Welcome to empowering families and education. Please welcome lindsay burke. [applause] welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today. I am delighted to what i have what i know will be a fantastic conversation. There has never been a better moment for education freedom. America has never been closer than it is today to realizing the vision for universal educational toys. Choice. The Arizona Governor signed into law the nations first truly universal Education Choice program. An Education Savings Account open to every single arizona family. West virginia wins nearly as far as the last year. 32 states and the district of, your offer 76 columbia offer 76 private School Choices. To nearly 50 million. Teachers unions remain a powerful force in case law education but we are here today to suck showcase a new coalition that will bring special Interest Groups this coalition understands the old summit objective is freedom for families into selective learning environments that align with their values. This volume based case for School Choice is the heart of what my calling has deemed education colleague has called education to point out. It represents a coalition of organizations reflected not just education groups, but groups like mom for liberty and partners like parents defending education, the Alliance Defending freedom and the independent mens forum who understand womens forum who understands the movement as a solution to current cultural battles. Thats also at the heart of new efforts like the promise to americas parents, developed by the alliance freedom, rooted in accountability for parents, Education Choice and transparency. Before i introduce our speakers, market calendars, because on september 9, the Heritage Foundation will be releasing our first ever education freedom report card showing just how well states are or are not doing on Education Choice and host of other freedom measures. We look at Education Choice, Regulatory Environment, academic transparency, and return on investment. Place your bets now for which states. You think will end up on top. It is now my pleasure to introduce a great lineup of speakers we have today. I will welcome them up on stage. Dr. Kevin roberts as president of the Heritage Foundation. Dr. Roberts served as the chief executive officer of the texas Public Policy foundation. He has a deep passion for education after earning his phd in American History from the university of texas and spending several years teaching history at the collegiate level, dr. Roberts founded the academy, a coed k12 catholic liberal arts school in louisiana. He served as the academys president and headmaster for seven years. In 2013 he resigned from the academy to become president of wyoming catholic college. Tiffany justice as the cofounder of moms for liberty, an organization dedicated for fighting for the survival of america by unifying, educating and empowering present parents to have parental rights and throughout all levels of government. Is she served a fouryear term on the School District she served a fouryear term on the School District. He is also the executive director of the educational freedom institute, an adjunct scholar, and a board member of the Liberty Justice center. Dr. Deangelis has coauthored 40 journals, setting the record straight on educational freedom. Monitoring our conversation today is kaylee white, a commentary writer and the Deputy Editor of restoring america for the washington examiner, focusing on religion, politics and culture. Please join me in welcoming our panelists. [applause] thank you all so much for being here. Im excited for the conversation we are about to have. Theres so much we could say about School Choice and education freedom. I want to start by asking you guys, what do you believe that School Choice and education freedom is . What does it mean for families . School choice and educational freedom means trusting parents, to make the best decision for their children. Unfortunately we have seen a nation that has not trusted parents to make the good decisions for their kids. Educational freedom means parents get to direct the upbringing and education of their children and thats the way forward in america. Trusting parents. Yes, four words for you, funding students, not systems, allowing Family Education daughters dollars for Public School, few like Public Schools you can keep it. If not you will be able to take that funding to a private school or homebased option. We fun people directly when it comes to Higher Education with the pell grant and g. I. Bill, we do this with prek programs and headstarts. You can take the money to a private religious prek provider if you want. We do the same thing with food stamps. The funding follows the decision of the family. We can take it to walmart but you can go to trader joes or whole foods or safeway, or any other provider. Same thing with medicaid, hospitals, you can take your medicaid dollars or vouchers to a private, religiously affiliated hospital. Im arguing for funding students directly, we apply the same logic with everything that we do with everything else, to those in between years of k12 education. I agree entirely with what tiffany and corey has said. What i would add is School Choice is about equality of opportunity. Its difficult for me as a historian of our republic to think of another example in the last 75 years of a system that is gone so much money, that is done so much to resegregate american kids, resegregate them racially, domestic ethnically, and socioeconomically. It is aborted to the american ideal that this not only exists with this is a controversy. We need every dollar for every child so every parent can make a decision for his or her child so that he can guarantee quality of opportunity, which is the defining characteristic of the u. S. Would it help it . Yes. Theres a lot of reasons for School Choice. We made the testbased argument for a long time, was School Choice, your kids are stuck in a Failing School because of the massive reading test scores but there is a dimension of quality that parent started to look into in the past couple of years whether these schools align with your values. Now, was School Choice you can have the funding follow student that goes tuned to dachshund to duchenne that values your that goes into the values. To follow but not, the relationship to follow up on that, the relationship between the students and school is important. No matter where you are sending your child to school you need to build a relationship with that school. I dont think the idea of educational freedom frees us from worrying about the ideology creeping into schools. Parents during the pandemic, sometimes when they wanted School Choice it wasnt there for them in their communities. They also thought that they would move their child into another school that they thought was a. Favorite place and it wasnt. What you need is informed decision makers. A lot of information about what a good quality education looks like for their child, making those decisions about what is best for the child. That starts with the relationship between the parent, the child and the school having good communication. Because School Choice increases transparency, it i provides datan the market. Data in the market that doesnt exist now. It breaks up the monopoly government funded schools has now. Put the power in the hands of parents, highlighting something we have learned, the more parents discovered the curricula that were being offered to their kids, the more unpopular Critical Race Theory became. Theres a direct correlation, the two great patriots sitting between us deserve a lot of credit for highlighting that. They provided the ammunition for parents to go into their School Boards and say, in spite of the fact that youre not answering our question, in spite of the fact that you