Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children and author of "T…

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. Big end of the year show. What the heck has happened with school choice and schools in general with our guy who's one of our more frequent guests on radio and the podcast that you're listening to, old school, new school, next school, Corey DeAngelis, a PhD, senior fellow, American culture project. He is a senior fellow with the Reason Foundation.

Liberty Justice Center, Schauer, Cato Institute, and bestselling author, The Parent Revolution.

Corey, thanks for a great 2025. I've admired you from afar, but I think this is the first year we've really talked with you.

So let's talk about 2025 on the cusp of the big, beautiful bill kicking in in 2026.

Breaking news story, not just school choice, but one of the reasons for school choice.

On your Twitter, a federal judge ruled that parental exclusion policies are unconstitutional. California can't force teachers to keep secrets from parents. How long would you say this policy has been going on in general terms across the country? And is it mainly because of issues that are bordering on trans kids or kids that think they are? Yeah, this actually started in California.

in 2024, which mandated schools keep secrets from parents because they had some school districts in conservative areas that were basically like, OK, let's pass a policy to do the opposite, to not keep secrets from parents and to inform parents that their child changes their gender at school, wants to go by a different name than their name that their parent gave them from a different sex.

And so because there was this kind of transparency policy happening in some school districts in conservative areas, in their infinite wisdom, the Democrats at the state level, their attorney general, Rob Bonta, Governor Gavin Newsom, they pushed a policy to keep secrets from parents. And so this went to court. This ruling just happened December 22nd of this week.

And the federal judge basically said this creates a trifecta of harm.

You're harming the kid because, well, the kid isn't getting that one-on-one conversation with their parents.

You're kind of cutting out the parent from this conversation.

The kid could be harmed because they're not getting the medical intervention that they need, which would be guided by the parent.

You're creating harm for the parent, obviously, because you're cutting off their children away from them and basically trying to transition their children behind their backs. And the third arm of harm that happens because of this kind of policy is that the teachers are being forced to go against their own value system or even their religious beliefs to go ahead and lie to parents about their kids.

And so this is a great ruling for parental rights. They cited a lot of Supreme Court precedent going back to 1925, about 100 years ago. Pierce v. Society of Sisters, where the court famously ruled that the child is not the mere creature of the state. And so this is all great news. This only applies to California right now, but it does put some great precedent out there for other states if you have a policy like this.

But I would also say that school choice is still necessary because there may be other things going on in the schools that aren't specifically this issue that you're not happy about. Maybe it's gender ideology instruction that you're not happy about, even though they're not keeping secrets behind your back. Maybe they're telling you they're doing these things at the school and you're still not happy about it. You should be able to take your kids' education funding to a private school or a charter school that's aligned with their values too.

What if there's still teachers that are keeping secrets behind parents back? Yes, you know, you can still take them to court. But what if you had an option to just say, something fishy is going on here. Let me take my kid to a school where I actually trust the people there. And I know that they're having an open and honest conversation with me, the parent, as opposed to trying to play games around this court decision. So it's a good it's good news. It's great. It's necessary, but it's not sufficient. School choices.

for true parental rights.

Well, I like your pivot.

I'm in agreement when I brought it up, though, because it is hopeful for those that are still going to be in schools.

And I would say, to your point, we don't want parents to be exhausted every day like detectives trying to what's going on with these public schools.

That's what it's come down to.

And that people who have lost their minds think that somehow or another you can hide stuff from parents.

So back to the main point about school choice, Corey, what are some of the highlights this year? Either if there were any downsides, I mean, I think this is a steady March, but it's incremental on the front of school choice. It is not one big blow. When we get to 2026, there is a big one. What would you say were some of the highlights? Yeah, the biggest win this year by far on the school choice front was in my home state of Texas. We had the biggest day one school choice.

in U.S. history. And what does that mean, Biggest Day One? Well, when the program starts, which is coming up, applications will start opening for parents in February of 2026, and then it will roll out the next school year. But the bill passed in 2025, this year. And when it starts, there will be about 100,000 scholarships available to students. And so when I say Day One, it's not universal from Day One, meaning everybody

regardless of what's in the budget could access the funding.

But since Texas is a bigger state, 100,000 scholarships is the biggest launch of a school choice program.

When you're just talking about the number of scholarships, even though it might not be the biggest on percentage terms, it's still a big deal.

And I expect there's going to be a lot of people applying for that program.

