The Truth About School Choice & How It’s Reshaping Education in America | Corey DeAngelis DSH #1211

Summary

Digital Social Hour: Episode Summary

Title: The Truth About School Choice & How It’s Reshaping Education in America | Corey DeAngelis DSH #1211

Release Date: March 1, 2025
Host: Sean Kelly
Guest: Corey DeAngelis

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Introduction to School Choice

In this episode of Digital Social Hour, host Sean Kelly engages in a comprehensive dialogue with Corey DeAngelis, focusing on the controversial topic of school choice and its transformative impact on the American education system. Corey, a passionate advocate for educational freedom, delves into the systemic issues plaguing government-run schools and presents school choice as a viable solution for empowering parents and improving educational outcomes.

Notable Quote:
Corey emphasizes the gravity of the situation by stating, "For 13 years of their lives, for seven hours a day with 50 million kids or so each year in the government-run school system, they can churn out Democrat voters using that school system without even having their own kids." ([00:28])

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Critique of the Current Education System

Corey begins by critiquing the government-run school system, highlighting its inefficiencies and the unintended consequences of its structure. He argues that excessive funding has led to administrative bloat rather than direct investment in student education. Corey points out that despite significant financial expenditure—mentioning New Jersey's $30,000 to $40,000 per student—academic outcomes remain subpar.

Key Points:

• Excessive Spending:
  "If you look nationwide, it's $20,000 per kid in the US in the government-run school system, we spend more than any other country on the planet." ([03:08])

• Administrative Bloat:
  Corey criticizes the allocation of funds, stating, "They put it towards administrative bloat. Doesn't go to the kids."

• Learning Loss During COVID-19:
  He contrasts with Catholic schools that maintained operations during the pandemic, resulting in better academic retention compared to public schools that faced prolonged closures.

Notable Quote:
"The definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over and over again, expecting different results." ([04:49])

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Rise of School Choice and Its Benefits

Corey discusses the burgeoning movement towards school choice, which allows parents to direct funding towards private schools, charter schools, homeschool programs, or other educational institutions that align with their values and meet their children's needs.

Key Points:

• State-Level Adoption:
  Thirteen states, including Tennessee, have embraced school choice, enabling funds to follow the child rather than being tied to a specific public school.

• Cost Efficiency:
  "Catholic schools, the private schools, they're doing a better job at a fraction of the cost." ([03:08])

• Improved Competition:
  Allowing funds to move freely fosters competition, incentivizing public schools to enhance their quality to retain students.

• Homeschooling Surge:
  The pandemic catalyzed a significant increase in homeschooling, a trend Corey advocates will continue to grow.

Notable Quote:
"School choice for me, but not for thee. They send their kids to private schools but oppose school choice for others." ([13:11])

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Political Dynamics and Union Influence

A substantial portion of the discussion revolves around the role of teachers' unions in shaping education policy. Corey argues that unions have historically hindered efforts to reform the education system by prioritizing their interests over those of students and parents.

Key Points:

• Union Opposition:
  Teachers' unions have actively opposed school choice initiatives, fearing loss of control and influence.

• Financial Influence:
  "99.9% of Randy Weingarten's union's campaign contributions went to Democrats in the 2024 election cycle." ([17:30])

• Impact on Legislation:
  Union resistance has delayed or blocked school choice measures in various states, despite growing public support.

Notable Quote:
"Randy Weingarten's union lobbied the CDC to make it more difficult to reopen schools." ([07:33])

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Educational Outcomes and International Comparisons

Corey presents alarming statistics to underscore the failures of the current education system in the U.S., especially in public schools, and contrasts them with outcomes in states that have adopted school choice policies.

Key Points:

• Academic Performance:
  "About a third of students are proficient in reading and about a quarter of students are proficient in math." ([09:56])

• International Standing:
  The U.S. has declined in international assessments like TIMSS, falling more than most countries except a few like Iran and Kazakhstan.

• Success of School Choice States:
  Florida, having expanded school choice decades ago, is now ranked number one by U.S. News & World Report on education, despite spending 27% less per student than the national average.

Notable Quote:
"Florida is ranked number one by U.S. news & World Report on education... It's not a money issue, it's an incentive issue." ([20:15])

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Advocacy for Legislative Change

Corey outlines the legislative efforts needed to dismantle the barriers imposed by the Department of Education and teachers' unions, advocating for returning control of education to the states.

Key Points:

• Proposed Legislation:
  The Returning Education to the States Act aims to block grant current federal education funding back to states, effectively abolishing the federal Department of Education.

• Local Control:
  Allowing states to manage their own education policies ensures that funding and programs align more closely with local needs and values.

• Federal Overreach:
  Corey argues that education should not be a federal mandate, citing the 10th Amendment and the lack of educational directives in the Constitution.

Notable Quote:
"The Department of Education... should be revoked. It's a violation of the 10th Amendment. I'd say it's unconstitutional." ([22:37])

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Personal Experiences and Broader Implications

Towards the end of the episode, Corey shares personal anecdotes highlighting the negative aspects of his own public school experience, reinforcing his stance on the necessity of school choice.

Key Points:

• Negative School Culture:
  Corey recounts experiences with violence and gangs in public schools, illustrating the potential dangers of unsupervised, government-run institutions.

• Success Stories:
  He credits specialized education, such as magnet schools, for positively impacting his life trajectory and advocates for expanding such opportunities.

• Future of Education:
  Corey envisions a future where education is tailored to individual needs through various options like micro schools, homeschooling, and private institutions, free from political and bureaucratic constraints.

