Guest: Rep.

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, welcome back this week. Special edition of Old School, New School, Next School. With us, I have the chair of the House Subcommittee, K-12 Education, and I believe one of the leading forces in something that some supporters said they have become giddy about. I know I have. I'm giddy on this. Representative Kevin Kiley.

Representative, thank you very much for joining us. Are you giddy tonight with the possibilities of school choice? I think it's very exciting. I mean, we are on the cusp of a potential school choice revolution in this country and the most significant victory for school choice in in Washington in a long, long time. And we could see millions of kids in this country who have options that they didn't have before, who have a chance at a better education.

and a better life. So I think it's something really worth celebrating.

So you're from California. Give listeners a sense of how long in Congress California, where from, and why your passion, because I've seen several of your speeches getting ready for this, on this part of education and charter schools. I know you're heavily involved.

That's right. Yeah, so I'm from California. I represent the third district, which is the largest district in the state. It runs about 450 miles along the Nevada border.

It includes Lake Tahoe on the California side. It goes all the way down to Death Valley. I previously served six years in the state legislature. I actually started my career as a high school teacher in inner city LA. So a big part of why I got involved in politics, public service, was to try to fix our education system, which in California is about as bad as it is anywhere.

So I'm a former teacher. That's how I got into this. I got noticed because of getting kids to read, which in the place I would, you talk about reluctant readers. You were in inner city LA. I don't think you're old enough though, that you would have been there then, but stand and deliver. I actually knew Jaime Escalante growing up. So, well, I, I, I know Marva Collins or knew Marva Collins and had her on a lot for the stuff that I do. I never had him on. Talk a little bit about that.

and maybe having that figured when you were in L.A. helped this inspiration to see this is doable. Well, you know, knowing Jaime was actually pure coincidence. He was my neighbor when I was growing up. But yeah, then I actually found myself, you know, teaching in inner city L.A. not that long after that. And he passed away while I was I guess it was a little later on, actually. But shortly after I when I started going to law school.

But in any event, I mean, what a absolutely inspiring figure. And unfortunately, we still see way too many failing schools in this country that are holding kids back. And, you know, so that that sparked a lot of my motivation for running for office. I was the vice chair of the Education Committee in the California legislature. Now I have the chance to be the chair of the K-12 Education Subcommittee in the House.

Now, the bill that we're talking about, and look, in what I do every day, it's a 50,000 watt radio station, and we're really probing down to the innards of this. I had no idea. Well, it's over 1,000 pages long, that in here is something that is truly a breakthrough on the federal level. We're talking about the Educational Choice for Children Act. Talk about the mechanism and why you guys have crafted that. What would that do, Congressman?

Sure. So it's pretty simple. What it does is it leverages the federal tax code to enable school choice. So right now, as it is, if you have a child who's in, let's say, private school and you pay tuition there, you're still funding their spot in public school. It's just that you're also then paying for them to go to private school. So what we want to do is provide a tax credit. And the way that it's set up is that you can get a tax credit for donations to

a scholarship granting organization, as we're calling it. And then that organization then provides a

scholarship to the kid, to the student to attend a school of their choice.

Is there some cap there of how high this could go as far as the money? Because I read $5 billion. Am I off on that?

Yes, $5 billion a year for the next four years. An individual donor can give up to $5,000 or $10,000 or 10% of their gross income, whichever.

of the two is greater. So I wanted to talk about this in the broader sense of choice, not just school choice and what this would be revolutionary. I looked at one of your hearings, your subcommittee, and my goodness, I felt I was in a time machine. One of the people on the other side started talking, prattling on, and I'm hollering at the screen, and you have to sit there, about how, you know, these charter schools, they were set up in the South to segregate once again, actually fight. I mean, there are battles.

here, I could see the other side prevailing. But talk a little bit personally, when someone starts bringing up segregation in charter schools again. Nothing could be further from the truth. Charters have an outstanding track record across the board that students who attend charters on average learn a lot more than students who are in traditional public schools. And the results are particularly striking for students in poor and underserved communities and minority communities.

You look at, for example, we had as a witness, Eva Moskowitz of Success Academy, which has, I believe, 57 campuses. It's a charter school network in New York City, and 80% of their students are in poverty. And yet they have literally the number one best performing schools in the entire state of New York when it comes to reading. I think they're number three in math. Absolutely astounding results. So, and, you know, the reason that Democrats, some of them,

at least, most of them attack charter schools, is that the teachers unions don't like them because generally speaking, you have more flexibility with hiring at charter schools and the teachers are automatically unionized when they go there. So there's been a full-on assault against charter schools, which are public schools, by the way. We've been talking about this provision of the bill that's for private school choice. Charters are public schools. I actually have been fighting to get in a similar provision for charter schools in this bill.

