| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Robert Enlow is the president and CEO of EdChoice, joining us now when it comes to administration, education policies, particularly when it comes to school choice. | ||
| Mr. Enloe, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Could you talk a little bit about your organization, what it does, and how you're also financially supported? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So EdChoice is the legacy foundation of Milton and Rose Friedman. | ||
| Milton Friedman, as you might know, was the 1976 Nobel Prize winner in economics, and he had the idea back in 1955 that it's fairer, more equitable, more efficient to separate the government financing of education from the government administration of schools. | ||
| So we support funds that go to parents. | ||
| We do research, data analysis, and polling to make sure the American public understands the importance of school choice. | ||
| And like most nonprofits, we're funded by anyone that is willing to support our cause. | ||
| We take money from anyone except the government. | ||
| And I suppose when it comes to the matter of school choice, when you say that, everybody has a perception of it. | ||
| What do you think that perception is? | ||
| What's the reality from your perspective and what you do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, the reality is that parents want their children to be in the best option possible. | |
| And that often is by moving to a district and buying a house. | ||
| And we think that's patently unfair, right? | ||
| The idea of American education, of public education, should that we should have an educated public, not an income-segregated system of schooling based on where you live. | ||
| And so what we're trying to do here is separate that funding from where you live and allow parents to choose. | ||
| And that's what parents want. | ||
| They want the ability to get the best option for their kid, regardless of whether that's in a public, private, or charter school. | ||
| We're really sector agnostic. | ||
| We just want families to have more choices. | ||
| Our previous guest talked about vouchers, and I suppose it's not the first time you've heard an argument that if you impose some type of voucher system, it ultimately takes away from public education overall. | ||
| What do you think of that argument? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's just patently false, and we know it to be false over time. | |
| Every single study that has ever been done on the impact of school choice on a public school finances has shown that it has not had a negative impact on public schooling finances at all. | ||
| Moreover, we've seen dramatic increases in funding to traditional public schools over the last 10 years, a 13% increase. | ||
| It's now $17,000 or so per kid, $850 billion. | ||
| It's not like we have a spending problem. | ||
| We have an outcome problem, and that's why parents are demanding more options. | ||
| When you say outcome problem, are you specifically looking strictly at testing and results that way? | ||
| Or are there other factors that determine that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, there's tons of other factors. | |
| Testing, testing is important, but families care about academic quality. | ||
| But what they really are starting to care about is they want their kid in a safe school where the kid's not bullied. | ||
| They want their kid in a school where they're not anxious and overworried. | ||
| These are the number two, one and two reasons why families are choosing right now. | ||
| They're saying, Don't have my kid bullied. | ||
| I want a safe school. | ||
| Don't have them anxious. | ||
| And by the way, give me some academic quality as well. | ||
| And that's why you're seeing millions of parents moving away from their traditional school options to other school options, including across the district or charter schools or private schools, or now we call them ESAs. | ||
| According to the folks at Education Week, they tell us that 20 states currently, when it comes to school choice options, have tax credit scholarships, 18 have education savings accounts. | ||
| 10 states, including the District of Columbia, have voucher systems, two have tax credit education savings accounts, and five have direct tax credit. | ||
| That's a lot of waterfront there. | ||
| What do those mean as far as options for parents in most states when it comes to school choice? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I love it when Ed Week uses our data. | |
| So they're collecting that data, and we appreciate that's what EdChoice collects. | ||
| We collect this data across the country. | ||
| What it means for families is that there are multiple ways that families can access options, right? | ||
| You can get money off your tax code. | ||
| You can get a nonprofit to give you a scholarship. | ||
| You can get direct assistance in the form of a voucher. | ||
| Or in the modern case, you can get money put aside onto a digital platform where you can customize your education. | ||
| That's education savings accounts. | ||
| Look, we as taxpayers agree to fund education. | ||
| That's important. | ||
| The idea, however, that it needs to go to one school system where one size fits all is what we're trying to stop. | ||
| And that's why education savings accounts and school choice are the national move right now. | ||
| There are 36 states that have school, 35 states that have school choice. | ||
| Over half of all Americans now have access to school choice. | ||
| There are 18 states with universal school choice, meaning everyone can choose. | ||
| This is a movement that is growing from small to big, and particularly since COVID, from zero programs that were universal in 2020 to 18 programs now. | ||