Notable Quote:
"Parents know their kids' needs more than you, professor, and they shouldn't need your permission to choose the school that works best for their kid." ([43:19])

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Conclusion and Call to Action

Corey concludes the discussion by urging listeners to support school choice initiatives and remain vigilant against the entrenched interests of teachers' unions and the federal education bureaucracy. He promotes his book, The Parent Revolution: Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools, as a resource for those seeking to understand and advocate for educational freedom.

Notable Quote:
"You can ruin Randy Weingarten's day by reading this book." ([46:15])

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Digital Social Hour offers a critical examination of the American education system, advocating for school choice as a means to enhance educational quality, empower parents, and reduce governmental and union interference. Corey's insights provide a provocative perspective on how restructuring educational funding and policy can lead to better outcomes for students across the nation.

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Additional Resources:

• Corey DeAngelis's Book: The Parent Revolution: Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools – Available on Amazon.
• Follow Corey DeAngelis: X (Twitter Handle)

Transcript

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[Corey DeAngelis]

The direction of this country by using the school system as a way to mold the minds of other people's children. For 13 years of their lives, for seven hours a day with 50 million kids or so each year in the government run school system, they can churn out Democrat voters using that school system without even having their own kids. So conservatives and libertarians, if you want to fight back, if you're a limited government supporter, if you support the free market, if you're against socialism, you can't win this battle just by having more kids. That helps, obviously, but you need to take back control of the school system and also fight for school choice so that if a low income parent is stuck in this school that they're teaching kids all the genders and teaching more about the LGBTs than the ABCs, that parent needs to say, you know what, I want to focus on the basics for my kids and maybe I'll talk about that other stuff at home, right? Let's have the money follow me to this private school, or this charter school is doing a better job. Or hey, maybe I want to raise my own kids. Maybe I'll do homeschooling and have some of that funding follow the child.

[Host]

All right, guys, we got Corey here today. We're going to talk about the education system. Thanks for coming on, man.

[Corey DeAngelis]

Hey, thanks so much for having me.

[Host]

A lot's about to change, right?

[Corey DeAngelis]

Well, a lot is changing already. I mean, we're winning so much. I'm almost getting tired of winning. I mean, the unions really overplayed their hand during the COVID era. They fought to keep the schools closed. That showed parents what was happening in the classroom. And conservatives in particular were pissed off about the critical race theory in the schools. The gender ideology, far left indoctrination that mobilized parents like we've never seen before. And they started to push for school choice. And we've had 13 states now go all in on school choice, letting the money follow the child to the school that works best for them, whether that's the public school, private school, charter school, or a home based education option. Most recently, Tennessee became the 13th state to go all in. It's basically the idea of the money that's meant for educating your child that's funded by the taxpayer dollars. In the current system, you, the status quo makes you take that money to your assigned school based on your address. It creates a lot of monopoly power. They have no incentive to spend money wisely. They get a lot of money and they've put it towards administrative bloat. Doesn't go to the kids. But now that money can follow the student, creates more competition and the public schools get better as a result.

[Host]

That's interesting. I grew up in Jersey. How, how are, how are the schools over there?

[Corey DeAngelis]

Pretty horrible. And they spend a lot of money. I think they spend between 30 and $40,000 per student in New Jersey. I know in New York city they're at $40,000 a kid per year.

[Host]

I didn't know that.

[Corey DeAngelis]

And if you look nationwide, I mean, it's $20,000 per kid in the US in the government run school system, we spend more than any other country on the planet. That amount is about 52% higher than average private school tuition in this country. Wow. So the Catholic schools, the private schools, they're doing a better job at a fraction of the cost. I mean, you look at the latest nation's report card scores that just came out on math and reading. They found decades of learning loss for the public schools. Public. But for the Catholic schools, they have a big enough sample to be able to show us what's going on in that sector. Not for private schools overall, but for the Catholic schools. They show no statistically significant losses relative to 2019 during. Because they kept their schools open during the COVID years, the teachers unions, they knew they could leverage those closures for even more money. They held children's education hostage. You had places like in Chicago, their union was tweeting, I'm not making this up. They deleted the tweet, but it said the push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny. They threw every buzzword at the wall to see what would stick because they knew if they could keep those schools closed longer, what were they going to do? They're going to say, well, we'll open if you just give us more money than we already have. They already have about $30,000 per kid in Chicago. And so over time as well, this money has just increased, increased, increase. It wasn't just a Covid thing. Since 1970, we have data on this nationwide, our per student funding in the US has increased by about 164% after adjusting for inflation, have our outcomes gotten 164% better?

[Host]

Obviously they've gotten worse.

[Corey DeAngelis]

They've gotten worse and we're throwing more money at the problem. It's the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over and over again, expecting different results. But now, because the unions mobilized parents to basically create their own union, one for the kids, they're holding politicians accountable at the ballot box. And now politicians are voting for school choice like we've never seen before. Because now you have a new coalition pushing for this policy. It used to just be for kids who, who were in objectively failing schools based on test scores. Now families are understanding that their kids, in some cases even if they're in a neighborhood school, they're being brainwashed with views that are not aligned with their family's values. They're being told to hate their. And I thought that this at the beginning, I thought maybe this is just a rare occurrence because we see all these viral videos of libs of TikTok and stuff where public school teachers are saying just extreme things, going too far on the left, attacking President Trump. They have Trump derangement syndrome. There's actually been a nationwide survey that came out last month, actually in January of 2025 by education next and, and they asked high school students in the U.S. a nationally representative sample, how many times different kind of critical race theory topics were mentioned at their school. One of them that stuck out to me and a lot of these things were prevalent, but one of the big ones that I thought was really detrimental to have in our public school system was that 36% of the respondents, US high school students said that their teachers either often or almost daily. We're saying that America is a fundamentally racist country. 36%.

