The False Front of School Choice: How to Reframe the Debate

The school choice debate isn’t about opposing options. It’s about demanding fairness. Real choice requires real facts, accountability, and access for all students. This episode unpacks how misleading language and policies distort public understanding and offers clear, effective talking points to help advocates reframe the conversation and win the narrative for public education.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So today I want to get into powerful talking points, sound bites, if you will, elevator speeches, things that grab your audience and have impact on them very, very quickly, right? And it's mainly around the topic of how do we discuss school choice. Now, if you've listened to me at all, you know that I am a huge fan of America. I'm a huge fan of choice. I want to, I want to be able to eat french fries and tater tots. I want to, I want to drive Fords and Chevy's and tourists, whatever. I want choices and I love choices. But you also know that school choice is not really choice at all. It's a false front, right? So how do we discuss without looking anti, without looking like we're against things? We need to be for things. We are for the children. And I think we should be for choice if it was done the right way. But I think about this word choice, and it's a suckers game. It's a suckers game because just adding, well, it's all about school choice. It's not about school choice. There is no choice right now. And but but once you start to control an argument, control an argument, and you control the words, you can manipulate the heck out of people. So let's I'm gonna I'm gonna give you a few examples before I get into school choice, all right? And the one that just kind of popped in my head, well, I'll give a couple ones. So no child left behind. Remember when no child left behind came out? It sounds like we're not gonna leave any child behind. But that's not what it did. I mean, it may have not let any children behind. It may have left children behind. I don't know. But there was no goal or key performance indicator with no child left behind. What it did was, is it tied um schools to testing and then graduation rates. Wait a minute. Why didn't the law say instead of no child left behind, standardized testing for children's law? Wouldn't that have been more accurate? But that is not sexy. And it doesn't get you, you know what gets you to vote for it? No child left behind. How you're against no child left behind? That means you're wait a minute, you're for leaving children behind? How dare you? I mean, it's a bunch of BS, man. It's it's the words are designed to trick us and to shame us. Oh, oh, almost, oh my God. And then and then I think about this this one's gonna get you if you haven't heard this one. Clean coal. This I don't know if you guys heard of this clean coal. We're gonna use cleaned coal to do our power plants and all this stuff. And I put this in a I put this in Google and and uh ChatGPT because I was trying to look for some examples, but even the example they give has a false front in it. And the computer didn't even catch it, but I caught it. I caught it. It said this it sold clean coal was sold as environmentally friendly coal. But the reality check, that's what it wrote here, is that coal is a non-renewable fossil flu with significant emissions. Clean refers only to add-on controls. But hey, ChatGBT, you wrong. Because there's not one fossil in fossil fuels. I bet you didn't know that. Did you not know that? Caroline, did you know that? There are no fossil fuels. There, it's not like dinosaur remnants are in coal. And I thought this the whole time growing up because they call it fossil fuels. It's not from fossils. Fossils are like decayed organic matter. It's not that at all. That was a term that they coined it because they thought that that would make it more likable by people. Well, these are from these are fossil fuels, so it's natural. It's like this world natural. If it's natural, it must be better. What?

