Episode 82: School Choice: The Great Debate. A Conversation with Mike McShane.

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:00):
I mean, I talk to a lot of parents who are just
like, we we've gone to publicschool, we've tried it, like my
kid can't learn like that, orlike my kid has this, you know,
unique issue or this unique needwhere we really need these
options.
And now that we have the schoolchoice option in Arizona,
Florida, like these states, I'mhearing all these stories about
like my kid is happy, they'rethey can go to school now,

(00:20):
they're progressing now, justbecause we were able to give
them some choice, some options.
Because people are unique.
Hello, and welcome to theKindled Podcast.
I'm Katie Broadbent, your hostfor today, and in this episode,
we're talking to Mike McShane,and I'm gonna tell you a little
bit about him because getexcited.
This is an amazing episode.
You're gonna love it.
So, Dr.
Michael McShane is director ofnational research at Ed Choice.

(00:41):
He's the author, editor,co-author, or co-editor of 12
books on education policy,including his most recent
Getting Education Right withRick Hess.
He is currently an opinioncontributor to Forbes, and his
analysis and commentary havebeen published widely in the
media, including in USA Today,the Washington Post, and the
Wall Street Journal.
A former high school teacher, heearned a PhD in education policy

(01:03):
from the University of Arkansas.
He also is a senior fellow atthe Show Me Institute and an
adjunct fellow in educationpolicy studies at the American
Enterprise Institute.
Mike is a truly incredibleindividual.
He knows his stuff front andback, and I'm super excited to
talk to him today.
In this conversation, we focus alot on the topic of school
choice, what it is, thearguments for and against it,

(01:25):
and the trends that Mike isseeing in the data.
This is a hotly debated issue inthe education world, and I love
how appreciative and positiveMike is about folks on all sides
of the conversation.
I learned a ton about thehistory of school choice and how
it might impact the future ofeducation.
So let's talk to Mike.
Mike McShane, welcome to theKindle Podcast.
Thanks for coming.

SPEAKER_00 (01:44):
Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 (01:45):
Alright, so tell us your story.
What makes you so interested inschool choice?
What's your big why?
What's like the change you'reseeking to make in the world?
But maybe while you think aboutthose big questions, just like
literally start at the beginningand like how did you get to
where you are?
Like what got you interested inthis?
Like, tell me like the originstory of Mike McShane.

SPEAKER_00 (02:04):
Yeah, I mean, I depending on how far back you
want to go, I'll say I started,I was a high school teacher.
Um, and I taught in an innercity Catholic school on the west
side of Montgomery, Alabama.
Uh and I was sort of connectedthrough that through this
program called Ace, which is theAlliance for Catholic Education.
It's the easy way to think ofit, it's like Catholic Teach for
America.

(02:24):
We we tend to think it's alittle bit more rigorous.
It's through the University ofNotre Dame.
And it was basically like I gota master's degree in teaching
while teaching, and they theysort of have people teach in
underserved Catholic schoolsaround the country.
It's been going on, it'sterrible now because it was each
year there's like a cohort name,and I think I was ace 14, and
every year there's a new one,and I'll get the email like the

(02:45):
email updates, and I see likethe new one, I think it's hit
like the 30s or something, and Iwas like, I'm perpetually
thinking all these these peopleare two or three or maybe five
years younger than me.
It's like, oh no, they aresubstantially younger than me
now.
Um, but it's an incredibleprogram, and people uh people
should check it out.
But yeah, so so I was a highschool teacher, I taught in
Catholic school, I was anEnglish major in college.
I think really all I wanted tobe was a high school English

(03:07):
teacher.
That was like my goal.
That was my thing, and that'swhat I was doing.
So it's awesome at 22 to get thejob, to get the job that you
want.
Um, but that program was comingto an end.
Did I want to stay at the schoolthat I was teaching at?

(03:27):
Did I want to, you know, movesomewhere else?
And I had thought of maybemoving and teaching somewhere
else, but I found out through uha former roommate of mine that
the University of Arkansas wasstarting this PhD program.
They had had this new departmentset up called the Department of
Education Reform, and they werehaving their new set of students
come in.
And I I had sort of in passinghad had seen some of the

(03:51):
professors and the things thatthey did, and I was like, well,
that seems kind of interesting.
And they were offering theserather generous stipend stipends
where I was probably gonna makemore as a student than I was as
a Catholic school teacher.
And I was like, okay, like on alark, I'll apply, see how it
goes if I get one of these, umuh get one of these stipends,
that that'd be great.
And so I got in and I did, andI'm originally from Kansas City,
and Fayetteville is only aboutthree hours away, so I was like,

(04:13):
oh, it's kind of close to home.
Like making more money as astudent than as a teacher.
And I had been like sort oftangentially interested in
education policy.
Um, you know, teaching at anurban Catholic school.
We had a big public schoolacross the way that a lot of my
students had come from and hadcome with a lot of like horror
stories uh of things that werehappening.

(04:33):
And we were the school,unfortunately, where I taught
has since closed, but we weregoing on a shoestring budget.
And at some point I was sort oflike, this doesn't seem like a a
bright way to allocateresources.
Like, if the students areleaving that school to come
here, maybe some money shouldlike follow them there or
something.
And someone was like, Have youever heard about this thing
called the school voucher?

(04:54):
And it's like, no, I was anEnglish major, so like I read,
like, if you want to talk aboutlike Victorian literature, I'm
your man.
I'm not necessarily talkingabout like Milton Friedman's
papers from the 50s, but thenpeople introduced me to those
ideas, and I was like, oh, well,this is interesting.
And I'm naturally kind of acurious person, so the the
thought of being a researcherwas like, oh, that sounds like
fun.
So I kind of flipped a coin andwas like, I could stay being a

(05:17):
teacher, maybe be anadministrator, or go to graduate
school, and it landed ongraduate school.
So I did that, I studied, and Ihappened to be to be a research
assistant for Pat Wolfe, who wasat the time had these big one
was a big federal contract, andone was like a state contract to
evaluate voucher programs.
So I helped, you know.

SPEAKER_02 (05:37):
So just real quick for our listeners who also don't
read Milton Freeman much, tellus what a voucher is.

SPEAKER_00 (05:42):
Sure.
So vouchers at that time we wereevaluating a program in
Washington, D.C.
called the DC OpportunityScholarship Program, and a
program in Milwaukee called theMilwaukee Parental Choice
Program.
And what these basically did wasgive public funding to families
to send their kids to privateschools.
And at this time, they were someof the only programs that exist
in the world.
There's a lot more of them now.

(06:04):
They were relatively small, theywere limited to low-income
students.
And so the team that I was avery, very junior member of at
the University of Arkansasworked with in in Milwaukee with
the team from the University ofWisconsin.
And so we collected a wholebunch of data.
We collected student testscores, and I went up and did
like focus groups and sitevisits and interviewed people
and and sort of tried toevaluate how these programs uh

(06:25):
were doing.
We did something similar in inWashington, DC.
And like at the time, like wewere generally finding positive
things, and I was going up andspending time in these schools,
and people seemed happy and likeit was going well.

SPEAKER_02 (06:37):
And I was like, So those programs essentially give
families state funds to go toprivate school.
Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 (06:42):
Like an accurate, yeah, for sure.
And people seemed to be happy,so I was like, hey, maybe we
should do more of these things.
And as I was finishing thatprogram, Rick Hess, who runs the
Education Policy StudiesDepartment of AEI, um put out uh
an email to some of his friendssaying he was looking for like a
pre-doc, postdoc person, sosomeone's just sort of finishing
their PhD up.
And my advisor, Pat, had gone tograduate school with him, and so

(07:06):
he said, Hey, you'd probably bepretty good for this.
So I was like, Okay, sounds likea good idea.
So before I knew it, I was inWashington, DC, um, was there
for a couple of years, um, andthen wanted to move home, wanted
to move back to Kansas City.
I was getting I got married atthe time and um was looking like
the Midwesterner in me waslooking at the like little tiny

(07:26):
apartments and things and howmuch they cost, and all my
friends back home were buyinglike houses and stuff, and I was
like, oh, with yards and dogs,and I was like, this seems like
a better way to live.
Um so I moved back to KansasCity and I worked for a think
tank based in Missouri calledthe Show Me Institute that
basically focused on I did theeducation stuff but but focused
on the state of Missouri, andthen I got connected to
EdChoice, where I work now, andthey had created this new

(07:49):
position called the Director ofNational Research and asked me
if I wanted to do it, and I didit.
So I've been been doing thatever since since like late 2017.
So I've been there for a while.

SPEAKER_02 (08:00):
Well, what an exciting time in history to be
in that position, right?
Like you couldn't have picked abetter like block of time.

SPEAKER_00 (08:07):
For sure.

SPEAKER_02 (08:08):
Tell me a little bit more about what Ed Choice is.

SPEAKER_00 (08:10):
So Ed Choice was founded now more than 25 years
ago.
It was originally called theMilton and Rose Friedman
Foundation.
So I had sort of name-checkedMilton Friedman before.
He was a Nobel Prize-winningeconomist.
In the 1950s, he wrote thispaper called The Role of
Government in Education.
And he's thought of as one ofthe kind of fathers of school

(08:31):
voucher, school choice, at leastthe sort of modern version of
it.
It's been around for a longtime, but this is sort of the
modern version of it.
And so as he was reaching the,he and his wife, who is no
slouch herself, it kind ofsinks.
When your husband wins the NobelPrize, you can be like really
brilliant.
And it's like you're always kindof in the shadow there.
But the two of them reallyworked closely and well
together.
But it was really fascinatingbecause he did work all across

(08:53):
economics and in all thesedifferent areas.
But when he was thinking, like,what is what do I want my legacy
kind of foundation to be?
And what issue do we want it totackle?
Turns out it wasn't free trade,it wasn't those, it was actually
educational choice.
And so EdChoice was founded toboth do research about school
choice and school vouchers andall these areas, and then also

(09:14):
to advocate for them.
And yeah, again, started in likethe late 90s to do that and have
been doing it ever since.

