Join Priscilla Rahn as she hosts Dr. Corey DeAngelis, a leading voice in the school choice movement. In this episode, Corey outlines the challenges and triumphs of advocating for education reform, highlighting the historical context of school choice, and the profound influence of libertarian ideologies on his work. Delve deep into Corey’s philosophy on education and discover the urgent need for systemic change in America’s education landscape.
Welcome to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Rahn. She’s a master educator and author leading the conversation to restore the American mind through wisdom, virtue, and truth.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, hello, hello, everybody. Welcome back to Restoring Education in America. I’m your host, Priscilla Rahn. I have an amazing guest today, and I’m so glad that you’re going to hear from someone that we call the mega school choice evangelist. Let’s welcome Dr. Corey DeAngelis. Hi.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hey, Priscilla. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, thanks for being on today. You are an amazing advocate for school choice. What first inspired you to pursue this passion of education, freedom and school choice?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I actually started as a researcher. I did a PhD in education policy at the University of Arkansas, and my first study there linked the Milwaukee Private School Choice Program to a long-term outcome that was understudied, which is whether you are involved in the criminal justice system. And my co-author and I found statistically significant, pretty large positive effects of if you get an opportunity to go to a private school using a scholarship program, they were substantially less likely to commit crimes later on in life. And so that kind of thrust me into the national conversation. I’ve since done about 40 peer reviewed articles, mostly on the topic of school choice. And I thought I was going to go into academia. And then I saw that would be an uphill battle. The peers in the peer review process were more like my enemies, so I went somewhere where I’d be rewarded for my ideas as opposed to being punished. I went into think tanks, and I really got into this as a libertarian. I’ve – had anti-government sentiments for a long time. And I saw that the government school system was probably the most socialist institution that we have in America today. I mean, the guy who won the New York City mayor’s race, Ma’am Donnie, he wants the government to run the grocery stores And maybe some people are OK with that because they see that the government runs the schools. I think the government does a horrible job running the schools, just like they do with everything else. And as we’ve seen throughout history, when government controls the food supply, it leads to mass starvation, mass death. And it never turns out very well. And I’d say that our American children are starving for a better education. because the government has controlled the school system. And it’s also, I’ve seen it through the lens of an economist. I did my bachelor’s and master’s in economics, and we assign kids to schools based on where they live, based on their address. And it’s such a problem that some parents have even gone to jail or gotten fined for lying about their address to get their kids into better so-called public schools. And this residential assignment, this compulsory funding through taxation, It leads to substantial monopoly power. And so just imagine if you were assigned to a grocery store or a restaurant just based on where you lived and you had no recourse. If they had horrible food, it was expired. Let’s say the grocery store shelves were empty. And you complained and they told you just go complain to the grocery store board. Things will get better. And they never do. They would tell you just throw more money at the problem. We’ll do better job next time. We promise. And things wouldn’t change because they’d had no incentive to do so. But school choice, just like when you are able to vote with your feet to another store, gives the provider an incentive to do a better job. And we’ve seen this with school choice in Florida. And other states across the country, as they’ve expanded options for families, it’s also improved the outcomes in the public schools, too. So seeing it as an economist, I mean, the only way to break the monopoly and to allow families to have better opportunities, it’s to allow the money to follow the child. It’s their money. It’s meant for their kids. It should go to the school that works best for them. And that could be the public school, too.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, everybody knows who you are in the world of education, but in case someone who’s listening who doesn’t know you, I’m going to share a little bit of your bio. You are a senior fellow at the American Culture Project and a visiting fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. And you have been labeled the most effective school choice advocate since Milton Friedman. You talked about economy. I want to talk a little bit about You are a regular on Fox News and you frequently appear in the Wall Street Journal. And you’re also the executive director at Educational Freedom Institute, a senior fellow at Reason Foundation, an adjunct scholar at Cato Institute, a board member at Liberty Justice Center, a senior advisor at Accuracy in Media, and a senior advisor at Americans for Fair Treatment. So people need your voice. Let’s talk about that comparison between you and Milton Friedman, who has been a big voice in the space of school choice. In fact, since 1955, he talked about school vouchers and the money following the student. Can you talk a little bit more about what that comparison means to you in this day and age?