Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced Shurpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Robert Enlow, President and CEO of
ed Choice. It's a good time to be in the
school choice movement in America. Let's take a closer look
at the opportunities and challenges ahead. Sarah, thank you so
much for joining us on this edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Mad thanks for joining me. I am looking forward to
the conversation. Absolutely. We talked about hopeful time several months
ago during the twenty twenty four election cycle. We're going
to delve into those times arriving hope turning into action.
But before we do that, I wanted to get your
take on once again President Trump repeating his desire to
shut down the Department of Education, saying the first task
for his education Secretary nominee Linda McMahon is to put
herself out of a job. That's a different take on
big government, certainly than we have seen in the past.
You said recently, originally established to collect and disseminate information,
the Department of Education's purpose has evolved far beyond its
initial scope. I don't think anybody could disagree with that statement.
It often imposes one size fits all policies on states
and enacts intrusive regulations that make it harder for education
in general of our children. Where do you.
Speaker 1: Think all of this is heading from here?
Speaker 2: You know, I think we're headed towards and continuing to
head towards, an education renaissance in America where parents are
put in charge, where dollars are following families, and where
the role of the federal government is to come alongside
states to help them do their job better, and in
particularly to help school choice programs continue to grow in
those states and maybe and hopefully start holding our traditional
schools actually accountable for the results we have seen. We
spent one hundred and ninety three billion dollars on COVID
for learning loss, and our NAP scores have gotten worse.
I think it's about high time we changed the Department
of Education and to help make it what it's supposed
to be, which has come alongside states and help parents
get more choices.
Speaker 1: Do you believe that we will see the end of
the Department of Education? I guess you know this has
been talked about for some time, certainly on the campaign
Trail's been talked about by a lot of candidates over
the years. Will we actually see that happen this time
around in a Trump administration that has, you know, in
its first few weeks of operation shown it is ready
to shake up the swamp and truly drain it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So for those people who think that it can't
at least be on the table and can't be a
topic conversation, I'll remind everyone that I said way back
in November that you've got to take this president seriously.
He is going to try and be it true to
his word related to getting rid of the Department of Education.
So you know, you take him, you don't take him
seriously your own peril. That said, I think you know
they're going to be challenges. The role of the federal
government in education doesn't just go away because there's let's
say a reduced or diminished or dismantled department. There are
certain things that have to continue, funding for special needs,
funding for Title I. There's a whole host of things
that need to continue. Now, whether they continue under our
current department and our current structure, I think is well
open to debate. And I think this president is tired
of seeing nate results like we've seen in the last
few years, and so we're going to see some real changes.
You know, there's, for example, in the state like Indiana
where I live, where you have a special needs education
savings account, why doesn't the federal money that is set
aside for that child anyway just goes directly into their account.
Why does it need to pass through three government entities
before it gets to a parent. So I think you're
going to see changes. This administration is going to do
everything they can to make them, and I think we're
going to We're going to begin to see even more
an education renaissance, which is happening in states. You mentioned
the listeners real quick, the renaissance I'm talking about starting,
you know, I would argue in twenty sixteen, with more
and more states passing universal choice, COVID comes along and
really just supercharges this movement. We're now to a point
where we have fourteen states with universal school choice right
where every family can choose. We're seeing Texas, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho,
South Carolina, New Hampshire all on this, this move to
make parents more empowered. And I see the federal government
and the President is going to continue to come alongside that.
And so I think we're headed for a renaissance. We're
already seeing it begin to happen, and that renaissance will
lead to better outcomes.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the national report card just recently released. It's astounding,
it's sad, it's a tragedy. It's an injustice really to
so many kids who are still falling far behind.
Speaker 2: We have a.
Speaker 1: Proficiency l in English and in math in this country
that certainly have not caught up to pre COVID years,
and in many cases we're falling, as I said, further
and further behind. What let's delve into those scores right now.
What are we seeing in terms of the educational scores
as it relates to different categories of students and as
it relates to choice versus public in America.
Speaker 2: So here's what we know, at least from the NATE scores.
No one can read. Let's just be clear about this, right,
barely in the last names, there's only forty percent of
all kids career. It didn't matter if you're black, white,
or rich. You know, only four and ten. And I
think that number has gotten worse. Now we're looking at
having spending billions and billions of dollars to get fewer
and fewer results. I look at my friends state of
Utah and when they talk about their state spending. I
don't know if you know this, but in twenty fourteen,
the state of Utah spent three point eight billion on
their state's education. Today, in twenty twenty four they spent
to seven point seven billion dollars. Their MAPE scores during
that time for fourth grade reading went down by four points.