SPEAKER_02 (09:19):
That's awesome.
So circling back then to theoriginal question, what do you
see as your big why or like thechange that you're trying to
make in the world?

SPEAKER_00 (09:28):
Yeah, I mean, I my big why goes back to that time
as a teacher that I was, Itaught ninth and tenth grade,
and I taught a lot of studentswho were way behind.
I mean, they were reading atlike, I don't know, third or
fourth grade level.
And by the time I kind of theykind of got to me, there have
been so many failures, like notfrom them, but sort of systemic

(09:48):
failures that that led them toled us to meet in that way.
And it's like we gotta be ableto do something better, right?
Like we we we we we live in toogreat of a country to allow
stuff like this to happen.
So I I'm still think about thosestudents and students like them
all across the country and thinkabout how could they have more

(10:08):
opportunities, betteropportunities, how could they
better sort into schools thatmeet their needs younger in
their life.
You know, I think they wereprobably doing better by the
time they got to me, but it waslike, you know, this problem
would have been much easiersolved when you were seven as
opposed to when you're 14, youknow.
So how can we fix thoseproblems?

SPEAKER_02 (10:25):
Interesting.
Okay, tell me a little bit moreabout the history of school
choice.
You mentioned like MiltonFreeman in the 50s, and then
like in the 1990s, Ed Choicestarted.
Like tell me a little bit moreabout like where it started, why
it started, and like kind of anymilestones over the last, I
don't know, like 20 or 30 yearsthat have kind of landed us
where we're where we are now.

SPEAKER_00 (10:45):
Yeah, going like way back, um, you know, there have
been people talking about whatlike what we mentioned before of
like a school voucher or somesort of system like that, where
you have public dollars thatallow you to go to private
schools.
I mean, Thomas Paine, who waswho was writing, you know,
pamphlets during the time of theAmerican Revolution, wrote about
this.
John Stuart Mill wrote aboutthis a long time ago.

(11:05):
Generally speaking, though, andand and there were basically
sort of in the late colonialperiods to the mid-19th century,
there were the lines betweenprivate schools and public
schools were much blurrier.
You know, you had a lot ofreligion in public schools, like
people read Bibles and sanghymns and all those sorts of
things, and there's the sort ofgrowth of Catholic schools in

(11:26):
America, sort of in a responseto that, because Catholics were
like, well, can we read ourBible or sing our hymns?
And they were like, no.
So it's like, I guess we have tostart our own schools.
So, but that that was wherethings were blurred.
Our sort of contemporary publiceducation system, growing out of
the common schools movement inthe mid-18th century, really
being established by the kind ofprogressive movement in the

(11:46):
teens and twenties, etc.,established the sense of public
schools, sort of the way that wethink of them now, generally
residentially assigned, secular,etc.
So starting in times like the90s, Milton Friedman was one of
these people, but he wasn't theonly one, who sort of said he
approached it as an economist,which was like, well, you're
sort of granting a monopoly,where if everybody lives in this
one area, you're going to thesame school, and we think

(12:07):
monopolies are bad in most otherareas, so they're probably bad
in this one too.
But you had people fromreligious communities sort of
echoing arguments and madebefore, arguing Virgil Bloom was
one example of people like this,who saying, you know, we should
maybe have some pluralism in oursystem where we have different
schools pursuing different ends,whether religious,
non-religious, differentphilosophies, and others.

(12:28):
Well that was all sort ofcirculating around.
There were some smallexperiments and places, but the
the real start of the kind ofvoucher movement as we think of
it today, the first real kind oflarger scale we're gonna give
scholarships funded by thegovernment so the kids can go to
private schools was in Milwaukeeand started in the early 90s,
which is a whole, there's like awhole fascinating backstory of

(12:50):
how that happened, Howard Fullerand Polly Williams and the
people that were advocating forthat.
But started relatively as arelatively small program.
Not long after that, a similarprogram was started in
Cleveland, Ohio.
And then most of these programs,maybe some, I think there were
some other sort of smatteringsand places, but they were very,
very small because there werequestions at the time of whether

(13:10):
they were constitutional.
Does this violate the separationof church and state or the First
Amendment free exercise or theestablishment clause, really the
establishment clause of theFirst Amendment?
And a ruling, I think Zellmanversus Simmons Harris, which I
think was in 2005, ruled thatthey were constitutional.
And so we saw more growth afterthat.

(13:30):
We saw states like Indiana andFlorida and others create these
larger programs and the kind ofand grow their programs.
So this is sort of through theaughts and into the teens,
whatever we're calling thesethese decades now.
And then we had the pandemic.
And, you know, these programswere growing, and lots of states
had lots of small programs, butthe pandemic happens, and for
lots and lots of interconnectedreasons that are hard to

(13:52):
necessarily individually parseout, but created this sort of
opportunity where people reallythought about rethinking
education and saying, wow, thislike system that we have, I
don't know if this is reallyworking for us.
It's certainly fragile.
We've got lots of sort of issuesthat we're here, and and a dam
kind of broke.

(14:12):
And in Arizona, where you are,um in West Virginia, and now in
a cascade of states after that,states have decided to create
like universal school choiceprograms.
Whereas in like Milwaukee and inCleveland and in DC, as I
mentioned earlier, when thesehad started, these were small,
targeted programs.
It might be low-income studentsor students with special needs,

(14:33):
or only in certain cities, or ifyou were zoned for schools that
performed a certain way.
These new programs that we'reseeing sp uh spring up all
across the country are openenrollment, that any student in
the state can be eligible forthem.
And that's been the really thestory of the last three or four
or five years.
Massive growth in the number ofthese programs, big growth in

(14:54):
enrollment in these programs,and only sort of poised to do
more.

SPEAKER_02 (14:59):
Yeah.
When there are four Prendamicroschools here in Arizona, I
would be like talking to moms atthe park and they'd be like,
What do you do?
I'm like, I was already weirdbecause I homeschooled, right?

(15:19):
And so I'm like the only personthat in my neighborhood that
homeschools.
So I'm like talking to moms atparks now about microschools.
And it's taking me like 45minutes to explain what a micro
school is, maybe.
And now it's like I say that mykids go to prend to micro
schools, and everyone I talk toknows someone who is
microschooling, knows someonewho is homeschooling, doing
something different.
Much of it because of these, wecall them in Arizona, it's

(15:42):
called the empowermentscholarship or an ESA.
You're even using the termvoucher, which is so interesting
because I think nowadays there'sthere's there's been some like
weird political lines drawnaround this that if you look
closely, it like doesn't makeany sense that this would be a
partisan issue because we allhave children that we care about
and want the best things for.
Uh and if you look deeply, it istotally a nonpartisan issue.

(16:03):
So I have been talking to thesemoms, and sometimes I say that I
use like the ESA program orsomething, and they're like, oh,
I would never like do thatbecause it's like, you know, we
all we all feel very likenostalgic a little bit about
like the school system.
It's like, oh, like my thirdgrade teacher and like how the
school smells, and like allthese things, like we have this
kind of like romanticism aroundit.

(16:23):
And I'm like, oh they they viewit as something that's trying to
just destroy that, like in avery kind of like violent way.
And so I'm wondering if you'dtell me more about that.
Like, I've it's never quite madesense to me.
So, like, what are the argumentsagainst giving families access
to state dollars?
You've mentioned a few of them,but can if we can dig into that
a little bit, help usunderstand.

(16:45):
Yeah.
And also just so we've beenusing the word voucher, which is
now kind of like the theopposition's word for them, like
it's a bad thing.
So you can actually kind of tellif someone's like pro school
choice or against school choiceif they call it an ESA or like a
scholarship, they like it.
If they call it a voucher, theyhate it.
And so I'm like, okay, likethat's it's just like an
interesting little tell.
It's funny.

(17:05):
But yeah, go with like why dopeople why is this
controversial?

SPEAKER_00 (17:08):
So yeah, so we'll we do we'll we'll unpack voucher
first and then we'll we'll findbecause it's true.
Because voucher, yeah, voucher,like the other word for voucher
is just like a coupon, right?
And I don't know if coupon justdidn't sell as well or
something.
I don't know like why, but itwas if you think about it, like
a gift voucher or something isjust like a piece of pay rather
than having fifty dollars incash, you have a piece of paper

(17:29):
that says fifty dollars towhatever AMC movies or whatever
it is.
And so it was like, well, thatit was that for education, like
take this thing to the school inexchange for one education, you
know.
And that was like thepredominant way of doing it
until, as you mentioned, therewere these really interesting
policy innovations that startednow more than a decade ago in
Arizona, where someone said,Hey, like, okay, voucher, that's

(17:53):
a cool idea.
But what if, you know, we havethe technology now to rather
than having to give people likea coupon to go places, you can
like have all that money in anaccount and you could spend
different things out of thataccount.
Couldn't we do that same thingfor education?
We have health savings accounts.
So rather than just saying, hey,you have like this one HMO or

(18:15):
whatever doctor that you have togo to, we can put money in a in
an account and you can choosewhatever doctor works best for
you, and you can get yourTylenol at CBS or whatever, like
you can do all of those things.
And someone's like, why don't wejust do the same thing for
education?
And thus the ESA was born, whichhas now a lot of these states
that are doing these, and andthey're interesting because

(18:35):
they're all slightly differentfrom one another, and they're
different from, you know, howbroad of a set of things can you
choose from and how they'readministered, but they're kind
of following that same logic.
But but actually, even recentlyin states like Oklahoma, you
know, they've basically createda universal choice program
through the tax code where youcan get a tax credit, you know,
you your expenses, you can getcredited against your your tax

(18:58):
liability, and and you can evenget more for the for the taxes
that you owe.
So there's still a lot ofinnovation happening in this
place.
And yeah, as you're right,people who would tend to be
opposed to them call them allvouchers.
But we have vouchers, we haveESAs, we have tax credits, we
have all of these different waysin which this is happening.

