Former Indiana Congressman Luke Messer joins Students Over Systems to explore federal opportunities to support education freedom. As a state legislator and school choice leader, Congressman Messer significantly expanded Indiana’s school choice options. He co-founded the Congressional School Choice Caucus while serving in Congress and proposed legislation that would devolve power and funding to parents. We discuss his current role as president of the Invest in Education Coalition and the opportunities and challenges of expanding educational freedom to all 50 states through a federal tax credit scholarship.
TRANSCRIPT
Ginny Gentles:
Today on Students Over Systems, we’re celebrating the potential for expanding education freedom across the country. Former Indiana Congressman, Luke Messer, joins us to discuss federal opportunities to invest in education. Welcome to Students Over Systems, a podcast that celebrates education freedom. I’m your host, Ginny Gentles. At Students Over Systems, we talk to the creators, advocates, and beneficiaries of education freedom. On today’s episode, we’re so fortunate to be joined by Luke Messer, who is president of Invest in Education and a partner in the law firm, Bose McKinney & Evans LLP.
Luke served as the US Congressman for Indiana’s Sixth Congressional District from 2013 to 2019. During his tenure, he was founder and co-chair with Senator Tim Scott of the Congressional School Choice Caucus. Prior to serving in Congress, Congressman Messer was a state legislator in Indiana and he served as president and CEO of School Choice Indiana, where he helped pass major school choice legislation. Congressman Messer and his wife have three children and they live in Indiana. Congressman Messer, thank you so much for joining us today.
Luke Messer:
Ginny, great to be on. Please call me Luke. You didn’t in that list include longtime friend of Ginny Gentles either. We’ve obviously worked together a lot over the years on trying to provide better opportunities for kids and empower parents. Excited to be on.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, we are longtime friends. I actually was a stay-at-home mom for a number of years after serving in a number of different government positions. My first job back was working with the Congressional School Choice Caucus with your office to help explore federal opportunities to expand education freedom. So I am so excited all these years later to be having this conversation with you, to talk about a real possibility of doing just what we’ve been trying to do for many years. Our Students Over Systems’ guests are parents and policymakers who have the power to make education freedom a reality for all families. You are certainly one of these people.
You have done this at multiple levels, as I said in your introduction. You’ve been a school choice advocate as an Indiana state legislator, as a leader of a state advocacy organization and as a member of Congress. So let’s go back to the beginning for this conversation. What inspired you to start advocating for school choice as a state legislator and as a leader at the state level?
Luke Messer:
Well, thanks. It’s great to be on and to go back and reminisce about the way this issue has evolved. It’s been said, “It takes seven years to be an overnight success.” In some ways, I think it’s taken a couple decades for school choice to become the policy that’s being embraced all across the country in the way it is today. I think my inspiration more than anything, I grew up in a relatively tough environment. I was a product of a single parent family, grew up in rural Indiana in a small town, Greensburg, but was blessed to have good educational opportunities. As I went on through my high school career into college and then into public service, I knew that the only way that we were going to be able to be a country that made sure everybody had a chance was if everybody had access to a good school.
At that time, even in a state like Indiana, relatively conservative, it was controversial. The biggest powerhouse political advocacy organization in the state by a lot was the teachers’ union. I was championing these issues as a state legislator. I remember some of my firey-est, if that’s a word, speeches in the Indiana General Assembly were, as we were just trying to float pilot programs of a thousand kids, getting an opportunity to go to a school, looking across the aisle at my Democratic friends and saying, “Realize that while you’re voting politics, individual families won’t have opportunities because of this.” They of course, would glare back at me.
Eventually, in Indiana, we were able to get some big things done. Actually, after I left the General Assembly, I ended up being the President of Hoosiers for Economic Growth School Choice Indiana when we passed some of the boldest reforms in the country. We set the four-minute mile at that time in Indiana under Mitch Daniels’ leadership, and now multiple years later, hundreds of thousands of kids in Indiana have had better opportunities. The program’s about to be up for an even larger expansion yet this year.
