The Demand for School Choice | Joseph Magaña and Leslie Hiner

On this episode of Anchored, Soren is joined by Joseph Magaña, Vice President of Policy and Advocacy at EdChoice and Leslie Hiner, Vice President of Legal Policy at EdChoice, leading their Legal Policy and Education Center. They unpack educational savings accounts, and the importance of parental accountability in the school choice movement. They talk about the Friedman Index as a resource that allows families to assess where and how school choice is best accommodated across the United States. They also explore homeschool families’ perspectives and concerns regarding school choice. 

Transcript

Soren Schwab - CLT (00:00.715)
Welcome back to the Anchored Podcast, the official podcast of the Classic Learning Test. My name is Soren Schwab, VP of Partnerships here at CLT. And today we're joined by Joseph Magana and Leslie Davis-Heiner. Joey Magana, born in Texas, raised in Arkansas, holds a bachelor of arts in history from one of CLT partner schools, Oklahoma Baptist University. After graduating, he served two years as a journeyman in China with the International Mission Board, teaching conversational English at Sun Yat-sen University. I hope I didn't butcher that.

Joseph Magaña (00:14.093)
.

Soren Schwab - CLT (00:30.165)
He then worked for two sessions as a legislative assistant in the Oklahoma State House of Representatives for Tom Newell and briefly as external relations director for the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. He gained federal legislative experience as field representative and constituent services director for Congressman Langford and Russell. Before joining Ed Choice, Joey was deputy state director and most recently manager of outreach and government affairs for Americans for Prosperity. He currently serves as the vice president of

Policy and Advocacy at EdChoice. Leslie Heiner is Vice President of Legal Policy at EdChoice, leading the EdChoice Legal Policy and Education Center. Heiner was the first woman chief of staff to the Indiana Speaker of the House and was counsel to the Indiana Senate President. She was the Indiana Secretary of State's General Counsel and Elections Deputy and counsel to the State Elections Recount Commission. Heiner also maintained a private legal practice and owned a transportation business with her husband.

She is a founding board member of the Irvington Community School, one of Indiana's first charter schools, where she was board chair for the first nine years. Heiner is a Heartland Institute Policy Advisor, member of the American Enterprise Institute Leadership Network, and alumna of the Richard D. Luger Excellence in Public Service series. She is a board member of OIDEL, a nonprofit, non-governmental organization based in Switzerland, advocating for freedom of education with consultative status.

Joseph Magaña (01:30.061)
you

Soren Schwab - CLT (01:56.327)
with the United Nations, UNESCO and the European Council and friends. I shortened their bios because they're both so accomplished. I'm so honored to have you, Leslie and you, Joey on the podcast today. Welcome.

Joseph Magaña (02:08.225)
Thank you.

Leslie Hiner (02:08.234)
Thank you.

Soren Schwab - CLT (02:09.963)
Well, as we always do in the Anchored Podcast, we're going to talk about our guests own educational journey. So I'd love to hear a little bit about two things. One, kind of your early education and then going into university. And two, if you can kind of share with us the first time you heard the term school choice. And let's start with you, Joey.

Joseph Magaña (02:30.541)
Yeah, so I always kind of say with opening up with kind of my personal background is that I'm a typical millennial. So I come from a broken home. My parents divorced when I was fairly young. And so that's where the Texas dark and soft movement happened and got enrolled in a local public school in junior high. And one day we had a substitute teacher who, you know, as most substitutes kind of do, they don't pay a whole lot of attention to the classroom. So

She stepped out at one point and there was a little baggie of green stuff being passed from one end of the classroom to the other and I helped pass it over. So I turned to my friend and said, what was that? And he said, that's pot. And I thought, that's cool. So I went home to my mom and said, hey, mom, guess what? I just passed pot in the classroom. Isn't that neat? And of course she didn't think that was cool. And we were living with my grandparents at the time. And so my grandparents came out of retirement, got part-time jobs and put me into a local Christian private school.

And I've just never forgotten that sacrifice. I firmly believe that I'm only here today because of that sacrifice. And I know full well that a lot of families, you know, don't have that capability. They don't have somebody to do that for them. So school choice has always kind of been dear to my heart. As far as when I first heard school choice, it was probably in high school when I was at the Christian school. You know, this would have been, gosh, 2001 and two. And so school choice wasn't, you know, a known topic that it is today.

Soren Schwab - CLT (03:57.719)
Mm-hmm.

Joseph Magaña (03:57.74)
But I got involved in politics very early in life and so, you know, volunteered on campaigns when I was in high school. And so this idea of having choice with your school, where you go, where you get educated, is kind of really where I heard that. But that's really my story and I will always be thankful for my grandparents for doing that. you know, I love hearing other personal stories too because we all have our why and that's kind of my why.

Soren Schwab - CLT (04:19.191)
Well, it's interesting that you're why, you you experienced it yourself, and yourself more or less before you even kind of fully probably processed why and what that meant and that other families don't have that. Fascinating. Leslie, I mean, you are you're an absolute legend in this movement. so, you know, first of all, just so grateful for all the work you've done over the years. But yeah, talk to us a little bit about your your background and the first time

You heard about school choice.