| So families are demanding more options. | ||
| You may have said this already, but if those vouchers take place and those options are there, is it the private schools that benefit the most? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I think it's families that benefit the most. | |
| I mean, that's the point. | ||
| Families, there's not a single dollar that goes to a private school unless a family chooses that private school or chooses that charter school or chooses to go across a school district or chooses to buy a house in a public school or chooses to customize their education through an ESA. | ||
| All of this funding that we believe should go to families, not systems, is used through private school choice and through parents making those choices. | ||
| This is Robert Enlow joining us with Ed Choice. | ||
| He's their president and CEO. | ||
| If you have questions about him, about school vouchers and other related matters, 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans and Independents. | ||
| 202748-8002. | ||
| If you are an educator or a student and you want to give perspectives on the conversation, 202-748-8003. | ||
| Mr. Enlow, in the House version of their budget that was passed, there is something called the Educational Choice for Children Act. | ||
| Can you talk a little bit about that and talk about actually the addition of such a thing in this legislation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So efforts to try and create school choice on the federal level have been going on since Ronald Reagan and maybe even before that. | |
| This proposal is a tax credit scholarship proposal that will allow individuals to claim a dollar-for-dollar tax credit to contributions they make to scholarship organizations that give out scholarships or tuition or reimbursement for curricula. | ||
| It's a national effort to allow school choice into all 50 states. | ||
| You know, it does a great job of balancing that the role of education is truly at the state level and that the role of education should be placed in the hands of parents. | ||
| And so it's a truly private choice program that allows private individuals to help private nonprofits to give out to families who choose. | ||
| This is all a very positive direction. | ||
| As far as the approach that act does, is it a good approach? | ||
| Are there issues with the approach? | ||
| Could it be improved? | ||
| How would you interpret that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, for D.C., it's the best possible approach, right? | |
| So it's as minimal invasion as possible right now. | ||
| Although there's some challenges to that bill, like there are challenges to every bill, which we would like to see changed over time in the reconciliation. | ||
| But the reality is, is if DC is going to do something like this, then it's probably a better option than other things they could do because we all know about federal overreach into schools. | ||
| I have a friend of mine who is a superintendent for years, and she used to say, I get about 9 to 11% of my budget from the federal government, but 50% of my staff is compliance. | ||
| And so there's a problem here in the sort of reach of the federal government, and this program does a good job so far of minimizing that. | ||
| You probably won't be surprised in response to the addition of that act. | ||
| It was the National Education Association's Becky Pringle putting out a statement saying when they redirect public dollars to fund private school vouchers, they weaken public education and limit opportunities for students. | ||
| They siphon crucial funding from public schools serving 90% of students and redirected to private institutions with no accountability. | ||
| Access to affordable quality higher education will slip further out of reach for countless students. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, so that's just patently not true and based on the data. | |
| First of all, it's taxpayer funding. | ||
| It's not funding for public schools. | ||
| It's funding that we agree to fund kids and fund education. | ||
| Second, every single study, this is something serious researchers agree to, when there's a school choice program operating in a state, public schools get better faster. | ||
| So there's a real benefit. | ||
| They call it competitive effects. | ||
| There's tons of studies that show public schools get better faster. | ||
| There's also tons of studies that show that children do better. | ||
| They also, tons of studies that children become more tolerant of other people's opinions. | ||
| So this idea of unaccountability really doesn't trust parents because parents are the best in final accountability. | ||
| Robert Enlow joining us for this discussion from Florida. | ||
| We'll start off with Ross. | ||
| He's on our independent line. | ||
| You're on with our guests. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| Yes, I was hoping to get more specificity on evidence-based successes that you can repeat as far as what has already worked. | ||
| As far as going with etymology, with education, educare, to learn from within rather than without. | ||
| I was going to ask what, for instance, by having more responsibility with the parents to get more, get the PTA more active again and have information rather than the disinformation that is permeating. | ||
| I was going to ask with specificity what you can add to that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Also, Ross from Florida, thanks. | ||
| Mr. Enloe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, Ross, that's a great question. | |
| Here's some answers to that. | ||
| Regarding parents and their involvement, we have done studies in the state of Indiana of parents who receive scholarships and sort of try to find out how they're behaving differently after they got a scholarship than before they got a scholarship. | ||
