More School Funding, Worse Results? - Here's Why | TBNS 1072

0:00Yeah, that's where the world, the real world, if you will, the world that we all live in is going through more as law, right? Like technology is doubling year after year. It's just accelerating at this rapid pace, faster than most people can even talk about it, much less adapt to it, and education is still very much struggling to innovate anywhere near that spectrum. And so what we do to kids is kind of insane. We put them in this rigorous, you know, read this, regurgitate it, and take a test on it until you're 18, and then at 18, we're going to drop you out in the real world and I hope you can find the job in an apartment and I wish you well. $100,000. That's what some school districts in New York are spending per kid per year. And the results? Well, worse than country spending half of that. So where's all that money going? And more importantly, why don't parents get to decide? That's what we're getting into today. Alright folks, welcome back to the Brian Nicholson show.

1:01So here's the thing, for literally generations, your zip code determined your kid's education. You live here, you went to this school, end of story. No options, no marketplace, no competition. And what did that get us? Well, assessing that spends more per kid than almost any country on the planet and delivers results that would get any business fired by its customers in about six months. Something's shifting and I don't mean just what we've seen at the state level. And we've talked about that with Corey D'Angeles, and we've had those conversations, but no, now we're seeing real movement at the federal level. New tax credits, expanded 529 accounts, actual mechanisms that could let parents vote with their dollars instead of being told where to sit. So I brought back someone who's not just talking about this stuff. He's in the rooms where the policies are being written. Andrew Clark from Yes, every kid, an organization that works directly with lawmakers, to change the laws and empower families. And here's the thing about Andrew, he's going to tell you why these new programs could

2:02be transformative, and he's going to tell you exactly why you should still stay skeptical. Yeah, of course, yes, every kid is an education advocacy organization. We care a lot about freedom. We think ultimately that parents and families are responsible for the education of their children, and that to the degree of the government helps it should be to empower people not to take away the decisions from them. So we work directly with lawmakers to try to change the laws and the policies in the country in order to empower families, and then that's what we do. Okay, so that's the mission in power, don't control. It sounds great in theory, but what does that actually look like when the federal government gets involved? Because there are two specific programs moving right now that most parents have never heard of, and they could fundamentally change the game. Yeah, let's go ahead and, you know, we've talked, I think, a lot about ESAs historically. We're talking about those if you want. I think some of the things that are new or novel, there's two, two federal programs that are different than what you've seen before.

3:03So one came in the big beautiful bill, which is this federal tax credit. And the idea there is that anybody can donate up to $1,700 is an individual to a scholarship grantee organization, which is just a nonprofit who gives scholarships to children to go to private schools. And so use a taxpayer can donate the $1,700 to this organization, and then the organization can pull everybody's donations and can give out whatever the tuition amount is for the kid who's attending that school. And so that is going through rulemaking right now with the Treasury Department, and then it should kick off in the spring of 2027. And so theoretically, as long as a governor in a state says, yes, we want to use this program and these schools in my state can use the program, then the scholarship grantee organizations in that state can start accepting the fund and distributing the kids there. So that has the potential to be transformative and say, I don't have any essay yet, just

4:03a governor through a pen could fundamentally alter that one. So there's a lot of potential in that program. And then the other change is 529 accounts, which people were probably familiar with as a college savings mechanism. But essentially, the federal government set this up quite a while ago where you can donate money for your kids college scholarships and that money can grow tax-free. They have doubled the amount of money that's in there from $10,000 to $20,000 a year that you can donate into a 529 account and they've made it permissible for you to pay for K-12 tuition out of those 529 accounts as well. So there's now more expanded federal programs. So think about that, the money's not going away, it's just changing envelopes. So instead of your tax dollars going straight to whatever school your zip code assigned you, now there's a mechanism where your money flows to you, the parent, and then you get to the side. That's a big deal. But Andrew's going to be the first to tell you this, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. I think I'd answer very summary.

5:03I also think the libertarian and you should stay on guard because the government subsidies and government programs are fatally flawed, right? They have a long and storied track record of hurting people more than helping people. I think the argument in education is that education systems completely capture them right now. So you talked earlier about how customers should have some expectation of customer service, customer focus. You don't have any of that in public schools for the most part right now. So we've got to go from a system that's completely captured and completely run in unresponsive customers. The bet here is if we can move to a system of subsidies that at least you get some customer behaviors, some market dynamics that help improve people's lives there, but I wouldn't be confused about the fact that subsidies and flight costs, that's what subsidies do. And then having a middle man of the government is inevitable. We're going to open it up for lobbyists to come in and try to corrupt the system to their own benefit. And so if we're not vigilant about it, these subsidies could be just as dangerous as the capture system. And so we've got to keep ourselves and everybody involved to honest so that we can eventually