It's a bill that I've introduced called the High School Quality Charter School Act, which would provide a similar tax credit to create new charter schools and we think could triple the number of charter schools in the country. You don't look at but last night or a couple nights ago, you guys are up at one o'clock going through all this stuff. Let's go back to the strategy, the tactics. So it's in there. It got out of the House Ways and Means, this committee. What are you wary about? I mean, it would seem every Republican.

should be on board with this. It's a pretty simple, it's almost like in the Senate, they just passed a resolution, all of them, Democrat and Republican saying we're in favor of no tax on tips. This would be a similar kind of thing. What are the hurdles to get this to remain in the big, beautiful bill? You know, I think that most of the hurdles have been mounted at this point. The fact that we have it in the House text and we're going to vote on that tonight, maybe.

We'll see you whenever your podcast is actually released.

We're a few hours potentially away from the vote, but that's still a little bit up in the air.

But in any case, the Senate is going to have to then go through its own process,

and we'll just have to make sure that it stays in there on their side,

and then it's in the final text when the two versions of the bill come together.

Let's take us through the Senate.

Again, you seem pretty confident on this, so I'm feeling confident.

Why would they strip it out? What would the trade-off be? I'm trying to get into

the inside because you're the point person on this. I'm so glad we found you.

Yeah, that I was shocked. You know, I'm looking at the big picture here where I am, New Jersey, the salt stuff, the salt tax. I'm looking at Medicaid. I'm looking at any number of real big things. And I see this in here. And I believe this is the thing that would revolutionize the country. The more that we do this, the greater things are going to happen.

Is there any hurdle in the senate that you see? Well, I mean, I don't expect there to be, but you never know. The senate's going to sort of go through its own process, and what they end up producing may be different in a number of ways from our bill, and so that's just the way the process works. But let's say for the sake of argument that for some reason the senate comes up with a bill that doesn't include any of the school of choice tax credits that we want, that wouldn't actually be the end of the

because when there's two different versions of a bill, then you have to come together and reconcile them and you have a conference. And so at that point, we'd have to really fight to have it included in the final product.

What do you say? I'm not one, and I don't think listeners necessarily, but when they hear this, they'll say to people like me, conservatives, well, you guys are always talking at the state level. I'm in Pennsylvania. You may be aware. You know the governor is a national figure. He's going to run for president. He's been running since grade school.

We're in a state where your civil right to get a quality education

is just ignored. And that's why a federal prescription to this appears to be necessary.

Why the federal approach?

Well, you know, the fact is we have states across the country that are doing great things when it comes to education, school choice. You know, Florida has some excellent programs. Iowa has some excellent programs. Many states do. And I think that we want to encourage that as much as possible. But this is really our one opportunity to expand school choice for the entire country, because in California, they're never going to pass anything like this in the legislature, you know, as well as in a number of other states.

And the beauty of it is it's not as though the federal government is prescribing education policy. That's not what we want. We want local control for and certainly private education. What it's instead doing is empowering parents at the local level in every locality across the country to be able to make a choice for themselves.

And you think with $5 billion, any guesstimates, how many kids and parents do you think per year that might be liberated to make a choice? We think that this could send up to 2 million kids to give them choice options. Yeah, that is a tremendous, tremendous benefit. With the charter schools, I'm glad to see you're a participant in both. In other words, this is the more advanced, the voucher program, if you will.

But the charter school thing, speak to some of the things, the criticisms we hear and where we are with charters. Where I am in Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, we have waiting lists of a couple of them of 9,000, 10,000 kids on this. These are public schools. And I think the beauty of them is if they don't appeal to parents to go there, they go out of business. You have this other bill that's part of this. Why are we doing both?

just so that we can multiply the number of kids, I guess, that can take advantage of it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. We need both. We need a universal school choice so that you have options within both within the public education system and you have, you know, the option of private school.

And, you know, the reality is when you look at charters, there's maybe even no education reform in modern U.S. history that's been more successful at giving students a chance at a great education.

And it's all done within the framework of the public school system, but it takes some of the sort of virtues of school choice in the private system into the public system by saying that we're going to free you from all of these requirements that are imposed on traditional public schools. So you don't have to follow all of these mandates. You can run your school as you see fit. You can provide offerings that will appeal to parents in your community. But the flip side of that, in return for that flexibility, there's accountability. And that works two ways. Number one, as you said, you actually have to do that.

to attract students to want to go there. No one gets assigned to your school by default like traditional neighborhood public school. And then in addition to that, you have to get your charter renewed every so often, every three years, every five years to show that you're actually doing a good job. So, you know, that's why, yeah, there are some charters out there that don't do a good job. And guess what happens to them? They close. So then the good ones are left and the good ones are able to expand. And that's actually what we want to do with this bill. The High Quality Charter School Act has caused the good ones to expand even more. And we think that actually,

This could triple the number of students attending charters across the United States at six million more kids who are able to attend charter schools. So the thousands of students who are on waiting lists in Pennsylvania and places in New York, across the country, they could get a seat.