| What they tell us over time and in multiple studies is that as a parent, they get more involved in their child's education. | ||
| They get more involved in their child's homework and they get more involved in their community. | ||
| It's a very positive benefit for parents to have that power and control again. | ||
| It gives them a sense of empowerment. | ||
| It gives them a sense of belonging. | ||
| And they do a lot more with that by getting involved in their schools. | ||
| As related to the evidence that we know. | ||
| At EdChoice, we collect all of the studies, pro and con, of the high-quality studies onto school choice. | ||
| We have found of the 188 studies, there are 166 that show positive gains and only 11 that show neutral gains, and very few that show anything negative. | ||
| And here's what that means: we study and find studies that show how these students do in school in voucher programs. | ||
| And the evidence is that overall they perform slightly better statistically on state tests. | ||
| This is true in every state except Louisiana and Indiana, although the new data out of Indiana is showing positive results. | ||
| We study whether kids graduate at higher rates, matriculate, and persist in college at higher rates. | ||
| School choice is finding tremendously positive results for that, particularly from the urban institutes studied most recently by David Figlio. | ||
| We study whether competitive effects exist, whether public schools in areas with high concentrations of choice do better on standardized tests. | ||
| That evidence is overwhelming. | ||
| We study whether families and children are more tolerant and have more civic engagement. | ||
| Those studies are also overwhelming. | ||
| So there's tremendous amounts of data you can look at. | ||
| It's called the one, two, threes of school choice. | ||
| I encourage anyone here, go look at the data, read the studies for yourself, and make your own determination. | ||
| But the overwhelming majority of studies show positive results from school choice. | ||
| In New York, Democrats lying. | ||
| Gloria is next. | ||
| Go ahead, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, can you hear me? | |
| You're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Yes, we can. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I have to make a separation here. | ||
| Public education is a public good for communities, as is police and fire and all of our other public goods. | ||
| This is how Americans as a nation educate. | ||
| To start to parse out these monies to different types of school systems corrodes the foundation and the public good and then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: oh, yeah, public schools don't work. | ||
| If you look at the massive bulk of the population of this country, it is in public schools. | ||
| And this idea that parents only should be the users and deciders of the education is giving, parents are the advocate for their children. | ||
| It is their job. | ||
| But educators stay in, and over the long term, we have become a testing mill. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because that's the best way to say, oh, it doesn't work. | ||
| Oh, it doesn't work. | ||
| And everything that was said, especially during Randy, one caller spoke about the fact that they're just pulling apart all of our public goods, all of these things to say, government is no good. | ||
| Let's just do whatever we want. | ||
| And here we are. | ||
| We have made so much progress in education, and parents have a gigantic voice in public schools. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Gloria, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Gloria, Alec, I really appreciate that. | |
| Believe it or not, I'm a huge fan of the idea of an educated public and a public education. | ||
| I just don't necessarily think that's done in one place in a one-size-fits-all traditional government-run, district-run system, right? | ||
| So for us, it's the idea that parents should be in more power. | ||
| And if we're looking at other countries, by the way, I heard the previous caller talk about other countries. | ||
| Every other Western democracy all across Europe believes in pluralism, and they fund private education. | ||
| They fund religious education in a way that's basically universal choice and universal vouchers. | ||
| So what we're really talking about here is we believe that education is a public good, but that public good is not delivered only by a government-run school system. | ||
| It's delivered by any system that educates the public. | ||
| We believe in an educated public for the public interest, and that's important for us. | ||
| That's why we support charter schools and private schools and traditional public schools. | ||
| We just think that you've got to separate that connection between a district-run system where you're buying a house to choose a school and then letting parents choose. | ||
| And I think that's the big difference here. | ||
| We believe in an educated public. | ||
| We just don't believe in a traditional government-run system only. | ||
| Mr. Inlo, I don't know if you had a chance to listen to our last guest, but she brought up the fact that it was Kentucky voters who turned down a school voucher amendment. | ||
| She mentioned other states as well. | ||
| Is this anecdotal of it, or at least in these three states, is it specific to these three states, or does it reflect a larger picture of how states feel about vouchers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that was really interesting. | |
| So the Kentucky and Nebraska cases, there was a, just for your listeners, there were referendum on the idea of school choice. | ||
| And in those states that don't have any school choice at all, Kentucky and Nebraska, hardly any at all, they saw crushing defeats. | ||
