What can the woman who lead the political campaign to restore Algebra in the San Francisc…

Welcome to Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano, a podcast devoted to shedding light on issues pertaining to making America smart again. These include, among many topics, school choice and parental rights. This podcast is dedicated to reversing the deeply disturbing trend known as the dumbing down of America. Now, here's your host, Educator.

and noted talk media commentator, Dom Giordano.

Hey, everyone. This is Dom Giordano. Welcome to this week's edition of Old School, New School, Next School.

Our mission each week with you, and we're making great progress on this, it's to make America smart again.

Novel idea, huh? How much dumbness do we need to see to know what's going on in schools?

This is a pushback against the crippling dumbing down of America.

And it's real. You know it and I know it. And some of our weapons, one of them, school choice, is going great guns. The other is parental rights. And that is often under siege in so many fronts. Now, this week, apropos of this, we have a great guest. The woman we're having on from San Francisco led a campaign. It was an actual political campaign to get the San Francisco school board to approve a plan to restore,

Now, you talk about sabotage and dumbing America down. It is now restored, and she's going to lay out only by a four to three vote. What happened in San Francisco is that 12 years ago, 12 long years ago, they killed eighth grade algebra. Now it's set to come back. Why was it killed? In the name of equity. So our guest, as I understand it, heads into the campaign mode.

She told me, or at least Ro Khanna, who is a progressive, tweeted out as a result of this whole thing in San Francisco on Twitter, it's absurd that Palo Alto School District just voted to remove honors biology for all students and already removed honors English. They call it D-laning. And I call it an assault on excellence. I took many honors classes at Council Rock,

high in Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia, Ro Khanna.

So the point is, why are they doing this?

They're doing this because that last phrase, that delaning, another made-up term,

means then that certain kids can't get into the right lane later on.

The turn signal's not working.

You know, they won't let them in.

It's a long lineup.

No, you should have gotten in a mile ago.

You're not getting in.

Imagine Palo Alto, Stanford.

So here, we have in San Francisco the very same thing with the issue of algebra. In other words, they want to lay it out. Now, they should lay it out that you take algebra in the eighth grade, and then you're set up for the next four years of high school with higher level math at each level. By taking it out at that level, they force people to have to pay themselves, go to summer school, all in the name of equity. To me, classic case.

of dumbing this down. It took 12 years, and our guest actually, you know what a campaign is about. I'll let her play this out. She's a very skilled political consultant. Having to run on a platform of, yeah, we're in Silicon Valley or right near there, wouldn't it be a good idea that our kids could have top-flight math? And that's where we pick up with our guest, Autumn Loyan.

And Autumn, as I can tell by this, when I first read this, and I saw that you talked about your role in getting eighth grade algebra back in school, is I didn't know then. I thought you were a concerned citizen parent, but this was a full-fledged political campaign to do something that is so obvious. And you were very generous at the end, and we'll go through the campaign here, to say voters should take note that this only passed after national attacks.

tax on San Francisco by a 4-3 vote. So who hired you? How did you jump into the ring that 8th grade algebra became a full-fledged political campaign? We hired ourselves. My partner and I had run the school board recall in San Francisco that you may have heard about. Yes. And after that, we felt that it was our responsibility. If you take something down, you kind of have a responsibility to put it back together again. And we wanted to make sure that the kids in San Francisco had the same opportunity to put it back together again.

as the kids in the rest of the Bay Area. Okay. So what is the politics of this, though? This seemed to be that parents were definitely ready for this. And again, I did read about you and the recall message and all that. You're a highly skilled political consultant running a campaign versus just show up, hey, this is not right, put it in. What was the other side? Who were left? Did I get three votes here?

Are there still a lot of people in San Francisco

that say no, this woman is a menace and that equity should, I guess that's the word,

take precedence over kids actually getting into high-powered math in a sequential manner?

The fascinating thing for me as we were campaigning across the city was that the vast,

vast majority of people in San Francisco were in favor of giving our kids access to education.

