Freedom to Learn

Shaka Mitchell on Education Freedom, Teacher Bonuses & Rural Schools in Tennessee

• Ginny Gentles • Season 1 • Episode 11

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This week on Freedom to Learn, we break down a major development in Tennessee’s education landscape—the passage of the Education Freedom Act of 2025. Passed during an emergency legislative session, this new statewide program expands school choice while making historic investments in public education. Governor Bill Lee, in his State of the State address, declared, “Tennessee will strive to have the best public schools in the nation and give parents choices in their child’s education, both at the same time.”

But what does this mean for families, students, and schools? Shaka Mitchell joins us to unpack the details, debunk common education freedom myths, and explore the real impact on rural communities, students with disabilities, and public school funding. Tune in for a thoughtful discussion on what’s next for education in Tennessee.

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Ginny Gentles (0:00)
Welcome to Freedom to Learn, the podcast that champions choice in education, defends parental rights, and exposes the harm caused by school unions. I'm Ginny Gentles, Director of Education, Freedom, and Parental Rights at DFI, the Defense of Freedom Institute in Washington, DC.

Shaka Mitchell (0:21)
When people talk about defunding the system, I might suggest that if that’s your concern, you are concerned with the wrong end user. To me, the end user is students.

Ginny Gentles (0:34)
This is an exciting week in the education world with the confirmation hearing for President Trump's nominee for US Secretary of Education scheduled for Thursday morning. Linda McMahon served as a member of President Trump's cabinet in his first term as head of the Small Business Administration. Education is primarily a state and local issue though, so rather than focus on the hoopla in Washington, DC, we're diving into some exciting developments from Tennessee. The state's new Education Freedom Act of 2025 creates a new statewide school choice program and make significant investments in traditional public education. More than a dozen states have now created universal education freedom programs with more to come. 

Joining us today is Shaka Mitchell, Senior Fellow for the American Federation for Children, co-host of the Quality Matters podcast, and an adjunct professor of political science at Belmont University. Shaka will help us navigate the ins and outs of the new law and unpack some common myths about education freedom, especially those pushed by unions and union-backed politicians.

Ginny Gentles (1:36)
Shaka Mitchell, welcome to Freedom to Learn.

Shaka Mitchell (1:38)
Thanks, Ginny. Thanks for having me.

Ginny Gentles (1:40)
There's great news out of Tennessee where you currently live. Tell us what's happening with education freedom there.

Shaka Mitchell (1:45)
Yeah, really exciting news. Just a few weeks ago, I guess two weeks ago, a week and a half ago, we passed the Education Freedom Accounts program. And it's really exciting and this was a long time coming, took a lot of work, many hands. I'd like to say many hands made light work, but it was heavy work. We put in a lot of time really for many, many years to get this done, but it represents a tremendous opportunity for students across Tennessee.

Families of all income levels really and especially families who have been struggling for a long time to find the right education opportunities for their children.

Ginny Gentles (2:24)
Education Freedom Act of 2025 establishes a new statewide school choice program in Tennessee, also makes additional new state investments in public education?

Shaka Mitchell (2:34)
Yeah, there were a few things, actually two primary pieces that dealt with the public school system. One is a $2,000 bonus to all K-12 public school teachers, which is a big deal, right? I mean, there's a lot of teachers, we're talking statewide. And what's special about that is the money is created in such a way that it is really designed to go directly to teachers, because we know that sometimes what happens, frankly often what happens, is that the state legislature, Tennessee General Assembly for instance, will approve say a pay increase for public school teachers and much of that money never makes it down to the teacher, right? It gets caught up in the LEA, in the district, in the bureaucracy and next thing you know teachers say, hey what happened to that pay increase we were supposed to get? And it results in like a $20 per paycheck bump which is nothing. 

So this is really designed to go right to teachers. So that's $2,000 per teacher, every teacher across the state. And then the second thing is a new account that's set up to help with some capital improvements across districts, you know, districts across the state. We've got, I think 95 counties, about that many districts, and it's going to help with, you know, some building enhancements.

Ginny Gentles (3:56)
Well, this is a common thing to do now when states are looking at opportunities for expanding education options. They're coupling that with investments specifically in teachers. I'm seeing a lot of that, making sure that teacher salaries are addressed or in this case, these teacher bonuses are provided. Was that a new approach in Tennessee?