6:07get to the the prosperous place we all want to go to over the long term. And see, this is why I love having Andrew in the show. He's not trying to sell you something. He's not just saying, trust the government because they've got this. He's saying, hey, look, current system is broken. We're going in a better direction, but don't fall asleep at the wheel. And that's a sales lesson, by the way. If you're in sales, you know this. The most powerful thing you can do is acknowledge risk. So when I'm talking to a customer about going month to month instead of locking them into a 36 month contract, I don't pretend there's zero downside. I say, yeah, there might be short term risk. But what you're getting is a vendor who has to earn your business every single month. And that changes the relationship entirely. See, that's what school choice should be. Schools earning your business, parents as customers, not hostages. But here's the number I should make your jaw drop. No, I look some of the problem with the way that we've approached education today and any of these government programs is that subsidies do create inflation. And so a few better examples of that than education

7:09where the per student cost right now is about $20,000 per house. The country, there are school districts in the upstate New York that are over $100,000 per kid per year. And by the way, inflation for folks playing on the home game, it's too many dollars facing too few goods. Or in this case, too few services in schools. Yeah, exactly. And the layman way of thinking of it is things just get more expensive, right? And that's where we're at is, you know, $45,000 a year per kid in New York City is cost prohibitive. You're going to have a private school tuition is cost prohibitive. But certainly more so when it's public schools. And so, you know, compared to the rest of the industrialized world, they're at half of that rate or lower. So if we're going to get to a place where we're saying, OK, the current system is not only not working for people. It's not delivering the attendance results. The customers are unsatisfied. They don't feel listened to. But also we're spending more than twice, oftentimes through or four times more than the rest of the industrialized world. For a kid basis, how do we get back out of that?

8:11Certainly moving to a system of subsidies might be a helpful direction. But if the impulses for people who have ESAs to say, we need the same amount of money as the public schools, well, that's just going to be more inflationary. And the same way the higher education has been more inflationary. What we have to do is to get the kind of school choice crowd, the education reformers to say, no, getting lower costs in a better quality service is actually the value proposition of a marketplace. And that's what we need to do. We need to offer people better access to education than they can get elsewhere at a much lower cost. And that should happen every year, right? As more innovative options come online, it should be driving quality up and cost down. And then we should be responded to that by having even more freedom and more dynamism. So this is where the education reformers start to separate between the people who are just looking for more money and the people who are actually trying to empower human progress. And hopefully we all want to stand on this side of human progress. Did you catch that?

9:12The reformers are separating. You've got one camp that just wants the same pile of money redirected to them, which, spoiler alert, just more inflation. But then on the other side, you've got folks who are saying, no, the whole point is that a marketplace drives quality up and costs down. See, that's the group you want to be rooting for. And then this leads to what I think is the most important part of this whole conversation because it's not just about where the money goes. It's about what the education even is. Yeah. I mean, I said of the answer when you asked like, what's every, yes, I'm kid about it. I said, it's about giving parents the responsibility back to educate their kids. And this is one area where libertarians have traditionally struggled is we love the freedom. We often recoil at the responsibility part, but you can't have one without the other. Right. And if you're going to go out and have children, that's a pretty significant responsibility. Your job is to listen to your kids, to understand what they need, to be able to operate

10:14in a complicated ecosystem of learning options and help your kid find the one that's best for them. And I know that people aren't used to that in a lot of cases, but that is not just your right and your responsibility. It's also your privilege and your opportunity, right? It's part of the way you show love to your children instead to help prepare them for the world. And we've fought for a long time because we've had this hyper centralized system that we could just focus on the one true way to learn something, the quality way to learn it. It's just not how it works. Every kid's a little bit of a special snowflake. Everybody's gonna learn in different ways and unique ways. And most people aren't gonna learn one way. They're gonna learn from lots of different ways. And so I really like there's this parable of the pottery store where a professor is purported to have given two groups in a class, different assignments. He told one half of the class, he said, your job is to only create one piece of pottery at the end of the year and to make it the best quality you can. And he said to the other half of the class,

11:16your job is to make the highest quantity of pottery that you can. Just volume, that's what I'm gonna reward you on. And then he let him go loose, also semester. And then at the end of the semester, he came in and obviously the people whose job it was to create the highest quantity also happened to create the best quality pottery as a result of having the most opportunities, right? There's something about that parable that is transmissible to all sorts of educational opportunities. The ability to try things in different ways, to try, fail, learn, pivot. You know, as a parent that can make you feel like you're doing it wrong, but that's actually part of adulthood, it's part of living and it's part of learning. Activity breeds results. Well that's my old CEO used to say, and Andrew just proved it with a pottery class. And think about all of that for a second. The group that was told to aim for perfection made worse stuff than the group that just kept making things. See that's not just an education lesson. That area there is a life lesson. And it's exactly what our current education system gets backwards.

