Republish Ep. 24&25 "Where Does Parenting Stop and Teaching Begin?" - Guest Josiah Gaiter

As a former homeschool and public school student, Josiah Gaiter has a well-rounded perspective on education choice. But his expertise doesn’t stop there—he’s also a teacher with experience in the classroom and one-on-one tutoring. In today’s episode, Josiah and Melvin explore the separate, yet complimentary, roles of parents and teachers. Understanding the distinction of each role helps parents and teachers do their jobs more effectively and sets children up for success. 

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Transcript

ADAMS: Our guest today, on The State of Education, is Josiah Gaiter. Josiah works with Freedom Works. I’ve really learned to respect him, he’s a tremendous young man—great mind, very articulate and really has some things of value to say to us. 

And so I’ve asked him to join us today on The State of Education, so Josiah, welcome to the program today. 

GAITER: Well thank you so much for having me, Melvin, and thank you for the kind words. I just feel fortunate to be here and to be able to work in this arena with you. 

ADAMS: Well it’s a privilege. So, Josiah, for those that are watching, why don’t we start off with you sharing a little bit more about yourself: about your upbringing, your personal education, and maybe even your own stint as a teacher for a while. 

GATIER: Yeah, absolutely. So, I feel fortunate to have looked at the education system from a few different angles at least. My parents had this, maybe crazy to some, idea that they were going to homeschool their kids. 

Not only that, they were going to homeschool 9 of them. Some of them all the way through, some a little bit mixed in between. To be honest with you, I don’t actually know how they managed to do it with 9, especially since 7 of us are boys, so… 

ADAMS: Wow. 

GAITER: So, props to my parents just for doing that. So I grew up as a homeschooler and I was homeschooled until my junior year in high school. And at that point we had made a decision and I had talked to my parents about it, that—at that time—there were going to be some benefits for me to go to the local public school. 

And [I] made that transition to public school. So I went from being homeschooled my entire life to going into an entirely new environment. And I happened to excel in that environment and some of my other siblings didn't excel in the homeschool, or didn’t excel in the public school, environment. 

But I happened to do quite well there so I did two years in the public school for my junior and senior year of highschool. And then I went on to college and that’s actually when I started one-on-one doing tutoring and getting an idea of what it’s like. 

And then I went to grad school and was a teaching assistant there and taught undergraduate students and continued to teach highschoolers as well when I was in graduate school. And then, finally after all of this education that I had gone through, I started teaching middle school and high school in Texas, actually, for a handful of years. 

And that was a whole other level. So I’d seen the homeschool system, been acquainted with colleges, teaching that and attending of course, and then I had been teaching part-time and had been doing a lot of tutoring. But then really stepped into the public school system as a teacher for a handful of years. 

And was able to take away what I hope is a lot of information about how we can improve: what’s going well, and why different opportunities might work better for different students. So that’s the quick overview [and I’m] happy to talk about any of those, but that’s a little bit of my journey into some of those parts. 

ADAMS: Super. Well I appreciate you sharing that because everybody's story is a little different and understanding a person’s background, what they’ve experienced for themselves, certainly helps bring perspective into everything. 

Now, if I remember correctly, you were raised in Colorado, is that where you were homeschooled? Is that where you went to junior, senior, and maybe even college? Tell us about that 

GAITER: Yeah, exactly. So I was homeschooled in Colorado until junior year of highschool and then I went to Poudre High School and I did my undergrad in Colorado as well. 

So I actually didn’t live anywhere other than Colorado until I decided to go get my master’s degree in Texas. And that’s where that switch happened. And interestingly enough, at the time, not a ton of people (especially just outside of a college town in Colorado) were homeschooling their kids. 

And what was funny is that my parents would always get the exact-same question about homeschooling and that was, “Aren’t you worried about your kids' social development?” and to that they always said the exact-same thing: “Of course we are, that’s why we homeschool them.”

ADAMS: And that’s why they had 9 kids, right? 

GAITER: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And we felt really fortunate and very prepared. When I went into the public school system, I think there were two things that happened: I got a lot of very good teachers my first year (and the good news is there’s great teachers all over the country). I was just particularly blessed my first year.