SPEAKER_02 (19:13):
And just real quick before we keep going, I I'm just
being like a littlelistener-sensitive in our
conversation.
I feel like you and I know kindof what's going on here.
And I just want to back up evenjust a little bit more and just
even just talk about how schoolsare funded generally.
Because we have all this, likeif you just send your kids to
school, you just think school'sfree.

unknown (19:30):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (19:30):
And like you don't really give it a second thought
about like where this money iscoming from.
So can you just like one minuteexplain like how that works?
And then like the voucher on topof that is like that means that
this money is flowing in thisnew way.
And like talk go into that alittle bit.

SPEAKER_00 (19:45):
So your local public school, if we think about the
American public school system,there's roughly 13,000 school
districts across America.
There's about a hundred thousandpublic schools.
So a hundred thousand publicschools in these thirteen
thousand districts that exist.
Those schools are funded fromusually three pots of money.
And the easy way to remember itis as a rule of thumb, it's

(20:07):
different, but the rule of thumbis 45, 45, 10.
About 45% of the money comesfrom your local property taxes,
about 45% comes from the state,which depending on what your
state is, could be an incometax, could be a sales tax, could
be some property taxes that areactually assessed at the state
level.
Depends.
Um, and then about 10% comesfrom the federal government.
That in your school district,that's basically what it is.

(20:29):
So you draw from all of thesedifferent sources, and that
gives the the the money thatthat that funds those schools.

SPEAKER_02 (20:35):
Well, just so that means that if I like all the
years that I homeschooled, I wasstill paying all of those taxes.

SPEAKER_00 (20:40):
Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 (20:41):
But my kids were not receiving the education.
I was out of I was paying out ofpocket for all of our education
expenses, but still paying intothose pots for other kids.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (20:51):
For sure.
So if your kid or if you havekids that go to private school
or whatever that you're payingout of pocket for, you're
basically paying double.
You're paying for the publiceducation system and you're
paying to privately educate yourkids.
Um so then, yeah, so vouchers orscholarship accounts or any of
these tend to be the state'scontribution, that 45%, which

(21:11):
then follows that child towherever they go to school.
And so instead of that 45% goingto your local public school,
they can it can go into theireducation savings account or it
will go into a voucher that theycan redeem for one education
somewhere.
Different states do thisdifferently, but that's the
general rule of thumb in these,which is an important thing to

(21:32):
remember because local propertytaxes stay in their school
districts.
Now, I can't be it's alwaysdangerous to say when there's
13,000 of anything thateverything is going to work
exactly the same.
But generally speaking, you getyour property tax bill every
year.
And it's not saying, well, wehave X number of kids or
whatever.
It's a property millage ratemultiplied by however much your

(21:52):
property is worth, and that'show much you pay.
If there's one kid or if there'sa million kids, that's how much
you're paying.
The state money tends tofluctuate more based on how many
kids are enrolled, etc.
And frankly, like federal money,there's all these complicated
things that are in it thatbasically says you'll never get
less of it.
Good rule of thumb is like onceyou get a certain amount of
federal dollars, you keepgetting that same amount of
federal dollars.

(22:13):
So really, the the sort ofsticks, the local money stays,
the federal money stays, it'sthe state money that would
follow a child to where they'regoing to school.

SPEAKER_02 (22:20):
Interesting.
So going back to like thisproperty idea of property taxes,
this is kind of why we seeinequity in schools, why like
you if you live in a quoteunquote good neighborhood, your
house is worth more, like thoseproperty taxes are more, so then
the school has more money,essentially.
True?

SPEAKER_00 (22:35):
Yes and no.
Yes and no.

SPEAKER_02 (22:37):
Okay, go into that.

SPEAKER_00 (22:38):
Most states have, in fact, I think all states now,
have what are calledequalization formulas or they're
funding formulas that basicallyaccount for that.
So if you are in a lowerproperty tax area, the state
kicks in more money.
That's why it's like 45, 45, 10as a rule of thumb.
But if you're in very wealthydistricts, it could actually be

(23:01):
like 8055 because it's allcoming, there's enough local
property wealth to pay for allof that, and so it doesn't, and
so the state kicks in verylittle.
Whereas in very property poordistricts, you would have, you
know, the the local contributionmight be 10 or 15 percent, and
then the state contribution willbe much higher.
Now, there is still variationbecause some places are wealthy

(23:23):
enough that like even on top ofthe equalization, like even with
the state kicking in no money,you still have a lot.
But there was this we this is avery long history that I'll
spare you, but there was aseries of lawsuits in the 70s,
80s, and 90s around both whatwere called adequacy lawsuits
and equity lawsuits.
So adequacy was basically everystate in its constitution has a

(23:45):
guarantee for children to get aneducation.
And this was a bunch of lawyersmade a whole lot of money
determining what dollar value itmeans for a child to get a quote
unquote adequate education.
And I'm trying to remember, youused to remember the one in
Missouri.
It was literally like$23.
And as long as they werespending$7,423, it was
constitutional.
And if you spent like$7,422, youwere violating the Constitution.

(24:09):
So then then so that was likeadequacy.
There were also these equitylawsuits sort of addressing what
you were talking about, which iswhat if we have these massive
disparities?
And so in lots of states, andagain it varies from state, but
they sort of brought that inline where poor um property poor
districts got more support,property rich districts got
less.
So we do still see thoseinequities.
It used to be wild, like it usedto be in the 60s and 70s, you'd

(24:32):
see massive, massive disparitiesbetween these.
Those have really been broughtmuch closer to one another.

SPEAKER_02 (24:37):
Okay, interesting.
That's good.
Because you hear about like thereal estate world, the number
one, one of the top fewquestions is like, are the
schools good here?

SPEAKER_00 (24:44):
Sure.

SPEAKER_02 (24:45):
Like that's a real estate question.
And so and you also hear aboutlike redlining.

SPEAKER_00 (24:49):
Sure.

SPEAKER_02 (24:49):
Is this to talk a little bit about that?
Like trying to get into a goodschool based on where you live.
And like I'm just trying to getat like where like if you have
already are pretty wealthy, youessentially have ubiquitous
school choice.
Because you can move.

SPEAKER_01 (25:02):
Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 (25:03):
Right?
But if you are in this in thedistrict and you're stuck there
and you can't move, then youdon't have options.

SPEAKER_00 (25:09):
Yes, and what we've basically done is created
private public schools.
Because if we tell me aboutthat, if we residentially assign
children to schools, right?
We say you have to live in thisarea, and as you mentioned, the
first question that everybodyasks is how good do the schools?
There's a limited number ofhomes zoned to that area,

(25:29):
limited supply, bigger demand,prices go up.
So what we have is peoplebasically paying tuition.
I'm making air quotes for thoseof you listening.

SPEAKER_01 (25:38):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (25:38):
You know, paying tuition in the form of their
house being more expensive.
But like the quality of thatschool is what economists would
say is being capitalized intothe value of that house.
So you're basically just payingtuition to that school.
Uh you're just paying it in yourhouse as opposed to cutting a
check to them.
And so as a result, we're notgoing to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_02 (25:57):
You can't get into that school unless you live in
the neighborhood.
So there's like this.

SPEAKER_00 (26:02):
You've basically created a private public school.
And these districts exist likethis.
Now, redlining that youmentioned is more of a
historical phenomenon that wasexplicitly racist, in which
housing covenants and other likejust laws that existed drew
areas in which it was usually todiscriminate against black
people, saying, like, you canonly live in this area.

(26:24):
And so they would take a map andliterally draw a red line around
it and say, you can only livehere, and and other white
families and other folks couldlive in other places.
So again, if we have schoolsthat are based on where people
live, and we have historicalsegregation patterns that still
persist to this day, becauseeven though the redlining is

(26:46):
illegal because of thestickiness of the housing
market, these things still existand you can still observe these
patterns in places, you're gonnaexacerbate that problem.
If we say you're gonna go toschool based on where you live
and where we live is uhethnically or or racially
segregated, but it's also trueif it's economically segregated
or any of those, we're justgonna exacerbate all of those
problems.

SPEAKER_02 (27:06):
Okay, so enter school choice, this idea of like
giving parents the dollars tosay now you have a choice, you
don't have to live in thatneighborhood.
There are things like openenrollment that kind of preceded
this.
Can you go into that?
Like, so Arizona's an openenrollment state, so when we
talk about school choice,everyone says you already have
school choice.
And I'm talking about an ESA,and they're talking about really

(27:29):
what's open enrollment.
So go into that.

SPEAKER_00 (27:31):
Yeah, so all of these things are basically
severing where you live fromwhere you go to school, right?
So you can have open enrollmentthat could be within your
district.
So some districts, so you know,you're you're living within this
district area, there's five orsix schools.
In a lot of places, you're zonednot only in your district, but
you're zoned for a particularschool.
But some places around thecountry say, actually, you can

(27:53):
go anywhere within yourdistrict.
And that's one form of openenrollment.
We would call it likeintra-district open enrollment.

SPEAKER_01 (28:00):
Okay.

