Are charter schools part of the education freedom movement? Nina Rees, president and chief executive officer of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, joins the Students Over Systems podcast to discuss her influential role in the school choice movement and the history and mission of charter schools. The episode also explores the challenges charter schools currently face, including the Biden administration’s burdensome federal Charter School Program rules and conservatives’ concerns about prominent charter school networks abandoning their original missions.


TRANSCRIPT

Ginny Gentles:

Today on Students Over Systems, we’re celebrating charter schools. National Alliance for Public Schools President and CEO, Nina Rees, joins us to discuss charter schools and education freedom.

Welcome to Students Over Systems, a podcast that celebrates education freedom. I’m your host, Ginny Gentles. At Students Over Systems, we talk with the creators, advocates, and beneficiaries of education freedom. And on today’s episode, we’re joined by Nina Rees, who’s the President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Prior to joining the National Alliance, Nina spent 20 years shaping education policy at the Heritage Foundation, the US Department of Education, the White House, Capitol Hill, and as Senior Vice President of Knowledge Universe.

Nina, thank you so much for joining us today.

Nina Rees:

Thanks so much for having me.

Ginny Gentles:

So, Nina, as I mentioned, you have been influential in education policy for a very long time. And actually, you were personally influential to me at the beginning of my career when I was a young staffer, very young staffer so long ago, on Capitol Hill. You were at the Heritage Foundation and writing and talking often about innovative options within education policy. So, thank you for that and all that you did way back when.

I’ve been wondering, before we launch into the specifics of charter schools and the charter school movement, what were your sources of information and inspiration when it came to school choice and education reform back in your Heritage days?

Nina Rees:

Well, thanks again for having me, Ginny, and reminding me of those days at the Heritage Foundation. Things were very different back then. We had a lot of groups on the left and the right who were interested in standards-based accountability and forms of choice in service to raising student achievement and serving students. And we still have a lot of these players present, but the national dialogue around these issues is not quite as coordinated and cohesive as it used to be unfortunately.

In terms of my background, as you know, I’m an immigrant. I moved to the US in 1983 from Iran after the Iran Revolution and the Iraq War and the hostage crisis. So, as I reflect back on my own education, I started at a private little French lycee, transferred to a government-run school run by the Islamic Republic, which was actually a religious public school. And my parents left Iran to give me and my brother access to a good education. So, we moved of all places to a small town in Southwest Virginia called Blacksburg, which only has one high school, that is the high school that I was assigned to. And I did fine.

But in reflecting back, that school certainly didn’t know how to educate a student for whom English was not a first language. And certainly, in terms of my advocacy today, when I reflect back on some of the things that I accepted as normal, there were a lot of things about the school that definitely left me falling behind. And from a support standpoint, I didn’t think that the educators were necessarily pushing me as much as they could and giving me the resources I needed to excel in some of the subjects that I wasn’t very strong. And obviously, I had parents who cared.

I ended up graduating from college and moving to Washington, DC. When I first moved to DC, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. And somehow I ended up working at a public interest law firm that advocated for the expansion of school choice. And one of my first assignments was actually to go up to Jersey City to find some parents to invite them to a dinner to meet with this attorney that I used to work for, Clint Bolick, who’s now on the Arizona Supreme Court. And I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was able to pull a group of families together to this dinner. And we talked to them about school choice, the potential that there might be a school choice program in Jersey City.

From a legal standpoint, Clint was very big into making sure he had his ducks in a row in case the case got challenged after passage. So, I was personally really gratified, not only was it a successful event, but I also noticed how easily and quickly parents signed up for this attorney from Washington, DC to represent them, I mean, consider the fact that he was not from New Jersey. I was not from New Jersey. We were just there for 48 hours to meet with parents and to talk to them about a policy proposal that hadn’t even been enacted. But these parents knew that the schools their kids were attending was not working for them and they wanted access to better schools.

And for me, that was potentially the moment where I decided this was not only a transformational cause, but something that really connected with me considering how my parents left everything behind to give me and my brother access to a better school. It’s very difficult for those of us who have worked in the choice movement to not fall in love with the families who are advocating for options and their needs and desires are really no different than those of affluent families.

And as a country, I firmly believe that access to a high-quality education is really the first key step to reaching the American dream. And it’s one of those things that should be available to any child regardless of zip code and their life circumstances.