So I went into it with high energy, very highly skilled teachers in public school. But also my parents had set me up for success. I really thought that public school was going to be pretty hard, I thought I was going to get C’s and D’s—there were some areas where I had to take courses and catch up—but honestly, I was able to achieve all A’s with what I thought was a relatively simple amount of work. 

And so I attribute that, and many other things in my life, to the foundation that happened partially and mostly because I was homeschooled and had that opportunity prior in life. 

ADAMS So you’re a relatively young man, so let’s just say in the last decade or so, what are some of the kinds of changes that you have seen in education? 

GAITER: Sure, so maybe I’ll tie this into a little bit of my story first and then talk a little bit more about politics and policy. One of the things I noticed (and I distinctly remember and I don’t know why this young kid had this thought in his head) but maybe several months into being in the public school and the high school, I thought to myself, “Wow, it’s really hard for these teachers to parent.” 

And the real question that I came away with is what is the balance [in] society of how teachers parent versus teach and where are we at with that? So what should it be and where are we at? 

And that was, hopefully—I think—an astute observation for a high schooler. Maybe not. Maybe everybody else was thinking the same thing. But when you spend so much time in that school system, it can be hard to draw that line. 

And so I’ll start off by saying that’s one of the things that I think shifted over time, and potentially not in a good way. And we’re starting to see a lot of that come to light over the last 18 years where people are saying, “Wow, okay, we need to make sure that we’re parenting our kids.” or, “The line is too far.” 

Teachers are being expected to parent when they should just really be able to focus on subject matter expertise. And the important thing here is that it’s not fair to try and ask these teachers to try to parent, either. 

So that’s one of the things that I see through my experience that I’ve thought about ever since that day in high school [and] throughout all these items and these phases that I just talked about that I was involved in. 

The other [thing]... when we look at my lifetime and education, we really have two events. Those are Common Core and then COVID, if you will. Common Core was the last big shift that we had in an effort and ability to push for education reform. 

And then we had, with COVID, all of the opportunities to promote parents’ rights, to promote curriculum transparency, to promote educational freedom, but those are way, way bigger than Common Core by a factor of 2 to 3 probably. 

The opportunities and the changes being made are so much better. So what I had been seeing was a whole lot of shift towards government schools taking over more of, let’s loosely say, “parenting” for the students. But now we’ve been presented with this opportunity—the biggest one in my life, for sure—and it’s not particularly close… to reverse that. 

ADAMS: Yeah. 

GAITER: To make sure that we’re equipping educators, we’re equipping parents and that students have the freedoms and that parents have the transparency and the rights to be able to be the best educators for their students. 

ADAMS: Josiah, let me just pop in on a quick response to something you’ve said. You know, I have talked to many, many teachers. I certainly witnessed this myself, so many teachers are there for the right reasons: they love kids, they love their subject matter, they’re passionate, they want to do a great job. 

But so much of what they get saddled with is really parenting issues, as you very-well articulated. And that becomes exhausting because it’s not 1or 2 kids, it’s not 9 kids, it’s a whole classroom full of kids. [And] they’re trying to take care of and juggle all of those needs—sometimes, quite frankly, because of neglect at home, sadly. And sometimes just because the system itself is pushing them to do that. 

Where the system, for monetary purposes, has increasingly taken over more engagement in those spaces just because there are dollars that can be attached to that and are attached to that. And so that has really escalated the workload, the responsibility and the frustration, quite frankly, on our teachers. 

As far as the other changes, those are certainly the big changes—no child left behind and all of the dynamics of that. Many times early on it sounded like a good idea, but like many things, often the legislation comes with unintended consequences. And we certainly saw that in that program. 

Now with COVID, and in some respects it’s the parents—and maybe an educator’s—best friend, because all of a sudden the realities of the classroom came right into the living room. And significant awareness took place with parents. And now folks are saying we want to see change. 

And like you said, some significant movement is happening in that direction, I think we are going to continue to see it happen and I believe some very positive things can be ahead of us if we will pursue it with diligence and with intelligence as well. 

GAITER: I was going to add one other thing—and you kind of reminded me as you said some of that, so I’ll be very brief. The thing that I didn't’ mention was that homeschooling, particularly, is easier, more accessible and the resources available to you are at a higher quality than ever before. 

