Corey DeAngles, Senior Fellow at the American Culture Project, returns to the 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.

All right. Welcome in, everyone, to Old School, New School, Next School.

And I am really loaded today. I didn't give full credit to our special guest, Corey DeAngelis, Ph.D.

Let's see. We only have like 15, 18 minutes we do these podcasts.

But Corey is a senior fellow, American Culture Project, visiting fellow, American Institute Economic Research,

Board of Liberty Justice Center, Adjunct Scholar, Cato Institute, National Best Selling Author, The Parent Revolution. And just to give you an idea to check them out, I left out like three quarters of it. So, Corey, how does one man do all that and do all the traveling that you do? I guess it's really important to me. Look, I used to make the libertarian case for school choice based on improving academic outcomes, competition being a rising tide that lifts all boats.

but it's become a lot more personal. I have a 15-month-old daughter now. Her name's Angelina. And we just got back in town yesterday from Disneyland of all places. And we plan to homeschool her. This is an issue of parental rights. Whose children are they? Are the government supposed to be the people who control your kids' minds or are you supposed to be in control? And I think that answer is obvious. Parents are the best decision makers for their kids. Absolutely.

Stanford of all places.

The headline is the looming $90 trillion cost of learning loss and the policy solutions to address it.

Nowhere in here, though, Corey, is anything about the teachers union, shall we say, at least indifference on a good day, on a bad day, anything to block anything and control their power.

I mean, it's.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dom, it's willful ignorance.

I mean, Stanford and other universities, I looked up data from Harvard. Open Secrets has information on donations from people affiliated with Harvard University and other universities. Ninety-five percent of the political contributions from people affiliated with Harvard go to Democrats. And the Teachers Union is an extension of the Democrat Party, where you have Randy Weingarten's union, the American Federation of Teachers, funnels about ninety-nine point nine percent of their political contributions to Democrats every single

It's the same reason why the New York Times, when they reported on Randy Weingarten leaving the DNC after 26 years, never mentioned that she was at the Democratic National Committee before that. They always wanted to frame the narrative of the teachers' union bosses being there just to represent teachers and to try to improve academic outcomes. But guess what? You're right. The teachers' union,

has become a political operation. And when it comes to the learning loss, they are responsible. They held children's education hostage. They lobbied the CDC to get more money from taxpayers. They made it more difficult to reopen schools. And they were able to use that as a bargaining chip to say, hey, we'll open if you give us more money. And they ended up getting $190 billion in so-called COVID relief starting in March of 2020.

So these are not education activists. These are radical people on the radical left who are trying to pull the Democrats to the left and trying to pull the schools to the left. And school choice is a good solution to this because if you don't want your kids to be indoctrinated with an ideology that goes against everything you're doing at home, you should be able to vote with your feet, take your money somewhere else. And that goes for people on the left and the right.

You could be in a school that's biased on the right. I haven't really seen many examples of that. But if you're a Democrat, school choice can benefit you too, just based on whether the school is not, if it's not the right fit for you academically, if it's not interesting to you, or if your kid's even not in a safe place. So this is not just a, it's not really a left versus right issue, but it does happen to be the case that,

New Data Just came out today, Dom as well, from researchers at different universities put out data, millions of observations of showing people's voter registration records de-identified, it's private, and linking that to their employment sector. And they even found that the education sector was the furthest to the left out of any other category, including the arts. So you have like teachers,

being more biased to the left than the general public, but even further than we expected before.

Well, Corey, you're the preeminent guy on school choice. But what I wanted to say, it's a two pronged attack. Now we're looking at the teachers unions. And most people usually by and large, with exceptions, like their child's teacher. It's the union part. And today, Washington Post even talked about one of your favorites and you're one of her favorites.

And that is Randy Weingarten and her union. And two things in this big column today. They brought up a former teacher, Shanker, began American educator. And they talk about, and this guy was a guy who would really go to the wall in these teacher strikes and all. They talked about, though, some of the information he put out, some of the things that he did. And they say, the guy that wrote this for the Washington Post, much different than Randy Weingarten.

And they also cite the former mayor of L.A.

who has now become an education activist.

It appears to be to me for charter schools and the like.

And he.

Wow.

That guy.

Paul's out Randy Weingarten.

So let's talk about what you're trying to do.

I talked with Ryan Walters, who's also doing some stuff in the zone.

Why go after the teachers unions?

Would you completely try to dry them up and get rid of them?