Leslie Hiner (04:52.304)
Well, I'm happy to tell this story. When I was growing up, my parents were like so many parents. They realized when it was time for me to go to school, they weren't happy with the options. And so even though my parents, they didn't have the money to do this, but somehow they figured out a way to move into a district that had the best public school in the area.

And so that's how I ended up going to a pretty decent public school, which still is today a pretty decent public school. But it was real hard for them. I mean, when I say they built their own house, they literally built their own house. My mother was lifting the windows up into the building. mean, because that's the best they could do, but they were able to get me into a good school.

But then during my junior year of high school, I was a Rotary Exchange student to Sweden. So I spent a whole year in Sweden living with a family. And while I was over there, I learned some odd things about US education from people who lived there and in Europe. And they all said, we love America. We love America. There was big, big, just love Americans. But what's wrong with your schools?

I had no idea what they were talking about. I don't know, like mine's pretty good. But there was a thing then that kids who went to public schools in the US couldn't go to the university there until they had completed at least two years of undergraduate study after high school just to rise up to the academic level.

Joseph Magaña (06:19.729)
Okay.

Leslie Hiner (06:48.64)
of a student in Sweden and in Europe. So that was kind of a heads up. And for me, I hadn't met anybody who went to a private school until I was a senior in high school. So I really didn't know much about that. But when I did go to college though, the College of Worcester, it's a small liberal arts college in Ohio, which is great, by the way. I'll put a little plug in there for Worcester.

Almost all of my friends went to private schools and they went to these, you know, very big private schools out in the East Coast. And what I learned is that somehow they knew a lot more about certain things than I did. Like the classics, for example, that's the first thing that jumped out to me. We didn't read the classics in my public schools.

But of course they knew all the classics and could joke about, you know, passages and that sort of thing. And I had no idea what they were talking about. That was my first clue that, hmm, yeah, maybe there is a difference. But at any rate, me fast forward now to the school choice movement. When I first started advocating for choice, that was in the mid 1980s, and I'm

I also went to the University of Akron Law School where I studied primarily international law. That's my training.

I, as a new lawyer, I had a client who came in and the client and her ex-husband were disagreeing about whether their daughter should continue on with the private religious school that was part of their church. The ex-husband had a falling out with the church and said, well, no, you know, I don't want my daughter going to that school anymore with those people anymore. And so I think the government should decide where our daughter goes to school. So the mother said, over my dead.

Leslie Hiner (08:59.53)
body. Okay, and we went to court. So we had a five day trial. And during that time, because I didn't know about private schools, I knew nothing about homeschooling. I had to learn. So I had a big crash course on all things private schools. This was right after the report, A Nation at Risk had been published.

Soren Schwab - CLT (09:26.861)
Mm-hmm.

Leslie Hiner (09:28.884)
And then I could say, great, they've documented all the things that I should have learned when I was in public schools, but didn't learn. I guess it's for real. But I learned a lot and won the case, happy to say. But what happened was the case was decided at 3.30 in the afternoon and I had been studying so much.

doing so much research for this case, I didn't know what was going on in my own world. So I went home, put my feet up, glass of wine, watched the evening news, just relax. And the top story that day was about how some kids earlier in the day, about 3.30, when they were getting on the bus to come from school, they got into an argument and they started shooting each other. That is the school that my client's daughter would have gone to the very next day.

I lost that case. And in that moment, I learned everything I needed to know about the importance of parents making the decision about how and where to educate their children. I knew that mother was dead on right. Her daughter would have lost her had she gone to that public school, would not have worked.

for that girl at all. And thus began my advocacy for school choice. Now, it wasn't school choice. So what I was advocating for was the right of parents to make these decisions and to have the funded ability to actually make this happen. But it was just an idea. So I started looking to see what...

Soren Schwab - CLT (11:08.567)
Yeah.

Leslie Hiner (11:19.56)
other people were doing across the country. And right around that time of the late 1980s into the early 1990s, this is when people started connecting with each other. There were some people up in Milwaukee and Wisconsin, there were some people in California, there were some of us in Indiana, and then we started to find each other. So there came a point where somebody said,

what do we call this? should, you know, if we're gonna come together, we should call it something. And there were people who said, it should be school choice. You have your choice of school. But then I was on the other side of this argument. said, no, no, no, this should be educational choice because a school might not be the choice. And there are other choices, not just sending your child to a school.

Soren Schwab - CLT (11:51.352)
.

Soren Schwab - CLT (12:09.25)
Mm-hmm.

Leslie Hiner (12:18.674)
So this was the big division and the struggle school choice or educational choice. And at the end of the day, to be quite honest, the marketers went out with school choice for just the simple reason that it'd be easier for people to see and understand and they get it right away. So there you go. I still call it educational choice though.

Soren Schwab - CLT (12:39.032)
Right.

Soren Schwab - CLT (12:44.332)
School choice, education, freedom. I've heard a lot of folks, I don't want to call it school choice, but you're right. mean, it's.

