The state by state count for accepting federal money for school choice continues.

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 Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano.

We just got through a huge week, School Choice Week, and nobody better to bring you, I mean, he was incredibly busy last week, than the evangelist of School Choice.

That would be one and only Corey DeAngelis.

And Corey's been with us several times to document how optimistic he is, the progress that we're making. USA Today did a big feature with him this School Choice Week. So without further ado, let's bring in the evangelist of School Choice on Old School, New School, Next School, Corey DeAngelis.

Happy School Choice Week. It seemed like every week's School Choice Week over the past few years, though, in state legislative sessions, because we've had a lot of victories.

The Wind is at our backs. Yes, we need some more work to be done in blue states, but now we're breaking through with this new federal tax credit scholarship program. I think more blue states are going to come along because there's an irresistible incentive included in that new program that was included in the big, beautiful bill. Well, let's set up a bet. I'll bet you a pizza. I'm going to take, because you said that, I'm going to take the other side. This weasel on the end will not relent. Josh Shapiro is not going to sign BBB. You say he is?

I don't know if it's going to be Josh Shapiro. You notice I didn't give you a timeline, but I do think that over time all governors are going to opt in because it's kind of like the 21 drinking age to where everybody chooses 21, but that's because it's tied to federal highway funding. And with the school choice program, it doesn't touch a single cent from local school budgets, either from local funding, state funding, or federal funding. That all stays the same. This just incentivizes additional private donations.

to come into your state. And guess what? You can only receive those scholarships, your constituents, if you opt in. So it creates a weird situation where if you don't opt in, you're going to be shooting yourself in the foot. And one Democrat's already come along. His name is Jared Polis from Colorado. And he said that it was a, quote, unquote, no-brainer decision. And he said, quote, he would be crazy not to. And he's right, because why would he want his constituents, whether they know it or not, donating to scholarships to families of,

of the constituents of Governor Greg Abbott in Texas, his political opponent. So Jared Polis is the first Democrat domino to fall, and I think we'll have others. I thought Josh Shapiro was going to be first, Dom, because Josh Shapiro pretended he supported school choice when he ran for governor in 2022, included it in his education platform. And then when he vetoed it, which is crazy, his own campaign promise, he pointed his finger at Bradford in the House and said, look, the Democrats control the House.

It's not my fault. I just need to get a budget done.

And what ended up happening is you fast forward to today, that decision is squarely in the hands of the governor.

And so there's no pointing fingers anymore.

Josh Shapiro can't have his cake and eat it, too.

It's time to put up or shut up.

He either has to choose the teachers unions or he has to choose the truth, which, you know, in order to go along with what he said in 2022.

He even said in 2023 on Fox News saying he supported school choice.

So come on, man. 27 other states have already come along. And I thought Josh Shapiro would have been first if he was a school choice supporter, like you said. You are a guy with all the balls in the air. I'm glad you referenced Bradford, though. You don't understand this guy. I've duked it out with him. Josh Shapiro is afraid of this guy. I know that's hard to believe here at the state level. You're the governor. You're supposed to be in charge. I'm still saying he won't in the end, but I want to be optimistic. Now, you said 27.

which is remarkable. And Polis, I'm trying to get on to kind of spread that word. And look, he's a very liberal guy, but he's a thoughtful guy. He's not just somebody you can push around. How about a state like California, though? Is that possible? That's kind of the last frontier. Maybe they'll be 50th. Maybe they'll be 49th. They're racing for last place in California. But who knows? Jared Polis, a lot of people are pointing out that, yeah, he fancies himself as a libertarian.

Some groups do, but he's not really. He's far left on the gender ideology issue. So even for him to kind of see the writing on the wall here, if he can do it, anybody can do it. And a little birdie told me, I used to include this map that I put on social media, all the states that said yes versus the ones that said no. Four had said no, including New Mexico, Wisconsin, Hawaii, and Oregon. But I've taken Oregon off the no list because people are telling me from Oregon that, wait, we're working on Tina.

We think she's going to come along. So I wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth. And I emailed her education director, got her email and said, hey, what's going on? Is she going to opt in, Tina Kotech? And the education director remarkably emailed back. I thought they'd see all my affiliations with these free market think tanks and say, oh, he's an enemy. I'm not going to respond to him. They said she's still deciding. So she went from being a hard no in August of 2025 that she told Education Week to now,

Now, we have today in 2026 undecided. So the winds are shifting. And I think if you can get a radical left governor like the Oregon governor to start to see the dollars and cents here and start to make some sense, anybody could do it. And Josh Shapiro, come on. I've emailed his team as well. And they're still on the fence. They're waiting for additional guidance. They're kind of just kicking the can down the road.