Well, we should give teachers a choice, which they do now have after the Janus decision at the Supreme Court. You can no longer be compelled to pay union dues, whether you're in a red state or a blue state. So if you're a conservative teacher, an independent teacher, you would be crazy to continue funneling your money out of your hard-earned paycheck to your political opponents. I mean, you look in New Jersey, for example, the teachers' union is getting sued for basically misusing union dues.

You have teachers suing the union because they funneled about, I want to say, $40 million to a failed gubernatorial.

It was 50 or so. One note for listeners here with Corey DeAngelis, I'm a former teacher in New Jersey by statute, by law. I never saw that union do money. I didn't pay it. It was taken out of my paycheck. Can what you're up to do anything about that?

Yeah, of course. So teachers can opt out of that funding. They can join alternatives like Ryan Walter's Teacher Freedom Alliance, which gives you twice as much liability insurance that the unions are typically providing. And they're doing it for free because donors are covering the cost. And so you can go to optouttoday.com to join the Teacher Freedom Alliance and get out of the union. Stop giving your money to people like Randy Weingarten, who make over half a million dollars a year.

who are just spending the money on politics. But you can also look at states like Florida, where they've changed the default. Now teachers have to choose whether they want to opt into union dues every year as opposed to them stealing your money and then not telling you you have the freedom to opt out, because that's what districts are doing right now. The unions aren't going to advertise that you have a choice. And so a lot of teachers in blue states in particular think, oh, you know, this is just how it's always been.

I'm going to continue having my dues, my funding go to the union, and they're going to protect me, which they don't really, they aren't even really required to do that. The liability insurance that's owned by the unions is in the name of the union, whereas the Teacher Freedom Alliance liability insurance is in the name of the individual teacher actually protecting the teacher as opposed to the union. And so I think, yeah, there's other things besides school choice that we can do to incentivize

the unions to do a better job. And I think giving the teacher that decision every single year to say, hey, do I actually think these people are representing me? Are they just focused on representational activities? And we know that's not the case. I think the latest data from Randy Weingarten's union showed that only about a third of their funding that they steal from teachers every year is allocated towards representational activities. The vast majority of their money goes towards advancing their political pet projects, fighting against school

choice, giving money to Democrats. And so, again, if you're a Republican or a

conservative or an independent teacher, or if you're even a Democrat teacher, I even listened

into a radio interview from New York City before their mayoral election. And one of the teachers in their public school system called into Randy Weingarten, who was on the radio, and said, you know, I feel like you guys are getting too political. You guys are sending money to Mam Donnie, or you at least the UFT endorsed Mam Donnie.

And Randy Weingarten responded by saying, you know what, the union can be as

political as it wants to be. And if you don't like it, you can basically leave. So I think teachers should take Randy Weingarten's advice and say, look, if they're not focusing on us, I mean, it's our money that they're taking from our paychecks. If it's going to political causes that we might even agree with, but maybe I don't want my money going towards political causes and I can choose to donate that way if I want to separate from the union.

They need to opt out, join the Teacher Freedom Alliance to do something different. And I think that is the only way that people like Randy Weingarten will be able to have an incentive to say, huh, maybe I should do a better job. Maybe we should just focus on educating kids, focus on academics as opposed to activism, focus on the teachers as opposed to politics. And I think at the end of the day, that would do better for the teaching profession overall because it would give them a better

name, because I feel like Randy Weingarten and Becky Pringle and the union bosses are just making the profession look bad by being so hyperpolitical. For example, Randy Weingarten's going on a book tour right now, and her book is titled Why Fascists Fear Teachers, and she's using that as a way to brand conservatives as fascist people that she politically disagrees with. It's just bogus. I mean, we just saw the Virginia elections as well, and Jay, two bullet

Jones, who won the attorney general's race, he got the backing of the teachers union in Virginia, even though he fantasized about killing his political opponents and wishing death upon their children for political purposes. It's insane that you had the union representing teachers that are responsible for educating kids endorsing a political candidate who fantasized about and wished death upon children. I mean, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just,

We're beyond parity at this point. And I think it's up to the teachers to save this country because, look, the union bosses only have power if the teachers consent to giving their funding to those union bosses. And it's up to us to educate those teachers to say, hey, I know it's always been this way in the past where you were basically forced to do whatever people like Randy Weingarten wanted you to do and to send your money to them, but you no longer

have to do that. So I think that's a good first step is to provide those options for teachers and people like Ryan Walters at the Teacher Freedom Alliance are doing that right now.

Corey, any numbers, though, do you have any sense? Janice was what was it 2018? So that's seven years ago. And I thought initially there was a liberation sense. But then reality, you know, you'll be blackballed in that school is a fear.