Ginny Gentles:

Well, I personally had an experience of working directly with families who were involved in the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program a number of years in the earlier life of that program. And you were part of launching and leading the effort for the federal government for the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program when you led the US Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement during the Bush administration.

I’d love to hear more about your experience leading OII and your thoughts on whether or not an innovation office can impact the workings of a giant federal bureaucracy. You didn’t only lead the DCOSP Program, but also the Charter School Program, which we’re going to talk about, and a number of other programs as well. Were you able to make an impact there in your time in OII?

Nina Rees:

Well, I’m always going to be grateful to the opportunity to run a small office, an office that had about $1.2 billion in grants. You worked there after us so you know what a great privilege it is to be given the chance to run an office of that size and to, I mean, I learned how to manage individuals through that experience. And at the time, Secretary Paige really wanted to give a platform for the agency to advocate for school choice. And one of the key pieces of legislation within No Child Left Behind was the option to send kids to a public school, if the public school that students were assigned to was not working, access to supplemental education services, and so on and so forth.

So, other than managing these programs, a big part of the job was being the bully pulpit for public school choice options and supplemental education services. But all of that has, of course, fallen by the wayside. I am extremely proud of the progress we made in passing the DC Student Opportunity Scholarship Act. Partly also because when I was at the Heritage Foundation, we had worked very hard to tee up this legislation and it had actually come to a vote at least twice and once vetoed by President Clinton.

We have a [inaudible] actually by now President Biden, indicating that the next time this ever came up, he could not vote against it because as a Catholic, he believed that students should have access to greater public education.

So, to be able to advocate for something in a think tank and then actually be able to pass it legislatively was a great learning experience. And one of those things that I encourage anyone who is in a think tank to try to do. Because we spend a lot of time in our space talking and writing papers, but there’s nothing like actually trying to implement something both legislatively, but also in an agency, kind of grounds you in the difficulties of actually bringing policy ideas to life.

But that program was launched, it was small. I would say two of the things that caught me by surprise, the first was we had an intent on making sure that there was a randomized field trial attached to the program, which meant we had to attract twice as many families as we had slots within a very short timeframe. So, again, as much as I love research and evaluation, I thought it was not only difficult to get twice as many families in that timeframe, but there was also something a little bit heartless about attracting families who you knew had to remain in a control group for you to see if the program was effective.

And then, the other thing that was quite disappointing to me, which is partly why I’m a huge advocate of charter schools, is I, for whatever reason thought a lot of private schools would sign up to participate in the program. But the only ones who were excited and ended up participating were Catholic schools and a few Christian schools. None of the private, independent schools ended up taking students in that first year except for Sidwell Friends, which opened the door to one student.

So, even though the program didn’t have a lot of strings attached to it, other than making sure the students in the program were being evaluated using the same test that DCPS students were taking, I just didn’t appreciate the fact that so many private schools were not open to the idea of inviting these scholarship students to their schools. But a lot has changed ever since. Again, charter schools were new at the time, but that along with the charter school movement certainly led to a lot of the reforms that Michelle Rhee put in place.

And I would say to this day, DC is a much different city because of some of those reforms. If you recall, before that stage, every other year, DC was under receivership. The federal government was assigning who should run the school system. And a lot of that has changed. And I credit the advocacy around parental choice for making those changes possible.

Ginny Gentles:

And some of the limitations with the private school participation with DC is the geography. You have a small city and the private schools that were allowed to participate in, are allowed to participate are only located in Washington, DC. But fortunately, when you have a private school choice program in a large state like Florida, you end up having 2000 private schools willing to participate. So, we definitely are in a different era. And then, when we’re talking state-level private school choice programs, you’re talking about a different geographic consideration.

So, let’s fast forward a number of years. You currently lead the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Is it of Public Charter Schools or for Public Charter Schools?

Nina Rees:

For Public Charter.

Ginny Gentles:

For Public. Okay, that actually makes sense. So, you lead the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. We were talking about private school choice, and let’s switch to charter schools and start first with, what is a charter school. I think people, particularly because there are so many misconceptions out there and myths around charter schools and lies, there isn’t a clear idea in the public of what is a charter school, and maybe how it’s different than a private school or a traditional public school or even a magnet school. So, what is it that you’re leading over there?