I unfortunately expect there's going to be a wait list.

If you look at other states, Louisiana had a school choice program roll out a couple years ago. And when they made it universal with education savings accounts, they had about a 6% of their school age population apply for the program in the first year. And so if you apply those numbers to Texas, you do some quick math, it seems that there might be over 200,000 kids on a wait list on the wait list. So over 300,000 applying.

If there's a similar proportion of people who want the school choice program in Texas in the initial year. And so that's going to create a lot of pressure for the legislature to come back. They come every two years. So in 2027, they're going to have some pressure, I believe, to say, you know what, we need to clear the wait list. Because this happened in other states as well. A couple years ago in North Carolina, when they expanded to having everybody regardless of income,

access their program. They had about 50,000 people on the waitlist, which is a pretty big deal for a smaller state like North Carolina relative to Texas. And their legislature came right back. They passed a bill to clear the waitlist. And so I expect the lawmakers in Texas to do the same thing. And the other big win, I would say, is a national school choice program. We never had this before. So Trump, in his big, beautiful bill,

There was a provision called the Educational Choice for Children Act creates a federal tax credit, which means you can donate up to $1,700 per person per year to a scholarship granting organization. And you can get a dollar for dollar tax credit every single year on your taxes for up to $1,700. And then other families, low income families can go to these scholarship granting organizations, get the funding and go to a private

school, just like they do in states like Florida. They've had tax credit scholarships. In Arizona, they've had tax credit scholarships for a long time where you can donate, get a tax benefit. Other families can go to those organizations, get the scholarships, go to a private school. It's not directly a voucher. It's not public funding. It's private donated dollars, but there is a tax benefit to doing so. And at the end of the day, what it ends up doing is basically the same thing. You get a scholarship to go to a private school.

So some big news on the Educational Choice for Children Act or the big, beautiful bill, Nationwide School Choice win came out just last week. Governor Jared Polis of Colorado became the first Democrat to signal he's going to opt into the program, which is a big deal. He even reiterated in his statements to the Colorado Sun that he's against vouchers, but he supports this idea of the tax credit.

And it's kind of this political do-si-do, right? At the end of the day, it might have the same financial impact on the public schools because if public schools are funded based on enrollment, whether you're leaving because of a voucher or whether you're leaving because of a scholarship, it's basically the same impact. But I think Jared Polis also knows that voucher is less likely to pull well, and the teachers' unions know this as well. He just knows that's a dirty word in the

space. And he also knows that if he doesn't opt in, and he admitted this in his statement to the Colorado Sun local newspaper out there, he admitted that if he doesn't opt in, he'll basically be shooting himself in the foot. And I quote, he said, he would be crazy not to opt in. Why? Because it's kind of like the 21 drinking age. With the 21 drinking age, it is a state level decision in a sense, but it's tied to federal highway funding. So every single state in America, guess what? They have a 21,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's not a federal mandate per se. It's kind of this exchange for funding. And so they do it. And so with the tax credit, if you don't do it, anyone can decide to fund these scholarships, whether you're in California or Texas, whether your governor decides to opt in or not, you can still receive that federal tax benefit from donating to the scholarships. But if your governor doesn't opt in, aha,

You cannot receive the benefit in terms of a scholarship. So what you end up getting is this scenario where if blue state governors like Jared Polis didn't opt in, well, then all of their constituents who are voting for him could, whether they know it or not, end up subsidizing scholarships to children of Jared Polis' political opponents like Gavin Newsom and

Ron DeSantis in Florida could be giving scholarships to Floridian kids and Texan kids, and they might not even know that's what's happening. And so Jared Polis said, you know what, it would be a dumb idea for me not to, you know, why would I not take these funds that could even be coming in from other states if they don't opt in? I should at least allow my constituents to benefit from these scholarships, even if it conflicts with the teachers unions who normally control Democrat governors.

But I think this might be the tip of the iceberg. It might be the first domino to fall because we've had some other Democrat governors say, no way, I'm not doing it. We had New Mexico's governor say this, Oregon's governor say this, and one other blue state governor has already come out saying, no, we're not opting in. We don't like Trump. Just reeked of Trump derangement syndrome in their statements. We've had five Republican governors already say that they will opt in. And then now Jared Polis being the first Democrat.

that hopefully it's a sign of good things to come. I think those other three Democrats who said no already probably have a foot in their mouth right now. They're probably regretting coming out swinging too early. Maybe they'll change tune and reverse course and do the right thing. What you just said gives me a lot of hope, Corey, when it comes to school choice. And I am watching like a hawk. I have a thing. This guy, I don't know if he's on your radar screen. He is a menace. That is Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania.