[Host]

Damn.

[Corey DeAngelis]

Now that's not a majority, but that's more than zero percent and it should be zero percent. You have more than a third of the kids reporting in the US government run school system that their teachers are saying often or almost daily that America is a fundamentally racist nation. That is, that is unthinkable. I didn't hear that when I was growing up and going to public schools, but that's why so many families are upset. And they tried to take this to the school board meeting. Right. Because we kind of used to hear about this idea of democratic accountability, that if you don't like what you're getting at the public school, they'll listen to you. If you go show up and you complain at the school boards. Yeah, we saw how well that Worked. They. They labeled parents as domestic terrorists. I mean, the National School Boards association actually sent a letter to President Biden implying that parents protesting about CRT at school board meetings should be investigated, invoking the Patriot act for domestic terrorism.

[Host]

Holy crap.

[Corey DeAngelis]

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, though, because 26 states have since left the National School Boards Association. They've imploded. They. They stepped on a rake. And now the jig is up because this has all been exposed. The schools are open now, but the problems are still there. And the parents are hearing about it, and they're not going to give up the fight. They remember how powerless they felt in 2020, and they're going to continue fighting. So they never feel powerless like that ever again. And school choice, in my view, is the best way to empower parents to fight back. Because now if you go to your school board meeting and let's say you want to stay in your public school, if you have the power to take your money somewhere else, that school board's going to think twice about calling you a domestic terrorist. They're going to think of you as a customer. They're going to think of you as a partner in the relationship. But when you don't have competition, they view you as a nuisance. They view you as the enemy. And we saw that first, firsthand during the COVID years. But this, this revolution is still continuing today in my home state of Texas. The bill for universal school choice recently came out in both chambers. That actually passed through the Senate by a vote of 19 to 12. All Republicans except for one voted against it. All 11 Democrats in the Texas Senate voted against it. And a majority of them sent their own kids to private school. Those Democrats who voted against school choice, total hypocrites on the issue. School choice for me, but not for thee. I mentioned Chicago a second ago. Chicago teachers union boss. Her name is Stacy Davis Gates. A couple of years ago she was posting and saying that school choice is racist was her argument. Guess what we just found out last year she sends her own kid to private school. So she either is telling on herself and calling herself racist in some weird way, or she is just trying to protect the status quo because she's the union boss and that's what she has to do. She knows their failure factories. That's why she doesn't send her own kid there. She. She sends him somewhere else. And I don't blame her for that. But I think everybody should have those opportunities. And you shouldn't pull the ladder up from behind yourself and fight against school Choice for others. It should be open to all.

[Host]

Yeah. I wonder what the statistics are on public school graduates and success.

[Corey DeAngelis]

Well, if you look at the nation's report card that just came out, it's about a third of students are proficient in reading and about a quarter of students are proficient in math. So it's horrible, especially given the how we spend more than any other country. The international assessments just came out recently, too. They're called the timss. T I M S S. I forget what that stands for, but timss, if you want to look it up. And the US Fell on the TIMSS assessment internationally by more than any other country, except for three of the countries. Iran, Kazakhstan, and one other country. We fell by 18 points in fourth grade math scores.

[Host]

Damn.

[Corey DeAngelis]

And we spend so much money. But we also had our schools closed for a very long time. If you look at other countries that had their schools open, like Sweden, they didn't close their schools. What happened to their rankings on the same assessment, fourth grade math? They improved their scores by about 8 points. So there's been a lot of literature in the US Showing that school districts that close longer, they had more learning loss and actually mental health issues among the students too. And again, this is because the teachers unions saw that they could financially gain by keeping those doors closed. The private schools are fighting to reopen. The public schools are fighting to remain closed. And the main difference there was one of incentives that if, you know, your customers can walk. I mean, the Catholic schools were saying, I'm gonna keep my doors open because they're gonna be able to take their money somewhere else.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Corey DeAngelis]

And this really made it an easy argument for school choice, because during COVID when your grocery store closed, that might have been a horrible thing, but at least you could take your money somewhere else. When your school closed, they got to keep your money. And families were scrambling, trying to figure out how to pay again out of pocket for a private school that was open or trying to figure out homeschooling. That's another silver lining here, is that homeschooling has basically doubled or tripled since pre pandemic levels, according to the U.S. census Bureau. Families have figured out they can learn more at a fraction of the time, their kids are less anxious. And in some of these school choice programs that are passing, you can use that money to homeschool your kid, too. And Trump has also argued for a tax credit for families who homeschool up to $10,000. And he's also promoted school choice passing out of Congress. There's a bill Right now called the Educational Choice for Children act, creates a nationwide school choice program. It's supported by Speaker Johnson, it's supported by the Senate leader, Thune, and a majority of the Republicans in both chambers have signed on to at least one version of that bill. And it's already split, passed out of a committee last year in September. So there's a lot of momentum happening right now on the education front. We haven't seen anything like that. I mean, in the. We've seen more victories, we've seen more advancement on the school choice front in the past four years than in the preceding four decades.

[Host]

Yeah, that's exciting.