Nina Rees:

So, charter schools are public schools. Every state statute tackling the creation of charter schools made sure that they labeled it as a public school that was open to everyone, free of tuition. And again, depending on the state that you were in, some states enacted it in order to give low-income families access to better schools. Other states like Minnesota enacted the law in order to give their teachers greater freedom and flexibility to design school models and innovations in their classrooms. In other places, it was designed as a tool just to close the achievement gap.

But in general, they’re all public, tuition-free, no entrance exam. And in that sense, many of those who created the concept and advocated for it were out to reform public education and bring it back to its roots.

Ginny Gentles:

One issue is some confusion around what a magnet school is versus a charter school. And people might say, “Well, I’m for a magnet program,” that is sometimes selective actually. But charter schools aren’t selective. They’re different than a public magnet school that way.

Nina Rees:

Yes. So, magnet schools are creations of school districts. So, school districts that receive magnet school dollars or want to create a magnet school for whatever purpose, they control the school and they’re managing the school. A charter school can be authorized by a school district. And in that sense, it could be similar to a magnet school because it’s under the school district’s governance. But usually, a charter school is not only governed by school districts. In states that have strong laws, the state can authorize a charter school, a university can authorize a charter school, a nonprofit can authorize a charter school.

So, the key friction between charters and the district-run system is in the fact that the entity that’s overseeing the governance of the school is often not the school district, which is the case with a magnet school. And magnet schools, some of them do have admissions requirements. And that is, again, one of the big differences between magnets and charter schools.

Ginny Gentles:

So, you’re talking about charter authorizing, which a lot of our listeners are going to be familiar with that. And you use the term overseeing. So, a charter authorizer, those various entities, that are the entities that are overseeing a charter school and they have some oversight responsibilities, but then the charters themselves are granted various flexibilities. So, can you talk a little bit more about the flexibility that charters have within that authorizing structure?

Nina Rees:

Yes. So, again, it varies based on the state that you’re in. The authorizer gives a contract to the school that ranges anywhere between five to 10 years. There are variations to that. And within that timeframe, you tell the authorizer what you want to do and what your goals are in exchange for outcomes. You’re then given a degree of flexibility and autonomy. Most of those autonomies come around staffing so that you can hire the teachers that you want. If the law is strong, you can also step outside of the certification requirements. If the law is strong, you can also hire teachers who are not unionized. And in exchange for that freedom and flexibility, you can extend your school day, you can extend your school year.

And most importantly, the key flexibility is around your curriculum design so that you are experimenting with different models of instruction outside of what the district is offering. So, it can be a classical model, it can be a STEM-centric model. Some of them are focused on adults, students who are overaged and under-credited. So, that’s where the innovation piece comes in and the flexibility to do this differently in exchange for meeting the terms of your contract. If you’re not meeting the terms of your contract, that authorizer can pull the contract and close your school or fold you into another charter school.

The other level of accountability, of course, is families. If families are not attracted to your school, if you don’t have enough families or students in seats, the school obviously cannot stay open.

Ginny Gentles:

I’ve heard you reference the law and how strong the laws are. You and I live in a state that has a law that has not encouraged the creation of charter schools. So, I’m going to assume that Virginia is one of those states that you would say does not have a strong law.

Nina Rees:

Oh, correct. So, Maryland and Virginia are two of the states that have the worst laws for very different reasons. So, those who often say, “Well, charter schools are something that Republicans support,” I usually highlight a state like Virginia or Kansas that has had a law for a long time and a very weak one at that. And really the spirit of local control is so embedded in the state’s constitution and in the way of life that breaking that cycle has been very difficult. But that is not because there is no parental demand. And hopefully, one day, we’ll be able to break the cycle and introduce charter schools as we see them in other places.

Ginny Gentles:

And for more information about the strength of the law or the various provisions in the law, you all have great resources on your website that break down the components of the charter laws, but then also rank them as well, right?

Nina Rees:

Yes. So, if you go to our website at publiccharters.org, we have a model law that we use whenever a legislator is interested in exploring either passing a law or growing the quality of their law and either 121 metrics by which we evaluate the strength of law and we rank order the states based on that law. But the reason the Virginia law is so weak is that only school districts can authorize charter schools. And in order to create a statewide authorizer, you certainly need the legislature to support it. But there are also some legal questions around how to do it in a way that honors local control.

