Today Dom reviews the first ten episodes of his new podcast.

Welcome to Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano, a podcast devoted to preserving your parental rights, including the right to choose the best school for your child. This podcast is dedicated to gaining the option of school choice for every parent in America.

Here's your host, educator and noted talk media commentator, Dom Giordano.

Hey, welcome in, everyone, to this week's episode of the School Choice Show.

And this week, much different.

It's the first opportunity I've had to kind of catalog after 10 episodes.

This is the 11th episode.

My overall thoughts on School Choice.

Now, I'm sure that you get this by the show each week, by doing this show,

how extreme of an advocate I am for school choice, how big of a deal this thing is. I've taught in several school districts. I taught in Camden, which was a very difficult school district. I taught in a suburban school district. I've taught at the community college level, the college level. And throughout that career, it's always been a driving goal to just speak the truth, spread the gospel of this.

That school choice is as American as apple pie. And the people that are on the other side are trying to spoil the baking of this pie. That's the way that I see it. And when I got into talk radio, where I've been a talk radio host now 37 years, people always embrace this issue, but it didn't move the needle politically, which meant then it didn't get done. Well, guess what? Now it's starting to get done.

And one of the reasons is we have a great diversity of people that are pushing this issue. They have people in power that get this. And I think that COVID and what we saw from teachers and what was going on in schools and the shutdown of schools, it is really cemented this whole push towards school choice. That's one of the biggest things possible. So in my career in talk radio, people always seem to affirm this.

The question is, why has it not gotten done up until now? So this in brief for Dom Giordano, this is my manifesto, the manifesto of choice. Why, where we are, and what is going to happen next if we make it that way? And I have to tell you, over the 10 episodes that we've done so far on the School Choice show, even as much as I thought I knew coming into this,

just by the brilliant guests that are laboring in the vineyards of school choice

that I learn and get inspired even more. And I hope that's the case for you.

And then I want to identify an article from Forbes that I'm holding in front of me

that outrages me, outrages me completely. Forbes magazine for the affluent talking down school choice,

saying, not all parents are in a position to make good choices. Oh, really? Who do you think can make the best choice for their kids? Some guy over a woman at Forbes? Some Randy Weingarten or Becky Pringle of the teachers' union? Or you, the parent? Or you, the immediate connection to the child somewhere in the family that is looking out for their welfare? So over these 10 episodes, Ryan Boyer kicked it off.

And that was, to me, as good as it gets to kick it off. He is the president. He's African-American. He's the president of the Building Trade Union in Philadelphia. Incredibly powerful. There are 40,000 members of that union in Philadelphia. They control billions of dollars of work. And he is a union guy. That's how he rose to that level. But he is for school choice. And in that first episode, he laid out, going back and forth with me, his own experience.

and saying he'd be a hypocrite if he weren't for school choice. And how, you know, to go to a better school, they had to finesse where he lived with his parents. I mean, to get school choice. He was blatant about it. Another one that I remember was the Reverend Bob Oliver. All right. He's in my neighborhood, Germantown, Mount Airy in Philadelphia. Germantown has pockets of poverty, Mount Airy's middle class and up.

And the Reverend Bob Oliver talked about a unique charter school system that he had set up and a consortium, along with the Reverend Joshua Peterson in Harrisburg, of these schools through black ministers. And these guys are magnetic, charismatic, right there talking about how to save particularly young African-American males through school choice, through what we're talking about. What is Forbes magazine? What's their percentage?

Forbes to do something for these children rotting in some of these really bad public schools.

We've also talked with Stacey Garrity, who I'm hoping does run for governor in Pennsylvania.

She has a tremendous connection to rural Pennsylvania.

And we talked with her the politics of this, how in the upcoming governor's race and in the midterm elections of 2026, school choice will be front and center.

So before I break down Forbes magazine in a second, and this article that is really the face of the opposition, the smugness, there are many reasons for school choice. The number one thing, it's kind of just a synonym for what? Parental rights. Who could be against parental rights? Well, there was a big election in Virginia four years ago, which was tending to be a blue state, and Glenn Youngkin won,

because Terry McAuth said, no, the administrators, the people in the schools, they are the experts. Now, that's what the NEA has said. Randy Weingarten has said that. Well, the parents just don't have the expertise of these people. I come back to, again, who knows their child better, who has more of a burning desire for that child. Maybe some of these low-income parents didn't have a shot themselves. You all know that. They want a shot for their kids. This is the American dream.

