Guest: Rev.

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 back into the School Choice Show with Dom Giordano.

And this week, we have what some call the evangelist of school choice.

I don't know if that's self-described or not, but it certainly fits.

And Corey D'Angelis, you're with us this week.

And we are with breaking news on a big day with you.

I followed intently.

I don't know how you got the information so quickly from the NEA.

Their misspelling of fascism was going to cost more money to fight the fascists.

They're always good about that.

And saying essentially that America's schoolchildren will be part of this movement.

Let's talk about that.

What happened at the recent NEA convention first?

Yeah, they used to make these resolutions public every year, but they're like cockroaches.

Once we put sunlight on them, they scurried away.

Because in 2019, they failed to pass a resolution to rededicate themselves to being about student learning. And now this year, we find their private leaked resolutions that I put out on X. A member that wasn't happy about them sent me this information. I leaked it to the public. And basically, it was just they read like a war on the Trump administration. There was just so much unhinged political rhetoric. None of them had anything to do with education.

One of them did misspell the word fascism in their resolution basically to spend thousands of dollars just to call their political opponent Trump a fascist. They had other ones to get around Supreme Court decisions that were in favor of parental rights, allowing families to opt out of gender ideology instruction. They're going to spend over $200,000 on that one to try to coach teachers to get around that Supreme Court decision. It's insane. They want to subvert the will of parents.

And it became so obvious at their convention for the world to see. They chose this person as their teacher of the year from Pennsylvania. And this person in her speech, she really let the mask slip because she said that her job teaching had always been, quote unquote, deeply political. They become a political organization, not an education organization.

The Democrat Party, 99% of their campaign contributions every year go straight to Democrat campaign coffers. Wash, rinse, repeat. It's money laundering. It ought to be illegal. And if you look at people like Becky Pringle, the head of the NEA, she is an at-large member of the Democrat National Committee. I mean, it's just a clear conflict of interest.

Right. Excuse me, but Randy Weingarten resigned even more than that. She was a real powerhouse with the DNC.

For 23 years, and she had an influential position at the Rules Committee, and nobody knew about this. I'm in DC circles. I kind of asked my buddies in the policy circles. I said, did I miss something here? I'm really closely watching what Randy Weingarten is doing, and I pay attention to this stuff. I didn't know she was an at-large member with an influential position at the DNC for over two decades. The New York Times reported on it recently, and they were all nonchalant about

it as if everybody knew that she had this position. But it's an incestuous relationship between the unions and the Democrat Party. And it really goes to show you why the Democrats, who are elected officials, fight against school choice. I mean, it's not a partisan issue. If you ask families, Republicans and Democrat voters, they support school choice with supermajority margins. They want their kids to get a better education. It's their money. It's not the government school's money.

federal charter revoked. They've had one for over 100 years with the backing of Congress since 1906. They're the only union in the country, Dom, with a federal charter. And so now, Corey, to that point, you're the driving force. I follow you closely. You were in Washington yesterday. We're recording this on July 16th and late yesterday, but more into today, Blackburn and I think Congressman Harris have introduced a bill to take away the federal charter of the NEA.

And I deem you one of the driving forces for that. What would that do? Is it like the good housekeeping seal that Congress has put on the NEA? Yeah, it doesn't give them the legitimacy anymore of having the backing of Congress. So it is partially a symbolic victory if we can get it across the finish line. But look, they shouldn't have these special privileges. They shouldn't have the backing of Congress. And so they might lose some tax funding in D.C. I think they get some tax exemptions for having the backing of Congress.

a federal charter for their offices in Washington, D.C., so there may be some financial impact. We should not have a Republican-led Congress backing a one-sided Democrat money laundering operation, so they need to move on this quickly. I did write about it in the New York Post last week on July 10th and in Fox News, and we find out just this week that they're introducing this bill to revoke the federal charter. Congressional Republicans are moving in the right direction. Hopefully, they can get it across the finish line. They shouldn't have the backing of Congress.