| And let's be honest, they saw crushing defeats. | ||
| But in Colorado, where you've had examples of school choice for a long time, where you've had charter schools and you've had lots of new micro schools springing up, where you've had tremendous amount of opportunities for families, you saw the referendum basically get to 50% of the popular vote. | ||
| It needed 51% or more to pass. | ||
| So you're seeing in states with school choice a greater level of support for school choice. | ||
| Look, otherwise, there wouldn't be 36 states or 35 states in America that have school choice, and you wouldn't see the growth in the school choice in the way it's gone, particularly since COVID. | ||
| So we understand that there's no system is perfect. | ||
| We accept that Kentucky and Nebraska have made their choices. | ||
| And now we believe that the rest of the country is making its choice. | ||
| And education is primarily a state function. | ||
| Let's remember that. | ||
| 80 to 90% of the funding comes from state and local governments. | ||
| And that's where it should be, because that's where the focus of education is. | ||
| Of the states that you know that have school voice, is there a standout state, the state that does it right on a lot of different fronts? | ||
| And what would that state be? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great question. | |
| The states that we think do it right are Arizona, Florida, West Virginia, and Arkansas. | ||
| And that's because what they do is they allow all families to choose. | ||
| They give them all the options. | ||
| They don't just say you could choose one private school or another private school or a charter school. | ||
| They say customize, allow your family to go to one school and then maybe get a tutor or go to a micro school and then come back and get educated at home for a while. | ||
| And then they give all the money. | ||
| They connect the dollars to the families. | ||
| And so it's not like a program that has a cap of a billion dollars like Texas, which is great, but it's still a cap. | ||
| And so when they do those three things with it's all kids, all options, and all dollars, those four states of Arizona, West Virginia, Florida, and Arkansas are the standouts to us. | ||
| Let's hear from Sarah. | ||
| Sarah joins us from New Hampshire. | ||
| Independent line for our guests. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, and thank you. | |
| Yeah, I'm from New Hampshire. | ||
| We have a voucher system type of thing happening. | ||
| And our legislature just lifted the cap. | ||
| So if you're a wealthy family, you already have the money to send your kid to private school. | ||
| You can still tap public funds. | ||
| So I'm in a cooperative school district. | ||
| We have a problem with filling our classrooms now because children are being siphoned off. | ||
| Low birth rate. | ||
| Immigrants are getting kicked out of the country. | ||
| And we're closing some fairly new schools. | ||
| A threat of closing them because we don't have enough funding. | ||
| Our cooperative has had to go to the state to sue for equal funding where wealthy towns get more money than our group of towns. | ||
| And personally, I think that, yes, some kids do benefit from this, but there should be a cap. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now it's just going up and up and up. | |
| It's like a water faucet. | ||
| The state of New Hampshire has a constitutional obligation to fund and adequately educate every student in a public school system. | ||
| They are not getting the funding to do that because the money's getting siphoned off. | ||
| And I'd like to say how we got here. | ||
| The extremism of the two-party, dysfunctional two-party system. | ||
| We need ranked voting. | ||
| Okay, okay, Sarah, before we go too far down the road, we'll let our guest respond to what you said. | ||
| Thank you, Hill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sarah, I really appreciate it. | |
| New Hampshire, yes, might be the fifth most state for us to have all the universal options with universal kids and universal funding. | ||
| Let me take a couple of those points you made, and I appreciate them. | ||
| One, the concern about wealthy families getting access to choice. | ||
| Well, wealthy families already get access to choice is through public taxpayer dollars. | ||
| We fund $17,000 or so per kid in public schools, and those go to billionaires and millionaires. | ||
| And so one of my challenges back on this issue is, so why are we okay with a child who gets in my third grade state of Indiana $17,000 to go to a traditional public school? | ||
| He's a millionaire. | ||
| He wants to go to a charter school. | ||
| He can get $9,000 to $10,000. | ||
| But we balk at giving that same person $5,000 to go to a non-public school and have them pay the rest. | ||
| Somehow we're okay with funding billionaires and millionaires as long as they buy a house in a sort of income-segregated community. | ||
| That's a difference for me. | ||
| I find that an unjust way of looking at organizing society. | ||
| When he looks at the spending in New Hampshire, we know that spending in New Hampshire has increased over time. | ||
| In America, and nationally, here's one of the real challenges. | ||
| Nationally, we've seen for the first time ever more non-teachers in classrooms than teachers and more non-teachers in K-12 education than teachers. | ||
| We've seen a bloat in the bureaucracy, and we needed to really change that. | ||
| And so the goal here is to allow families to choose. | ||
| The families that choose are the ones that need it most. | ||
| And a family that has a child who's bullied, like the ones we know in New Hampshire, or is not in a safe environment, like the ones we know in New Hampshire, we need them to have options too. | ||
