Back to School: Dom Challenges the NEA

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, and it is back to school time.

This is your old school, new school, next school, back to school special.

This is a big year, 2026 into 2027.

Let's talk on the micro level for parents first.

It's a big year for MASA, M-A-S-A, make America smart again.

I want to play you a cut of this teacher a Houston teacher who made national news recently dedicated guy they go back to school earlier in Houston working with seniors listen to this teacher break up on his lunch hour and talk about the fact I think he's a new teacher he can't believe it these seniors can't even parse out a paragraph back to back on just simple questions to be asked.

Here's what the teacher said. Listen to the emotion of this.

So I am on my lunch break. It is, I don't know, 1130 or something like that. And I just finished a three hour class. We have what's called block and block is where first and second periods are combined for subjects that need it.

And so I literally broke down in the middle of class because I'm teaching seniors. These kids are leaving high school and going to college, hopefully after they finish. We had two paragraphs to read.

Complete to write.

I gave them

the sentence stems.

I basically

completed the sentence for them

in the model.

These are 17

and 18 year old kids

and they couldn't

fill in four

words.

Four words.

I gave them the scenario.

We annotated together.

I gave them the answers before we even had the problem.

And they couldn't do it.

I don't know.

I simply don't know.

where the problem is. This is only day two. And I have seniors who simply cannot read and seniors who cannot write. They cannot write. They can reason. They have the ability to defend their reasoning if it's talking to their homeboy.

a written text, two paragraphs. And they couldn't do it.

Our young black men, our young brown men, our young black girls, and our young brown girls.

Oh, God.

All right, I feel for that guy. You probably do and think, what the heck is going on?

It's just because he cares that he's involved. The superintendent of schools in Houston went on to say, well, why didn't he come to us? Why is he doing this? We know why he's doing it. He's blowing the whistle in a very, very calm way about exactly what's going on with these kids and the school in which he's teaching. But on a micro level, on your level as a parent or grandparent, what are some of the things that you can do?

any kid, I was just reading an article, Dom Giordano, with you just in the last couple of days about the reason that experts pin it at the age of nine. At the age of nine, declined by nine, it's called, where kids stop reading. Many, many kids, not all, many, many kids up until that age are pretty passionate readers. They like stuff. They like stories. They like to read. Whatever they're reading, get them more.

My best recommendation is if you can get them one that's several books, that they can go from book to book to book, or even small books, that's the thing that you want to do. But by the age of nine, if you start to see that reading decline or anywhere near it, if a child is a reader, all things being equal, unless there's a disability or whatever, they're going to be able to do fine. If they're not a reader, early on or at the age of nine, I taught when I was teaching, and I coined the

term illiteracy, not illiteracy, not functional illiteracy, different thing, illiteracy. That's how I got known in talk radio and started to do talk radio. Illiteracy are those that can read, maybe at grade level, something like that, but they choose not to read. Any number of kids in American high schools right now have not read a book in the last two or three years. They just haven't. So what happens if you're a reader? If you're a reader, you're constantly

up and refreshing your ability to read. So that is fundamental. As far as math, I recommend John Saxon, S-A-X-O-N. His math books, when I was still teaching, are the type of thing that's genius. Because he held out, he wasn't an educator, he was a former Air Force guy who created this system. And the books are out there, where every prop, every night, whatever you were doing,

incorporated previous skills, was genius, previous math skills. So even when you go to the end of the year, you're constantly refreshing these skills. I can't recommend that enough. Of course, at this time of the year, I always recommend E.D. Hirsch, H-I-R-S-C-H, a genius. He's a guy that wrote Cultural Litters. These are 3,000 terms he claims every American,

and should know fluently, like any port in a storm.

What's the significance of 1865? What's the significance of 1939 to 1945?

If you don't know these things, you may be able to read technically, but you're not picking up context.

You're not picking up content. E.D. Hirsch, Cultural Literacy.

The other is E.D. Hirsch wrote a series of books.

I'm not sure if he's still with us or not.

