Hear the real-life frustrations of an 8th grade teacher posting on social media about her…

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, everyone. Welcome into this week's edition, a very special one as we end the year together, the first year of old school, new school, next school.

And one of the things we've tried to do here is throughout the year, make America smart again, a big challenge.

And one of the ways to do that is to document the idiocracy that's out there already in the public schools and other places and offer as a solution, the only solution, really, school choice for parents and kids to get out of this. Good news front on the school choice front this week. The Washington Post, and sent to me by a friend and guy you've heard on this podcast, Corey DeAngelis, who is the real apostle, evangelist of school choice.

Choice sent me this from the Washington Post editorial board. They were taking a look back at some good things that happened in 2025. And in number 15 position, shockingly, good things that happened. Universal School Choice in 2025 is now, they said, in Idaho, Indiana, Texas, Wyoming. They were adopted this year, bringing the total of total school

choice to now 18 states that have total school choice. Now, we have the big, beautiful bill coming up. I'll talk a little bit later in the podcast about what that means. But first, a review of our first 30 episodes or so. So on this show, around the theme of make America smarter again, I've tried to delineate some of the things that are incredibly dumbing down the education process.

for kids across America. Not blaming just the teachers or superintendents or administrators, but in addition to that, we've offered up school choice of one form or another as an option. And that's going to be under big fire this year. You're going to see in New York with Mondami coming in, a lot of people flee the New York City public schools because in the name of equity, they're probably not going to have gifted and talented programs in the way they have them now. So over these first 30 episodes,

We talk first to Ryan Boyer. Ryan Boyer is the biggest labor leader in Philadelphia. The building trades really hooked into the Democrat Party. But he's a guy who had school choice in his own life. And he joined me to talk movingly about even his address they lied about in order to get him into a better situation. So how could he not support school choice with urgency? And he does.

And yet trying to move him forward on one of the biggest people in Pennsylvania who could make this happen, Governor Shapiro, he is silent on that when he's on with me. He just won't push him publicly on this. Shapiro, as we speak, is one of the Democrat governors who are faced with a choice. The big, beautiful bill from President Trump and Republicans comes into operation this week in early January.

With that in operation, what's going to happen is, in Pennsylvania at least, the governor will make the decision whether to sign off or not on the billions of dollars that are there for school choice. If the governor signs off, the public schools lose no funding, and that money will go to nonprofits that parents will be able to access to get their kids into a better school, to help them at least do that. Ryan Boyer knows that.

Governor Shapiro still has not in the media, in Curious Media in Pennsylvania, is not pressing him. All the information's out there. Will the governor sign this or not? And the big news that Corey DeAngelis brought us on the school choice front recently was that Governor Polis in Colorado, who might run for president, he's a Democrat, it's more of a blue state than not, signed off on this, and he signed off on saying, hey, these are my

Why would I not take free money in order to free them up to be able to go to the school of their choice? Now, this guy's very liberal. If he can do it, why would Josh Shapiro then not be able to do it? And throughout this show, we've talked in Pennsylvania about this guy, Matt Bradford, who's the Democrat majority leader. And I'm sure there are Matt Bradford's in other states. And what do they do?

They stand in the schoolhouse door blocking black and brown kids and their parents from making a choice. We also have talked to some national people on this. We've talked to Corey DeAngelis, who, as I've said, is the apostle of school choice. We talked with Ryan Walters, former superintendent of schools in Oklahoma, who's a national figure, trying to get teachers health care benefits and insurance of various sorts.

and being very successful so they don't have to be part of the teachers unions which are a large part of the problem we talked to national influencer jack posobic about school choice on the national level we've talked to kevin kiley who is the congressman who led the charge on implementing the big beautiful bill in the house and more to come in 2026

Those are just a few of the figures we talked to. So we are on the horizon of the big, beautiful bill taking effect and millions potentially of kids and their parents being freed with school choice. Now, we've tried to talk to about some of the reasons. Let me just give you one that's random of what's happening in schools that might make people want to get out of those public schools. The New York Times right around Christmas time.

I read a big piece that's saying in their estimation, New York Times, liberal

Bible, that increasing numbers, really extreme numbers of public schools, even English

classes, kids are not reading whole books. They're not reading novels. They're not reading nonfiction books, the whole book. And they talk about, as I do, how this is just one of the signs of dumbing down the curriculum.