| And so that's, I appreciate your point, but look, we seem to be okay with giving millionaires a ton of money to go to income-segregated community schools. | ||
| I think we should be okay with educating all kids regardless of who they are. | ||
| From North Carolina, Michael, Republican Line, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, Pedro, Mr. Rowe. | |
| I believe school choice gives parents the freedom to find the right learning environment, whether it's in a public school, another district, or homeschooling. | ||
| Instead of a one-size-fits-all system, families can choose what works best, helping every child reach their full potential while respecting their individual dignity. | ||
| And if I could make a couple quick points, Pedro, I actually had called when Mrs. Randy Weingord was on the show. | ||
| She said she agreed with getting rid of all the bureaucracy that her successor has now incorporated. | ||
| She agreed that parents' issues should be discussed on a local level with local school boards, which is also what the current administration is attempting to do by giving the power back to the states. | ||
| She had all these great ideas, but she didn't incorporate any of them when she was in charge. | ||
| And two more points. | ||
| I think the closing of schools during COVID was definitely a bad decision for such a long time. | ||
| And then finally, as a teacher in North Carolina, I'm a third grade teacher in a local school. | ||
| They have books in our school system that, to say mildly, is like child pornography. | ||
| That's too provocative to mention the contents of the book on this adult program today. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Michael there in North Carolina. | ||
| Mr. Enlow, you can address anything you brought to the table. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Michael, thanks for your question. | |
| First of all, thanks for being a teacher and thanks to all the teachers out there. | ||
| EdChoice, for those of you who don't know, has since 2020 been doing monthly polling of 2,000 adults and 1,000 parents and biannual polling of teachers. | ||
| And so we have, since COVID, the most comprehensive data set of parental attitudes towards school choice, towards issues of education, and probably the most comprehensive set of teacher attitudes. | ||
| And here's a positive thing that I would say about teachers, because we just released our most recent teacher poll. | ||
| Teacher optimism is on the rise for the first time in the last four years. | ||
| So four years previously, it was on the downgrow, very pessimistic. | ||
| Now it's going up. | ||
| And here's a really interesting thing I'd like to make. | ||
| We ask in our questions an unaided question. | ||
| Do you support vouchers? | ||
| Do you support education and savings accounts? | ||
| Just no definition at all. | ||
| Teacher union members support unaided the idea, do you support an ESA? | ||
| 60% of teacher union members support the idea of an ESA unaided. | ||
| When you actually give them a description, that support jumps to 74%. | ||
| So teacher support for the idea of choice is really strong. | ||
| That's because they know what's happening in classrooms and they want more options. | ||
| You're seeing optimism beginning to rebound. | ||
| You're seeing parents starting teachers starting to say we want more opportunities. | ||
| You're seeing teachers starting more micro schools. | ||
| I think we're on the cusp of something great because of what families and teachers are doing and because of school choice. | ||
| So appreciate Michael's work in North Carolina and keep going. | ||
| Teachers are on your side. | ||
| You talked about teachers. | ||
| One of the categories for your spring poll about public support for school choice programs, the headline says it's dipped since last year, though overall support levels remain high. | ||
| We're showing people the chart, but fill in the blanks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so what's really important is you could see a consistency of support of school choice from 2020 all the way to today. | |
| And it goes up and down over time. | ||
| And it's dipped a little bit from its highs and it's going to probably going to go back up. | ||
| The reality is, is if you look at it over time, the majority of families support school choice. | ||
| The majority of teachers support school choice. | ||
| The majority, like this is not even partisan. | ||
| Democrats support the idea of ESAs. | ||
| Republicans support ESAs. | ||
| Low-income support ESAs. | ||
| There is a tremendous amount of support for the idea of school over time. | ||
| And so you see individual dips, but over time, what you're seeing is a pattern. | ||
| For example, another pattern we see over time is since COVID, families want to have their kids not in brick and mortar schools five days a week. | ||
| About half of the families say, I'd like my kid to be educated outside of a brick and mortar school for one day a week or more. | ||
| This is a really important movement right now, a moment in the K-12 education where schools need to start responding to these desires from families. | ||
| And if they don't, they're going to find themselves in a situation like our friend in New Hampshire where schools are not being responsive or like our friends in Indianapolis where our public schools are not being responsive fast enough. | ||
| And our goal is to make sure more families have more options and the public schools get better. | ||
| So this is why competition works. | ||
| It actually lifts all boats. | ||
| Mr. Enlow, the first chart in that spring poll talked about the majority of Americans not supporting the closing of the Department of Education. | ||
| Were you surprised by that result? | ||