12:17We tell kids, sit down, memorize this, regurgitate it on a test, and then you do that for 13 years. And then, good luck out there or you go to forever college. And then we wonder why they can't function in real life. We stunted their ability to make decisions, to take risks and then to fail and learn from it. And by the way, if you're a parent listening to this and thinking, well, my kids school is fine, maybe it is. But ask yourself, is your kid learning how to learn or are they learning how to follow instructions blindly? Because those are very, very, very different sets of skills. And only one of them is gonna matter in the real world where AI is doubling the pace of change every single year. Well, it is somebody who tried prolifically to go to university many times and never finished. I've often said, I've tried never to let my education get in the way of my learning. And I say that somewhat flippantly, but I think it's the answer to your question in many ways,

13:17which is our society has envisioned education as though it's an institution. It's something you do for some time-loaded space. I'm gonna learn from 12 until I'm 18 or I'm gonna learn whatever in elementary school from the time I'm X to Y. But that's not what education is in our lives. In our lives, education is the process of learning and continually learning. And when you unbundle that from the institutions of education, what you find is people are capable of amazing things. And I often think of like Benjamin Franklin who I believe personifies America better than any of the family and fathers and perhaps is more responsible for more of the innovations we've had in America than any other. He didn't have any classical education to speak of really. And I actually think it's to his benefit because where everybody else has this mamesis, this desire to be tribal, Franklin was able to look at the world and just be endlessly curious. He wasn't told what learning was good

14:18or what learning was bad, all learning was good to him. And he was just a voracious learner. And that's how he ended up creating public libraries and fires and insurance and electricity. And all the things that Franklin becomes famous for, not to mention the Declaration of Independence, is in those contributions in the modern world when you look at guys like Palmer Lucky or Elon Musk, like same thing, they break the mold from traditional education in a lot of ways. They're outliers, but because they're outliers from the institutions, they're willing to challenge norms. They're willing to ask why not? The dreams that seem too big or too ambitious, they just haven't been beaten down in the way many of the rest of us have been. And I think that's what you're gonna see in the country. You're gonna see more and more people who are breaking loose from what's expected, what's normed. And they're gonna try different things. And they're gonna find it's immensely valuable. It's transformational for them. It's transformational for their families and their lives. It's gonna help education and learning get reconnected to work, right?

15:20Like how are people gonna adapt to the AI age? I don't know, you better figure out things that are valuable. Benjamin Franklin, no formal education, built public libraries, figured out electricity, helped write the declaration of independence. And Andrew's point isn't that school is useless. It's that the institution of school has become a cage that kills curiosity instead of feeding into it. So here's the framework I want you to walk away with. And it's really three questions every parent should be asking. First, is my kid learning how to learn or just learning how to comply? Second, does my kid's school have to earn if I continued enrollment? Or do they just get my money by default because of where I live? And third, am I preparing my kid for a world that exists or the world that existed when I was in school? Because the truth is the world is moving at Moore's law speed. Technology is doubling literally every single year. And education is still running on a model from the 1950s. That gap is going to eat your kid's future

16:22if you're not paying attention. School choice isn't just a policy debate. For you as a parent, it's a survival strategy for your kid's future. No, look, I think everything you're saying is right. Like everything you want lives on the other side of heart, we've got to be able to communicate with each other as humans again. We have to be able to have freedom to make decisions and suffer consequences. We have to be able to sit in the rooms and have uncomfortable conversations. It's more of a getting rid of safe spaces. It's more than getting rid of cancel culture. It's about finding meaning and purpose and being comfortable with discomfort and learning how to learn. And all those things are only possible in an environment of freedom. And that's where we want to get to. That's what yes, every kid is all about. And so you can find us online at yes, every kid.com. You can search for us on X or any other platforms there. You feel free to email us and we're always happy to interact and we'd love to have your help and support. Everything you want in life is on the other side of heart.

17:24I mean, that's it, that's the episode. Freedom isn't comfortable. Chaos means responsibility. And the education system we've been handed down doesn't prepare kids for any of it. But there is good news. It's changing. There are real programs, real policies and real organizations like yes, every kid that are putting the power back where it belongs. The parents. Remember that number from the top? 100 grand per kid in some New York school districts. And the results were getting worse. Well, that right there, right? That is where school choice will help solve the problem overnight. And by the way, if you're in New York, maybe this conversation really hits home. We'll do me a favor. Share it with a parent up in New York or wherever you may be who needs to hear it. And then tag me at being at those liberty on Instagram, X and Facebook. And of course, check out yes, every kid links are all in the description down below. Andro and his team, they're doing amazing work. And it's really the work that's changing laws

18:24and giving families just like you out there options. And if you haven't already hit subscribe, well, you know the drill. Hit that little notification bell. And of course, leave a five star review over on Apple Podcast or Spotify. Tell them why you listen. And we're not telling people what to think. We're giving them the better tools to think with. And of course, right now, that matters more than ever. And don't forget, support our amazing studio sponsor, Cardiomiracle, the best heart health supplement in the world. Being said, I'm Brian Nichols. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to The Brian Nichols Show. Find more episodes at BrianNicholsShow.com.