So just so unclear about this. In ten years, they
spend four billion dollars and they lost a point one
point per billion dollars. Right, let's just call it that way.
You know, we're seeing this massive expenditure for no results.
Now we do know, you know, the night scores are
collected for private schools on the whole, and they do
do better. And the data shows that both charters and
private schools do better on test scores for kids slightly better,
they certainly have greater life outcomes for kids. And so
this is why parents and policymakers are supporting choices at
higher and higher levels, because they know it works. They
know that kids, while their test scores may say roughly
the same let's, they graduated higher rates, they matriculated college
at high rates, they persisted higher rates. They have a
lot more going on for their future, and they're not
stuck in the same old, same old. So the name
scores are telling us one thing and one thing only.
We are wasting a lot of money to get very
little results, and the choice programs are telling us one thing,
and that is we can get a lot better results
for a lot less money, and kids can get more opportunities.
Speaker 1: Wasn't always like this, I mean, you and I have
talked about this before. States across the country were excelling worldwide,
of course, and we had states in particular. I think
about where I grew up in the Midwest. You know,
an exceptional education, uh, you know, being a student fellow
of a certain age. You know where we had to
walk uphill both ways, you know, with with four feet
of snow every day, even in this even in the summer.
For those of us are falling behind, how to go
to summer school. We had snow in the summer in
wiscons That's what I tell my kids at plus fifty
years old right now.
Speaker 2: But you know it was true.
Speaker 1: We got a very very good education. We were leading
the world. How did we get here? And how do
we get out of this place? How do we get
kids reading again?
Speaker 2: For the love? So, I think there's two things that
three things that happened that I think your listeners need
to know. And we hear this all the times. Why
can't it be like it used to be. It used
to be the public schools are the best in the world.
What happened? Right? I think three things happened. Schools of
education destroyed teaching, in my opinion, teachers used to be
taught how to teach phonics, how to teach basics, how
to teach the real rigorous type of curriculum, and it
just changed. And schools of education in America are largely
to bang for what I would consider to be a
de profile sexualization and really just taking the role of
teaching and really making it something that it shouldn't be
the results are really poor. The second thing I would
say is we created this idea in the eighties and nineties,
and part of was because of a nation at risk,
this sort of idea that came out that our scores
were really bad back then. Right back then, the nation
at risk said, I think the quote was if a
foreign government was going to do this to us, we
would consider it an act of war. If that's the case,
we've been losing this war for the last thirty years,
maybe even fifty years. The result of that, though, was
a lead to standardization, like state based test scores, standardized
curriculums that smarter than smarter than me people come up with.
None of that existed when you and I were school Right,
we took the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and got
held to account for it, right, and so number two pencil,
number two pencil. So I think that the sort of
central eigeh and standardization effort in our public schools really
hurt the ability of public schools to be responsive to
families needs. So I think let's go back. Teacher prep
changed dramatically and really did focus on things like whole
language and things that were not productive for kids learning
to the move towards standardization, and the way we did
it was really negative. And three we basically got rid
of choices for families. So and that same time, from
the seventies until today, we've seen a consolidation of I
think I think someone around that forty or fifty thousand
school districts. You know, in the nineteen fifties, I think
there were about seventy thousand school districts. Today they are
about thirteen thousand, five hundred. So we really didn't see
a lot of options for families. I'm particularly low income families.
And so you know, the lack of choice, the increase
in what I would call the monopoly standardization, and the
lack of high quality teaching prep programs I really think
have led to where we are now, to why parents
wanted significant amount more choice.
Speaker 1: Let's delve into that a little bit further. On the standardization,
A couple of things happened over the last twenty five
thirty years in this country. How much did common core
impact what we're seeing? How much did no child left behind?
Where now we have seen so many children left behind
over the last twenty five years in this country that
have an impact.
