The State of Education with Melvin Adams

Republish Ep. 59 "Arizona Leads the Way in Personalized Education" - Guest Jenny Clark

September 27, 2023 Melvin Adams
Republish Ep. 59 "Arizona Leads the Way in Personalized Education" - Guest Jenny Clark
The State of Education with Melvin Adams
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The State of Education with Melvin Adams
Republish Ep. 59 "Arizona Leads the Way in Personalized Education" - Guest Jenny Clark
Sep 27, 2023
Melvin Adams

Jenny Clark is—first and foremost—a mom. But she’s also the founder of Love Your School, a non-profit in Arizona that empowers parents and educators to make choices about the education plan that works for them and their kids. Today on this throwback episode of The State of Education With Melvin Adams, Jenny talks with us about the incredible strides she and others have made to get a universal ESA passed in Arizona. Listen in to learn more.

Resources Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

  • Check out Jenny’s organization, Love Your School, for insights on parental rights, school choice, and ESAs. Plus, find out more about how you can start a movement in your own state or community.
  • Jenny has worked with the Goldwater Institute to shape education policy in Arizona. Check out their website here
  • Visit Love Your Schools on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. And don’t forget to look up their West Virginia branch on Instagram


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Subscribe on YouTube:
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To hear more from NWEF, subscribe to our other podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1898310

– WHAT IS THE NOAH WEBSTER EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION? –

Noah Webster Educational Foundation collaborates with individuals and organizations to tell the story of America’s education and culture; discover foundational principles that improve it; and advance practice and policy to change it.


Website: https://www.nwef.org
Reach out:
info@nwef.org

Show Notes Transcript

Jenny Clark is—first and foremost—a mom. But she’s also the founder of Love Your School, a non-profit in Arizona that empowers parents and educators to make choices about the education plan that works for them and their kids. Today on this throwback episode of The State of Education With Melvin Adams, Jenny talks with us about the incredible strides she and others have made to get a universal ESA passed in Arizona. Listen in to learn more.

Resources Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

  • Check out Jenny’s organization, Love Your School, for insights on parental rights, school choice, and ESAs. Plus, find out more about how you can start a movement in your own state or community.
  • Jenny has worked with the Goldwater Institute to shape education policy in Arizona. Check out their website here
  • Visit Love Your Schools on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. And don’t forget to look up their West Virginia branch on Instagram


GET CONNECTED WITH NWEF

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nwef.org/
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/NWEF_org
Follow us on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/nwef_org/
Subscribe on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtdHayyOqPftVoiGEqxYdsg
To hear more from NWEF, subscribe to our other podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1898310

– WHAT IS THE NOAH WEBSTER EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION? –

Noah Webster Educational Foundation collaborates with individuals and organizations to tell the story of America’s education and culture; discover foundational principles that improve it; and advance practice and policy to change it.


Website: https://www.nwef.org
Reach out:
info@nwef.org

ADAMS: Welcome to The State of Education with Melvin Adams. I’m Melvin Adams, your host. And so, again, thank you for joining us today. 

Our guest is Jenny Clark. She is the founder and executive director of Love Your School, a non-profit committed to educating families about all their school options, providing personalized support to parents in supporting new education entrepreneurs and leaders.

Jenny has worked with The Goldwater Institute, she serves on the Arizona State Board of Education, she’s a member of AEI’s Conservative Education Reform Network, and is a board member of Phoenix Seminary.

Love Your School received a 2022 commendation from former Arizona governor Doug Ducey for their advocacy work for school choice.

So it’s a delight to have Jenny with us today. Jenny, welcome to today's podcast.

CLARK: Well, I’m honored to be on and thank you so much for the invitation. I’m really looking forward to chatting about what’s happening here in Arizona.

ADAMS: Awesome. Well, let’s just start out this way: the name of your organization is fascinating to me. Why don’t we just start out with why do you believe it’s important for parents and students to love their schools?

CLARK: Well, when we first started Love Your School, I wanted parents, when they were asked the question, “Hey, do you love your school?” they could respond with a resounding yes. And that’s the whole premise on which our non-profit was built. 

