John Schilling, senior advisor to the Invest in Education Coalition, joined Students Over Systems to discuss federal school choice options. John shares the current threats to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program for low-income students and the widespread congressional support for a federal educational choice tax credit. We lament the power-hungry nature of teachers unions–the biggest bullies in school–and celebrate the good news that education freedom programs are expanding across the nation.
TRANSCRIPT
Ginny Gentles:
Today on Students Over Systems, we’re celebrating education freedom at the state and national level. John Schilling joins us to discuss federal school choice programs and proposals.
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. On today’s episode, we’re focusing on federal school choice options, and we’re going to take a few minutes to talk about teachers unions once again.
For this important conversation we’re joined by John Schilling. John is the founder of 2020 Strategies, senior advisor to Invest in Education Coalition, and the former president of the American Federation for Children. During his 15 years of leadership at the American Federation for Children, he helped AFC and its affiliates become the most effective education reform group in the country. Before that, he served four years as associate superintendent and chief of policy at the Arizona Department of Education and held various positions for members of Congress. John, thank you so much for joining us.
John Schilling:
Great to be with you.
Ginny Gentles:
All right, so we’re going to start talking about the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. We talk a lot about education savings accounts here at Students Over Systems, or ESAs, but I’d like to rewind the clock a bit and talk about scholarship or voucher programs, including ones that were available in the early days of the school choice movement. So in addition to managing AFC, you led the local coalition supporting the DC Opportunity Scholarship program. You helped secure multiple program reauthorizations and many years of annual funding. Talk to us about what the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program does and who it serves.
John Schilling:
Yeah. So the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program is the only federally funded voucher program in the country. It’s now in its 18th year. It is among the most studied federal education programs ever. It is a program that has a demonstrable and incredible record of success over these 18 years.
It is a program that serves low income students in Washington DC. These are families with an average income of about $22,000 a year. It is overwhelmingly a program that serves minority children, African Americans, and Latino kids. It has just been a lifesaver for low income kids in District Columbia. Sadly, I am fighting the same battle that I have been fighting for the last 18 years in this program where we are still struggling to get funding for the program. It’s remarkable after this incredible record of success.
Ginny Gentles:
Many of us watch the incredible movie, Miss Virginia, which tells the story of Virginia Walden Ford and the fight that she led and was very much a part of in the early days to create the program. It has a happy ending. Ta-da. The program’s been created. We all live happily ever after. So what you’re saying is that 18 years later, we don’t have a happy ending yet for the program. Tell us why. Who are the opponents?
John Schilling:
Well, the reason we don’t have a happy ending for the program is because we still have, shall we say, institutional resistance to voucher programs, notably from the teacher’s unions. As you know, the teacher’s unions are the largest donors to the Democratic Party, and it makes it very difficult for Democrats to really want to step out and support this program.
As a result, what we end up having to do is depending on who is in control of which chamber, we have to work for the chamber that frankly is in Republican control, in order to secure funding for the program. This year we’re in this interesting space because the House has a very thin majority and the Democrats are in control of the Senate. So after a few years of this being a quote, Senate program, because Republicans were in a stronger position over in the Senate, it is now reverted to once again being a House program.
So we have been working with our friends in the House of Representatives to try to ensure full funding for this program, which is very, very critical. The program has been flat funded for the last several years, and as a result, well that in combination with the high inflation we’ve experienced over the last few years, scholarship amounts have increased.
Because the program has been flat funded, the number of scholarships have been forced to decrease because the Department of Education is requiring the administrator to add the inflation adjustments to the scholarship amounts. They’re interested in doing this because it will reduce the number of children in the program. The result of this unfortunately, is even students who have been in the program for a long time are not going to get renewed unless we can figure out a way to get this appropriation level raised.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, I think it’s important as we celebrate educational victories or educational choice victories around the country to recognize that this small program remains vulnerable. It also does not have very clear advocates in Congress. Once upon a time, former speaker John Boehner was a huge advocate long, long ago, and you’ll remember this, John, a majority leader, Dick Armey, was an advocate for creating this program.
So in the history of the program, they did have advocates in leadership positions. We definitely hope that congressional leaders will step up and express support for the program. Before we talk a little bit more about the opponents and they’re powerful allies, that’s the unions, what can people do to express support for the program?
John Schilling:
Well, I want to be clear, we continue to have supporters in the Congress. At one time, as you noted, we had guys like Dick Armey and guys like John Boehner. It’s always great when your program is the speaker’s number one priority. I mean, that was really, really helpful in those days.