Ginny Gentles:
I think there’s always been a good healthy competition between Arizona, Florida and Indiana when it comes to school choice. You definitely played a role there in ensuring that Indiana was in that competition and sometimes leading it. There’s quite a large program at this point. You were talking about trying to pass a pilot program. You’re way beyond that in the state at this point, right?
Luke Messer:
Yeah, I mean, when we first passed it was 3,500 kids in year one, 7,000 in a year two. We were also involved in making sure that parents knew about the program so that we filled those voids. I think today, they’re going to be very close. Won’t be completely universal. I think some higher-income families might be still out of the program, but certainly much bolder than before. Of course now, you look across the country and there’s many more states that are stepping forward with programs. You mentioned, Invest in Education, the organization I’m the president of now, focused on a federal tax credit program. As I got back involved, it surprised me. It’s a little bit different now with Arizona and some of the bigger programs. But 40 years into this movement, a little over 600,000, 700,000 kids will go to a private school of choice.
If we could pass a program at the federal level, it would of course, be two or three-fold that. I know we may have to go farther through the chronology before we get to the bill, but excited by that opportunity.
Ginny Gentles:
Right, because not all states are Arizona, Florida, or Indiana with these robust and growing programs and near to universal or universal programs. We do have over 30 states with private school choice programs, 45 states with charter schools. But as you mentioned, a number of those are still quite small. You mentioned the teachers’ unions. Before we start talking more about federal and national policy issues, let’s talk a little bit more about what some of the barriers were to creating and expanding school choice at the state level. It’s not just the teachers’ unions, there’s some other people who get in the way and other entities, right?
Luke Messer:
Well, I mean, look, Indiana was blessed. My chairman, the organization I became president of, was a visionary businessman named Fred Glitch. Before going to Purdue and having an incredibly successful career as an entrepreneur, he’d been an IPS, Indianapolis public school student. He just thought it was terrible that the kids that were in the IPS school system at that time, this was now almost 20 years ago, didn’t have the same kind of opportunities he did. He analyzed the problem like a businessman, and he said, “Well, what’s the issue?” Well, in Indiana at that time, the teachers’ union had a PAC of a million dollars a year, which was about three times the next largest. He realized that not only were Democratic legislators responsive to the teachers’ union and their defensive monopoly, but there was a significant arm in the Republican caucus too who were just frankly voting politics.
Then there’s all the arguments of the status quo. Mitch Daniels taught me the status quo is a fierce fighter. The monopolies fight back. I was involved in high school dropout reform legislation that was nationally cutting edge as well. You just hear all these myths that somehow we’re going to ruin our existing good schools if you create opportunities. Well, when I was a state legislator, I used to argue in committee, “Look, it may be true that if we open the door to opportunities, kids will pour out of your school in droves. Or it could be true that you are doing a fabulous job and everybody in your school system is happy, but both those things can’t be true at the same time. If everybody’s happy, they’re not going to exit your school in droves, because frankly, there’s a whole bunch of sports and other things, advantages that they have.”
I think we’ve pushed through many of those myths years later, but it’s a combination of those things. What we were able to do, and I think as folks that listen to this program and want to see changes in their own state, I think it’s important that you stay high-minded. It’s important that you stay policy-focused. It’s important that you stay focused on kids and parents. We’re on the side of the angels here. Every kid in America ought to have an opportunity to go to a great school. Every parent ought to have an opportunity to send their kid to a school of their choice that matches their values, that fits the best recipe of success for your own child.
But you can’t ignore the politics. You can’t ignore it. I mean, at the end of the day, blame our Founding Fathers, we have elections and those elections select our leaders. I think if you want to drive reform, you have to win elections and you have to be willing to step forward and do the political part of the fight and the hard work it takes to get the right people elected.