Shaka Mitchell (4:16)
It is a new approach. I mean, I think what's new is, as you mentioned, coupling an education freedom plan with like a teacher bonus or some teacher benefit. And I think what's new about it is doing it in one piece of legislation. What's not new is that we can do two things at the same time, right? We can care about a family's right to choose the best education environment for their student.

On the one hand, we can do that, and on the other hand, we can really value quality teachers because, you know, I don't know about you, but when we had our first child, we knew pretty quickly that homeschooling was actually not for us. We were like, no, we really value teachers a lot, and we value great teachers and need them. So let's do that. So anyway, all to say, I think Tennessee's legislation, what it's doing is saying, “Hey, we can do both of these. can increase educational choice and we can value teachers now in one legislative package.”

Ginny Gentles (5:20)
Yeah, I'm so grateful for my daughter’s teachers. I am not a patient person. I'm regularly impressed with the patience and classroom management and just commitment that my daughter’s teachers have. So I love the way that these education freedom proposals are now being combined with an acknowledgement that teachers are really important. 

All right, so it kind of looked like this Education Freedom Act in Tennessee was a piece of cake. There was this emergency legislative session. Tennessee was the first state out the gate with passing an education freedom bill this year. House vote on final passage, 54 to 44. Senate vote on passage, 20 to 13. How did you get here?

Shaka Mitchell (5:59)
Yep.

Ginny Gentles (6:00)
How did you get here?

Shaka Mitchell (6:01)
Yeah. Well, as I mentioned, this is not a one year sort of snapshot deal, though we're really excited that Tennessee is the first in 2025 to make it happen. I think there's going to be several other states that pass programs, maybe even in the coming weeks and certainly months, but we're excited to be first out the gate. But this is something that multiple governors have worked on.

So Governor Bill Lee is the current governor. He's in his second term. And so he's been a champion of this really since day one. And that was 2018, right? So he's been championing this for some time. Governor Bill Haslam before him also tried to get some education choice bills passed.

And again, it was just a challenging environment. We were able to get some, a smaller program passed in 2019, an education savings account pilot program. So we're excited about that. And it does do some, you know, a lot of good, but we just knew there was a lot more work to be done. And so, you know, things change. Obviously politics is important. Who is voting matters. And so I think voters across Tennessee let their representatives know that this was a priority. More than two thirds of voters from both parties support education freedom. And so that was really evident I think to a lot of House members. And actually when this passed, it was on the floor, it passed with bipartisan support. and so that doesn't happen every day either.

Ginny Gentles (7:47)
That's a huge victory in itself and also a return back to kind of the old days of school choice when of course this is a bipartisan issue. When students are not being served by their residentially assigned school, of course they should have options, particularly students who are in areas where schools are historically failing them. And that was the case for the Education Savings Account program that you mentioned that was passed back in 2019. You mentioned that it's small, but Shaka, I remember talking to you at the time, this was a huge victory at the time. 

Shaka Mitchell (8:19)
It was a huge victory, yeah.

Ginny Gentles (8:20)
Yeah, this was in the before times before we did these big universal school choice programs. So tell us a little bit about that ESA.

Shaka Mitchell (8:28)
So back in 2019, the program that passed, and as you mentioned, it was a before times because COVID changed so much, right? The confluence of COVID school shutdowns, technology and sort of emergent methods to be able to teach kids remotely, kind of at the same time. And then also this piece where, largely because of COVID, but not exclusively, parents saw what was actually happening in classrooms and a lot of them just from a value standpoint didn't appreciate what was being sort of taught to their children, right? So all those things changed. 

2019 was before all of that and so we didn't know any of that, of course, it was on the horizon. So we get this program passed and it was, as I mentioned, a pilot program, but it made all students, all low income students in Nashville and Memphis eligible for the Education Savings Account program. Nashville and Memphis of course are the two largest cities in Tennessee. So you take those students and you're still talking, I mean just those cities alone, you're talking about 20% of the state's student population. 

So that's a lot of kids and they desperately need it. I live in Nashville and despite Nashville kind of having this moniker of the it city, our public education system has struggled for decades and people know that. And so, people move to all of the surrounding counties and they commute into Nashville- 

Ginny Gentles (10:00)
Which is a brutal commute, right?

Shaka Mitchell (10:01)
Which is a brutal commute. And they do it because the schools in the district have been subpar for a long, long time. It's not cause we don't spend money. We spend a lot of money on education. It's not cause the property taxes aren't high. They're increasing year after year, right?

