Dom shares some mind numbing facts about people and organizations seemingly working again…

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 in to this week's edition of Old School, New School, Next School.

And here, school choice and parental rights are our mission to get toward them. Why?

Because our real mission is to make America smart again. MASA, M-A-S-A, make America smart again.

Apparently, even though people can get the podcast nationwide, internationally even,

Word of this has not reached our friends over in the Fairfax County schools.

Now, at one point in time, the Fairfax County schools over in Virginia were top rated, one of the top rated in the country.

Parents, if you can imagine, are in an uproar.

There's a big school board meeting.

Why?

I read this today five times to myself.

When you hear this, write it down and see if that's your school district.

The Fairfax County School District is under fire because fewer than half, we're dealing with maybe 19, 18 weeks of the school year, have five consecutive days of instruction time in school. Let me say that again. So say you have roughly, oh, I don't know, 38, 39, 40 school weeks of one certain or another. Fewer than half of those school weeks have five days of instruction.

Thousands of messages from parents. Here's a funny part of this. Open the school says Danny Royal hire on the Grant and Danny show on 106.7. The fan. It's a sports talk station that's gotten into this. And the host says, where can I help you people? I want to help this movement. The tired, irritated parents. I've got this microphone. I'll use it every day for this. You, me and Dupree. We can fight it until there's no fight left.

until they go to school five days a week, twice in one month.

Then we'll take our next victory.

We'll keep climbing up that mountain until the children go to school sometimes.

At the school board meeting, they say parents are seeking their help.

They want their kids in school for as many five-day weeks as possible.

Now, why is this?

Well, they're woke.

They have all kinds of holidays.

They have all kinds of early release days and teacher development days.

They have the indigenous people day. They have. They're thinking of turning veterans day into an instructional day. They have Swahili and they have Hindu holidays. It's all over the place. It's every nightmare. When I saw this headline, this is an example of why America is not working. This is an example of why we need school choice. What do these parents do? On these school days.

at least once a week, half the year, if not two days that week, where their kids are not in school. It's an astounding number. This ought to be up there everywhere. National media ought to be talking about this. I only saw this at the hill.com, and I have not seen it on national news. If this is happening in more places, I want to know about it. You can always email me at dom show at AOL.com. That's the place to go.

Now, something that people that are trying to fraudulently make us believe the public schools are working, that they're up to, this out of Minnesota, where they know fraud. Minnesota graduation rates see another record year, says Inforum, one of their Minnesota information sites. Slightly up from last year's data, 84.9% of Minnesota high school students graduated.

in four years. But in here, the proficiency rate is somewhere in the mid-40s in reading, and the proficiency rate is even lower than that in the mid-30s in math. Here's the point. You see what they're doing? Yeah, everybody's graduating. Aren't we wonderful? Well, wait a minute. If you're graduating with only, at best, under half of students proficient in reading,

and the standards are not overwhelming and even less than that in math. Well, why are you touting? Why do we care about the grads? Well, we're going to give them this phony piece of paper. They don't know that much, but it'll say high school graduates. So that will help the kid. That seems to be the mission. Watch for this all over the place. Minnesota starts as fraud and other places copy. And the newspapers go along with it. Graduation rates see another record year. Why not graduate? 99%.

100%, 105%. Put any number down. The number we should look at is what do these kids know? How proficient are they? Remember the Chicago Public School. This is very reminiscent of that we talked about that has a capacity for about 450, 500 kids. There are only 28 kids in that school, okay? And they have 27 administrators slash teachers or those 28 kids.