There are so many families out there, myself included, who were unhappy with the education that our kids were being provided. Especially—I think that’s common right now with a lot of families and what they saw during COVID in the public school system.

So we’re just looking to help families—whether they decide to stay in the public school or move on to something else—find a school that they love.

ADAMS: What is Love Your School? What does it do? What prompted you to start it? Talk to us about all that.

CLARK: Absolutely. We;re a non-profit that started about four years ago. The idea came to me around December 2018 and then we launched in 2019 and got our c3 status a year later, in 2020. 

I found, as a parent who was home educating my kids at the time, that I was struggling. Some of my kids had learning disabilities and we went through that whole kind of extensive evaluation process through the public school system…and at the end of that battle—because it was definitely a battle—I would say we found that our kid had severe dyslexia and dysgraphia.

And I discovered next that we were eligible for this thing in Arizona called an empowerment scholarship. And I know we’ll probably touch on that a little more later, but I was excited, but I was also frustrated. I was frustrated because I found out that we actually had qualified for that scholarship years earlier and no one had told us about it.

That really excited in me this passion, after getting on the ESA, to make sure that families knew about all of their education options, right? Not just their public school options, but options like tuition tax credit scholarships, ESAs, and even homeschooling.

That’s a lot of what we do at Love Your School, you mentioned that. We help families find the school option that works best for them.

ADAMS: You know, it’s interesting you say that, because we find that all the time too. A lot of parents out there have no idea the opportunities that are available to them and they’re frustrated. They want something better, but it’s just kind of always been this way, and unless they are totally tuned in, certainly their public school doesn’t tell them that they have better options, or other options.

So, yeah! How important is that?

ADAMS: Yeah, and that’s exactly right. Part of the challenge, even with having an ESA in Arizona for ten years, is that there were all these barriers to entry into a lot of these programs. We really felt like there was a huge gap in the parent navigation piece.

We step in to not only fill that gap and support parents every step of the way—whether it’s requesting that special education evaluation or consulting with them about how they can successfully homeschool or afford a private school—we wanted to fit those really important gaps in knowledge.

And then, naturally, as you’re doing that, you start to meet people who also are interested in launching new options. Not only are we dealing with the parent demand peice over here…we’re also really solving for what we call the “supply side” of the whole schools options world, which is: how do we get new education service providers, new schools, new micro schools and supporting that whole spectrum.

ADAMS: Well, you don’t hear that very often when we’re talking about education. Because most people in the education space, when you talk about it holistically, people in the industry are not really interested in more options.

They want it to be centralized and standardized and governmentized and so forth. How refreshing to hear somebody talking about, “Look, options are a good thing and we need to empower people to create new entrepreneurial ideas and try things. Let’s find more things that can work better.” 

Because students are not widgets. Students are unique, and every one of them needs their own customized experience, if I may put it that way. Different systems work best for different people so thank you for what you’re doing in that area.

You’re helping parents understand, you're helping people navigate that framework. What else are you focused on?

CLARK: One of the things that we’re launching at Love Your School that I’m very excited about, is something that we’re calling “the innovation hub.” Parents can already come to us and say, “Hey, I’m struggling at my local school, can you help?” right? And we kind of navigate on our end: “Okay, is this someone who needs to talk to one of our special education coordinators? Are they thinking about homeschooling, do they need to talk to our homeschooling consultant?”

We’re already dealing with that peice and have been doing that well for the past couple of years. But we really wanted to formalize the support that we’re offering to those new education entrepreneurs. 

Especially now that Arizona has that universal empowerment scholarship account program, where every single one of our students in Arizona—school aged students, so five to twelfth grade—is able to take their education dollars wherever they think, as the parent, they’re able to take those dollars wherever works best for them.

The innovation hub is where we’re going to help reduce the friction that a lot of these schools and micro and regular tutors might say: “Hey, I really want to teach kid’s history. I love history, I have a degree in history—it might not even be my full time job, but I want to launch something so that I can start educating students myself and families can use their ESA dollars to help pay for that.” 