| And can I ask also if your organization or you take a position on if the education department should be dismantled? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we support the fact that the administration is trying to do something with a very giant, overbloated bureaucracy, right? | |
| It is important that they do something about it. | ||
| It is important that they recognize that the federal overreach has been around for a long time and to really get to the core functions of the Department of Education. | ||
| Look, it's really clear from our polling that when asked whether they should close the Department of Education, only 36% supported closing it and 49% opposed it. | ||
| However, if you dig deeper, a majority of Republicans, about 58%, supported closing the Department of Education and 69% of Democrats opposed it. | ||
| So you're seeing a partisan split. | ||
| But what's really important is there's a clear majority for Americans saying that we support the core functions of the Department of Education, i.e. funding schools, protecting civil rights, and promoting equal opportunity. | ||
| That's true across all party lines. | ||
| And so the real question for the Department of Education closure isn't if it's going to be closed. | ||
| It's what functions need to be preserved and where. | ||
| And we support this administration's efforts or any administration's efforts, by the way, to stop this overreach and bloat that happens through an over-regulated public school system. | ||
| Joining us today for this conversation, Robert Enlow, the president and CEO of EdChoice. | ||
| Let's hear from Ted. | ||
| He's in Chicago. | ||
| Democrats line. | ||
| Thanks for waiting. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much for having me. | |
| I was going to say initially that I'm a teachers union member and I actually support school choice. | ||
| So I do agree with you on the data that you provided. | ||
| I was going to ask you, however, I've got children that go to private schools as well, and I do support the opportunity for options, but I was going to ask you about the history of segregation in the public schools post-1954 and Brown versus Board of Education. | ||
| And I was with you, my brother, up until you started talking about dismantling Department of Education, suggesting that somehow states are going to figure out this civil rights stuff by themselves. | ||
| They're going to figure out how to support anti-discrimination measures and funding by themselves. | ||
| The only reason why we have the Department of Education is because the states were not doing that. | ||
| And before 1954, I'm African-American. | ||
| Someone that looks like me had no shot of getting a quality education across half the states in the country. | ||
| So while I do support some level of school choice, I think you've got to fund public schools. | ||
| But I think there's a slight, I think we're being slightly disingenuous when you suggest the Department of Education can be closed and all that civil rights stuff will happen by itself. | ||
| Ted in Chicago, thanks for the call. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ted, that's a great point. | |
| Let me be clear about what I meant on this. | ||
| I really appreciate you bringing this points up. | ||
| We think that the protection of civil rights can be done at the Department of Justice. | ||
| We think that that's an important role and a core function of the federal government to do that and fulfill the protection of civil rights and equal opportunity. | ||
| And the American public is behind that. | ||
| So we support that at the federal level. | ||
| Whether that's done in our current U.S. Department of Education or not, I think is an open question. | ||
| Remember, the Department of Education started in 1867, became an office in 1868, then got reinvigorated in 1979. | ||
| And so there's a lot of growth and change that can happen in these departments. | ||
| The core functions of the department, however, including the protection of civil rights, needs to stay at the federal level. | ||
| And I think the American public agrees to that. | ||
| I would also add on the one question about the choice and the teachers, I really appreciate hearing you say that. | ||
| One of the challenges that we had from Brown v. Board is the fact that American traditional schools for a long time were not only income segregated, because look, you have to buy a house. | ||
| And as you reduce the number of school districts in America, which we have done dramatically, if you looked at the number of school districts in 1970 versus today, you'll see a dramatic reduction. | ||
| Or from 1950 today, you'll see a dramatic reduction for a population that's twice as large. | ||
| And so when you centralize like that, it's really impossible to make your housing price actually not out of the reach of most families. | ||
| And so that mere fact of the income segregation also had a knock-on effect on racial segregation for a long time. | ||
| We think choice stops that voluntarily. | ||
| We see what's going on with Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Cleveland and Florida. | ||
| We see families of color starting new schools. | ||
| This is all the steps in the right direction that we hope choice will lead to. | ||
| Let's hear from Kathy in Florida, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hello. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I just want to say it seems like the way this is going, that it's basically defunding public schools to establish religious schools, which of course goes against everything that our country was founded on. | ||
| But my main concern is protecting the children because there's so much bullying and targeting of kids right now. | ||
| I can't believe, and I live in the South, in central Florida, and people don't have money here to buy a house. | ||