Speaker 2: I think it had something to do with it. I'm
not going to lie on. I appreciate the desire of
no child left behind to disaggregate data, and there were
some good things about that, But as Milton Friedman used
to say, you should not judge its programs by its intentions,
but by its results. And the results of these efforts
of more standardized curriculum and more common core and more
top down sort of smart reformers has been to basically
improve the quality of education anywhere. So I'm really pessimistic
about the role of sort of standardized curriculum and standardized
testing to get us out of this mix. I think
we need to give parents more power. Look, you also
got to remember what's the purpose of education, And purpose
of education is different for every child. It shouldn't be
for them to pass a test that doesn't matter in
some instances. Right, so they pass a test in ninth
grade that's based on eighth grade skills, how is that
going to make them have a later life outcome that matters?
And I think you know, look, you can talk about
the family, you can talk about all this, but when
the parents lost their power in education and when bureaucrats
became in charge, is when we started to see all
this go downhill.
Speaker 1: Our sponsor today addresses a major concern, identity theft. If
you're worried about keeping your personal information secure, We've got
just the solution, introducing in Cogniti, your digital shield that
stands guard against even the most sophisticated online threats. Whenever
you shop online, start a digital subscription, or download an app,
you end up releasing personal information which can be sold
or worse yet stolen. Thankfully, in Cogny is your digital
shield against even the most sophisticated online threats. And Cogny
reaches out to data brokers on your behalf and request
your personal data removal with a firm, professional hand tackling
any pushback they might try to throw your way. And
Cognity provides unmatched identity protection, guarding your sensitive information such
as social security numbers and login details like a high
security vault, protecting you from potential identity theft and ensuring
your personal information remains confidential. Why delay act now? Within
Cognate your go to solution for keeping data brokers at bay,
got a network of friends or family, Visit in Cogni
dot com to start safeguarding your digital life. Today and
here's the bonus. You can try it in Cognate risk
free for thirty days with a full refund. If it
doesn't meet your expectations, take your personal data back within Cognate,
use code Federalist at the link below, and get sixty
percent off an annual plan. Okay, so we're seeing a
different time in America on that front, and certainly a
president refreshingly. I think a lot of folks listening to
this conversation, we'll say is putting power back into the
into the parents domain. You know, I think about you know,
what was happening around twenty eleven in my home state
of Wisconsin. Act ten at that time was being driven
by Republican Governor Scott Walker in a Republican controlled legislature.
I remember were the teachers unions descending on the Capitol
and the massive protest covered nationally, covered by the way,
along with remember the Egyptian Spring and the protests the
Middle East. They were these big teachers unions and their
struggles against having to actually have parents and school boards
have a say at the negotiating table for their contracts.
That's what they were equating that too, you know, to
the quest for democracy in the Middle East, for goodness sake.
But you know, I think about that time and the expansion,
for instance, of school choice that occurred under that and
every step of the way, these teachers unions and the
politicians that are richly supported and funded by these teachers
unions fought them tooth and nail trying to put them,
you know, out of business. We saw during the Obama years,
you know, these horrible investigations against parental choice programs in
places like Milwaukee and New Orleans and elsewhere. It has
been a struggle. But yet it is not only has
the choice movement survived, as you mentioned during COVID that
those times really shone a light on just how important
parental choice is. Now you have a president who has
been declared and I think understandably so the school choice president.
Where do we go from here at this point?
Speaker 2: So there's a couple of things I want to say
about that. First of all, I really appreciate that. First look,
this isn't about I appreciate President Trump and his support
for a parent choice and it's to really shake things up.
School choices, you know, has been around long before President Trump,
and it's going to be around long after President Trump.
There are times when there are Democrats that were supporting
more opportunities, like President President Clinton when he supported charter schools.
So there's a goal here is to have good policy.
And the previous administration and many administrations, particularly the state level,
many supported by your governor right in Wisconsin, Bill Evers right,
have been opponents of school choice over years. The reality though,
is that those families are winning the argument and Evers
is losing the argument. So I was going to pull
up something we do every year at ed Choice called
the ED choice share, which is what is the percent
of families in a state that get to choose something
outside of their traditional public schools. Wisconsin is now actually
number six in the country for ED choice share. And
here's why that's important. When we started tracking this data,
there were eighty one point six percent of kids in
their residential assigned public school. Today, twenty years later, they're
only sixty nine percent of kids in traditional assigned public schools.