Which is extremely exciting. It was hard to homeschool and it does take effort to keep your kids involved and engaged in their own community that you might have to build. Heck! Let’s say you get a new job and you move states while you’re homeschooling, it’s hard to build a new homeschool community for your kids. 

I’m not discrediting that. That’s the work that needs to be done but it is easier work than ever before. There are more neighborhood schools, there’s more access to experts who can help with math, they can help with physics classes. 

It’s easier to get your kids into extracurriculars, even if they’re homeschooled, than ever before. So that’s another exciting change that I see. Homeschooling for my parents was a lot scarier than it is for parents today. And that is a wonderful, wonderful thing to be able to say. 

ADAMS: Yeah, that’s great and it’s so definitely true. The resources available now to homeschoolers are so much better and abundant. I would also add that there’s all the co-ops, there’s partnership opportunities with private schools, Christian schools, and of course that whole element of education is growing and flourishing as well. 

So these are days of tremendous opportunity for parents. The bottom line is, if something isn’t working, there are multiple options out there, you just have to pursue them, find them, find out what works best for you and for your children. 

So, Josiah, here’s a question that just seems like a no-brainer-type of a question, but let me ask it anyway. Why is the education of our children so important to you? 

GAITER: Maybe there’s a couple of ways to look at this. So the obvious…and of course I think the same for everyone, is that the hope for our children is that they are able to live lives that they desire, that they’re able to contribute to society, they’re able to contribute to their family, and they’re able to pursue what matters most to them outside of those as well—any personal goals that they have. 

So the idea is to create an environment where they can succeed. And some of that success, in most of it, is determined by them. So you have to have a varied approach. But also we need to think about how we can decide what should be taught? Because that’s very, very broad.  

So part of the reason it matters so much to me, is [because] to reach that success, you have to take into account a couple of realities. The reality is that this world that we all live in is hard for most of us. Most people aren't making a ton of money and those who are still have tons of hardships that they face in life. 

Many people struggle to find out exactly how they want to contribute to society and how they can achieve that. Many people are struggling with what it is to be an expert and be credentialed and what the difference is and how they can succeed there. 

So the question is, when you look at all the challenges that your child will face, how can you set them up to overcome as many of those challenges as possible? Because the main thing that we can offer, that they can’t, is foresight.

Children don’t have the ability to foresee as far as adults and they haven’t failed enough just yet, thank God, as much as we have. So it’s very important to me because it’s easy to say, “Oh I want kids to know how to learn, not just know what to learn” but that’s why that is so important to me. 

So a successful education system has the foresight to say, “Here’s the challenges that you’ll face and here’s information that allows you to operate in a very challenging world in the way you see fit.” 

So we’re not telling them what to do, we’re giving them the tools to do what they want to do so that they can be a member of society, a member of their family, a member of their community that is productive, and, Lord willing, happy! 

ADAMS: Absolutely. Well that’s a great answer. Thank you for sharing that. I think at the end of the day, that’s what all of us want, we want our children to flourish. Because when your children flourish, our communities flourish, our family’s flourish, our society flourishes. 

And we’ve got to have that or we’re going to be in decline. And some would argue that we’ve been struggling in that space. So that kinda leads into another direction. Let’s zero in, just a little bit, into the public education space because this is what the area that’s probably most impacted by what I’m going to ask you. 

How much of the changes that we’ve been seeing going on in our public education have political influences behind them? Talk to us from your own experience, your own engagement, how do you see all of that happening? What has happened? What is happening now on the political front that is driving…? Because, honestly, what we have here are ideological collisions in some respect. Talk to us about that. 

GATIER: At the risk of going too broad to start off with… with some of the changes that we’re seeing now, I think it is a reaction to a long-term strategy from maybe the ideological far Left. And much of that strategy is to say, “Here are our priorities and we want them mirrored throughout the government.” 

So typically the far Left side of the aisle, or those in support of a larger government are also going to want their values instituted throughout those different parts of government that they create. 

So there’s nothing unique about the federal department of education or how they would go about doing that—just like any other part of the government. Create a new part of the government and then put our values, to the best of our ability, into that part of the government. 