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, big deal. But I shouldn’t get the award for being the best school choice advocate. It should really go to Randy Weingarten and the teachers unions for inadvertently overplaying their hand and doing more to advance school choice and homeschooling than anyone could have ever imagined. Because the teachers unions closed the schools during COVID, they showed conservative parents in particular and even rational Democrats what was going on in the classroom had nothing to do with education. they weren’t focused on math reading and writing they were focused on activism and pushing a far left agenda into the classroom a lot of parents weren’t happy about the gender ideology they weren’t happy about the marxist ideology critical race theory and otherwise and so families started to question the system and when they pushed back at the school board meeting like they were always told to do and They were kind of sold this bill of goods that was described as a democratic system of accountability. They saw that didn’t work out all that well in practice because the school board only wanted to listen to them if they agreed with what was going on in the schools when they – We’re not happy about the schools focused on politics. Well, what did the school boards do? They cut off parents’ mics. They labeled them as domestic terrorists in one case. They actually had the FBI under the Biden administration created a threat tag specifically for parents protesting at school board meetings. And so what did parents do instead? They said, you know what? If you’re not going to listen to me, I don’t want to be a part of your system anymore. There’s been a mass exodus. from the government-run schools since 2019. About a million kids, at least, have left the public school system. Homeschooling has at least doubled, and private school choice, which was championed by Milton Friedman, is going gangbusters. It’s all across the country now. We have 17 states have passed universal school choice in the past 4 years alone. So. And in a sense for winning so much, I’m almost getting tired of winning at least when it comes to. The momentum nationwide, there are some states that haven’t. Gotten it done, like, Colorado and other blue states, for example, that are still controlled by the teachers unions. But we now have 50 laboratories of democracy in America and those states are showing that the public schools are improving when parents have choices and people are moving to these states. If you look at the predicted electoral college maps for the 2030 census, the latest numbers that I’ve seen shown that all seven states that are predicted to pick up electoral college seats In Congress, they all have universal school choice, and all of them that are predicted to lose a bunch of seats, like New York and California, they don’t have any private school choice programs. We’ve had more advancement on school choice in the past five years than in the preceding five decades, and it’s a big deal. Look, Milton Friedman argued for this over half a century ago, but we’ve had vouchers in America, in some states at least, Since over 150 years ago, in states like Maine and Vermont, in the late 1800s, they actually passed programs called town tuitioning programs, and they were specifically designed for kids who lived in rural areas that didn’t even have public schools. So the state figured out, well, you know, instead of building a new school for five or so kids, we’re just going to give the money directly to the families, let the money follow the child. They can take it to an existing private school if they want, even a religious school, or they could take that funding to a nearby public school in a neighboring district. That’s the concept of school choice. And for… um in recent years in states like florida i mean it’s become it’s become the norm like i the teachers unions have started to focus on other things yes they would prefer for school choice not to exist they don’t want to have to compete for your money they just want your kid trapped in their school they want that funding to go to their school whether they’re open or not as we saw during covid or whether they do a good job or not as we’ve seen in recent years with the nation’s report card score showing decades of learning loss and math and reading But the Florida public schools have been a rising tide that lifts all boats. And 10 out of 11 academic studies find that all else equal, when they’ve expanded school choice, they found statistically significant positive effects. It’s a rising tide that lifts all boats. It improves the public schools, too. This isn’t private versus public. It’s about freedom of choice for parents. And if that’s the public school, fine. If you like your public school, you can keep your public school with school choice. And those public schools actually end up doing a better job. And it’s almost counterintuitive because when you have the opportunity to leave, it almost decreases the likelihood that you need to exercise that choice because. Well, now that you have the money attached to the child, the school board, instead of cutting your mic off or calling you a domestic terrorist, they sit there and say, huh, I got to treat this person as a customer now. And instead of being mean to them or calling them my enemy and trying to silence them and bully them, I’m actually going to take that feedback, do a better job as we see in the private sector. So this can be a win-win solution. And it’s just a fantastic time to be alive and to be a school choice advocate. You know, there’s a lot of gloomy things in the news over the past few years, but this is the one silver lining of the COVID years that families have woken up. They’ve become a political juggernaut. Politicians are finally paying attention to parents. I mean, the teachers unions were basically the only special interest group in town for decades. I mean, they were the only ones that politicians listened to. That’s the nature of special interest politics. But now there’s a new sheriff in town. They’re called parents and they’re beating the union at their own game.
