This is World Life Unschooling with my mom.
Very good, very good.
Okay, perfect.
So, what I sometimes hear from unschooling, homeschooling families is that they do all
these things at home by themselves and they are saving the system so much money and yet
there is almost no support from the government, from the state or any kind of, I don't know,
authority. I mean, a lot of homeschooling, unschooling people like it that way. But I
think a lot of families out there could use a hand, especially when it comes to finance.
And this is why I'm very, very happy that you are here with me, Shaka Mitchell, because you're
doing exactly that. You are going out there and you are fighting for the rights of free schooling
or alternative education-directed families.
And I will read what you're doing
because you're doing so much.
I really tried to learn and to reproduce it from memory,
but it is impossible.
So you're a lawyer,
senior fellow at the American Federation for Children,
Aspen Institute civil society fellow,
TEDx Nashville speaker,
advisor to the Journal of Law and Policy at Wake Forest,
and so much more.
I think you have a podcast, you're a father, what else?
You're a husband, you're so many things.
And I'm very, very happy that you're here with me.
Well, thanks for having me on, Alex.
I look forward to our conversation.
Yeah, when you read that bio, it makes me feel exhausted.
Me too.
I need to maybe give up a few things.
No, don't do that, please.
Because I really, I am inspired.
I don't know how you find the time and energy to do all of these things, but I think it's really awesome.
So you are here today because you really want to change something in education, especially for self-directed learning families.
And you invest all your time and energy into really, yeah, looking out for these families.
And on a broader context, maybe you can summarize what are you doing?
Sure, sure.
So as you mentioned, I'm a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, and we are a U.S.-based nonprofit organization, and we're really an advocacy organization.
Our mission is to sort of fight for what we would call school choice or educational choice or educational freedom, whatever you like.
But our mission is to make sure that all children have meaningful access to the education of best fit for them, especially children from families who are lower income or have historically lacked options and access to options.
But what we do is we work with state lawmakers, primarily state lawmakers, but increasingly some at the federal level also.
And we work with them to pass laws that allow parents to make the decision to send their kids to a different school and to receive public funding for it.
So those two things go together.
So when I talk about meaningful access, I don't just mean, as you mentioned in your introduction, I don't just mean the right to homeschool your child.
That right has existed. I would say that's the first form of education.
That right feels akin to just a natural right.
We really think that resources ought to follow that.
And so I think we'll talk more about that.
But that's our mission. And we've worked in, you know, more than half the states around the country. And now I'm pleased to say that there are 32 states with private choice programs so that allow you to get some sort of public resources to use them to make the decision to send your child to a participate in some sort of private school.
I should say non-public school, right?
Because it might be private, it might be homeschool, it might be a co-op, unschool, what have you.
So 32 states now.
And I think that number is going to continue to grow.
Really nice.
How did you end up doing what you're doing?
Because I don't think that one day you woke up and you were like, oh, my God, this is what I'm going to do.
I mean, you're a father and maybe there is a connection between having kids, seeing them grow up and realizing and experiencing self and what education might look like if you are open minded.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think all of us has some sort of education story, right?
Because we were all we were all children at some point. And so in some cases, that's a really positive story.
In some cases, it's one that we wish we could do over. In my case, I attended both private schools and Catholic schools when I was a kid, but then I also attended a really large public high school in different parts of the country.
And so I would say that that was really the first thing that informed how I think about education is that I saw the I saw two systems.
I saw I would say I saw the the primary forms of school choice firsthand.
The first one is that parents pay out of pocket if their local school, if their zoned government school is not working for them.
So my parents, you know, paid out of pocket and we didn't have a lot of money and we were working class family with four kids.
So that's not an easy thing to do for many families.
So that's one form of school choice, paying.
The other form of school choice, which we then did, is we moved.
So we moved to a different part of the country and we found better schools that were public schools.
And so that works for many people.
But what about the thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of kids that it doesn't work for?
And then to your point, I am a father and I have three daughters and try as we might, we have yet to find the one system that works exactly best for all three of them simultaneously.
And that's not just education, that's parenting.
The same incentives do not work for every child, even within the same household.
So why would we expect the same educational system to work for 55 million students?
That's what we have in the United States.
In my city where I live, you're talking about 100,000 students.
Why would we expect one system with a board of directors of nine people to be able to figure out how to deliver the best education for 100,000 students?
It's just, I think it's irrational, frankly.
And so it drives me to seek choices and options that work for everybody.
That's pretty nice.
This one size fits all thing.
I'm a teacher myself.
And I think I worked in my job for six or eight hours, not even two days, because I couldn't do it.
I mean, I was only teaching German as a foreign language.
It's not that hard. But to see like 20 different faces looking at me and I try to serve them all.
It's impossible. And as a teacher, how can you do it?
I couldn't go home and be like, oh, what a lovely day.
I couldn't. It's impossible.