Absolutely. And so we'll see what happens.

You're persuasive, though. You're persuading me right now. It'll happen.

AOC making the case for education freedom.

That cut where she talks about how they moved.

I think it was Saratoga, New York.

I'm going to play it for you, Corey.

Several years old.

Yeah, several years old.

But it was just running the other day.

And this is exactly the case for school choice.

And it's AOC doing this.

Here's what she said.

"I looked at the quality of education in the Bronx, and they looked at 50% dropout rates. They looked at the inequity of education, the inequity of education funding, the fact that teachers weren't paid, the fact that kids weren't given their tools to succeed, and that, frankly, it not only had to do with their income, but it had to do with their melanin, too.

And so they made, and my family made a really hard decision. And my whole family chipped in to buy a small house about 40 minutes north of here. And that's when I got my first taste of a country who allows their kids' destiny to be determined by the zip code that they are born in.

There we go. There we go. Yes. Yeah.

Why are you standing in the schoolhouse door now? Why are you doing that, Josh Shapiro? I'm at Bradford. I know why he's doing it. But, Corey, I wanted to go back to something. If the average parent knew this and they're on the fence, look, we've talked about your buddy, Randy Weingarten, who is a ferocious opponent but is rational. At least I've had that experience. But Becky Pringle, the bigger union, the NEA, you're the only one I've seen, put it out there that she's speaking

at this road to political revolution, the head of the biggest teachers union in the world.

Yeah, it's hosted by the Sunrise Movement, this far left climate hysteria group as well. So this is free advertising for school choice, but it's also free advertising for families to leave, the teachers to leave the union, to go to optouttoday.com, click on your state, and stop giving your money to people like Becky Pringle, who are using it for political causes.

And, you know, the teachers' union, a lot of people hear it, the name of it, and they think, oh, it must be an education organization. But they don't really do anything that focuses on education. It's become a political institution. And what an easier way to show that than the title of this panel that she's talking on, the Roadmap to Political Revolution. I mean, she's the teachers' union boss, and she also has an at-large position at the Democrat National Committee.

So she's not just funding Democrat candidates using unions, workers, hard-earned dues.

She's also funneling that money into the DNC, but also sitting on the table at the DNC as one of the decision makers.

It's just crazy. This is a one-sided political organization. I think we should revoke the NEA's federal charter.

They're the only teacher – they're the only union in general in America that has a federal charter, that has the backing of Congress.

It's a special privilege that was bestowed to them by Congress over 100 years ago in 1906. So we should yank their federal charter. There's a bill in Congress right now to do that by House Representative Congressman Mark Harris and others who have signed on as well, including Mary Miller out of Illinois.

But there's also another bill by Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis, which is to use their federal charter against them.

Because if you get rid of the federal charter, it does – one thing is that it kind of gets rid of this false sense of legitimacy that they have as kind of a nonpartisan thing when they're purely partisan.

But they lose some tax benefits in D.C. too if they lose it.

But if you look to this other bill, they say, okay, if you want to keep the federal charter, fine.

But if you do, you have to stop engaging in a lot of this stuff, including political activity.

So if that had a chance of passing, you know the NEA would be begging for Congress to instead get rid of the charter because they'd rather be engaged in political activity.

That's all they do.

You look at their annual convention in Portland last year.

All they did was pass stuff that read more like a declaration of war on the Trump

administration than anything else. They misspelled the word fascism in a declaration to call President

Trump a fascist. He can't make this stuff up. And they killed the resolution in 2019 to rededicate the

union to being about student learning. So they've made their priorities clear. And Becky Pringle let the mask slip the other day.

Now, thanks to you. And we'll tell people your book in a second here, Corey, in addition to everything else.

We've been playing. It's one of the richest sounds in the last six months. This representative Jim Hines, who we couldn't get on in Mississippi, where they were fiercely debating statewide school choice. He said, well, what if your mom is a meth addict and your dad is a pimp, that kid? They go to a private school. No one's going to speak up for him. In the public school, the school counselor would. It's crazy. So, yes, the Democrat in Mississippi, they end up passing that bill.

the universal school choice bill and his arguments basically you know there are some parents who might

not be able to make a choice and those are the same parents who went to the public schools that

you're trying to force everybody into i mean that that is not a legitimate argument to take away

choice from everybody that's like saying oh we got to abolish all public schools because some teachers

engage in uh abuse of students like yeah we should we should hold those teachers accountable when they

They should go to jail if they're abusing students.

But that doesn't mean we totally wipe out all public schools.

We hold people accountable where we can.

Same thing with school choice.