We do have folks like Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who’s a very strong supporter of the program. Dr. Andy Harris, another very strong supporter of the program who is on the House Appropriations Committee. So we’re grateful to folks like that who are going to fight for more funding. So that’s just really, really important.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, and I’ve noticed over the years that Dr. Virginia Foxx, who’s chairman of the House of Education and the Workforce Committee is always supportive of school choice. Always ready to speak to school choice recipients when we do bring them to attention.
John Schilling:
Absolutely. She is a great champion. Not only that, Dr. Foxx also serves on the oversight committee, which has jurisdiction over the Opportunity Scholarship Program. So we’re grateful for her support as well.
Ginny Gentles:
All right, well I definitely want to be keeping an eye on what happens with the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. That is a program that’s been around for a long time, but we have to continue to advocate for it to ensure that low-income families in the District of Columbia have those options that they so need and deserve. Let’s talk about the opponents of educational choice and really the opponents of all things good in K12 education. That’s the teachers unions.
With the American Federation for Teachers and the National Education Association meeting this summer, we’ve been talking about teachers unions here on Students Over Systems recently. We feel very strongly that it’s important to spread the word that teachers unions and what’s best for teachers and students are very different things.
You appeared on a PragerU short documentary called The Biggest Bully In School, Why Public Education Is Failing in America. Really that should have been the biggest bully in school, why teachers unions are awful. You articulated that idea very clearly when you said it’s about money and power. They have nothing to do with advancing education. So tell us a little bit about what that documentary was and what the objectives were there.
John Schilling:
That was a terrific product from PragerU. They talked to some folks around the country who had firsthand experience with the teachers unions really doing their level best to keep schools closed during and even after the pandemic. I live in Fairfax County, which Fairfax and Loudoun were ground zero for folks rebelling against local school boards who were not listening to parents and who were determined to keep schools closed.
I remember at one point during the pandemic, the local teachers union in Fairfax actually said that their teachers would not go back into the classroom. Not only until all of the teachers were vaccinated, but until all the students were vaccinated. Now mind you, this was before vaccines were made available for students. That’s just how severe their position was. To listen, coming out of the pandemic to Randi Weingarten talk about how the teacher’s unions really wanted to get back into school. I mean, that’s just farcical. I mean, how Randi can say that with a straight face after everything that the teacher’s unions did over the course of the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic to keep schools closed, is just offensive.
You hate to be cynical about these things when it comes to teachers’ unions and why they do not support education freedom. The reality is, sadly, it is about money. Charter school teachers do not pay union dues. Private school teachers do not pay union dues. As a result, they are not contributing to the union’s acquisition and retention of political power. That’s why they oppose this. It’s not good for kids.
The great news about this is I feel like with all the momentum that we’ve been experiencing around the country over the last couple of years, you just see it in state after state, after state. You’re seeing it at the federal level. You’re now finding more and more policymakers who have come to realize there might be something to this school choice thing. Because a lot of these folks, they’re parents, and they went through this during the pandemic and they know what the teacher’s union did to try to keep schools closed.
Ginny Gentles:
This wasn’t a new phenomenon. Now we know that the teacher’s unions were working against students, were working against parents, in a lot of cases working against educators when they were fighting to keep schools closed. This goes back years as far as their efforts to not help children learn, to not improve outcomes and really to not even help teachers improve their pay and benefits.
You mentioned in this PragerU video, which again is called The Biggest Bully In School, there’s no question the union goes out of their way to protect bad teachers and that the process to fire a bad teacher is extremely laborious. Talk to us about what that is that they’re doing to protect bad teachers.
John Schilling:
The process that you have to go through in order to get rid of bad teachers is just quite stunning. I first learned about this when I was working for the Arizona Department of Education in the late ’90s and part of the school board meeting, usually the end of the school board meeting was about taking up the issue of disciplinary action for teachers. Just to watch how long it took to remove bad teachers from the classroom was really… It was very illuminating for me back then. Frankly, I don’t know that much has really changed on that front. It’s really stunning.
I mean, you’ve heard stories out of New York where they put the teachers in these white rooms where they continue to get paid all their money when the evidence is piled up, that they’ve done some really horrible things. It’s not good. I’m reminded of a video clip I saw years ago of a guy named Bob Shannon who was the legal counsel for the National Education Association. He was retiring, so he gave this speech to the NEA convention where he accidentally… Well, maybe he did it purposely, where he just blurted out the truth. He’s like, “Look, we’re not in business for kids. We’re in business for the adults. We’re in business to have and accumulate power so we can do what we want. It doesn’t have anything to do with kids.” There’s really nothing more frightening than this.