So I think it's frustrating on so many ends, not only for the kids and parents, but for the teachers as well.
So yeah, before we started that podcast, we had a short call and you said something that
stuck with me.
You said the well-worn paths may not be working anymore.
And I feel that because my parents always told me, you are not going to have a calculator
in your hand 24-7 later.
And it wasn't even five years later and I had my first mobile phone, these kind of things.
And now people tell me, because my son is not going to school, oh, he's going to miss out on so many information.
But we have an overflow of information.
Nobody can memorize everything.
And with one click, you have everything on hand.
So maybe it's not about memorizing all these different things anymore, but it's maybe becoming a different task to make kids bulletproof for the future.
and i don't know maybe you want to talk a little bit about that because i found that quite
interesting yeah well i think that for many people many adults there is a lot of nostalgia
that surrounds the education system right if you were to ask if you were to ask young adults
19, 20 year olds, what did you think of your education process? They would, most of them would
have medium to negative perceptions. If you fast forward and you ask them 25, 30 years later,
suddenly it was much better. Right now, some of that may just be the wisdom that comes with time
and temperamentally things are a little bit different. I'm sure that's a piece of it,
but honestly, I think a lot of it is just nostalgia because what do we all do as adults?
I'm sure that you do it some, even try as we might.
Haven't you heard yourself saying those things that you heard as a parent?
Like, well, back in my day, we used to do it this way.
And we assume that that's the right way to do it, you know?
And if we were still doing that, then my kids would still be talking on phones that had cords that attached to the wall.
And we'd be like tripping over ourselves to do that.
you know, there would be, we would never have, we'd never have the ability to order something
and have it shipped the next day to us or within the week because things would take forever.
You know, time marches on and methods change, practices change. It doesn't reduce the value
of education, but I think we do our kids a disservice if we think that sitting in rows
and having direct instruction for 180 days out of a 365-day calendar,
that that's the only way that kids can learn.
It's just such a static way of doing things.
And it's a static way of thinking when there are so many more resources now
available to parents and to families.
And I think, you know, tragic as it was the time, you know,
sort of the height of COVID,
I think it really opened a lot of people's eyes to, okay, there's some other things that we can do.
I mean, at least where I live, the switch to remote learning on a dime didn't go so well.
But I would say that's because people weren't ready.
They weren't trained.
They weren't skilled in doing it.
But what have we seen since then?
Since then, you've now seen schools start to integrate some of these methods and say, well, maybe we can do some things.
Maybe we can do things in the summertime. Maybe we can have learning experiences at different times of year so that we're not so tethered to this fixed calendar.
And I just think that if we are in a fixed mindset, as I mentioned, it does a disservice to our kids.
It doesn't appreciate the diversity among learners that exists.
and then of course what what should we expect we should expect negative outcomes because half the
kids might be sitting there bored you know that that system does work for some students the problem
is it's a very narrow band of students and so what about the ones on you know on either side of that
right i kind of joke that the at least where i live the public school system tends to be really
good for like 50th percentile girls. The problem is that most people are not that.
That's not a, I don't know that that's a problem. It's just, it's just fact. It is what it is. So if
you're, if you're a 50th percentile, right, exactly average, whatever that would mean,
exactly average female student, you tend to do all right. What about everybody who's not? What
if you're plus or minus that? What if you're, you know, what if you happen to not be born that way?
So, um, we have to get out of the box.
I mean, which I know you're doing and it's a really brave thing, I think.
And a lot of your audience, I think is, has taken those steps.
Um, but yeah, the question is how do you do it?
What are the opportunity costs as well?
Um, and that's something that we think about a lot at AFC as well.
That's there's an opportunity cost to that.
That's true.
I think it's very interesting that everything is progressing in our lives.
Like everything is like so futuristic.
Our fridges are talking to us and all these things.
But school is still the same.
It is in my mind.
I cannot digest this.
Really crazy.
I want to know more a bit about your work.
because I'm far from understanding how lawyers work
and all these magical things happening in the background of, you know,
what I'm not doing.
So maybe we can talk about what does it mean to pass a law
or to work in this realm of laws and I don't know,
how to handle all of these information and things.
For me, it looks always like, you know, when you look at a very messy table,
this is how i uh envision what law is like so many different things you have to organize that
has to go together so many different compartments that are connected and so many different people
and you have to be really on top of everything to go through and to be able to pass a law
Yeah, well, I think you identify lots of the component parts that make it a tricky thing.
We have been fortunate to have relationships with many legislators that help get it done, but I'll back up a little bit.
Because I think one of the things that undergirds the whole process, at least in the U.S., where I'm based, is that for us, education is really a state-level function.
In the United States Constitution, there is no education clause.
Education is not mentioned.
So we talk about other rights, but education is not one of them.
Schooling is not one of them in the federal constitution.