We just can't get it together, our public school district. And Memphis has got similar problems. So that first program was really targeting two of the areas of highest need. It was immediately challenged in court, which is super frustrating, but also predictable. We won. I won't give you all of that drama, but the program was able to roll out. And right now about 3,000 students use that program, but we just know, okay, we can do more across the state and I would routinely get parents who are just over the income limit or just on the other side of the county line, who would say, “Hey, when is it gonna be possible for me to use it? Because we're struggling too.” And so I'm glad we're finally there.

Ginny Gentles (11:01)
You expanded the program in 2023 to Hamilton County. Where's Hamilton?

Shaka Mitchell (11:05)
That's right. So in 2023, the program expanded Hamilton County is Chattanooga. And so, you know, again, that's a meaningful thing. And I'm really glad for that. We were involved in that work along with lots of other state partners and national partners, but we can't wait, you know, another 94 years to add one County a year, right? That's not fast enough. We've got to do something dramatic if we're going to change the trajectory for all Tennessee students. And that's really what happened in 2025.

Ginny Gentles (11:38)
What sort of response have you been hearing from the participants?

Shaka Mitchell (11:42)
So overwhelmingly parents gave the program high marks. That's despite, I would say some initial implementation challenges. And so, when parents say that they're satisfied with the program and that it was a little bit tricky to navigate at first, that really speaks to how good they feel about wherever they've placed their student. So that's good. 

When you look at the academic data, the best way, we can't do a true apples to apples comparison, but the best way to assess this is to look at low income students in Nashville and in Memphis and compare the low income students to the students in the ESA, right? Because to be eligible for that pilot program, you had to be a lower income student. So when you make that comparison, ESA students were outperforming both Nashville and Memphis. So, you know, I think that's certainly the kind of trajectory you wanna see. There's still lots of room for growth, but keep in mind when you're talking about students who are multiple grade levels behind often going into a new school, it's gonna take some years to really get that flywheel moving, but we think it's moving in the right direction. So all signs pointed to some real positive results and I think that gave legislators more confidence to sort of grow the program, expand it.

Ginny Gentles (13:07)
So that's what's just happened. We have this new Education Freedom Act that's passed. How's it going to work?

Shaka Mitchell (13:12)
Yeah, I'll give you the quick details. So the goal is for the program to be utilized this coming school year. So the ‘25, ‘26 school year, families would be able to use this.

The good news is Tennessee is not the first state in the country to do this. I think we're now the 14th state with an ESA program, a sort of large scale ESA program like this. So that's pretty exciting. In 2025, there will be 20,000 scholarship accounts available.

20,000 available statewide. And of those 20,000, 10,000 of them are reserved for lower income families. So we're excited about that. That's a priority to us at AFC to make sure, especially in the early years, that families who are in communities that have been really underserved for a long time have access and can get those and sometimes move to the front of the line. 

So 10,000 of those are reserved for lower income families. The other 10,000 are open to all families. And if there are, as I expect, there will be more applications than scholarships, there'll be a lottery. And then that number can grow. That overall 20,000 number can grow year over year. It can expand, I think, by 5,000 scholarships per year into up to infinity. 

One of the things that was important to legislators was to sort of soften the landing for districts a little bit. So an account has been created and there essentially was called a “hold harmless” account. And so this means that when a student leaves a district school to use an education freedom account, the school is actually reimbursed for the same amount. And that's for at least a year, which I think is pretty generous, frankly. 

Ginny Gentles (15:08)
That's very generous, yeah.

Shaka Mitchell (15:09)
It's very generous. I mean, if you think about what happens when a family moves from one county to another, they just up and move. You don't get any notice. You don't have a ghost student on the books that you continue to get paid for. So I think that's really generous. I think that will give districts a lot of time to come up with maybe new innovative practices, maybe ways to maintain their enrollment and even attract new students. So that was something that was pretty new to this.

And I should say that dollar amount, the scholarship amount is over $7,000 per pupil per year. So, you know, that's a meaningful amount of money. It's based off the state funding formula. That's essentially the state amount. And in Tennessee, the first dollar has to get used at a private school. an accredited private school. otherwise families are able to use remaining funds for other educational expenses.