| You keep saying buy a house. | ||
| We have people from all over the world that buy houses here because Disney World is here. | ||
| Lots of big, expensive houses. | ||
| So there's lots of money going into the schools through those taxes, but they can't afford to take $5,000 and send their kid to a paper school. | ||
| That's not even an option. | ||
| And the problem in Florida saying that it really worked out well in Florida, it hasn't worked out well. | ||
| I can tell you that I personally, with my kids, because we've had it since the 90s, excuse me, when Jeff Bush was governor, and we had schools close down, charter schools close down, just throw everything into disarray. | ||
| And it's very difficult on people. | ||
| And I know many other people that they happen to, so it hasn't been good. | ||
| It's been awful. | ||
| And the thing that they keep doing is taking money. | ||
| The state takes money out of the schools. | ||
| It's the first thing they do. | ||
| Every governor that comes in, they takes money out of the schools. | ||
| And we need a federal government to handle that. | ||
| That's what the federal government is for. | ||
| Kathy, thank you. | ||
| Kathy in Florida, thanks for your comments this morning. | ||
| We'll let our guests respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Kathy, I really appreciate your point. | |
| And I'm sorry that school choice hasn't worked out for you as well as it's worked out for so many other families. | ||
| And that's, frankly, I think I hope the beauty of choice. | ||
| If it doesn't work out, you have the ability to move and the ability to choose a new option. | ||
| And Florida does provide those options. | ||
| Your point about defunding public schools, though, look, we're for funding families. | ||
| And if you look at Florida, they call it a per-pupil funding unit, right? | ||
| It's not a per-school funding unit or per public school funding unit. | ||
| It's a per pupil allotment. | ||
| It's a daily attendance allowance, right, or daily allowance. | ||
| The idea of it's based on the number of kids that go to your school. | ||
| And so we agree as a society that we should fund kids already. | ||
| The question is, is we just don't think they should go to one school system. | ||
| And we think in Florida, where they have increased funding for public schools almost every year, like they've increased it all over the country. | ||
| This is a big myth. | ||
| When you ask families in our poll, how much do we spend on education? | ||
| Almost no one gets it right. | ||
| No one really says $17,000. | ||
| They say somewhere in the region of $3,000 to $4,000. | ||
| So this idea that we continue to talk about the funding of public education, I want to talk about the funding of an educated public, wherever that is, much like Europe does already. | ||
| They fund their kids to go wherever. | ||
| It's not to one religion or another religion. | ||
| In fact, Milton Friedman thought very clearly, and I believe we'll show this over time, that the more choice you have, the more irreligious, the more secular that schools will become. | ||
| And I think that's true over time if we allow choice and opportunity to operate. | ||
| This is how the micro-school movement is happening across America. | ||
| And we think it's a really important idea to allow families more freedom to choose and have the capability to have that power. | ||
| Mr. Ernlo, I was interested in thinking, you're thinking the Supreme Court recently weighed in on that case when it comes to Oklahoma wanting to establish a public religious private school. | ||
| It was a 4-4 split. | ||
| Besides the split itself, what do you think about the merits of the case? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it was a giant punt by the Supreme Court, and I understand that, and I get it, right? | |
| Look, the question of this Drummond case, and it's called Isidore versus St. Isidore versus Drummond, was this. | ||
| Is a charter school a state actor or not a state actor? | ||
| And that's the question I think for us is important. | ||
| And I think the answer to that is no. | ||
| We think all schools that are not government-run should be considered non-state actors. | ||
| That's our opinion. | ||
| But look, I think what this bodes is it doesn't set a precedent. | ||
| And we think that just any charter school could start. | ||
| We're not about the idea of establishing a religious charter school is not about establishing a religion. | ||
| It's about giving parents more options and giving districts and states more options to choose different schools. | ||
| If the state chooses not to do that, that's fine with us. | ||
| The reality is we just want every tool in the toolbox. | ||
| The governor of Oklahoma said another case will probably rise to the Supreme Court in this level. | ||
| And this time, Amy Coney Barrett, who sat out on this case, may be the swaying factor on it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, certainly her absence mattered in this case. | |
| And I think we haven't seen the last of this conversation. | ||
| Again, one of the things I think your listeners need to realize, and they probably do, we didn't have what we call public education in this country until the mid-1840s, right? | ||
| It's called the common school movement with Horace Mann. | ||
| Prior to that, education was primarily privately run and parent-directed. | ||
| Certainly highly unequal, right? | ||
| But it wasn't government-run, right? | ||
| In the 1840s until the 1910s is when we've established a system of common schools or public schools as we call them today. | ||
| And if people look at the history of those, you see that they were started a lot because there was a second wave of immigration coming in America. | ||