Ginny Gentles:
We have been having numerous conversations here at Students Over Systems about that component of it. It’s not just having a great idea, caring about kids and passing a bill. You do need to have the elected officials in place who are willing to take those courageous steps and create these programs and these opportunities despite the opposition, which is loud.
Luke Messer:
I think it’s important to remember that it’s not a one shot deal. I see people on any issue, they show up, “Well, gosh, we didn’t win this time.” “Well, okay, what about next time?” One of the things we were able to do in Indiana that made this a systemic change was not only get the right folks elected on the front end, but then also support them and make sure, because look, as these changes happen, the fighters for the status quo will fight back fiercely. You have to be ready to defend yourself in multiple election cycles before this becomes the new normal.
Ginny Gentles:
Absolutely. All right, so state level fights, ongoing, but great progress being made there on creating and expanding school choice opportunities. The federal level has been a different story over many years. There have been school choice proposals that have been discussed at the federal level for decades. The Federal DC Opportunity Scholarship Program provides scholarships for low-income families in DC and that is a congressionally-sponsored federal program that was launched in 2004. But I’ve noticed this over the decades, you’ve noticed this over the decades, congressional interest and attention around school choice has waxed and waned depending on who’s in office. I think you had a mission to change that though, because you arrived in DC and very promptly co-founded and launched the Congressional School Choice Caucus. What were your goals in launching that caucus?
Luke Messer:
Well, look, I think you give me a little too much credit on that, and I’ll get to that in a minute. I think it’s important to say, even as we get into the broader debate, I think it’s important for us within the movement to remember, we are on the side of the angels here. The moral case for school choice, I believe, roots to the founding documents of our country. What do I mean by that? Well, we talk a lot about our constitutional protections. I think we don’t talk enough about the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, where we say that we believe in America. We are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. The rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In modern America, you can’t fulfill that right to pursue happiness if you don’t have the economic opportunities that come with a quality education. We should never apologize for fighting in America to make sure every kid has a chance to succeed.
I again, believe it comes back to the very foundation of what our country’s all about. Now, it’s its own podcast. It’s probably three podcasts to unpack all that. I’m not going to go through all of it. But remember, those rights come from God. I showed up in Congress and I knew I’d been a school choice advocate. I’d worked at the state level. I pushed hard on education issues, because about half of the funding of every state government budget is education, so it’s natural to focus there. Candidly, when I first showed up to Congress, I thought, “Well, gosh, that was a fun time working on education, but I’m going to move on to other issues and that’s behind me. I’m going to focus on international policy, and tax policy, and the growing economy, and healthcare, and some of the issues that we know are a little more federally-based.”
What I found when I showed up is that frankly, there were some big fights to be fought in the education arena, and there weren’t enough of my colleagues in the conservative caucus that really had spent a lot of time on them or were willing to focus on them. I knew enough from the school choice movement having been involved in what happened in Indiana, to know that the movement had planted flags in varying states, and then resources would flock there. Then we’d go through the process of trying to find champions, working the politics, moving a bill, and then driving change. It struck me that while, even then, and this was again, eight years ago or so, the DC OSP Program, the DC Choice Voucher Program, was a great program, but the challenges in our country were way bigger than just whether we were going to have school choice in Washington, DC.