That being said, all 50 states have an education provision and have an education clause. And so, you know, they can differ. They certainly do differ. Some of them are really minimal. Florida would be one of those. It has a sort of, you know, less language around that.
Some of them are much more extensive Kentucky is kind of like that But the language often says something to the effect of that the state will establish a system of free schools or maybe uniform schools or thorough and efficient schools something like that
And it's incumbent on the state to provide that.
So that's the first thing to know is that this is a state function, at least in the U.S.
Now, state constitutions don't necessarily say who's going to pay for it.
Or how, rather. I mean, I guess it is implied that if the state's going to provide it, the state's going to pay for it. But whether that's through property taxes or income taxes or taxes on goods and services, whatever, sales tax, that's left up to legislatures, so to the state lawmakers.
Um, it also, the state constitutions don't say that this is the only way that education can be provided. Right. So what, what I would say, and what most courts have decided is that those state constitutions, they set a floor, not a ceiling.
so they set a floor and they say okay baseline base level the state has to provide uh a a
uniform system of schools okay well that's a that's a baseline that doesn't say anything about
outcomes all it says is something about them has to be uniform and often the thing that ends up
being uniform is that they're governed by the same group of people like a state board of education
or the thing that's uniform about them is that they're funded the same way.
They're funded through usually in the States, it's property taxes.
And that makes it uniform.
But this has nothing of quality.
This has nothing of student outcomes.
This has nothing of, you know, what are our hopes for the students when they finish?
So that's where the rubber really meets the road is we kind of come in in a gap.
when you're thinking about education policy and what we do with laws is we say all right great we
you've got this system of education and it's supposed to be thorough and efficient well good
luck um it's supposed to be uniform even that is a difficult thing to do right um and say all right
we're doing that and but the question is really what else can we do what else ought we to do
because the goal shouldn't be to serve the system.
It should be to make sure students are thriving.
And so if that's really our North Star,
then that's kind of where we come in and we say,
all right, well, let's just,
let's take an honest look at how things are going.
Because in nearly every state, the amount,
I think every state,
the amount of money that we spend on public education
has increased for people and adjusted for inflation.
and by and large satisfaction has decreased so that's no way to run anything you know whether
it's a business or a service a non-profit whatever you can't run like that if if people are
dissatisfied and it's costing more well you have a problem so we come in and we say um you know
let's think about how to make the dollars follow the scholar.
And that's really the goal, as you mentioned,
and I apologize for such a long-winded answer,
but there are so many components that we think about
because, again, you're talking about a lot of money,
and so you want to make sure that funds are spent
in a way that is not just efficient, but accomplishes the goals,
those goals being educating students, right?
You don't want people just absconding with money and whatever.
What we're talking about is often per pupil,
these programs, a choice program might give parents
between $6,000 and $12,000 per year, you know, per child per year to go towards education. So this,
you know, these dollars can add up really quickly. Something that we think about, and
we think about it because lawmakers think about it. And this is just, it's the real world, and
maybe we have, we can have a discussion about this, but whether or not students who participate
in programs, say, take some kind of standardized assessment, that's often a question.
We don't, at AFC, we don't really mind that, but we think that there should be options for
what that assessment is, so we don't think it has to be the state test.
We think there's lots of assessments out there.
Let's take one.
The way I think about it is that that doesn't necessarily, I think that an assessment is
really, um, meant to be a diagnostic tool. How are, you know, did that lesson stick, right? You're a
teacher. So did the lesson stick? If I, to think about it in a different domain, I think about the,
the test is kind of like a scale. And if you are on a, on a new exercise plan, um, if, if your
doctor has said, hey, you need to, you know, Shaka, you need to lose weight for your health.
Okay, well, the way I'm going to know if the plan is working is to get on the scale.
Don't be mad at the scale if it tells you something you don't like, you know, be mad
at what happened before you got on the scale.
And I feel the same way about assessments.
Is that like, don't be mad at the assessment necessarily.
If the assessment is well written, it's going to tell us whether or not the instruction
was good.
It's going to tell us whether or not things stick.
So anyway, but that's something that is often written into the laws.
Sometimes eligibility can vary.
So there are a lot of factors that go into creating these laws.
And then it's one thing to write it down.
Writing it down in draft form is kind of the idea.
And then you have to get it passed.
And that's really when then it gets political.
And that's a whole other process.
and not unlike being in the middle of a middle school,
like cafeteria food fight.
So it's a little bit like that.
Like this, I did imagine it.
Yeah, very, very interesting.
Thank you so much.
You know what?
In my brain, I have all these German information
about how this works in Germany
and still I'm overwhelmed with how German education works.
and hearing it in English from another country,
about another country is like, oh my God,
my brain is like lagging.
But it's really, really interesting
because it's very different from how it works in Germany.
And I think it's quite interesting.
Another question I was thinking about
because Germans love alternative education.
So there is a Montessori school in every village.
You can easily access that.