Even the administration, there's a sense, might be in cahoots with the teachers union because they want to keep things going. And you would seem like a troublemaker always talking about this. Do we have any sense? Is it tens of thousands of people maybe nationally that have opted out? It's hard to tell. And the counterfactual is that it would have been an increase otherwise. So that we have a decrease, and that's what I believe Freedom Foundation has reported. There's been a decrease in NEA membership in recent years.

The number of teachers in the school system have increased by 10% since, say, 2000, but the number of teachers in the unions have decreased in recent years. So that's a sign of good things to come. And now that we have free alternatives in the Teacher Freedom Alliance, that's only going to amplify the numbers. I believe the Freedom Foundation also reported that over 2,500 teachers

have joined their teacher freedom alliance in the past month or so alone.

So, you know, that's a couple thousand here, a couple thousand there.

And I think that's only going to blossom now that teachers have this ability to keep all that money in their pockets, join an alternative.

And since other people are doing it and they have this kind of group that they can lock arms with, they're not going to feel like they're sticking their neck out so much anymore.

When you have a support group, which this group also provides professional development for free as well, and just teaching materials and a support group, I think you're more likely to have people break the ranks of the unions and join alternatives. And I think that's part of why the parent revolution was such a big deal post-COVID when parents saw that when they went and spoke out at school board,

meetings against CRT and gender ideology. They had people supporting them. I feel like that's really important to start a movement as well. And I think social media has been a big part of that as well. Facebook groups, people on X, when they see that they have supporters, they're more likely to speak out and make their voices heard. And so I think the same thing is the case with the teachers now realizing that, hey, they're not the

They might believe that 99% of teachers are Democrats who support Randy Weingarten because no one talks about these things, and they try to just focus on their work when they're at school during the workday. But even the data that came out today, even though it showed that most teachers are to the left, are registered as Democrats as opposed to Republicans, the split is only like 65-35 with about over a third of the teachers.

according to this new data set nationwide being registered Republicans as opposed to Democrats.

So if you know that you have a mass group of people within your school and they're on your side, you're more likely to say, OK, it's time to make the jump.

Keep more of my own money and stop giving my funding to Democrats who I don't want to vote for.

My experience in Jersey, too, in a couple of school districts over a lot of years, too, was a lot of these teachers were kind of apolitical. They were moderate, if anything. And that's Jersey. Now, it wasn't in the upper, the northern part of Jersey. They're very liberal. But you're exactly right. There's a lot of people there. And the activist types were the ones that took over the union, though, frustrated labor leaders. The average teacher wasn't really into that. Your book, by the way, behind you,

is a blueprint. Yeah. For for exactly what we're talking about. Now, it wasn't the biggest issue where I am in Jersey and I'm in sync with people and talk show host Corey in Virginia. But by losing those two and Mondami in New York, I think we took a beating on the parental rights. Yeah. School choice issue in Jersey. Phil Murphy has not approved his representative.

One Charter School in his eight years now. I don't think Mikey Sherrill would. In Virginia, to your point, they backed the guy who wished that his political opponent's wife would be holding the dead children that were killed in her arms. That's unforgivable. I mean, you can't go back on a teacher's union willing to do that. There is no excuse. It's rotten. It's evil. And then Mondami in New York, though, I have hope because already people are fleeing the New York City schools that are looking for a new school.

that would put up with it. He's getting rid of the gifted and talented.

After he went to a private school himself that costs over $60,000 a year for kindergarten. And it goes up from there. School choice for me, but not for thee. And I think the Mamdani story is important, too, with the whole school choice conversation. Because, you know, when you have kids going through government schools, learning that big government's the solution to all their problems for 13 years of their lives, for seven hours a day, they're going to get out.

and vote for socialism, because that's what they've been sold on the conveyor belt that we call this government school system, this factory model school system. And if you look at the cross tabs on the exit polls for Mamdani, he actually lost for the he lost against Cuomo for the older population. But for the the younger population, he was he won by like 50 points for like 18 to 20. Corey, let me stop and ask you, do you think socialism?

And I asked Ryan Waters, colleague of both of ours, about this. Is it actually being taught in schools or is it just they don't label it that? What do you think? Yeah, so Marxist ideas are being promoted in schools through critical race theory, for example, gender ideology. And so and then it's also just even if the bias isn't explicit, children are sponges. I mean, my daughter has been mimicking things that I do.

