The Texan Podcast - Interview: Corey DeAngelis on Texas School Choice Proposals

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

See the full interview exclusively at The Texan.School choice advocate and senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, Corey DeAngelis, joined The Texan reporter Cameron Abrams to discuss the ongoing push for school choice policies in Texas. DeAngelis talked about the momentum the school choice movement is enjoying across the nation, the hesitation that rural lawmakers often have despite conservative support for the policy, and how similar proposals have fared in other states. “There's a one-size-fits-all disaster called the government school system that by definition is just never going to meet the needs of individual parents who  are just going to disagree about how they want their kids raised,” said DeAngelis. Exclusively for The Texan subscribers in the video below, DeAngelis also discussed the prospects of a special legislative session in light of a vote in the Texas House suggesting a majority of representatives may oppose the current proposals under consideration. DeAngelis also compared the situation in Texas to that in Iowa, where Governor Kim Reynolds went on the offensive in primary elections against Republican lawmakers who opposed her school choice proposal. “This isn’t the only example of where things like this have happened, but this is the closest example and the most recent example that Texas Republicans in the House should be considering,” said DeAngelis. Watch the full interview here: https://thetexan.news/video-corey-deangelis-on-school-choice-proposals-in-texas/ Get a free one-month subscription: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/

Hi folks, this is Cameron Abrams, reporter with The Texan. Today I interviewed Cora DeAngelis, a school choice advocate and senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, who has been actively pushing for school choice reform here in Texas during the legislative session. We talked about the momentum on the issue across the country and how it compares to Texas, the opposition from members in rural areas, and exclusively for our subscribers watching at thetexan.news, the prospect of a special session on the issue, how members' votes could play a role in the next election, and the similarities between the push for school choice in Texas

and the push for choice here in Texas. Corey, thanks for joining me today. Hey Cameron, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, so I just wanted to start with getting your perspective on why school choice now? What has caused the momentum for school choice here in Texas, do you think? Well, Votie Bauckham said it best. We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans. Well, the good news is over the past couple of years, the parents are no longer surprised. The so-called remote learning, which we really should have just called remotely learning because there wasn't a lot of learning going on, that was pushed by the teachers unions all across the country to secure multiple multi-billion

dollar ransom payments from the taxpayers because they were able to say, well, we're closed because we need more money. And they got so much funding in so-called COVID relief since March of 2020, it's ridiculous. But parents got to see what was going on in the classroom. And they also got to see that the education establishment didn't care about their needs all that much because the private schools were open in the same cities that you had the public schools closed. And the silver lining, as I alluded to, is that families got to see another dimension of school quality that's arguably much more important than anything that could be captured by a standardized test, which is whether the school's curriculum aligns with their values. And so there's been a monumental push all across the country for school choice in the past couple of years. We've actually had six states go all in

on school choice. And what I mean by that is that every single student, every single family can take their children's education dollars to the education provider of their choosing. That could be the public school. If you like your public school, you can keep your public school. But for real this time, unlike with your doctor. But if not, you could take that funding in states like Arizona that first started this last year to a private school, a charter school or a home based education option. West Virginia also did this. And then this year alone, there were four states that went universal, Iowa, Utah, Arkansas,

and most recently Florida, with Florida's House having all Republicans vote in favor and even four Democrats. It was an 83 to 27 vote, overwhelmingly pushing for universal school choice. And we're seeing this mostly in red states engaging in this competition, this friendly competition to empower all families with school choice. So the argument has shifted for school choice. It used to be more so about the public schools in low-income areas had failing test scores, which is still important. That's an important argument for families needing to get out of a failing academic situation for their kids. But now you have parents who thought their kids were in good public schools,

seeing that there's something else going on here too, which is more likely to mobilize parents than anything that can be captured by math or reading test scores, which is families likely to mobilize parents than anything that can be captured by math reading test scores, which is families not wanting to send their kids to institutions where they're being indoctrinated in values that aren't aligned with their own for 13 years. I mean, parents don't want that. So they're pushing back. And there's no there's no other solution. I mean, there's, there's been some solutions proposed, uh, to fix this kind of curriculum misalignment problem in the schools. And most of them have been from the top down to, to ban certain topics or to, to promote others. But the, the, that doesn't get to the root of the problem, which is that there's a one size fits all disaster called the government school