Even if you're a Democrat, maybe there's other unions that you support that don't have federal charters. We shouldn't be picking winners and losers. And so this this will be a it'll be a big fight. But they did cite in their press release about this revoking of the federal charter, the NEA resolutions that I leaked to the public from their annual. Absolutely. No, it's a driving force. So who is Corey DeAngelis? Where did you come from? I follow you. People see you out there. You are the evangelist.

for this. I believe as a former teacher, as I told you, in New Jersey, where union dues were always taken out of my paycheck. And Corey, the average teacher that I experienced was not an activist, but I saw the activists. They were like little Jimmy Hoffas or something strutting around, not teaching. Where did you come from? How long have you been doing this? What started it? I live in Texas now. I grew up in Texas. I lived in D.C. for a few years doing think tank work. I'm still doing the same kind of stuff. But I got into the school choice,

as a researcher. I did my PhD in education policy at the University of Arkansas. My first study there linked the Milwaukee Voucher Program, which started in 1990, a few decades ago, to a long-term outcome that was under-researched. We found that getting a better educational opportunity through the private school choice program in Milwaukee, by the time the students were about 20 to 30 years of age, they were about 52% less likely to commit certain

types of crimes and they had a 38% lower likelihood of paternity disputes.

So these long-term outcomes were really interesting to me.

I started to look at things like mental health effects of school choice, citizenship,

your character, and finding these huge benefits.

So I thought I was going to go into academia.

I published about 40 peer-reviewed studies on mostly the issue of school choice.

But I really found out pretty quickly that that was a one-sided institution as well. The higher education departments are basically filled with Marxists who vehemently disagree with school choice. And so I figured I would be punished for my ideology there, whereas in think tanks I could be rewarded. So I moved over to think tanks and I've ever since been an advocate for school choice. And I have a child now myself. I've joined the parent revolution. She's

12 years old. She's in the background with mom and grandma right now. And it's made the fight a lot more personal. I got into this as kind of a libertarian that was thinking about it in terms of market-based reform, competition. You know, we shouldn't have monopolies. And those are all great arguments for school choice. But it's even become more deeply personal being about parental rights in education. Whose kids are they? Are they the government's kids? No way. We saw what happened with

Terry McAuliffe in Virginia when he said, I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach. He lost to Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, because that is a deeply held belief among parents and voters more generally that your kids are not pawns of the government school system. Give us some hope. My challenge all the time on the talk radio side that I do, for years, I've been doing it 37 years at major stations in Philadelphia and filling in nationally, I would say school choice, civil rights,

The Biggest Mover. You're the guy that has actually researched this, plus every instinct that you have drives that. Yet, is it starting to move the needle? You mentioned McAuliffe. That was kind of an extreme with what he did. Latino parents, African American parents. We hear people, we see the numbers. What should Republicans be doing that they're not? Because I'm kind of critical that they're not moving the needle politically with it. President Trump,

says the right things,

but it's not detailed coming from him.

Yeah.

They need to follow the Glenn Youngkin blueprint for political success.

And if they don't,

they almost deserve to lose.

So if you're not talking to education every single day,

then you almost deserve to lose as a Republican.

They they're kind of afraid to talk about it in some cases because they

think that,

well,

because Democrats have had a double digit advantage on education for

decades,

it's always going to be that way.

But Glenn Youngkin flipped the script.

He won with education voters by six points in a blue state, Virginia, that went 10 points to Biden the year before. And that was the number two issue in the election. So things are not stagnant. If you talk about them in certain ways, you can change the trajectory of how the voters are going to think about those things. And President Trump kind of did this as well. He campaigned every single rally talking about school choice and talking about abolishing the Department of Education. And guess what? We found in November he won the parent popular vote by 9.5.

nationally. And he also won the education vote, according to Atlas Intel polling before Election Day. He beat Kamala Harris on education. Why do you think Kamala Harris didn't give any details at all on education? She didn't make that a major pillar because she knew. She saw the internals showing that Trump, a Republican of all things, of all people, was beating her on education. So this is a seismic shift to the right. So in New Jersey or other states, the Republicans need to be going all in on this.