Joseph Magaña (12:47.899)
Ha

Soren Schwab - CLT (12:57.976)
for, know, a lot of us never heard of School Choice until not that long ago. And then hearing Leslie, how long you've been in this fight. And it seems like, wow, just the last few years, so much progress has been made. Joey, I mean, we've seen huge success. Several state have enacted what's called universal school choice, sorry, Leslie, with education savings account programs, right? ESAs. Can you give us just a quick kind of...

lay of the land, just when it comes to education savings accounts. Because I know a lot of folks that were skeptical of school choice and of vouchers, right, but are very, very in favor of these ESA. So where did they come from? And how many states have adopted them? And maybe just a quick, like, what changed for this kind of massive change to happen?

Joseph Magaña (13:52.359)
Yeah, so I always refer to our website because we update it consistently. And if you do EdChoice.org, the very first thing on the page is by the numbers. So 75 programs throughout the country, 35 states, and 1.3 million students are now in a choice program. So it's come a long way, as Leslie knows. And you kind of alluded to it. So the first kind of iteration of choice was this idea of giving parents a voucher to then

go to the school of their choice. And then it was the late 90s, think, maybe early 2000s, where we had the idea of an education savings account that came out of Arizona. And that was the idea of you give an account to a parent. The account is funded, but then you have a myriad of different options to choose from, not just a school, which is great and kind of the prolific style of choice today.

But now you're also having concepts like what Idaho just did, which is a refundable tax credit, which is the idea of parents just using their own money if they have it, or if not, they'll apply for it upfront. And they kind of, you know, they just spend it on what they need for their educational needs and kind of keep the receipts on the back end like a traditional tax credit. So there's lots of kind of different iterations of how to do this idea of giving choice to families. But the idea behind it really is the parents know best, and so let the parents decide.

And who's, you know, there's always kind of this argument to you of, who's accountable for these programs and who's accountable for the dollars and who's accountable for the kids education? Well, we would unequivocally say, obviously the families are, the parents are, right? Like, so we've come a long way. The biggest jump we've had in school choice comes from what you might think of as COVID. So a lot of kids were at home for anywhere from a month to in some cases, years.

And so families kind of got a first row seat into what kids were learning or lack thereof, just by virtual options of what their schools were doing. And so this already popular idea of school choice really kind of skyrocketed. So we've been doing polling at EdChoice really since the very beginning in 96, and we've been doing it consistently every month since 2020, but it's always been a popular idea with parents. This idea of

Joseph Magaña (16:17.881)
hey, let's put you in the driver's seat of your kid's education. And as you might imagine, a lot of parents still choose public school because that's kind of the easiest way to do it, right? I tell policy makers all the time, it's the easiest thing in the world to put your kid in front of your house, a school bus comes and picks them up and then drops them off. And that's it, that's all you really have to do. It's much harder to take that kid out of that system and figure out, gosh, where will my kid thrive? Where will they get the best education? How will I get them there? And then how will I know?

you know, if they're learning or not, because I don't have all these kind of standardized things, which nobody really likes, by the way, right? But again, I tell policymakers, like, you can trust parents with these decisions. And there's even this idea that maybe low income or poor families won't know how to decide, because how will they? But Milton Friedman himself said they are the most incentivized to make sure that their kids have a great education. So all of that has kind of converged, again, because of COVID. And so now,

Leslie Hiner (17:09.236)
Right.

Joseph Magaña (17:16.613)
Fortunately enough, we have a lot of states deciding to run school choice programs and policy and pass bills. And now we have programs popping up all over the place, as I just kind of mentioned. And so far, they've been going great. mean, we've gone from, Leslie, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was around 30,000 in Arizona for a special needs ESA. Then they opened it up to universal, every kid, which means every kid's eligible and every kid's funded. And 21.

And now it's, think, 97,000 kids. It's a billion dollar program. Florida's been around a long time. Texas just passed their bill. So, lot of enthusiasm, which we love.

Leslie Hiner (17:47.735)
Mm-hmm.

Soren Schwab - CLT (17:57.21)
And maybe Leslie, for our listeners, can you briefly describe kind of the difference between a voucher and an education savings account?

Leslie Hiner (18:04.608)
yeah, and actually I'll piggyback off of what Joey just said about Arizona. So actually, ESAs have not been around quite that long. What happened was Arizona had passed two voucher bills and then they were sued. Teachers unions sue all the time. Gosh, they don't like these things, but at any rate. So the courts...

And Arizona said that a voucher is unconstitutional there. But the court in its reasoning said the reason why it is is because the money can only be used at a private school. And that's correct. So a voucher is funding for tuition at a school. And typically it's tuition and fees, but it's for tuition. Now, Arizona...

Yeah, they were having none of this. They weren't about to back down. They just, had far too many families in Arizona who were just clamoring for help. So they decided, well, let's develop this other program and you don't have to use it just at a school. You don't have to use it, use the money at a school at all. Think about how

homeschoolers educate their children. And this really became a model for the ESAs. Well, if people don't send their child to a school, what do they do? What resources do they need? What do they access? The curriculum, the testing, cetera, all of that, what do they need? And that is how the ESAs were born. So they passed the ESA in Arizona.

And that was in 2011. And of course they were sued. And the courts in Arizona said, hey, this is good. This is fine. This is perfect. It works. The only thing they were concerned about was the direct payment to a school. But if it can be anything, then it's anything and it should help education for kids in Arizona.