If there's some people who are abusing their kids, I'd say that's not even a school choice issue.

The government should step in regardless of whether you have a school choice program.

So they're using these kind of outlier scenarios to try to paint school choice as a bad thing,

Where at the end of the day, the parents in general, yes, even low-income parents know their kids better than anybody else, certainly more than bureaucrats sitting in hundreds of miles away. And by the way, if you're going to say that the parents didn't get a good education, well, that's another argument as to why their kids should get a better opportunity in a private school and not the same failing public school that never got any better generation after generation. So that was a great argument for school choice at that.

That bill is now in the Senate right now. And that's the holdup. The governor is a huge supporter of school choice in Mississippi. The Trump administration supports the bill as well. But the Senate president, the word on the street in Mississippi, Delbert Hoseman, apparently is not a supporter of school choice for anybody else's kids. I mean, he sent his own kids to private school in Jackson, Mississippi. So we'll see how it goes. But it's going to be all eyes on Mississippi in 2026 to be the next state.

hopefully to go all in. All right. And 27 are going in already with the big, beautiful bill. And I hope Corey DeAngelis is right. I'm wrong on Josh Shapiro. That will be a major national story. And I think, Corey, you would argue if you were whispering in his ear, do it, Josh. You'll stand out among Democrats. I think his advisers are saying they're going to kill you if you do it. You are the principal guy. You're dead. You won't be president.

What would you say back when I rejoined to say to Shapiro? How would it help him if he doesn't? Hey, look. Hey, look, Josh, the establishment doesn't like you already. And we saw this in his new book with Kamala Harris going to pick him as VP. He was the obvious choice for VP. They needed to win Pennsylvania, and he was well-liked in Pennsylvania at the time based on the polls. And they picked stupid tampon Timmy. Why would they choose Minnesota? They were always going to win Minnesota.

And so the reason was, one, it's the whole kind of Palestine movement of the far left and him being Jewish. I think that was a big part of it. They even accused him kind of in an interview with him as being an agent of Israel or whatever that means. And he supported school choice. I think that the teachers' unions were never going to let it happen. And so how about you listen to the American public and not special interest?

The teachers unions aren't going to like you because you came out and support a school choice.

Regardless, they're going to support someone else in the Democrat primary.

You might as well get the vast majority of the American public who supports education freedom on your side, Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike.

No one should be forced to stay in a failing school.

Josh Shapiro, if you try to play both sides here, you're going to get arrows from both sides.

So you might as well stay on the team of Education Freedom and cross the roof of the con, join the club. We'll embrace you with open arms.

I can taste that margarita pizza now, Henry. I can see that, Josh Shapiro. I know my guy here. Your book, Corey, where do we find it?

The Parent Revolution, endorsed by President Trump, Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, and many others. And it's The Parent Revolution. You can get it on Amazon. It's like 40% off. Get it while it's hot. It's a national bestseller.

It's a good time to get it. The Parent Revolution. You can also follow me on X. It's at DeAngelisCory. And teachers out there, I'm on your side too. If you want to leave the union, go to OptOutToday.com. There's no reason why you should be giving your money to Becky Pringle, who's fighting for the roadmap for political revolution in America with these far-left groups. And she makes half a million dollars a year. Why should you give her any more of your money? Go to OptOutToday.com. All right. Thanks to Corey DeAngelis for joining us this week on a big,

a monumental week for school choice. To prove that, as school choice week is just slightly behind us, I have a list of some of the things that you can spread, some talking points about school choice around the country. The findings from the American Federation for Children poll released indicate that 69 percent of Americans support the concept of school choice, 63 percent support private school choice in the form of vouchers, and 76 percent

6% support public school charters. So these numbers continue to grow. I think they could even be higher on the charter front. More than 100,000 students use vouchers to attend private schools across the country. According to the Center for Education Reform, tax credit funded scholarship programs are available now in 14 states and the District of Columbia and help pay tuition for about 190,000 students.

Here's a talking point. There are nearly 6,500 charter schools with more than 2.5 million students enrolled. The only reason we don't have more in the Philadelphia area where I am is because they artificially set the limits that you can't do it. We would have double or triple or quadruple that. We're on the march and we're coming into a very important time. Governor Polis in Colorado has endorsed school choice. Which Democrat will be next?

If none, then there has to be a price to pay if they want to keep kids in substandard schools. That's our mission to make America smarter again. And one of the biggest ways to do that is to get parents and students school choice. Thanks for joining us. As always, if you want to send me an email, it's domshow, D-O-M-S-H-O-W at AOL.com. Old school, new school, next school. See you next week.

Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano is a presentation of Giordano Productions LLC. Copyright 2026. All rights reserved.