That’s what the innovation hub really is: reducing that friction, helping education entrepreneurs launch, and then connecting them. Connecting them to ESA parents. We want Arizona to be a model state. Not just for ESAs, but also for education innovation. 

And that can look like new private schools too. We’re seeing…gosh, I think I totalled it up this morning. Like six or seven different Christian microschools or private schools launching in August, which is very exciting.

ADAMS: It’s interesting, what you were just sharing. And it is exciting, what’s going on in Arizona. Actually, Arizona, right now, is leading the way in education reforms, as far as I’m concerned. Certainly with the new legislation that was passed last year.

What I think I heard you say just a little bit ago: so, you’re focusing—and help me understand this if I’m understanding it correctly, okay? You focus on working with parents to find the best education options for them and their children. And sometimes that involves a formal school, sometimes it involves, you know, hooking them up with a teacher that can meet their needs.

In other words, it’s just a kind of smorgasbord a la carte, and let’s find out what you need and put you together with individuals that can help accommodate your needs. Is that what I’m hearing you say?

CLARK: Not directly with the teachers, but we create environments where those connections can happen. For example, we have a Facebook group for all of our ESA families. We have over 2,000 ESA families in that Facebook group. 

And then we have another group that Love Your School recently created for education service providers. And so people can be a part of one or both of those groups and those education service providers can talk about the services they offer to families. And we create just another way for families to then connect to those service providers.

Some service providers, as I mentioned, might be only doing something as basic as tutoring. But other service providers have launched actual businesses with actual locations where they might be offering a variety of educational or therapeutic services for families.

We want to make that easier and we want to make those connections easier. Especially as it relates to folks who may have done something well in another state and they go, “Okay, I really want to launch…what it is I’m doing here in Georgia or Florida, in Arizona. Because 1) I know those families need what I have to offer, but 2) they also have those education dollars to be able to pay for those services,” whereas in other states, families don’t have that option.

We;re really trying to cultivate more providers coming to Arizona as well. Could be teachers, could be schools.

ADAMS: Interesting. That’s great.

There’s a lot of controversy, across the country, over school choice. School choice is a term that’s been used for a long time. Noah Webster Educational Foundation—we support school choice because we support parents and meeting their needs.

In fact, I think I prefer to use the language “parental choice” or “parents’ choice” rather than school choice, because so often the focus of school choice is the model that most states still follow where they education dollars are plugged into the school and then the parent gets to decide what school they’re going to pick.

With the new legislation that’s passing in an increasing number of states—we’re trying to get that here in Virginia, but it’s recently passed in a number of states—where those certain amounts of dollars are allocated that they follow directly with the child. Basically, the parent has access to that money and then the parent decides where they’re going to plug that money into the school system, right?

CLARK: Yes, that’s exactly right. These ESAs are Education Savings Accounts—Arizona’s is called the Empowerment Scholarship Account. That's essentially exactly what they do, whether it’s based on a state’s legislative allocation into the budget—funding specifically for that ESA—or whether it’s based on a formula. 

Arizona’s is a formula. It’s ninety percent of what the child would get if they were in a public school environment. I actually am a strong advocate of the formula method, because what it does is it strongly empowers families with special needs kids and also different neurodiversities. Because it’s not a flat amount saying, okay, every child is going to get $6,000 to take to the education environment that works for them.

That’s great, but a lot of times we might forget how expensive it is to educate a child with special needs. And so in our program, our scholarship goes from around $7,000 all the way up to $30,000. 

For example, a child in Arizona who has autism—the rates just went up—they receive close to $30,000 dollars per year that they can take either to a specialty school or a traditional school and use tutors and therapists. Or they can build out their own customized education at home with tutors and therapists and whatever else they think they need.

These programs, in a variety of different forms, depending on the legislation, are  getting past in many states. Of course, West Virginia—huge win in West Virginia. They have the Hope Scholarship there now. 

ADAMS: Right.

CLARK: Utah! We know Utah just passed the Utah Fits All, UT-FITS Scholarship. Iowa…and I think we’re going to see a lot more states this year as well.