unknown 3:28

E.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

coli's natural? Ewbonic plates natural? There are lots of natural things that are terrible, terrible for you. Natural does not mean better, but we're sold and we're manipulated and we're marketed to with these awesome phrases. Like, it's all natural. I don't care. Oh, I gotta do one more. I gotta do one more. Fat free. There was all this stuff. This is I mean 15, 20 years ago. Fat-free, fat-free, no fat, no fat. And and we all got sold that fat was bad. Like in your diet, like you get carbs, protein, fats, and all this other stuff, right? But those are the principal ones. Well, fat's good for you. Fat's good, carbs are good, protein's good, fat's good. Now, who was promoting the fat-free stuff? The sugar industry. The sugar industry, lobbyists. They wanted you to put more sugar in stuff because sugar doesn't have any fat, but sugar is not good for you. It tastes wonderful, but it's not good for you. Fat is much better for you than sugar. Okay, so they manipulate us with these words. So I want you to start off with the premise. I'm not into the talking points of the narrative yet. I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you kind of a checklist. Uh uh, a matter of fact, I think we can probably even email this out, like talking points for how to discuss school choice and and win. And when how to discuss school choice and win, I think is the goal of this podcast. All right, so oh okay, so so I want you to be pro and I want you to be organized, and I don't want you to sound like you're against anything. You're for great education, you're for making schools the best they can be to train the most number of children possible. And that's always the dream, and that's where I want you to stay at. So I don't want you to use this anti-language. Anti-language means you're against, but but what's important is that you're for something. You're for something. And I want you to be for the the kids. I want you to be for creating the best adults possible, which I think is the goal of public education. I think the goal of all education should be creating outstanding adults. Whatever that looks like, I don't know what I don't think that it's a one-stop shop. I don't think that everybody that means something to everybody. Uh, it should mean something different to everybody, but as long as you feel like you're successful, have a chance at the American dream, whatever, that's awesome, right? So it's not about making you the best test taker, like no child left. It shouldn't be about just graduating you so that you have a diploma, but you think the earth is flat. Like that's bad. All right. Like that's not good. All right. Um, I don't expect you to have to do calculus. I can't do calculus, but but I don't need I maybe I need it, but I don't use calculus, and I think I'm doing okay. Good enough. All right. So let's get into how to discuss the narrative about what you're for. And yes, it's it is to make school choice an actual choice. And I think that's my first talking point. As it stands now, school choice is really not a choice at all. You see how I paused? You see how I paused? Sit with it, let it sit. Don't keep arguing with people. School choice isn't a choice at all. Let them ask the question. Well, what do you mean it's not a choice? They get to pick all these schools. No, no, no. They get to pick the school that's promoted to them the most. They get to pick the school that's advertises, that markets them, that has the less bureaucratic nature attached to them, the one that's not being graded by the state, right? They could be, they could have marketing propaganda. They could just be convinced that a choice is the right one, even if it's not right for them. In order for a choice to be real, you should have all the facts. And this is why in America, in America, in America, we have in the court system the adversarial process. Both sides get to present their facts to a jury or a judge, and they decide. I didn't say it was perfect, but it's the best system the humanity's ever come up with. Factual, not emotional. We're gonna let both sides present and you're gonna pick. There's no such thing as an unbiased person. So we're gonna have, we're gonna advocate your side and that side, and that's the way you got to start thinking about. You're gonna advocate, you're gonna get promoted. Same thing we do for political campaigns. Now I got it. Elections are terrible, messy, messy, messy things. It's better than a dictator. It's better than a king or queen that never gets voted on, you never get to choose. All right, it's messy, it's not great, but if the candidates present all the information possible to a voter, we're going to hope that the voter then gets to make an informed decision, maybe they do some independent research. What's the difference between a voter and a parent? Well, nothing. They're the exact same people, by the way, because I hope parents vote, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And just make it a decision. You're just making an important decision, right? So we're advocating for something, not against something. We need the people to vote for you, not vote against school choice. Okay, so the first premise is well, school choice isn't a choice at all. Would you like to know more? All right. And so, and then you can, I'm gonna start giving you the talking points around that. So remember this the common ground, and there's a lot of common ground with people that believe in school choice, but don't understand its devastating effects. It's our job to educate them, right? Okay, so so every parent really wants fundamentally like three things. We do a lot of national polls. We've got one that'll it'll be out in another month or so on what do parents want with