School choice awareness foundation. Thank you for joining us. Guest thank you so much for having me. Host a little bit about your organization, how does it work and how are you funded . Guest our mission is to raise Public Awareness of all types of School Choice. That includes traditional Public Schools, public Charter Schools, public magnet schools, private schools and online learning. The way we do that is through Charitable Programs. The first is National School choice week which is held every january. We work with 22,000 countries across the country, 59 of them are Public Schools. They enroll 53 million children. What they do during School Choice week, they hold open houses to let families know that they exist and what they offer. So that families can access School Choice options in their communities. The second Charitable Program is School Navigation resources. We develop and promote the nations largest resources that want to access their resources. People can go online to School Choice week. Com and get all of these resources in english and spanish. So many families want practical, unbiased information. We are funded by private foundations, and individuals. Host when it comes to School Choice, when someone says that term they think School Choice means Public School versus everything else. Is that something that you are seeing . Guest School Choice is every option that a parent has or wants to have for their daughter or son. That includes district schools that people can access through open enrollment plans. Tuition free public Charter Schools, that includes magnet schools that are theme based focused on map, and the performing arts. It includes online Public Schools which are available half of states. Private School Choice programs and it includes homeschooling. The freedom to choose to educate their kids at the home. We are talking about the broadest spectrum of options and we are not favoring any one type of option over another. Host in 13 states, parents can select any Public School, in 18 states, they are forced to participate in open enrollment, how has that changed over the years . Guest we have seen incredible changes in access to different types of schools over the past 30, 35 years. The modern day School ChoiceMovement Began in 1990 in milwaukee, wisconsin. A small group of black parents worked together with democratic and republican lawmakers to create a program that would allow lowincome families to Access Private schools for their kids who otherwise would not be able to afford those programs. In minnesota, in 19 92, Public School teachers rallied with lawmakers created a public Charter School. From there, we have seen an incredible growth in School Choice options. More School Districts are allowing open Enrollment Programs. Its the opportunity for a mom or dad to choose another traditional Public School that might be outside their zone or district. In 13 states, there is unrestricted open enrollment. A parent can choose any Public School within that state which is incredibly exciting. We have seen the growth in Charter Schools. We have seen more than half of u. S. States create private School Choice programs. I talk about those programs, they allow families to tap into Tuition Assistance to afford private education for their kids. More than half of u. S. States have online Public Schools that are tuition free providing students with the technology in order to access these programs. We have seen homeschooling expand with states allowing more opportunities for homeschoolers such as the ability to participate in sports. Host our guest is with us until 8 45, we divided the lines differently parents 202 7488000, if you are an educator 202 7488001 in online for others 202 7488003 you can also text us. I know Public Schools are a part of this. If you invite all of these avenue for kids to go elsewhere do you dilute the power of a Public School elsewhere . Guest no, not at all. If you really expand School Choice and you expanded across the board and make sure that there are a variety of option for families you will see an increase in support for Public Education. When we talked to parents and asked them what types of schools would you choose for your kids the plurality would choose a school in their district but outside of their zone. When you give them more publicsector options it will lead to a higher base of funding. Host you talked about private schools, 30 states are offering scholarships to private schools. 21 states offering scholarship programs, one state offering a deduction program. Why should funds be applied in this manner particularly if you have the ability to send your kid to private school in the first place . Guest you may have the ability to, do you have the resources in the access to those schools . Really, having the ability to do something and be able to do something are completely different. We dont want to create a system where lower income families are denied the opportunity to choose education environments that meet their childrens needs that these parents have determined are in the best interest of their kids and will help advance their kids lives simply because those parents dont make enough money to afford private school tuition. These programs, the ones that you referred to, once a real research, these programs allow families to be able to make those choices if they want to. Host arizona recently put into law an avenue for parents a new resource for parents. Guest they passed the education savings program. They can tap into the savings allocation for that student. They can get 90 of what the state would allocate to that students education. They have to sign a contract with the state saying that they will unroll their child from the Public Education system. They can then use the funds which are about 7,000 to choose from a menu of different options. They can pay for private school tuition. They can pay for qualifying online classes for their students. They can pay for resources to develop a customized Education System which homeschooling families do. This program was passed recently and enacted several days ago. If you go on the arizona education website you can see what families can do with those funds. There are some limits. They cant spend that money for anything they want, there are specific things improve by the state. Host the editors of the Arizona Republic say that it is troubling they did not oppose the same standards on private schools as is required on district Charter Schools. Private schools are not mandated to make testing Data Available or report learning gaps. Lawmakers will need to see if esas will receive any semblance of public trust. Guest they all have different rules and regulations students can accept scholarships, need to take state tests. These are decisions that are left up to legislatures. They are left up to lawmakers. We are not involved in any legislating advocacy. Ultimately, it is up to a parent whether or not the school is