Is Education in America Getting Better or Worse?

0:00Here's something most investors miss. It's not recklessness that costs people money. It's being late. Big shifts start quietly in policy meetings and regulatory rooms long before they hit the headlines. Right now, the AI buildout is driving massive spending in energy, data and infrastructure. There is a way to potentially benefit from that surge without betting on a single textile. To get the full breakdown, visit planwithoxford.com. Again, that's planwithoxford.com. Hi, everyone. I'm Danielle Gill and we have so much to talk about today. We are going to dive into the school choice revolution. We're going to talk about homeschooling and what is the state of education in America today? We're going to speak with Cory D'Angeles, who was an expert on all things education, particularly school choice from Heritage Foundation. And we will dive into that in greater detail. Stay with us. I am delighted to welcome our guest today. Cory D'Angeles, he is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. And we are so delighted to have him

1:04here today. He is the president of the Educational Freedom Institute. He is also the author of the book, The Parent Revolution. So make sure to check that out. Cory, thanks so much for joining us. Hey, Danielle. Thanks for having me. Awesome. Well, I know you are so great to talk to about education, public schools, all of it. So what is your analysis of the current state of public education in the US in America today? Well, things have gone off the deep end with political activism. And it starts at the very top with the Teachers Union. If you look at their National Convention from last year, it was in Portland, Oregon, in all places because, of course, the National Education Association is the largest labor union in the country. And they passed all these resolutions that had nothing to do with educating kids that they read more like a declaration of war on the Trump administration than anything else. And then one of them, they declared President Trump a fascist. And in the same resolution, they misspelled the word fascism because, of course,

2:08you can't make this stuff up. But we spend so much money, we spend $20,000 on average per student per year. That's like 30% higher than average private school tuition. And our results are abysmal, about 80% of kids are not proficient in math. And if you look into Democrat-controlled cities like Chicago, they have 55 public schools, Danielle, with not a single kid proficient in math. I just found out last week that they have a school called Douglas High School. It's not a special need school. It's a regular school. And it's 97% empty. It was built for about 1,000 kids, but they only have about 30 kids there. Yet the unions won't let it close down. And they have not a single kid proficient in math or reading in that school. And also, they have two-thirds of their kids that are actually, you know, the 28 that are so that are enrolled. Two-thirds of them are chronically absent. It's only about, you know, eight of them are actually showing up for school and they spend, you know,

3:11do the quick math on it. They spend almost $100,000 a kid in that school alone. It's such a waste of taxpayer money. They're basically lighting your taxes on fire and they're just laughing all the way to the bank. They just create so many jobs for government employees. They're not really focusing on the kids. They're more focused on the adults. Yeah. How is it possible to even spend $100,000 a kid when kids are not showing up? When you said there's, you know, like eight kids there. And I mean, what does that make sure they empty their cars at the time? It is insane. It's like worse than the Nick's Shirley situation because, you know, we thought for a long time that the school system was there to educate kids. We're seeing with these all these anti-ice protests are really there to create student activists for their progressive causes. So when we say that the school system is failing because bad math scores and reading scores,

4:12we're looking at the wrong metrics. So many of these far-left lunatics got into the profession so that they can mold the minds of other people's children. At that annual convention last year, seven or eight months ago, the NEA passed a resolution to mobilize students and to dedicate resources to it, you know, financial resources and time and money to mobilizing students to protest against deportations and ICE and other Trump policies. So this didn't bubble up out of nowhere. The kids aren't organizing the protest. You have the leaders that they're supposed to be in the schools orchestrating all this nonsense. The NEA also told their members to wear blue uncertain days to protest ICE. They told their members to print out anti-immigration enforcement posters and propaganda in the hallways. And they also told them to sign up recently for anti-ice trainings. And that has nothing to do with education. The problem is the teacher's union has