[Corey DeAngelis]

It's a huge deal.

[Host]

It's thanks to guys like you. It's thanks to guys like Charlie Kirk saying college is a scam.

[Corey DeAngelis]

Yeah, Charlie Kirk's fantastic. He's, he's a great advocate for education freedom. A lot of people have, you know, said that. I've kind of helped push the fight too. But we should really, we should really, you know, raise our glass to, and give a toast to people like Randy Weingarten, the president of the teachers unions, for inadvertently doing more to advance school choice and homeschooling. Thanks, Randy, than anyone could have ever imagined. I actually dedicated this book to Randy. And if you want to look at the endorsement on the back by Ted Cruz, he's a senator from my home state of Texas. He says you can ruin Randy Weingarten's day by reading this book. I love it. It's really, it's their fault. I mean, they've been so drunk on power for so long, they've started, they've injected their politics into the classroom. I mean, the radical left figured out a long time ago that they didn't, they didn't, they almost didn't even have to have their own kids. They could shape the direction of this country by using the school system as a way to mold the minds of other people's children. For 13 years of their lives, for seven hours a day with 50 million kids or so each year in the government run school system, they can churn out Democrat voters using that school system without even having their own kids. So conservatives and libertarians, if you want to fight back, if you're a limited government supporter, if you support the free market, if you're against socialism, you can't win this battle just by having more kids. That helps, obviously, but you need to take back control of the school system and also fight for school choice so that if a low income parent is stuck in this school that they're teaching kids all the genders and, and teaching more on about the LGBTs and the ABCs. That parent needs to say, you know what, I want to focus on the basics for my kids and maybe I'll talk about that other stuff at home.

[Host]

Right?

[Corey DeAngelis]

Let's have the money follow me to this private school or this charter school is doing a better. Or hey, maybe I want to raise my own kids. Maybe I'll do homeschooling and have some of that funding follow the child too. So I think this is going to shape this direction of our country in a better way now that we have more education, freedom and the winds are going to continue racking up. And look, Vodi 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. Good news is the parents are not surprised anymore.

[Host]

Yeah, yeah. This is a deep issue, man, because these kids are the future of our country.

[Corey DeAngelis]

Yeah, exactly.

[Host]

This is a massive deal. Just because people watching this might not have kids, but this affects you in a certain degree.

[Corey DeAngelis]

Exactly. If you don't like high taxes and you, and you, you have some other political pet project that interests you, maybe you're really focused on immigration, maybe you're focused on, you don't want the government taking as much out of your paycheck. And a lot of people are concerned about that. You're concerned about the economy. You should care about education freedom too. Because the root of all these problems stems from the socialist indoctrination in the government school system. Of course, we have K millions of kids, 50 million kids or so each year going through this system, being brainwashed by the government run school system to like big government and to see government as the solution to all their problems. It shouldn't surprise us that at 18 years old they go and vote for more government, I mean, and Democrat. And if you look at Randy Weingarten's union, for example, there's something more insidious going on here with it's not just the school system churning out Democrat voters. We have a money laundering operation on the political side with the unions. 99.9% of Randy Weingarten's union's campaign contributions went to Democrats in the 2024 election cycle. And it's not new. This has been happening for decades. You look at the Open Secrets website, they list this every single election cycle. About 98, 99% every single time. From AFT, the American Federation of Teachers, it goes to Democrats. Wash, rinse, repeat. It's A money laundering operation, it ought to be illegal. And hopefully more and more people start to see this is some BS going on and we need to push back. And we should ban taxpayer funding of teachers unions. Some states are pushing to do that, like Idaho right now. They're currently debating this in their state senate. And we also need to defund the unions through school choice. Because if unions actually had to listen to parents and say, well, maybe they're going to go somewhere else and our unions won't have as much power because of that, maybe they'll start to rethink things. Maybe instead of fighting against parental rights in education, they'll say, I'm going to pick a different battle. I'm going to just focus on, I don't know, maybe having a better job for teachers and maybe paying them a little more. Because if you look at where the money goes today, the unions aren't doing a good job for the teachers either. They're doing a horrible job for parents. They do not think parents should choose their child's own education and direct the upbringing of their child. But they're also failing for the teachers. Since 1970 I mentioned, spending has gone up in the public schools by 164%. Guess how much the teacher salaries have gone up since that time?

[Host]

Not a lot.

[Corey DeAngelis]

They basically haven't moved. Only about 3% increase, inflation adjusted, since 1970. And why is that? Well, it's become more of a jobs program for administrators than an education initiative for kids. We have data on this nationwide. Since 2000, according to the national center for Education Statistics, we've increased the number of students in the system. Enrollment has increased by about 5% since 2000. It hasn't really changed much. The number of teachers in the system has increased by twice that rate, by about 10%. The number of administrators in the system has increased by 95%.

[Host]

Holy crap.

[Corey DeAngelis]

19 times the rate of student enrollment growth. Then you zoom into different districts and it's happening everywhere, especially in union driven districts. In Chicago, which we mentioned a Second ago, since 2019, we have data on this in Chicago, the number of staff employed by the Chicago public school System has increased 20% since 2019. Over the same period, enrollment has dropped. The students are fleeing by about 10%.

[Host]

Wow.