SPEAKER_00 (28:00):
What states like Arizona have is that you can
actually cross district lines.
So it's not just you can choosewithin whatever district or
school that you're zoned for,but you can actually go to the
the district next door and go tothat school there.

SPEAKER_02 (28:13):
Without lying about your address.
Because people have been doingthis for a long time.
Because it's like, well, ouraunt lives in that, and when we
register for school, we'll justuse our aunt's address so we can
be zoned for that better school,right?
So then you're like literallycommitting fraud to get your
kids into a better school.
People went to jail for this.
We no longer so yeah, we don'tneed to break the law to get
your kids into good schoolsanymore.
Progress.

SPEAKER_00 (28:33):
And so that's within the traditional public system.
So those are still schooldistricts, one of those 13,000
school districts, they're run bya school board, yada yada yada.
The next kind of step arecharter schools.
So charter schools areindependently operated public
schools.
So they are not run by anelected school board like your

(28:54):
13,000 school districts are.
They're completely funded by thegovernment, they're open
enrollment.
If you have too many kids, youhave to hold the lottery, but
they're usually notgeographically zoned.
So anybody can go to them.
Like if you have a school-agechild and you want to go there.
So they're sort of one stepbeyond open enrollment when it
comes to school choice.
So there's still publicity.

SPEAKER_02 (29:14):
I feel like with Yeah, with charter schools,
there's also kind of like afocus.
Like, you know, they've writtentheir own quote unquote charter,
which is like a like a th apurpose statement, right?
Not just like your neighborhoodschool, but like this school is
about like performing arts, orlike you'll you'll see kind of
like a focus.
Is that kind of for some charterschools not exactly better?

SPEAKER_00 (29:34):
The charter refers to, as you mentioned, like a
document, like the charter thatthey basically said, hey, we
want more freedom to existoutside of this existing system.
But in order to get thatfreedom, we promise to do this
stuff.
And so a lot of it's performancebased.
We promise our kids will do XYZwell, or a lot of it is we're
gonna offer these programs,these special programs and

(29:56):
things.
And they are authorized, andagain, it depends on the state,
sometimes it's a state.
Board, sometimes it's auniversity, it could be mayor's
office, it could be the localschool districts, etc.
And every so many years they goup to get their charter
reauthorized.
And in theory, folks, they holdup the charter and say, okay,
you promised to do A, B, and C.
Did you do A, B, and C?
Okay, you get to keep existing.
Oh, you haven't done A, B, andC, you don't get to exist

(30:17):
anymore.
So that's in theory how it'ssupposed to work.

SPEAKER_02 (30:21):
Sometimes I hear parents say, like, oh, I don't
deal with fill-in-the-blanknegative aspect of public school
because my kids go to charterschool.
And knowing what I know aboutcharter school, it's like
actually, you're like they arestill using standardized
curriculum.
Like people sometimes in Arizonawill be like, oh, we don't use
Common Core because we docharter school.
It's like, no, the standardsstill apply.
Your kids still take thestandardized state test.

(30:41):
Like they still feel you arestill part of the public school
system.

SPEAKER_00 (30:45):
They are still public schools and they, yeah,
you're right.
They take all the same.

SPEAKER_02 (30:48):
Do they get all of the funding?

SPEAKER_00 (30:50):
No.

SPEAKER_02 (30:51):
Do they get less funding?

SPEAKER_00 (30:52):
They get less funding.
They tend to not get the likefacilities and capital funding
that public schools get.
So they tend to get similarlevels of per pupil funding, but
public schools also get money tolike build and upkeep their
buildings and all that sort ofstuff that from sort of separate
pots of money.
And charter schools depends,some states are starting to
change that.
But general, the last time Ichecked, at least, in lots of

(31:14):
places, charter schools don'tget that.

SPEAKER_02 (31:16):
Okay.
And then the other way, anotherlike category of school choices
coming to my mind is thelegality of homeschool.
Sometimes states have outlawedhomeschool.
So you have to choose a school,and there are like truancy laws
where like if your kids don'tcome to school, you go to jail.
True?
Yes?

SPEAKER_00 (31:32):
So it now I think homeschooling is legal in all 50
states.
Yeah, you can homeschooleverywhere.
Now it wasn't always that.

SPEAKER_02 (31:38):
Regulated in different ways, right?

SPEAKER_00 (31:40):
Totally regulated in different ways, exactly.
You have some states that thesort of broadest homeschooling,
I think they're, I think they'recalled like no notice states,
which is literally youhomeschool your kids, don't have
to tell anybody, you don't haveto tell local school district,
you don't have to tell anybody.
You just homeschool, do yourthing.
Yeah, you do you.
Whereas on the other end, thereare states that have not only do

(32:00):
you have to register, butoftentimes you have to submit
your curriculum, you have tosubmit student uh evidence of
student work.
A lot.
This is like Massachusetts, Ithink Pennsylvania, New Jersey,
I think these are some mostlynortheastern states have.

SPEAKER_02 (32:14):
Sometimes you have like a person you have to report
to that like meets with yourstudent occasionally and checks
in on you.

SPEAKER_00 (32:21):
Yeah.
So there's so there's a mix.
Now I will say, looking atAmerica, it leans much more
towards the no-notice statesthan the high regulation states.
There are a lot of no-noticestates and there are a lot of
very, I think we wouldgenerally, I guess it's all in
the eye of the beholder, butgenerally pretty lightly
regulated homeschooling whereyou don't have to follow.

SPEAKER_02 (32:41):
I mean, if you look at the last like 40 years, like
has been kind of like a hardbattle that's been fought by the
homeschool.
You know, there's like thehomeschool legal defense, like
there's lots of like entitiesthat have have helped protect
someone's right to homeschool.

SPEAKER_00 (32:53):
Yeah, homeschooling, it's really interesting because
like homeschooling, again, thetime when the the nation was
founded, up to daytime, theselines between public and private
and home and and formalschooling were a lot blurrier
than they are now, right?
Like a lot of kids, their earlyyears would be taught at home
and then they'd go to formalschooling, and sometimes they'd
come back and they'd do allsorts of stuff.

(33:14):
It was really with the advent oflike compulsory education laws,
like you mentioned truancy,which was at the sort of end of
the 19th and beginning of the20th century, where these new
sort of formal public schoolswere existed and then laws were
passed requiring students toattend those schools.
That homeschooling all but diedout in America from the 1920s

(33:34):
until like the 1970s.
And then a confluence ofdifferent people, I'm probably
telling you things that youalready know, but you know, a
confluence of different peoplefor different reasons.
And a lot of people like to tellhomeschooling is like one, it
was this group of people, but itreally wasn't.
There was multiple differentgroups of people for multiple
different ideological reasons,sort of slowly but surely built

(33:55):
up the homeschooling movement.
But interestingly, enrollmenthad in the maybe five to ten
years before the pandemic, andsometimes it can be hard because
of no notice states, it'sactually kind of hard to get our
handle on how many familiesactually homeschool.
From the best statistics that wehad, homeschooling had sort of
plateaued in the kind of five toten years before the pandemic.

(34:16):
And then obviously exploded.

SPEAKER_02 (34:18):
Plateaued at what?
It plateaued at a percent.

SPEAKER_00 (34:20):
I want to say around two percent of the student
population in America.

SPEAKER_02 (34:27):
And the student population is like what, like 50
million kids together.

SPEAKER_00 (34:32):
There's about, I think about 49 and a half or 50
million kids in public school.
So there'll be another fewmillion on top of that in
private and homeschooling.
I can actually give you, youknow, most of these podcasts I
just shoot from the hip.
But because of the respect thatI have for you, Katie, I
actually have numbers in frontof me.
Oh my gosh.
So if you want some numbers,I've got numbers.

(34:53):
So if you want to know, okay,yes.
Let's dig into the data.
Yes, so this is something wecalculate called the EdChoice
Share, which is basically howmany kids are in the different
sectors of the Americaneducation system.
And my colleague Colin Ritterdoes it.
It's available on our website.
You can go to edchoice.org andsee this, but I'll just tell it
to you.
So 74.8% of students attendtraditional public schools,

(35:16):
right?
Well like what we were talkingabout earlier, residentially
assigned, yada yada yada.
Another 4.9% attend magnetschools.
So that's magnet schooling is akind of form of open enrollment,
right?
Could be within district oracross districts, but they
magnet schools are operated bythe traditional public school
districts, but they just havekind of more freedom to enroll

(35:37):
there.
But it is a school of choice,it's a form of school choice
within the traditional publicschooling system.
So that's where we went, we'vegot 74.8% plus 4.9%.
So we're at about there, around80% are sort of within that
traditional public schoolingsystem.
And then as we start to step outof that, 6.6% attend charter
schools, another 6.8% attendprivate schools self-paid.

(36:03):
So not participating in a choiceprogram, but just like paying
tuition to get that.
4.7% are homeschooled, and 2.5%.
That's up from yeah, doubled.

SPEAKER_01 (36:14):
Okay.
Yeah, double.
Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 (36:16):
Since in recent years, yeah, homeschooling
basically it shot up even higherthan that during the pandemic
and it's since come down a bit.
Uh and then last is 2.2% usesome sort of educational choice
program to be in that.
So if we want to call themprivate schools, but also it's a
mix of kind of blurry lines ofprivate schooling, micro
schooling, homeschooling, etc.
So that's that's basically thebreakdown.

(36:36):
So you've got about 80% of kidsare within the traditional
public sector with somevariation there about the amount
of open enrollment that's that'savailable and that are taking
advantage of that, and thatother 20% are in a mix of
private schools, charterschools, homeschooling,
participating in choiceprograms.