A new book is out. I was just searching my notes here. Don't have it in front of me. But the gist of it, you mentioned somebody who testified, Congressman Kiwi before you, and somebody very successful. The charter school movement, even as early as 2000 or slightly before,

I would read about it. There were huge success stories, but the book talks about what happens with this, that they were under constant assault. Some of it was even racial. Some of it was saying they're too white. They're doing techniques that you shouldn't be doing with these children. And you and I both have seen the success. Is some of that, in your estimation, calming down, or are those elements still out there trying to attack on that basis?

Well, unfortunately, there are relentless attacks in places like California.

You know, Gavin Newsom has, as soon as he came into office, declared basically war on charter schools.

They use all kinds of myths to attack them.

They've made it very difficult to actually open new charters now.

They're trying to close the ones that do exist.

They've tried to impose caps in New York State.

They do have a cap on the number of charters.

They defund them, so they get far less funding than traditional public schools.

They deprive them of school sites. And then at the same time, they are actively re-regulating them, imposing the very mandates that were originally lifted and were the entire purpose of charter schools. Now they're putting those mandates back on charter schools. So it's absolutely a recognition by the educational establishment that charter schools are a threat to their business model, which unfortunately that business model all too often is keeping kids trapped and failing schools. Do you have experience, parting question for you, Congressman, with Democrats,

who you know deep down off the record, you know, away from the subcommittee say, hey, look, I'm on board with this, but I got to answer. This is the biggest foot soldiers, money, NJEA, where I'm at, NEA. They're under relentless pressure. But do you think any of them might vote for this bill in Congress, the big bill that we're talking about?

None of them are going to vote for the bill. You know, not just the school of choice provision. I don't know how many Democrats,

if any, we'd get for that, for this private school of choice program either, unfortunately.

There have been some Democrats who have a better take and approach to charter schools, like the governor of Colorado, for example, Jared Polis's general pro-charter.

Even Cuomo, when he was around, one of the few things that he was okay on was he had better charter school policy approach than de Blasio did, who was always going after them as the mayor of New York City. And even in the legislature in California, there were some of the Democrats who were willing to at least push back against some of the most over-the-top attacks on charters. So unfortunately, though, that is becoming less common.

The Democrats have started to enlarge the close ranks in opposing or at least trying to be unfriendly towards charters as well and just kind of opposing school choice in any form, which is very unfortunate because we're in big trouble in this country when it comes to education. The nation's report card shows that we are getting worse and worse and worse, even though we're spending more and more and more. I believe school choice is the single most effective thing that can change that trajectory. And it'd be nice if we had some bipartisan support for that.

Congressman, I couldn't wish you better. I'm so glad we discover you. I invite you on my radio show in Philadelphia. We'll get in touch. You seem to be keeping everything calm here as we go through this. But I agree. This would be all those big things we hear about in the bill, I think in the long run are going to be great. But this to me is a legacy. This is the thing that really would change America, not just the kids, but the attitude of these parents to have that power, parental rights.

This is the vehicle where those parental rights really take shape.

That's right. No, absolutely. I couldn't have said it better myself. And so I'm excited to fight to get this cross the finish line and to get the charter school provision in there as well.

Good luck. Thank you very much. Thanks for joining us, Congressman.

You bet. Anytime.

Thank you. All right, everyone here on the School Choice Show.

After speaking with the congressman who did a great job with the big, beautiful bill and this liberation,

That's what it is. That's what we're dealing with here. We're dealing with liberation of American students, many poor, lower middle class kids and their families. I spoke with Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick on my radio show. And he, I found out, is the co-sponsor in the Senate of this part of the big, beautiful bill, which would take this $5 billion and free up American students.

This would be the first in any number of battles to be fought that will be tremendous as far as actually getting kids a good education. So that's in progress now. As this podcast unfolds, the negotiating is going on. You may know that July 4th is the date that President Trump is trying to push them toward. I think if you don't go for July 4th, these guys, the dithering, the back and forth.

But as far as I can tell, in speaking with McCormick and with Congressman Kevin Kiley, I think this is pretty much going to get home. And we are going to see your chance and people across the country to contribute to this big, beautiful fund that would be capped at $5 billion. McCormick told me he wanted it to be $10 billion. I would like it to be $20 to $50 billion. To free up kids, this is the only thing that's going to work.