[Corey DeAngelis]

In what other industry do you bleed customers like that and then go on a hiring spree? It makes no sense. But it's because they're a monopoly. They have no incentive to do the right thing. They spend it on their political pet projects. They spend it on more dues paying Members, which means people like Randy Weingarten can make their $500,000 a year salary without actually producing results and actually failing year after year to provide an adequate education to kids. And I think the only way we get out of this mess through freedom as opposed to force is from the bottom up. Give them an incentive to do, let them exist, but give them incentive to listen to parents instead of treating them as horrible people.

[Host]

Right. So that being said, do you feel like teachers should make more money?

[Corey DeAngelis]

I think there's not a one size fits all answer to our school system, but there's also not a one size fits all answer to that question because some teachers are doing a horrible job, but some teachers are doing a fantastic job. And so when I argue for school choice, similarly, it's not a public versus private debate. I think there are some public schools that are knocking it out of the park. There are some public schools that are horrible. In Chicago, they have about 33 public schools that have 0% math proficiency rate, 0, not a single kid proficient in math, and 33 of their government run public schools. Baltimore, you go look over there, 40% of their high schools have 0% math proficiency rate. And so, you know, not all private schools are beating all the public schools though. But that's why parents who know their kids better than anybody else, they should be the ones determining, hey, maybe I like the, maybe I like the public school for one of my kids because of whatever, you know, programs they have over there, specialized mission, maybe the mission of the private school is better for another kid. Or maybe you want two different public schools. But that decision shouldn't be up to me. It shouldn't be up to a government official. It should be up to the parent for their own child. And so I like to say if you like your public school, you can keep your public school. Yeah, for real this time. Unlike with your doctor and Obama's false promise that, but for real. And the public schools we've seen in places like Florida, they have gotten a lot better as they've expanded school choice a couple decades ago. They're at the bottom of the pack on the nation's report card for math and reading now as they've expanded school choice to all families. Florida is ranked number one by U.S. news & World Report on education. And it's not because they pumped more money into the system. They spend 27% less than the national average per student in Florida. So it's not a money issue, it's an incentive issue. And it's a great place to Be right now, but we're not done yet. The blue states are really far away. Why? It's because of that problem I just brought up, where the Democrat voters support school choice. A lot of Democrats send their kids to charter schools. They. They send their kids to private schools. They use the voucher programs. They use the scholarships to go to a better school. And the thing is, the Democrat politicians, almost in lockstep, vote against school choice because they're controlled by the teachers unions.

[Host]

Damn. So these unions are powerful.

[Corey DeAngelis]

Yep. So they, they have hundreds of millions of dollars that they can use to lobby against any change to the status quo. They fight against any form of accountability whatsoever. Why do you think our schools were closed so long? Randy Weingarten's union lobbied the CDC to make it more difficult to reopen schools. The NEA did the same thing. The National Education Association. They're the largest labor union in the country, and they have a federal charter, which makes zero sense to me. They've had it for over 100 years. They are federally chartered by the federal government, by Congress. Republicans have a trifecta this session. They should revoke that federal charter from the nea. We shouldn't give them special privileges. They're the only labor union that has a federal charter. It just makes zero sense why they have one to begin with. But Republicans in Congress should also pass school choice. They should also abolish the Department of Education. I'm glad Trump has been campaigned. He campaigned on that issue like every rally. And look, that department started in 1979 as a payoff to the NEA, the largest teachers union in the country. Jimmy Carter wanted their endorsement and gave them the teachers union. Gave them the Department of education started in 1979. We've spent about $2 trillion at the federal level since that time. The stated goal was to close achievement gaps. That hasn't happened. They've widened. If anything, they've gotten worse. And it's a violation of the 10th Amendment. I'd say it's unconstitutional. It should be up to the states. The word education's not in the Constitution. Thankfully, we do have a bill in Congress right now by Senator Mike Rounds out of South Dakota, Republican, and it's called the Returning Education to the States Act. It's pretty dang simple, and it's not as scary as what the Democrats will have you believe. It block grants the current funding at the federal level. Back to the states. It's literally returning education to the states. And Texas, for example, has 10% of the students in the nation at the K12 level. So they'd get about 10% of the funding based on your enrollment, how much of the funding you'd get. And any vital programs, according to that bill, would move under different departments. So for example, special needs students, they may have some programs that benefit them under the Department of Education right now that would move under the Department of Justice, of treasure, of Health and Human Services, the Pell Grant scholarships for college, those would move under the Department of the treasury. The, any civil rights protections for students, that would move on under the Department of Justice. So it's not really as groundbreaking as what the Democrats are. The lines that they're repeating, they're saying, oh, we're going to defund education, it's going to cause all these problems. What about the special needs students? I've just addressed all those things. The money's going back. You'll actually have more money for education if you depart, if you abolish the department. Each individual state already has a Department of Education. Why do we need another one in D.C. to employ 4,400 people who are pushing paper, not really doing much of anything. If you don't have those people in place anymore, that means you have more money to give back to the state Department of Education to spend as they see fit. You increase local control, you have more. They know their constituents better than people in D.C. and you should end up having more funding for education. So contrary to the myth that's being pushed by the Democrats that abolishing the department will defund education actually makes education more well resourced than before.

[Host]

They need increased funding on the lunch programs. Man, that is garbage that they're feeding the kids. And I think that's impacting the scores, to be honest.