They saw how unfair it was that if you were a public school kid in San Francisco,

you didn't have algebra until ninth grade, which meant you had to take five years of advanced math in just four years. You had to double up somewhere. None of the other kids had to do that. None of them in private school, none of them in surrounding districts. And for a place that's kind of in the heart of the technology industry, you're having these kids grow up and saying, oh, this path isn't for you. And I thought that was deeply, deeply unfair. And the vast majority of people in San Francisco agreed with me. When I was going door to door and at farmer's markets, everyone was like, we don't have a

This is crazy. Let me look that up. And then they come back and be like, oh, my God, how do I help? And so I think the people in San Francisco are very, very sensible. But a lot of the politicians in San Francisco are looking to make a name for themselves and are honestly not working in the best interest of the people, not working in the best interest of the kids.

But I wanted to ask you, because I respect greatly what you've done here, I'm a big fan of school choice. And if you're not, or you have some sense of that charter school center, I want to hear somebody who I respect in case I ever had to see the arguments of the other side. What in the world were they appealing to, though? I think you're exactly right. Even in a place that's kind of like Philadelphia, that's been Democrats forever, they objected to this.

and it took 12 long years. What was the constituency for these other people? They wanted to make sure that kids who weren't ready for algebra weren't left behind. Right. And that was what they said. But when you look at it, I think something different was happening. I think they had this problem where kids were arriving in algebra in eighth grade and a lot of them were unprepared. And the right way to fix that would have been to say, let's look at our elementary schools and teach math better.

But they went with the easy way to fix that, which was, hey, let's just give everyone an extra year to catch up. And let's sell it by telling everyone it's an equity issue. Because if you're a politician sitting on that school board and you want to move up, you can't, if you kick off something that's going to improve test scores five or six years from now, no one's going to know it was you. You're not going to make your name that way.

Right.

But if you do something very short term, if you give everyone extra year, you might get those algebra scores up in just a year. That builds your reputation, then you can move up onto higher office. I really think it's that type of short term thinking that makes the politicians behave in a way that no one in San Francisco wants, or very few.

Well, you restore my faith that it's not some woke, full woke agenda. But the bottom line, I'm a former public school teacher, and I've seen I get the golden age of public schools and I get the notions involved with it. Somebody that ran this campaign like you, what's your sense of school choice? Would that destroy, in your view, the public schools? Would it lessen them? Is that possible? Can that be done in a reasonable way based upon campaigns that you might run?

I used to be against school choice because it does leave public schools with a disproportionate number of kids with disabilities and other issues and then they get and they don't get any extra funding for that. And I was very concerned because the public schools are kind of the way we bring in new immigrants into our society and I didn't want to lose that. But when I look at what's actually happening, when I look at the charter schools I have seen in our communities, most of them are doing really great work, you know, and

I think definitely in places like San Francisco where a lot of schools are really struggling are not offering opportunities like eighth grade algebra I think parents ought to have a choice I think parents ought to have the ability to say hey if you guys won't offer eighth grade algebra to my kid I'm going to vote with my feet because I don't think I don't think things are going to change any other way without a lot of effort I mean I worked for a year to bring algebra back right that's a lot of effort for something that is in the whole scheme of things very small

And so let me say I don't think it is because I think it's a greater thing than that. And I just had a sense. I mean, it went on for 12 years in talk radio. The attacks on this are unbelievable. So you would come down for charter schools. Would you come down beyond that or just charter schools? I think I am OK with school choice. OK. And that surprises me a little bit in San Francisco. I'm very glad about that so that this can be done and worked out in a reasonable way.

the governor of Colorado, who I think is progressive sort of on a lot of issues, he's the one Democrat so far, and I'm asking you to put on your political hat, that has come out in favor of it, where I am Shapiro pretends like he doesn't seem to know what this will mean under the big beautiful bill, but Paul has said, well then they'll just send the money to the states around me and Colorado will suffer, and this is really a chance to vote with your feet.

I'm a big fan of charter schools, of course, because they can meet an exact need that's here. But with San Francisco, do you think, or is it just too ideological for people to favor school choice? Man, a lot of people in San Francisco are opposed to charter schools. There are some in San Francisco, but the teachers union is very, very much against them, and the school district is against them as well.