Choice is winning in your state, whether that's through the
private school choice program, magnet schools, charter schools, or this
massive growth and interdistrict choice where kids can go from
one public school to another. Families are making a lot
more choices in the state of Wisconsin, and that means
they're winning. And this is why choice is like undergoing
a renaissance. And it's not just these bills that are
passing all over. Right, I've rarely been as optimistic as
I am now in the school choice movement. But I'm
positive that there's movement on policy. But more importantly, there
are teachers out there now who are tired of the system,
who are building their own schools. There are parents who
are coming together in co ops and trying something new.
There is such an underground economy happening in education they
would shock you. In the state of Indiana, when we
started looking at this two years ago, we wanted to
start micro schools and help with them. Started we saw
that there were six in the state when we first
started looking around. They're now sixty nine in the state. Right.
Think about the growth of that in two years. Right.
So families are just taking this on themselves, and they're
taking their power back, regardless of whether there's choice programs,
but choice programs are now helping them do that. So
I'm excited. You know, on one hand, we've seen this
massive problem with our government run monopoly and this massive
growth in the rise of parent choice. Milton Freeman used
to say, the presence of an underground economy is sure
fire bet that there's going to be radical transformation soon,
and I think we're there.
Speaker 1: President Trump on the campaign trail called this school choice
movement and the you know, the the war to reclaim
education in America, successful education in America. He called it,
you know, the civil rights battle of our time.
Speaker 2: Do you agree? So that's a great question. You know,
people use the language as civil rights, and I think
that's important. I'm glad that they try to look at
it that way. I certainly have seen it that way before.
I look at this issue as it's the human rights
issue of our time. Right, there is nothing more important
than children's education. Right. We have to ensure that children
who are going to go ahead and run society actually
have the ability to do so. It is a civil
right in the fact that it's a human right that
we should be having. Rose Friedman, Milton's wife, used to say,
if you can't read, if you can't write, if you
can't compute, if you can't understand history, who's going to
govern the affairs of our country? And I think The
important point to make here is that is it a
civil right. Yes, the people who are getting the worst results,
our kids who are in low income backgrounds, our kids
in our urban areas. That's terrible and we should we
should be all against that. But look, if we know
that black and brown kids are learning less, their test
scores on nighbor even lower than white kids, Sure we do,
but white kids test scores are less than forty percent.
So I don't know about you, but I don't know
if the gap, which is a problem, is the only problem.
So we have a human right issue here because our
human rights are being violated by the fact we don't
have quality education. And I don't know who's going to
run our government if we don't have kids who understand anything.
One of my favorite movies you should watch, if you
haven't in your listeners should watch is something called idiocracy. Right. Oh,
it's the future of America if we don't actually have
an educated populace.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's frightening, and it's all too true. I mean,
because let's be honest, in many ways, the future is now.
What we've seen, of course, coming out of the Doge
protest from many individuals on the left who are trying
to die on the political hill of waste is good
in government? I mean, that's where we're at in America.
That is the idiocracy going on. Our guest today is
Robert Enlow, President and CEO of ED Choice. We're talking
about the school choice movement in America. Just sellbraided National
school Choice Week, and President Trump did, indeed, with an
exclamation point to school Choice Week, sign in executive order
that puts school choice as a priority at the federal level. Now,
all of that said, you can you know better than anybody, Robert,
you can only do so much at the federal level.
It has a relatively as big as it seems, it
has a relatively small role to play. Yet, what did
you think of the provisions that came out of the
executive order on school choice?
Speaker 2: Look, I loved it because what it basically said I've
been saying this. First thing it did is I think
it tried to recognize the appropriate role of the federal
government in education while making sure that states deliver the
education and it's their right. So he did a really
good job of balancing. I think that there is a
role for federal government. Here's what it is. It's coming
alongside states to give them more opportunities. It's coming alongside
them to give more innovation. It's coming alongside parents to
give them more options. And then it's saying, but the
states need to run this stuff. And so I think
the executive order is a great step in the right direction.
He's and called upon these departments to have sixty to
ninety days to come up with how to spend money
more effectively. But also he took action and said, hey,
we can help our families and military schools in Dodia schools,
Department of Defense schools, or families who are Bureau of
Indian Education schools. Those are direct federal programs that he
can impact immediately, and I think he's doing that with
this executive order. So it's just great balance of like, hey,
we believe states should be the primary drivers' education, and
the role of the federal government has come alongside them.
So look, I was excited by it. I think it's
the right direction for our country to get the federal
government more and more out of it and to help
them come along side states to do their job better.
And I think that this President's going to do that.