And a lot of different kinds of alternative education models
are out there and how does it look in the u.s because i have no clue i heard about some democratic
schools that i found very interesting personally but apart from that i have no clue about the
landscape yeah it's um and and i you can instruct me and inform me about about the german model
because um you know something that i suspect is very different is because we have this federated
model because we have 50 states we really have 50 education systems you know so the um if you
look if you were to look at funding sources um the federal government the national government
only accounts for about 10 11 percent of school funding in the u.s the vast majority of funds
are local and state funds. And so that's really, so the vast majority of, you know, the decision
making and the dynamics that are important are happening at the local and state level.
What that means is if you move from California to Florida, totally different system. If you move
from Florida to a border state, Georgia, different system. Even within a state from district to
district, you can have different systems and different options. And so I think that this can
be really, really tricky for parents navigating education in the US because you've got to figure
out, all right, what options are available where I live? There might be a zoned option.
And so, for instance, where I live, I'm in Nashville, Tennessee.
There, the public school, the public government run elementary school, the primary school that is closest to my house does not provide transportation.
So what that means is that if you live very close to the school, that's fine.
and that may be a good option for you and you might choose that for your kids.
But the zone is much larger.
And so there are kids who are eligible to attend that school
who live a mile and a half away.
And it's not a mile and a half with sidewalks and some safe bike path.
It's a mile and a half of major roads and trucks.
and you're talking about six-year-olds and we don't have a culture that is very pedestrian
friendly. So what does, what does it mean? It means that practically speaking, no one who lives
a mile and a half away. And, and in this case, the, the families who live a mile and a half away
are, are the lower income families. They don't have access to this school. So they end up going
to another school. So anyway, so it's these little idiosyncrasies can really change things.
In terms of the appetite for different models and methods, that's something that I am pleased to say is growing in the U.S.
There's still a lot of nostalgia, but because of all the choice programs that now have started to pass, you are seeing a whole lot of new models.
You mentioned Montessori.
We've got, you know, there's Montessori schools and there might be what are called like Waldorf schools.
And you've got lots of classical schools are starting and have started.
You have things, the hybrid schools that are that are starting in the hybrid sort of micro schools and co-ops.
So dependent upon the state, I would say you have you may have a whole lot of diversity of model.
But a lot of it comes down to can you fund it? And so if you're in a state like, let's say, Oregon or Washington State or Maryland, even New York, those states don't have private choice programs.
So if you want to get funds for school, your options are the government schools or what's called a charter school, which is another type of public school sort of run by an independent nonprofit.
Those are your options.
If you want to do something that's a non-public school, well, you have to pay for it yourself.
And so that's necessarily going to cut a lot of people out of the process.
I think, yeah, it's really unfortunate because there are a lot of people who, you know, just because they don't, they may not have the means to do it doesn't mean that they couldn't provide, you know, a great education for their kids or find something else.
Or their kids may really need it because they may be, you know, atypical learners or what have you.
And so it's not just about, you know, some personal preference or some whim or some fancy.
I mean, it's, there are real lives at stake and not all kids are going to do well in a brick and mortar school with, you know, 25 other kids in 180 days.
So, so it's a real shame those, those states that lack options right now.
Yeah.
Might traumatize them for life to go through this without being prepared.
Yeah.
I think that's right.
Yeah.
Yeah. In Germany, it's quite, yeah, synchronized.
I mean, we have 16 different states, but you can move from one state to the other and there is no big difference.
There are minor differences, but in general, it is what it is.
And I went to a private school and I was a private school teacher.
So I just know this kind of this part of the story.
And these schools were funded like 10 to 15 percent by the state.
The rest was donation based and paid by the parents.
so we have the same problem in Germany if you don't want state school for your kids you have
to pay it yourself this is what it is I don't even know there are any programs like receive
funding for alternative education for our kids in Germany I have no clue because I left Germany
I don't know maybe 10 years ago or longer because I really felt I had no chance to
find the perfect fit for my son because the democratic schools were
not like I knew them from the US or New Zealand they were quite I don't know weird you know like
in the beginning like they were just growing into what they could be so I felt like wow this is
everything I I've seen was just yeah not enough options for the kids was quite downgraded into
minimum because of lack of funds, obviously, because nobody wants to pay for this.
Well, and you know, one of the things that it calls to mind for me is that,
you know, and I'm drawing upon some of my experience when I was a school administrator,
also part of the problem with a traditional school year and traditional funding is that
an annual cycle of change.
And that's often far too long, too much time.
If you see something that's not working, what do we want to do?
We ought to be able to pivot quickly and change something and say, okay, this is not working.