So that’s not exactly anything new and that was continued throughout the department of education. And so what we’re seeing today, to really zero in quickly, are things like critical theories, whether it be race or critical gender theory, we’re seeing a lack of transparency. 

We’re seeing a commitment to allies of particular parties, like unions, associations, and coordinations between them and specific parties. And those, really, once you have an entity established, the goal of that entity sometimes can be to retain itself. 

So for example, when you have a budget in most parts of government but especially in several schools, if you haven’t spent your whole budget at the end of the year… not many people go back and say, “Hey, we didn’t spend our whole budget” because then they won’t get as much money the next year.  

So they go and spend all their money at the end of the year, they order 30, 40, 50 (maybe more), thousand dollars worth of equipment just to make sure that they always spend their entire budget so that they can ask for more the next year. 

So oftentimes, the goal is to retain itself. And that’s oftentimes the goal of unions [and] many government bodies. So a lot of that does come from a political place because they build a part of government and then they try to maintain it and insert their values. 

ADAMS: Now in all fairness, I think both sides of the political aisle do this.

GAITER: Yeah! 

ADAMS: It’s just the nature of government, right? It’s the nature of government. I think what is perhaps the most impactful here is… really the far Left have been very intentional about having dominance and having control over our educational system… and this had been for years. 

And so little by little, systematically, they have inserted themselves, put their people in place and so forth, until it has become a well-oiled machine that accomplishes their goals. 

And so I think what’s happened is that influence starts to permeate back out into the broader culture because we are what we think as we think [and] we typically think as we are taught. And so when generations of people are taught in a particular way, new ideas are brought in and they’re being introduced to new values and so forth. 

And that’s how you see culture shifting. And I think that’s just the natural, political process but I think maybe what we’re seeing today is a little bit of an overreach (personally I think it’s a way overreach), particularly in the area of some of the social sides of things. 

And so what we’re seeing now is reaction from parents and others that are saying, “Wait a second. Look, it’s okay for you to educate my kid but my kid is not going to be a laboratory animal that you’re going to experiment on in these ways.”

And maybe that’s an overstatement of how people are thinking, but I think a lot of parents are starting to think in that way and that’s how we’re starting to see some of the push-back against some of the things that have been very—without a lot of people in broader society knowing it, it’s been gradually worked into the curriculum [and] worked into the system and some of us have known this for a long time but now, all of a sudden, the blinders were pulled back when the classroom came to the living room and people have been startled at what’s really been going on in the instruction of their children. Speak to that a little bit. 

GAITER: What people were not startled about was specifically the way that they were teaching math. They didn’t have tons of problems with the teachers’ understanding of the subject or ability to teach multiplication. 

It was that these ideologies were being inserted into math or English. Or that they were having people do privilege walks where, if you’re black, you take a step back and if you’re part of the LGBTQ community, you take a step back because you’re inherently disadvantaged from the start and there’s nothing you can do about it. 

That’s what many parents had a problem with. And you’re exactly right—this was the first time they were seeing all of the extra things. Because if you think back to high school Josiah who said, “Huh, I wonder how much parents and teachers should parent and teach?” 

What they’ve realized is like, “Wow, I honestly just thought these teachers were just having to teach my kid multiplication and addition and mirror generally good values.” But if we take a look at the Overton Window, it’s the idea of what’s acceptable within society and everything within the window is acceptable within society. 

And for a long time people on the right have been saying, “Oh, colleges are indoctrination camps that are certainly not politically neutral.” But what they didn’t realize was that the exact same thing was happening in your highschools with those same sorts of values. 

So these people have tried to exclude many ideas that would typically be relatively politically neutral—not even Right or Left—outside of the Overton Window and say. “No, only our ideology is inside of the Overton Window” and then teach kids that from a very young age and say, “Okay, here’s what’s acceptable within society.”

So that’s what parents were concerned about the subject matter outside of the subject-matter expertise. And I like to say that what we need is for teachers to be able to be subject-matter experts who teach content. And that parents need to teach character. 

And as you said, that means that there is a lot more involvement at home. It is hard when your kids are not home for at least 8 hours a day and they’re with somebody else. And that’s why it’s a hard part for the teacher to balance as well. Because things are going to come up. 