This guy can teach anybody. He's got 23 staffers working on TikTok just out of town every day. And he is the ultimate chameleon. He is a progressive up and down the line. And yet he has danced all over. We don't know what he's going to do yet. And the media is complicit in this. That's why what you do and what you've just done in the last few minutes informing people around the country of this is so necessary.

He acts like there's not enough information. We have the information. It's decision time for every one of these governors. And if we actually had a media that thinks, as you and I do, this is the civil rights issue of our time, they would be relentless in asking, why no decision, one side or the other? Like, I commend those other three Democrats. They're on board putting it out there, and there's going to be blowback on that. The guy in Colorado is a different type of Democrat. I mean, I think he's pretty far left, too.

But he's pager, smarter, and maybe even more reasonable in certain things in his logic here that you laid out. Can't the media just run with this in Pennsylvania where I am? I'm going to lead with this today talking about Paulus simply because it's been underreported in the way that you talked about what he actually said. It should ratchet up the pressure on Josh Shapiro because Ohio and West Virginia, border states, people have already said, we'll get that money.

And Dave McCormick, who has been the senator, a big force, even though he's kind of a tepid guy when it comes to excitement, he's one of the driving forces of this that really drilled down and did it. So how about around the country? Only seven, eight or so you've talked about. The others haven't said yay or nay yet? That's exactly right. So five Republicans, three Democrats, no, one Democrat, yes. So not about almost 10.

have committed one way or the other. And a lot of the governors have responded to an organization called Education Week that has a map tracking the statements of each of the governors. I think they used to have a map, but then they pulled it back, I believe, because most of the statements were just all over the place with not really taken aside. And so they got a lot of statements, but even a lot of the Republicans who support school choice were saying, we're waiting on the rulemaking process.

And so this is what Josh Shapiro said too, which I don't really buy it because now I believe the news is that starting January 1st, governors can formally opt in. So now I've listed some governors who have stated on the record, but now they can actually officially go in and opt into the program starting on January 1st. It doesn't come into effect until 2027, but they can actually start to do that.

very soon. And Josh Shapiro, look, I had him on my bingo card as being the first Democrat to do the right thing. If there were going to be any of them, I thought it was going to be Josh Shapiro. And it's because he came out so hard swinging in 2022 when he was running for governor. His opponent, Doug Mastriano, called him a hypocrite on school choice because Josh Shapiro went to private school, sent all his kids to private school. And then Josh Shapiro said, oh, you know,

I support Lifeline scholarships. He put that into his education platform.

I even called him out a few times in Wall Street Journal. Once this year, I called him out and said,

look, you basically blamed the legislature for not getting school choice across the finish line,

even though he vetoed it in a line item fashion. He vetoed his own campaign promise. He can't make this stuff up.

But then he blamed the House. He said, "The guy who's in control, the House is controlled by Democrats, and we got a budget to pass. I can't do anything about it." And so he was able to point the finger before. Now he can't point the finger at anybody. This decision is squarely in the hands of the governors. And so, Josh Shapiro, all eyes on you. There's no more excuses. And so I talked to his education team earlier this year as well.

education guy.

But his argument was the same thing we saw in the media that's being reported, is that they're waiting on the rulemaking process.

I pointed out to him all of the things I pointed out in the Wall Street Journal article.

Look, you'll be shooting yourself in the foot if you don't opt in.

This is a benefit.

You already have school choice programs in Pennsylvania.

Your constituents are going to be happy about it.

They have tax credit scholarships in Pennsylvania, but they're very small, very limited, nothing like any of the red states and places like North Carolina.

North Carolina, where they have universal school choice. And so we'll see what happens. But yeah, I'm still watching Josh Shapiro. The thing is, you know, he might have presidential aspirations. And I was talking to someone the other day in the political world, and they said, well, maybe he won't do it because he's running for president. And maybe the teachers unions will never let him do it. But I think that's why he didn't get picked as vice president by Kamala Harris, because the unions were never going to allow it. But also, there's this whole Jewish thing.

and that kind of schism in the Democratic Party right now. So that might have been a problem. I think it was both of those things might have hurt Josh Shapiro's, unfortunately, chances to be VP before. But I've made the argument that this should help you be a presidential contender. Maybe that's what Jared Polis is thinking, because people have suggested that he might be wanting to run for president too.