SPEAKER_02 (36:54):
Okay, interesting.
What do you think is behind thatshift?
Like obviously the pandemic likeopened some eyes, but like it
stayed, right?
Like all all these choiceprograms are opening up private
school to kids, homeschool tokids, other things.
Like what like why isn'teveryone just like, oh, why
would I ever look for somethingdifferent?
You know?

SPEAKER_00 (37:14):
Yeah, the thing is, and we do any thoughts on that?
We do a lot of polling andsurvey work where we, you know,
we talk to parents and others.
And I think one thing, and thisis where I think a lot of school
choice people can kind of getover their skis and sort of take
our own sort of complaints aboutpublic schools or others and and
sort of impute them foreveryone.
Most people and most parentslike their kids public school.

(37:36):
You know, when when asked, theygive them A's and B's.
So they're not there, there's asmall percentage, you know, I
think it's usually aroundthree-quarters of public school
parents say, like, I give mykids school an A or a B.
So first off, you know, 25% notgiving that, when we talk about
a number as big as 50 million,25% of 50 million is a lot of
people, right?
It's a lot of people.

(37:57):
That's how you can like doublethe number of kids in
homeschooling.
We might like double the numberof kids in in school choice
programs, etc.
And while that looks small,you're like, oh wow, like, you
know, 5% of 50 million is a lotof kids.
So that's one part of it.
But then the other part of it isthat it seems that while parents
like their kids' school, they'reopen to doing better.

(38:18):
So if something someone can showthem a thing that says, oh yeah,
totally, like, totally get whyyou like your kids' school,
we're doing this.
Maybe it's a better fit for foryour child, maybe it fits into
your schedule better, maybe itfits into the things that you
want for your kid, etc., that Ithink is what's happening in
lots of places.
Saying, oh yeah, no, like Idon't hate I don't hate my kids'

(38:39):
public school, but I think thisthing might be a little bit
better.

SPEAKER_02 (38:42):
Yeah, it's kind of like if you're used to going to
a grocery store that always hasthe same thing, and someone asks
you about your grocery store andyou've never had options, you've
never thought about it, you'rekind of like, it's fine, like it
feeds the family, like there'snothing wrong with this.
And then someone's like, at ourgrocery store, this happened.
Like this other stuff, andyou're like, oh, like I didn't
know there was a difference, youknow?
So that's I think I feel likekind of like what's happening in

(39:04):
education right now.

SPEAKER_00 (39:04):
And I think that's a good thing.
We can make mistakes if we'relike trashing that grocery
store.
People are like, well, like, no,our grocery store's fine.
But if you sort of pitch exactlythe way that you do, which is
like totally get it, feedingyour family.
But you know, this grocery storehas like the nice salad bar.
You like salad?

(39:25):
Because I got this place has asalad bar.
Like, you know, the butcherconvenient is awesome.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (39:29):
Maybe your kid is allergic to all of the food at
that grocery store and you haveto find someone else.
But totally because of the wayyour district you're you're
assigned to that grocery store,yeah.
Your child is having a reallyhard time getting nourished and
fed.

SPEAKER_01 (39:45):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (39:45):
Right.
And so then, but but because ofthe way school funding works
that like the monopoly you weretalking about at the beginning,
you know, it's like it makes itreally hard for that other
option to open and sustainitself.

SPEAKER_01 (39:56):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (39:57):
And to feed those kids where maybe like the the
the traditional neighborhoodgrocery store is not like suited
to serve that individualstudent.
So I mean, I talk to a lot ofparents who are just like, we
we've gone to public school,we've tried it, like my kid
can't learn like that, or likemy kid has this you know unique
issue or this unique need wherewe really need these options.

(40:18):
And now that we have the schoolchoice option in Arizona,
Florida, like these states, I'mhearing all these stories about
like my kid is happy, they'rethey can go to school now,
they're progressing now, justbecause we were able to give
them some choice, some optionsbecause people are unique.
Yeah, you know, people we hearthis term like the one-size fits
all, or like the square peg andthe round hole.
It's like we don't need to havea bunch of holes and pegs.

(40:41):
Like we can live in a way thatis a little bit more creative
now.
And which I am actually sopro-public school because it has
been like the hugest boon tosociety in the last 150 years.
Like it has raised a ton ofpeople out of poverty, and like
it's such a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 (40:56):
Yes.
So this is important.
And it's a question I think youasked earlier that I didn't
really answer when you talkabout like opposition to all of
this, like opposition to ESAs,opposition to open enrollment,
opposition to charter schools.
And I think, again, takencharitably, which I think is how
we should deal with people whodisagree with us, that the
insight that you just madethere, I think, is at the core
of it, which is to say thatpublic schools have been this

(41:18):
important institution inAmerican life.
And if we track the the historyof America, particularly in the
20th century, where we saw thislike incredible boom and growth
in our economy and in livingstandards and improvement across
all of these different areas, aneducated population, which was
by and large done by publicschools, was a huge part of
that.
And there was this broaderbelief coming out of even in the

(41:40):
name of it, the common schoolsmovement, this idea that we have
these institutions that all ofus are part of, so we all pay
taxes to them and we all sendour children to them.
And it's a way for it's it's away to sort of socialize our
children, to inculcatedemocratic values, to quote
unquote, like make Americans outof everyone, so we have this
shared experience.

(42:00):
And the belief is if you allowpeople to opt out of that
system, that a few things couldhappen.
Number one, that it would beworse off for the kids that are
left behind, because if all ofthe most motivated with it kids
leave, well, what does that meanfor the you know, all the kids
that are left behind are stuckwith each other, you know, not
having the great peer effects ofof better treating children or

(42:23):
create stratification.
Yeah.
And and we worry about thingslike, well, if the people that
are leaving are wealthier or ifthey are more educated or
others, we could see more sortof stratification in our
education system.
That we have, okay, well, likethe kids of college-educated
parents are all going to privateschools and other kids are left
there.
Or we could see racialstratification or economic

(42:43):
stratification, et cetera,across all those sorts of
things.
And this, what is supposed to bea unifying institution, could
actually be just anotherinstitution in American life
that is polarized and segregatedand separated from one another.
And so I think, again, this isanother one of those things
where I mean, obviously, I havemy critique of all those
arguments, and I'm happy toshare them.
But I think that if you supportschool choice, you should take

(43:05):
those arguments incrediblyseriously, and that those are
actually coming from a goodplace, and they are coming from
people who care deeply about oursociety and its children and our
communities, and we dismiss themat our peril.
So I think it's really importantto engage with those arguments,
but I think that that's where alot of it is coming from.

SPEAKER_02 (43:21):
Yeah, I agree.
So let's go into like a handfulof the arguments against it.
A lot of the time I hear like astatistic thrown thrown around
that like all the people thatare using these ESAs, like the
ESA money, they're all they werealready sending their kids to
private school.
They can already afford it.
There's no reason that they needthe state funding to help them

(43:42):
go to public school or to to uhto have a choice.
What do you say to that?

SPEAKER_00 (43:47):
Well, I'd say a couple things.
The first one is it's alwaysdangerous when you tell other
people what they can and can'tafford, you know?
Like, because there's lots ofwhat, you know, and oftentimes
the people that are making thosearguments would never make those
sort of arguments in otheraspects of people's lives, where
it's like, well, healthier foodis more expensive.
You can afford it if you'redoing and you know, we don't

(44:07):
want to make those sort of valuejudgments about how people spend
their money, but in this case,somehow people are able to.
And I think that that's animportant thing to note, though,
that lots of people that arealready in private schools are
in private schools becauseschools are providing
scholarships, because they'repart of religious communities
that are paying for these sortsof things, that are scrimping
and saving, and as you mentionedearlier, paying twice in order

(44:29):
to do this, you know, demonizingpeople who are already in
private schools, I don't thinkis a super solid plan.
But if opponents want to keepdoing it, you know, never never
get in the way of your opponentknocking themselves out.
But so that's part of it.
So one of which is there arelots of people that are in
private schools that arestruggling to pay for them, that
if they were given money tosupport that, could spend more

(44:49):
money on food and clothing andshelter and all of those things.
So I think that's one is part ofit.
Number two is sort of like whatwe talked about earlier, which
is every child in America isentitled to a government-funded
education, right?
So if those children that werecurrently in private schools
stepped into public schooltomorrow, they would have to
educate them and they would haveto pay for it.

(45:10):
So the fact that they'd be happyto do it.
Totally.

SPEAKER_02 (45:13):
Like if you had some rich kid show up to your public
school and be like, hey, I'dlike to go to school here, the
principal would be like, Great,the Simmons family, like so
excited to have you and yourmoney here.
But like, but we don't see that.
You would never say, like, oh,you already have enough money to
pay for private school, so wewon't serve you at the public
school.

SPEAKER_01 (45:28):
Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 (45:29):
But that's literally the same thing we're saying when
we say like if you have haveenough money, you shouldn't have
the ESA.

SPEAKER_00 (45:34):
If we want to means test public schooling, we can
means test private schoolchoice.

SPEAKER_02 (45:39):
What's a means test?
Tell us.
I'm saying just um economicsthing.

SPEAKER_00 (45:42):
If you just want to limit it, like if we want to say
if you make X amount of dollarsmore, we're not gonna pay for
public school anymore, thenokay.
But you know, the wealthiest,you know, Jeff Bezos had a kid,
they can go to public school andeverybody else will pay for it.
You know what I mean?
So that I that argument hasnever really carried that much
weight with me because you know,that's just not how we fund

(46:02):
schools.
It would be different if if weif we funded schools
differently.
But everyone's entitled to one,so I don't know why they
wouldn't be able to participatein this.