system that by definition is just never going to meet the needs of individual parents who are just going to disagree about how they want their kids raised. And the only way forward through freedom as opposed to force is to fund the student directly, empower parents to choose institutions that align with their values. And at the same time, that competition could lead to the public schools focusing more on education as opposed to indoctrination. Yeah. And you touched on something I wanted to ask you about actually is because school choice is not a new idea. Many states for a long time have attempted to get legislation passed related to school choice. We've seen them labeled as education savings accounts, vouchers, scholarship programs. But you use a very notable phrase

in regards to school choice, funds, students, not systems, right? Can you talk about why you use that phrasing and the importance of the use of language when communicating what school choice is. So it's more transparent. When someone says school choice, you don't really know exactly what they're talking about. But when you say fund students, not systems, it gets into the mind of the listener, the concept of the funding following the child. That's what we're pushing for with education savings accounts to have the money meant for the child to follow them to wherever they want to get an education, to literally fund the student, not the institution. And this also puts the other side on defense right away, because if I'm saying fund students, not systems, well, if you want to argue with me, you have to

try to figure out why we should fund the system and not the student. And so it reveals the other side's preference or prioritization of institutions over the children, which really doesn't help them make their case. And then also when you talk about it in terms of funding students, not systems, it's not just more transparent, doesn't just keep you on offense, but it also allows you to bring in analogies of other programs that opponents of school choice support, but only when it comes to everything else. So we fund students directly with Pell Grants for higher education. We do the same thing with the Texas Equalization Grant. You could take that funding, which is taxpayer or so-called public funding that can be used at private religious or non-religious institutions. The funding literally follows the decision of the

student. With pre-K initiatives, you have the Head Start program and other county or state level pre-K initiatives that allow taxpayer public, so-called public dollars that can be used at private religious or non-religious pre-K providers. We do the same thing with food stamps. You can use food stamp dollars at HEB if you want, but you could also take it to Walmart or Trader Joe's, any other private institution that provides groceries. We don't force low-income families to take their food stamp dollars to residentially assigned government-run providers of groceries. That would be absolutely ridiculous. And whether you're for or against food stamps, we can all agree that we're going to spend the money. It might as well go to people and to let the people

decide for their own families which institutions offer the best product at the lowest price. And all I'm arguing with school choice is that we apply that same logic to K-12 education to fund the families and not the buildings. Right. And we have a few different school choice plans proposed here in Texas. One that has a lot of steam behind it is the Senate's plan, Lieutenant Governor's plan for SB8, which has some provisions built into it, like a carve out for rural districts. Talk about why do you think rural districts have been a bit apprehensive about school choice? Why do you think that is? Well, first of all, this is the most ridiculous argument I've ever heard against school choice. It's more of an excuse for Republicans to side with the establishment and vote against their party platform issue, which is also a top eight Texas GOP legislative priority this session. And Governor Abbott has been pushing it harder than I've seen any governor ever push for an education savings account initiative across the country. So I just want to mention Governor Abbott's efforts this year have been heroic, and he's fighting for

it as hard as possible, even making school choice and education freedom an emergency item this session. But from some of these Republicans will say in their justification for voting against their party platform issue and trapping kids in failing government schools, they'll try to make the two arguments that are logically incompatible with one another. And they'll try to say that because I'm in a rural area, I don't have to vote for this. And they'll say on the one hand, well, you know, they'll actually say the quote, the public school is the only option. We don't have any other options. We have this great public school in my rural area. And then in the next breath,

with a straight face, they'll try to tell you that giving families a choice is going to decimate our fantastic rural public schools in my community. Well, one, if they're fantastic, you should have nothing to worry about from a little competition. But then two, if there really is no other option in your area, you're not going to lose any money at all from your public schools because one, they're great. And two, if it's true that there's no exit options, public schools are funded based on enrollment counts. If you don't lose any students and parents continue to send their children there, you should be the last area legislator arguing against school choice on the basis that it's defunding the public schools.