This whole array of various school choices is the only thing that will improve the public schools in the long term. In the short term, you shouldn't be held prisoner to this. Case in point, the Free Press, which is not in the habit of being, you know, over the top critical of something. They're just very intelligent people. The Free Press website. Barry Weiss is the person who founded this. Here's their headline this week that makes the point.

of what it's like to be in these big city schools. And maybe you have parents who like what I'm going to tell you, but I think a lot of parents would not like to be trapped into this. They did a big piece called the three R's of Philly schools, Philadelphia schools. And the three R's are reading, writing, and racism. And they talk about the curriculum, particularly some of the people on the inside of the Philadelphia public schools.

And they talk about what is the essence of DEI, or a large part of DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion. A large part of it is not just the racial affirmative action part. It's also the part that says the world only has two people, the oppressor and the oppressed. And the free press says the curriculum of the Philadelphia public schools crawls with this. In contrast, they say, to Philadelphia's oppression-centered focus,

study materials for the AP United States History Exam course say students should learn that the Gilded Age produced new cultural and intellectual movements, public reform efforts, and political debates over economic and social policies. That's the standard for the kids that are going on to the AP, advanced placement. But they say in the Philadelphia public schools, you would get none of that.

A spokesperson for the school district of Philadelphia said that its recommended social

studies curriculum provides grade and course standards, align guidance, yada, yada, yada.

But they didn't talk about the people behind it. One guy they mentioned, Ismail Yemenez, the district's director of social studies curriculum, said last year that the curriculum emphasizes multi-prospectivity and dialectical thinking. In March, Yemenez says in an Instagram post,

that educators are agents of change. Every child should walk into a classroom and feel the

revolution stirring in the air. Yemenis has also posted an image of the American flag being thrown in the trash.

Compare the U.S. This is the head guy in Philadelphia to the Soviet Union in North Korea. He didn't respond, of course, to requests from the free press to debate some of these things.

And they go through a litany. They even reinforce the principle of the 1619 Project

that the Revolutionary War happened because Americans wanted slavery.

The Brits did not. They were moving away from it. And we fought the Revolutionary War to keep slavery.

An assignment on Ronald Reagan and American conservatism asked students to write a critical analysis of the American narrative versus reality on topics such as the war on drugs and the Cold War.

I'd like to see that on the Cold War. I think we were the good guys, they were the bad guys. They go on to say that Philadelphia students perform far below national and state standards on reading and math. Just 18% of the district's eighth graders are considered at or above proficient in reading, compared with 30% nationwide, according to the 2024 National Assessment Results.

are English language learners. U.S. News and World Report reports that 69% of the school district students are considered economically disadvantaged. So this is the shame of Philadelphia. They have a piece in here in the free press of one of the guys that is involved in the Philadelphia public schools, along with this Yemenis guy, who says everyone's using AI to cheat at school. That's a good thing.

Oh my goodness. Bottom line. They write. It seems like the district is okay with activist teachers and with teachers actually claiming they're teaching the truth, but really they're teaching activism bias. I don't understand how somebody like that can be a teacher in a public school. Well, they are able to do it in Philadelphia because it's a monopoly. And this is why they don't like charter schools. They keep artificial caps on it. This is why governor Shapiro doesn't sign off on freeing kids up in the

the budget which is going on now in Pennsylvania with Lifeline scholarships. This is why they go after cyber charter schools. And this is why this podcast this week is so important that this big, beautiful bill, this element of it. We talked with Congressman Kevin Kiley. I'm going to have Dave McCormick on the show in the future. That at least $5 billion is in there. McCormick wanted $10 billion. I'd want $20 billion at least to get away from this stuff.

If you're a parent that objects to this stuff, are you even aware of what they're doing on a daily basis? Again, the free press is not an organ of conservatism or anything else. It's moderate to moderately liberal. Brilliant people with a point of view. Why this expose on Philadelphia public schools? You could probably find it in the New York public schools and several others. This is what you're going to get. What parents need is an option.

Who are the oppressors, I would ask? Who are the oppressors when they keep in these schools those that have no other resources and they can inflict their value system upon them with these dismal results? Aren't these the people being oppressed because they don't have a choice? And who's doing that? Well, the people that want to shut down vouchers. That's the way that I see it. If we're going to play this game of oppressed,

an oppressor. As I see it then, in that context, the oppressor are the people that will not give parents, many of them poor, lower middle class, the options that they may have to choose the best school for their kids. Thanks for listening this week. If you have any comments, hit me at domshow at aol.com, D-O-M-S-H-O-W at aol.com. We'll be back with you with our next podcast. Thanks for listening today.

Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano is a presentation of Giordano Productions LLC. Copyright 2025. All rights reserved.