working for her or his children. Host Andrew Campanella of the citizens for responsibility ethics. Colorado springs, colorado a parent is on the line. Caller good morning andrew. For families who dont have education options that they feel that they need for their student, how can they advocate for more options, what is your advice for pushing for more Educational Opportunities for their children . Guest i encourage all families to check out the options that may be available in their state. A lot of families that we talked to dont realize how many options are actually available. See what is out there, our website has a lot of information that helps you navigate the process. The second thing i would say is, if parents want more options they should have their voices heard and they should explain why and they should tell their personal stories about why they want School Choice and why they need more options. How their childrens lives would benefit if they had additional options. The powerful testimonies of individual parents and families about why they want School Choice are what created this movement in the first place. Host she called from colorado springs, do you think a place like that would have options . Guest colorado recently expanded Transportation Options and transportation funding for students to attend public Charter Schools. That is something other states can look to as a model. We need to make sure that people can actually get to the schools. That is something our team is working on researching and analyzing. They have a thriving Public School charter sector. They have a variety of tuition free online schools. They dont have a private School Choice program. Host a retired educator from vincent, ohio. Caroline in ohio. Caller hello . Can you hear me . Hello . I just have a comment. I was born and raised in columbus, ohio. I went to columbus Public Schools and i was part of the School District that had their strike in 1975. I loved Public School back then and i loved education while i did it. I want to admit that i have done a 180. I think people should have a choice. I worked with differently abled students and i could see where they would benefit from other types of school systems. I also have had friends send me information about columbus Public Schools in the videos that i am seeing of water gushing through the ceilings breaks my heart. All of that has helped me to decide that yes, we need more choices. I still want to support the teachers in columbus, ohio that are on strike. I think the teachers of columbus, ohio, for that. Host mr. Campanella. Guest what you described, your experience and education and your support for School Choice is what i hear from around the country. They support Public Education because they realize that students are not onesizefitsall. One student who lives in the same street may be better served in a Charter School or on line school. That does not mean there is anything wrong with the Public School. That does not mean there is anything wrong with the kid. It just means the student is better served in their interests, talents and challenges are better addressed in the school that their parent has chosen for them. You talked about conditions in schools and i want to point out that School Choice is a solution to fixing conditions in a Public School that needs to be fixed. We do need to make sure that all schools in this country regardless of type are well maintained, and provide a healthy and safe atmosphere for students. Host you probably heard this argument from twitter, not one tax dollar should be sent to religious schools. We are a secular society. We sent our daughter to a Catholic School but we paid for it. How do you respond to that argument . Guest look at the discussion we are having about student loan forgiveness. They have never said anything about whether or not the student who got a loan to attend a private or religious college would not be eligible for it. I have never heard anyone argue that a pell grant for a student to attend a religious university should not be offered. We cannot distinguish between right and wrong types of schools. Those are decisions that parents need to make based on their own children and their own values. If we are going to have one standard for higher education, where families and kids can choose any school that works for them. But a different standard for k12, thats wrong. Host but isnt that a different argument. That is state dollars. Are those two different arguments . Guest no i am talking about loans that are sponsored by the federal government. We spin the of dollars a year on Community Colleges in state run colleges and institutions and we also spend money to provide governmentsponsored loans as well as grants for students to attend private colleges and universities. Host but you are talking tax dollars that would become a voucher to a private school . Guest when you look at a voucher for private school in a pell grant they are almost identical. Caller you might have already answered this question. I just want to ask, i am for School Choice. Can you provide some data or statistics on how School Choice or Charter Schools have helped low income kids are kids and bad areas. I am from the baltimore area. Or provide some information on how when these kids go to Charter Schools or they are provided School Choice they get a better education in their lives turn out better . Thank you. Guest the reason we do this work is because we want to see students have every opportunity to succeed. What we know based on research is that when parents actively choose schools and learning environments for their kids, students succeed in school at higher rates than when parents dont actively choose their schools. It doesnt matter what type of school they choose, just the act of going through the process and making the decision is what matters. What we see is, if a parent participates in open enrollment or a public Charter School or send their kid to a private school or homeschooling, the fact that they exercise their options leads to higher student graduation rates, Higher College exception rates, higher lifetime earnings and all the things we want out of education. Host we saw students staying home during the covid years. How do you think that changed the School Choice debate . Guest for the First Time Ever in history every parent in this country was intently focused on their kids education all at the same time and they had to make decisions all at the same time about their kids education. Whether or not they will participate in remote learning. Whether or not they could participate in remote learning. They got to see exactly what their kids were learning in the classroom. They had this heightened level of awareness about what was going on in schools that every family thought about at the same time. Education is one of the most discussed topics in our Popular Culture right now. Number two, we saw parents who were forced to make decisions saying that they want more options. They want to never be in a position where they felt stuck again. Sending their child to a school where they had policies they didnt agree with. Parents have a lot of opinions on education right now because they were all intently focused on it during the pandemic. There has been a ton of learning loss as a result of the pandemic that needs to be addressed. This learning loss has had black and hispanic students the worst. 