If you really wanted a statewide authorizer in Virginia in the way that you see in some other states, you actually need to amend the state constitution, which requires a vote by the legislature twice in a row in two different cycles. And then, you have to then take the measure to voters, which is again, a very complicated task. But there are other mechanisms that you can use to create charter schools. And we’ve certainly talked to different governors at different points in time.

As you know the governor of Virginia is only in office for four years at a time. So, it’s also hard to gain some momentum and work with administrations to impact this change.

Ginny Gentles:

Well, sometimes people in states that don’t have a lot of school choice options just assume, “Well, this is the way it is. Of course, there there’s no other way that things could be…” I tried to make it that point in Virginia. We have something like maybe seven charter schools, but in Florida, it’s like 700. So, of course, things could be different. You can figure this out. And I believe 45 states have charter school laws.

Nina Rees:

Yes.

Ginny Gentles:

Okay. Where are the states that are considered charter friendlier? Where are charters thriving right now?

Nina Rees:

Well, Florida is one place where charters have thrived. And what’s interesting about Florida, when you look at the NAEP data that just came out in the fall, which looked at NAEP scores during the pandemic, the states that did the best in terms of performance or in the case of charter schools, the communities that did the best were in Miami-Dade and I believe Palm Beach or Broward County. So, Florida is definitely a shining example of a state where the results have been good. There was another study done a few years ago that looked at your income after you graduated at a charter school.

And this study found that students who graduated from Florida charter schools and charter schools in Chicago ended up earning more after graduating and getting a job. So, there’s a lot of evidence of success in Florida. There are other places that all depends on what you’re trying to do. I would say there’s a lot of momentum in states like Texas, states like Utah, Idaho, interestingly enough. So, again, to the extent there are population shifts, these are the places that are attracting more families and where there is momentum to do creative things through the charter school mechanism.

Ginny Gentles:

So, one way that these charter schools do grow is by accessing federal funding through the Charter School Program. And I had a great experience a few years ago, writing up a history of the program. And it was so encouraging in some ways to read and learn and talk to people about just how bipartisan the creation of this program was, like profoundly, deeply bipartisan. And it’s discouraging to think about what’s happened in recent years to that bipartisan support. But let’s talk about what the Charter School Program is and how it’s impacted the growth and the number of charter schools. Can you explain CSP to us?

Nina Rees:

Yes, we talk about CSP all the time, so thank you for that question. This is a federal program that passed in the ’90s with support, bipartisan support in Congress. And back then, President Clinton is the president who signed it into law. And over time, the program has continued to exist and garner the support of presidents since Mr. Clinton, from President Bush to President Trump, President Obama. But unfortunately, as time has gone by, the current president hasn’t been as open to embracing the Charter Schools Program in the same way that past presidents have and the way the other presidents have shown their interest is by advocating for the growth of the program from a financial standpoint.

So, I would say that bipartisanship still exists. When you look at some of our key advocates in the House and Senate, they remain, members like Senators Bennet, Senator Corey Booker, Senator Dianne Feinstein. These are individuals who have continued to remain supportive, and they’re the individuals who lead our annual advocacy letter to ask for more funding for the Charter Schools Program. And in the House, we have a good number of members on the Congressional Black Caucus and new members, [inaudible] representative Ritchie Torres of New York, who have been supportive.

I think the key thing that’s different now as opposed to what we had before is that the union influence at the federal level is higher than it’s ever been. So, to me, the lack of enthusiasm for the growth of charter schools is not as much about a lack of Democratic interest and support as much as it is with other factors that may be shaping the politics of charter schools and also competing priorities.

The priority right now at the federal level for the past few years has been COVID relief dollars, mental health, and a whole host of other issues that are not as focused on offering choice and options, but more broad support to make sure that schools are able to combat learning loss and the things that happened since the pandemic. So, it’s going to be interesting to see what happens after these COVID relief dollars dry up and how this current flood of funding will impact what schools end up needing to do after that fiscal cliff hits.