Leslie Hiner (20:24.988)
It did there, it's continuing to help and now other states are doing the same. And we're finding in other states, of course, the beauty of school choice is that you can tailor it to what is right for your own state, culturally, historically, you can tailor it around what people want and need for their kids.

So there are some states where the ESA, first need to use it for tuition, but then you can access a variety of other services. And in other states, you never have to pay anybody any kind of tuition and you can go to 20 different education providers and resources to get what you need for your kids. It's up to you. So it's many and varied.

Frankly, people are still trying to figure out how to make it as good as it could possibly be for parents.

Soren Schwab - CLT (21:19.15)
Yeah. Well, it's already pretty darn good for families that I've spoken to, you know, let's say in the state of Florida. And the fact that it's only going to get better is encouraging. Joe, you mentioned earlier your website, absolutely at choice.org. Everyone should check that out. I saw the Freedmen Index and I thought, ooh, this actually would be a really, really good resource for families. Can one of you tell us about what the Freedmen Index is?

Leslie Hiner (21:33.504)
you

W R

Leslie Hiner (21:48.308)
Woof! Woof!

Soren Schwab - CLT (21:48.418)
indexing and helping help families kind of stay up to date and informed.

Joseph Magaña (21:52.577)
Yeah, so obviously, but you know we were started by Milton Friedman back in 1996. It's one of the many reasons why I joined Ed Choice. And so you know his idea was again kind of going back to parents should be fully in charge of their kids education. They should have the.

the choice to kind of do what best fits their needs. And so we came up with the idea of the Freeman Index, which kind of gauges how much freedom do parents have in states and how much are programs letting them do that. And so it's a little bit different from a lot because we take into a lot of factors. One is just really three things, right? So like how many kids are eligible? So universal programs are, you know, every kid is eligible.

But some programs are means tested, which means it's only for low income, or they might do only from failing public schools, or any different number of ways. So we kind of look at what the eligibility is. Then we look at the dollars as well. What is the ratio between how a private choice student is being funded versus a public student? And we want that to be equal. And it's not always the case, right? And in fact, there's lots of barriers to that. Leslie can kind of talk about, there's a lot of.

local money that flows into public schools that can't really be touched by the private side. And so eventually we would like to get there, but there's lots of barriers to that and we understand that. So that's a factor. And then also the options that they have. So as Leslie talked about with the voucher, it's only a private school. Then you have the ESAs, which kind of gives you an expense account. And then you have a whole list of different vendors you can choose from. And then you have tax credits, which kind of even is more open to it. And so we kind of look at all those different things and

Soren Schwab - CLT (23:11.598)
happening in the next class.

Joseph Magaña (23:37.023)
what kind of marketplaces out there for parents? How many options do they truly have? Because again, a lot of choice programs will say, well, you can buy this, but you can't buy that. And then you'll see headlines, well, a family bought Legos. Okay, well, do you know how many billions of dollars that public schools spend nationwide on Legos? So there's those kinds of conversations and what can they do, what can they not do? We of course advocate for let them do whatever, again, is best for their kids. So the Freedom Index looks at all those kind of things and then we score it.

And I think the highest Leslie is like 83. think nobody nobody meets 100 because again we look at the dollars and is it completely kind of equally funded and again there's lots of barriers to that and reasons why. But if you're anywhere from like 75 to 85 you're you're in good territory. You're giving your parents a lot of kind of flexibility and freedom. So it's a great way to kind of look at things and see where your state is and kind of where the programs are.

Leslie Hiner (24:07.6)
you

Right.

Soren Schwab - CLT (24:31.739)
What are some of the states that are kind of more at the bottom? And I'm afraid that maybe my state is one of them.

Leslie Hiner (24:32.096)
Right.

So.

Joseph Magaña (24:40.046)
yeah, it's there's lots of states with just one or two, which you know, as you can imagine, a lot of states are very competitive and so you know, they see that and kind of freak out and what we say is, well, hey, at least you're on the board, right? At least you're not a zero. But as some as you can imagine, some of the better states are like Arizona and Florida and West Virginia. New Hampshire is going to is going to jump up because they just went full universal this year. So a lot of states are doing some great stuff and.

Leslie Hiner (24:45.198)
Yeah.

Soren Schwab - CLT (25:03.035)
Yes, yes.

Joseph Magaña (25:08.351)
You know, some people might say, even do you know, lists like that? think heritage has like a freedom list and Alec has a way and there's different groups that have different lists. And it's truly because we're a laboratory of democracy, right? And states all kind of look at each other and what they're doing and they all kind of want to be the best. And so that's where these kinds of things come in. And we just thought it would be unique to kind of give a Friedman perspective on things. And so that's what that's about.

Leslie Hiner (25:22.474)
We do.

Mm-hmm.

Soren Schwab - CLT (25:30.715)
Yeah, and I'm wondering if you look at those states and then you compare to population increase by state. I mean, I'm pretty sure there's a fairly high correlation there too. Leslie, I'd love to... go ahead. Peace.

