Join Priscilla Rahn as she explores pivotal education reforms in America with special guest Horace Cooper, Chairman of Project 21. This episode dives deep into the role of federal versus state government in education, analyzing President Trump’s policies, and exploring the accountability of public schools in maintaining high academic standards. Cooper shares his expertise on how education policies can sometimes limit parental authority and how community-driven approaches can address systemic challenges effectively.
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, everybody. Welcome to Restoring Education in America. I’m your host, Priscilla Rahn. And I’m so grateful that you’ve decided to join the conversation today. I am loving 2026. It’s America’s 250th birthday. And there is a new school that’s opening this fall in the Centennial Colorado area. It’s called Excalibur Classical Academy, and their mission and vision is restoring America’s heritage by developing servant leaders who are keepers and defenders of the principles of freedom for which our founding fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. They have open enrollment going on right now, so if you have a young child that will be starting school, kindergarten through third grade this fall, please go to their website, ExcaliburClassicalAcademy.org, and let them know you’re interested and would like a tour. And also, if you are a teacher looking for a great environment to teach at, they are also looking to interview great teachers. Well, I’m really excited about this next conversation. I am not going to delay in bringing someone very special to the stage today. Mr. Horace Cooper. Hello.
SPEAKER 03 :
Good afternoon. It is great to be on your program.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, Horace Cooper, you are the man of the hour because you are the chairman of Project 21. And for the listeners who may not know you, but I would find that hard to believe someone wouldn’t know who you are, but in case. I want to share a little bit of what you’ve done. You are a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, chairman of the Project 21 National Advisory Board, and a legal commentator. Horace, you have taught constitutional law, George Mason University in Virginia and was a senior counsel to U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Arne. So you have been around shaping policy for quite some time. So thank you again for your time today.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I am excited about this conversation. opportunity here because more and more Americans absolutely need to be aware that just because you can look and see my color or my race, it tells you nothing about what I think and what I believe. And the same is true for you. And one day, it’s my hope that we get to Martin Luther King’s dream. that people are going to be judged by the content of their character and not by their physical appearances.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, 100% right, because I was raised by a Black father who grew up during segregation, and he always raised me to work hard and to use my mind. And I was so thrilled to be invited to be a part of Project 21. So for my listeners who may not know, Project 21 is a collection of African-Americans in all different fields who are just using their voices to talk about what’s going on socially. I’m in the education space. And so I want to kind of get into that because you have been a professor and you’ve been involved in education policy. Horace, we know that the Constitution doesn’t mention education, but how do you view the proper role of the United States government in the space of education and its authority federally versus at the state level?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I’m a big fan of President Trump’s plan to close down the Department of Education. It’s not because, quote, I am anti-education. I believe that education is primarily a responsibility of moms and dads and they can work collaboratively with their local governments and their state governments to figure out what is best for their child. What the federal government has done is bring stipulations on the small amount of funds that they provide. 95% of the education funds are generated locally. But the 5% that comes from the federal government comes with strings that have historically countered or stymied the ability of moms and dads to place priorities on what they see as the value system and the education priorities for their children.
SPEAKER 01 :
So Horace, President Trump has issued his executive orders, not just about ending the Department of Education, but rolling back DEI programs. How do you see those orders fitting in within constitutional limits of civil rights?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, every time any state or local government or even some citizens have challenged the, quote, stipulations that are placed on federal dollars, they’ve lost. The federal government operates in primacy with its resources. So that is one of the reasons why the federal government has been able to obstruct so successfully moms and dads since its creation under the Jimmy Carter administration. What Donald Trump is doing is taking that same power and saying, we’re going to use, while these dollars exist, that authority to stop the use of government money to single people out on the basis of race. And what are some of those things? One has been social promotion. Instead of saying that young people, when they’re in the classroom, are going to need to master certain achievements in either reading or writing or mathematics, They’ve said, it’s important for us. This is what the left has done. And they’ve done it in conjunction with pushes by the federal government to just move students along. And they graduate not being able to read their diploma. What President Trump has said is we figured out much of these bad policies, including social promotion, were done because there were observed differentials between the performance of some racial groups over others. What we should do is figure out why aren’t our children achieving like they should? Why are we instead ignoring the performance differentials and simply promoting so that we could pretend it’s all fine when kids now graduate? They have this diploma, they apply to go to college, and suddenly what they find is with some of these old affirmative action programs, they’re admitted and they can’t compete. It teaches it’s destructive but i’m gonna tell you one thing that it teaches to our young people when they first enter the education arena they’re able and they’ve been able to for the last 25 or 35 years. look around on their university campus and they can actually judge based on race how people are going to perform. Now, this should never be the lesson that we teach. We should have high standards for admission and we should have high standards for high school graduation.
