The Highwire with Del Bigtree - ROBERT ENLOW: PARENTS WANT EDUCATION CHOICE

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

After COVID restrictions proved detrimental to our children, the interest in education choice has surged among parents and families. Robert Enlow, CEO of EdChoice, discusses the voucher system, why we should fund students and not systems, and the role of the American Federation of Teachers during COVID.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

I'm here with Robert Enloe, president and CEO of Ed Choice. Here at the Highwire, we've been really, one of our front foot forward was educational choice for parents. Tell me about Ed Choice. Tell me about the work you're doing to help parents really have this choice. So first of all, I love that you brought that up because I think what we learned in the pandemic is parents had a new cultural connection with education that they hadn't had in a long time. Right? The connection had been, I send my kids to school.

And now they had this connection with, oh, I see what my kids are learning because I'm looking over their shoulder. And when they look over their shoulder, they're saying to themselves, wait a minute, that's not necessarily what I think. So Ed Choice is an organization started by Milton Friedman, whose job is to make sure parents have the freedom to choose whatever learning environment they want. And we're into such a unique inflection point right now because parents are saying, we want the power, we want the control, we want customization, we want hybridization.

And for all of the, I'm going to say, all the horrible things that happened during the pandemic, Is this a silver lining where it has driven so many parents to start now rethinking why are they putting these kids in schools? When we started at Ed Choice in 1996, there were only six school choice programs operating in four states. Now there are 78 programs operating in 32 states in D.C., and that was before the pandemic, right? And then the pandemic comes along, and it just takes it over the tipping point. Ohio just became the seventh state to universally apply this educational choice. And that's through a voucher system of my understanding. Explain to people what that means.

Think about it this way. We as taxpayers collect public funds in order to educate children. Traditionally, we send those public funds to a school district, right? A public school based on where you live and you have to go. Choice programs operate like this.

I spend public money to a parent to go to a private school. Or I spend public money to a parent to customize their education. So it doesn't have to be a private school. It could be a public school. It could be an online school. It could be a tutor or curriculum

versus a voucher, which is basically saying, Hey, we want you to have freedom of choice. You have a charter, you have a public, and now you have a private option. Let me get your view on the American Federation of Teachers, because this is an organization that we reported on quite a bit, because they were really one of the barriers to getting these kids back in school. They were, we saw through internal emails in 2021. They had their hand directly verbatim into the CDC, crafting the language for reopening,

quote unquote, schools. Monoplies are bad in whatever form they are, whether they're government-run schools, whether they're big companies, or whether they're union. And yes, the union at the AFT was a problem for parents. They got in the way of parents. They stood in the doorway and said, we want you to do what we want you to do rather than letting parents have choices. So what I think the AFT is mired in is a really old way of thinking. Yeah, yeah. They're not thinking for their customers and their parents. They're thinking for their teachers.

And that's what their job is. So educational choice seems like such a common sense idea. What kind of opposition are you getting from this? Opposition comes from a lot of different areas. Do we have opposition even from traditional Republicans? Certain urban Democrats don't support it. The real opposition comes from teachers' unions, however. What gives you hope in your view, in your focal point,

what gives you hope that we're moving in the right direction? The hope I get nowadays is this is becoming, starting to happen without groups like mine. Right? It's starting to happen on its own individually. The rise of microschooling, the rise of pods, the rise of hybrid customization, the rise of ESAs. All this is coming because the new message and the right message which has always been what it should have been is

we should be pro parent wonderful thank you so much for sitting down thanks chairman Jeff right thanks thank you Jeff all right thanks