5:15become nothing more than a far-left arm of the Democrat party. Look at where the money goes. 99 percent of their funding for political purposes goes to Democrats. It's a money laundering operation. It's time to puttin' into it. And there is a bill in Congress right now to revoke the NEA's federal charter, which I don't know why they had the backing of Congress as a partisan organization of the only union that has such a special privilege. But hopefully Republicans can lock arms and do the right thing on this issue and at least pass it out of the house. Gold in silver recently soared to record highs, then pulled back. So our pressures metal still goodbye. Many Wall Street experts predict higher prices ahead. Why? Because we still have trillions of national debt, a declining dollar, and inflation that keeps shrinking our savings. Even with corrections along the way, gold remains a historical hedge for wealth protection. That's why Morgan Stanley's chief investment officer ditched the 60-40 stock and bonds portfolio and recommended

6:18up to 20 percent in precious metals. They're getting educated and you should too. Call Lear Capital at 800-992-2255 for your free gold investment kit. And learn how you could qualify for up to $20,000 in bonus gold. Lear Capital has over $3 billion in transactions and thousands of five-star reviews. Call 800-992-2255. That's 800-992-2255 or visit LearAlex.com. And why is it that public sector union workers need to be able to opt out of these unions? How do they opt out of it? What are the benefits of doing that? Because you're right, these unions have major problems. Well, in blue states that weren't right to work states for a long time, union members thought that they were compelled to pay union dues as a condition of employment. But we wanted the Supreme Court recently. And so, Linda and man, the education secretary actually put out

7:20a video a week or two ago pointing out that whether you're in California or Texas, New York, or Florida, Red State or Blue State, you can no longer be compelled to pay union dues. So if you're a public school teacher and you're not on board with all this far left radicalism, even if you're a Democrat and hey, you just want to focus on the basics. You don't want to get it mixed up in all the politics from people like Randy Weingarton at the very top who makes over half a million dollars a year and who pushes for policies that mean lower teacher salaries while just hiring more people, more Democrat foot soldiers to push for political pet projects. I mean, you look at the NEA's budget according to their own LM2 reports that they that they sent over to the federal government. These are public reports less than 10% of their total revenues actually goes towards representing members, but they spend tens of millions of dollars on political activity. And that's according to their own bookkeeping. It's probably a lot worse than that. And so you can opt

8:21out by going to opt out today.com. You click on your state, very easy. And guess what? You can join organizations like the Teacher Freedom Alliance so that you can get your personal liability insurance and they actually cover it for free. Whereas the union takes that money out of your paycheck and the union's insurance is in the union's name, which means they might not want to back you up if you're conservative, but there's a legal issue that arises. Whereas with the teacher freedom alliance, the policy is actually in your name, so they have your back. Okay, good to know. And you mentioned Supreme Court. So maybe we can talk about the recent Supreme Court decision on parental rights in California. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about what that is about. Yeah, it's the Mirror Belly versus Bonta case. And we won. It's more of a temporary victory, but it sends a shock wave to the rest of the nation that California and other public schools should not be keeping secrets from parents. I mean, it's amazing that this ad actually go all the way to the Supreme Court. So in California, you had certain conservative school

9:24districts over the past few years passing policies to have more transparency for parents. It was pretty basic stuff. If the kid was having confusion about their gender at school, the policy was pretty simple. Hey, maybe you should tell the parents about these things so that they're not left in the dark, and so that the kid can get the help that they need from their family members, as opposed to strangers that are employed by the government who had their own whole host of issues that can arise. We see a lot of headlines coming out of the government school system of cases of abuse happening and people being arrested. So you don't want to carve out the parent, which is the primary decision maker for their kids. And so what the heavy hand of the state did in California when it's conservative school districts were trying to do this to have more transparency and to uphold parental rights was you had the attorney general Rob Bonta sued those school districts and said, you know what? We're going to try to force you to keep secrets from