[Corey DeAngelis]

Yeah, and it could be. But at the same time, I don't want the government to, to, to kind of take over the role of the parent. And you know, I guess I see the argument that if you're, if you're gonna force the kids under compulsory education laws to be at school, you might as well feed them. If we're spending all this money anyway on administrators, might as well spend some of it on, on lunch. So I don't really see, have a huge problem with it, but I, I am a little weird. I don't have like a hard stance one way or the other on the issue because I do think parents should be involved in these processes. It's their kids. But I do understand, you know, for lower income families, that's not a fight I'm gonna pick. As far as the first thing that we should cut. I remember Randy Weingarten was on a left leaning news source. I don't remember which one. It was recently where she said, you know, the Department of Education, we just need to give, we need it so that we can give kids a good lunch. Well, they don't even administer, administer the federal lunch program. It's administered by another department anyway, so she doesn't know what she's talking about. And at the end of the day, if you still have that money and it's going back to the states, why can't the individual states do that? And I think they could do a better job at providing the meals that, that best fits their constituents. And I think more local control would be a good thing.

[Host]

Yeah, I got a lot of friends. I'd say 80% of them send their kids to either private or homeschool.

[Corey DeAngelis]

80% of my successful friends myself. So maybe this is why I'm not so successful is I went to government schools. And if you want to check out, I wrote you a note at the beginning, Sean, and listeners, if you want to see it too. Handwriting's horrible. I tried real. I was in the hotel before this. Slowly scribbling. And you know, I can't blame it on being a doctor either, because I'm not a real doctor. I'm more like a Jill Biden Doctor, Ph.D. in education policy. But no, I went to government schools. That's, that's the reason I have all these problems.

[Host]

And I went too. I got, I got bullied. I got made fun of.

[Corey DeAngelis]

Yeah, so did you go your entire K through 12?

[Host]

K through 12. And I went to Rutgers, which is a public university.

[Corey DeAngelis]

Okay, cool. Yeah, so I went to public. I don't like really call them. I catch myself sometimes calling them public schools, but they're not really public schools. I like to call them government schools because they're not open to the public. If you live on the wrong side of the district line, you can't go there. It's not a public good. It's rivalrous. It's excludable. They do exclude kids based on where you live.

[Host]

Really?

[Corey DeAngelis]

So, like in San Antonio, Texas, where I live, there's a neighboring district to mine called Alamo Heights. And in fact, if you want to transfer your kid in there, you could theoretically do it, but they charge you in addition to what you're already paying in property taxes. They charge you $10,000 or so per child per year. A public school charging tuition as if it's a private school. So they do exclude kids. They expel kids. That's a way to exclude them. They're not accountable to the public. We've seen what's happened with the school board meetings and how they just turn off mics. They label you as an evil person if you disagree with them. They don't want any transparency. They don't want any sunlight, which is usually the best disinfectant because they live in a bubble in this closed system where they, they're not accountable to anybody right now. And so one. That's why we need school choice. But yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's just. I actually went to a public. Oh, yeah. So they're, they're not accountable to the public. They're not open to the public. They're not public goods as a, as an economics basic definition of being rivalrous and excludable. You can't exclude people. They do exclude people. They're run by the government. They are compelled by the government through compulsory education laws. They are assigned by the government and they are funded by the government. At least, at least the taxpayer, which is the government takes your money and then sends it to the schools. So they're more, they're more accurately described as government schools than public schools. But in high school, I had the opportunity to go to something called magnet school maga. Magnet. MAGA school would be awesome. Yeah. Teach you to love your country, not to hate your country. And it'll be the best school. It'll be the best. And they'll, they'll get, they'll be in the top percentiles and all their academics. But no, it was a magnet school. So they're kind of like charter schools in that they can have specialized mission and they're not. You're not assigned to a magnet school. You. They're run by the district. But they have to attract their customers because you're not just. They don't just get. They don't just get people assigned to them.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Corey DeAngelis]

And so they usually have specialized missions. Mine was a communications school and I felt like that a good, positive impact on my life trajectory. I think other families should have those opportunities too. And it shouldn't be limited to schools that are run by the government. You should be able to go somewhere else. I have a daughter actually. I just joined the Parent Revolution. She's actually at the hotel with Mama and she's about. She's almost seven months old. And before we had our, our first child. Her name is Angelina. We, Miranda and I, my wife had planned to homeschool us. One of the first conversations that, that we had kind of when we were dating and stuff. And we were aligned there. So we were aligned everywhere. But that was a really important part of the conversation too. And after having our child and seeing her for the first time, there's like no way that we're not going to homeschool. I don't want to send you anywhere else. I don't want to send you to the private school, I don't want to send you to the public school. Maybe things change over time, but I think we're going to try to make the homeschool thing happen. And there's a lot of other cool things that are, that are going on recently. And this isn't a new phenomenon at all. But have you heard of micro schools?

[Host]

No.

[Corey DeAngelis]

So it's kind of like homeschooling and how about the pandemic pods? They were calling them pandemic pods during the COVID era.

[Host]

Yeah, I didn't see that.