I think if you were to run a successful campaign for school choice in San Francisco, you would need to highlight what's best for the kids. Just stay laser focused on what's best for the kids. Are kids being well served? Are they being deprived of opportunities that they could get if they had other choices? And what are we going to do for parents who want to make those choices, but maybe you're a single mom who works as a cashier, you don't make much money, is how can we make sure that you have a choice?

have not just the ability to choose a school, but the ability to realistically access that school for your kid. And I think those are the kinds of questions that folks in San Francisco would be very interested in knowing the answers to. Have you ever worked on this? Is this the sole education campaign you've worked on? And I followed this or read this carefully, and I'm impressed that you ran it like a campaign. Of course, it's moms and dads and all that, but you were kind of relentless in the matter that you got this over the finish line.

And I can tell by only a four to three vote after all this, those three people, were they adamant about this? Or what's their priority here today? You know, I hate to use that wrong side of history, but it would seem like they would get it here and come on board with this.

You know, I would have hoped so. I've, you know, I, I know all of them. I've spoken with all of them. One of them was actually someone we helped get elected a couple of years ago after the recall.

And when she was put into place, the mayor at the time, Lennon Breed, was boasting that, you know, these guys were going to get algebra back for our kids. And then it didn't happen. So I was really disappointed to see her as a no vote. I think many of them were hoping for a better implementation of algebra than we had. But regardless, a no vote on that was a vote for the kids not to have algebra. And I would much rather for them to have algebra in an imperfect form than to wait possibly forever for.

a better implementation of algebra.

Given your background, you're the first person I've had on. It's actually done campaigns around this versus all kinds of people of different walks of life that are either opposed or a favor school choice.

What is it that you think is effective again in a campaign nationally? We're up to 28 governors who've said they would take one Beshear.

I don't get it maybe you can help the the Democrats doing this is it that the school board the school teachers unions will just kill them if they go for this Beshear in Kentucky was overridden amazingly by the legislature amazing proportional votes to say we want school choice and three other Democrats are reconsidering this and again I guess what I'm asking is this I am I

I think this is such a huge issue to give parents choices be a charter school I could settle for that home school school choice or a really good public school if that's their choice and all well funded this money doesn't come away from it everybody it seems to be 75 25 of parents in favor of this what is it in your view politically that the will is not there though to easily both make this a major issue I think it's a huge issue I think it's a huge issue I think it's a huge issue I think it's a huge issue I think it's

It's a back burner, even though you and I know how important this is in kids' lives. So what do we have to do to make this more front page? What we did was we looked for the statistic or the image that we could put in front of people and have them say, oh, it's obvious we need to bring algebra back. So for us, we called every school district in the Bay Area to find out who had eighth grade algebra and who didn't. And we made a color-coded map that showed that

practically everyone in the Bay Area had it. It was just San Francisco that was behind. And we put that out on Twitter and people, it was shocking to people and they started sharing it. I think that really brought it into the conversation. We got the news media picked it up and it made a difference. It suddenly became something people were talking about. And the other thing that was really helpful was an organization we were working with called Grow SF ran a poll that said 80% of

I think 80% of parents, 80% of people were in favor of bringing algebra back. And the nice thing about that number you brought up earlier, 75% of parents being in favor of that, that is really a powerful number because when people are deciding an issue that they don't know much about, they're going to be like, who do I know who I can rely on and use as a proxy? And so if you publicize that 75% of parents are in favor of this and they just need your help to get it past the finish line,

because there aren't enough parents to get it through on their own. I think that's a really powerful way to approach people because then they know they're doing the right thing. Absolutely. Well, Autumn, I thank you very much. Congratulations. What are you working on now? What's your next campaign so that I can keep an eye out? We're actually a little idle on the political front. We're building an off-grid cabin. Okay. All right. Well, Autumn, thank you for coming on today.

I really appreciate it. Congratulations on this. To people who think, well, that's a no-brainer, the 4-3 vote indicates how difficult these things are to actually get through and to run it as a campaign, not just as we're begging you on this issue. So thank you for that very much. Pleasure to have you on today. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you. All righty, everyone. That's the view from San Francisco of all places. I think you just heard a new angle when it comes to school

by a veteran campaigner here on Old School, New School, Next School, that laid out how to approach people. And someone who I think is ideologically a little bit more to the left, agree that this is another stunning example of why school choice is necessary. By the way, my big find this week here with Dom Giordano, and by the way, you can always email me, domshow, D-O-M-S-H-O-W at AOL.com. New evidence, this is from the D.C. Journal.

