got to have public schools.
Okay, that's fine. We can do both of these things. You can give more freedom to families and also fund the public schools for the kids who attend those schools. And so it hasn't been an impediment in other states.
It just so happens in some cases. You have judicial activists who side with the teachers unions and they do this everywhere. The unions, they will file lawsuits against all these programs in Texas. The attorney general Ken Paxton did already issue an opinion a couple of years ago saying that a school choice education savings account program would not conflict with the Texas Constitution or with the US Constitution.
And in South Carolina, they also have a provision that says that public money can't go to like private institutions of education. But guess what? They have a college scholarship program where the money can go to religious private colleges. And they have a pre-K program at the state level.
I'm not talking federal programs even. They have a pre-K program in South Carolina that can be used at private even religious pre-K providers. That's education too. And so why is it okay for everything else, but not for K through 12 and they want to come up with an excuse to get rid of the program.
It's because this is all about power, not about logic. It's not about what the founding documents actually say. And guess what?
In South Carolina, the new Chief Justice on the Supreme Court was the Chief Decentre in the previous opinion. So he's on our side. So South Carolina should be able to survive. And maybe if they don't, maybe it goes up to the US Supreme Court where we've had a really good track record on the choice cases.
And I also think, so I mentioned South Carolina should get it done. North Dakota last session had a universal school choice bill that passed the legislature that was vetoed by Doug Burgham. It was the interior secretary now. And Doug Burgham said at the time that it didn't go far enough that, you know, I didn't believe him at the time.
I thought he was full of crap. I thought he was just caving to the teacher's unions. But this year during his state final, you know, budget address or whatever it was state of the state or budget address this year. In January, he called for education savings accounts.
He called for school choice. And then the new governor, I believe, his name, last name is Armstrong of North Dakota, also called during his official address for education savings accounts. So North Dakota has a couple, you know, bills moving. I don't know if it's going to ultimately be universal.
I don't know why it wouldn't be, especially after they got it to Burgham's desk before. But North Dakota should have a victory this year as well. South Dakota, I was really hopeful for. They had a bill died because some of the, there was a lot of infighting on the Republican side in South Dakota about which bill to go forward.
They had two bills. And some of the people who voted for one bill didn't vote for the other bill because I think it was like a personality thing. There was leadership on one bill that I thought was a fine bill. And then there was another bill that had more funding appropriated for it for, but had a lower likelihood of passing.
And some of the people that voted for that more expansive one based on funding didn't vote for the one that had less funding, which I thought was a stupid way to shoot yourself in the foot. But maybe next time around South Dakota will get it done. And I'm just glancing really quickly. I don't know if there's any other movement.
Mississippi's bill did not, did not make it this year. We've won so much Matthew that we're running out of states. Now we're all forward. Did you already talk about Brian Kemp?
Did you already, I can't, did we? Georgia, Georgia already passed an ESA last year, but it's limited to kids in failing schools. And you know, that, it needs to be an reversal that they're not ready for it yet, but look, they got a new, any other, you know, era of the school choice movement, the Georgia victory would be hailed as a huge win. But the barometer of success has changed.
It's only available to a quarter to the kids in the state, based on how many kids are assigned to failing schools, which is another step in the right direction. But it's not even colored on this map because the new metric of success is, is everybody eligible? Are you picking winners and losers or are you not?
Yeah. Okay, so based on what you've said here, New Hampshire, we got a fighting chance there. South Carolina. South Carolina, North Dakota, basically the ones that have it.
And that, and I'm only listening a few states in Texas. I'm only listening a few states, but don't forget, even though it's early in the year, three states have already passed universal school choice on this map this year. Tennessee, Wyoming, and Idaho. Yeah, it's amazing.
And Idaho, and okay, quick, quick aside, and Idaho and Wyoming, these are very rural states, and this puts the bed the myth that rural voters don't want schools. In fact, if you look at all these states, and if you include Texas too, I mean, just out of these, just out of the top 20 most rural states in the country, and I found it on the Census Bureau's data, the top 20 most rural states. If you just look at those, 17 of them already have some form of private school choice. But you know, only like, only like a dozen, a half a dozen of them are universal school choice states, but that's all pretty good.
The rural states, all three of the school choice programs that have been universal that have passed this year, Tennessee, Wyoming, Idaho, those are all of the top 20 most rural states in the country. Tennessee less so than Wyoming and Idaho. But you know, this whole argument that rural voters don't want school choices, a bunch of BS, and that's if anything more, where it's more likely to pass. So real quick on that note, then this is the call out to every state legislator out there that's listening or watching right now.
This is your cover when you need to go in and either sponsor a bill or vote on a bill, you can already see it. It is happening in other rural states, and it works because like Oklahoma, that's a, that's all, that's got to be on the top 20 of and West Virginia. Awesome. Great.