Often in schools, you have to wait a whole year
because you got funded one time, you're paying for things,
everything's on this annual cycle.
and um that that lack of flexibility i think often you know it locks kids and families into
a system that's not working and you say you know here it is school starts in august by october we
see that it's not working well we have to wait through november december january you know all
until May to get it right. That's crazy. And so part of that, I think, though, is that when
funding, when the funding stream is singular, when it's only government schools, there's not
an incentive to innovate and to be nimble. And so what you want to do is you want to have more
capital in the system that available so that people can try things out And it not to say that we want to I mean no one wants to experiment but but we can do these little sort of
you know, what one author calls tiny experiments, you know, where, where we're trying new things and
teachers should be allowed to try new things and not have to worry that they've got to,
that now they're stuck in a system teaching kids and clearly seeing that lessons aren't working or
that the structure is not working, but I have to ride it out for another eight months. That's just
such a waste of time. And that I think is something that a lot of families saw during COVID
is they saw, okay, I don't, maybe I don't love what's happening when it's 100% digital. We went
from all in person to digital, but a lot of families went, why is my, why would we sign up
for this, you know, seven hours a day that is super inefficient. And so I think it started a lot
of people started to rethink this and say, okay, what else is available? And so, you know, there's
all these, what we call them, emerging school models. So all these emerging models that are
popping up, I think there's a lot of momentum there. And I'm excited to see kind of where things
go in the US in the, you know, next five years. I think it's pretty exciting. Yeah. Yeah, it is
exciting to be honest but I had the feeling in Germany that although we know everything about
not everything maybe but so much about how do kids learn the best most efficient way the
way that makes them happy and joyful in life that makes them thrive and maybe even enjoy life a
little bit here and there we know so many things about this and still in Germany it's quite
yeah rigid you're sitting down you're listening to one person then you're listening to the next
person then you are running around the soccer field and that's basically it and I found that
quite disturbing to be taught in school I had lessons in school how to teach and how to learn
how people learn how kids learn this that was part of my curriculum while I was being taught
the wrong way I was sitting there like this can't be true I mean we are behind ages maybe a century
or more even maybe 20 years or more it is for me it was impossible to yeah to understand why they
would teach me how to teach me while teaching me the wrong way what do you think in Germany what
do you think the what's the source of the inertia why doesn't it change I think because it's not
only about education. I might be a quite, yeah, I might be very extremistic when it comes to
why does education work exactly as it's working in Germany. I like one example. Every year in
history class, I had the Third Reich. Like every damn year was about the Nazis and what horrible
people the Germans are and what they all did wrong and that it's my fault as a kid because I'm German
And I learned nothing about what happened before.
I mean, German has a history and it has a beautiful history.
And I just learned about the Nazis.
And I think it's indoctrination.
It's like you have to feel sorry and you have to adapt a certain way of thinking and behaving.
And this is what we teach you.
I wasn't even allowed to ask about the Holocaust, about if the numbers add up and all these things.
I mean, I was a kid.
I was 10 years old.
I was curious. And then I was told, this is illegal. You are ending up in jail if you ask
these questions. And I really think it's about to keep the narrative, narrative as it is. You don't
change. This is what it is. In Germany, people are quite, I don't know, it's hard to tell.
I think it's hard for a lot of people to accept change. I see that in my family,
I go back and forth like maybe once a year I visit them they don't progress they are still in the same
old routine they love that and they are comfortable in this bubble so I imagine all these German people
left behind are still in their bubble and still living that life I left them like 10 years ago
I do imagine that yeah this comfort level of this is what it is it's quite nice and to be honest
for the state it's working quite well and you don't have to put a lot of energy into change
why why would you change and yeah i don't know to be honest when i learned how to teach kids or how
to teach the german language there's no way of being creative as a teacher this is all in a box
and if you want to think outside of the box you are screwed because this is not how germany works
this is what it is i don't know what it would take in germany to really bring change to the
educational system because i think even germans a lot of them there are two sides of the german
culture i see like the extremistic people who run away from all of that and create new beautiful
things very yeah um passionate about educational models and the other parts really like this rigid
but we keep it as it is, culture.
So I see two different sides of that.
Unfortunately, a really powerful movement that is changing something
and that is forming new schools, new ways to learn.
It's quite a small portion of the German people, but very lovely
because when I travel, I see all these German, let's call it
expat tribes all around the world.
And I'm super fascinated because I left Germany because of this rigid
thinking system. And then I met all these German people around the world and they were so different,
so much more open-minded, so much more in flow with what is happening in the world.
I think Germany is a little bit stuck in history. That is what it is. But this is just my opinion.
I think a lot of people will hate me for this opinion, but this is what I experienced and
And what I still, when I go back, it's like, wow, time is not passing here.
It's standing still.
Yeah.
It's unfortunate because I think Germans did a great job in the past in, like, invention.
That is hard to lie.
And we just, yeah, stopped doing it.
I mean, it is what it is.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think in the U.S. education system, I think the inertia is a little bit different.