Leslie Hiner (25:41.84)
sorry. Sorry, let me tell you a story on this because I can't leave out Indiana here. But before right before I started with Friedman, now Ed Choice, I was chief of staff, the speaker of the House. And we were doing a lot of economic development work as we say was a trouble at that time financially. The day that we passed the voucher, which at that time, that was in 2011,

Joseph Magaña (25:42.282)
again.

Soren Schwab - CLT (25:49.068)
All right, all right.

Leslie Hiner (26:10.676)
That was the biggest voucher program in the country that was passed in Indiana. And that day when it became public knowledge, there were some of the guys who I had talked to when I'm in the speaker's office who were thinking about opening businesses in Indiana, but they're kind of on the fence and they were on the fence largely because of our educational system. The day the voucher passed, so they called the state house and I wasn't there.

And then they started calling around to find me. They went to the effort to find me to verify, all right, Heiner, is this true? Did you really pass this big voucher program? And I said, yes, it's true. And the response on the other end of the phone was, well, then I guess we're going to Indiana. And the reason why, so I dug into this a little bit with these guys, say like,

Joseph Magaña (27:00.985)
Yeah.

Soren Schwab - CLT (27:01.146)
Yeah.

Leslie Hiner (27:07.57)
So tell me exactly now why, tell me the rest of the story. And the rest of the story was simple. Because we had passed this big voucher bill, then that signaled to them that our state was serious about education. So it was highly unlikely that we were going to start backpedaling and go to the same old, same old. But now we were a state that was taking this seriously and we were moving forward. And that's something

Soren Schwab - CLT (27:22.522)
Yeah.

Leslie Hiner (27:36.148)
that they could build on. So they came to Indiana. Yeah.

Soren Schwab - CLT (27:39.566)
Wow, that is a great story. Thanks for sharing that, Leslie. Let's talk a little bit about homeschooling. mean, you know, some listeners might hear this and say, yeah, why would anyone have a problem with that? Right. Being in the driver's seat, getting funding to, you know, invest in their children. Right. But especially on the homeschool side, you've probably seen some of the apart from the teacher unions, you've probably seen some of the harshest critics of school choice as well. And so

I'd love to hear, know, kind of, and I want to give you the opportunity to kind of share what have you heard in terms of criticism from homeschool families? I'm assuming it has something to do with Strings Attached, you know, accepting dollars from the government and all those things. But what are some of the concerns that homeschool families have and how do you address those with them and kind of give them reasons to maybe reconsider?

Leslie Hiner (28:36.416)
You want me to jump in, Joey? I have been tackling this recently, in fact, because as you may have guessed, I'm a huge supporter of homeschooling. Every parent is a child's first teacher. That's it, right? That's where we start. Anything else comes after that, upon the choice of the parent. So yeah, there are some homeschoolers who,

Joseph Magaña (28:37.746)
Go ahead.

Leslie Hiner (29:06.56)
who I'd say come from that very pure model of homeschooling. The parent is educating the child in their own home. And so there's no interest or need to bring in any kind of government, anything into that relationship. And 100%, that's great. But where there is some friction is when you have homeschoolers

Joseph Magaña (29:13.247)
Okay.

Soren Schwab - CLT (29:22.308)
Mm-hmm.

Leslie Hiner (29:35.604)
who are also coming from that same pure point, this is my child, I'm going to educate my child, but that's a parent who perhaps both parents need to work. And so they do need some outside assistance, they may or may not be able to afford it. And they may also have a different way of looking at it in that we're all...

all of us are paying money to support our public schools. Every person is because our tax dollars are all going to that. And it's always over 50 % of all the tax money collected is going to the public schools. So we're all paying a lot for public schools. And so then there will be some homeschoolers who say, yeah, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense for me to be paying for the public school. you know, and I'm struggling to

Soren Schwab - CLT (30:09.498)
Mm-hmm.

Soren Schwab - CLT (30:32.539)
you

Leslie Hiner (30:33.759)
purchase the resources I need for my own child to homeschool. So when an ESA comes along and the parent can access a little bit of the ESA or all of the ESA, you know, there are a number of parents who they may be able to get say $8,000 from any essay, but they only need $1,000. And that's what they do. And that's fine. That makes perfect sense.

But the thing that is the most difficult is when homeschoolers, this is really a conflict between homeschoolers. The homeschoolers who think there should be no connection whatsoever to government, and they're not wrong about that. But they have to understand that not everyone shares that view who is a homeschooler.

Soren Schwab - CLT (31:28.539)
Mm.

Leslie Hiner (31:30.984)
and the homeschooler who does not share that view should be respected and receive our support for what they need just as much as we respect the rights of homeschoolers who want nothing to do with any of this. And that's where we come down on this. Whatever the parents need and want, that's their decision, and we respect that decision, whatever that is.

Soren Schwab - CLT (31:46.213)
Mm-hmm.

Leslie Hiner (31:59.86)
The main underlying issue that causes people some angst is the regulatory piece. If you take money from government, then government's gonna regulate you. Well, no one else in this nation fights more readily and stronger than we do at Ed Choice. Where Milton and Rose Friedman's foundation, they...

Soren Schwab - CLT (32:08.22)
That's right.