ADAMS: Yeah, it is exciting. Exciting times for parents and for students. And really, for education as a whole. A lot of shifts…there are some things that are very bad that are going on in our schools, but there are some good things going on as well. And it’s nice to have a conversation about opportunities and positive things.

Here's a question that I’d like to ask you from your own experience, because I get this all the time: okay, so if you remove funding and take it and create options for other alternatives, it’s defunding our public schools. It’s going to hurt all the public schools.

Two part question on this. First, is that true in your experience? And secondly, what are you actually seeing  when parents are given an opportunity, approximately what ratio choose to take their child out of the traditional public school into other alternatives? And how many—let’s say in Arizona, because I think that’s where you’re most focused—what present say “I’m okay with our public schools. I like our public schools and I’m happy to have my child stay in public school”?

CLARK: Great questions. In response to the defunding argument, I would say it’s completely not true.

The reason it’s not true is that states and students and schools are funded based on the students that are there educating. Even right now, if you have a child that switches between district schools, or goes from a district school to a charter school—which is also public—we all know that the funding follows the child. The funding never stays at the school that the child left, because those dollars are there for the education of that child.

Now, if these programs somehow said, “We are going to take the dollars, but we’re going to leave the student and you still have the responsibility to educate the student and we took away the dollars,” well, that would be a problem. Right?

But no school has ever, or should ever, receive funding for a child who they no longer have the responsibility or burden of educating. It’s exactly how the ESAs work, right? The child is leaving the school, they may not be going to a different public school. They may be going now to a private school or to a home education environment and so the dollars are following them just like they do for inter-district open enrollment or other transfers.

In Arizona, actually, it’s quite fascinating. Since our ESA is the percentage of the state funds that I mentioned—ninety percent—there actually is a percentage that we call our “local dollars” that actually still stay at the school because they’re not based on student enrollment.

So every time a child leaves, the school is still receiving—and that dollar amount changes, which is why I’m not giving the dollar amount—that school still receives those dollars whether or not a child is enrolled there. In a lot of ways, we reduce the classroom size by having an option like an ESA, all the while leaving dollars at the school.

ADAMS: I think that’s a very important thing that you just stated. A lot of people don’t realize this. But, first of all, you said ninety percent, so I’m assuming ten percent potentially still stays. You’re only…look, education only comes out of three basic sources. One is federal money, then there’s state money, and then there’s local money.

These ESAs are only talking about the state money. Federal money is not affected, typically. Locally money is not affected, typically, and as you just stated, those revenues continue to flow into the school and go into the public system. In some cases, part of the state money still flows into the public school, it goes into the system. Just a certain  portion goes out with the child that leaves.

But if you look at that, then the per-student funding ratio actually goes up.

CLARK: That’s actually not how our funding works. The local dollars do stay at the school, but this ten percent state portion does not stay at the school. The ten percent state portion just stays in our general reserve budget. 

So taxpayers save. Taxpayers save because those dollars are not there. But that calculation doesn’t happen where the per-pupil amount goes up because the students leave.

So it’s just the local dollars that stay—that ten percent is a saving to the state.

ADAMS: Alright. What I’m hearing you say, then, is that the local money still goes to the school and they get the total amount of local money, they just have less students that they have to take care of with the same amount of money.

CLARK: Correct.

ADAMS: Okay. Let’s go back to the second part of the question we asked earlier. What kind of present do you see? Do you have any input on that?

CLARK: Yes. Our universal ESA has been in effect since December 2022. Prior to the universal ESA, we had about 12,000 students utilizing the program. And at that time, only about 250,000 students qualified. Now about 1.1 million qualify.

ADAMS: Yeah.

CLARK: And in the last five months, the ESA has grown to around 48,000 students. Now, a couple things with that. One, it really is too soon to tell how many students are leaving public for ESA. And there’s a couple reasons for that.