Ginny Gentles:

Yeah, I spoke recently in the congressional testimony about that fiscal cliff. I hope people are aware and awake to what’s about to happen when you send $190 billion of bonus funding with those COVID dollars to districts and then turn off the tap. There are going to be consequences, particularly if the district’s invested in staff. They are going to have to fire a lot of people. Separate from that, we do have the CSP funding that has been flowing for a long time and will continue to, but the Biden administration did offer some changes to that program. Can you tell us a little bit about the status of that?

Nina Rees:

Yes. So, the other thing I should say about the CSP is as far as federal grant programs are concerned, it is probably, as your paper indicates, one of the best programs out there in a sense that its goal is to help you launch a new school in the first few years before you have enough students in seats and it doesn’t support a school in perpetuity. So, it has a very defined goal. And according to the General Accountability Office, schools that receive CSP dollars end up staying open longer, and they end up having higher enrollment. This doesn’t surprise us, but this GAO, or these two GAO reports that just came out were commissioned by one of those individuals on the Hill who’s not a supporter.

This is Representative DeLauro from Connecticut, and whatever she was asking them to do ended up yielding these positive outcomes. So, what happened last year? So, the department had to promulgate rules. This is within their purview whenever there is a new administration and some changes that… these were changes that we anticipated. We knew that they were going to go through rulemaking. However, when they introduced the rule, the timeframe to respond to the rules and time for the program to actually be disseminated was extremely tight.

And within that rule, they introduced the whole host of ideas that were new to the sector. And from a congressional standpoint, the law did require them to involve the field before putting a rule out there, which is not something that the department necessarily adhered to. We don’t know who they had talked to before they put out the rule for public comment. The rule would’ve done a couple of things, one of which would’ve been to ask for the schools that are applying to get the funds to get a letter of support or some agreement with the school district. And that to us is asking McDonald’s if it’s okay to open Burger King next door. So, fortunately, that piece was moved out.

There were also requirements around making sure that charter schools were adhering to the desegregation policies that school districts have to adhere to, which on paper might make sense. But for a small school to know these types of things that a district usually with its central office needs to be aware of was pretty complicated. And again, a lot of our schools are schools of choice. And if you are in a community that serves predominantly Black students or if you’re in a culturally affirming school, to tell the school that they have to now place a premium on diversity when the mission of the school is different, runs counter to the whole concept of charter schooling.

So, we made some progress in pulling back some of these rules to the point where once the rule was actually promulgated and the competition was conducted, we were able to get a good, healthy number of applications both from the states and charter management organizations. This is the one thing about rulemaking is once you… like in the concept of school districts, right now, there is a provision that can be an invitational priority. So, if you want to get a letter of support from the district, you can ask for that letter. And the department or the peer reviewers can use it for whatever purpose.

They can’t use it as the reason to approve or negate a grant, but it’s just an invitational priority. But once you get it approved down the road, someone can decide that we might want to attach some points to this priority. And that’s really the slippery slope of rulemaking. And as an advocacy organization, we were very proud of the number of letters we generated and the amount of attention that this issue got.

But to your earlier question about the federal role in education and all of that, as much as I believe in having a federal role that shares information with people that does research and evaluation, research and development, this particular thing is one of those reasons why I’m somewhat skeptical of additional things at the federal level. Because it’s not done with an eye toward getting everyone to vote, and it’s not very transparent. And so, through rulemaking, you can add layers of bureaucracy, which this department has added to a program that was really supposed to be a simple application to launch new charter schools.

And so, those who were advocating for this, groups that were in support of the rules were ultimately not advocates of charter schools. And which was one of the key reasons we thought that we should pull everything back and start over. But our sector has shown up, they have adhered to whatever is on paper. There is definitely a need for more funding for charter schools, not just for these two programs, but also for facilities finance.

And so, we’re going to continue to see an uptick in applications, and we will definitely serve as a watchdog and have been serving as a watchdog to make sure that nothing strange happens to this program.

Ginny Gentles:

Well, you definitely have an advocate in Senator Tim Scott, he was one of our earlier interviews here at Students Over Systems and mentioned his support for the CSP program. That’s encouraging because I know that there are some Republicans who have increasingly been wondering, “Well, it seems like the charter school movement is courting Democrats, but ignoring us even though we’re the ones who have been speaking up for so long.” So, you do still have the support from some prominent Republicans, but I did just want to give you the opportunity to speak up and share your approach to how do you balance the bipartisan aspect.