Post-COVID, we haven't recovered by doing what I know to be done. We should have spent all that money on intense one-on-one or small group tutoring. It should be a Manhattan Project. America's kids really went backwards during COVID. And as a result, that's what's needed now. So that's just a small sample of what's going on in the public schools. Here's an even more telling example of that.

A young woman who teaches eighth grade history took to TikTok, and it's become viral. Her estimation of the lack of skills, and I believe she teaches about 110 or so eighth graders, U.S. history. So she's at a good pivot point to see kids that are developed, but they're not already through high school. And history is something where their sense of literacy,

their sense of analysis and all would be called into question.

Here's what that teacher told us.

Her worries are about this generation of kids that she's teaching.

And this is as big of an indictment in a reasonable way.

She has no ax to grind as I could bring you about why people are fleeing the public schools.

Sometimes these kids, I don't understand how they ended up to this point.

You know what I mean?

I teach 8th grade history and I have 110-ish students.

Two of them are reading on grade level right now.

18 of them are at a kindergarten level.

55 of those students are between a 2nd and 4th grade level.

That's a lot of them.

And that's typical of what I've seen lately from students.

But it's not just literacy. It's not just lack of content knowledge. It's not just critical thinking skills. It's basic thinking skills. My students can decode almost nothing. They cannot apply inference. They cannot process questions that are longer than a sentence. They cannot connect cause and effect. They can't track multi-step ideas like in a political cartoon.

And it's scaring me a little. Like, I see it every single day. I had a kid yesterday. Four kids, actually. This happened in every class. We were doing guided notes. Supposed to be a real easy day. It was a review. They wrote down, Maryland was founded as a safe haven for Catholics. It was on the board. They wrote it down. And before we moved on, I call on a student and I ask, hey, where were the Catholics one more time?

And these students, what they do is they look at me, and then they look at their notes, and then they look at the board. They look back at their notes. And some of them never answered me. They never figured out the answer. It was wild. And I kept giving them hints, like rephrasing the question and saying like, "It's in your notes. We just wrote it down. We just wrote it down. Where are the Catholics? It's on the board." And they never got it.

their own notes. And I don't mean their handwriting. I mean like they can't make heads or tails of it on the page. I had a kid today. I have these extra credit assignments. Three of them. They're on the wall. They could turn it in at any time. And I think they're pretty easy. Like this one. And it replaces your lowest daily grade. So like end of the quarter, lots of these start to roll in. This one says on a separate sheet of paper, choose four

principles of the Constitution and for each one write what it means in your own words, an example of how it works in the US government today, and a personal example how that principle might show up in your own life, school, or community. I wrote them an example and I labeled it do not use the example and I even gave them a checklist at the bottom. Make sure you have these four things so you can get full credit before you turn it in. Make sure you have the four principles and the meaning and the

"Make sure it's one full page." And this student just turned it in. And I read it. First of all, they don't write it on a separate sheet of paper. I've only had one kid this year do that. They just write like in the spaces of the instruction, like in the margins and stuff. Very bizarre. But like they just don't do the assignment. It's like they don't understand because it's not written in like a

multiple choice format. This is exactly what this student wrote. They wrote the principal's definition in the student's own words. They rewrote the instructions. The whole thing. Even the example where it says do not use this example. They just copied the instructions and wrote them again. And then checked off the checklist even though like you didn't do it.

The student, just like the students yesterday, I don't think they're fooling with me. This is a student who's doing extra credit on their time off. They genuinely want to bring their grade up. I know them. But like, is that what you think that the extra credit assignment was? You sat there and thought like, yeah, she wants me to copy down the directions and then turn it in. But no, they didn't think that because they didn't think anything.

These kids have a frightening ability for information to go from their eyes to their hands and not pass through the brain at all. Like, what do we do, y'all? That ship is sailing across the ocean and there is no one at the wheel.

that we go forward. In addition to school choice in 2026, we've talked a lot about the issue of phones and kids on phones and phones, cell phones in schools. We've talked about COVID and we've talked about the failure to address the losses that happened during COVID. We have talked about it just a moment ago, the reading problems in schools.