I think that it has more to do, in our case, with, frankly, you have very, very large teachers unions.
and and i mean the unions in education that's sort of the last place that in the u.s we have
very large occupational unions and so um you know we don't we've never had a guild system
as you as you do in many european countries so uh you know we we believe deeply in free
association, but we also have such an individual spirit that, you know, you've seen union membership
decline in most other industries year after year. And it's declining in education also,
but the teachers unions still have a lot of political weight. And so what we tend to see
is when these laws pass, and I used to work at a constitutional law firm that helped defend these,
whenever choice laws pass, the teachers unions will sue and they'll challenge them in court.
So there's one happening right now in Wyoming. A new law passed. It would give scholarships to
families in Wyoming, regardless of income, so that they can access non-public school of their choice.
okay great and the teachers union challenged it basically saying they're what they're claiming
is that the wyoming constitution you remember i mentioned that the constitution's kind of set a
floor they're saying no that's not the floor it's the ceiling and that's all that the state can do
the state can only do can only fund government operated schools and the union is is saying that
which I just think is just a little crazy.
I think it surprises a lot of people,
but you have to be reminded that the purpose of the teachers union,
at least in the U.S., is not to advocate on behalf of students, actually.
It's to advocate on behalf of the members of the union who are other teachers.
And in many places, if you have seniority,
then the teachers get to pick what schools they go to.
So it's a really interesting system.
So on the one hand, the teachers union wants some choice for its members,
but doesn't want choice for the students and the families who are a part of it.
So that's where we see a lot of friction in the U.S.
You know, the other crazy thing about it is that teachers at non-public schools
went to the same colleges and universities as teachers in public schools.
It's not like they're, so I don't think that the, that the members, I don't think the teachers themselves are, you know, really differ all that much necessarily from system to system.
But you see that their association really tries to block innovation.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
Blocking innovation.
Yeah.
I agree.
But there's a lot of people who do really well as members of the union and members of the – if you have a collective bargaining agreement, I mean, there used to be a thing in New York.
I think it still exists called like the rubber room.
And it,
it was a place in the central office where teachers who were low performing
teachers or who had some sort of issue where they said, okay, well,
you can't be in the classroom anymore.
They would send teachers to this room.
So they're still paying them,
but the teachers are not instructing kids anymore because it was such a
convoluted process, you couldn't fire them, you couldn't get
rid of them. So you kept them on payroll, but they're not
actually teaching kids. And it's like, what other job is like
that, you know? And so it's really, really wild. But you
know, hats off to the hats off to the union negotiators, I
guess for getting that deal through. But it doesn't serve,
you know, our schools well, it doesn't serve students well.
No, not at all. That's crazy. Sometimes I
in germany while looking at all these different school models before we left germany i really had
the feeling this is serving the teachers it's not serving the students it's it's designed in a way
to make teachers most comfortable in dealing with the kids i do understand that because it's a lot
it's a horrible job if you are out there alone and it's i don't know designed to be horrible maybe
but in the end if this is so yeah if this is not serving the kids maybe we should
all go on the streets and uh start a revolution or something like that instead of just
working around like not really uh talking about the elephant in the room i don't know yeah quite
quite strange i do have a personal question uh to you so why are you doing this why are you so
passionate about doing what you're actually doing? I mean, I can see that you are really good at your
job, but what is your why behind all of that? Thank you. Well, I have thought, and I guess
when I was first getting into education, there were other things that I was also interested in.
I'm interested in economics and interested in healthcare and interested in criminal law and
criminal justice and lots of different things. But it seemed to me that it's really difficult
to have conversation and to make progress in some of these other areas if we don't get education
right. And so, you know, that's a bit simplistic, I'll admit. But I sort of think, yeah, if we want
to, if we want to improve our, you know, criminal justice system and the outcomes that we see,
if we want to have less recidivism and, you know, less crime, and I mean, who doesn't want that,
right? We want a more, more peaceful community and society. Well, if people aren't well educated,
they're not going to have options to be thriving adults. And, and so I think there's a, there's a
correlation there. And so, yeah, so to me, it's education is such a matter of kind of first
principle almost. I also think, and I, and by the way, I am a pretty like,
we would say like a pretty kind of libertarian minded person. But I think that education is one
of these things that has community benefit. So if your son is educated, that's going to benefit
the people that are around him later in life. And we see the opposite of that too. If your son is
not well-educated, doesn't have a lot of options, well, that's going to negatively impact people
also for the rest of his life. And so I do think that we have a community interest. So even
you know members i think about the uh where i live um you know on our block not everyone has
children but i will tell you they benefit from my kids being well-educated quote good kids right
because if they're not if my kids are running around and they're little hellions the neighbors
who don't have kids are gonna they're gonna feel a way about it you know true and so i do think
that there's some community benefits. So I think that's kind of the why I just think it's, um,
education is a matter of first principle. And I really think it's something that, that, uh,
all families just deserve that kind of access because we don't know when you, you know, when
a baby's born, we don't know what that kid's going to be. We have no idea. And, uh, you know,
turns out humans will surprise us. So just because they're just because a child's parents
at a certain path, we don't know what the trajectory is going to look like. And so how do we
create the conditions that allow for thriving? That's very interesting. I really like your answer.