Leslie Hiner (32:26.386)
they were totally against all government regulation. We're fighting this on the front lines every single day. Will government come in and want to regulate something? They will, only because if it's money, there's a regulation that goes with it. But the regulation though, can actually be something that does not impair the parents' right.

Soren Schwab - CLT (32:54.417)
Mm-hmm.

Leslie Hiner (32:54.452)
to educate their children how and where they choose to do so. And that's the bottom line consideration. Any regulation that impairs that right of the parent, okay, we're gonna push back against that. But any regulation that doesn't, it's paperwork, it's not a barrier to the parents to do what they need to do for their children. Well, then you can analyze it. Then you can think about it.

Soren Schwab - CLT (33:07.77)
Mm-hmm.

Leslie Hiner (33:24.576)
But that's how we approach it and we try to also make sure that people know that even if there are homeschoolers in the state or private schools in the state and there's no school choice program whatsoever, those folks are in imminent danger, I'd say, of the regulatory arm of government.

every bit as much as anybody who's in a state with school choice. School choice doesn't create the regulatory burdens of government in any way. That is always there. So if people are not paying attention, they're not paying attention to what kind of regulatory stuff is going on at the state house with respect to private schooling and with homeschooling, then you're asleep at the switch.

Soren Schwab - CLT (33:51.964)
Hmm.

Leslie Hiner (34:20.084)
You need to be alert and with it and following it and have your voice heard, whether you have a school choice program in your state or you don't have a school choice program in your state. Either way, this is important. It's part of our duty as citizens in a free nation.

Soren Schwab - CLT (34:20.38)
That's right.

Soren Schwab - CLT (34:38.554)
Right.

Joseph Magaña (34:38.873)
Yeah, I'll just say too real quickly. I number one, we're coming of a place again, like Leslie said, Milton and Rose Friedman, who didn't believe in any kind of government regulation. And one of my favorite topics and really still is before I joined Edchoice was occupational licensing, because why does, why does government get to say, yeah, here's your license to work or here's your permit to do this type of work? So he wanted to put families back in the driver's seat of their kids' education.

Soren Schwab - CLT (35:02.032)
Mm-hmm.

Joseph Magaña (35:06.895)
He also didn't believe in monopolies. He believed in a true free marketplace. And he also, you know, pointed out in several different ways that government run monopolies are the absolute worst, which is our educational system. And so that's a place where we're coming from. I would also say a place of where state legislatures and policymakers are coming from when they do these programs as much the same as ours is to put parents back in the driver's seat of their kids' education. That's first and foremost.

Another thing too I would say is that what we have seen over the last couple of years is the most popular forms of choice are homeschooling and microschooling. And microschooling I think really comes out of homeschooling because we've all heard of homeschool co-ops and kind of these hybrid models, right? Where, hey, there's a couple of families in the neighborhood doing homeschooling, why don't we come together one day a week, you teach science, I'll do whatever. So.

knowing that there's popularity and that parents are very interested in doing homeschooling and also knowing that a lot of parents are not able to do that for whatever reason. Maybe it's they both work at home or maybe one parent or I'm sorry, both work at work or one works and one stays at home. So they're kind of financially restricted. And so, you know, I think we all have to recognize that there are so many families out there that do want to homeschool, but they just don't have quite the tools and they need a little bit of the extra help.

And to Leslie's point, we fight very hard to make sure that there are no strings attached, that programs are transparent, but the accountability falls on the parents, not the government. So that's kind of what we say is transparency falls on the government side of things because we want to be transparent about where money's going and how it's being used, but accountability falls on the parent. And that's really, I think, an important delineation there. And I'll also say really quickly too, because

To Leslie's point, this is kind of an inner fight with the homeschool community because some of the older homeschool families are really kind of the ones kind fighting against this, right? Like, hey, we poured our blood, sweat, and tears into this, and we did it on our own. But then you have this kind of new parents coming up and saying, man, we really want to homeschool, but we just need that extra help. I was in Utah.

Soren Schwab - CLT (37:22.032)
Mm-hmm.

Joseph Magaña (37:26.028)
Earlier this year and they were deliberating at the state house about rolling back some of the funds that they were giving homeschoolers. So the homeschool families came out of the woodwork who were taking advantage of the of the program and it would break your heart to see the testimony that they had because so many moms and dads were testifying and saying this was the first time we were able to do homeschooling for my kid and it's completely changed their life and there's story after story after story of how that's the case right.

Soren Schwab - CLT (37:50.417)
Thanks.

Joseph Magaña (37:55.626)
And what they were saying is, take this away because this is, again, this has just changed our lives for the better because now we're in charge of our kids' education. We can do it at home with this type of curriculum or this type of program. So, you know, I would just have people remember those families too because there so many out there who would take advantage but can't otherwise do it.

Soren Schwab - CLT (38:15.185)
Right. And it's not like homeschoolers, even if a state passes legislation, homeschool families are not coerced or not forced into accepting those dollars, right? They can choose not to accept them while other families that like you just said, Joey, that might benefit from it could accept it. Well, got to quickly ask you here, because I just had a conversation at a conference earlier this week and it was with a private school that happened to be in Texas.

Joseph Magaña (38:23.098)
press.

Joseph Magaña (38:27.969)
Dude, right.