10:26parents. And there went there was some back and forth ping pong with the courts, but we ultimately won recently with this mirror belly versus Bonta case. And even at a federal district court before even went to the Supreme Court, we won with a guy named Roger Benitez was the judge. His money quote was that these kind of secrecy policies created what he called a trifecta of harm. And obviously harm the parents. It kept them in the dark and violated their 14th Amendment right to direct the upbringing of their kids, but it also harmed the teachers because the teachers might be conservative. They may not want to keep the secrets from the parents. They may want to they may not be on board with transgender insanity. And they might actually want to help the kids. And then the third arm of harm is obviously the kids who they're young, they're confused. And if you continue putting your thumb on the scale towards pushing them towards away from their biological reality and towards confusion, that's going to hurt them later on in

11:30life. You have so many stories that these transitioners coming out when they get these irreversible surgeries, they go on these puberty blockers that have irreversible side effects as well. And that obviously hurts the kids. And so there was an appeals court where they struck down that that federal court, but then we went up to the Supreme Court and it looks like we have a victory there. So, you know, it shouldn't come to this. You know, parents should just be able to say, hey, if they get a whiff that something fishy is going on at the school and they're trying to keep secrets from me, they shouldn't have to go to the school board. They shouldn't have to go to the courts. They should just be able to take their money somewhere else. And they so school choice is the ultimate solution. Here's not the only one, but if they're going to have to fight you in court and you see this in places like Maryland, they're trying to force teachers to use the students preferred pronouns. There was actually a court case in Maryland that went two to one in a federal court against the teacher. So they're using the government to try to twist the

12:33army teachers going against their religious beliefs, denying biological reality and telling them, no, you have to buy into the delusions of a small child. And so this is this is not only a parental rights thing. It's also a child's right to accept their biological reality. And also the teacher's right to not have to buy into this crap and pretend that this fiction has any basis in reality. Yeah, I mean, you wouldn't think we need the Supreme Court to weigh in on parents' rights to raise their children to even recognize his gender and so on. So how did we get to this point? How did it get to where this is so extreme? Because if I think back to let's say, I don't know, the Apple Valley school days, where schools were small and it was kind of local, you know, maybe like you were very involved in the school or it was another mother or something who was teaching during the day at the school, it just seems like this is so crazy. It's gotten to

13:35this point. So if you look back in history, is there a time when you feel like schools just totally changed? I think it's gotten worse in recent years, but I think it's been bad from the beginning in too many of these government institutions. And I think we see it more often now because of social media. You had the teachers bragging about pushing gender ideology in schools on TikTok. That's why lives of TikTok became a thing. And then in COVID, when the government schools closed, a lot of families thought the schools were focusing on the basics, even in 2020, but then they saw through Zoom School at the kitchen table, wait, hold on, what is your teacher talking about? You're an oppressor, if you're white, and you're the oppressed, if you're not, you're dividing people. It's like this Marxism happening in the schools. And parents said, you know what, we're going to homeschool. And starting in since 2019, homeschooling has essentially at least doubled according to the Census Bureau's data. And so I think from the very beginning, you go back to

14:35Horus Mann in the, you know, in the, he was the first education secretary in Massachusetts. And they've got their first compulsory education law in America started there. He got this idea from modern day Germany, which was pressure at the time. And their compulsory school system wasn't started to have, to have, you know, math reading and writing. It was to create obedient soldiers and to create just obedient factory workers as well. And so they brought those same ideas over to America at the time. And they said, what better way to create an obedient citizenry that has nothing to do with, you know, academics than to start at the very young age to go from K through 12 Vladimir Lenin has been attributed with the quote of saying that if you give me four years with the child, they'll forever be a Bolshevik. I don't know if that's a