[Corey DeAngelis]

So when the government schools closed, a lot of parents, they were trying to figure things out, right? They, if they couldn't, you know, they were trying to find the private schools that were open. And a lot of them were, a lot of them tried to do homeschooling, but they're also trying to work at the same time. They found this kind of middle ground called pandemic pods. So that's where you had five to ten children getting together in one household. And so the parents could basically band together and economize on the process of homeschooling. And so it's not like a one on one situation, but it's, it's almost there. You have, you get some of the benefits of socialization with the other kids and you could even hire a private tutor and pay them to help in your household. And you can basically create your own miniature school, hence the term micro school. And they've been doing this for a long time. A lot of people try to like to say it's this kind of re envisioning of the one room schoolhouse. And in Arizona where they've had school choice for a long time, they're one of the best states on school choice. They were actually the first state to go all in in 2022, allowing all families, regardless of income, to be able to take their scholarship money to the school that works best for them. The union got really upset though, because parents were using the scholarships to go to these micro schools. And one of the very famous ones, or ones that's doing a good job In Arizona at least, is called Prenda Micro Schools. The founder's name is Kelly Smith. And the union actually put out a political hit piece against their founder. And the organization, the nea, the largest teachers union put out an opposition research sheet on Kelly Smith and Prendom Micro Schools because they were so afraid of them shaking up the education status quo. It's not the factory model, government run school system anymore and families like it. They're using the ESA fund to access those schools. And during COVID in particular, they were seeing just a phenomenal increase in their enrollment in students in their micro schools. So, you know, in some states, like in my home state of Texas, you hear from some of the people on the fence in the legislature who might not want to vote for it, usually because they're already endorsed by the teachers unions and they're already controlled by them. But some of them live in rural areas and so some of them are Republicans. And so they'll try to have their cake and eat it too. They'll try to say, on the one hand I'm a conservative, I'm a Republican, but on the other hand I got to vote against this thing that's on the party platform, school choice. Even though Trump supports it, Governor Abbott supports it, basically every other Republican supports it. But I am going to make an exception for myself because I'm in a rural area and because I'm in a rural area, my constituents don't want it. We don't have a lot of private schools. And, and, but at the same time, in the next breath they'll try to say this is going to defund their fantastic rural public school. Hold on a second. If it's so fantastic in your public school, you should not be afraid of any competition at all. Then no one's going to go anywhere else. And especially if you don't have, if it's true you don't have any private schools, then people can't, if people don't leave, the public school is not going to lose any money because public schools are funded based on the number of students based on their enrollment. If it's true that you don't have any options there, then you're not going to lose any money. So they try to. It's like the two button meme on social media where the guy's sweating and he's trying to figure out which button to press on. The one button is, it's a way to say two things are logically incompatible. On the one hand, they'll say my constituents can't use it the public school is the only option and the other button is basically them saying that school choice will defund my rural school. The reality is actually some of the oldest voucher, the oldest voucher program, scholarship programs in the country started over 150 years ago in the late 1800s in Maine and Vermont of all places, some of the most rural states in the country. And guess why? They were created back in the 1800s and in some cases now as well. They have some districts in their state where they don't even have a public school. They're so rural, they don't have a public school. And so they figured out over 150 years ago not having a lot of options is an argument actually to expand opportunities, not to restrict them. So our oldest scholarship school choice programs were because they were rural. So let's give you more choices so that you can have an opportunity. And so like with these micro schools in rural areas, that's an option that can pop up too. Maybe you don't have a brick and mortar private school that pops up, or maybe you just have one, but in a rural area you might be able to have some type of homeschool co op or micro school pop up. Supply will meet demand. And now you actually have more options than you had before. And what's really important about the legislation that they're pushing now, as opposed to a long time ago, we've gone from the voucher or the scholarship to an education savings account. Savings accounts you can use on things beyond private school tuition. Whereas the voucher is basically a ticket you can use to get to a private school. But now you can use the savings account directed by the parent, kind of like a health savings account. I don't know if you've used one of those before, but you can only use it for health expenses. With the education savings account, it's that money that would have went to your government school. You can still choose that if you want, but if you don't, that a portion of that goes into that savings account directed by the parent can be used for private school tuition if you want, but you could also use it for homeschool curriculum, micro schools, private tutors or guides. And so it really is the gold standard of school choice policy. It really takes us from school choice to education choice because school, as we know schooling is just one way to achieve an education. And in some ways schooling is antithetical to education these days. Yeah, I mean, I don't know about, about your experience in the public school.

[Host]

Not good.

[Corey DeAngelis]

Yeah. So like when I was in the public school system before the magnet school at least there was, there was a lot of drugs, gangs, violence, people getting into fight. That was the cool thing to do to get into a fight.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Corey DeAngelis]

And so like we had this thing and I wrote about in the book called getting rolled into a Gang and the way that they would do it at my middle school is if you got beat up in the bathroom by fellow gang members, then all of a sudden that means that you were initiated to the gang too.

[Host]

It's like a prison.

[Corey DeAngelis]