I'm like how did the heck did she learn that? Like she'll be talking on the phone with the with the phone next to her face. I'm like, oh, man, I guess I'm on the phone too much. But even if a teacher isn't sitting there saying explicitly like you, we should vote for socialism, if they hint that that's the right approach or if they kind of make a face when people say Donald Trump, they don't even have to say anything out loud for that to rub off on the children.

And then they'll start to learn implicitly over time that the people around them think that big government's a good idea. So they're going to think big government's a good idea as well. And just the very nature of having government-run school systems is a socialist idea. Mamdani wants government to run the grocery stores too, and maybe some of his voters think, ah, that's no big deal. The government runs the schools. The schools are okay. I went to public schools.

And so maybe we can apply that to grocery stores as well. So we all know throughout history that when the government controls the food supply, that leads to mass starvation. It's a huge problem. I'd argue that today having government run the schools leads to mass starvation of education quality. And we look and we see the nation's report card scores showing decades of learning loss after the COVID school closures that were caused by the teachers unions prioritizing themselves as opposed to the kids.

with about a fifth of kids proficient in math now on the nation's report card. That means 80% are not doing math at grade level despite us spending $20,000 a kid per year. But as the socialists always say, they'll convince the kids that real socialism has never been tried. And so they got to just do it harder, throw more money into the bottomless pit that we call the public school system, where most of them are failure factories more than anything else.

that is really a shame. And it's probably one of the clearest examples of systemic racism, if I ever saw one, where you have these segregated public schools that fail the least advantaged more than anybody else, where the most advantaged can buy their way into the fancy neighborhoods that are assigned to the better public schools. And they're more likely to be able to pay for private school tuition and fees out of pocket. And so you relegate these kids to failing

schools and failing futures. And I think that's why once you get school choice, parents fight really hard to keep it, whether they're Democrats, Republicans, they want their kids to get a better opportunity than they had. Unless you're Zora Mimdani, you don't want the rest of the masses to be able to have your opportunity at a private school, maybe for his kids. And we see that with politicians time and time again. They all send their kids to private schools. But then if their campaign contributor,

happens to be the teachers union, then they side with them as opposed to future generations.

Parting question for Corey DeAngelis. So as we run out toward the end of the year, holidays coming up, what's on the imminent future for you? What big things? Are you working on another book, an organization? What's Corey DeAngelis up to? I'm going to tell Randy Weingarten so she's ready for this.

Yeah, don't let her know what I'm working on. But I do have another book in the works. I won't go into the details on that, but I'm putting a proposal together. It won't be the Parent Revolution Part 2, although that might be a good idea to do that as well as an update. But I think what's a really important fight right now that I'm leaning more heavily into, if you couldn't have guessed it earlier on the show, is that school choice is extremely important. We know that.

I've been fighting for that my entire career because it incentivizes the government's school district monopoly to do a better job. But teacher choice is almost equally as important to incentivize the union bosses to do a better job as well. So I would argue there's now a two-pronged approach for success going forward. And I've posted many times on social media that we're now assembling a team to dismantle the teachers' unions. And I've asked people if they'd like to join. And everybody basically says yes,

who follow me.

And I think the best way to do that right now is to get teachers to get on board as well, to leave the union if they don't feel like their views are being valued, if they feel like their money's being wasted, if they feel like they're being forced to fund their political opponents.

So I think the Teacher Freedom Alliance is another very important aspect to this battle.

It's a two-pronged approach towards improving education.

Competition for the school districts through school choice and competition for the teachers unions through teacher choice. We need both of these things to win the war. Where do we find you on Twitter? People want to volunteer, see what you're up to constantly. Yeah, you can follow me on X. It's at DeAngelis Corey. You get my book. It's The Parent Revolution. It's on Amazon. It's like 40 percent off right now. It's endorsed by President Trump. It is a national bestseller and it's called The Parent Revolution. You can check it out.

Corey, thank you so much. Being so generous as always. Have a great Thanksgiving if we don't talk. And I agree, we're launching that. That's my idea too, this two-pronged approach. And with you and Walters, well, we're going to win. That's right. Yeah, thanks so much, Dom. Take care. All right, there is Corey DeAngelis on Old School, New School, Next School. You can always hit me with an email, domshow at aol.com. Would love to hear from you. And we will talk next week.

about what we just started to talk about with Corey today. At the end of the year, the post-COVID, $90 trillion, says that Stanford study is at stake to get kids up to grade level. Corey, thank you again. Thank you so much, Tom. Good talking to you. Same here. Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano is a presentation of Giordano Productions, LLC. Copyright 2025. All rights reserved.