15:38accurate or a direct quote, but it's paraphrase at least. And it gets to the sentiment of, they believe that the kids are not yours, that they belong to the government, they belong to this idea of society, which is ultimately controlled by a special interest group, namely the teachers union usually. So it's not even the majority inflicting their will upon everybody else. It's worse than that. It's in a radical minority inflicting their will on everyday parents who just want to raise their kids to have good values. And so school choice is a way to get rid of this problem to hold the decision makers accountable in the system. But also if teachers opt out of the union, which is the political arm causing a lot of the problems, the teachers can fight back to because there are a lot of good conservative teachers in the school system as well. Gold and silver recently soared to record highs, then pulled back. So our precious metal still

16:42goodbye. Many Wall Street experts predict higher prices ahead. Why? Because we still have trillions of national debt, a declining dollar and inflation that keeps shrinking our savings. Even with corrections along the way, gold remains a historical hedge for wealth protection. That's why Morgan Stanley's chief investment officer ditched the 6040 stock and bonds portfolio and recommended up to 20% in precious metals. They're getting educated and you should too. Call Lear Capital at 800-992-2255 for your free gold investment kit. And learn how you could qualify for up to $20,000 in bonus gold. Lear Capital has over $3 billion in transactions and thousands of five star reviews. Call 800-992-2255. That's 800-992-2255 or visit LearAlex.com. And shifting a little to school choice which you mentioned because there's been a lot of action on that front as well. Texas, Kentucky. Tell us a little bit about what status on school choice,

17:46where things looking. It's a very popular issue. And so do you think more states are going to move toward adopting school choices? Yeah, we're winning so much. I'm almost getting tired of winning. I'm just kidding. We're not done yet. But we've come so far in such a short amount of time. It's almost unbelievable. I mean, in 2020 we had zero states with the idea of universal school choice, meaning no more picking winners and losers. Everybody can take their money to the school that they want. They're tax dollars. They should be able to pick public or private. And now we've gone from zero to about 18 states with universal full-blown school choice policies. And Texas is one of them Kentucky's making moves as well because they had one of their programs struck down in the court. Now they have a bill with lawmakers to tell their governor that hey, we need to opt into President Trump's new school choice program. So President Trump ran on the issue of universal school choice. He's done a very good job of using the bully pulpit effectively whenever a red state is about

18:48to go all in. He typically chimes in and says, you know, I hope the lawmakers do the right thing. And I think that's made a huge difference. So promises made, promises kept. And in his big beautiful bill, there was a provision that created a federal tax credit. And 27 states have already opted in. 26 of those governors happen to be Republicans. Only one Republican governor hasn't opted in so far. And one Democrats actually come along. And this is a form of school choice, which is privately funded through charitable contributions. And Jared Polis was the Democrat. He's from Colorado. And he's pretty far left on some other issues. And so, but even he saw the writing on the wall. And he told local media recently that it was a no brainer decision for him. And he said he would be crazy not to participate in President Trump's new school choice program. And the reason for that is if he didn't, he'd basically be shooting himself in the foot. That's true for other Democrat governors as well. Because anybody can donate to these scholarships

19:48and get a dollar for dollar tax credit. But you can only receive the scholarships if your governor in your state decides to opt in. So when that happens, if you don't, let's say you're a California resident, you may donate to get the tax break, but your kids aren't going to be able to receive the scholarships unless the governor opts in. So you would end up subsidizing scholarships in red states if Democrats didn't choose to opt in. So there's a kind of two levels of school choice going on here. One of this federal, you know, school choice program that Trump signed on to. And then also the state level action is mostly happening in red states because the GOPs basically emerged as the parents party. Whereas the Democrats have kind of taken the stance of, hey, we're a wholly owned subsidiary. The teachers unions, we get a lot of money from them. And a lot of them are lead to snobs where they think they know better than parents. They think that their kids can go to private school, but those other parents might not have the wherewithal to choose, which is a totally elitist paternalistic view. It's an incorrect view.