Soren Schwab - CLT (38:44.637)
And I've had several of those conversations with folks in Texas that I didn't have with folks in Florida. And I thought it was really, really interesting because I felt like in Florida, private schools, Christian schools kind of got on with the program pretty quickly and seemed to be happy. And here we are in Texas, largest education choice bill ever, right, passed. And maybe that's just my perception, but I'm seeing a bit more skepticism and reservations.

I think part of that is, you know, for a family to say, hey, I'm going to accept, you know, the ESAs for this year and maybe things change and you know what, next year I'm not going to do that. I'm not locked in for many years. I'm going to, like you said, Leslie, I'm going to be vigilant. I'm going to be, you know, looking at what's happening at the Capitol. Well, a brick and mortar school, when they look at their financial modeling, when they look at their budgeting, it's not a year to year. mean, oftentimes it's five, 10 years.

Joseph Magaña (39:39.831)
But.

Soren Schwab - CLT (39:43.388)
And maybe in state like Texas, that is not Florida, when it comes to the governor and the legislation, there is potentially some fear, right? That if we start this and then things change, right? State government changes and so on, that we're, pardon my French, that we're screwed, right? We can't get out of it. And so maybe it's not even the idealistic kind of are we for or against this, but like, what are the potential practical

Joseph Magaña (39:52.026)
Okay.

Soren Schwab - CLT (40:13.003)
implications. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Joseph Magaña (40:16.561)
Yeah, I'll start really quickly and then Leslie will let you go into it because I know you have a lot on this too, but we saw a little bit of this in my home state of Arkansas too when they started learns act. So it was a three year phase in.

Soren Schwab - CLT (40:25.873)
Mm-hmm.

Joseph Magaña (40:27.993)
The first year was very low income. The second year it got raised and then the third year it was for everybody. And so I spoke to some of the, even my own school that I went to, my own private school I went to. There was some hesitation, but there's any number of different reasons for that. In the case of Texas and a little bit of the case in Arkansas, there was very little to no choice at all. So there was no sort of kind of concept of how will this work and how has it played out or none of that. So it was brand spanking new, especially in the case of Texas.

No choice before this year. So of course there's going to be some trepidation around that and kind of, you know, I don't think there's any fault in schools saying, well, let's just see how this plays out, right? Like let's see from other schools who are participating, you know, what's, what's the process like? What's, what's the reporting like if any. and then another thing too, that I think you pointed out, and we want schools to be very thoughtful about this is don't just say, we're to open our doors and capacity is going to skyrocket without thoughtfully.

you know planning this out right so maybe you think about we can only have this much more capacity maybe it's only ten more seats and then we think about maybe how we grow that over time so there's lots of different factors into that because you you also don't want to play with families or lives right you don't want to say I have twenty seats when you really only have capacity for fifteen and then the next year you have to short you have to take that back some so I think there's lots of you know

I think they're being very thoughtful, which I really appreciate. And I don't think there's anything wrong with just saying, well, let's give this a year and see how it plays out. Because again, there might not be any context. Florida's had different kinds of choice for decades now as Arizona. And so they have a little bit more context about it, right? Like they've experienced it. They know it. They have families that have taken part in it. And so it's not as new as, like a Texas.

Soren Schwab - CLT (42:17.532)
Yeah, there has been somewhat of an on-ramp, and at least a framework for what that means. Leslie, do you want to add to that?

Leslie Hiner (42:24.364)
Yeah, I think that you also need to consider the parent side of things as well, because parents will also have their own fear and trepidation by move this child into another situation. it going to last? it not going to last? What happens if it doesn't? So yes, thoughtful consideration is necessary, which is why usually these programs grow rather slowly over time.

and you know, that's proven to be just fine. Although I will say in North Carolina when they passed their ESA, there were 72,000 families who applied for an ESA on the first day. So things are happening in a hurry there. I mean, there's been a lot of pent up need there. But...

Soren Schwab - CLT (43:09.224)
goodness.

Leslie Hiner (43:21.472)
Probably the best advice I could give comes from a man who runs a school, a private Krishna school that's up in Milwaukee. So Milwaukee, they actually passed the first modern day voucher back in 1990. They were the very first one. So they've been at this for a while. And now the city of Milwaukee is divided about a third public schools, a third charters, third private schools. So it's a real pluralistic.

school environment there and a lot of choices for families. But in his school, he has all Hispanic kids and they're all on vouchers and they are all very low income. And it's a fabulous school and these kids are all just thriving. But I posed that question to him, well, politics in Wisconsin are a mess. So, you know, do you have a fallback? What happens if things

Soren Schwab - CLT (44:14.654)
you

Leslie Hiner (44:18.858)
People go off the deep end again in Wisconsin. And of course there have been a couple of times when they've tried to go off the deep end, but inevitably they have not. They have preserved the vouchers. And if you look to why, it's not because the politics evened out. There was none of that that happened, but it was because the parents said, kind of like my client did, over my dead body, you are not

going to harm my child, which is the exact thing that the mayor of Stockholm told us. The mayor of Stockholm was in the mayor of Stockholm during the time that Sweden adopted a universal voucher program. And that was during a time when the more conservatives came into power in government. Well, after a few years, the socialists came back in.