These are the least likely areas to be defunded. And then if you just look at other states that are more rural than Texas and legislators in those states in more rural areas than in Texas, they vote for it and they had no problems with their rural public schools. They haven't been decimated. Public schools actually get better in states where school choice has been expanded. So you have, uh, I've tweeted out the 10 most rural states in the country according to census bureau data west virginia being one of them they have a universal school choice education savings account program they're fine maine and vermont they actually had the oldest voucher

programs in the country in maine and vermont they started in the late 1800s called town tuitioning programs that were explicitly designed for students in rural areas that didn't have public schools. They gave vouchers to those students. They're still on the books today. These programs are still being used. And if you didn't have a public school in your rural area, they saw a need for having more choices because there weren't a lot of choices. So they gave the funding directly to the families to direct to another public school in another area, a nearby area, or to a private provider of education as well. So we've been doing this for over a hundred years in this country in rural areas and it's been fine. And most recently, a couple of weeks ago, North Dakota, they didn't have any private school choice or charter schools

until this year. They just passed through both chambers. It's awaiting signature by the governor soon, but they passed their first private school choice program in the state of North Dakota. So the top 10 most rural states have school choice. That's not an excuse. You look into Texas, you look at Republican primary voters on the ballot. 88% of Texas Republican primary voters support school choice on the ballot in March of 2022. That's up nine percentage points since it was last on the ballot for the Republicans in Texas in 2018, when there was 79% support, which is still high, but there's been a surge in just the past few years alone. And then if you look at the University of Houston polling that recently came out, if anything, Texans in rural areas are more supportive of

universal school choice than Texas in non-rural areas. So this has just been a ridiculous excuse to side with the teachers unions, to side with Randy Weingarten and the leftists, and to vote against Republican issue for those who are already backed by those groups. And look, the Texas Senate already passed the Senate Bill 18 to 13 with all Republicans except for one in favor. The Texas House should be able to do it too. Look at the numbers. I mean, look at Arizona that was the first state to do this last year as far as empowering all families with school choice going universal. They passed their bill with one seat GOP majorities in both chambers. That meant every single Republican had to show up and vote for their party platform issue in the state of Arizona to unlock education freedom for all families there. Texas should

be able to do the same thing. Well, that's one of the things I wanted to ask you about is because you've been instrumental across the country helping get school choice passed. And we saw one conservative state, Wyoming, not able to get school choice passed. And we saw one conservative state, Wyoming, not able to get school choice passed. And I saw a recent report that many of the states that are overwhelmingly Republican or conservative, they are actually voting more moderate as opposed to what the party platform might be. So why do you think some of these more conservative states where their party platform or their constituents are pushing for school choice, but their legislators aren't putting the votes up? Well, you look at Wyoming.

I mean, they passed theirs through their Senate, universal school choice. We're expecting this to be a major victory. And then in the House, they had a majority of the chamber sign on as co-sponsors. So we knew we had the votes. I mean, that's a lower bound of what the true yes votes would be in that chamber. If you had a majority already co-sponsoring, you had the votes to pass it. The speaker in Wyoming unilaterally killed school choice for every single family in the state of Wyoming. So leadership can be an issue in some

states. And there are some red states that haven't passed school choice. We're not winning everywhere. But if you look at the momentum we've had this year, 2023 is the best year for school choice we've ever had. And Texas's neighbor to the north, Oklahoma, each chamber has passed one in their house. They passed 75 to 25 vote in Oklahoma, a universal school choice bill for private school choice. And then in their Senate, they passed by overwhelming majority. I think it was like 27 to six. It's close to that number. It might not be exact, but their Senate passed an expansive private school choice initiative that would cover, I want to say, over 80% of parents based on income in the state of Oklahoma. And so they're going to decide which

of those proposals goes forward. South Carolina's Senate passed a new education savings account program. It's now being considered in the House. Nebraska finally reached their two-thirds filibuster-proof majority in their unicameral to pass their first private school choice program on second reading. It has one more time to go through their unicameral before it goes to the governor, who's a strong supporter of school choice in Nebraska. I can go over more examples, but there's a universal school choice proposal in North Carolina and their Senate. They have a veto-proof majority signed on as co-sponsors, all the Republicans signed on as co-sponsors in the North Carolina Senate. So a lot more to watch