And then, a two-part question. Secondly, some people are expressing concerns about woke charters. The KIPP model used to have this motto of work hard, be kind, but then they’ve moved away from that. And maybe some of the other no-excuses charters have moved away from their previous support for that philosophy. So, wondering how you respond to some of these concerns out there from what likely is our more conservative-leaning audience because they might share those concerns.

Nina Rees:

Well, the members who want us to get more Democrats to support charter schools are Republicans. We have a lot of supporters, Representative Moolenaar from Michigan as the head of the School Choice Caucus, and one of our key advocates, as you mentioned, Senator Tim Scott, Senator Cornyn. We have a good group of Republicans to the extent there is ever a question or concern about this issue, to be honest, it’s because most of our schools are in Democratic strongholds in school districts. So, you can’t constantly ask individuals who don’t have a stake in the game to be your key advocates.

And so, one reason we pay attention to Democrats is because their constituents are charter school leaders and charter school parents, and they should be listening to what their constituents are saying. In terms of your other question about woke charters, look, charter schools are schools of choice. No one is forced to send their children to these schools.

And to the extent a community is interested in a particular type of school that adheres to certain values, then in my opinion, in our society, we should allow for parents to be able to make that choice. And again, so long as you’re not being forced a particular doctrine, it’s fine to have different types of models and we should encourage them. Same way you would encourage a classical model in some communities or a different kind of school.

The other thing I’ll just also end with is that every survey I’ve seen in the past couple of years indicates that parents, at the end of the day, are interested in making sure their kids are learning how to read and do math. And as someone who is very focused on what is happening in our workforce, making sure that our kids are graduating with the critical thinking skills in order to create the jobs of tomorrow. So, we could be distracted with some of these cultural wars.

But at the end of the day, if we really are in this to serve the needs of our families, the best thing that a school can do is really focus on these basic skills and making sure critical thinking skills is at the heart of everything that they are doing right now in service to whatever happens as technology is disrupting everything around us.

Ginny Gentles:

All right. Well, Nina, we’ve covered a lot of school choice history here, which has been my goal in the earlier episodes of Students Over Systems. There’s some misconceptions out there that school choice is brand new, that it just started, and you and I know. Oh, no. We’ve been doing this a long time. School choice has been in place, we’re talking decades, as far as the first charter school law and even the Charter School Program has been around for… is it 25 years now? I should know.

Nina Rees:

Well, it was 1995, 1997, updated.

Ginny Gentles:

Yeah. A long, long time.

Nina Rees:

Charter schools have now been around for 30 years, over 30 years. We have 7700 public charter schools serving about 3.7 million students. So, it’s definitely grown over time.

Ginny Gentles:

Wait, 7000 charter schools?

Nina Rees:

7700 public charter schools serving 3.7 million students.

Ginny Gentles:

Okay. And again, 45 states have charter school laws, some stronger than others. So, check the National Alliance website, publiccharters.org for information on all of that. Final question, what is the charter school myth that really bugs you the most and you’d like to debunk today?

Nina Rees:

Well, the fact that they are not public, and this is not just a myth that our opposition talks about. A lot of people who send their own kids to charter schools don’t know that these are public schools. And then, this is the reason why I’m so excited about your podcast and similar podcasts that talk simply about what it is and what it’s supposed to do. When we were first born, charter schools were a new phenomenon, so it was obvious that some people were confused by it. But over time, those myths have not gone away.

And every poll that’s happened, looking at charter schools broadly, demonstrates one thing, which is there’s a percentage of people who are never going to embrace it. There’s a percentage of people who will support it no matter what. But in between, there are a lot of people who simply don’t know what it is. So, for me, the fact that there is a perception that they are not public or that they have admissions tests is one of the key myths and one that we need to continue to dispel if we want this movement to thrive.

Ginny Gentles:

Well, Nina, I am happy to help dispel the myths around school choice. It’s actually my favorite thing to do, and happy to talk to you today about charter schools and all that you’ve done for the school choice movement over the years. Thank you so much for joining us.

Nina Rees:

Thank you, Ginny, and thank you for your leadership over the years.

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 Education Freedom Center, please go to iwf.org/efc, and thank you for listening to Students Over Systems. Till next time, keep celebrating education freedom and brighter futures.