Speaker 1: And there is a mood shift here obviously a tone shift,
which is very important, and I bring that up for
several reasons. During the Biden years, during the Obama years,
I talked about the Department of Justice Dear Colleague letters
and the subsequent investigations that came out of that. I
think that stuff was going on during the Biden years.
Those were very adversarial times to school choice. Those things
I believe to be the case will now stop. School
choice will have some room to breathe in the States.
Speaker 2: I think President Obama, regardless of what you think about this,
and I'm not going to argue one way or the
other way on this, right, I had my personal opinion
on him. But President Obama when he started talking about
transgender bathrooms, right when he started that executive when he's
started that sort of a dear Colleague letter out of
the Department of Education, States, as I recall, States were saying, hey, okay,
you're telling us this, we would like to have just
simply then you single sex bathrooms in the sense that
you know, one create bathrooms that are sort of all gender, right,
but have one stall right, have one bathroom, which is
a reasonable frank, whether regardless what you think, it's a
reasonable solution, right, the administration said, no way, we won't
allow that. You're going to be forced to and compelled
to accept this guidance. And I think President Obama, whether
he realizes it or not, helped to start this movement
of parental freedom because of his compulsion and trying to
force an ideology on schools, whether families wanted it or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that is an interesting point where a
lot of this stuff began. And then of course it
continued on into an administration, into the Biden administration, where
you actually have the Department of Justice and the Attorney General,
you know, telling FBI officials, let's monitor school boards, you know,
let's harass parents who are coming up to try to
argue for a better life and educational life for their kids. So,
you know, it is a vastly different environment. But as
we've talked about before, with all of these executive orders,
they're transitory. That is to say that the next administration,
as we have seen over the last twelve years in
this country, the next administration comes along and all of
the things you've achieved for in this case, school choice
go away because you have someone, you have a president
who's had the serial to that. How important then is
Congress in this And what does Congress need to do
to make sure that school choice protections are enshrine so
that school choice can thrive.
Speaker 2: So Congress can do a lot of things right. And
this is where the Department of Education's future is really
in Congress's hands as much as anything, because Congress has
to set the tone of how they're going to fund
education at the federal level, fund educational programs. And so
Congress has a big job in front of them, and
I think they have two things they can do. One,
they can make sure that the allocations of funds through
the federal Department of Education or whatever department or whoever
agency gets distributed is distributed in ways that are friendly
and flexible to states. Right, rather than having ourcane funding
formulas for like Title one that just don't work and
often create major disincentives to help families, why don't they
just block grant to states and let states figure it
out so long as they meet certain criteria. So the
Congress has a role in ensuring that funds can be
used flexibly and efficiently right at the state level. Two,
they can also support parental school choice by coming alongside
these There's two proposals out there right now. One would
create a tax credit scholarship that would allow donors to
give get a federal tax credit dollar for dollar federal
tax credit for moneies they give to nonprofits that help
families get scholarships. That's a huge book plus and it's
a I think it's a ten billion dollar program, which
would be great. Coming alongside passing that program, seeing more families,
particularly in blue states, benefiting as a result of that
would be great. There's also, I believe a tax credit
program for individuals that are running that is running through
so Congress can pass these kind of efforts and this
monies that give families more freedom and help states be
more flexible. So that's what Congress can do.
Speaker 3: There's a specific reason why some of these politicians hate
Elizabeth Warren claims she doesn't accept donations from big pharma.
Not only does she collect money, she collects more than
anyone else does. And the person next in line, Bernie Sanders.
Check out the Watchdog on Wall Street podcast on Apple, Spotify,
wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: And what are we seeing at the state level? You
touched upon it before you know you're seeing multiple states
now what did you say, fourteen states altogether? This would
have been unheard of, of course, maybe a decade and
a half ago, but fourteen states now have some form
of universal school choice. What are we seeing in the
early sessions to expand that elsewhere and to help parents
on the road to choose.
Speaker 2: State for that? You know, it's the states where the
real action is, as they say, state and local, And
right now I said fourteen because we've already seen the
State of Tennessee. It was thirteen until this last week.
The State of Tennessee past a universal eligibility program that
will give families thousands of dollars to make more choices
that will prioritize kids, but ultimately grow over time to
allow all children to be able to choose, which is great.