45 months of learning loss. That is significant. Host earl from detroit, michigan. Caller the previous caller was asking a rhetorical question he already knew the answer to. Communities that were underserved. My personal experience when my kids were of schoolage with School Choice, a lot of the Public Schools in the area had closed. A lot of Catholic Schools closed down to because of the Catholic Church scandal. The only choice i had was to send my kid to Charter Schools. I looked at Charter Schools as a hussle. The quality of the teachers within those schools, they didnt even have to be state certified. A lot of the kids that were in the schools, they were suburban young white kids. They did not know anything about black culture. They could not really associate with the kids. Some of those teachers were crying in classrooms because they could not deal with black students. My son was saying the teacher was crying in front of the classroom. At the end of the day, that program where you go into an Underserved Community to get your College Tuition paid off. A lot of those teachers were going to Charter Schools to get there College Loans paid off. Host got to caller, thank you very much. Guest i am sorry for your experience. Im sorry you didnt have more choices. Every student in every family needs to be treated with dignity and respect and be truly accepted in a classroom. I am sorry you had that experience. I know many other families that have had positive experience with Charter Schools. But every parents story as their own. Host the Supreme Court had a case involving the schools in maine. Guest carson v maine is a ruling in relation to a private School Choice program in the state of maine. In maine, there are some areas where there are no Public Schools serving specific grade levels. What the state has done is provide families living in those areas without schools provide students with scholarships to attend private schools. How can the state make a restriction on this . The Supreme Court said if you have a private School Choice program and you will give families scholarships you cannot tell families that they cannot choose faithbased schools. You cant force them to choose faithbased schools. You have to give them the widest variety of options available. The Immediate Impact is limited to states that have similar programs and those states are maine, vermont. Families in maine are still in a bit of uncertainty because the state needs to promulgate regulations to let these families make these choices that the Supreme Court said they could make. We are doing research on that so that families can figure this out. A lot of them are still confused about how this decision will benefit them. You asked about broader implications. In the future, what this says is that when the state designs its School Choice program it cannot exclude religious schools. It is important not to expand the true meaning beyond what they said. Host Andrew Campanella with National School choice awareness foundation. Lets hear from carrie from wisconsin. Carrie and wisconsin. Caller an earlier collar, hello . An earlier caller already asked my question which was as their data that suggest that going to going to Charter School gives you a better education because i know there are dismal results from Public Schools as far as rankings in the world. It is not so much the school but parental involvement. It seems a shame to me that in all these discussion on education we are not allowed to bring that up anymore. My father, before he retired worked in the milwaukee Public School system all his life. Every year he would get in trouble with the administration because he flunked too many children. He was a math teacher, they cant add two plus two. That is just dooming children to failure. When you pass them along and they are not prepared. During the pandemic, our children have gotten further behind in areas like math and science. In other School Choices bes ides Public Schools, children are being passed along when they are not ready to be passed along. Host we got your question carrie, thank you. Guest let me clarify about what i said about the success of School Choice programs. The data does show that regardless of what type of school a parent chooses for their daughter or son, students are likely to do better when parents are empowered to choose their school. But you have to have the School Choice programs and you have to empower families to be involved at the beginning of the childs education by choosing their school, im making a good decision for their child based on their own childs needs and challenges. For the family to truly be empowered to choose the environment and truly be involved in their kids education. As far as social promotion is concerned, where schools are encouraging teachers to past students who would otherwise be failing. That is a very real problem and it is a real problem across the board. I dont have specific data to share with you but i understand what you are talking about and i know teachers do as well. No teacher wants to be in a position where they are promoting a student who they know who has not really grasped or understood the subject matter. No teacher wants to hold a student back because they understand it has implications beyond that childs learning. Schools need to address it on the school to school basis. Host there is a journalistic outfit called education next the did a survey, they asked a question about supporting or opposing homeschooling. There was strong support from the public. How do you think homeschooling has changed since the inception . Guest homeschooling is the original School Choice. Its what people did before there were brickandmortar schools. Homeschooling has grown ever since. Even with the advent of more school options. How it is changed is that there are more supports for homeschooling families and ever before. If you are parent who wants to homeschool their kids there are a lot of cooperatives out there whether in person or online that will help you go through the process and explain exactly what you need to do to opt your child out of their existing school or file the appropriate paperwork with the state to start the process. There are a lot of free online courses that parents can tap into. If they are confident in teaching their kids history, english or they are concerned about physics they can tap into free courses that can help them teach physics. There are a lot more supports out there than ever before and homeschooling