their schools? Well, they want their kids safe. No surprise. There, safety means a lot of different things to different people, but safe in general. Two, they want their child successful. They have to define sex success in their own family. So that'll that'll be an individual choice. And then some third thing. Uh, maybe they're really focused on teachers today, maybe they're focused on extracurricular activities, maybe they're but they want to feel good about their choice, right? And they want to believe it's gonna lead them to a brighter, shinier future. All right, so now the desire for choice. Remember, choice is not the enemy. You can't say you're anti-choice because the desire for choice comes from wanting the best thing for children. And I know that that's what you want. I know you want the best thing for children. I want the best thing. Well, not all children. I'm thinking about my daughter right now. She very rambunctious phone call last night. She's in college. Now I guess I do want the best for her. Okay. But yeah, I mean, like, what why would we want the best thing for children? Because if all children are well educated, we're gonna have a great, vibrant society of people that can take care of themselves, help others, provide positive feedback to the economy, take care of their family, and get out of my way when I'm driving my car down the highway. Like, like put their shopping carts up. I want people that will put their sharpen carts up when they leave the grocery store. They fit the with the social contract, right? All those things. Okay, so choice is good if it's a real choice. And I want you to continue to indicate that. Now, there's a rule in communication that when you are sick to death of saying something, they just started to listen. So I'm gonna continue to reiterate this. It's it's there's no real choice right now, but we'd love to get it to be a choice. We'd love to get it to be a real choice. It's not a real choice yet. It's it's a fake choice, it's a false front choice. But we would love it if it was a real choice. That way you don't seem like you're against anything, right? Do you you kind of get the get the psychology of this? All right. So most Americans, by the way, this is gonna be a shocking fact to you. Most Americans want the same thing politically, ideologically. Like 73, 75%, it used to be as high as 80, but it's drifted in the 70s. Pretty much all want the same stuff. We get trapped in political parties, we get trapped, trapped into ideology, we get trapped into whether or not we're for or against school choice. But we should all be for getting the kids to be better. So this shouldn't be a political issue at all. All right. So when we start to talk about why it's not a fair choice, you got them. You got them. Once you start, well, tell me why it's not a fair choice, then you have somebody open to learning and to having a dialogue. So I want that to be the main theme is I love choice. This isn't that. Would you like to know more? Right? Okay. So, first off, I and we're polling this actually. We're getting ready to poll this of school district administrators and parents across the nation because I think there's a misunderstanding about what it is. It's so I'd ask him a question. Do you think A, give them a give him a multiple choice? People love to follow out surveys. A, do you think that all schools of all types, if they get any government money, because those are the ones that that we should have some say over? Once that you want to do a homeschool, you want to do an independent learning journey, God power to you, right? We're talking about schools that take tax dollars, okay? Because that that's if it's in the form of a voucher, uh, uh a grant, a savings account, or you know, you put your kid in public school and we fund the public schools. If you are using tax dollars, that's when the government should have a say, right? Do you A, want all those schools that receive tax dollars to take standardized testing? B, you only want traditional public schools to do uh testing, or C, none of them should do testing. Let them pick. Let them pick, all right? Now, if they pick B and they say, I only want public schools to have testing, well, why? I mean, if testing is so awesome, if we believe in standardized testing so much, why don't you want it for all the kids? I thought our goal was to make life great for all children. If standardized test should be the hallmark, the the only key performance indicator that that matters, why don't we make them all do it? So, so now you're starting to flush out somebody that's either full of it or they're gonna start to learn. Now, I'm only worried about the ones that want to learn, right? Trust me, there's a lot of them out there, and it's our job to educate them. So, so now wait a minute, if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. But right now, going back to the choice argument, schools that receive vouchers and all these other, I'm gonna say I'm gonna say vouchers, but please realize that I'm talking about any kind of form of state money, government money going to a school, you know, so I don't have to keep saying a thousand disclaimers, right? Is that, but they don't have to do it. Private schools that take vouchers do not have to do standardized testing. Okay, should all schools be graded? Now, in most states, schools get a grade, and that influences a buying decision. Parents look at that grade and and the grade does not say, wow, man, like we have a very impoverished population. We have a lot of children that are more worried about having their power on at night and if they're gonna eat at night, uh uh versus an area that, you know, the parents can afford tutoring and read books to them and um really support their education, right? We don't talk about that. We