I mean, and this isn't even counting like this map right here since we're talking with the map up. It's not even counting like a lot of the states that have school choice, but that are just not universal. So like Maine and Vermont, they have the oldest voucher programs in the country that started in the late 1800s over 150 years ago, specifically for kids in rural areas. They didn't have public schools in some of the districts.
So they gave the money in a form of voucher or scholarship to a family so they could even choose private even religious schools that they wanted to or other public schools. And so they figured out over 150 years ago that not having a lot of options because you're in a rural area is an argument to expand education opportunities not to restrict them. But real quick, the reason I brought up Idaho and Wyoming is I wanted to point out two things that I thought were interesting is that in Wyoming, um, last session, they passed universal school choice. But guess what the governor did?
He line item vetoed a Republican line item, he told like 90% of the bill and only kept the portion for the lowest lowest lowest income group out of like six or seven income groups. And so so that was about as like, you know, playing both sides as you can get. I wanted to celebrate it because it was a new ESA program in a new school state that didn't have schools. But at the same time, he watered it down as much as possible.
The same governors in, um, in Wyoming now, Governor Mark Gordon, a Republican, he signed it this year straight up signed it didn't veto any parts of it and kept it for all families. He even, he didn't, he couldn't just like sat on it and let it become law without a signature. He didn't do that. He signed it.
And he also, um, gave a statement at a press conference and said that it was like a fantastic thing. He talked about it in a positive way. And it might have something to do with Trump sending that tweet out saying, you know, Wyoming should get this done this year. Or maybe he's maybe he had a true change of heart or maybe he is reading the political tea leaves.
Yeah. Um, which, uh, which I don't care what the reason is. I would hope it's because of a true change of heart. But, but parents and voters are the ones calling the shots here.
They're the ones holding politicians accountable to do the right thing. And if a politician is doing something because they're afraid of losing public support, that just tells you that we're on the right side of history here that that school choice is supported by the majority of Americans, whether you're a Republican Democrat or independent Idaho. Same thing. Governor Brad Little, the governor of Idaho, he signed the bill and has bragged about how his state has school choice.
But a few years ago, a lot of people were putting him in the camp. He was endorsed by the teachers union. And we're putting him in the camp of being an opponent of school choice. And so you have another governor that has come along.
And look, I'm not going to question your motives. I hope it was a true change of heart. But I'm glad that you're with us. Yeah, I take converts.
If it took you a long time, I don't care how long it takes you, but if you're going to be our friends, then we'll open, we'll welcome you with open arms. Even if you're a Democrat and some Democrats have done that, they've changed parties on the issue. In North Carolina, Trent should call them. She switched from the Democrat Party as a sitting legislator to the Republican Party.
And she was the chief sponsor on the universal school choice bill. And Georgia, Misha Maynard, switched parties and voted for their new ESA program last session. And hopefully some more Democrats come along. I mean, it shouldn't be a partisan issue in Louisiana.
You had 20% of the Democrat caucus in the House voting for their universal school choice bill in Florida, 10% of their House Democrats voted for the bill. That's not a majority, but any bipartisan support we can get is something I predict in my book, the parent revolution, something I called bipartisan ship through hyper partisanship. The more the GOP leads on the issue and makes it a political winner, the more politically damaging it is for Democrats to oppose it. So some of them will start to defect and they are as I predicted in the book.
And if they don't, maybe they'll lose some seats on the issue and maybe those blue states will become red states, and maybe we'll get more school choice that way. Yeah, well, I think that part of the part of what's happened across all of these states is that you have these Democrats changing their mind, changing their positions on the issue. You have governors signing instead of line item vetoing at least in part. I have to believe that at least in part because of what happened in Texas.
So maybe talk about that because I don't remember the numbers offhand you do, but there's no way that these governors didn't know what happened to all of those sitting legislators all of us. Yeah, I think we could take the map down now. But yeah, in Texas, you had 21 so-called Republicans join all the Democrats last year to vote against their own party platform issue of school choice. And guess what happened since the primaries 14 of them are gone.
It was a political earthquake. Two thirds of the Republicans who voted against school choice are no longer in office. Incomments usually when re-elections 95% of the time. So what they lose about 5% of the time is barely ever.
They lost like 67-2 thirds of the time in the most repressive minutes. It's never happened. And it's because parents held them accountable at the ballot box. And you look at even places like Glenn Rogers.
He said he was the Texas incumbent in a rural district. He lost by 27 points against Mike Holcott, a school choice supporter. And Glenn Rogers, he's the biggest, he is the biggest sore loser in political history that I've ever seen. He's still railing against school choice on on X.