out for. A lot of states moving the ball down the field. These are red states doing so. But there have been some failures. If you look at Georgia, their Republican-controlled legislature passed it through their Senate with all Republicans in favor by a vote of 32 to 22, I believe. And then it went over to the House, where 16 Republicans sided with the Democrats who cheered when the vote came out. All the Democrats were cheering for those 16 Republicans who joined them in blocking school choice. It ended up getting blocked by a handful of votes overall in do i think with in in deep red states the teachers unions are dumb in a lot of ways but they're smart in some ways and in one of those ways when it comes to elections and controlling the outcomes uh in state legislatures and to protect their monopoly they're a special interest it's what they do for for a. It's their whole purpose of existence to protect their interests. And in red states, they know they're not going to get Democrat majority. So they fight really hard, at least in one chamber, to get enough fake

Republicans to kill school choice bills. They'll find someone to run in primaries that seem conservative on other issues, but then when it really comes down to it, they are staunch advocates of trapping kids and failing government schools. And so I think we've seen that in some states. There have been a number of legislators in the Texas House who have been endorsed or funded by teachers unions, some of them who have sent their own kids to private school, but then fight against it for others. And so that's part of the issue here. But also, I believe, you know, Texas hasn't gotten it done in the past because there hasn't been as much of a push as there has been now. I mean, in 2017, the Senate passed an ESA bill, which was great. But then when it moved over to the House, it quietly died,

and there wasn't a lot of commotion about it. I mean, I was upset about it. I testified in favor of that bill in 2017. And, you know, a lot of families who really wanted it were upset. But there wasn't as big of a groundswell support as what we're seeing this year. And another game changer is that Governor Abbott, again, is really pushing the issue, making an emergency item. And I believe the Senate and the governor are willing to play hardball to get something across the finish line this year. Hopefully they don't have to. Hopefully the house just does the right thing and votes for what their

constituents actually want. And I mean, it's even worse than pointing out Republicans that might vote against it. It's Democrats should vote for it too. I mean, Republicans, Democrats, and independent support school choice. You have the chair of the House Democrats, Trey Martinez Fisher. He went to a private school before high school. He sent his kids to private school. And then he came out and made some very strong statements against Abbott saying something along the lines of, you know, if vouchers are Abbott's dream, we're his worst nightmare. He said something along those lines. But it's, you exercise school choice for your family. And that's great. I don't have anything wrong with that. I don't blame you for that. Every single family should find the best education for their kids, whether that's in a public school, a private school, or even a homeschool or charter school option.

That's up to you that you should choose the best for your kids. But then you shouldn't say that you're for helping the little guy or helping the least advantage in society and then turn around and close the door right behind you and tell those low income families that they're that they just got to go to a school in their in their name that they're assigned to based on their address. You have some families in Texas that and other states, too. This isn't only a Texas thing that lie about their addresses to try to get their kids into into better so-called public schools that is so inequitable it squanders equality of opportunity uh assigning kids to schools just based on their address and forcing

those families to take that funding that's meant for their child to that school regardless of whether they like it or not and if they don don't like it, they got to move houses, which is very costly to do to get to a better public school, or they have to pay out of pocket to get a religious education that's aligned with their values. Why should only the most advantaged in society have that? Democrats should be all for this. They should be all for school choice as an equalizer. They're for it for their own families. They should be for it for other families, primarily less advantaged families at the same time. Funding students directly as an equalizer, it expands equality of opportunity. This shouldn't be a partisan issue. You look at the polling, it is not a partisan issue. You look at the Texas polling, you look at the latest real clear opinion research polling nationwide, finding super majority support among Republicans, Democrats, and independents for school choice. Texas should be able to get it done. Who knows, maybe there will be some Democrats in the House who go for it. Okay, folks, thanks for listening to the free portion of today's interview.

Corey and I also chatted about the prospects of a special session and how the stances of elected officials now might also play a role at the ballot box. That portion of the interview is exclusive to our subscribers at The Texan and can be found at the link in the description of this episode. As usual, if you're not already a subscriber,

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