One, it’s the middle of the school year, right? And a lot of families didn’t know if our universal ESA was going to go into effect. It was potentially put on hold with a potential ballet referral. All these different things happened, so a lot of families said, “Gee, they’re not going to know until the end of September if this is all happening. We’re just going to go ahead and stay at our school and we’ll make a decision at the end of the next school year, as far as going on an ESA.”

The unfortunate result of those teachers unions groups, like Save Our Schools Arizona, trying to stop the program, was that it really limited a lot of families making a decision this school year for an ESA.

That resulted in a lot of those early adopters of Arizona’s universal ESA being a lot of families who are at a private school or who are already homeschooling. So a lot of those early adopters were existing private schooler/homeschooler families.

What we anticipate is that this Spring—probably more likely in May— families will start applying again for the Fall. Then I think we’ll have a better picture of how many families are actually transitioning from the public school system to an ESA, then utilizing those dollars for private school. 

I can tell you that the vast majority of families on the ESA program—it varies quarter to quarter—but about eighty percent of the families on the ESA program, utilize their dollars for private school. I anticipate that number, as the program grows, going up. Because I think that we’ve seen the families that home educate, who want to utilize an ESA: they’ve gotten their ESA now. The next wave of adopters of the ESA program is likely going to be people who are transitioning or switching from public school.

So we’ll have, probably,  more information in Summer on those numbers.

ADAMS: Okay. So let’s shift gears just a little bit here. You worked for a while with the Goldwater Institute, and they’ve been a strong mover behind the scenes—a catalyst for a lot of the policy that’s been developed there in Arizona over the years. It’s been like, what, a ten year process really, from when that first started until where we are today.

I’d like you to speak to that for parents and legislators and whatnot, across the country, who are wanting to have Arizona’s opportunities where they are and they want it now. And they’re frustrated by incremental legislative movement. Talk a little bit to them. Because I think that’s always one of the frustrations for individuals. They need to understand how things work and why process is so important. And a little patience and how they can work to move things incrementally to where they want them to be.

CLARK: This is a great question topic and you might be surprised at my answer, Melvin, but I am not a fan of incrementalism.

The reason why is that Arizona had the ESA program through the incredible hard work of, as you mentioned, The Goldwater Institute, and their leadership over all of those years. I mean, who would have ever thought that, here, over eleven years later, we've got a universal ESA.

That’s what had to happen, right, in the past? And Arizona was the first. We had to have that incremental growth. But you recall that I mentioned how small the program was. When Love Your School started four years ago, our ESA program only had, gosh, seven to eight thousand students on it. That is super duper tiny.

Other states that have similar scholarship programs, but they may only be for children with an IEP, or a 504 plan, or whatever qualifying category there is—it is extremely difficult to gain access and to implement those programs when you have limited qualifying categories. 

I really love that we’re seeing other states essentially go big! Go for universal. And that’s my advice because families can’t wait! I mean, we really can’t wait. I don’t care what state you're in, if you are looking at what Arizona, West Virginia, and Iowa, and Utah—and the list is going to start going on and on—have, you need to start mobilizing.

Work with groups like the Goldwater Institute. Work with your local policy organizations, parent advocacy groups. And start demanding that you want access to your child’s education dollars too.

Families shouldn’t be stuck in a school that not only doesn’t meet their child’s needs, but that also doesn’t align with their worldview or their ideology.

ADAMS: Yes.

CLARK: When we go really slow, like we have with Arizona in the past, it was such a heavy lift to get people on the program. So we’ve done the ten-year thing for you! Now other states, you can’t jump right into universalism, and we really hope to see more of that happening because parents are being the strongest advocates and pushing the policy makers in their states.

ADAMS: Well, thank you for your response. I appreciate that candid response and I’m with you there. 

Here’s what I know: legislators tend to go a little more cautious because every state’s laws are different. Every state’s education laws are different and trying to work through some of the things, and unplug and replug and all that. There are some of those nuances and I think it’s a lot of that that’s often the case.

And of course, it’s always the teacher’s unions and those entities that have huge lobbying influence and a lot of vote power, potentially. Mobilization power that legislators tend to be afraid of. 