Ginny Gentles (16:05)
Okay, but the students, as you said, need to initially use that scholarship for private school tuition and that's for what Tennessee calls Category 1, 2, and 3 private schools. So those schools already have some state testing requirements, is that right?

Shaka Mitchell (16:19)
They don't have state testing requirements, but those schools are, based on those categories, have already worked with an accrediting agency, and so like SACS, which lots of people are familiar with, or Cognia, that used to be Advanced Ed, I believe. And so these accrediting agencies, to my knowledge, almost always have some sort of nationally norm reference test requirement. So per the law, a student who participates can either take the state test or they can take the nationally norm reference test.

Ginny Gentles (15:54)
Well, Shaka, I  know you have three daughters. I have two. My daughter, who's at a K-8 little faith-based private school where I live in Virginia, takes the MAP growth test three times a year. It's just, it's not a big deal. It's a tiny private school, but that is something that they do. And then those test scores are compared against thousands of students in public and private school across the country. And I'm happy with that. I don't need her taking the state test. I've got three times a year, MAP growth results.

Shaka Mitchell (17:26)
Yeah. My, my girls do the same, at least my two younger girls both take MAP assessments. The two older girls take, another test, it’s called the ERB. And I'd be lying if I knew what ERB stands for. I assume it stands for something. So they take that test and it's fine. And we kind of demystify it and I get it. I understand that some, for some kids there's test anxiety, but by the way, that's like regardless of whether or not it's public or private school. 

We do think that some sort of academic measurement is useful and we think that the transparency is really what's useful, right? Families should know, like what's happening because, you'll remember this, but many times, those days before, you know, No Child Left Behind, lots of times you said, “Hey, how's my student doing?” And you didn't get an objective answer.

You know, the answer was like, “Well, they're doing pretty well.” “And how's the school doing?” “It's pretty good.” Well, what does that mean? Right. And so we do think that data transparency is important. And having a test doesn't mean that like it's gotta be so high stakes and everything is riding on it, right? I think great educators use it as a diagnostic tool. So I think the private schools are not worried about that. In fact, they're, they're pretty happy to show you what their kids know.

Ginny Gentles (18:44)
Anything else about the Tennessee program?

Shaka Mitchell (18:46)
Tennessee continues to have two other choice programs. So this is the education freedom account program. The pilot program is still in place, right? So students who are currently participating in that, they won't count towards that 20,000. Right, so that's really important. So this really created 20,000 new scholarships. It's not gonna subsume the other program. And then Tennessee also has the Individualized Education Accounts program, which is a mouthful, but that is a program specifically for students with special needs. And so that's a choice program also for any student in the state. There's a list of qualifying IEPs and if your child has one of those, then you already qualify and that's a separate program.

Ginny Gentles (19:38)
Well, this is a great transition because I wanted to talk through some education freedom myths. This episode is going to be live the same morning that the nominee for the US Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, will be put before a HELP committee confirmation hearing process.

And there'll be a lot of school choice myths that we'll hear in that confirmation hearing and then around that whole process on social media and in regular media. And one of those pervasive myths is that somehow students with special needs are harmed by school choice programs. So speaking to what's been happening in Tennessee with the existing program or what you know nationwide, how would you tackle that?

Shaka Mitchell (20:21)
Many states have specific choice programs for students with special needs. So I don't really know how opponents can sort of square this idea that a choice program isn't helping when there are specific programs designed to do this, right? In fact, some of the original choice programs in Florida, Arizona, Tennessee, did just that. They were specifically designed for students with special needs and those continue to grow and be utilized. 

I think one reason that that myth persists is because it plays on two things. It plays on parental fear, right? This idea that, I mean, of course we want the best for our kids and so we would hate to think that we're giving something up when we could be adding something to their experiences. So nobody wants to do that. So it plays on fear. But more than that, it plays on, I think, an ignorance. Because the reality is, most people actually don't have a student with an IEP. And so they don't know what that IEP process is like. And so what I would say to those opponents is, “Okay. Let's go ask families who have participated in the IEP process in their public school and their public school district-

Ginny Gentles (21:41)
It's horrible, Shaka. I cried in my car after every meeting.

Shaka Mitchell (20:21)
It's miserable. 10 times out of 10, if I had to go to the DMV or sit through an IEP meeting, like status meeting, I would go to the DMV. 

Ginny Gentles (21:55)
For sure, for sure.

