Dom discusses the coming wealth transfer, where Democrat Governors allow federal school c…

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 in to this week's edition of Old School, New School, Next School, where we talk school choice is the ultimate answer, at least now, to giving people their rights toward making America smart again, which is the mission of this show.

And I have a really interesting angle before I give you a few more things that have come down this week as a parent, as a grandparent, as a taxpayer to help kids navigate what is becoming increasingly difficult in America to learn and be smart. And the update is this. How is this for an angle on school choice of something coming to a head, something you can agitate for in your state?

On Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano, I've talked with Corey DeAngelis and others nationally about this movement. So last night, State of the Union, President Trump had a tremendous number of things to talk about. But this is the struggle with school choice, that it's not prominent enough as the civil rights issue of our time. It exposes Democrats with the teachers' unions. I wish he had addressed that. Here's an interesting angle, though, coming off last night from the Hill.

Now, the Hill is a website publication that's a little bit more liberal.

The center left. And they had a great column today by a person named Christian Bernard, opinion contributor.

Will Democrats allow a school choice wealth transfer?

He writes, it's no secret that Democrats leaders despise school choice, usually at the behest of the teachers union's backer.

Do they hate it so much? They will let a huge amount of their home state's wealth flow to Republican competitors to states that are red. If you're keeping score at home, we have one Democrat governor who is very liberal, but gets it when it comes to this issue of kids. Governor Polis of Colorado say, yes, he will sign off from the big, beautiful bill to allow that money.

to flow into nonprofits in Colorado to then be dispensed to Coloradans who want choice, school choice for their children. The donor will get a dollar per dollar tax credit, lowering or eliminating their tax bill for the year. We'll have more on that as it develops. Now, 25 or 26, I'm a little unclear, of states with Republican governors who say they will participate.

There are four states who have just ruled it out completely, at least you're being honest at this point, that are Democrats. California, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin have already said no thanks, and they will not let that happen. Democrat governors in Kansas and North Carolina are blocking attempts to enter the program by the Republican state legislatures, though veto overrides are possible. The result could be, says the Hill,

Potentially an enormous wealth transfer out of the Rocky Mountain State, not only to neighbors like Wyoming, but also to Texas, Florida, and other deep red states. According to conservative projections published by Education Reform, if just 1% of Colorado filers with more than $1,700 in federal tax liabilities claim the credit, the state could lose $17 million a year. If 30% donate it, more than $5 million.

$500 million a year would leave the state. So Paul has made the right decision. He's not a school choice fan, but he does recognize that Colorado ought to come first. Gavin Newsom has been silent on this. Education reform says that the state could lose up to $3.1 billion a year in scholarship donations to places like Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. In Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro could see, are you ready for this number?

$967 million a year leave the state annually, most of it heading west and south.

Are these people really going to do this? Is the media really going to let them get away with this idea? This is a great angle. We now have some more facts and figures on this. And if there is an enormous uptick, like the 30%, God knows how much of these states and that wealth. Remember, it's not just leaving their state.

It is going to flow to red states, which are overwhelming on this. We have 25 now. I think Corey DeAngelis and others project there's going to be more than that on the red state side that sign up for this. So we are really reaching an unbelievable situation. And I just love this headline. Will Democrats allow a school choice wealth transfer? A transfer of funds from these states that may be

Like California.

And we already have the example of Governor Polis of Colorado who did not do that.

What will Josh Shapiro do?

I'm in Pennsylvania.

We're waiting.

But nationally, you know, the billions of dollars a year, this would mean in wealth transfer from the blue states to the red states.

Think about that.

How in the world is that going to help their students?

How in the world is it going to pressure the school districts in their state to up their game because people will have more of a choice to go to the school of their choice? Whatever that might be. It's a simple equation. Thank God that Hill printed this, did this. The rest of the media ought to be covering this rather than down the rat holes of things that don't matter as much. Now, that would be something that I think will really make America smart again.