What I’m hearing you say is, “Look, guys, we did it the hard way. There’s a formula now, there’s a pathway now. We’ve demonstrated that this can be a successful program. We are fully engaged here and, look, we’ll give you the playbook. And plug and play!” Is that what I’m hearing you say?

CLARK: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. Even former Governor Ducey, I heard him speak so many times on the topic—former governor here in Arizona—has said, “Listen. I am content with you taking Arizona’s ESA statute, scribbling out “Arizona” and putting in your state’s name.”

Now, we know it’s not that easy, but I love the sentiment, right? And parents need to know that as powerful as these unions might be, because of the dollars that they are getting from each one of the teachers that’s participating…parents: you are more powerful.

A small, but focused and professional and strategic group of parents can move your state's needle on this issue without a doubt. Hands down. I think what happens is, we tend to feel like, “Oh, there’s just no way. I mean, there’s no way we can compete with unions.”

This year—this is an example from Arizona—in 2018, the teachers unions and Save Our Schools Arizona did stop our universal ESA in 2018. It was referred to our ballet and it lost the ballet. Fast forward: Love Your School started, we started educating and advocating for families to have choice, families started learning about their choices and getting on ESA. We then had, four years later, the universal ESA law get passed and get signed.

There was another attempt to refer that to the ballet and they had three—ninety days—to gather signatures to stop that. And they could not even get enough signatures to stop Arizona’s ESA.

The culture has shifted, and it’s shifted in favor of parents.

ADAMS: I would suppose that the COVID situation and all the shutdowns and bringing the classroom into the livingroom…and all of a sudden, the awareness of some of the things that have been going on in our government schools, probably helped a significant deal with that, as well.

Would you agree with that?

CLARK: I would absolutely agree. 

The thing is, I also had teachers who were part of the Red For Ed movement in 2018 who didn’t support our universal ESA back then, coming to me now, four years later, and said, “Listen, I support the universal ESA. I’m realizing also that I love what I do, I love my job, I love my school. My school’s doing a great job. But I know this is not the place for every student.”

More students now, for a variety of reasons since COVID, have learning challenges, learning disabilities, anxieties. All these other things that are making that traditional environment less accessible for so many students. I’ve seen teachers, even, shift in their mindset, in their perspective about ESAs.

So you had all these factors playing into this perfect storm to get universal ESA in Arizona, and now across the country. So I agree with you, a hundred percent.

ADAMS: This has been great. Let’s take just a few minutes as we start focusing on a wrap up, here. Talk to parents, educators, legislators, people who are interested and care about this issue…they want to see change. They want to have more opportunities for their children and grandchildren.

Give them a handful of pointers that they can follow to move the dial and make change happen where they are.

CLARK: Absolutely. Well, the first thing I would say is: find your lane and stick to it.

I think often what I see with different advocacy groups or other organizations that start and then struggle to maintain their focus or fail—is that they try to take on too much. Those people that are following them tend to get overwhelmed, because they don’t know what the focus is either.

If you’re a parent, be the parents, right? Be the parent advocacy voice and be a part of, or create, a larger coalition in your state and plug in. I don’t try to be a policy expert! I’m not a policy expert. The Goldwater Institute: they’re the policy experts, right?

So I—even before Love Your School—stayed in my lane as the parent. Constantly giving the feedback to the policy experts about what works, what doesn’t work, what’s important—and that meant that we formed a very strong coalition in our state, because everyone knew what their roles were.

It also is really helpful—we do this a lot at Love Your School—we do a ton of webinars and email communication. One thing that can happen with these movements, which is very exciting, is that a lot of people want to jump on and join very quickly. It can kind of spin out of control.

If you create a Facebook group, right? If you’re a parent and you’re excited, and you create a Facebook group—which I think is a great place to start—be very clear on that group, this is who we are, this is our single, sole mission, and this is what we’re doing. When parents question or hear something or get confused, bring in another expert and say, “Hey, next Wednesday—you guys are asking a lot of questions about,”—this happened in Arizona—“the budget, and how ESA relates to the budget, or whatever.” Instead of kind of ignoring that or saying “That’s not our lane,” bring in the expert to educate the parents so you can continue to focus and stay on your mission and on your task.