The State of Tennessee and State of Texas is considering
a billion dollar a year program for school choice, which
would be ESAs for roughly ninety five thousand kids. And
so they're looking to really grow their program, make us
one of the biggest programs out of the gates in
the country. You're looking at New Hampshire looks like well,
probably and we hope will take its program from three
hundred percent to free and reduced price lunch to universal.
That program is a model for the nation. What they've
been doing there has been fantastic, and it's being spearheaded
by a lot of local activists who are making sure
that current program is running and operating very well. You're
looking at a state like South Carolina trying to pass
broader school choice, and then you're looking at Utah, which
is trying to increase its current program by a lot
of money. And then what I call the drive for
the Upper Northwest. Right, so North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Wyoming, Montana,
and Idaho are all considering universal educational choice programs and
they all have a real chance. And so I think,
you know, this administration could do anything that's coming on
making sure that those states which are Trump Country understand
how important it is to this president. So we're seeing
a lot of movement all over the country. You know,
before this year, forty percent of all kids in America
were eligible. By the end of this year, we might
see fifty percent of all kids are, maybe even fifty
five percent. So there's just massive growth of the states
and we're excited by it. Now, the goal is you
can't just pass a program. You've got to make sure
parents use it, and you got to make sure vendors
join it, and you got to make sure everyone's aware
of it. And so the key thing that ED choice
will do is make sure that we're helping people be
more aware of their choices and more able.
Speaker 1: To choose them. That's interesting because we certainly have seen
regimes that are resistant to that in states, resistant to
school choice, but you know, trying to do whatever they
can to block or make it more challenging for parents
to get involved. And I think organizations like yours can
be a you know, have been a very solid voice
in making sure that those options are available there. You know,
we're talking about a philosophy in education that has long
been at its core, what we're talking about is the
funding following the child, following the families, not the school systems.
And you know, that's a real departure in thinking from
century and a half of public education in America, once
lauded as the gold standard. As certainly as we've talked
about fallen apart. There are millions of people in this country, though,
that believe the money should follow the systems. And when
you take the money out of those systems and put
them into let's say, on the school choice side of things,
bouchers or charters that don't align with the usual public
school systems. Then you're depriving kids in those public education settings,
which is always the argument. But then let's Robert, let's
take a look at the funding levels, because you're, for instance,
again in the state of Wisconsin, the state of Iowa,
you know where I live. Now, I'm seeing education, public
education funding, you know, growing at you know, at a
record pace. In a lot of cases, it is growing
a lot, and it continues to grow. I want to
go back to something you said, though you know, U
we're not really looking.
Speaker 2: We want all dollars to follow all kids, right, And
that's the plan and the goal. What that is is
basically extending the idea of public education to all school types. Right.
So public schools basically all kids are served, and all
dollars follow them. Right. So if you move from one
public school district in Iowa to another one, guess what
happens to your money? It follows you. And the same
thing needs to be true regardless of school type. I
think what the difference is happening right now is we
just want in the private school choice and the charter
school choice in the micro schooling sector, to basically say,
we just want what public schools have had for one
hundred and fifty years as a monopoly. We think the
dollars should follow kids just like they do in public
schools because that's the best and most effective way to
educate kids. So in one way it's brand new and
another way, now we're just asking for what every public
school gets all the time. We're asking for funding equity
and funding parity. And we know he's on the other
side of that question. Is we know that the monopoly
of K twelve education right that we call it public education,
I always say it's publicly funded, state and district run education. Right.
That's very different than public public education because every child
that is educated in a charter school or in one
of our great public schools, or in a private school
or online or at home, if done well, every child
in those setting is educated in the public interest. The
question that we have to ask ourselves is is the
public interest only served by a state run school system?
And it's not. And so this is why school choice
has been on the rise, because parents recognize that they
can get an education for their children. Those children are
getting served better and the public interest is being served.
All the while the monopoly that we know, which is
basically state run schools, is continuing to gobble up more
and more money. I ask this all the time. If
I were to ask you or your listeners, do you
think raise your hand if you think the traditional public
schools waste of money and don't spend it. Effectually every
hand in the room would go up, right, And that's
what we're trying to combat. We're trying to combat a
monopoly system that is not working in a parented interests
in the best way. This is not about individual public schools.
There are a lot of great ones, right, This is
about a system that is basically broken. Yeah, you're right.
Every hand would go up.