They might have to take care of a situation [and] the kid is going to act out, something has to happen at the school too to deal with it at that moment—so I understand that that’s a balance. But those are a couple of the issues that we run into. 

ADAMS: Yeah, absolutely. So what encouragement can you give to parents and grandparents who are really trying to protect their children and would really like to see education in this country reclaimed? 

GATIER: So, for those individuals the encouragement I have to offer—some of it I’ve already said so I’ll quickly recap that—one is that things like homeschooling, co-ops, microschools, all of those are easier than ever before. 

Also, we’re living in a time when the moment is really now and we’ve done a lot of great work in the last year. So we are absolutely on the right track. When I say that we have more momentum than ever before in my life, that is a really exceptional thing to be able to say. 

So then the encouragement is, now is the time to continue. Before other things come up, before all this other stuff happens, when this is still the focus of society and in the media regularly, now is our chance to make a big change. 

Because other issues are going to come up and we’re going to have to wait a little while before most people are still focused on this exact same thing. 

The other encouragement that I have to offer to these individuals is that you are the only ones that are able to do it. The lobbyists, the policy-makers—all of them—the only thing that can overcome the power of teachers’ unions and the lobbyists that they have and corporate interests—whatever it might be working against what you want and parents’ rights—are the parents. It’s that grassroots army. 

And there’s nobody that cares more about your kids than you. So you have the power, we’ve seen it work over the last couple of years. So we’re looking at an extremely exciting time for that. It’s easier than ever, the time is now, the momentum is now. 

It’s a fantastic and opportune time. Last year saw… I think it was about 18 states that passed laws that expanded education freedom and opportunities for funds to follow students, as opposed to educational systems. We’ve heard congressmen and legislators across the country making this a top priority because many of them are afraid of what these parents will do. 

We’ve seen associations that called parents domestic terrorists lose a third—I think it may be more, maybe two thirds—of their membership. [Like] the national school board association. 

So the power is real, but parents, grandparents—those individuals are the ones that have it. And so a friend of ours, Cory D’Angeles, likes to say, “There’s a new interest group in town and it’s parents.”

And that’s really exciting. They have a lot of power and if you look at what we’ve accomplished [since last year], I hope that they realize that that is a ton of power. 

And the last thing I’ll say is that I said that we were going to get caught up with other things—but if you’re playing chess, you know, if I’m playing chess and, Melvin, since I work in this area a lot and I lobby on behalf of things like parents’ rights—part of my job is to try to play that chess. 

If you’re just thinking about education and you put yourself in a silo as a parent who’s like, “Well what is most important for my education?” Those things like your state legislators, or who your superintendent is (and your school board decides who your superintendent is in your school district) are probably going to impact you more for your education. 

Now there’s other issues [that] parents care about and I understand that. Then worrying about who’s in the white house… So if you’re thinking, “What’s going to impact my kid’s education the most?” you need to be thinking about those state legislators who are going to let the money follow the student, or that state superintendent who’s setting up those policies and enforcing them. Or your school board who’s hiring that superintendent first. 

And then, after you’ve got that in the right place, you can worry about it. But, day-to-day the person in the white house does not have as much impact on what’s going to happen to your kid when they step into a government school, as you might think. 

ADAMS: Absolutely. That’s great stuff. So I think what I would say [is], first of all, you’re absolutely right. In this conversation and at this particular time, the parents and grandparents who are engaged—let me clarify that, those who are engaged—definitely have the loudest voices in the room. 

They have authority because they are voters and they are engaged and they have the most direct, and actually the most legal, rights when it comes to their children. And so that is a huge block of voters. 

And we’re seeing just amazing responses from parents and grandparents. We see all these different moms groups across the country, other organizations that are coordinating at a local county and city level, parents coming together [and] engaging with their school board members. 

I will say this—it’s not good enough to get mad over whatever the issue is that you most dislike. What is important is that parents educate themselves well and then engage with their leaders in a way that helps those folks understand that they’re not going to go away, that they have opinions, that they have votes. So that those leaders clearly know the changes that they expect. 