I revere this guy. He wrote a number of books that talk about what your child should know by the end of first grade. And it's every subject in there that you can, as you're going through first grade, be talking to them about. And if they don't know these things, helping them with them, you got to realize there's a lot of fraudulent behavior in America's public schools and a lot of schools where kids are passing.

They're doing well.

I told you in last week's episode, this Mission High School

in San Francisco has a great number of kids go to Berkeley

and they can't even do fractions and they're in calculus classes.

This school is giving them inflated grades and it happens all over the place.

So if you really want to know right now, grandkid, kid,

pick up E.D. Hirsch, whatever kids you know, by the end of first grade,

by second grade, by third grade.

It's wonderfully done.

One last thing to start the school year off before I get to the macro level, the big picture level, and that is the digital delusion. We talked with Dr. Horvath. This guy's really hot. The neurolinguist that we talked about that everybody in the world at these better school districts is citing and giving out his book, Digital Delusion. He's the guy that says we've gone way too far with the number of screens, technology, that kids are

learning on and at school. In addition, you know what they're going to do with their own phones, etc. So cutting down on the phones, both at school or cutting down on the technology, and they've got real leverage here and a lot of press pressing on this issue. And this is a very affluent, educated school district. All right, that's the micro level for now, meaning you and your own child. What's the big picture level? Well, in 2027, I'm going to be there at the stroke of midnight.

Are we going to see the 20 remaining states? Here's a number for you. Of America's kids that are eligible for that new money, the Federal Education Freedom Tax Credit from President Trump's big, beautiful bill. We've been talking about that forever here on Old School, New School, Next School. Well, 52 million American kids nationwide. That's five, two with an M, million.

are eligible for this. But the problem is presidential contenders like J.B.

Pritzker in Illinois, Josh Shapiro, both Democrats in Pennsylvania, for example, have not signed off on this.

Mostly, it has been Republicans that have signed off.

Kathy Hockel has signed off. And Polis, I admire this guy, even though he's a progressive in Colorado, has signed off to take that money.

The way that it would work, you can contribute $1,700, and then that would be taken dollar and dollar off your federal income tax that goes to nonprofits who then collect this money state by state and then allow parents to apply for it to go to the school of their choice. This is going to generate billions and billions of dollars of choice, of freedom. In what universe are Pritzker and Shapiro not going to take advantage of them?

along with 18 other states, some of whom seem like they're ready to do it, but we'll see as we get closer. So that is the big picture story. And I read an article the other day about something I really am trying to get out there. What are some of the reasons that people want to get out of a school? Well, maybe the location, it's too far, it didn't work out. Maybe academically, they don't feel challenged.

in this national survey, bullying. In other words, they don't feel that their kid feels and they don't feel that he is or she is safe at school. Picture that as a driving thing. Picture that for a moment. It's your child. It's your kid, your grandkid, somebody you know. And that's the feeling. And yet they don't have the resources to get out of that situation or being held haptive by whom? The other big, the big villain in the world.

a lot of this, the teachers' unions. And this year, there's going to be a big showdown. I've been telling you for weeks here on Old School, New School, Next School, that the teachers' unions, led by Randy Weingarten, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association, they are planning as their mission, not proficiency in reading or math. They want to have a huge march on Washington with teachers and students before the midterms to protest.

the Trump administration. That's their driving force. I dare them. That's what I hope comes out of this podcast. I dare you, Randy Weingarten, Becky Pringle. I dare you to do it. How much more evidence do we need to know that these teachers unions are a huge part of what is making America dumb? We're trying to make America smart again. They're trying to keep America dumb for their own power. And in the middle of this, we see hope.

Let me give you a couple of hopeful things. Have you heard about the Mississippi miracle? Now Mississippi, when I used to talk on my radio show or anywhere about educational achievement, you know where Mississippi was. It was in 49th, 50th place and all these metrics. Maybe a good year, they're 48. The rising star of proficiency, and I'm going to do this in more detail coming up,

is called the Mississippi Miracle. In other words, they've adopted the science of reading, what we know that works, phonics and other things. They've adopted resources going into this, supporting the kids. And Mississippi, since 2023, is rising the most percentage-wise in reading and now math, but principally reading. The Mississippi Miracle. Why are we not doing this across the country?