SPEAKER 01 :
You are on fire today, Horace. I’m loving it because I’m seeing that as a 32-year veteran educator. I’m still full-time in the classroom teaching. And I see this, especially as a middle school teacher, where kids are socially promoted. As you’ve said, there’s no consequences for whether they get all A’s or all F’s. They’re just going to get promoted. And I think that type of system doesn’t help our students, obviously, but it makes teachers a little more lazy because there’s no… There are no consequences for making sure students are learning when you know the system is going to promote them anyway. And so we are desperately in need of changing what we’re doing in the public education system. But talking about that, I am a conservative educator. There are a lot of things that we are asked to do in the public education system that I don’t personally believe in, one of which is lying to parents, keeping secrets from parents, or using compelled speech. But I’m not sure what the Constitution says or the law says. I know it’s not constitutional for the government to compel speech. But as a government employee in a public education system, are teachers protected from having to call a boy by a girl’s pronoun? Or what have some cases said? Sure.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, the Supreme Court has been very, very robust in making the point that the government, and that’s when they operate as a public school, may not compel its employees to violate principles of their conscience. They must find a way to accommodate those teachers. Now, it could be as simple as removing that particular child or children from from the classroom, or it can be allowing the teacher to express their views of their conscience. There was just a case before the Supreme Court last year in which a Muslim family wondered why the school was imposing very radical and woke views about gender identity in the classroom. And the Supreme Court Even though the district court ruled against that family, even though the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against that family, the Supreme Court made it very clear a school may not either penalize The parents may not allow the school to expel the student, and they may not compel the teacher in the classroom to accommodate to certain views and perspectives that they don’t personally hold. There was actually no reason why such woke policies had to be imposed other than the fact that because in many instances there is a difference between the value system of people who are raising children and the people who are part of the education bureaucracy. I am excited that you are playing a role in that particular arena. But in many, many instances, parents have no help in the education bureaucracy and the court has had to step in. And increasingly, the court is saying that even as an employee, your rights to the beliefs that are consistent with your conscience are not allowed to be thwarted or overrun.
SPEAKER 01 :
If you’re just tuning in, my guest today is Horace Cooper. He is the chairman of Project 21, a legal commentator and has taught constitutional law at George Mason University. So 1994 was a big year for me personally, Horace. That was the year I graduated from college and had a big degree that said that I was ready to go out in the world and make a difference. And it was also the year I became a public school teacher. But 1994 was a big year for our nation as well when it comes to your work in the federal government with U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey. And that’s when we first got the contract with America. And that actually ended up being something positive for our nation. The Republicans were able to accomplish a lot of the things that they promised to the American people. With the midterms coming up this year, do you think that we need something similar to that and maybe for education specifically?