And of course, [the] bottom line is, if those leaders don’t respond to their constituency then the constituency can respond to those leaders. And we have seen that happen in a massive way over the last year. And I think we’re going to see it even increase in the year to come—particularly at the school board races. 

But you talked about the different levels of folks involved, you know, where the bigger impact is. I guess I would encourage parents and grandparents [to] get educated on the issues, know who the players are (the good ones and the ones who are not supporting your issues) engage with them, and then when you go to the ballot box, start at the bottom and work your way up, okay? 

Because, typically with the ballot box, you start at the top and you go with the highest offices and you work your way down, but the ones at the bottom are the ones that actually impact your lives the most—especially when it comes to the education of your children. 

A lot of people don’t even vote on those issues. They start at the top, check off the first couple of issues, then leave. So those lower-level elections are absolutely critical. So, Josiah, anything you want to add to that? 

And then let’s talk just a little bit about teachers and school board members and legislators. Because those kinds of folks are listening as well. And, look, our goal here is to support people, to give them the best resources they can get to be problem solvers… 

GATIER: I like to say something very similar to what you said. When this all started, there was a whole lot of anger. And it’s okay to have anger—the question is, what do you do with that? and you don’t want to marinate in that emotion for very long. 

So your anger quickly turned into passion when parents, grandparents, and people who cared across the country, said, “Okay, I’m over the anger, but what am I going to do for the good of the children?” which we discussed earlier. 

ADAMS: Yeah. 

GAITER: Then, your passion needs to turn to action. And in between the passion and the action is the education step that you talked about. So the last encouragement that I would say is [to] keep thinking about what is achievable for you and look at the resources around you. 

So I hope that you’ll look at FreedomWorks, at Noah Webster Educational Foundation and say, “Okay. Maybe I can’t do everything all at once. I can’t solve all the education problems, but you know what? I can really help with curriculum transparency in my school district. And I’m going to focus on that first. I’m going to use the resources—from groups like us—to get that done”

And then if I’m also going to engage… “Okay, I care about school choice, but maybe I can’t spend all my time on that, but maybe I could engage a little bit with another group that’s doing that. So, there’s so many resources around, don’t try to do everything by yourself. 

Get educated about what’s going to make the most change, try to make that change and then keep moving from there. So like everything, take steps to make sure that you’re successful. Because none of us are going to solve this overnight, there’s a lot of opportunity for each of us to focus on a couple of problems and get some progress there. 

And if we’re all working on these problems together, but different groups focus on things, we’re going to get a lot further. But we don’t want anybody getting burned out. But yeah! I’d be happy to talk about the different levels of teachers all the way up to congress maybe. 

ADAMS: Yeah, so… first of all, well-said about the steps there. So you’ve got teachers who listen to this program, school board members, legislators. Just quickly, and I don’t want to belabor this, but what do you have to say to them, specifically to core principles and best practices in education? 

Here’s what I learned a long time ago. Teachers are there to teach our kids and they need to be supported. They need to have the shackles taken off and they need to have liberty and freedom to actually do the job—not all the extra curricular stuff but the real focus of their profession needs to be promoted. 

When it comes to school boards, when it comes to state legislators and even federal, congress and so forth. Everybody is looking for solutions because that’s what they’re there for. They’re there to fix things. But most people aren’t experts in all of these things. 

And so just some simple solutions that can be encouraged for those who are listening, that they can take actionable steps or at least inquire into. Do a little bit of study and research to really find out [that] these are some of the best things that can happen in our schools if we can make these kinds of policies. Without going too deep into this, just highlight a few things. 

GAITER: So, the first—especially for policy-makers, whether that is school board members, all the way up to congress, is to consider it from the perspective of the parents’ job to educate the child. And everything we do is to help supplement that. So they’re the expert. We’re not experts on their child. 

So we’re trying to facilitate and make it easier for parents and provide services for those parents to educate their child—and opportunities to do it in a variety of ways. So if you start with that perspective then you set up a nimble education system and environment that allows the parent to say, “Okay, what is working? What isn’t working? Where do we need to increase discipline? What’s happening here?” 

All those sorts of things. So you start from that perspective and say, okay, ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s not the state’s kid, it’s not the teacher’s kid (it’s the teacher’s student, for sure! But not their kid.)