20:55Even low-income families know their kids needs better than anybody else. Certainly more than bureaucrats sitting in offices hundreds of miles away. Yeah. So if you're a parent raising your kids in California, you're subsidizing school choice basically for other areas because you can't partake in that. That's right. And, you know, Gavin Newsom hasn't made a decision yet on this Trump school choice program. But, you know, there were four governors that quickly came out on the Democrat side. You know, Tina Kotec from Oregon, the Hawaii governor, Wisconsin's governor, Tony Evers, and Luhon, Christian from New Mexico. They quickly said, like months ago, we're not going to participate because, well, one, they have Trump derangement syndrome. And so, you know, they just, they got blocked by that. And they also, they, they historically didn't support school choice. So they figured my union lackeys aren't going to like it if I opt into this thing. So I definitely can't do that, right? But now, Education Week is reporting just the other day that three of those four governors

21:58are now having second thoughts. They had a knee jerk reaction at first. And now they're saying, hold on a second. We're not actually saying no. We are going to think about it. We're going to, you know, kind of soak up the, you know, either it's one of two things happening. One, they made a dumb decision at first. And now they're reconsidering. And they don't want to shoot themselves in the foot. They don't want to give away the additional money. And or two, they basically, you know, maybe, maybe they're getting more information. But, or they're, they're seeing that it's a political loser to be on the wrong side of parents. I hope that's the answer. But the problem is, you know, they're so in bed with the teachers unions. It's kind of, they've been so drunk on power with the teachers unions. It's hard to reverse course. But, you know, Jared Polis shows some, some signs of good things to come, hopefully. Right. Yeah. No. I mean, definitely. Do you think so? Okay. We talked a little about the teachers. Obviously, the Democrats are protecting the

23:00teachers unions. How can we protect good teachers? There are some teachers out there that are really good. And they just want to help people and they not woke. And then there are other teachers who are bureaucrats. They don't care about kids. They just want to collect checks. And then they're, you know, there are others that are crazy, woke, and, you know, they're the ones that lives of Ted Talksmeak, they is about. So how can we shift things to where we are incentivizing only the first type of teacher and not the other two options? Yeah. We weaken the teachers union bosses because they take all the money for themselves. If you look since 1970, per student spending in America has increased 170%. At the outcomes gotten 170% better. No, obviously not. But at the teacher's hours, gotten 170% higher. No, not at all. They've only increased by basically zero, 3% increase in real terms. So where's all the money going? It goes towards hiring more people. It goes towards administrative bloat. That's good for union bosses like Becky Pringle and Randy

24:01Winegarten because that means more dues paying members, which means more political funding for their Democrat buddies to get into office. Becky Pringle is also an at-large member of the DNC. Randy Winegarten used to be a Democratic National Committee influential member as well for like almost three decades. And nobody basically knew about it until she stepped down just last year. And the New York Times reported on it. But school choice would give some competition for the teachers union bosses to spend the money not on just hiring more people, but maybe put the money towards salaries instead for the teachers doing a good job. The problem is the unions fight for the lowest common denominator they fight against merit pay. And so what do the best teachers do? They say, I'm getting screwed in this system. I'm not going to pay out a pocket for supplies each year for the kids. This guy over here, he's not actually, everybody knows he's horrible at what he does, but he makes more than me just because he's been around longer and has more loyalty to the status quo. So the best teachers say, you know what, I can be an engineer as opposed to a math teacher.

25:04So maybe I'll go to that. And so the system is stacked against the best teachers right now partially because of union influence. So I'd say opting out helps them. They still get protected through the liability insurance in the private market costs a lot less than what the unions are charging, and it's in their personal name as opposed to the union's name. And also there's a lot of these, you know, beyond school choice, which looked private schools and teachers have actually started these micro schools where they can have 10 students in a household. They can make about the same amount of money and they can have less bureaucratic red tapes so they can have more autonomy, teach how they want to teach, don't have to buy into the woke garbage. They can have the values that are aligned with the families values that choose their micro school. And the Washington post of all places Danielle wrote about this during the COVID years and highlighting how that was a success. They didn't take the next step and say, well, that's why we should have school choice. Some more teachers can do this and more kids can have these smaller class sizes and whatnot. But the last