I've been diving through this week here on old school, new school, next school.

An article written by a woman in a fortune magazine.

That's getting a lot of traction. Here's the headline.

The U S spent 30 billion dollars to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets.

The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents.

Less, less.

And she writes and she takes a look at the fact that this happened mainly in 202. She goes back to Maine where this was. Oh, let's see. You know, we have a problem here with reading, writing, thinking. What are we going to do? Well, let's put people on computers and tablets. Nothing wrong with using technology. They're going to be using AI. We're going to hear another spasm of this. Let's make America smart again. Let's just throw everything to AI.

I think it's already happening. That's not what you as a parent ought to be doing. Common sense tells you if your child is struggling, and a lot are post-COVID, post some of the nonsense that we've seen with teachers unions and the like here, now's the time to spread the word through this podcast about what to do about it. By the way, I'm going to have this guy on in the near future.

A Professor, Jared Cooney Harvath, PhD, Portland, Oregon. And he's a neuroscientist educator who says that this is the first generation, Generation Z, first generation officially dubbed dumber than the last. The generation born between 1997 and 2010 is the very first generation who did worse in school than the graduation before them, according to this top neuroscientist.

So the evidence is all over the place. What to do about it is the issue. I've told you in preceding weeks, and I'll say it again each week just so you remember, E.D. Hirsch is the guy on something like this, H-I-R-S-C-H. He wrote the book, What Every Educated American Should Know. He's written books about what every child should know, what your child should know by the end of first grade, second grade, third grade. He put out all those books. They're wonderful.

They really help you key in until you get into a school, until America wakes up about what's going on here. I mean, a breakdown of just some of the things we're up against post-COVID. The pandemic-related learning loss is a big deal. We have too much screen time. We've talked about that with phones. I'll talk about that a little bit more. Chronic absenteeism, mental health challenges,

Shift away from active learning. All these factors are making Americans and American kids dumb. You've seen it. You know it. We all have examples of it incrementally. So I try each week to give you some updates on the science, what's due, and what you can practically do as a parent in order to deal with this. A large part of it, of course, is school choice. It is breaking out of this bind we have where school can be non-professional.

They're forming essentially forever. And yet they stay in business. There's no difficulty they face. They need competition. We need to pressure these states using that wealth angle to free up that money from the big, beautiful bill. Now I'm looking at two competing camps this week about the phone issue again and too much time on phones. One, Ingrid Jacques writing in USA Today says,

getting so involved in our personal lives and social media use. I for one don't. Headline, if your child is addicted to social media, whose fault is it? I take her point. I take her point as a parent, but I do want to offer parents some help here. It is almost overwhelming, this deluge of phones and social media and the pressure associated with that for the average kid to fit in. So here's an editorial.

from the New York Post that says why a U.S. ban on under-16 social media would be a huge gift to parents and kids. And they make the point that I made, there would not be so much school pressure here. There would not be so much that the kid has to conform by fitting in. Now, of course, the compromise is, can the parent insist on this on their own without help from the government?

You would hope they can do this to some level, but I'm not withholding the idea of having the government involved in this. The New York Post writes, the reasons are obvious. It's not just the hours burned at least 20 a week for the average teen girl. A lot of this centers in on females, but the mental health impact exposed by NYU's Jonathan Haidt, epidemic levels of anxiety and depression. And I would add, this leans into a lot.

movement away from anything academic. It is a big hurdle attached to what I told you about from Fortune magazine of how much we've spent on all this technology without the basics of learning to go on. So I'm heartened this week that this article on the Hill hopefully will be picked up in the media, which should be looking for a great story that really

impacts America, everybody, taxpayers, grandparents, parents, schools,

the future of our country and the future of the average kid.

Will Democrats allow a school choice wealth transfer?

In other words, they're going to be so beholden to the teachers unions and that pressure.

They will not follow the example of Governor Polis of Colorado, who is probably running for president.

He's a liberal, et cetera.