| And that wave of immigration was primarily browner and more Catholic. | ||
| And so there's a lot of anti-Catholic bigotry in the establishment of our schools. | ||
| And so when we talk about the idea of public schooling, we've got to not remember, we haven't remembered it does not go back to 1776. | ||
| It goes back to more like 1846. | ||
| And it's important that we can change this and do what's right for American families by giving them more choices. | ||
| Here is Jeannie from Kentucky, Republican line. | ||
| Jeannie, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Yeah, you're right. | ||
| I'm a retired teacher of 30 years. | ||
| I kind of have a great story to tell. | ||
| I was sent to a private school. | ||
| My mother paid for it, Notre Dame Academy, the best of the best. | ||
| My daughter's best went to public schools. | ||
| I'm a public school teacher for 30 years, and I'm a little bit convoluted on Ed Choice. | ||
| I do believe the schools need to, there are issues with schools because in the 30 years I knew when I first started, things changed rapidly as the 30 years progressed. | ||
| I saw too many ancillary people coming in, too many of the big people coming, taking over my opportunity to teach. | ||
| And I can remember I was trying to teach as fast as I can because I could not get the other people out of my classroom. | ||
| And my contention is, let's save the public schools, but also let's have opportunity for Ed Choice, too. | ||
| I was so frustrated that I had a curriculum to follow. | ||
| I'm a very dedicated teacher. | ||
| I could have been on to being a supervisor. | ||
| I could have been at administration because I had all the certifications needed. | ||
| But my vocation was to teach the children and to educate. | ||
| Thank you, Jeannie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What a great story. | |
| And what a fantastic way to think about this. | ||
| Like, we want our public schools to be as best as possible, but we also need more options. | ||
| And thank you for being the teacher that you were. | ||
| And we hope to give teachers more freedom by allowing them to have more choices. | ||
| So I think you hit the nail on the head. | ||
| We want great public schools. | ||
| We want great schools for all families, and we just want more options. | ||
| One more call, William in Georgia, Democrats line. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing? | |
| I think what they're doing, this is called elite flight. | ||
| We had white flight before out of the school system. | ||
| Now they want elite flight paid for by taxpayer money. | ||
| There's not enough spots in these schools. | ||
| If these schools want to be a school system, they must be in every county. | ||
| Give everybody the opportunity to go see schools because there's just not enough feet for everybody to go to these private schools. | ||
| And they will turn down people based on grades. | ||
| They will have their own admissions. | ||
| They will have endowments. | ||
| If your grandparents went here, you get it. | ||
| They're going to have all those. | ||
| I'm not funding that with my tax dollars. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Because we're going to leave out a segment of society. | ||
| William there in Georgia. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
William, appreciate the question and the comment. | |
| We already are funding it through Pell Grants because that's what happens. | ||
| Pell Grants go to religious private schools and religious schools all over into higher ed institutions of choice where you test in. | ||
| So we're okay with it in the higher ed, it seems, with our taxpayer dollars. | ||
| As to the elite flight comment, look, the vast majority of these programs prior to 2023 were for families in the middle and lower income. | ||
| So we know that those were families that were not the elites that were needing more options and choosing. | ||
| That's who benefited first and foremost from choice. | ||
| And then lastly, you know, there's not enough spots. | ||
| I hear that a lot. | ||
| But the great news is we just did a study of Arizona and Florida and a number of states that have school choice. | ||
| Here's what we found. | ||
| In states with private school choice, robust programs, private schooling grew at a faster rate than in states that didn't have school choice. | ||
| And in Arizona, you see dramatic growth of the number of private schools from 550, I think, to 661. | ||
| You see dramatic growth in the number of opportunities for vendors like tutors and curriculum providers to come in to the state. | ||
| That's just year-over-year gain. | ||
| That's what happened in one year. | ||
| So we believe the opportunity will create new spots, and it is proving to be the case based on the evidence. | ||
| The website for our guest is edchoice.org, Robert N. Lowe, the president and CEO joining us this morning. | ||
| Mr. N. Lowe, thanks for your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington and across the country. | ||
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| As Mike said before, I happened to listen to him. | ||
| He was on C-SPAN 1. | ||
| That's a big upgrade, right? | ||
| But I've read about it in the history books. | ||
| I've seen the C-SPAN footage. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If it's a really good idea, present it in public view on C-SPAN. | |
| Every single time I tuned in on TikTok or C-SPAN or YouTube or anything, there were tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people watching. | ||
|
unidentified
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I went home after the speech and I turned on C-SPAN. | |
| I was on C-SPAN just this week. | ||
| To the American people, now is the time to tune in to C-SPAN. | ||
| They had something $2.50 a gallon. |