26:06thing I'll say is there are other bills floating around in state legislatures right now to hold unions accountable. One of them's in Florida. The bill already passed the Senate 20 to 14, basically, yeah, all the Democrats voted against it. It's now in the House. I'm pretty sure they have the votes there. But it's it's simple stuff to help everyday teachers and hold the boss is accountable. For example, one of the things that it does is requires at least 50% of the members to vote in favor of recertifying the union each year in order for the union to maintain its certification each year. So you better, you know, get the support of your union members. If you're at the top, if you want to be certified in that state. And so that's probably going to pass that provides more accountability to the unions that actually focus on the members as opposed to activism. And another piece of that bill is that you want to be able to force taxpayers to pay for politics on the on the part of the union members. So if you're in the classroom, yeah, fine, your salary is still going to be funded through tax dollars. That's how it works. But

27:11if you're going out to campaign and doorknoc for certain politicians, that shouldn't be covered by the taxpayer. It's ridiculous. And so that would provide much needed accountability. There's another bill in Idaho right now that already passed the House to ban taxpayer funding of union politics. And so yeah, why in the world should taxpayers be forced to fund these political organizations called teacher unions? So that would be banned in Idaho. And there's a lot of other examples. I'm not going to give you a running list. But there are other things that kind of one of one last thing. There's a lot of states doing this right now. Florida has already done it. It's called paycheck protection. It wouldn't allow the districts to automatically take the money from the teacher's union's paychecks for union dues. Teachers would have to voluntary elect then and send that money to the unions if they want to be members. And so these are just other common sense solutions kind of at the edges, not as big and elaborate as school choice. But those are

28:15things that that will help hold the union leadership accountable as well. Yeah. And it seems like Democrats, they are really just focused on controlling our choices in Connecticut. They're trying to enact an anti homeschooling regulation. And everywhere else, they want to force parents to put their kids in these horrible schools. So why does the left have this just hatred for homeschooling and gets president can't control the kids on the parents as much. But maybe even tell us a little bit about what's going on in Connecticut. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, you have states, you look at these blue states, Connecticut, Hawaii, they tried to regulate homeschooling, California had a bill last year trying to regulate homeschooling New Jersey had one to even go as far as forcing the homeschool families. One, to have a general health and wellness check from a public school district official every year. As if they know anything about a proper education and health and wellness in the government school system, give me a break. They have no business

29:18telling homeschool families if they're doing a good job or not. And so that was an overreach, but they even went further. They said, if you're going to homeschool, you have to use the public school state curriculum, which includes DEI and Marxist ideology. That's the whole reason why parents are leaving the public school system to begin with. Why do you think we've had a doubling of homeschooling since 2019? It's on the rise because parents saw there was so much communist gobbity-gook in the public school curriculum that so many parents were on board with. And so that they're trying to inflict that same kind of curriculum on the parents who are fleeing that ideology just gives away the game. It's all about this form of brainwashing. They think that your kids are their kids and they want to raise them in their socialist worldview as opposed to yours. Whereas conservatives and libertarians and independents and school choice

30:20supporters have a different worldview, which is the parents of the primary decision-makers. And if you disagree with me and you want to send your kid to the public school where they're learning left-wing activism, one, they shouldn't be doing that. But as long as you're not forcing that ideology on my kid, I think we're probably going to be okay. Let's agree to disagree. You raise your kids how you want. I'm going to raise my kids how I want. But the teachers unions, their control freaks in a lot of ways. They think that your kids are society's kids. And Joe Biden basically said the same thing a couple of years ago that there's no such thing as your children and society's children. And that's a communist worldview that we should reject every step of the way. And the Supreme Court in the United States has for over 100 years now. We had a Supreme Court decision called The Here's for Society of Sisters in 2020, 1925, over 100 years ago now. And it famously ruled that child is not the mere creature of the state.