And I actually had a friend and I've still talked to him to this day. He's mentioned in the book, but not by name at the time in middle school he would actually teach. He was teaching me on the weekends how to walk because I was walking to. I wasn't walking gangster enough for him. So that was kind of like the culture in the school system and actually how I got into the school choice movement. I actually started as a researcher until I figured out how how many lunatics are in the university system. I still published about 40 peer reviewed studies. I don't know how I did it. I mean one of the, the peers in that process, it's blind. So you don't, they don't know who you are, but they usually do because you usually publish your paper online first and then you submit it to a journal, but you don't know who's reviewing your, your study. So there's no accountability there. They can do whatever they want, they can reject it, accept it, regardless of how good or bad the study is. And it's usually if they agree with the result, they'll accept it. If they disagree with the result, they'll reject it. And I had this study where I found it was in my first study, it's peer reviewed now in Social Science Quarterly. There's actually another iteration in the Journal of Private Enterprise. So two studies on this topic finding that the voucher program in Milwaukee, it started in 1990. We used student level data from the state mandated evaluation of that program, my co author and I, and we found that by the time Those students were 25 to 30 years of age, they were substantially less likely to commit crimes as adults than their similarly matched peers in the public school system. So lo and behold, you get a better education experience, you're more likely to graduate, you're more likely to get a job, you're less likely to be involved in the criminal justice system too. It's another one of these side benefits that are, I would argue, even more powerful than the Academic benefits of school choice. But one of the first journals we sent this to was called the Journal of Urban Education, I think. And we had written the study and saying this benefits urban students. The editor got back to us, or I think it was one of the peers in the peer review process. And they said, you can't refer to them as urban students. They are students in urban areas. And I was like, okay, fair. Okay, well, we can change that. That's not a big problem, right? Just flip the words around. But the reason we wrote it that way is because we looked at the journal's website. They're about the journal, many times referred to urban students. So it's okay if they talked about urban students, but we couldn't talk about urban students. And that same reviewer said something along the lines of, you know, I buy your methodology. I think it's like a causal relationship. It's a rigorous study, but you didn't talk about how this relates to whiteness and structural oppression and all these, you know, buzzword DEI buzzwords. And it's like, well, that wasn't the point of the study. I'm just, here's the results, here's what happened. I'm not gonna put any extra flavor on it and get on all this equity stuff. I'm just doing a. I thought an unbiased study. Here's the data, here's what it says. But no, I had to talk about how relates to whiteness. I mean, it didn't even make any sense to me. And so we went to a different journal and it ultimately got published. But just goes to show you, I mean, when they say peer reviewed, that doesn't actually mean all that much. And it could actually mean. It could actually be a negative indicator.

[Host]

Not a positive, depending on who's reviewing it.

[Corey DeAngelis]

I mean, I had someone I was arguing with who's a professor in a college of education at the University of Texas, Austin, today or recently on on X, and he was basically saying, you know, there's some studies that show that if you use a scholarship that they lemon pick the evidence, they choose the few negative studies and credit. They use that to hang their hat on it. And they say, well, sometimes when students use scholarships, their test scores go down a little bit. In this and that study, and it's a peer reviewed study. One of those studies in their working paper version found positive effects. They went through the peer review process and all of a sudden found school choice somehow had negative effects. And you know, as professors, you're going to do whatever the peers say because you're trying to get published, right? That's kind of like, that's kind of like your. I mean, even if no one reads the study, if you have a journal article that's in a high, it's a resume, it's. Yeah, it's like that's kind of their, their status right there outside of their echo chambers, nobody really cares about it.

[Host]

No one reads.

[Corey DeAngelis]

And no, the peers don't even read the studies. I mean, you and I don't read this.

[Host]

I've never read a single.

[Corey DeAngelis]

So I mean, they're like 50 pages. Nobody reads it. You're more likely to get people paying attention to a tweet than a 50 page article.

[Host]

100%.

[Corey DeAngelis]

And that's another reason why I said to hell with this university stuff. I still do studies from time to time. My most recent one found that the school closures hurt parents mental health as well, not just the kids mental health.

[Host]

I could see that.

[Corey DeAngelis]

And that just got peer reviewed in a, a journal. I don't remember the name of it because I don't really. That's, that's not as important to me. And the most recent study I got peer reviewed before that was finding that the teachers unions were linked to the closures, that places that had stronger teachers unions were more likely to keep their schools closed longer. That wasn't really a surprising finding, but a lot of people in their echo chambers would say, oh no, you can't just read the news headlines. You need to put data behind it. And so we did. But yeah, it's looney tunes in the university system. And I think that's why we have so many problems at K12 too. The teachers are going through these colleges of education and learning to be Marxist and then that trickles down to the public school system and it's a huge problem. But this person I was arguing with on X earlier, professor at the University of Texas Austin in their college of education, he was pointing to these studies saying this actually hurts the kids. And my response was, you know what, the parents know their kids needs more than you, professor, and they shouldn't need your permission to choose the school that works best for their kid. Because maybe they're not choosing based on the test score getting 1% better. Maybe they're choosing because they're getting bullied. Maybe their kid is involved in a gang at the public school. And hey, maybe their public, their test score went down a little bit in the private school, which could be because they switched schools and that, that is known to have negative effects on test scores, regardless of whether you're, what type of school you're switching to. It's, it's, it's a shock, right? It's something that you have to deal with. It's a, there's a transition cost associated with that. But things get better over time, right? And the parents know their kid's situation, which is not going to be captured by a standardized test score. There's multiple dimensions to school quality. It's safety. It's the culture of the school. It's the specialized mission of the school. And the parent knows that better than any bureaucrat sitting in an office hundreds of miles away. And they certainly know it better than some PhD who doesn't even have their own kids and some PhD who likes to call themselves doctor even though they're more like a Jill Biden doctor.

[Host]

100%. Corey it's been awesome. And where can people find your book and keep up with you?

[Corey DeAngelis]

You can find on Amazon. It's actually a national bestseller ranked by USA Today. Those New York Times people, they didn't put it on the list, but Trump endorsed the book as well. But on Amazon, it's the parent revolution, rescuing your kids from the radicals ruining our schools. And it's actually 45% off right now. So take advantage of that. It's almost half off. And yeah, check it out. You can follow me on X. It's Angelus. Corey and again, if you want to take Ted Cruz's advice, Senator from Texas, he says on the back, you can ruin Randy Weingarten's day by reading this book.

[Host]

I love it. We'll link it below. Thanks for coming on, Corey.

[Corey DeAngelis]

Hey, thanks so much for having me.

[Host]

Thanks for watching, guys. Check out his stuff below. See you next time.