So who is responsible at the end of the day? The parent. Which means our perspective should generally be [about] how we can support the parents and the families so that they then can be that primary person. So we’re in a support role. That is really, really helpful. 

And then when we’re at the school board level, there’s a couple of key things here. So we talk a lot about curriculum transparency, we talk a lot about these critical theories. A lot of these school boards are implementing these policies already. 

So there’s a couple of things that school board members can be doing. School board members can work to make sure that these things are more transparent, and make sure that their superintendents are implementing more policies that are transparent for teachers. 

Because you know what parents need? Parents need to be able to be that involved party that I just described because they need to know exactly what’s going on. Why did they get involved when COVID started happening? Because they knew exactly what was going on! It’s not rocket science here. 

ADAMS: Yep, yep. 

GAITER: So let’s make it easier. We don’t need full-year requests or open-records requests for parents to know what’s going on. And then for state legislators what we will see… What Melvin and I talked about through my experience and for several of these students, since COVID, was really all just saying, “We gave the students the opportunity to succeed.” 

So, our job [is to] support parents as a state legislator and give parents the opportunity to succeed. Don’t say, “We know what’s best for your child and we think that it should only be these two options: this government school or paying, yourself, for private school.” 

Say, “Hey, with your money, through your local and state taxes, we want you to be able to take advantage of a variety of opportunities because we’ve said our perspective is to support the parents, not to decide for them.”

So all this comes from a very liberty-minded influence, which is [to] support people in their decisions. We’re not the experts in their kids. They are—and it’d be kind of foolish to say I was the expert in somebody else’s kid. 

Now, when I was a teacher I wasn’t. I was an expert in the subject matter and that was it. I knew where the students were on that subject matter but I didn’t know what was going on at home. You know, I just didn’t know that kid that well. So it’d be kinda foolish for me to say otherwise. 

ADAMS: Yeah. And so, particularly, like to legislators, I would add this. In every industry, we find that we get better products and cheaper costs when there are more choices. You get more people engaged in that space, more business involved in that space, and that competition will—all by itself—make things better. 

Both from the standpoint of production, and also from the standpoint of the consumer. They get a better product at a lesser cost, almost always. And education is exactly the same thing. And unfortunately in way too many states (particularly in Virginia) government education is an extreme monopoly. 

And we should be encouraging more choices for parents, more opportunities for them to make the decisions for their children and taxpayer money should follow the student. Always. Not the organization, as you stated. 

Because education is not about the educational system. Education is about the future of our children. And so that’s where the investment needs to be made. And so, I think if we work hard together—everybody understands these basic concepts… and if we can bring more agreement around these things, I think some great days are ahead for us all. 

GAITER: Yeah, absolutely. I said one time that buildings, or schools, are not sacred. The building that it happens in—there’s nothing sacred about that. What happens in that building is sacred. And we have great teachers…

We have a variety of great schools across the country, but we have a lot of work to do to make sure that we’re truly capturing those best teachers, allowing them to focus, capturing those best schools are doing and copying that across the board, and making sure that we trust parents. 

Because this process doesn’t have to happen in any particular building. It can be in a church basement, it can be in a house with other kids from across the cul de sac and a retired science teacher of just one parent who happens to know that subject well. 

There’s nothing about a building that is inherently valuable. It’s what happens in the building and that can happen in any building. And so when we trust parents to come to that perspective, I know there’s a ton of untapped opportunities there.

ADAMS: Well that’s awesome. Let me kinda sum up what you just said there this way. Buildings are important, but they don’t educate. 

GAITER: Yes. 

ADAMS; Well hey, Josiah, it’s been great having you today, this has been fun. I hope those who are listening had some really good take-aways today. Thank you for all the work you are doing. And we’re just going to keep working hard for the American people and for our families and children and schools, our teachers—everybody involved. 

This is such a critical part of our country, of our communities right now, and certainly for the future. And so let’s keep working at it and [with] all of us together, good days are ahead. 

GAITER: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Melvin, and I’m looking forward to working together!

ADAMS: I hope you enjoyed this show, and if you did, let me encourage you to like our channel and follow it. You can certainly learn more at our website, which is www.nwef.org. The organization is Noah Webster Educational Foundation