SPEAKER_02 (46:11):
Okay, so the next one I hear is I don't want to
participate.
So when a state passes in ESA,Prenda is totally run based off
ESA.
We used to operate under thecharter umbrella and we met all
of the requirements andrestrictions, and all our kids
took the state test.
We because we're very committedto access.
We don't want to create anotheroption that only wealthy people
can afford.
That's not systemic change ineducation, which is what we're

(46:31):
pushing for.
So we actually, in all of theyears, like through through the
pandemic, we had people knockingat our doors, begging us to let
let them give us their privatedollars to open a prend a micro
school in some state.
Yeah.
And we said no for a lot of timebecause we would want to, we we
said, no, we don't acceptprivate funds.

(46:53):
We only make partnerships withthe school district and we run
this full access to everyone ina state.
And so we would, I mean, wecould have grown a lot of
microschools and built a lot ofmicroschools, but we literally
said no because we're committedto access.
So once the ESA laws were passedin Arizona, we kind of flipped
that to say, like, okay, now wehave a way to operate a
microschool that's where westill can give kids full access,

(47:15):
and it's a little morestreamlined for us.
There's more flexibility, moreautonomy and things like that.
And parents, kids are stilllearning, parents are still
happy, so we're happy with theresults.
So as soon as a state passes anESA law, and I'm sure like you
in a choice, like we're trackingall of these, the legislation
and things like that.
And so we'll go into a new stateand the well, we we like any
other company, like we run ads,right?

(47:37):
And so we'll educate peopleabout this way that they can
have educational choice and beable to send their kids to a
print of microschool with noout-of-pocket cost to the
parent.
And if we make an ad that saysthat, that ad gets so much hate.
Like all of the comments arejust like, you're destroying
public schools, like all of thishate.
So I'm like, wait, I really wantto sincerely understand does

(47:59):
this destroy public school?
And a lot of the like quoteunquote opposition is just like
it it there's so like literallythe organization that is against
school choice in Arizona iscalled Save Our Schools.
Sure.
Like the opposite of that isruin our schools or shut all our
schools down.
Or it's like, I don't think the2%'s gonna hurt the 80%.

(48:19):
Like this is not this is like aDave and Goliath situation where
the Goliath is being veryaggressive on the ad comments.
But talk a little bit aboutthat.
Does it does it hurt publicschools?
Like, how should we think aboutthat?

SPEAKER_00 (48:31):
So I think like the first way of thinking about it
is okay, like what is actuallyhappening here?
And what's happening here isthat like you have kids
currently, like or without theseprograms, that go to these
schools because they have to.
Because they have no otherchoices, and that's why they're
there.
And these programs are created,and then they have a choice and
they choose to leave.

(48:51):
So what exactly is that tellingus?
Like, that's telling us thatlike that kid's not doing so hot
in that school, right?
And the only reason they'restaying is because they're
forced to.
And so, in some ways, this wholeargument of like it's gonna
destroy public schools is kindof an indictment of public
schools, right?
Because if your schools aredoing awesome, nobody wants to
leave.
No one will want to leave,right?

(49:12):
And I think that that's actuallytied into the second bit because
I think there is amisapprehension that who leaves
when it comes to these choiceprograms, right?
Everyone says, oh, the best andbrightest kids leave, all the
best kids in every class aregonna leave, and who's gonna be
left with the worst kids?
And then you think to yourself,for like 30 seconds, wait, if my

(49:33):
kids crushing it in this school,why the hell would I take them
out?
Right?
The kids who are gonna leave arethe kids who are not doing well
in that school and are gonna belooking for somewhere else.
And then if you just play thetape out a little bit longer,
you think, whoa, wait a second.
You know, we might think aboutthat kid leaving and going to a
better school, and that's goodfor them, but then think, what's

(49:57):
what about the classroom thatthat child left?
That kid's not in it anymore.
So the kid who's not doing well,who's struggling, is not in that
class anymore, and the only kidsthat are left are the kids who
want to be there.
So part of what we can have, andand look, part of this is like
economists were sort of on thevanguard of this, and they love
things like we're gonna havecompetition, where like the
schools are gonna compete forkids and the best kids' schools,

(50:18):
where where it's like a betteridea of sort of thing about is
like, no, it's about sorting.
The kids are gonna be able tosort into the schools that work
best for them.
And what might be a great schoolfor one kid is not necessarily a
great school for another kid.
Right.
And so as these kids move, it'sbetter for everyone.
It's better for the kids who areleft behind, it's better for the
kids that are going to to thesenew schools.

(50:39):
And so, like, I don't actuallythink that that's destroying
public schools.
I think that's actually makingthem better.
Because like the people that arethere are the people who want to
be there.

SPEAKER_02 (50:48):
Won't we, just to play devil's advocate here,
like, won't we see some schoolsclose though, or like classrooms
close or things like that?
Like, talk a little bit aboutthat.

SPEAKER_00 (50:55):
Yeah, so like that is true that if your kids leave,
you will have you will have lessmoney coming in because uh, or
at least the portion of themoney that follows kids will
follow that kid out of there.
And you'll you would reach apoint that if, you know, I don't
know, 80% of your kids leave,your school's gonna close,
right?
So we we can't pretend like thatthings like that wouldn't

(51:16):
happen.
Now, again, I don't think thatthat's if 80% of kids, when
given the chance, leave,probably school shouldn't be
open.
Like, I don't think that that'sunreasonable to say if the only
reason it's open is becausepeople are forced to be there.
Again, we can draw out, I don'tknow, uh analogies of other sort
of businesses or others that arelike, well, the only reason we
go to this place is becausewe're forced to.

(51:36):
It probably can't stand underits own two feet.
Uh but even then, I mean, likethe funny thing is that so so
we're talking in the sort ofpurely like theoretical range
now of like it's almost animagining if all of the money
follows the kids, whatever.
In most of these choice programsthat exist, there are you know,
only a portion of the moneyleaves and a bunch of it stays.

(51:58):
There are various like holdharmless provisions that are
added in, where it's like whenit comes to calculating state
aid, you can actually count thekids that leave for like years
for like two or three years inyour enrollment to soften the
blow of this whatever like allthe capital monies so like they
people have gone out of theirway to make these programs as
non-disruptive as possible.

(52:20):
But like at the margin, or I youI should say sort of like at the
extreme, like yes, if all ofyour kids leave, you don't have
a school anymore.
And so, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (52:31):
Which a lot of the the arguments like that I hear
also when I'm you know, I'mtalking to parents who are
education shopping looking forsolutions, and they say, like,
oh, do you have a roboticsprogram at Prenda, or do you
have a really good orchestra?
And I'm like, No, no, I don'thave any of that.
Can my take my kids take thebus?
Do you feed them free?
Like, is there a lunch program?
Like, no, no, I don't have anyof that, right?

(52:53):
So, like there's a ton ofbenefit to your neighborhood
school still, like it's a goodoption.
And you are like in making adifferent choice, oftentimes
like choosing to have fewerresources.
So it's not like I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 (53:06):
No, I think and I think that that's the right, but
but part of this comes from, youknow, again, going back to what
we talk about common schools,kind of progressive movement
where the thought you know, wehad a bunch of little, you know,
think of all the one-roomschoolhouses that were all over
America, and we said, no, likewe need to bring kids together
into like the comprehensive highschool, which is like, hey, like
there's no way we can teachcalculus to one kid here and one

(53:28):
kid there.
Let's get them all in one room,because that not that many
people can teach calculus, let'sall get them in one room.
So that was like solving theproblems of a particular time
and solving them well and withthe tools that they had.

SPEAKER_02 (53:40):
With the best the best we could do for a long
time.

SPEAKER_00 (53:42):
But it turns out, oh, and and you know, there
might only be one in the townthat you're in, there might only
be one band teacher or one dramateacher or whatever that
existed.
So we gotta get all the kids inone place to do it.
Well, now, you know, like maybeyour school doesn't need an
orchestra because there's like alocal one that kids from a bunch
of different schools could goto.
Or maybe there's a robotics clubsomewhere that people can

(54:04):
participate in, or whatever, andmaybe with like the flexibility
of ESA dollars, you can you canstill have those things.
Or there's lots of kids who say,like, well, maybe, you know, all
the money that that schoolspends on a robotics team, I
have no real interest in, I'drather go to a school that
focuses that on having, I don'tknow, smaller classes or science

(54:25):
labs or whatever the hell it is,you know.
So so I think that like thinkingabout the idea that not every
school has to be everything foreveryone.
When we had the bigcomprehensive high school, when
your district had one highschool, they tried to be
everything to everyone.
And lots of kids got a greateducation there.
Like lots of them.
Maybe we might even say themajority of kids.

(54:46):
We think of the big bell curve,all those people in the meaty
middle of the bell curve, theydid great.
But the kids in the tails, likeif you are really, really high
performing, you're really,really low performing, like
that's not necessarily the thebest place for you.
All of these things can be trueat the same time.

SPEAKER_02 (55:01):
Right, right.
So I want to switch a little bitand then we'll wrap up.
Um, talking about the supplyside of choice.
Who's starting new schools?
Like what's driving people intothat kind of like line of
thinking.
And then I mean, we've talked alot about kids doing well in
schools and being happy, but wehaven't talked at all about
teachers.
And we talk, I mean, we hear alot about how like teachers need

(55:23):
to get paid more.
This is a very stressful job.
I think like was it Gallup wholike rakes like all or maybe it
was Pew, I can't remember whichwhich survey this came from,
maybe you know, uh, that justsaid like teaching is that the
most K through 12 teaching isthe most stressful job by like a
wide margin, like compared tofirefighting, like everything.
Like they are the most likeburnt out, stressed people.