I thought, “Well, gosh,” Tim Scott and I talked, “let’s try to plant a flag in Washington and get people focused on what we could do to empower families and help kids at the federal level.” The vision was never that we were going to create a federal Department of School Choice. It was just a recognition that they spend money in Washington with a B, billions, versus in most state governments, it’s millions. If you could bring change there, you’d make a big difference. Some of my proposals would be modeled off the Heritage A+ Program. I mean, most of us look at the Constitution and recognize there’s nothing in there about a delineated Department of Education. I recognize many conservatives wonder why we’re doing anything on education in Washington. But while that money’s being spent, it can be spent quite a bit better. Anyway, that’s the genesis of where the School Choice Caucus came from.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, we’ll talk a little bit more about the School Choice Caucus and then move on to a conversation about some exciting federal proposals that are out there now. But let’s first have a short message from one of our favorite podcasts at IWF. Are you a conservative woman? Do you feel problematic for just existing in today’s political landscape? Every Thursday morning, on Problematic Women, Lauren Evans and Virginia Allen sort through the news to bring you stories and interviews that are of particular interest to you, a problematic woman. That is, a woman whose opinions are often excluded or even mocked by those on the so-called pro-woman left. Lauren and Virginia break down the news you care about in an upbeat and sharp-witted way. Search for Problematic Women wherever you get your podcasts.
All right, so Luke, let’s talk about National School Choice Week and the Charter School Program. Before we move on to the federal tax credit, you are part of this celebration. You continue to be part of this amazing celebration that happens each year, where the members of Congress are gathered together with local students to celebrate National School Choice Week. What are some of your favorite memories of this rally or this celebration that you host each year?
Luke Messer:
Well, for me, it actually goes back before there even was a National School Choice Week. As I was the head of School Choice Indiana, I thought it was really important that we do a rally every year at the Indiana State House where the supporters, the legislators, the policy makers who had created School Choice could see the beneficiaries and recipients of school choice. We would have a rally where hundreds of parents would show up at the State House. It would be interesting, because when you looked at that crowd of people, it was a mosaic of the State of Indiana. It was folks of every race, religion in the state who were receiving the benefits of these programs and wanted to make sure that their policy makers knew about it.
It was ironic, because I would watch my Democratic colleagues walk past the rally timidly as they looked over and saw who the beneficiaries were, who the people they were frankly, voting against, and then the leaders and champions who could come in and speak in front of this group and see who they had supported. Sometimes, and it’s natural, the folks that tend to be the leaders of the 501(c)(3)s and (c)(4)s who advocate for these organizations, they don’t necessarily come from the same economic background as the folks who are the biggest recipients of the program. Then when National School Choice Week started, I thought, “Well, boy, this would be really important to get going in Washington, DC.”
We’ve had a series of events over the years. My favorite part is, of course, always seeing the kids, and the parents who come up at these meetings and get the chance for their voice to be heard. I can’t wait for the day when it’s tens of thousands coming to Washington on National School Choice Week. We got some work to do to make that happen, but I believe it’s going to be happening soon enough.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, while you were in office, you supported a federal charter school program, which provides startup funding to new charter schools. That’s an another example of an existing federal program we talked about, the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides, I think, maybe a thousand or so scholarships to low-income families. There’s also the Federal Charter School Program. There are these precedents for a federal role in expanding and supporting school choice. Let’s talk about the Educational Choice for Children Act, which is a new proposal for introducing a federal tax credit. Again, there’s a precedent for a federal role with school choice. This isn’t a brand new idea, but this is a totally different approach than what has been proposed before. Tell us a little about the Educational Choice for Children Act. Is it ECCA? Is that how we’re-
Luke Messer:
Yeah, I think we’re calling it the ECCA. We decided ECCA. I’m going to get the bill numbers for your listeners, because I have to admit, even though I’ve spent some time in Washington, I don’t always talk about all the right initials and numbers. It’s Senate Bill 120 and House Bill 531. The lead authors are Bill Cassidy and Tim Scott in the Senate and Adrian Smith and Burgess Owens in the House. Essentially, back to our initial premise, most of us look out at the landscape of what’s happening in America today, and we know parents need help. I think within the school choice movement, we’ve made the argument for multiple decades that no child in America should be forced to go to a failing school. It’s only fair that parents have an opportunity to send their kid to a school where they can be successful. Those arguments still remain today.