Shaka Mitchell (20:56)
Which is really telling, right? But I've sat through these as a school administrator and it's an intimidating thing as a parent. It's usually not additive. It doesn't add to the educational experience of the child. You've got so many adults in the room that I remember sitting in one and thinking, who's with the children right now? If we're all in here, who in the world is with the children who actually have needs that need to be taught right now?

So it is just not at all true that the current IEP and IDEA process is serving families well, which is why you have so many hearings, it's why you have so many lawsuits, it's why there is just so much frustration. Now, that's not to say that every private school is equipped to serve every student well. Of course not. But neither are public schools, right? And in fact, most public school districts actually outsource a fair amount of services to students with exceptional needs. So anyway, that's a long-winded answer, but I think the current system is just clearly not serving families well, and that to me is the real point of impact. So it's up to a parent. 

If a parent says, “You know what, my student with a specific learning disability is not being served well and that private school, I think that that system over there is gonna work better for my student, well why wouldn't we let the parent choose that? They know, right? They can then partner with the educational experts and get the job done. And if they can do that without having to sit through some IEP meetings, well, God bless it.

Ginny Gentles (23:47)
Yeah, and for the ones who do continue with that IDEA process, even though they have their child placed in a private school, they still have access to equitable services. 

Shaka Mitchell (23:58)
Right. That's right.

Ginny Gentles (23:59)
And those are provided under IDEA. That's a process that I went through with one of my daughters. Another topic that I think we'll hear about a lot during the confirmation hearing and the noise around it, and one that I'm sure you've heard a lot in Tennessee, is that school choice harms rural communities and schools. How do you address that?

Shaka Mitchell (24:16)
Yeah, yeah, and that argument is often coupled with a secondary one, and that is, “Well, in my rural area, we hardly have any private schools.” And so you say, well, which one is it that you're talking about? Are there not any private schools, and so therefore, this is gonna be useless? Or is there such a problem with your public school that everyone is gonna flock to a private school somewhere, and it's going to decimate the system? Because it can't be both of those in the short run at the same time. 

I was actually just with some educators, some school founders back in December, in Gainesville, from Gainesville, Florida. So these were some teachers who taught in the public school system and they just felt that they could do a better job in a smaller environment. They could do a better job themselves and they could do a better job and better serve students in a smaller environment. So they banded together and started a small school. I found some rental space and started a little faith-based school in. you know, what is a pretty rural community. 

Because Florida has got a robust, you know, education choice ecosystem, that school is able to thrive. It did not put the district school out of business, right? Because kids are coming from surrounding counties and they're making families are making that drive so that they can attend this, you know, small and very sweet school that, by the way, is run by educators with the same training as the ones in the public school system, these are not educators who wanted to burn it down, who had an ax to grind. They just thought, “Hey, we can do a better job in a different setting.” We give teachers that choice, we should give families that choice as well. All to say, say, we've got plenty of examples, Florida's a great state for this. Arizona's a great state for this. Iowa, where you've got rural communities utilizing choice, and I've yet to see high schools shut down.

Ginny Gentles (26:14)
A related question to that, the claim is out there that school choice defunds the public school system.

Shaka Mitchell (26:21)
Two things come to mind when I think about the defund the public school system. One is that I had the great fortune to sit down and have a conversation with LA Unified Superintendent Alberto Carvalho recently and he, prior to being the superintendent out there where there are 550,000 students, okay. He's got more students than the state of Wyoming has people. It's crazy. But prior to that, he had been the superintendent in Miami-Dade County. And Miami-Dade has got the distinction of having the best academic results for an urban area, a major urban city in the United States. And he said that something like 70% of the students in Miami-Dade attend a school that is not their zoned school. 70%. 

Now, some of them attend a public charter school, some attend a different public option, but some are going to private schools, some are homeschooled, whatever. He did not feel threatened by that. He sort of said, we think that's great because it means that families know when they come to Miami-Dade, they have options, and so now our role as a public school system is to say, “Okay, what can we do really well, right, to distinguish ourselves and to fit into this kind of choice ecosystem.” And so that to me is what public school leadership should look like. It should look like, hey, how are we serving students well, not how am I trying to maintain this system just for the sake of maintaining the system. 