Maybe, yeah. And so-

I'll give you a little bit of local knowledge. You're the guru on this, and I'm amazed, actually, the Pennsylvania knowledge you have. There's a guy named Matt Bradford.

Yeah, the House leader.

Yes, he's white in the suburbs. I mention that because he's the one black and brown kids from having some choice in life here. Bradford, the deal is, as we're told by people that are the upper echelon of Republicans, on the air with me,

He does the day to day. He makes a lot of these decisions because Josh is running for president. And Josh Shapiro doesn't cross this guy who's just the majority leader from the Pennsylvania suburbs and has nothing other than he is aggressive beyond belief. And that's sort of the deal. Josh Shapiro is running for president since the eighth grade. So, Corey, when that comes up, remember that name. I'd love to have you try to get a chat with Matt Bradford. This will be a brawl.

He is one of a kind. He used to come on my show no longer. And it's an amazing story because I think when the dust starts to settle, you'll see Shapiro in the top tier of people for president. He's that aggressive, that well-funded, that well-everything. And he is also on the side of saying boys should be able to play in girls sports. Oh, boy. He's on the wrong side of 80-20 issues. And the thing is, Jared Polis even signed a bill.

bill this year that mandates insurance companies provide gender-affirming care to people.

And so they got to pay for that kind of stuff.

That includes sex chain surgeries.

That includes puberty blockers, stuff like that.

Republicans actually introduced an amendment in Colorado to try to exclude kids.

Like, OK, if you want to do this with adults and force insurance companies to pay for that fine, the Democrats quickly killed that amendment.

and they're forcing these kind of procedures on children in Colorado. And Jared Polis supported that idea, but then he still saw that the school choice issue was a line in the sand. I would have thought, you know, if you're going to be for school choice, you should also have a light bulb go off and say, you know, these other issues are going to be on the wrong side of history with the mutilation of children and the chemical castration of children. We should be sticking up for kids, whether it comes to giving them a scholarship to go to a better school.

be in a better environment, but also to live a natural, healthy life and not to have irreversible surgeries. I think you'd be on the right side of both of those issues. But I think the thing is, with this school choice provision, it is becoming such a political detriment to people who don't opt in. I think that just goes to show you how powerful it is, how they crafted the legislation in the big, beautiful bill to get

Nationwide School Choice Done. Hopefully, more Democrats see the writing on the wall, and hopefully Josh Shapiro wakes up soon as well. Absolutely. Thank you, Corey, for a great 2025 and a rosy picture as we head into 2026. Now, your book's still out there, in which it's so popular. Randy Weingarten designed her book on fascism to look almost exactly a facsimile. And again, my goal in 2026 is to moderate a debate between the two of you. Let's do it.

over the top rope in the first 30 seconds. So we know how that would go. Talk about the parents revolution and where do we find all things Corey DeAngelis? Yeah, you can follow me on X is at DeAngelis. Corey, you can get the parent revolution. It's right here behind me. It looks like Randy Weingarten's book because she copied me. Mine was out a year before hers. She's going around calling conservatives fascists. I just say that we should have parents or rights in education. And it's on Amazon right now. It's I want to say 30

to 40% off. So get it while it's hot, The Parent Revolution. It's a USA Today bestseller. It's endorsed by President Trump, Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, and many others as well. And basically the main idea is, look, the wind is at our backs. We're winning on the issue of school choice. We talked about some of this today. We've had 18 states now pass universal school choice in the past four years alone. We've had so much winning. I'm almost getting tired of winning. We now have a nationwide

The Victories are stacking up even beyond the pages of this book. The story is just continuing itself even after the book came out. So check it out, The Parent Revolution. And thanks for having me, Dom. It's good talking to you. Corey, as always, Merry Christmas to you and the family. And thank you. Thanks for all the great work. And again, I'm stunned by your Pennsylvania knowledge, given your broad scope nationally. Thank you, Corey. We'll talk soon. Yeah, thanks so much, Dom. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. All right, everyone.

And that's Corey DeAngelis, star guest here and looking back on 2025 and into 2026 here on Old School, New School, Next School. Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano is a presentation of Giordano Productions, LLC. Copyright 2025. All rights reserved.