They have a principal. Can you imagine? It's like Little House in a Prairie Schoolhouse. What's the proficiency rate in reading and math of those kids? The answer would be zero, zero, meaning zero are proficient in reading or math. They're spending well over $94,000 per student, Chicago public schools. How do they get away with this? Well, they get away with it because of the teachers unions and because of the National Democrat Party. They're

in this together. Now, this show has a remedy for this, and that remedy is school choice and parental rights. Like in Fairfax, parents are trying to exert those rights, but I don't know if they have much of a shot if they have fewer than half of the school year, five-day school days. Now, one of the other things we'd like to do before I give you an update on school choice this week in Making American Smart,

I saw another article at the Hill, and I want to get this guy on, great piece about memorization in school. And in this, he talks about the fact that at one point in time, kids memorized whole poems. Kids were proud of this. Kids memorized tables in chemistry. In other words, this idea that memorization is not good, he goes into great detail,

of how much memorization stretches the mind, works on that, in addition to the material that you know. And there's a sense of pride. There's a sense of, I actually know things. I'm not just going to, I know how to look it up. So we'll get this author on. But I've already told you over the course of this year with Old School, New School, Next School, about E.D. Hirsch, H-I-R-S-C-H. And he is a big believer. He has a book about the 3,000 workers.

every American should know, their concepts, their phrases, their words, that you have to memorize in order to be able to read in context. I've told you he's written books, what every child should know by the end of first grade, second grade, and so on, so that you can check at home as a parent. E.D. Hirsch, genius. And he says, yes, there are things you have to memorize. I don't know anything, but I can look it up. No, you're much better off if you actually know things and know that you know them.

H-I-R-S-C-H for E.D. Hirsch. Now, the core of this show as a remedy for both parental rights to enhance those and to make America smarter is what? School choice. That's what we started out with. That is the ultimate remedy. And we're coming up on just about a year of old school, new school, next school. And over the course of that year, I'm going to give you the rundown of some things you may or may not have missed.

You can go back and listen to them. But give you an idea of hope that we're winning on this by some of the guests I brought on. One of the biggest things to happen is that we had signed into law the big, beautiful bill. Remember that? No tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime. That's coming into play. But in there was the mechanism to spring forward billions of dollars that would go to nonprofits.

in each one of the 50 states if they sign in. And that money would be distributed to parents and kids in order to get to the school of their choice. Now, as we speak today, 28 states have ratified this. Two of them are actually Democrats. One, we interviewed somebody from Colorado, a talk show host from there that talked about Jarrett Polis. It was riveting. This guy's a progressive governor, might run for president, vice president.

Colorado has turned into a blue state. And he said he was the first Democrat. He said, well, if I don't do this, I'm failing my constituents, citizens, Coloradans, because the surrounding states or other states will get that money then. And the governor decided there. That was powerful. Kentucky also has a Democrat governor this year. This guy went to a private school.

His kids go to private schools.

But he rejected the money because of the teachers unions, and he's running for president.

He was bypassed by the legislatures overwhelmingly.

So now Kentucky has that money, the new money, from the big, beautiful bill.

So we're up to 28.

And let me give you some of the people we've had on that are agitating to move this forward.

In Pennsylvania, where I am, we had on Stacey Garrity.

She is the treasurer in Pennsylvania.

She's running against Josh Shapiro. Josh Shapiro is also running for president. Garrity, if she wins the governor's race, has said a hundred times she will immediately sign off to get that new money for kids to make school choice in Pennsylvania under the big, beautiful bill. All that money. Shapiro is still waffling on this. Also, over the course of this year, we've had three governors that initially Democrats who said they would not

take the money. Now they're saying we're going to wait and see.

I think we're somewhere, even at this point in the next few weeks, we're going to reach about 35 or so states that will accept the money.

I'm hoping the groundswell will force these others to reconsider.

Otherwise, they will be in a deep minority here like they're standing in the schoolhouse door, stopping sometimes low-income poor kids and their families from getting the education.

they deserve. A couple of other people we brought on this year as we come up on our one-year anniversary.

The first show was with Ryan Boyer. He is the leading union person in the city of Philadelphia, which is a big union town. And Ryan Boyer talked to me in that very first show, podcast, about urgency, about how we're urgent on other things.

We also have talked about quite frequently with Corey DeAngelis. Now, Corey DeAngelis is one of my all-time favorites. He is the evangelist of school choice.

his agitation across the country for moving the ball forward on this, about exposing it to parents, and also about exposing the teachers' unions. His group, along with Ryan Walters' group—Walters is the former superintendent of education in Oklahoma—they have taken tens of thousands of teachers out of the teachers' unions, NEA, AFT, all that stuff, and they have gotten them into,

an individual group where they're protected, they can get insurance, all those things.