And so that gets to kind of my second response, and that is when people talk about defunding the system, I might suggest that if that's your concern, you are concerned with the wrong end user. To me, the end user is students

Ginny Gentles (28:14)
The nation's largest teachers union, the NEA, National Education Association, claimed that they're fighting against, this is a quote, “The attempt to hand our nation to billionaires on a silver platter,” end quote. So why do school choice opponents always bring up billionaires? Like you and I have known each other for what, 15, 20 years, like a really long time. Have we been like controlled by billionaires this whole time without our knowledge?

Shaka Mitchell (28:13)
Yeah. And I've yet to become one or even a millionaire. I'd take a millionaire, you know. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's, that's just such a lazy target of theirs, right? And maybe what part of the myth is that if there are beleaguered teachers, it must be the fault of these billionaires running around. When what I would suggest is that, listen, teaching is a hard job, for sure. And in many cases, as we talked about earlier in the podcast, funds that are appropriated for teachers often never make it down to teachers, which is a shame.

Okay, so let's ask the question, where are the funds going then? Well, they're not going to the billionaires. They often, however, are taken right off the top of salary and they're going into union coffers, or they're going to sort of middle management folks at school districts, that money's never making it into the classroom, or it's going to teachers' union salaries that are excessive and, you know, into the high six figures. 

So when I think about like, aren't we respect the teaching profession more? Probably. I don't believe that that means that we ought to give credibility to the union shills who are just trying to obfuscate and kind of show you this shiny object over here and say, “Oh well, forget about the fact that we haven't raised a warning flag about academic results in years, but boy are we frustrated with the Paris Climate Accords.” Well, stay in your lane and show some value both for your own constituents and for the ultimate end user, which is students.

Related a little bit to our talk about educational choice. It's always been the case that teachers utilize choice in greater proportion than the rest of the population. So that's also worth noting. I would sort of say like, “You want to know what the experts do with their own children? They don't put them in district schools.”

Ginny Gentles (30:58)
We definitely want to make it clear that that beloved third grade teacher that we're so happy our child has and is educating our child so well has absolutely nothing to do with a powerful politically focused union leader. 

Shaka Mitchell (31:15)
That's right.

Ginny Gentles (31:16)
These are very different entities and that union leader, as you said, often does not speak for that beloved third grade teacher. Certainly the union leader does not represent the needs of students or parents. Okay, over to you. School choice myth that bothers you the most or one that you've been hearing a lot in Tennessee.

Shaka Mitchell (31:34)
A lot of folks think that school choice or education choice, education freedom will exacerbate things like segregation. And I would say quite the opposite. If you look at many public school districts, a lot of the school zones mirror redlining. And for folks that don't know, like redlining was a race-based way to sort of manage real estate and how property was sold and where people lived. And so you had property values that were of lower value where racial and ethnic minorities lived. And often, our current school zones mirror those districts. 

And so you had less resources going to these places that were redlined. Well, those are things that happened prior to any school choice programs. These policies came through in the 50s and 60s. And so I would say that quite the opposite, that education choice programs are now giving families an opportunity to cross boundaries and cross lines and take their children to a school that best meets their needs, irrespective of what the zone says. 

It's interesting that a lot of folks who talk about the need to fight against systemic change, sometimes they don't appreciate that one of the most frustrating and locked-in systems that we have in the US, is the system of public education based on residential assignment. And so, school choice is really a way to open that up. It's also when we have these universal programs, meaning universal eligibility, I'm hopeful that one of the things, just like in that Gainesville experience I gave, is that it incentivizes new school creation in places where it wouldn't have happened before because why would a new school start up in a low income area? Nobody in the low income area can pay for it. Well, now if they have access to, you know, $7,000, $8,000, $9,000 per pupil, maybe you can start some really interesting, say, Montessori school in a low income community and do something, provide an offering that they've never had before. And that's possible with school choice. Unfortunately, districts have not been able to innovate that way. So yeah, that's a myth that frustrates me.

Ginny Gentles (34:03)
Well, Shaka, so appreciate our conversation about Tennessee's new development and your openness to tackling some of these pervasive school choice myths with me. Thank you for your commitment to education freedom and thank you for joining Freedom to Learn.

Shaka Mitchell (34:17)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Ginny Gentles (32:26)
Freedom to Learn is a production of the Defense of Freedom Institute. You can learn more about DFI at dfipolicy.org. If you have feedback or suggestions for future podcasts, please reach out to us at podcast@dfipolicy.org. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe and leave a rating and review wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.