Unfortunately, decades later, there are schools where a kid doesn’t really have a legitimate chance to learn. That’s not fair to anybody. But then we’ve also had the rise of these woke debates in schools and policies that many parents, particularly conservative Christian parents, but parents of all faiths and beliefs are seeing politics brought in to schools in a way that, at least not with the transparency, that we’re seeing in recent years. I think both of those phenomenons, the combination of failing schools plus the wokism debates in schools and then everything surrounding the pandemic, and parents couldn’t get schools open. They saw kids wearing masks they felt like they didn’t need to wear. Parents want to be in charge of their child’s education. Conservatives haven’t had much to say about what they could do to help in Washington.
Most of us recognize you shouldn’t have a federal department of school choice, but also conservatives have for quite some time supported certain tax incentives. We support an earned income tax credit that is, in a sense, working. AEI, for example, has been a big champion of expanding that dramatically as opposed to providing direct payouts through welfare or the like. What the ECCA does is just creates a simple 10 billion dollar tax credit, where businesses and individuals all across the country would be able to provide money to scholarship organizations and take a tax credit for that. It’s basically mirrored off the tax credit programs you’ve seen all across the country that have had tremendous success. We think this version of it is improved over versions in the past, in part because the entire program would be run through Treasury.
You wouldn’t have a larger expanded role for the Department of Education. It includes protections for religious liberty and provisions that make sure that some of these scholarship dollars go to every state across the country. As I got involved back in this debate, as I became the president of Invest in Ed about a year ago, I was able to see some of the global numbers we had in the school choice movement. There’s been a lot of extraordinary work over 40 years. But as I mentioned to you earlier, over 40 years now, we’re a little over 700,000 I think this year, individual kids that have an opportunity to go to a private school through school choice. With a 10 billion dollar tax credit, it could be a million or 2 million almost instantly. That would be an incredible opportunity and make a big difference for parents across the country.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, I want to go back to one of the points that you mentioned that I think would be important to explore a little bit more for maybe more conservative-leaning listeners. How can this proposal be protected from federal regulations? We have this sense that with government dollars or a government program, particularly federal, that often brings government strings. That’s a pushback that you hear from homeschoolers at the state level about school choice programs, so protections are written in the bills to make sure that they are protected from any government strings if they choose not to participate in the program. And that any strings that are in place are appropriate and limited if they do choose to participate. How are you guarding against heavy-handed, federal government regulations?
Luke Messer:
I think there’s multiple ways. One, I mean, it’s expressly in the legislation that those burdens can’t come and that nothing in this bill creates a nexus for those kinds of burdens. Secondly, you’ve seen states around the country who’ve used this very same structure and been able to do it without additional burdens and restrictions. Three, and I say this with no joy, but if you had an activist Supreme Court that wanted to over-regulate schools, there are already plenty of nexus from a federal level in these schools. Does the school take free and reduced lunch money for kids? Are they in any way involved with academic curriculum that’s been funded by the local public schools? I mean, a lot of private schools borrow their curriculum from the neighboring school.
But fourth, beyond that, it’s part of why we like the elegance of this program actually being the scholarship coming from a private entity, a scholarship-granting organization, and not through any kind of federal government benefit. The only federal government involvement is that a taxpayer who makes this contribution can then go back to the government and claim a tax credit for it. Frankly, we think this is much less of an nexus than would typically be the case on any kind of program that had direct funding. Then there’s express language in the bill that protects those liberties as well.
Ginny Gentles:
Right. We’re not talking about a federal grant program, like the Charter School Program, actually. You’re talking about a tax credit, again, run out of the Department of Treasury rather than the Department of Education. There would need to be a close eye on any regulations that the Department of Treasury would be creating around that program, so hopefully, any legislation is protecting against the federal government’s love of regulations.