shows that school choice lifts all students. I was thinking about that when we were talking with our guests. For years, school choice opponents, not that she made this argument, have leaned on a familiar claim. When families opt out of traditional public schools, the students left behind suffer. A newly released study from the American Federation for Children, who've been a guest on Old School, New School, Next School, examines that assumption and proves how faulty it is. Patrick Graff, Senior Fellow,

at AFC conducted an in-depth analysis of Florida's tax credit scholarship program, which was passed into law 25 years ago. Now think about it. That's a small sample, Florida, but it's a pretty good 25 years. Researchers then tracked outcomes for students who remained in traditional public schools over the next 15 years as the program initially serving 15,000 students from low-income households grew.

The peer review research showed that public school students in areas with higher concentration of school choice competition posted stronger test scores, attended school more consistently, and experienced fewer suspensions and disciplinary incidents. All right, let's break that down here. In the most competitive markets, public school students gained the equivalent, here's your number for the week,

120 additional days of learning and reading. That's two-thirds of a full score a year. The gains were most pronounced among low-income students, the population that critics argue school choice abandons. Not true. School choice opponents inevitably counter. Why not just direct those funds to the traditional public school system? Well, the researcher considered that question, and his findings are unambiguous. If Florida had taken those same dollars, put them in the public school

budgets instead, would that approach provide a better result for students who remained in those schools?

It would not, and it's not even close.

For improving public school students' achievement, expanding Florida's scholarship program proved to be, ready for it, 11 times more cost-effective than equivalent increases in per-pupil K-12 spending.

In short, over 15 years, Florida invested $2.8 billion in the choice approach. Students were 120 days ahead. Had that funding been directed to the traditional approach of raising public school budgets, the same kids would have progressed only an additional 11 days. 11 days versus 120. So what are we talking about here with this? All right, here's the broad proposition. If this comes up, you ever hear an opponent of this?

wherever you might get this podcast. It not only gives freedom of choice, civil rights here. It not only creates competition. But what it does because of the added pressure of choice, it lifts up those who remain behind. It gives them a better shot if they and their parents want to stay behind for whatever reason. In Florida, over this vast number of students, it shows

that they also are going to be better. So this idea of just plowing billions of dollars willy-nilly back into the same public schools that have been in large measure failing for all the reasons we could talk about, and I'm sure there's a lot of reasons internally why this happens. Bottom line, school choice is good. It's a social good. Give people choice. This is America. Parents and students. Bottom line, those people will do better.

They can make their own choice of what fits their child, and they won't have to deal with the nonsense we often see in many public schools. But also, those that remain will gain that additional 120 days or something like that versus 11 days if we spent $2.8 billion more in Florida. This is groundbreaking. This really underlines, we're taking apart here, how many objections can they come up with? Well, they're desperate.

They have to know reasonable people. This is the ultimate right of a parent to educate

their child. And the new evidence says shows that school choice lifts all students. We're lifting up all boats.

And by the way, a lot of these are not the wealthy in the upper middle class.

They are kids that are lower income, lower middle class or even lower.

They are being lifted up by this. I rest my case again this week.

Take all this stuff and rest your case and let's continue to march. By the way, we are up now to 28 states that have accepted the big, beautiful bill money, that new money that comes in that does not take away from the public schools. It is something that's a gift. Bashir, the Democrat governor of Kentucky, balked. He wouldn't do it and they overran his balking. The legislature did. 28 to 22, we have them.

Three more Democrats are potentially saying they're looking at it again.

They may now finally do it.

If they do, it's going to be very hard for the Josh Shapiro's in Pennsylvania and some of these other.

The guy, this Tony Evers, what a joke out in Wisconsin.

The legislature voted overwhelmingly to take the school choice money.

He vetoed it.

Now they have to override his veto.

This guy standing in the schoolhouse door.

This is ridiculous.

We're winning on this.

who are going to win? America's school kids and parents. Not just those who take the money, but in areas where this choice happens, they will do better in the public schools as a totality. Take all this information, go forward, and let's make it happen. My name is Dom Giordano, G-I-O-R-D-A-N-O. You can email me, domshow at AOL.com. I'll see you next week on Old School, New School, Next School.

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