SPEAKER 01 :
If you’re just now tuning in, my guest is Dr. Corey DeAngelis, the evangelist for school choice and as a public school teacher who was teaching during COVID, I can tell you, it was a disaster. And at that time, I was still a member of the teachers union, not just a member, but a leader. I was the treasurer, I was the secretary, I was on the political action committee that was giving millions of dollars to Democrat candidates. I was on CEA boards, on NEA. I mean, I did it all and two years ago, I literally walked away because, you know, I saw the light. And, you know, I cannot relate to the union bosses who are making half a million dollars a year. So they don’t understand the day-to-day. And I saw how they worked so hard to keep us separated from our students in person. I mean, in Denver Public Schools, we couldn’t even require students to turn on their cameras. So kids were logging on. turning off their camera and going out to the pool and not being engaged. And we couldn’t hold them accountable while other districts would, you know, say it’s a requirement to have your camera on so the teacher can actually make sure that students were learning. And so you saw this disparity and where was the disparity in the lack of equity? It was in our city schools where we saw even more loss of learning, but I want to quickly, ask you about your book, The Parent Revolution, Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools. And you talk about the radicals ruining our schools and you alluded to it. How do you define radicals and what are the main ideological or structural forces that are driving this problem that we have?
SPEAKER 03 :
I do just want to point out that the Denver Public School superintendent during COVID was trying to argue that it was a form of segregation or I guess implying that it’s racist to start micro schools and do the pandemic pods that a lot of parents were doing. The Denver Public Schools were closed for in-person instruction. So when families tried to find alternatives, they were talking about how this would lead to inequities. But I mean, one way to fix those inequities is to open the public schools. I mean, it was pretty obvious. In states like Florida, they were doing that. In my home state of Texas, they were more likely to do that. They kicked and screamed along the way. But the radicals ruining our schools, it’s anyone who’s trying to push their politics in the classroom despite the best wishes of parents. And Look, the radical left has figured out that they don’t even have to have their own kids anymore. They can infiltrate the government school system and mold the minds of other people’s children in order to shape our country into a leftward direction and to push their socialist worldview. Why do you think Mamdani won the New York City mayorals race, even though he calls himself a socialist? Which is really weird, though, because he he went to a private school and then he opposes school choice for others and he opposes gifted and talented programs. Yet he had that ladder of opportunity that he’s trying to now pull up from behind himself and preventing others from having that same kind of choice. Think about people like Stacey Davis Gates in Chicago. She’s the teachers union boss over there. She called school choice racist a couple of years ago. And then we found out afterwards that she sends her own kid to a private school. It’s so much hypocrisy school choice for me, but not for the, look, if you want to teach the way that you want to teach and, and, and, uh, parents have a choice to escape your clutches, I don’t have that much of a problem with you. But when you fight against exit options for those families, when they feel like their kids are being brainwashed against all of their ideas, that’s when it becomes a problem. And the problem is, The teachers unions overwhelmingly, they fight against school choice, but then they also fight against any form of accountability within the public school system. And guess where all the money goes? It goes towards far left causes and politicians. Randy Weingarten, who does make over half a million dollars a year at the American Federation of Teachers. Her union funneled ninety nine point nine percent of their political contributions to Democrats last cycle. Same thing with the National Education Association. Their boss also makes over half a million dollars a year. And at their annual convention this summer in Portland, Oregon, of all places, they passed resolutions that read more like a declaration of war on the Trump administration. than anything else. None of them had anything to do with education, but they passed a resolution to dedicate thousands of dollars to call President Trump a fascist. And in that same resolution to call Trump a fascist, guess what they did? They misspelled the word fascism. I mean, you just can’t make this stuff up.