But he said, I can't let these other states get all this wealth. Because people are going to want that tax break of up to $1,700. And they are going to give the money to nonprofits. That's the way the system's set up. And they can be, as I understand it, in any state. Why not keep it within your own state? And you heard that, as I said, Pennsylvania could face each year a loss of about a billion dollars. What argument can you make against this?

This is something that is exciting and will kick in. We're in the preliminary part in 2026 and 2027. It will kick in. So what did we do until then? Well, A, we agitate, expose this, pressure the media to tell this story. Let's have this debate with these governors. As I said, three have already signed off. What do people in Wisconsin and New Mexico and Oregon think? Are they really thinking it's better that that money?

which is new money, will not help anybody in that state or hurt anybody in that state if it comes into play. This is insanity we're fighting here. The second level, until all this happens, is staring us in the face that you may be kidding yourself. You're a parent. You think you're on top of things, but kids are becoming dumber. I hate to use that word, but that's the point. Every day in America, we are

We're relying on quick fixes, like more technology, maybe even AI. And that is not, you know it in your heart of hearts, that is not going to make America smart again. What's going to do that is giving people more choices and give arming parents with solutions, like the ones I tell you about each week, taking those tips and putting them in play, independent.

of any of these entities, like the public schools or any school, that has a self-interest not to tell you these things, not to give you an idea about what is possible. So remember, E.D. Hirsch, H-I-R-S-C-H, Cultural Literacy. You can find it online. You get a sense of it. What your child should know by the end of first grade, second grade, third grade. He is the best that I've ever found. There are others out there. John Saxon, S-A-X-O-N.

His math books I've been recommending for 25 or 30 years because he gives you practice each night, practical things. The first skill of that year that your child would get in math then is exposed throughout. You get a lot of practice on it throughout the entire math book. In other words, he incorporates the basic skills into the harder skills as you go. Constantly, you know, the Malcolm Gladwell thing of 10,000 repetitions of something.

That's the principle here. That's what's working. John Saxon. Just Google his name. He was a former engineer, military guy who just got this idea. I've had it. Why don't people know math? Not even to the extreme level, but just the basics and a little bit beyond. So the good news this week is we are seeing things come to a head. Jared Cooney Harbath, PhD, out there in Portland, Oregon. Sometime coming up next month, we'll have him. And you will hear him lay out.

Why Generation Z, for example, is the first generation officially dubbed dumber than the last? The kids that are in school right now are probably even more cognitively distressed. We still are kidding ourselves after COVID and after we finally went back to school. I recommend it with all that money. Where did it go? We need either one-on-one or intense,

and whatever the deficiency is, if the child already was fairly far behind, it only intensified.

You could see it right now in the Northeast with all these remote learning days with snow and we're going to do remote learning today. No, you're not. It's preposterous to be doing this. I mean, you can say it's better than nothing, but not much. We know what the loss was. Now it's time to recoup it. And that's what you'll get each week here with me.

Our mission, make America smart again. And to do that, we have to name it, we have to frame it, and then we have to work on getting the hurdles out and giving you solutions that you can practically put into play. Hey, if you have any question about any of this, I'll answer them. For Dom Giordano, G-I-O-R-D-A-N-O, my email, domshow, D-O-M-S-H-O-W, domshow,

AOL.com. Have a great week. Help is on the way. At least if we can get these governors to agree to do this. If not, well, then the red states are going to make America smart again. And the blue states are going to say, nah, let's transfer the wealth. You know how often we hear that wealth transfer to the billionaires and all this stuff. We're going to be transferring wealth from the blue states, some of them very big, like even California, to the red states.

The Red States are going to benefit God knows how many billions they'll get every year and how many billions New Mexico and Wisconsin and Oregon and others will say, nope, we're not interested. Remember, tell other people about this podcast. Dom Giordano, have a great week. Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano is a presentation of Giordano Productions, LLC. Copyright 2026.

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