SPEAKER 03 :
If you were sitting in my classroom at George Mason University, you’d get the gold star. We absolutely need a platform, the conservative movement, Project 21 and the National Center are nonpartisan, but we need a conservative platform so that when voters go, they understand what it is, the choices that they are making. There are places like California that have been trying to get the teacher to lie to parents about what’s going on with their child. They have this insane idea that the teacher is better equipped to understand the needs and interests of the child than mom and dad. If a child is quote suicidal, you absolutely must bring mom and dad into the equation. If a child is struggling quote with their gender identity, you absolutely must bring mom and dad. The child doesn’t get to make this choice. If you’ve been in a public school for any time, even for an hour, you know that they can’t give you a Tylenol without the permission of your mother and father. And yet, in some places, something so consequential that is completely life-changing, there are folks in the education bureaucracy that believe that the parents should be locked out. a platform that says mom and dad are the primary decision makers. But a corollary to that is we must absolutely expand the ability of parents to pick places to educate their children that are consistent with their own beliefs. Here’s the truth. Even overworked, even tired, even Dropout parents understand they want what they didn’t get. They want something better for their children. And oftentimes when they go to the school and they complain, the education bureaucracy doesn’t care. You see, the education bureaucracy measures its success, not by how well your kid’s doing, not what he does or she does in the future. How many monthly or quarterly payments are they getting from the state and the federal government? And that’s all that they care about. If moms and dads could move their children to a school that is more responsive to their needs, it would have a twofold effect. One, we could get more kids out of the education bureaucracy, but two, even the education bureaucracy would learn to improve so that it could attract people to continue using its services.
SPEAKER 01 :
Horace, we can’t even give a child a cough drop at school without parental permission. And yet there are schools secretly transitioning children, giving there are teachers secretly giving children bandages, girls bandages for their breasts. I mean, I can’t believe the stuff that’s happening. And they’re preying on children who are in the foster care system. They’re preying on children who are in the special education system because they’re the most vulnerable. It’s really sad. So thinking about- Can I add one thing? Yes, absolutely.
SPEAKER 03 :
We were largely, not you and I, but many parents were largely ignorant of what was going on in the classroom until COVID. Suddenly when things were being videoed and recorded, people were absolutely astonished. The gender identity issue is completely crazy on the part of the bureaucracy, and so is the social promotion. But many of just the running commentary in the classroom was unbelievable when parents got to see the push for abortion rights, the push for open borders, the push for all kinds of radical worldviews. You’re in the math class. What on earth is it? Why is it that there needed to be a push about gay identity in the math class? These kinds of things we’re now aware of. And so I just want to reiterate, it would be useful heading into the election if parents could see a plank of all manner of things, particularly with education, so they could know This candidate supports me on this. That candidate opposes me on this.
SPEAKER 01 :
On the very basic level, Horace, school should not be keeping secrets from parents. School should be fostering healthy conversations. If a child comes to you and they’re questioning themselves, and I say, again, as a middle school teacher, there’s no middle school girl who’s comfortable in her body. These kids are going through puberty and they’re feeling awkward and they’re questioning everything, the first thing you should do as a school is first ask the student, have you talked to your parents about this? I think this would be a really great conversation for you to have with your parents. Or call the parents and say, you know, your child said this today and Let me know how I can help, but I’m going to let you as the parent have the first opportunity. But we’re not doing that. And people on the left are creating this whole false narrative propaganda about those of us who believe in parents’ rights first and their first ability to teach their children. They’re saying we’re anti this, anti that, we’re hateful. That’s not the case. It is not the proper role of government. And for every teacher that’s listening to this radio program or watching the encore on YouTube or Rumble, you can have courage. You can walk away from the teacher’s union. You don’t have to comply with this. you’re going to be okay do the right thing it’s better to do the right thing and and foster strong families because when we have strong families and we have strong dads and we elevate men in their proper role that i believe god has created men to be in then we’re going to start to see healing in our families but um horace i have a kind of a controversial but fun question to ask you your opinion about is it the proper role of government to force children to learn anything
SPEAKER 03 :