31:27Many politicians would be wise to remember those wise words today. Gold and silver recently soared to record highs, then pull back. So our pressures metal still goodbye. Many Wall Street experts predict higher prices ahead. Why? Because we still have trillions of national debt, a declining dollar and inflation that keeps shrinking our savings. Even with corrections along the way, gold remains a historical hedge for wealth protection. That's why Morgan Stanley's chief investment officer ditched the 6040 stock and bonds portfolio and recommended up to 20% in precious metals. They're getting educated and you should too. Call Lear Capital at 800-992-2255 for your free gold investment kit. And learn how you could qualify for up to $20,000 in bonus gold. Lear Capital has over $3 billion in transactions and thousands of five star reviews. Call 800-992-2255. That's 800-992-2255 or visit learallex.com.

32:32Yeah, the education system is seriously as long as issues. But like you said, there are a lot of things that are looking better and are slowly getting better. It seems like things are getting worse and getting better at the same time somehow, depending on where you're located maybe. It seems like, I mean, the left is certainly moved to the left and the right is kind of moving, you know, to the right and that more people are becoming in favor of school choice, like you mentioned. And then I guess final question. What do you think will be kind of your prediction? Do you think looking ahead a few years, we're just going to have people having totally radically different education experiences and red states versus low states? Is that kind of why this is going? Yeah, you point out that some of the left is going further to the left and education, whereas some of the right states are becoming more conservative on education. I think that gives a little eye into the future and that if you look at the census bureau's prediction or the prediction, you know, they show the maps of which states are set to gain

33:33congressional seats because of their population after the next census versus those that are set to lose seats, states that have universal school choice, all seven or eight of the states that are ingrained on that map that I'm thinking about that predict more seats. Those are universal school choice states and all seven or eight of the states that are listed and read on that map, which show that they're going to lose seats because they're losing population, think about places like California, New York, they don't have any meaningful school choice. So people are already voting with their feet to places that have education freedom and once people get school choice, they fight really hard to keep it. In my home state of Texas, we just open our scholarship applications and they have 163,000 people who have already applied. It's higher than that now and the scholarship window is still open. And so, you know, once people receive that benefit and go to a school that

34:34works for them, in Arizona, for example, they have over 100,000 people using their scholarship program. That's as much smaller state than Texas, but they've been doing this for many more years than we have. When the unions try to get rid of that and if Democrats try to get rid of that freedom, they're going to pay a price at the ballot box and we saw this in Florida in 2018, when DeSantis barely won his first governor's race by like 0.3 points, he barely won. The headline in the Wall Street Journal the next day was that school choice moms tipped the governor's race in Florida because his opponent, Andrew Gillam, the Democrat, he called to get rid of school choice scholarships that were already benefiting over 100,000 kids at the time. You fast forward to the day over 600,000 kids are using scholarships in Florida and exit polling from CNN in 2018 found that black moms in particular came out in force for DeSantis much higher than expected, and the argument was that these parents were basically single issue voters. They didn't want to lose their scholarships.

35:38They might have disagreed with DeSantis on everything else, but they figured, hey, I want my kid to get a better education than I had. And so that became a very important issue in Florida. And so I don't think, you know, there's going to be many politicians going forward from either party. At some point, they're going to see that it's a form of political suicide to come out against parents. And that's the only way things will change in the future when it comes to school choice. And I think at some point we'll get bipartisan support in a widespread manner. And I think Jared Polis pointing out that, hey, maybe I'll opt in the Trump's program. Maybe the first domino to fall. Hopefully others will join as well. Awesome. Well, Corey, thank you so much for joining us. They are really appreciated. And make sure to check out Corey's book, The Panther Revolution. Thank you so much, Danielle. Great talking to you. Well, that wraps up today's show. If you enjoyed the show, make sure to find me on social media.

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