Luke Messer:
I mean, look, I think it’s important. I mean, there are certainly many conscientious people who make this argument, so I don’t want to be dismissive of it. But I would just caution us all. I think there’s also some folks who don’t want to see these programs expand, who borrow those arguments. I believe firmly we need to have expressly written in the law, the protections that are there. This legislation does that. Unfortunately, the most recent example is the Biden administration’s effort on student loan giveaways. So having Obamacare, there’s also constitutional debates. What happens when your leaders just ignore the law and just make up their own law? My point would be, it matters who we have in the Supreme Court. It matters that we elect conservatives that will follow the law. If we’re honest with ourselves, there’s already plenty of nexus that bad actors could use as an excuse to overregulate these entities anyway.
I think one of our biggest protections, and you’ve seen this in states where school choice programs have expanded, these programs are very difficult to reverse, because parents and students who receive the benefits of them become vocal and effective advocates for the program. One of the best ways to continue to protect school choice and expand the debate across the country is to pass a program like this so that we triple or quadruple the number of families that are able to benefit.
Ginny Gentles:
We have over 30 states with scholarship, or tax credit scholarship, or education savings account programs right now. What you’re talking about is a federal tax credit that would expand the potential for those, but also offer opportunities for the students in states that have not yet passed the program.
Luke Messer:
Yeah. I think it’s important to say, look, we want a tax credit program that works for both the states that already have programs. I believe there can be a huge force multiplier in the states that already have programs for the reasons we’ve already described. I mean, there’s just, most people have a lot more federal tax liability than they do state tax liability. Our rule, first do no harm. We want to make sure that this law is crafted in a way where existing programs thrive and survive. But there’s also millions of families in America, locked-in states, where they’ll never have a chance if we leave it to their local leadership.
The leaders of New York, Connecticut, California, frankly, they’re bought and paid for by champions of the status quo in a way that it will be a very long time before parents in those states have an opportunity. Again, for the reasons we described before, every parent should have a chance to send their kid to a school that meets their needs.
Ginny Gentles:
Absolutely. As we wrap up, Luke, I’d love for you to address the school choice myth that really bugs you the most. I know that there are so many, but-
Luke Messer:
I think, really, two. One is this idea that somehow these programs are just for middle class kids that would already have an opportunity. When you visit these schools, I mean, I will never forget as a member of Congress visiting the BASIS Academy in Washington, DC and talking to a bunch of young people from every zip code in the Washington, DC that were thriving under a very challenging math and science curriculum. The first question they asked me was, “Congressman, why don’t my friends and neighbors,” or sometimes my brother or sister, “have the same kind of opportunity I have?” Every kid should have a chance. When you go to these schools you know that these school leaders, they’re seeking out the disadvantaged, the kids from tough academic backgrounds and economic backgrounds and changing lives, so that’s one.
Then I think one that’s emerging is that this has to only be about academic performance. What I mean by that, Ginny, is of course, every kid should have a chance to go to a school where they have a chance to thrive academically. But no parent should have to send their kid to a school that teaches values that are antithetical to their beliefs. You shouldn’t have to be rich in America to be able to send your kid to a religious school, for example. I think within the movement, we shouldn’t shy away from the fact that, of course, part of this is about making sure that every kid in America can go to a religious school, if that’s what they choose and that’s what their family chooses. So, yes, it’s important that you have academic achievement. And yes, it’s important that you go to a school that’s safe. But you also should be able to go to a school that meets your value system. School choice is a great tool to make that happen and be a reality for families.
Ginny Gentles:
Absolutely. Well, Congressman Luke Messer, thank you so much for all that you’ve done at the state level while in Congress and now in your current role at Invest in Education. And thank you for joining us here today. We really appreciate it.
Luke Messer:
Hey, thanks, Ginny. Take care.
Ginny Gentles:
We hope listeners found today’s conversation informative and encouraging. If you enjoyed this episode of Students Over Systems, please consider leaving a review on your favorite podcast app, and don’t forget to share this episode with your friends. To learn more about the work of the IWF Education Freedom Center, please visit IWF.org/efc. Thank you for listening to Students Over Systems. Until next time, keep celebrating education freedom and brighter futures.