I need to say, can we talk a little bit about what is happening in Texas? I mean, I've been
reading into it, but just understanding half of what is happening over there, just because I lack
insight into the overall situation. But I remember that in our pre-call, we briefly talked about Texas
because my son is in love with that state and he really wants to move there and be free And I don know what his imagination is And we can apply for the funding there couldn we Yeah so Texas just passed in May of this year 2025
passed the first ever private choice program in the state.
And the components of this law,
it's an education savings account,
which, by the way, I think should be called an education spending account because the purpose is to spend the money on education.
It can roll over from year to year. And so there is a savings component. I get it.
But education spending account, I think that would be a sexier name anyway, because people like to spend more than they like to save.
So anyway, I've lost that battle, that PR battle, marketing battle.
But Texas passed an education savings account program this past year.
And that program allows, it's going to create about 100,000 scholarships in the first year.
So they allocated $1 billion to this program and families can apply to, you know, to the program. They can apply regardless of, you know, where they live in the state.
and if they are accepted,
they'll probably have to be a lottery
because I imagine that a lot of families
are going to apply for this thing.
Even in the first year,
they can take the funds
and they can use it on the educational expenses
of their choice.
Now, there are some eligibility
kind of not really constraints, but there's some priorities. So lower income families are
prioritized in the, in the program. The program can grow though over the years. So it's, I think
they will probably give out a hundred thousand of these things in the first year. And I would expect
year two, that that number is just going to keep increasing, right? As more people learn about the
program and do different things. Right now, so you may not like this part, but right now you can,
or when it first starts in the first year, you've got to use the money at a non-public school that
is accredited. So that's a little bit different. So it's not as expansive as it could be. But I
also think that that's likely to change over time too. I mean, something that I remind friends of
mine who also work in the spaces, these laws change over time and they expand. So Florida is
a really good example. Florida's first program that was like this, I believe was a program for
students with special needs. It's very limited. I mean, and only a certain list of disabilities.
very small you fast forward now 20 years later and every child in the state of florida is eligible
for an esa they could all apply in the same year i mean there's no monetary limit on it
and 500 000 students participate currently so it's so it's grown so these things change over time
So I think I would say that even though in Texas, you know, you couldn't use it in sort of an unschooled way, you know, in the first year, I think let's give it time, a little bit of time, and let's see how it works.
But maybe you can, because they are credited online schools based in the US that do allow unschooling based on their philosophy.
okay so this would be a loophole for everyone who's interested yeah yeah that's right that's
right no and and i think i mean i even saw um an organization uh is working on creating a new
accreditation body to do just that so i think maybe so maybe there will be more than you know
more than one accrediting agency to do that and so i i think yeah i think over time um and we're
not talking about a generation. I think in a matter of years, we'll see if the program goes
well, you'll see additional uses, additional ways that families are using the funds in some pretty
innovative ways. So it's a pretty cool program. Here's something that some Texas trivia for you
and your son, some of the biggest pushback in Texas, the biggest resistance, most resistance to
this came from rural legislators. And the word from them was often that basically they were worried
that, well, they would say two things. First of all, they would say, well, we don't even have any
private schools in our area. Okay. So that's on the one hand. On the other hand, they would say,
well, if a lot of people use this program and it's going to do, uh, all of the kids are going
to leave the one high school that we have, and we're not going to be able to have a football team
anymore. And so what we would say is, well, which is it? Are there no options or is it going to
decimate your school because it it's likely not going to do you know both of those things
both can't be simultaneously true um and that was a dynamic in texas that we fought for
a really long time i mean more than 10 years we've been at this fight in texas and um so much of it
had to do with friday night high school football um but i think finally there was enough momentum
and we realize that you can have two things at once.
You can have educational freedom and high school football.
These things are not in conflict.
I'm so sorry.
No, you're fine.
Can you do it slow or later?
Wonderful.
Coming home from picnic with the dog.
This is real life.
It is what it is.
Yes, so one last question I have for you is,
What are the next steps for you?
What are you fighting for next?
Or what state are you tackling next?
Maybe we can have an outlook on what is happening.
I would say the next big push is actually at the federal level, at the national level.
So everything that I said still holds true.
Most education decisions in the states happen at the state level and then even more localized.
But as part of the recent national budget that was passed, there's a federal program that allows scholarship organizations to start in every state.
And people can give money to the scholarships and they can get a tax credit.
So if you have to pay taxes, as anyone who works has to pay federal income tax, instead of paying federal tax to the government, I could write a portion of that.
I could send a portion of that to a scholarship organization.
So let's say I have to pay $5,000 at the end of the year.