just talk about a flat letter grade as if everyone's quitted equal and everyone should fit into a little cookie cutter mold. It's not true. Okay. But but you look at those letter grades, you're well, this one got a C and this one got an A. Well, where do you want your kid to go? I want my kid to go to A, because that's the piece of information that I have. That's all I know. I don't know whether or not the C school really has more things for my child. A better band program, maybe a better extracurricular activity, a better STEM program, but but for some reason they got a C. I don't know, but it's an easy decision if I could just look at a letter grade. I just want, I want straight A's, I want A's. That's what that school I'm gonna pick, right? Okay. So I'm gonna ask you the same question. Should every school that receives government money have a letter grade? Or should just the traditional public schools? Well, right now it's just a traditional public school. So how is that a fair choice? We're ranking them. Are you just making the assumption that every private school's an A? It's ridiculous. I mean, it's I mean, I have yet to find somebody that when I when I make this argument to them, they say, yes, every private school is the best. It is the bomb. Every parochial school, every religious school, every homeschool, every virtual school, every charter school is the best. And every public school is bad, or exactly what their letter grade says. I mean, do you have you understand how when you take away that data point, what you're doing is you're making the parents, the caregivers, I'm saying parents, but you know what it caregivers, make a choice based off of a letter grade instead of going and finding more information. So why do we do it for one, but we don't do it for all? So that's not really a choice at all, is it? What about the Americans with Disabilities Act? Do we like the Americans with Disabilities Act? Does that feel good to us that we're taking care of people with with disabilities and want to give them the same access to becoming an outstanding adult? I'm gonna go with yes. If they say no, you're talking to a flat earther and you probably need a boogie. You probably go go educate somebody else. Don't waste your time at this point, right? But if you believe in it, how come all these others don't have to comply with Americans with Disabilities Act? What about transportation, meals, counseling, nurses, extracurricular activities? They're not guaranteed in any well, extracurricular activities are guaranteed in any school nowadays, but primarily they're from the traditional public schools who are the ones that fund those. Primarily, I mean I'm not saying that the private schools don't have some great extracurricular activities, but all these ancillary services to help the children in the most need, which by some estimates is as much as 20 to 28 percent of the total student population is in need of some help. Not maybe a full-fledged DSM disability um or physical ailment, but anxiety, stress, poor nutrition, no food at home, whatever. Well, the public schools have got to train. The public schools have got to take care of them, they have to accept them. The other schools don't. And I had an argument, I was at a conference, and a woman, she was really bright, a former superintendent, and she goes, Brian, everyone's gotta apply with these federal laws, Title I, Title VI, Title I. You can't discriminate. I go, Oh, you're right, you're right. If only the law was so clearly and easily discerning. It's not. If I've got 300 seats in a private school, I can give those under the cover of darkness to whoever I want. And I am not gonna pick, because I'm a human being, the ones with the biggest pains in the butt, the students are the most pro the students where I've got to get them transportation, where they need meals, where they need nurses, they need anxiety help, they need, you know, wheelchair accessible, whatever, whatever, whatever. And I get, I get wheelchair accessible is under another form of the Americans of Disability Act. I get it, but you you know what I mean? Like I can just be a little bit picky and say, well, I only have 300 seats. A public school cannot say, we only have 300 seats. They have to take everybody that shows up, which means they've got to provide every level of service or at least take everyone from where they are. That argument alone lets you know there is no choice. And if we expect people to be, we used to talk about uh uh backfilled rooms with smoke where men were making with cigars or making decisions, smoke-filled rooms, making decisions about what happened to you. It's still happening. It's just happening in the in the board moons and the missions departments of all these private schools that are taking your vouchers. You really think that they're gonna take on a bunch of liability they can't afford to pay for? Nope, they're not. And if you're that naive, uh, I don't know what to tell you. Um, people do kooky things behind the kind of cover of darkness and say, well, let's get into the next issue why it's really not a choice. The cover of darkness. Uh we have elected boards that can be voted in or out on public schools. We have FOIA requests, sunshine laws, freedom of information acts, where we can get every piece of data the public school has. I mean, with the exception of, you know, some student with exception of privacy student data, which is another protective law. Um, can you FOIA request the board meeting of a private school? Nope. Can't do it. Private, it it freedom of information act, sunshine laws deal with the government. And a private school, parochial school, is not the government. So you're not gonna get those. It's not an elected board. You don't know who's in charge, you don't get to change who's in