SPEAKER 01 :
Exactly.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s just, I mean, they all were like this. They called dismantling the Department of Education racist in a separate resolution. In 2019, they were set to vote on a resolution to rededicate themselves to being about student learning. That one went down in flames. You’d think they’d They’re the teacher’s union. They’re supposed to be there to educate the kids. Shouldn’t they pass that resolution? No, they voted it down. But it starts to make some sense when you see that they are a political operation. They’re just an extension of the Democrat Party. And even if you’re a Democrat, you might not want them to launder your dues to democrat candidates and this example came out in new york city for example there was a public school teacher that called into a radio program that randy weingarten happened to be on the teachers union president and the teacher in the public school system in new york was just basically pointing out that hey the union has been overly political and You know, they endorsed this ma’am Donnie guy and he’s a socialist and I’m not really on board with that. And Randy Weingarten responded with actually some good advice for one. She said that the union could be as political as it wants to be, first of all. And then she said, if you don’t like it, basically, you can take your money somewhere else. You don’t have to pay your union dues. And so teachers should take that advice because after the Supreme Court ruled in 2018, the Janus decision that it would be a violation of your First Amendment rights. to take your money from you, make that a condition of employment to funnel causes that you politically disagree with. That would be a First Amendment violation. And so teachers all across the country now, whether you’re in New York City, whether you’re in Texas in a red state or a blue state, anywhere, you are no longer compelled to pay union dues. You can’t be required to pay union dues as a condition of employment. Teachers can now join alternatives like the Teacher Freedom Alliance, get liability insurance for free as opposed to paying for it out of your hard-earned paycheck because donors are covering the cost, and that liability insurance in the rare event that you get sued for doing your job. That liability insurance is twice as much under the Teacher Freedom Alliance as it is in Randy Weingarten’s union or Becky Pringle’s union, the AFT or the NEA. So you’d be crazy if you’re a conservative teacher or an independent or even a rational Democrat to continue handing over your paychecks to people like Becky Pringle, Randy Weingarten, who just embarrass the profession, honestly, on a daily basis on social media. All they do is rail against conservatives. And this is why so many people think that teachers are trying to push politics in the classroom, because they see the union bosses representing all the teachers just going on rants against Donald Trump. Randy’s book that just came out, it actually copies my book cover. It looks exactly like my book cover. She says it’s just a coincidence. All book covers look like this. No, she plagiarized or basically copied my book cover. And hers is called Why Fascists Fear Teachers. It came out right after the Charlie Kirk assassination. And instead of turning down the temperature, what did she do? She quadrupled down this kind of divisive rhetoric, trying to rip our country apart. The public school system is supposed to be created to create a more cohesive society so we could all learn from one another to get along. But when you’re pushing toxic ideology in the schools, it does the exact opposite of its intentions. And when you have a teacher’s union president representing all the teachers in the country, or at least the ones that belong to the union, calling conservatives or political opponents conservatives, And comparing them to Hitler in the first page of the book, it’s totally ridiculous. It’s uncalled for. And teachers who are not on board with this, and I know a lot of them aren’t, new data actually just came out showing that… Although the teaching profession tends to be more left-leaning, if they looked at voter registration records and found that it was like a two-to-one ratio that twice as many teachers are registered Democrats as they are Republicans. It’s like 66-33, two-thirds versus one-third. But look, 99% of the money goes to Democrats. Not 99% of teachers are Democrats. So if you’re one of those 33%, for sure, you need to wake up and say, why am I giving money to someone I’m voting against? That makes no sense. And the districts and the teacher unions, they’re not going to advertise this stuff that you can opt out. But you can go to optouttoday.com. And then click on your state to figure out how you can opt out and get this liability insurance for free, professional development for free from the Teacher Freedom Alliance. And then also they have other materials. It’s also just a good support group of other like minded individuals who have said enough is enough. It’s time to walk away from the unions.
SPEAKER 01 :
Corey DeAngelis is my guest, Dr. Corey, because you know, you worked really hard to get that advanced.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m not a real doctor though. I’m more like a Jill Biden doctor. Education, PhD. I can’t, when I’m on the plane, they’re like, are you a real doctor? Can you help if we have a medical emergency? No, I’m sorry. I won’t be able to help you on the plane. So don’t come.