is growing each year by 3 . Host how would you respond to a question about the quality of that kind of education versus a Charter School, private school or whatever . Guest you need to look at the data, the situation and you can see that with homeschooling families they actually have increased College Acceptance rates. Increased scores on sats and other metrics that are objective. Host michael is joining us from california. Caller good morning pedro, i would love your opinion on betsy devos. When the teachers went on strike, she did nothing to fight for those teachers while we pay professional athletes tens of millions of dollars and teachers get 50 grand a year. Second question is, did you go to Public School . Thank you sir. Guest thank you for your question. I went to Public School from kindergarten to 12th grade. I had a great experience and i value what i learned from my Public Education every single day. The highest percentage of schools that we work with and participate in that program are traditional Public Schools. We have relationships with some of the nations largest Public School districts. I consider myself a strong supporter of Public Schools. What you see about people on the news and what you read about in the newspaper is not always reflective of their values. Betsy devos has always stood up for School Choice. Host what do you think school face as they deal with issues of covid. They have received money from the federal government to deal with covid, what are they face . Guest it is an ongoing challenge that they are dealing with. When there arent enough School Drivers to take them to school. They feel this when their kids get covid and have to stay home from school for a. Of time. We can move on as a country broadly from the dangerous threat that existed beginning of the pandemic but it will still cause disruptions. We will have to figure it out and make sure that students are healthy and safe and also recognize that we cant sweep learning loss under the rug because we dont want a whole generation of students to graduate from high School Without the requisite skills that they need. Host from wisconsin we will hear from the parent. Caller good morning mr. Campanella. I really appreciate your diligence with important questions of the day. I was on a school board for 15 years and my children both went to Public Schools. I went to private school for four years and then i went to Public School for the rest of my career. My question is, in my view as a school board member. Funding for Public Education is not a zerosum game. When you take funds away, and i am familiar with the funding system in wisconsin for Public Schools and you give it to other entities whether it be parents or Charter Schools or distancelearning situations, it can potentially take away from the ability of Public Schools to educate their students. In wisconsin, Public Schools must take anyone in the district. They cant not take someone and that is not the case for charter or private schools. My question to you is, how do you think that will affect in the long run, in a country that has had free Public Education almost from its inception, the socialization of children into the society and thank you. I will listen for my answer. Guest i want to thank you for your service on the school board. I know it is not easy to serve on a school board from the folks i know who have served on such boards. Thank you for your commitment to Public Education. You said that funding is not a zerosum game and i agree with you. But you then said that it kind of is a zerosum game and that if a dollar is available it should go to a Public School or it would go somewhere else. What i would say is, lets fully fund all schools to make sure that they can serve the students in those schools based on the schools parents have chosen for their schools. I encourage folks to think about this in the context of their individual communities. You likely have a variety of different parks. Maybe you have a park where you can hike, maybe you of a park where you can for shack. People dont go to City Council Meetings that the skate park is taking away from the hiking part. You should have a variety of Educational Options that should be available to all students. One school may be good for one student but it might not be a good fit for the other student. Host you are asked about betsy devos, what do you think about the Biden Administration stance . Guest i think that School Choice is a state issue. When we look at the history of School Choice and the success that states have made an expanding options for families, what we see is that successful and replicable School Choice programs always come from statelevel actions. Whether it is open Enrollment Programs that allow people to choose Public Schools. Whether it is theme based magnet schools in different homeschooling access laws. All of these programs and policies originated in states and have been expanded in other states. These are the incubators of education policy and i think that is where the decisionmaking should go. Host we have shauna in maryland. Caller thank you so much for taking my call. I just have one question, just about ensuring that schools are up to standard of the national level. Is there anything being done federally to ensure that . I have gone to many kinds of schools. I grew up in wisconsin. I was educated there. I got my undergraduate degree there. One thing i saw a lot was thick kids were doing really well k 12. They got to college were not ready at all. Is there anything being done to ensure that her children are receiving the same standard of education. The same quality of schooling . Guest you asked a really good question and that is what is the federal government doing to make sure that the money spent on education is producing good outcomes for students . The federal governments role in education is limited. Its limited to the amounts of money and gifts to the states. What is done over the years is that it is tried to put restraints on that money and less they meet certain benchmarks. Every state has submitted and approved the plan, a contract that says in exchange for receiving federal dollars, states must meet certain benchmarks to advance certain goals. That is where there is some level of federal involvement. But most standards are set at a state level. Instruction and curriculum is set at the state and school level. Most of the decision with the exception of federal dollars are statelevel decisions. Host this is Andrew Campanella with the National School choice awareness foundation. Candidates had to say following the results. [cheers and applause] rep. Maloney thank you, thank you. Thank you. I first want to give thanks to team maloney, the campaign team, my volunteers, all my good friends. Some of you have been with me for many years and some of you, this was your first campaign. Your support has been tremendous throughout the earlier elections and throughout this race