And they are starting to weaken the power of these teachers unions over these politicians.

Now, this is going to take a while. These teachers unions are really powerful.

But we've told you if an enemy came and tried to conquer us, that enemy would be the teachers unions when it comes to making kids dumb.

We also brought on a brilliant neuroscientist who I'm going to have back and talked about this generation.

is the first generation when you look at tests nationally, vast amounts of testing that have not just plateaus, meaning you haven't gone up, but have actually dropped the first generation to do that, to be dumber in his words. And we went through the reasons why. The evidence is there. It's not just COVID. We also talked with several African-American ministers over the course of the year, including Joshua Robertson.

African-American minister in the Harrisburg area. And he leads a consortium of these black ministers in Pennsylvania, and they're spreading to other places that have instituted their own school choice programs. They're trying to scale it up. So what a year it has been. It started out on the cusp of the big, beautiful bill. That came through. It started out then with pressuring and counting and trying to get to these governors or

in these states, we're up to 28, as I said now, which is massive approval.

This goes into effect in 2027. Can we get all 50? No, there will be a few of these Democrats,

because of the teachers unions, will not cave in. They will be martyrs for this. Well,

you know what? Politically, that may be the case. This movement has real power. And each time we

Capture a state. Each time a state outside the Big Beautiful Bill, Texas, went to become school choice statewide. Corey DeAngelis told me the other day 230,000 families. Now, Texas is big, have already applied for that money. 230,000 families, even in a place as big as Texas. That is an enormous number, and some don't know about this yet.

We are seeing a groundswell. Are we at the tipping point? I'm urging politicians of both parties, but principally Republicans in the midterms to be bringing up school choice, to be bringing up Make America Smart Again, to be bringing up even bigger than those two in its own way, parental rights, which is expressed through school choice. So in under a year, and counting, we'll celebrate soon the one-year anniversary.

We have brought you people that are making that type of progress. Stories that are both horrifying, like the Fairfax County story and the Chicago Public Schools, and stories that are uplifting. I brought you recently this woman in San Francisco who actually ran a political campaign. She's a political consultant to get the school board there to bring back algebra for eight

If you remember, it was billed as an equity issue, which is ridiculous because anybody could take it. And if you take algebra in eighth grade, it sets up high school for calculus, algebra two, and the other things. It gives you that nice. And this is Silicon Valley. It took 12 years to do it. In the course of it, she admitted through that struggle that she's become more of a fan now of school choice. And she's self-identified liberal.

San Francisco liberal. Why in the world would they do this? Well, because of activists and others that have seized the public schools, teachers unions also. Is that uplifting America's kids? No. Now, we're going to continue to fight those battles to make America smart again, like this one in Fairfax County. Just give us five days in a row of school, more than half the time. How about three quarters? My God. We're going to continue to fight them.

But in some instances, like Chicago, the only thing that's going to work at this point is those that want to be freed of this do not want to deal with the nonsense that's there. There's plenty of money there, but it's just not going to work. They're bad, a lot of these public schools. Year after year, when you have zero proficiency in those schools and spending $94,000 per student, when do you give it up? Sadly, some parents and kids will just, through inertia, remain there.

But those that want to get out, our mission is to leave nobody behind to get you out of those schools. So it is a big end of the year coming up here on the horizon where I think we're going to get 40 states or more to sign off on a big, beautiful bill. When people get that money and they do it, others are going to say, whoa, what was that? How about us? And by 2027, we're going to see substantial numbers of kids and parents liberated.

So keep the faith. If you have a question, something you want me to talk about, you can always email me, domshow, D-O-M-S-H-O-W, at AOL.com. And thanks as we move toward that one-year anniversary for each week, listening and letting people know about old school, new school, next school. Old school, new school, next school with Dom Giordano is a presentation of Giordano Productions, LLC. Copyright 2026.

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