You can't just watch a film of Romeo and Juliet. You have to hear the language. You have to read the whole book. Even in English class, we're not doing that. So what is it that will make America smart again? Well, one of the things is recognizing models that work. The success charter schools, which are in New York City, they're so big, I believe there are 59 of them. 59 of them are number one.

It's 22,000 students. So it's like a smaller school district or a midsize. They are number one in math. It just come out. These charter schools across the board in the entirety of New York State, the entire state. And in some reports, I saw they were number two in English reading and reading scores. So who is the model? Who is running this? A woman named Eva Moskowitz, who is renowned.

One of the greatest educators in the country.

How about if we try to incorporate some of the things done in charter schools,

which, by the way, are affiliated with our public schools are not private.

These are in conjunction with the New York City schools.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens when Mondama gets in there.

Why would these schools be number one in math when we have so many failing schools?

Well, in the Pennsylvania level, I had on Pastor Robertson this year from Harrisburg. He heads up a consortium of black ministers, and they're out there saying now that guys like Governor Josh Shapiro, who recently signed into law the Crown Act, which stops discrimination or tries to push back against discrimination to African-Americans based on hair and hairstyles.

The minister, who's African-American himself and has been on old school, new school, next school, says that, well, this is about blackwashing. In other words, the governor's pretending to do things to help African-Americans and African-American kids, but the test will be, and here's why Shapiro's a national story with the big, beautiful bill. He's been running for president since he was in fifth grade. He is, you will see in the end, master politician, chameleon,

he will give all the Newsoms and Kamala Harris a run for their money and might be the Democrat nominee. Will he see that politically, nationally, the thing that would differentiate him, just like Governor Polis in Colorado, is to sign off on giving people a choice, the big, beautiful bill, etc.? I'm betting he won't. I'm betting he's still going to be stuck in preventing this. And that will be a very telling sign about what

where all this is headed in places like Pennsylvania, but even nationally.

If he does go for it, this may be a signal of a difference in the Democrat Party and the race for the nomination.

So again, we have had on great guests, and thank you for being a faithful listener.

And the things that are hurting school kids,

The only remedy, the surefire remedy that I have told you about during this year is for the parents to stay on top of it if you're stuck inside that school environment in the public schools. I recommended E.D. Hirsch, who's written the book, What Every Educated American Should Know, 3000 Terms, H-I-R-S-C-H. He's also written books, What Every Child Should Know by the End of First Grade, by the End of Second Grade, so that you have a blueprint, even if your kid is a parent,

is doing well, A's and B's. How much do they really know? The other thing is big issue coming more and more apparent, the overusage of cell phones, particularly in schools. There is progress on that. Why is every school in America not making more progress on that? It is a great way to return the classroom to learning, to actual learning. And again, the only remedy, if your child fell behind and they're still in the public schools, is a one-on-one tutor, a good tutor.

And it has to be intense. And it has to be now. The longer this lingers and goes on, the more difficult it's going to be. So we have big things on deck for 2026. You heard on this podcast that teacher on TikTok lay out explicitly what's wrong, what's going on in the public schools. As far as predictions this year, I think you're going to see a number of states, maybe another four or five,

bringing us into the 20s that are full bore school choice up and down the line.

You're probably going to see another eight to 10 who are going to fight the battle and have some inkling of that.

We have a little bit of an inkling in it in Pennsylvania.

If Governor Shapiro goes with the big, beautiful bill and just signs off, then the floodgates are going to be open.

What are these other Democrats going to do?

He's a prime contender.

Are they going to see the civil rights issue of our time as a good education

to get out of these failing schools? We will see. I predict you're going to see him

stonewall this, sadly. But he's running against Stacey Garrity,

treasurer who's been on this show, and she's going to make a heck of an issue out of this.

And are people in Pennsylvania going to say, no, I don't want parents and teachers,

parents and students to have a chance at a good education. Can she make that case? If she can, it has national implications because Shapiro is a national figure as we speak. Now, if you have any questions, any comments for the next batch of shows of old school, new school, next school, you can always send me an email, domshow, D-O-M-S-H-O-W at AOL.com, domshow at AOL.com.

Thank you, Ed Palladino, for producing. And thanks for listening to this week's edition of Old School, New School, Next School. Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano is a presentation of Giordano Productions, LLC. Copyright 2026. All rights reserved.