The first thing they wanted to do was to get rid of this voucher because, you know, private entities could participate and they thought that that was terrible. But as they tried to do that, as the mayor said, it was the first time in Sweden's history that they nearly had a revolution. The parents went crazy, said, you will not take this away from us. And all these years later, they still...

Joseph Magaña (45:34.006)
.

Soren Schwab - CLT (45:38.227)
Yeah.

Leslie Hiner (45:44.606)
have their vouchers in Sweden. And so this is really the power of it. It really comes down to parents. Parents just want their kids to thrive. Parents who dropped out of school early and they're drug addicted and they don't have any education, their motivation comes down to a simple, don't want my kids to be like me. I want my kids to be different. I want them to have a chance in life.

Soren Schwab - CLT (45:52.51)
Yeah.

Soren Schwab - CLT (46:09.567)
.

Leslie Hiner (46:12.998)
It's for so many parents, it's just, they just want their kids to have a chance to be successful adults, to live joyfully. That's the bottom line.

Soren Schwab - CLT (46:19.219)
Yeah.

Soren Schwab - CLT (46:25.575)
Love that. Love that. I could talk to you all for hours. We are running out of time. So I'm going to ask one more question. It's a little twist on our typical kind of anchored question. Since we're talking about education choice, education freedom, is there one book or maybe even an article that you all could recommend to our listeners on the topic of school choice? And maybe start with you, Joey.

Joseph Magaña (46:50.215)
Yeah. Well, at first I would just say that the thing that's made the most impact has been recent. And that's what I said about the homeschool moms and dads who were testifying in Utah and just hearing the stories about how much it was changing their lives. And so that was huge. It's not an article or a book, but it just made such a big impact. And I will always remember that. But I'll also say there was an op-ed in Oklahoma City. It was from a

young black lady who had started the school for those in her community and it was all kind of less fortunate and she was scraping by to get the resources. She started the school in a church because the church had room, which I'm sure, you know, lot of us have seen instances like that. And it was, she was kind of giving her argument for why the state should do school choice. And she said, look, I was able to do this, but I'm able to do this on a very small scale.

I've got a waiting list that's huge because families are just lining up to get in because they can see the difference. And that makes a huge impact too. When you have people on the ground who make a sacrifice like my grandparents did and they put their neck on the line and they start a school just to try to help out families and get their kids a better education. So that made a huge impact on me as well.

Soren Schwab - CLT (48:10.889)
Leslie, about you?

Leslie Hiner (48:11.2)
Well, for me, it starts with Milton and Rose Friedman, of course. They wrote a book called Free to Choose. That's just a very inspirational book and it really is a foundational document. I can tell you also, whenever I come up across something that I'm just trying to figure it out, how can we make this happen? I'll just go back to Milton and Rose and...

and what they've written or I'll look at podcasts like this or any videos. And there are a lot of videos out there that you can access where they speak to school choice. And it's really helpful. But I will say, if you ever run across in any media source, a story from a child who was educated as a result of

a school choice program. That's something you want to read. These stories of kids who had nothing in their lives. And I've met so many of these kids who literally everything in their lives was a failure. They didn't know where their parents were, never passed a test, all the kids hated them, they got kicked out of school all the time. And, you know, little kids, 10 year olds.

who are in this situation and they know that their lives are just a mess. And then they get this opportunity to go someplace else for learning and inevitably, and this happens so often with the faith-based schools, I just have to put in a big plug here, because when they walk in the door of a faith-based school, the very first thing that happens is they know that their life is valued.

Soren Schwab - CLT (50:06.121)
Mm-hmm.

Leslie Hiner (50:06.822)
And that makes all the difference in the world. And then you see these kids, they blossom, they find the joy of learning. And suddenly they're the kids who are trying to get everybody else to do your homework and participate. And they become the best kids in the school because they have found real life and real joy in their lives and they can do it. And they've learned that they can do this.

Soren Schwab - CLT (50:32.361)
Yeah.

Leslie Hiner (50:36.568)
Whenever you find any kind of op-ed or article at all that is written by one of those kids, you really want to read that.

Soren Schwab - CLT (50:44.189)
Yeah, any testimonials. I've watched a lot of hearings whenever, you know, kind of the recipients of choice that attended, like you said, Lesley, school. I think those are always the most powerful ones. No offense to the folks speaking on behalf, but it really speaks to the transformational power of education, right? And that complete life trajectory that can change.

Leslie Hiner (50:49.438)
yeah.

Leslie Hiner (50:57.812)
No, they aren't powerful. They are very powerful.

Soren Schwab - CLT (51:10.591)
Well, this has been so absolutely delightful. Joey, Leslie, I really appreciate all the work that you do. And anyone who might have questions or said, kind of agree with that, or I have some questions here, go to the Edchoise website. Stay in the loop on what the great work that they're doing. Again, we're here with Leslie Heiner and Joey Magana from Edchoise. Thank you both so much for coming on the Anchored Podcast today.

Leslie Hiner (51:37.824)
Thank you, Sorin. Thank you very much.

Joseph Magaña (51:38.694)
Thank you.