Are you kidding me? You know, I could tell you too that schools are safer when you have school choice. I know that school choice, we get better academic results. I know there can be a better matchup for the child with particular school choice of the parents. Why are people where I am in Philadelphia, there's a charter school system masked and they have a lottery every year because they have 10,000 people on their waiting list. It's like the Eagles.

Why are people voting with their feet? Well, Forbes magazine would tell you things like this. Listen to some of their reasons, and it's helpful to deconstruct the smugness, the arrogance, the monopoly thinking, the status quo. They say not all parents are in a position to make good choices. What if the best choice is on the other side of town and parents have no reliable way to get their child

What do parents need after school, Karen? Can you imagine? How many hurdles can you put up? Is this America? Don't we try to figure out ways to make the better choice, if not the best choice? Forbes, in writing Against School Choice, says, it can be hard to make good choices when there's an abundance of options. So they cite in a magazine, they say in Washington, D.C., the writer of this, where I live,

There are about 200 possibilities. Well, good. More choice. They're talking about overchoice. Oh, my God. I have too many choices. So their mechanism, this woman who wrote this, her kid's not going to some of these abysmal schools. I've taught in some of them in Camden, places like that. I mean, I taught when I first started doing my student teaching at Southern High School in South Philly.

They had a chalk outline in front of one of the main doors into the school for about a year where someone was shot. They didn't remove the chalk outline. It was shot and dropped there. There were food riots. I saw one kid trying to smother a kid's head in this giant vat of mashed potatoes. There was a lot of theft at Southern when I went there. And the lead teacher for me, it was my student teaching, said they would steal that phone right off the wall.

And the phone was stolen. It was gone. So I've seen this. Forbes is saying, oh, too many choices. You got to stay in a situation like that. I would tell you as a teacher, when you have to deal with stuff like this, it makes it difficult to give your best to the kids that are really good, really trying, because you're just trying to get by because of the craziness, the violence, the chaos, the kids that are acting up. All right, Forbes goes on to say school closings are disruptive.

What if a school is shuttered? Good. That's America. We filter out the worst and we go with the best. So if a public school closes, that's bad. There are, in Pennsylvania, any number of public schools where not one child is, not one, is proficient in reading and math. Baltimore has even more. Not one on the state testing. There are others where their proficiency rate historically, year after year, is 4% or 5%.

How can you continue? Well, it's a monopoly. That's why it continues. And Forbes seems to be. Would you go to them for financial advice? They seem to think monopolies are good. They go on to say there really isn't a lot of real choice. Well, they just told us there were too many choices. Now there's not a lot of real choice. Item five from Forbes magazine. Not everybody puts their own kids' interests first.

self-interest will ultimately benefit everyone. But for a variety of reasons, some parents and students feel loyal even to a school that is struggling. My God, let me finish this quickly here. Item six, the sins of the parents are visited upon their kids if you have choice. So they say in this, do children need to suffer the consequences of their parents' choices, whatever they may be, or does society have an obligation to ensure as much

as possible that all children have access to a meaningful education. Get that? The parents suck. They don't know what they're doing. We are the experts, buddy. Yeah, how's that expertise working when you have these rotten choices, these public schools that are violent, chaotic? And I'm not blaming the teachers per se on this. I'm talking about the system. I'm talking about a system now in Philadelphia where Lincoln High School is so bad because of

due to illegal immigration, that the incoming freshman class is going to be housed in 22 trailers.

You're going to school in a trailer, 900 kids, a trailer.

All right.

So those are a few things bouncing off Forbes that make the case.

Do they not?

This is America.

I am emotional about this.

It is parental choice.

It is the rights of parents.

It's about empowering parents, the thrill, the joy of seeing that.

That's why a lot of the people that I work doing this podcast, they get that. They get that moment. They want people to experience what the middle, upper middle class and wealthy parents can. Which brings me to a guest that we had booked that I hope will come on. But I want to hear face-to-face refute what I just said. No, it's not from Forbes magazine. We were scheduled to talk this week to Becky Pringle.

NEA and is someone who called the Supreme Court ruling. And this is an example why we need school choice. This is a real snapshot. This happened in a Maryland school district. Look, the deal in America when I was in public schools and still now was on certain really controversial matters. The school may teach this. This involved gender fluidity, transgender, et cetera, with kids in the kindergarten level. So they put it not as in the health class where people could opt out. They said, this is the curriculum.