This is what happened in Pennsylvania. And when Josh Shapiro was running for governor against Doug Mastriano, Doug started calling him a hypocrite on school choice. He said, Josh, you sent your kids to private school. You went to private school. You're a hypocrite on this. You should support the same thing for others. Josh Shapiro tried to kind of play both sides at one point. He included that school choice in his platform. He ultimately vetoed his own campaign promise. It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it works out for him. But the political winds are shifting.

in our favor. And hopefully Democrats come along at some point and say, maybe we should listen to the kids union, the parents and not just the teachers union.

Corey DeAngelis with us. Corey, the big, beautiful bill, as I understand it, and it's a bit Byzantine to figure out this. The parliamentarian jumped in with the $5 billion that's going to be put out there. Now, each state, you just referenced Josh Shapiro, who hasn't said anything about this.

They determine whether they want to partake of that bounty that's there

through the mechanisms that's been set up with you put in $1,700 comes off your federal taxes.

What can you tell us is going on in the states now? When does this happen? Are you agitating,

rallying people to be aware of that? I think it's a big breakthrough.

It's a huge deal. It's the first time Congress has ever passed a nationwide school choice bill. Yes,

It does have a provision that where, you know, Democrat governors could basically opt out. But look, hey, if they don't want to benefit, we live in 50 laboratories of democracy. The red states that are already passing school choice are going to have a supercharged school choice landscape. And parents are going to vote with their feet. They're already doing it. People are moving from California to Texas, New York to Florida. And the electoral college map looks like it's trending heavily to favor Republicans after the next census. So the Democrats, the longer they hold out,

against parents. It's going to be to their own disadvantage. So they need to come along sooner rather than later if they don't want to bleed votes on the issue. But yeah, the big, beautiful bill had the Educational Choice for Children Act basically part of it. I testified in Congress in favor of it in front of the House Ways and Means Committee last year where it passed on a party line vote. I remember when I testified, one of the Democrats on the committee, the minority leader, said, hey, why are you making this so political? Democrats support school choice too. And I said, yeah, you're right. Democrats do.

support school choice. Maybe you should sign on to the bill. For some reason, he never took me up on that offer.

But in the states, the red states are going all in. In the past four years, we've had more advancement on the issue of school choice than in the preceding four decades. We've had 17 states pass full-throated universal school choice. No more picking winners and losers. Everybody's eligible. My home state of Texas was number 16. New Hampshire became number 17 very recently.

And that is just so much momentum and so little time. I wish Milton Friedman were alive today to see his ideas finally coming to fruition. He famously said that the way that you change things is not by getting the right people into office. Obviously, that helps. But the way that you change things, Milton Friedman famously said, is by creating a climate of opinion where it becomes politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. And so I think we're getting there with more pressure.

or the wind shifting in our favor, where even some Democrats are putting their thumb in the air and saying, maybe I should at least start to say I support school choice so that I don't get beat too much on this issue. Corey, books and other places, where do people find you? There's a wealth of information they can get from you. What's the current book? Yeah, my latest book is a national bestseller, actually. It's called The Parent Revolution, and it's endorsed by Trump as well and Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vivek Ramaswamy and even my

Mya Home State Senator Ted Cruz from Texas, he says on the back of the book, you can ruin Randy Weingarten's day by reading this book. So it's called The Parent Revolution. It's a good deal right now. This is the debate. I'm setting up a school of choice debate here in Philadelphia. You're my first choice. I've interviewed her three or four times. She's much better than Becky Pringle. She's much savvier. It's a much different type of person here. And she's the number one person that kept kids out of school successfully for her union.