He's writing for the Dallas, the Dallas morning news every day in his guest column against school choice. He can't just pick up his ball and go home. I mean, he's lost his seat and he can't get over it. But from what I could tell, he outspent Mike Holcott by three to one.
And he's still lost by 27 points as an incumbent. That is so embarrassing. He should just quit the game because get out of the scene. But that was just one example of just people getting tronched.
A lot of them weren't even close. Hillary, Hillary Hickland, she was in like a four way primary against a guy who had been in office for like over a decade, I believe. Hugh Shine. And he outspent her, Hillary won by double digits in a four way primary.
And then I don't remember if that one went to a runoff or not. But if it did, I don't think it did. I think she won straight up. But if it did, she still won the runoff in double digits from what I remember.
So, you know, this sends a message. So I think other states saw what happened in Texas. And this happened in Iowa before it happened in Texas. A lot of people don't remember this.
But in Iowa, Governor Kim Reynolds tried to get school choice across the finish line in 2022. We've seen this movie before. And Kim Reynolds, the bill passed through the Senate easily, only one Republican defected and joined the Democrats. When he got to the house, they had like 60% of the house controlled with people with an art next to their name and could not get it done about how many meetings she had with those people.
And guess what happened in the primaries. They got a new more conservative house in Iowa. And the running joke in Iowa is that the Democrats should have voted for the pair down version of school choice that she proposed in 2022. It was only a few thousand kids.
Now it's the green state on our map. No caps. Everybody's eligible. And play stupid games.
When stupid prizes, the Democrats should have voted for the minor version of school choice that probably would have led them to having a less conservative house than what they have today. And so we see movies we've seen before. That's exactly what happened in West Virginia, right?
Exactly. Exactly. So the best that our opponents can do is slow down the school choice momentum by a session or two. But they're never going to be able to stop it because the facts are on our side.
Logic is on our side. Morality is on our side. And the winning is going to continue no matter how much the left and the teachers union scream about it. And you know what, once it passes, they kind of shut up a little bit.
Once they realize they can't beat it in the courts, they can't beat it any other way. And some of the Democrats, like in Florida, will come along and say, you know what, this isn't so bad. And guess what?
A lot of the constituents like school choice. And if I take their scholarships away, I might lose my seat. And so that hopefully we get some bipartisan support. I won't hold my tongue because I mean, maybe at that point, the teachers are going to just start to focus on something else.
Maybe they maybe they'd do a better job. Maybe they focus on teacher salaries because they're not doing a good job there right now. The superintendents are making ton of money. Randy Winegarden is making over half a million a year.
The teachers are, their salaries have been flat over time. And more money has been pumped into the schools than ever before. It's just going towards administrative bloke. And so if the unions had to focus on, I don't know, the basics and actually benefiting their members instead of trapping other people's kids in their failure factories, maybe they'd do a better job and maybe the teachers would be happier.
But school choice would benefit the teachers too through competition. The public school system would have to funnel more money towards the classroom and towards the good teachers. So we've only got a couple of minutes left before we hit the hour mark. But let me ask you this, let's come full circle.
We're talking about the unions right now. Let's just touch on, I just saw 30 minutes, 45 minutes ago, but it was longer than that because we've been on this. So it's been an hour and a half, maybe NEA president Becky Pringle was on the news advocating for stopping any executive action or other action on closing the department of education. So let's just maybe wrap up with why?
Why do they care about the federal department of education? Well, Becky Pringle is the biggest labor union in the country and I think that they find it easier to lobby the federal government to get what they want. We saw this during COVID too. The NEA and Randy's union AFT both separately lobbied the CDC to make it more difficult to reopen schools.
It was probably easier for them to do that to just go right there with all the resources and to hit it head on then to go to all these individual thousands of school districts across the country would have been a lot tougher for them to control things than they could through the federal department of education. But who knows, maybe even if we don't abolish it all together and I'm hoping that the Democrats lose enough seats to where we could overcome the filibuster in after the midterms because of issues like education and saving women's sports that they're just on the wrong side of history on the Democrat side. They haven't learned a damn thing from President Trump's monumental victory. He won the popular vote.
He won all seven swing states. He won the parent vote by nine points, which was a 15 point shift to the right relative to 2020. The unions have been so drunk on power for so long they can't learn a damn thing and maybe that's good news because as I said in my book, I dedicated it to Randy Weingarten for overplaying her hand and for inadvertently doing more to advance school choice and homeschooling than anyone could have ever imagined. She never endorsed my book after that.
She never responded to my request for an endorsement. You did send her a copy, though, right? I did. I sent her a signed copy.