charge. Now I get what somebody's gonna say, but the parents can always choose to go somewhere else. Yes, yes, if they're provided with accurate information, with real information, without these biased of a letter grade on these schools, but no letter grade on these schools. Standardized tests by these schools, regardless of where the student was last year and where they are now, just where they are right now is the only thing that matters, apparently. But but over here, they can give you any propaganda, any marketing they can to convince you to stay or to convince you to go. And you won't even know how good the other schools are. You won't even know it because you don't even have access to all the right information. Access to information alone lets you know that we have no real school choice. If we did, public schools would be marketing and advertising their services at the same volume as all these other schools, and they're not, they don't even have time, they don't have the budgets for it. It's it's tough. Okay. So, what about money? Let's talk about money. Why money hinders the choice also? If you believe the parents really have a choice, do the vouchers pay for tuition dollar for dollar? And almost all circumstances the answer is no, it's not. The parents still have to augment, or the caregivers still have to augment their tuition dollars. And there's a lot of data, I won't get into it today, but there's a lot of data out there that says that when these vouchers come out, the only people that are like 80%, I think this is in New Hampshire and New Mexico, but don't I'll have to fact-check myself on that one. Where they ran studies after their voucher programs, and they said basically 80% of the people are already in private school, they just took the money as a voucher to augment what they were paying. Maybe they deserve that, maybe they don't, but it didn't get any new kids a choice. Like 20% of kids had a choice because if the tuition for the school is$12,000 and the voucher's six, well, they still got to come up with$6,000. And for some people, that's still a Herculean effort, and that's not gonna happen. So, so really the schools, uh, you know, I know we're all supposed to be, you know, perfect angels and perfect creatures. Are so if a voucher's 9,000 and they don't want to get the undesirables, the little Brian Stevens is to come to school there, they just move that tuition from 9,000 to 11,000. Wait, wait, now the vouchers are 11,000. Okay, we're gonna make our tuition 13,000. We can keep moving that needle up to bar undesirables, whatever that looks like. And we can also pick and choose, pick and choose who who we take. And if you think it's not fair, it's not. But I remember when I was a young lawyer, and as a young lawyer in a big law practice, only goal is to bill a ton of hours. Just bill, bill, bill, bill, bill, make a lot of money, right? For for the bosses, you didn't make a lot of money then. Bill, bill, bill, bill, bill. And then you would get charged as a young lawyer with hiring law students as interns or hiring new associates, and they would walk in with a stack of resumes. Yes, it was before the internet and all that stuff, but you get a stack of resumes. And there were hundreds and hundreds of them. Uh, you know how we did the first, how we thinned it out first? We would throw this stack. We would throw the stack hundreds in the air. Me and a couple other associates. I didn't start this game, but I sure continued it. We'd just throw them up. And anyone that landed outside the normal area of the circle, we keep. Everyone that landed inside the circle, we felt like we're a little too boring, and we toss them. Totally unfair. They might have been the best person in the world, but it's time and it's energy. And we didn't have time to go through every resume and send every single person a thank you for applying, but I it would have been nice, it would have been ideal. People are gonna dog me out, but that's the way people work. No, unless you, oh, I know. Some people are so tight they'd read every single resume, they'd go through everyone, they'd send a letter, and those were the associates that got fired. Because they weren't billing any hours. The key performance indicator for our young associate was not hiring great employees, it was billing hours. That's what we got rewarded for. That's what we focused on, right? Okay, so oh, okay, so so if they can just keep moving the needle from price and they can also be picky in the cover of darkness on who they accept, you know that the ones that need the most need are not gonna get there. So why don't we fix that before we actually say that this is real choice? Let's just do that, all right? So I'm gonna kind of uh this, I think I'm gonna try to work up a like a one-page document for for everybody, but I think that the call to action here is we're not asking to end options. We're not against anything. We are for the kids. And only ask is to make it fair, to make it equitable and just for all the students, and then we can get right behind it because public schools deserve a fair fight. And if they have a fair fight, fair funding, fair accountability across all these different education systems, they're gonna win. But if we destroy them, because we're not making it equitable and fair, you know, society's doomed. I'm I'm sorry, it's it's true. Ugh, I got so much to do with these podcasts. So, so let's talk about what we're for. And we're we're for making a really awesome, fair choice to let parents make the best choice possible so the kids become the most successful they can be. All right, I'm gonna keep working on this, but I hope this gives you something to reflect upon. And I'd love to hear your comments and emails about which way you want me to go next. All right, thanks. Bye.