SPEAKER 01 :
Corey, we have an emergency in our nation. That’s right. We need to get our kids in writing at grade level and like have a future. We could do a whole show on the proper role of government. We have a couple of minutes left. What do you think the message is going to be that’s going to entice more teachers to leave?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, they can keep more of their hard-earned paychecks. I think that’s important. And then also, if you don’t align with the toxic ideology and politics that the national leaders are pushing, then there’s no reason why you need to continue giving them your money. So, And then also, I mentioned this earlier as through the lens of economics, that the public school districts have a monopoly on funding for your child’s education. If you want to go somewhere else, you basically have to pay twice. You got to pay out of pocket for private school while still funneling your tax dollars to the school you’re not using. I mean, it makes no sense. It creates perverse incentives. And so school choice can improve the public schools by giving them an incentive to do a better job. Teacher choice. gives the union heads an incentive to do a better job and so we need this two-pronged approach to improve education in america because it’s almost i mean i think people like randy weingarten are more afraid of teacher choice than they are of school choice because when parents can vote with their feet out of the district i mean the district is the one who’s you know really feeling the pain there they’re not getting that per student enrollment directly to the schools And so when you have teacher choice, the unions feel that pain more directly. And that’s how you get them to listen to you. If they’re not listening to you right now, I mean, Randy Weingarten said it herself. If you don’t like how political the union has gotten, you should stop giving the money to the union from your paychecks. So listen to her. You don’t just have to listen to me. You listen to your own bosses. They’re telling you the quiet part out loud now. that they’ve tried to keep quiet for a very long time. But it’s almost like a form of Stockholm syndrome, I think. A lot of teachers are fed this false narrative when they go and sign their papers that, oh, my goodness, you’re going to get sued. You need the union. But you know what? The union insurance is in the name of the union, whereas the Teacher Freedom Alliance insurance is in your name. And so you’ll… You have better representation getting it for free twice the amount of liability insurance as you get in the public school system. So why in the world would you pay for something you’re getting less out of? And it’s not even in your name. It’s in the union’s name. So this is a no brainer at this point. And yeah, I’d say go to opt out today dot com. And learn more yourself. You don’t have to just listen to me. You don’t just have to listen to Randy Weingarten. You’re a teacher. You could figure it out for yourself. The more that people see that others are doing it, I think part of the solution, because it’s the same reason that the parent revolution started. Parents thought they were going to get retaliated against if they spoke out. They thought they were the only ones. They didn’t want to stick their neck out because they didn’t want to get punished for doing so by speaking at a school board meetings. But when they saw all these other parents were upset as well, they said, uh-huh. Actually, they have social media groups. They felt emboldened to push back. They felt like they were in the right and they had control. So with the Teacher Freedom Alliance, it’s the same kind of thing. You’re not the only one. And I think they reported like last month when they first announced this, that when they were doing it for free, that they had like two to three thousand teachers already joined like that. So there are other people. You’re not the only one. You have support. And I think that’s really important, too, because people don’t want to be bullied. They don’t want to be the only one to do something. It’s heroic to be the first mover, but others have already beat you to the first mover like Priscilla. So I think knowing all that, it makes this an easy decision. I think that’s how we make education great again in America. And it’s… It’s not a battle between parents and teachers. It’s a battle with parents and teachers together locking arms against the system that gives the kids and the teachers the short end of the stick. You look at where the money goes, Priscilla. Since 1970, per-student spending has increased in American public schools by 170% in real terms after adjusting for inflation. Have the teacher salaries gone up by 170%? No, the test scores haven’t either. They’re both getting shortchanged here. Teacher salaries have only increased by 3% over that period. They basically haven’t budged. The money’s going towards administrative bloat. just hiring more people, which means more dues paying members for people like Randy and Becky to make over half a million dollars a year. So superintendents can get a bunch of money. Some of them are making more than the president of the United States. Over half a dozen in Texas are making more than $400,000 a year to be superintendents to steal money from hardworking teachers. And so When you have competition, when you tell the unions, you know what, I want to be rewarded for my success. I don’t want you pushing politics. They’ll have to listen to you. And so school choice and teacher choice, they are the two-pronged approach that will save American education.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, thank you, Corey DeAngelis. We’re out of time. We’ve got to land our plane for today. I’d love to have you on another time. But for my listeners, thanks for tuning in and catch me next time. And remember that educating the mind without the heart is no education. So seek wisdom, cultivate virtue and speak truth.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thanks for tuning in to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Ron. Visit PriscillaRon.com to connect or learn how you can sponsor future episodes to keep this message of faith, freedom, and education on the air.