I sent Stacey Davis Gates a signed copy, the union leader in Chicago. I called her a hypocrite in the front because she sent her own get to private school after calling school choice racist just a couple of years ago. She sends her kids to a Catholic school that cost half as much of what they spend in her failure factories in Chicago about 30,000 a year in the public schools per student per year. They actually sent the book back to me.
They went through the trouble and the Chicago teachers union to send it back. They didn't say anything but Randy didn't send it back. She probably burned it or something. But there was a call from a Wisconsin teachers union executive board member who said that it's a great day for a book burning party.
So they actually had never read the book. It was kind of a pre-release thing that I was announcing and they already wanted to burn my ideas because it's such a threat to the monopoly. But school choice is going to come whether they like it or not and they should just brace themselves and get ready. Maybe they should do a better job so that families don't flee when they have the opportunity to do so.
Maybe the public schools instead of labeling parents as domestic terrorists, maybe they'll actually listen to parents. Maybe they'll treat them as customers. Maybe they'll treat them as partners in the relationship as opposed to treating them as enemies. And so I think this really could be a win-win.
The thing is the monopoly doesn't want to have to compete. They don't want to have to change their game. They don't want to have to enact merit pay and to reward the best teachers. They want to protect the worst bottom of the rung individuals.
And that's the point of the union. They protect the worst people. And that is unfair to the teachers who are doing a good job who look across the hall and say, I'm bust in my butt. I'm doing a good job.
I'm trying my hardest. And this person across the hall has been here five more years. But that doesn't do anything in the kids' hate them. He's earning more than me.
So the best teachers leave. They go to do something else because the school system isn't rewarding them because the system is controlled by the unions and not by the actual teachers. So I guess to wrap it up, Becky Pringle and Randy Weingarten should embrace themselves for the change that's going to happen. And I think to get to your question again is that they think they can control things at the federal level easier.
And it can also just be a trumped arrangement syndrome thing. I mean, Randy Weingarten was on MSNBC a couple weeks ago. And she said that the federal government shouldn't control education. She said it should be up to states and localities.
That's right. I clipped that part and I said, this is a free advertising for abolishing the department. Get on board. She also separately said in another MSNBC interview, Randy Weingarten said that her members don't really care whether they have a federal Department of Education or not.
Okay, well, but then she pivoted and said, you know, I can't support this because we need the money for education. Okay, well, the bill sends that money back to the states. The money's still going to be there. So she can't give Trump a win, right?
She just asked the art because she wants Democrats in charge to push her agenda. And she can't hand that victory to Trump even if she finds herself agreeing with the proposal accidentally. Well, because probably most of the staff at the federal Department of Education for the past 40 years, 45 years, has been Democrats that all function as a little lobbyist for the unions. So you don't even have to pay for the lobbying through the federal Department of Education or if you're the NEA or the AFT.
You just go every month and hang out with them and bring them in donuts or something once a month and you've got an army of lobbyists. Yeah, Randy also switched her argument up again about the Department of Education and says, well, if we get rid of the Department of Education, that signals to everybody that we don't care about education. Okay, so you're admitting that this is all about virtue signaling. The signal says to show people that we care about education.
Well, you know what? We've had this department for a long time. Outcomes have gotten worse. We've wasted almost two trillion dollars at the federal level since its inception.
And it's about time to get rid of it. It's had its opportunity to improve things. It hasn't closed the achievement gaps like it purported to do. They've actually gotten worse in some cases and we spend about $20,000 per kid per year in the failure factories that we call public schools in this country.
That's 52% higher than the average private school tuition in this country. It's time. It's time has come. It's past it's past time.
I mean, this this this department should have never been born. It's it is unconstitutional. The word education is not in the US Constitution. Let's get rid of it and hopefully Congress comes along.
You know what the Democrats used to say that they wanted to end the filibuster when they were in charge. Republicans are going to do that. And I don't think I'm not sure if they should. I don't think they should because but the Democrats a few years ago, you probably find clips of them saying that they should end it.
They don't want to end it anymore because they're using it to stop commonsense stuff like saving women's and girls and sports act. I mean, it's crazy. Hopefully they lose some seats on the issue and hopefully I'm super excited about this executive order from Trump. Hopefully there is a solid plan to give it death by 1,000 cuts if we can't kill it all together.
Yeah, step one, hollow it out. Step two, do away with it. I'd be good with that plan. So, okay, well, thanks, Corey.
Thanks everyone for tuning in. We had plans to do another one of these in the next week or two. And we'll try to be a little more regular about this. But this is a good conversation.
Thanks, Corey. All right. Thanks, Matt. Talk to you later.
All right. Bye. Thank you for listening. You can find EFI online at EFInstitute.org on Twitter at EF underscore institute and on Facebook at Educational Freedom Institute.