And the parents, many of them religious, Muslim, Christian, wanted to opt out. They were told you cannot opt out from this. When the Supreme Court said, yeah, parental rights, freedom of religion, you have to have a space to opt out from something this controversial. Becky Pringle of the NEA said that this is a shameful decision. I wanted to ask her, are the parents bigots? Are they people that we should be aware of?

with their kids. And maybe the kids shouldn't be with them. I'm hoping to get the chance in the near future, and I'll be very civil, direct, back and forth. I was thrilled when we heard about this to get a chance to talk with one of the driving forces against this. I'm not afraid of debate. Anytime, anywhere, you can set it up for me. You can always email me, by the way, domshow at aol.com, domshow at aol.com, and I'll respond pretty quickly.

So to summarize a bit, the manifesto, why school choice? Why at this moment? Look, we're seeing a major disruption of things in Washington, of the status quo, of a lot of things that needed to be fixed. This is something if fixed and we had real school choice would revolutionize America, would be our legacy second to none, second to nothing else that we could do out there.

This is it.

It gives parents the opportunity to really parent.

They get more involved when they're school choice.

It gives children a chance not to have to deal with all the difficulties.

And look, I'm sad for the kids that would be left behind in dysfunctional public schools.

But I'm not going to hold which I wouldn't hold my kids captive with you to those schools.

And we are winning on this.

The Big Beautiful Bill, if you've listened to this podcast, tell other people about it. We are winning. There's a lot of money in there that now goes state to state for school choice. People will be able to take up to $1,700 off. They contribute to nonprofits set up in each state. You can take up to $1,700 you contribute, and then you take that off of your income tax. Each governor gets to decide. I'm in Pennsylvania. Will Governor Josh Shapiro say, no, I'm not going to take free money?

This isn't taken away from the Philadelphia public schools.

And that's where this show comes in.

That's where this show is kind of our own podcast think tank of some of the great people in America who are in the forefront of getting us over the finish line.

The finish line of something that is going to be more revolutionary, more effective than anything else out there that I can think of.

So your mission, spread the word.

Be inspired. Tell other people about this, that this is now working. We are at what they call, Forbes magazine, an inflection point, where in this big, beautiful bill and all kinds of forces out there, you're seeing state after state. You're seeing more and more laboratories of this, where people are trying different things. They're expanding the choices. They're making this something that

will effectively give parents quite a lot to consider for their kids. And guess what? I believe parents are up to this. Now, are there parents that are not? Okay. So we're going to think of the premise of Forbes here. We're going to keep kids in this rotten system because there are some parents that are incapable of making what they deem to be the best decision for those children. No, we're not going to do that. We're going to forge ahead. We're not going to be called shameful.

We're not going to be called fascist or anything else.

We are the ones that are offering something, again, as American as apple pie.

And that is choice.

And remember, this does not have to be one choice.

It would be a voucher system, private schooling, religious schooling, whatever it might be.

What do they have against the charter schools?

Those are public schools.

And if they're not meeting requirements and satisfying parents, unlike the other public schools, well, then they would go out of business. So what problem do they have? The problem that they have is this upsets the status quo. And as bad as the status quo is, you have all kinds of groups and people that are nourished by it. I have not seen anything as infuriating in something that purports to be a capitalist magazine for,

the capitalist system as that article that I read and took apart. There's six reasons why

school choice is probably not a good idea.

They say the most committed advocates of school choice

see it as a way to improve education for all through the free market. Let schools compete

for students, they argue, and eventually only the best schools will survive.

Isn't this free market competition? Forbes didn't really make a case telling me that it wasn't here. All right. Now, here's what you do going forward. Our mission statement for this week. Continue to bring you great stuff each and every week here on the School Choice Show. Great guests coming up next week. We have a Democrat leader, former mayor of Providence, which is very Democratic. Rhode Island is a huge supporter and getting traction even inside the Democrat Party for School Choice.

Send me an email. Tell me what you're thinking on this. Give me some ideas that you'd like to hear explored. Tell me what's happening wherever you get this podcast. You can do that at domshow at aol.com. D-O-M-S-H-O-W at aol.com. That's the place to go. We're winning on this. We are winning every single day. There's a development that tells me we're pushing back on this. So thanks to all my producers.

Thanks for having the opportunity to spread the gospel, so to speak, each week. And all the great people that I mentioned that have been involved in the first 10 episodes, we got to thank them for the work they do every day. Until next week, Dom Giordano here on The School Choice Show. Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano is a presentation of Giordano Productions, LLC. Copyright 2025. All rights reserved.