I don’t think so again, I believe that our founders intended and by the way, there was no department of education in 1790. There was no federal funding except on a few Native American reservations for schools. We didn’t have this entire school bureaucracy concept until shortly before the Civil War, and it didn’t build until 20 or 30 years after the Civil War. Most communities… pooled their resources and they had a school. They hired a teacher and they let their kids go to this facility so that moms and dads could focus on ranching and farming and many of the other home-based responsibilities that they had. But some Parents didn’t even take advantage of that. They said, we can educate our children. No communities at the founding of our country compelled this kind of participation. We allowed while having some of the highest literacy rates of any comparative country around that time. Now it’s confession time. I am the son of a school teacher. My mother, Mrs. Cooper attended college after my brother and I were born and she kept going. She got her undergraduate degree. She got her master’s degree. And after I was in college, she got her PhD. And it helped me dramatically to appreciate the importance of education. Well, guess what? She was not a member of the TEA. She did not agree with the radical ideas that they were pushing then. And even as she retired, she continued to reject these zany, crazy ideas. During COVID, my mother said, look, a lot of these teachers need to get out of the classroom, and they need to let experienced, capable teachers step in. She explained that even though she was old, elderly and vulnerable, she was competent enough to actually handle a classroom simply by having a camera focused on her while at home that showed her the classroom. Because she was interested in actual attainment. During her last 12 years in the classroom, she set records for how many of her students, that was 100%, passed Texas competency tests, second and third grade, fifth and sixth grade. Even when she was assigned 11th and 12th grade students, she was able to get those students to achieve Some of her fellow teachers asked to have their children placed in her classroom. So you can be a school teacher. You don’t have to be part of this NEA work and you can be a great model for what it was. And by the way, my mother never sat around saying, oh my gosh, They don’t pay me enough. They don’t pay me enough. She believed that they ought to move to some sort of bonus system. Teachers that achieve get a bonus. Teachers that don’t ought to be ultimately sent home.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, that makes all kinds of sense to reward teachers who are doing an excellent job, national board certified teachers. You’re right. And that’s a great certification that is not part of the bureaucracy because it’s voluntary and your application is reviewed by your peers. I mean, this is the most ridiculous thing. This is a whole additional conversation around licensure. I go to school. I do my practicum. I graduate with a degree in education. Then I have to go pay my state to take a test to prove that I learned what I was supposed to learn and then continue to pay, you know, and say I have a license. But if having a license meant that you are an excellent teacher, we wouldn’t have a broken public education system, right? because that’s the argument from the teachers union. We have to have licensed teachers. That’s what makes you highly qualified. No, it doesn’t make you highly qualified. It’s nice to have experience and practicum teaching, but that doesn’t make you a great teacher. But Horace, we’re starting to run out of time here. My show is called Restoring Education in America. In your mind, what is it going to take to restore education in America?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, as I started with, one of the things that we absolutely must do is close down the Department of Education. Secondly, there are red states where we need to make sure that we defund the NEA. Those are just unions masquerading as teacher organizations to encourage exceptional experiences in the classroom. Really quick, when my mother first got told that the state of Texas was going to require a test for competency for school teachers, she told me about half of the teachers in the lounge, were complaining and crying about it. And a third never passed and had to be removed. How can you teach geometry if you can’t be a master of it? We need higher standards, not lower standard. And we need more opportunities for places to learn that are not necessarily a government run.
SPEAKER 01 :
Horace, before we head out, where can people find you and follow you on social media? You’ve also written several books and where can they purchase your books?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, obviously go to Amazon.com. Put your back in chains. How Biden’s policies harm America shows why the woke policies that the left is pushing are extremely unpopular with black America. I’m also accessible podcast. on X, the real Horace Cooper. And you can always follow us at thenationalcenter.org. Just type in Project 21 or watch me on Fox News.
SPEAKER 01 :
On a daily basis, seems like we can see your wonderful commentary. Well, thank you so much, Horace Cooper, for your time today. And to my listeners, thank you for tuning in. Catch me next time. And remember, 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 Rahn. Visit PriscillaRahn.com to connect or learn how you can sponsor future episodes to keep this message of faith, freedom, and education on the air.