(55:44):
And I've actually had teacherscome to talk to me about
starting microschool withPrenda, and they're like, Oh,
the first day of school, I hadto be taken to the hospital in
an ambulance because I had ananxiety attack.
Like this is like reallynegatively affecting people,
this space.
So I'm interested in that.
Well, we can just touch on thatfor a minute.

SPEAKER_00 (56:03):
I have more numbers for you.
Um I love polling.
Consulting my pages in front ofme.
So this is from polling workthat we do.
So we at EdChoice in partnershipwith Morning Consult do a ton of
polling work.
Every month we poll a nationallyrepresentative sample of
Americans and of Americanparents to understand their
views on a host of issues.

(56:23):
And we also regularly um pollteachers.
I think we did two, we used todo a quarterly, and the numbers
didn't move all of that much, soI think we've we've done it to
like we moved it to twice orthree times a year.
But we just did a recent one, Ithink, was in the field in in
March.
Um, and what we found, we'vebeen asking this question,
asking them a thing from marketresearch about a net promoter

(56:46):
score.
So if you've ever gottensometimes if you like shop at
Home Depot, you get one, orsometimes after you you stay in
a hotel, you get asked thisquestion would you rate your
your experience from one to tenand would you recommend whatever
this Home Depot or something touh folks from one to ten?
For those of you that don't knowhow that's being used, what they
do is is calculate somethingcalled a net promoter score,

(57:07):
which is basically you take allof the people who gave you a
nine or a ten and you subtractall the people that gave you a
zero to a six.
Right?
So actually, in those, if youanswer, if you give a seven or
an eight, your number isn'tactually even counted.
So in the future, if you want totell people that they did a
great job, yeah, you gotta givethem a nine or a ten, or you
gotta give them a zero to a six.

(57:28):
And actually, I think a zero toa six, it doesn't matter what
number you give a six or yougive a zero, and you get the
same thing in there.
But basically what you do is yousubtract those two, and as you
might imagine, you want positivenumbers, you want more promoters
than detractors, or what they'recalled.
So, teachers, in our most recentpoll, teaching was underwater by

(57:49):
18 points.
So 45% of teachers weredetractors, and only 27% of
teachers were promoters.
So, well, it's gonna get wilderbecause that is actually a net
promoter sort of negative 18.
Yeah, negative 18 is a netpromoter.
Negative 18 is the net promoter.
Now, what's wild is that weasked that same question a year

(58:11):
ago, so in April of 2024.
Uh at that time it was negative47.
So negative 18 is actually asubstantial increase.
So we we separate them out andwe look at district school
teachers and private schoolteachers.

(58:31):
And in our most recentadministration, private school
teachers were above water.
So there were they were a plusseven.
So there were 35% of privateschool teachers were promoters
and only 28% were detractors.
So they were above water, andthat's interesting because that
same poll a year ago, they wereminus 31.

(58:55):
Whoa.
Which is wild because normallyso this I I don't know.
This is something I'm reallyinterested in, because to to do
the last bit of data, and thenwe can so public school teachers
were a minus twenty-three, um,this this time, so 25%
promoters, 48% attractors, but ayear ago were minus 48.

(59:17):
So what's wild is that in ourpolling, because we've done this
for a long time, private schoolteachers were almost always,
except like a year ago, werealmost always above water.
Charter school teachers, whenwe've had a big enough sample of
charter school teachers, they'vegenerally been above water.
It's been mostly driven bytraditional public school
teachers that were more negativethan than private and charter

(59:38):
school teachers.
But for whatever reason, lastyear, and only last year, so in
the years before it, it wasn't.
So this is like the 23 24 schoolyear, teachers were super, super
negative.
Within this question, I'm notmaking like a global judgment on
teachers, but just with withrespect to this question of
asking them like on theprofession, whatever something
happened last school year.

(59:59):
I'm not 100%.
Percent sure what it was becausealmost any explanation that I
have thought of doesn't actuallyanswer it.
Because it's like it wasn't thepandemic, it was like after the
pandemic.
It wasn't like political eventsdon't line up with it really,
like social events don't reallyline up to it.
Like I don't really understandwhy this happened, but for
whatever reason, last year wesaw this massive dip in teacher

(01:00:21):
morale, and it has rebounded.
Um again for public schoolteachers, it's still underwater.
For private school teachers,it's above water.
But something happened and maycontinue to be happening that I
made them less.
Yeah, that made them less happy.
They're happier now than theywere a year before.

SPEAKER_02 (01:00:35):
They're happier now.
Wow.
Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 (01:00:36):
And they were happier a year before.
There was like this dip lastschool year.

SPEAKER_02 (01:00:39):
This dip.
Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 (01:00:41):
I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 (01:00:42):
Okay, so like what's the best, the best net promoter
score you're seeing, likeamongst is it amongst private
school teachers?

SPEAKER_00 (01:00:48):
Private school teachers.
So look, this could start toanswer your question of like
who's starting these schools.
You know, I think you have a lotof traditional public school
teachers, and there's a grouplike the National Micro
Schooling Center, did that greatreport that came out recently
where they've like asked peoplewhere they came from.
And what you have is like a lotof traditional teachers, you
know, from the public schoolsector, but also from the

(01:01:10):
private school sector and othersthat are saying we want to do
something different.
The way the system is currentlyconstituted doesn't work for us,
and so we want to to startsomething new.
So that's a huge source of wherepeople come from.
And so when you see net promoterscores like this, where people
are like deeply unhappy, it'slike, well, they might try and
start something different.

SPEAKER_02 (01:01:30):
Can I tell you a funny, a funny thing?

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:32):
Please do.

SPEAKER_02 (01:01:33):
You want to know Prendas apprenda guide net
promoter score?

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:37):
I would love to.

SPEAKER_02 (01:01:39):
Positive 60.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:41):
Whoa.
That's from the guides aboutlike their own jobs?

SPEAKER_02 (01:01:43):
From the guides, yeah.
Over several years, hundreds ofmicroschool guides.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:47):
So we shouldn't be surprised to see more prendas
opening.
If someone can trade a minus 23net promoter score job to a plus
sixty net promoter score job,you're probably gonna see more
of the latter.

SPEAKER_02 (01:01:59):
Gonna see more of that.

SPEAKER_00 (01:02:00):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:02:01):
Well, wow, I feel like I've been on like an
educational roller coaster.
Like, I feel like we've hit somany topics, and like I I I
wanted to know are there anyother numbers that you have that
I didn't ask you for?
Let's see, what numbers are anyof just like your most
interesting like you wereshocked, or like, yeah, just a
couple of things.

SPEAKER_00 (01:02:19):
I'll give you two more numbers.
So, one, this is another onethat sort of answers a question
we're talking about where arethese people coming from and
others.
So we've asked this question inour polling for a very long
time, but we asked parents ifyou could send your kid
anywhere, where would you sendthem?
Like what sector would you sendyour kids to?
And the our most recent thing ofschool parents, 41% told us that
they would send their kids topublic school, three percent

(01:02:40):
said that they would send theirkids to private school, eight
percent to charter school,eleven percent to homeschooling.
So now if you true that up withwhat we said before, where like
so 40% say that their idealsituation is public school, but
80% of kids are in it.
So there's another situationwhere again people may like
those schools, but it's nottheir optimum one.
If we talk about privateschooling, where you have six

(01:03:02):
percent self-pay, two percent inuh in choice programs, right?
That's far away from 33% ofparents who say they'd ideally
like to go there.
And even think, you know,charter schooling is actually
pretty close.
I think it's like six and changeto eight, but then homeschooling
where you have just south offive percent actually do it, but
eleven percent want to.

(01:03:22):
So to me, I see scope for bothprivate schooling and
homeschooling.
Like, I don't know if we'regonna see a lot more growth in
charter schooling because we'resort of lining up with what
people want.
I definitely see there beingscope for growth in both private
and homeschooling, becausethere's more people who said
they would like to do it if theycould.
But still, let's just say goahead.

SPEAKER_02 (01:03:42):
I'll just throw microschooling in there as a
word that's kind of a hybridbetween it is a private school,
but it feels a lot likehomeschooling.
So, like if people knew the wordmicro school, which very few
people do still, maybe theywould choose microschool.

SPEAKER_00 (01:03:54):
Totally.
And again, this kind of alsogoes back to our conversation
where this is this is likethere's no obstacles, there's no
options, which is obviously arealways gonna exist.
So like it's never gonna looklike this when we're done.
But even if you think aboutthat.
41% of people, the even in thissystem, the largest single
sector of education would bepublic schooling.
Right?
Like the plurality of the stillchoosing that.

(01:04:15):
Yeah, 41% of people still wonpublic schools.
Public schools would still bethe largest sector in America.
So even under like full,unencumbered, do whatever the
hell you want to choice, publicschools would still be the
largest thing here.
So again, that's another thingthat I say to public school
people where it's like thepublic schools are gonna go
away.
I'm like, I don't think thatthat's actually the case.

SPEAKER_02 (01:04:34):
So we always say at Prenda, real quick, the the
thing that we always say atPrenda is like the best way for
Prenda to go out of business isthat neighborhood schools get so
much better that no one wouldwant to leave.
Like in that situation, I likesleep very well at night.

SPEAKER_00 (01:04:47):
I'd go do something.
Closed Prenda.