For legislators and other leaders: encourage those coalitions, be part of those coalitions. Because you’re going to want their support, and you’re also going to want their stories. That’s one of the things Love Your School does really. We help parents, and then we have this beautiful array of stories of parents who were like, “Hey, this policy needed to change for this reason.” Or, “I love ESA because it does this for my family, and this is how it changed our lives.”

Be the conduit to get those stories to legislators and other leaders, which are the truth. And often more compelling than some of the other, arguably, very important things like: these programs save money, they improve academic outcomes, the schools actually still get to keep the local dollars…those are all great! And they’re all true on paper and fiscal conservatives love those things, but they don’t move the hearts, right? As the stories do.

Legislators need to encourage those coalitions to develop as well, so there can be that natural connection with stories and the policy, and of course, the legislative leadership.

ADAM: That’s good stuff.

Final question: what are your hopes…you’re seeing what’s going on in Arizona, and in many ways, Arizona is leading the way. What are your hopes? What do you want to see across the country in the next five, ten years?

And then, to wrap it up, give our audience your website and how they can learn more about what you’re doing.

CLARK: Absolutely. My hope is that we would genuinely see education freedom in every state. And what that means is some form or way for parents to be able to direct their child’s education dollars to the environment that works for them.

I know that not every state is going to do as high a dollar amount, right? Or they may not do a percentage. But we need to do something. Everybody knows that throwing more dollars at a problem is not going to solve the problem on its own. It can definitely help, but it’s not going to solve the problem on its own. 

When we look nationally—I mean, we’ll take the latest NAEP scores—when we look nationally, at what’s going on in our country…how many students can’t read at grade level, at third grade when they’re tested. How they’re not doing math, even remotely proficient at third grade—those numbers get even worse for our black and brown students. 

It’s a national crisis. It really is. We need to get out of the thinking that school choice, education freedom, ESAs, whatever you want to call them, is only a Republican policy and that everyone else should oppose it.

We need to just look at what’s going on in our states, in our communities and in our country and go, “Something has to change.” We all should be championing this, no matter what political party or worldview or ideology we come from.
 
We all deserve to have access to those dollars, and our country, quite frankly. We need it! Because we are falling so behind it’s shocking. It’s quite frankly very, very scary. So that’s my hope. I am an optimist. I think we are moving in the right direction and I do think that as other states pass these programs, we start to have a few years under our belts in a variety of different states, we will start to see those academic outcomes improve.

Whether it’s states that decide to do some sort of evaluations after a student leaves an ESA, or we see higher numbers in post-secondary education because of ESAs in other states. I’m very excited to see what the future holds for those.

And as far as Love Your School goes, we would love to connect with anybody in any state that’s interested in learning more about school options. Even, potentially, starting a Love Your School in your state.

Our website is loveyourschool.org. You can also find us on Instagram. We’re starting to develop Instagrams for every state that you’re in, @loveyourschoolaz. We also have a @loveyourschoolwv because we’re in West Virginia. And then you can also find us on Twitter and Facebook, as well.

So we’d love to connect with you. Please feel free to reach out to us at any time.

ADAMS: Awesome. Jenny, thank you so much for your time today. One thing you stated in your summary statements: you stated that this isn’t just a Republican issue. 

It is true that we’re seeing Republicans pushing this issue more, but I’ll tell you what: when it comes to parents and their kids, they don’t care about Republicans or Democrats. They want the best opportunities. 

And that’s why, as we stated earlier, we need to get the whole politics business out of education. Let’s just really focus on what is best for our kids. I’m a firm believer that the thing that is always best for our kids is when we empower parents to make decisions that they know are best for the children.

Thank you for what you’re doing. Thank you for your leadership in this space. Thank you for being with us today and I hope many of our listeners will check out your website to learn more. 

None of us are islands to ourselves. All of us are working together in our lanes to move the ball down the court. So we value what you’re doing. Thank you so much for joining our podcast today.

CLARK: Thank you so much for having me.