Speaker 1: I think most people would say there's a good deal
of waste and inefficiency in our schools. But we're making
that argument now conservatives, you know, limited government conservatives are
making this argument right now with the federal government and
all of the waste and fraud and abuse therein and
it's being exposed, you know, at an alarming pace for
some people. And the same people would raise their hands
about waste in the federal government. Some of those are
now hitting the streets and protesting that were actually shining
a light on it and trying to expose that because
and I make all that point, you know, because people
in general, in schools across the school districts across the country,
they live in their communities, and for the most part,
they like their schools. You know, they're still willing to
pay for them. So you know, there is a bit
of a disconnect. How do you motivate and get around
that disconnect?
Speaker 2: I guess so I think that disconnect has gotten around.
I've been saying this a long time now. The last
five years a long time against five years is a
long time in America. For the longest time, Americans had
the common cultural experience of traditional public education. You and I,
you talked about it. We went uphill both ways to school,
even in summer, right, oh yes, and we walked ourselves
to school. This is this common experience of a common
school system that everyone understood, right, but no one had
ever really looked under the hood of right. And so
COVID comes along and all of a sudden parents get
a peek under the hood. The common cultural experience changed
and so people are parents in particularly saying what the
heck is going on with my kids schooling and what
the heck is going on with schooling in general, and
they said they'd had enough. And so even though they
have much at the local level schools, local schools are
very dear to people's hearts. That's great, I get that,
but families are starting to vote with their own feet
in those local areas. One of the most exciting things
we're seeing is the growth of school choice in more
local and more rural areas. Parents are trying to take
it onto their own hands. And I think they're just
frustrated with and you've seen these school board meetings. They
are frustrated with school boards that just don't listen to them.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and we've seen that over and over again
in this country for a lot of different reasons. And
then I do want to expound upon that you touched
upon it before, and that is durrence, you know, particularly
post COVID, when they had to watch their kids and
the education that they were getting, the online education that
they were getting in that particular case, or quite frankly
not getting. I remember a concept called asymmetric learning at
the time, which was a fancy word for saying, your
kids are no longer under the tutelage of their teachers.
They're on their own. And that's what parents saw. These
kids were absolutely on their own during COVID and it
really opened their eyes. So now, over the last four
years in this country, what have we done with that information?
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that's exactly right. So parents, look, parents
are driving their kids to the best educational possibilities in
the world. Look at the state of Florida. Florida passed
a universal choice program just a couple of years ago.
They had a choice program in the state for twenty years.
They now have half a million kids in their various
private school choice programs. But more than that, it's the
amount of choices they have in magnet schools and charter schools.
State of Florida is our number one ed choice share
state because they go They went from eighty I think
eighty two percent of the kids in traditional public schools
in two thousand and one to today only fifty one
percent of the kids. You're looking at a place like Indianapolis,
where they have a public school district. Here Indianapolis public
schools where just barely a third of the kids in
this district attend their assigned public school. Choice is having
a huge impact. And it's not just private school choice.
It's charter schools, it's public to public transfers, it's homeschooling.
It's this robust educational environment that's being created in local
areas and states all across the country that were most
excited about it.
Speaker 1: Very good and so finally for you, what's next for
ed Choice in this new exciting moment in time for
school choice?
Speaker 2: You know. So ed Choice, as you know, has been
around for twenty eight years. We were the oldest school
choice organization in the country. The first twenty years was
making sure that we built coalitions, that we educated people
on the need for school choice, that we got Milton
Freeman's vision out there, and then we sort of filled
that put pins in the map like they get a
new programs every year. You know, from twenty sixteen to
twenty twenty, we focused on every universal choice need to
promote universal choice. Now from twenty twenty five, were just
getting ready to launch our strategic plan. We are going
to focus on making sure we achieve Milton Freeman's vision
of a radically transformed system of education where all kids
can get all the options with all the dollars, because
that's what we're looking for, not just kids getting access
to education, but they're aware of their option and their
So ED Choice is going to focus on those three things,
making sure all kids have choice, making sure they're aware
of their choice, and making sure they're dog gone making
a choice.
Speaker 1: It couldn't be a more important mission. And as you
said and said so well, this is a human rights
issue at the end of the day. Thanks to my
guest today, Robert Enlo, President and CEO of ED Choice,
you've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the Federalist. We'll
be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of
freedom and anxious for the fray.
Speaker 2: Hearn a fameboic the reason then it away