Well, we're not doing it across the country because of the politics involved, because the teachers' unions don't like it. And now, the thing I wanted to tell you this week, in addition to the science of reading, there is now the science of math. In other words, what are the things that work in math versus somebody somewhere just liking to do it their way and say, hey, we're going to do it this way because we've always done it this way. The science of math. Watch for that. As I said, we're dealing here.

When it comes to this big issue of school choice with 52 million kids that are eligible, think about that number. And I told you in one of the most recent podcasts about the Reverend Joshua Robertson, great guy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which has horrible public school outcomes. And he talked about the fact that Jeff Yass, big supporter of school choice, spoke in New York recently.

maybe $44,000 on each student in the public schools.

The scores just came back from New York from last year.

They're down abysmally in literacy, in math, in everything, and they already were not good.

So the YASP proposal was to take that $44,000.

You can get a great private education for probably 22.

Give the parents and the kid the other 22 in escrow.

When that kid comes through, the private school system is doing well, he's got all that money to start off with. Wouldn't that be a more efficient way than throwing $44,000 per student away to have outcomes that, let's face it, they just purely suck. Year after year, they suck. And we should start using the word dumb. We are making America dumb. We are making kids dumb. Sometimes they and their parents, some kids are not trying,

that hard, but the word is dumb. It's not just not proficient. These proficiency tests are only a borderline. You are dumb. Well, you can't say that. I'm saying it. That's exactly what's going on. Let's have people use that word. So I've given you here, the start of this year, my back to school message. And you as a parent or grandparent, look at your own child. That's the first thing. Take some of those tips. I think you'll find they really will make a difference.

to get off to a great start and to be able to monitor what your child is really doing. Remember, if they're a reader, if you stay on this and you don't drop all, the age of nine is a real, real big time to be wary of this. If they are reading and enjoy reading, at least do a lot of reading, that's going to go a long way. The macro level, be ready to pounce. Be ready to get in line and get that money so that you, the parent, grandparents, and guardians will be able to determine

and a better future for your child and for you as a family.

This is a godsend.

The teachers' unions are trying to turn Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York.

They're going after her and her buffalo where she grew up incredibly.

Why are they doing that?

Because they want to keep the same system that we have, the power they have, the money they have, a system that does not work.

You know that.

You've seen it.

You've seen the dumbness.

You've seen the nonsense.

It is a monopoly that has failed. The only thing propping it up are things like the teachers unions and some members of Congress and at the state level who want to continue this, who will tell you that school choice is white supremacy or racism or something crazy. Right here in Philadelphia, how would you like to be a parent of these students? Kensington High School. You may have heard of Kensington because of the drug trade, right? Not a good area. These poor kids,

They were putting air conditioning into their building finally. It cost $18 million to do it. I'm not making it up. $18 million. And apparently they disturb things. And now the asbestos is loose. So these kids going back to school already in a high-risk, violent, drug-infested neighborhood now have to go close to eight miles away to be going to the Austin Meighan School in Northeast Philadelphia. Year after year after year, the Philadelphia Public Schools does something like this. Why are they still in business?

are a monopoly. The monopoly has to end. To make America smart again, we need two things. Observing the rights of parents and the vehicle for parents, which is school choice. If we do that in 2027, you're going to see a market of change. Those that still want to send into Philadelphia public schools or public schools across the country, oh well. We can only warn you so much. You want to continue to do that, you're going to get the same result.

All right. Love to hear from you. Tell people about this podcast. Tell them about the hope of the things on the horizon for 2027 for their child, their grandchild, their future. Send me an email, domshow, D-O-M-S-H-O-W at AOL.com. Domshow, D-O-M-S-H-O-W at AOL.com.

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