are calling us domestic terrorists, we demand on behalf of our kids, on every american child, because this is america, that you stop teaching that nonsense. The more as a going to the next round of a state legislative sessions, we can really push towards every dollar following every child, you will see that transparency. As American Families are going to decide keep their kids in Public Schools, that will be fine provided we recognize, provided we think about the research that where School Choice exists, Public Schools improve and in every measure. We ought to have the optimism to embrace this. For a lot of my time i heard School Choice, it was School Choice or die. It is not School Choice and not Public Education but a School Choice and Public Education and reforming that system and recognizing that there are children being as a educated in america that are being taught that america is not a very good country. Is that what we as americans want being taught in Public Schools . Its a question a lot of people need to grapple with. We should take a moment to thank the Teachers Union for doing so much to advance the concept of School Choice and homeschooling than anyone could have ever imagined in the past couple of years. She overplayed her hand, you have the cdc closing schools, hurting kids academically and mentally. Two weeks to slow the spread turned it to two years to flout the generation of children. You had the chicago Teachers Union, they overplayed their hand and show their true colors. We are all better off for it because in 2021 we are dubbing it the year of School Choice. The biggest goal choice expansion in a single year that i have ever seen. As lindsay mentioned earlier, arizona went all in and one upped all the other states and that, were going to expand educational them to every single student, every family regardless of income. Theyre going to take their statefunded education dollars to the state providers of their choosing. In arizona they have a majority lay the house. And the senate. They all had to show up and vote for the party issue and that got it done. That makes me optimistic or other states, particularly red states to empower every singlefamily to have educational freedom. Domestic terrorists, that back fired, 26 states left the and sba. We may as well call them the Regional School board association. Those domestic terrorists vote and push back, their new special interest group, parents who are going to win the battle in the long run. You can call us whatever we want we will not stop writing. Fighting. Democrats in the past have made themselves out to be the party of the little guy for years. Why is it they oppose a School Choice so vigorously . What is the motivation for them to oppose giving parents the power to direct the education of their children . It undermines the power. In fact it is a misnomer to think the american left the Democrat Party is a part of the little guy when he think about this deplorable consequence of the not so Great Society and the ridiculously named war on poverty, building out government funding schools. We ought to embrace the project of a Public Schools because it is part of our tradition of transmitting american ideals from one generation to the next. The workingclass movement in the u. S. Is all about bureaucracies and systems. It is really important to wrap up here, that conservatives who have not spent a lot of time on education reform recognize this is the civil rights issue of the 21st century period. American parents got to see very clearly th what the unions had. I remember sitting in bargaining sessions and the district of our getting for the district and the union are arguing for those of the table. I called randy the arsonist to pretend to be a firefighter. You have union, and who was bargaining for the kids our parents . I watched it in School Districts, controlling things you would never imagine unions being can controlling. You need to look that up if you are a parent. America, all of america got to see as parents were struggling to the pandemic, the unions working to keep schools closed. We fastforward to representative assemblies and the meetings they had and you look at the agenda on the things theyre concerned about, climate change, abortion, Foreign Policy, ukraine. Focus on our children. American children are not learning to read in school. What other industry would you pour more and more money into and how the outcomes that we have . If you are surgeon and two thirds of the kids died on the operating table would we still let you operate on children . I said, i tried to be as with the is corey, its hard but i said, they should change their name to the National Extremist association because they are representing the most far Left Progressive ideology and is not reflective of what parents and what we believe teachers want. They dont represent teachers either to be honest. The National Extremist association and the armen of Indoctrination Department of indoctrination, this firefighter just throws more money into the fires and keeps earning. She doesnt bring water to the fight. Another reason for this, 99. 97 of campaign contributions, the American Federation of teachers have gone to democrats as opposed to republicans. School choice is not a partisan issue with voters on the ground. Texas released a poll yesterday, at tyler, 59 of democrats, a majority of independents as well, and a clear Opinion Research polling nationwide in february 22 also found that super majority of republicans, democrats and independents, support School Choice. Another thing has changed, is the political wind. This is becoming a litmus test issue for republicans and coming out against parental rights in education is becoming a form of political suicide. Look at what happened to Terry Mcauliffe and virginia. I dont think parent should be telling teachers to teach. He laid out a bloop a blueprint for success for republicans going forward. The democrats are in a catch22 situation on education. If they come out for these parents the unions will be mad at them. If they come out against parents, the news special Interest Groups, parents are pushing back, they woken up, theyre paying attention and they are holding politicians accountable. In tennessee you had their republican primarys primaries. Nine of the tenant lost their seats. Wake up and listen to the parents who are never going back to sleep again. X amen amen. School choice comes in a variety of forms. There are many different policies including curriculum transparencies that parents are interested in passing. What do the next few years look like for School Choice movement . Where should we be looking at next . All eyes on iowa. Governor reynolds is a staunchest of order of educational freedom. She pushed the Education Bill this past year. It made it to the senate with all republicans except for one voting in favor. It will easily pass the chamber it got to the house, 16 of the 100 seats had an r next to their name, but they could not get it done even though reynolds held the legislature and passed the 100 day mark. She fought, she actually took action and took it a step further and went to the primaries and endorsed nine republicans with mostly School Choice as a dividing line in that primary. Eight of those nine School Choice supporters one. It looks like we have the votes in the iowa house. Its not a matter of whether iowa will get School Choice next year but how big of an initiative it will be. Hopefully it will be universal, like they did in arizona. Lets make sure we do it. Ive been looking at texas. No disrespect iowa. Governor abbotts voice, calling in may of 2022 to have the state funding while every single child to the public, child or Charter School private or Charter School. The Senate Passed it before it was cool back in 2017 with all the to report with all but two repub