It's just insane. So, yeah, we should beat them in the public sphere. We already are winning the battle of public opinion. You can find more of my work on X. I'm at DeAngelis Corey. And you can also check out, I have a new teacher's union tip line if you have any crazy stuff going on in your area.

Yeah, what is the teacher's tip line? Where do they go?

Yeah, you can go to AmericanCultureFoundation.org. AmericanCultureFoundation.org. You can submit it anonymously.

I'm not going to share your information. It goes directly to me. You can upload documents. That's the Teacher's Union tip line, which is at AmericanCultureFoundation.org.

Corey, thank you so much. Congratulations. Thanks for being so generous with your time. And particularly as this plays out, do you see any Republicans who will not vote to remove the charter of NEA? Do you have any sense?

That would be political suicide, so we'll see what happens.

All right. We'll take it to work. Corey, finally catching up with you. Hope to get you on my radio show someday when you have time, too. Thank you. Absolutely great talking to you, Dom, and I'm very excited to speak with you on radio as well very soon. All right, everyone. That was Corey DeAngelis, and he is very hopeful here on the School Choice Show with Dom Giordano about progress being made. The big takeaway is with the big, beautiful bill, each state will determine, and where I am in Pennsylvania, Governor Shapiro,

hasn't said anything about it. We'll see what the great man does. Does he sign off on the money that will give choice to parents and students across Pennsylvania? By the way, in Pennsylvania, we still don't have a budget. It's coming up on three weeks overtime. You don't need a budget. And one of the things holding it up is Republicans in Pennsylvania, like Martina White, do want school choice at the state level.

She has something called the Learning Investment Tax Credit, House Bill 1662.

The LITC would create an $8,000 per year refundable tax credit to offset education expenses if parents choose a non-public school.

So that's out there.

Corey mentioned the idea of Democrats coming on board with this.

Headline from Democrats for Education Reform.

They put out a piece. It's time for the left to come to the school

choice table. That's right. They say that

people on the left have to realize that this is a big deal and that the only way that Democrats are going to share into this is to come to the table with their version of the school choice.

Now, that version may be completely different. I have no doubt they're not going to do that.

But we'll see as it plays out. One update of good news, too. In Pennsylvania, I interviewed last week's podcast. We talked with the leader of the Black Pastors for Education, and we're starting to see big movement in Philadelphia on that. The bottom line with Corey DeAngelis, this is the number one guy that's out there banging the drum on school choice.

And I'm still not convinced he's a little bit more hopeful than I that Republicans are getting the message and leading with this more, including President Trump. I think they have to talk more specifically about this now that we have the big, beautiful bill. And what's in it is something that really could go a long way to free up education for kids and parents. So let's hope that that happens. Now, he mentioned, too, he told me that he's going to be at a Pennsylvania

in the near future for a debate on school choice. The bottom line is I think they're having trouble finding anyone to debate them. Isn't that a tell? Doesn't that give you an idea of how difficult it is to be on the other side of this? All right, as I tell you each week here on the School Choice Show, any question, any comments you have about what you're listening to and these great guests from around the country and the civil rights issue of our time, just send me an email, domshow at AOL.

And I'll respond to you. Ideas, guests you'd like to hear, that kind of thing.

Domshow, D-O-M-S-H-O-W at AOL.com.

And I'll be happy to get that going.

All right, next week, we hope to talk to the Black Pastors Group again in Pennsylvania.

This time in Philadelphia, the capital of several schools that are just abysmal and they'll remain abysmal.

The only remedy is for parents to get their kids out of those schools, get them into a charter or get them into a Catholic school or private school. That is the only choice. That's the only thing that's going to work with a lot of these big city school districts. It will not work. They're a monopoly. They don't have to produce. They just blame and continue. We'll catch you next week here on The School Choice Show. Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano is a presentation of Giordano Productions, LLC.

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