Well, I have to pay it.
But now, instead of paying $5,000 to the United States Treasury, I can send a portion of that to a scholarship organization in my state.
And then those can give out scholarships.
Why it's going to be a fight is because the governors have to opt into this program.
And so there's going to be a lot of governors who are on the fence about this, primarily in your Democratic governors, are on the fence about this because they have usually been beholden to the teachers unions.
And so anything that kind of has a whiff of school choice, they just get nervous about.
But so I think that's going to be our next push.
But I'm hopeful that a lot of people are going to participate because if you don't.
So let's say you're in California and your governor in California does not participate.
Well, that's fine.
It's not really fine, but that's his prerogative.
But as a taxpayer in California, he can't block you from giving money.
So all it means is that there's going to be no scholarship organizations in California,
but you could still give money to a scholarship organization in Texas or Tennessee.
So if you're the governor of a state like California and you don't participate,
it just means that you're exporting millions of dollars, potentially, to kids in a different state.
And I don't know why you would want to do that.
That just seems bananas to me.
So that's going to be the next fight.
But, you know, if governors get on board, it means that you could have these scholarship organizations in 50 states and and the scholarships can be used just like an ESA.
They can be used for a range of educational expenses.
So not just tuition, but you could use it on materials and, you know, any kind of educational services and therapies and all sorts of online activities, all sorts of things.
So that's kind of where we're headed next.
That's really nice.
What do you think? How many years will it take to go there?
Well, I mean, the programs passed, the first scholarships will be given out in 2027.
I think that right out the gate, half the states or more will participate.
So I think you'll see, you know, probably 30 states immediately participate.
And then the other ones will kind of waffle around a little bit, but I don't think it will take, take very long, honestly, because it's just, it's free, free money is how it's going to be sort of sold. And that's how it's going to feel. And that program, by the way, would stack on top of a state program. So, you know, I mentioned in, in Texas, if you got the, so if you move to, if you follow your son's advice and you move to Texas, which would be a very big difference from where you've been.
But if you move to Texas and you participated in the ESA program, that would be about $10,000.
Okay.
For that program, then the federal program could stack on top of that.
And who knows, that could be another two, three, $5,000 on top of that.
So that, that goes a long way and that could really help a lot of families.
So I, I think a lot of States are going to participate.
That is beautiful.
nice we're hopeful so you know come on over to texas the water's nice come on in let's see how i
can yeah manifest this it is a lot to move to the u.s as a foreigner it is quite hard i mean it
always has been quite difficult to move to the u.s but nowadays it's like yeah almost impossible at
least for me i'm not a millionaire so yeah yeah almost impossible but let's see i don't know maybe
the future i mean he's he's only 12. we have a lot of time to try different countries yeah yeah maybe
an exchange program or who knows there's uh many different ways it could work yeah fingers crossed
i'm ready for it i mean i would love to i think i imagine i don't know texas is huge compared to
Germany it is I I know my brain is cannot I saw I saw actually someone put online it was a picture
of Wyoming yeah and they superimposed Wyoming onto Europe and you know it gobbles up like
15 countries yeah and um and I knew this I went to school with um with some women who were in an
exchange program from Austria. And, and I remember, you know, they were talking about how long it would
take to get from one side, one end of Austria to the other. And I said, Oh, well, we wouldn't even
be out of my state yet. Yeah, that long. That's a, you know, I don't mean to belittle it. It's a,
you know, it sounds like a lovely, lovely place. I'd love to visit Austria at some point,
but I don't think it would take me very long.
No.
I think that's funny because I heard the same.
I don't know who I was talking to,
but I traveled around Europe with my child
and it only took me a couple of days to visit a lot of countries.
And we were going by train, I think.
And the other person was like,
dude, I wouldn't even be in the next state even.
I think this person was from Texas even.
he was like dude i would still be in texas yeah yeah i mean even my state is a we don't think of
it as a very big state but if you went from one corner to the other driving from one corner to
the other corner it's about seven or eight hours you know driving and that's i'll put it into uh
into your terms. I mean, that's driving it 110, 115 kilometers per hour, right? So yeah,
it's not like walking. It's a very, very big country, but you're welcome.
It's lovely.
Maybe we connect when you come over here at some point.
Thank you so much. Nice. I'm really happy that we connected because you've been
really putting or giving me a different outlook on what is happening in the US because honestly,
I have no clue. And normally I'm like, let's not get involved with the state doesn't bring any good.
But obviously, there is hope. And it's really nice to see that people like you are really working on
changing so much like the foundation of kids lives, and their future and everything that is,
I think the most important work we can do.
So I'm very inspired by you.
Thank you so, so much for being on my show.
I learned a lot and I really hope you succeed
and do many, many more of these things that you're doing.
Well, thanks for having me, Alex.
I really appreciate it.
Nice.
Thank you so much for listening.
Oh, my fress.
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