SPEAKER_02 (01:04:49):
Like, great, we don't need that.
Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 (01:04:50):
I'd go do yeah, I would very happily go do a job
somewhere else.
Yeah.
You know, there's any number ofother careers that I would like
to pursue, and I would I wouldgo I would go do that.
So the last thing I would justsay is this question of why.
Why are people choosing schools?
Why are they leaving certainschools?
So we asked this question about,you know, the school that you're

(01:05:11):
of parents who've made choices,looking at like the school that
they left and what were issuesthat they had with the school
that they left.
Okay.
Number one answer, bullying.
Wow.
31% of families telling us that.
30% say excessive stress oranxiety, 28% saying academic
needs not being met, 25%difficulty with teachers, um,

(01:05:34):
and then it sort of goes goesfrom there.
But interestingly, the sort ofacademic element, which again
comes in a lot of theseconversations about people think
that school choice is entirelydriven by academics or that the
most academically gifted orwhatever people would leave.
Turns out like that's not themost common answer of what
people are talking about.
They're talking about bullying,they're talking about mental
health, they're talking aboutthose issues of moving kids from
from one place to another.

(01:05:55):
And again, and and and stufflike that, like just is not
really ever part of the schoolchoice conversation, at least
it's sort of like the policylevel.
People generally talk aboutacademic indicators and others,
and it's like, well, that maynot be the primary thing that's
motivating a lot of parents.
And again, if your kid isgetting bullied, what you what
the school's math scores are notreally that important, right?

(01:06:18):
Yeah.
Or if your kid is miserable, youknow, doesn't matter if they got
a great English teacher.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Like people don't really careabout, you know, again, if
they've got a robotics team ornot, right?
Like there are some basic thingsthat people need to.
And I think, look, my two senseof why in the growth of micro
schools and hybrid schooling,homeschooling, and others is

(01:06:39):
much smaller, tighter knitcommunities where kids are known
and understood, and where youcan convey, you know, you can
just create respectful,supportive environments that are
really challenging to do in verylarge institutions.

SPEAKER_02 (01:06:53):
Yeah, that's interesting.
Your numbers that you sharedabout bowling actually line up
almost perfectly with ourinternal polling of kids, asking
them about their pre-prendaexperience.
We get like 30% of kids tellingus that they were bullied.
And the numbers at Prenda areway lower because if you're in a
group of 10, it still happens.
Sure.
But it's like there's an adultwatching you like and creating a

(01:07:13):
culture that's connected.
And I mean, if you look at uhhave you heard of
self-determination theory?
I haven't.
We talk about it a lot on the onthe Kindled podcast.
If you're a longtime listener,you've heard me talk about this
a lot.
But it's just it's one of thethe most well-supported
psychological like kind offrameworks about our basic
psychological needs.
Like every human needsconnection relationship, every

(01:07:35):
human needs to feel competent,and we call that like a sense of
mastery, or like that's why wepersonalized learning to meet
the that need for competency,and they need to feel a sense of
autonomy.
And so all of those things arereally hard to do, they're hard
to deliver at scale, right?
When I'm running that bigschool, I I can't let kids
choose what they want because Ihave I have standards, I have
this system that I'mimplementing.

(01:07:56):
I can't spend a lot of timebuilding relationships because I
have a lot, I'm spread thin as ateacher, right?
I have a lot of things, and thenI can't give everyone a
personalized education because Ican only one thing can come out
of my mouth at a time, right?
So really hard to deliver onthat.
And that's where we see thoselow mental health scores.

SPEAKER_01 (01:08:10):
Totally.

SPEAKER_02 (01:08:11):
And kids looking to bully because they're looking
for connection, they're lookingfor dominance.
Like, you know, we get all theselike psychological things going
on.
You pull these kids out intohomeschool or private school, a
smaller setting, those needs getmet, the mental health shoots
up.
And then chakra, they startdoing better academically.
So that's kind of the story thatI'm seeing broadly.
But as soon as schools are ableto meet those needs, like, I

(01:08:32):
don't see a need.
Like I love public school, Ilove public education.
I think it's so, so important,so foundational to our country,
and want to see it thrive, wantto see it do well.
But I also care deeply aboutstudents more than I care about
that preserving the preservinglike the nostalgic system.
Like if it's almost like, youknow, like the national union of
like typists, like in the 50s or60s, whatever.

(01:08:55):
Like they're really good attypewriters.
Yeah.
It's like, well, we don't don'tlet computers in here because
like we would lose our typingjobs.
And we're just like, there'sstill some typing to be done on
a computer.
Like your skills will transfer,but it's gonna look different.
And maybe like, or like thetelephone operator.
Yeah.
It's like, well, we don't needto have like rows and rows of
people doing this, pluggingtelephones connections in, but
like there's still like reallyimportant, valuable work to be

(01:09:16):
done.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (01:09:17):
But you may find like far more fulfilling and
enjoyable.
For sure.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:09:22):
Yeah.
So I I feel like it's we're justkind of like all realizing like
what the future of educationlooks like and what society
looks like and how we canpreserve the things that are
important to us, keep kids atthe center.
And I think that school choiceseems like a powerful way to to
keep families and kids at thecenter and to we just need to
like make the connection of likethese things are still going to

(01:09:42):
preserve all of the things thatwe hold dear.

SPEAKER_00 (01:09:44):
Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 (01:09:46):
Anytime, anytime things change, it's hard.

SPEAKER_00 (01:09:48):
Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 (01:09:51):
Okay, any um thoughts?
I'd love to know.
I know this is going long, butuh where do you think school
choice will and education willbe in like 10 years?
I mean predictions.

SPEAKER_00 (01:10:00):
Yeah, I mean, like these school choice programs,
like Texas just passed that lawrecently.
I mean, we're looking at now,like over the course of the next
couple years, something likehalf of American school children
living in a state where theywould be eligible for one of
these programs.
Now, a lot of these programsthat they're technically
universal in that they're like,you know, anybody can
participate, but they're notreally universal because either

(01:10:22):
there's not enough funding forthem or even like what people
can choose is kind ofrestricted.
So I think there's gonna be alot more policy work on that
front to make these universalprograms actually universal.
Where, you know, everybody whowants to participate can.
So so that's I think like on thepolicy front where where it's
going.
It's like making universalprograms truly universal.
I think enrollment in these isjust going to grow.

(01:10:44):
You know, I I think we see, youknow, what was it, Tennessee
last week or something like theylaunched a new program, and in
the first weekend it was openand like thousand tens of
thousands of people signing upfor it.
Louisiana's got this problem,the very good problem now.
They launched the Gator Act,which is of course the very
Louisiana of them, which is likean ESA program.

(01:11:05):
And, you know, what was it,40,000 kids applied for it, and
now they're like, oh, well, wewe were thinking it was gonna be
like six or seven.
Well, now we gotta find themoney for it, and you know.
So those are the sort of issuesthat I think that are be coming
up.
But I mean, I just see I justsee continued pretty steady
growth in these.

SPEAKER_02 (01:11:24):
Love that.
Okay, wrap-up question where canpeople learn more about your
work?

SPEAKER_00 (01:11:29):
EdChoice.org.

SPEAKER_02 (01:11:31):
There you go.
And you can also track, I loveEdChoice as a resource because
if you're interested in whatschool choice looks like in your
state, very helpful resources onedchoice.com to go look at your
state and to to know like how ifyou want to bring school choice
to your state, how you can getinvolved in advocacy and making
that happen.

Okay, final question (01:11:48):
Who has been someone in your life who
has encouraged you, motivatedyou, or kindled get it, your
love of learning, your passionto help you become who you are?
Who's that person?

SPEAKER_00 (01:12:00):
So I want to give a shout out.
Unfortunately, passed away, Ithink, in the last year, my high
school English teacher.
I had the same teacher for myfreshman, junior, and senior
year.
So as someone who writes for aliving now, giving a shout-out
to probably the most formativeperson in my writing.
His name was Andy Hagadorn.
But what I want to give him aparticular shout out for, and I

(01:12:21):
think is something that we needmore today, he was very
demanding.
He was a challenging teacher.
He had super high standards.
And it took me a long time, onlyuntil I was sort of a teacher
myself and even probably beyondthat, to realize that like
that's someone who actuallycares about you.
Like the teacher who makes lifeeasy and is like the cool

(01:12:43):
teacher that everybody loves,like, doesn't actually care
about you the way the personwho's like, I'll be unpopular
and I'll be difficult and youwon't like me sometimes because
I'm gonna push you to be thebest that you can be.
And look, I worry, and even inlike even in the world of school
choice and others, you know,that there's a temptation to

(01:13:04):
sort into schools that areeasier.
No, hey, you know, it's a placewhere you're gonna get easy A's,
you'll have a high GPA, maybeit'll help you get into college,
whatever.

SPEAKER_01 (01:13:12):
Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (01:13:13):
And so I think just from a sort of cultural or sort
of perspective, to continue topush, like, no, we need to
valorize like teachers inschools that hold high
standards, because that'sactually what it means to care
about kids, is to say, like, Ibelieve in you, you're capable
of more than this, and I'm notgoing to accept less than that,
even if that makes you angry,even if that makes your parents

(01:13:34):
angry, even if it's like you cando better than this.
So, shout out to Mr.
Haggadorn.
The world needs more of them.
It certainly kindled to me.
I don't think I would be thewriter or person that I am today
if someone at that formativetime in my life hadn't said, do
better, do better, do better, dobetter, do better.
And I try to continue doing thattoday.

SPEAKER_02 (01:13:53):
I love that.
Mike McShane, thanks for comingon the Kindle Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 (01:13:56):
Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 (01:13:57):
The Kindled Podcast is brought to you by Prenda.
Prenda makes it easy to startand run an amazing microschool
based on all the ideas we talkabout here on the Kindled
Podcast.
Don't forget to follow us onsocial media at PrendaLearn.
And if you'd like moreinformation about starting a
microschool, just go toprenda.com.
Thanks for listening, andremember to keep Kindling.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 82: School Choice: The Great Debate. A Conversation with Mike McShane.

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Episode 82: School Choice: The Great Debate. A Conversation with Mike McShane.

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