The thing that I was taught very early on in my career in education, which now goes back as I said to the ’90s, was my old boss and my old friend, Lisa Graham Keegan, who always said to us, “Look, you always need to be careful about differentiating between teacher union leaders and teachers because we love teachers. Teachers are underappreciated and underpaid.” There’s a lot of incredible teachers around America, public school teachers, charter school teachers, private school teachers, homeschool teachers, and magnet school teachers. Teachers are amazing. The teachers union leadership really is in business for one reason, it is to collect union dues. It is to spend that money and to leverage political power. That’s what they’re about. They’re not about helping kids succeed.
Ginny Gentles:
Right. “NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power.” That was that union quote that you just mentioned that was also featured in this documentary. You also mentioned in the documentary that as they’re amassing this power, they’ve become very political over the last 20 or so years, and therefore they’re not representing their members because many of these classroom teachers who we love don’t have these really extreme views or this extreme desire for great political power. So the unions increasingly are very different and distinct from the individual classroom teacher. We definitely want to make sure that that point is clear. We love teachers.
John Schilling:
That’s right.
Ginny Gentles:
Unions are political machines and we don’t love them. They’re hurting teachers, they’re hurting parents and most importantly they’re hurting students. That has to stop.
John Schilling:
I mean, this is a little bit like the degree to which the teachers’ union leadership is out of touch with rank and file teachers is very similar to the way that the Democratic Party in America is out of touch with their core constituencies. If you look at the support for school choice among parents, Latinos, African Americans, the support is just overwhelming.
We’re at the point now where the only constituent, the only core constituencies in the Democratic Party that still oppose school choice are wealthy white liberals and teachers’ unions. That’s it. Because the support is so overwhelming among all of their other core constituencies, they’re simply out of touch with their core constituencies.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, thankfully, we have made great progress on the school choice front and some of that, a lot of that’s due to your leadership at the American Federation for Children for many years. You’re working on another school choice front right now, and that’s federal school choice. Just one more plug and mention of the Biggest Bully In School, the PragerU documentary that everyone should listen to.
You talk about the fact that there is hope when we talk about school choice, that this is unquestionably the most important reform. The more that we can empower parents to choose best educational environment for their child that’s going to shake up the system. With money following the children we take away the power and the union dues from the union, and there’s all kinds of other benefits as well.
So let’s talk about what you’re exploring at the federal level right now. As we mentioned at the start, you’ve been really the godfather of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, shepherding that program through Congress for 18 years now. You’ve been also engaged in another endeavor at the federal level, and that’s what’s now being called the Educational Choice for Children Act. What is this?
John Schilling:
So the Educational Choice for Children Act is a federal scholarship tax credit. We refer to this as the post pandemic version of what Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos introduced back in 2019. Basically, this is an opportunity, and I want to be very specific about this because the moment anybody utters the word federal, there are a number of people around the country that immediately go into a fetal position and think, “It’s a federal program.” It is not a federal program.
It’s a federal opportunity that is going to be funded by individual and corporate contributions to nonprofit scholarship granting organizations around the country. Up to $10 billion, donors, individual donors can contribute up to 10% of their adjusted gross income or $5,000, whichever is higher. Corporations can contribute up to 5% of taxable income.
The money’s going to go to scholarship granting organizations who would then hand out scholarships that students can use on a variety of educational purposes, including private school tuition, tutoring, which would help address the catastrophic learning loss that is taking place around the country. Special needs services, education technology, fees, homeschool families would be able to benefit from this. The individual and corporate donors who contribute would get a 100% non-refundable federal tax credit. There’s very broad eligibility requirements for this. The eligibility is based on 300% of median income by area around the country. So what does that mean?
What it means is, is that around 85% of the K 12 population in every state would be eligible to participate in this. So it would be just a remarkable achievement at the federal level. We believe that it will help parents of up to two million kids around the country choose a school or education service of their choice. You talk about money following kids, you talk about trying to dilute the power and influence of the teacher’s unions. If you can empower parents of another two million students around the country with educational freedom and choice, you are diluting and diminishing the power of the teacher’s unions.
Ginny Gentles:
Okay. John, let’s talk a little bit about your statement that this is not a program, this is a tax credit. This is an opportunity, not a program. Why is it not a program if it’s something that has to be administered at the federal level, how is that not a federal program?
John Schilling:
So it is not a federal program because it’s a tax bill. So there is no middleman. The relationship is between the donors, the SGOs, and the Treasury Department. There’s nobody in between. The words, United States Department of Education do not appear anywhere in this bill. Nowhere. This is a bill that respects federalism, it protects religious liberty, it ensures private school autonomy.
Before this bill was even introduced, we sat down with all of the major faith-based groups around the country and we asked them to take a look at it. We asked them, “Does this bill truly protect religious liberty? Does it truly ensure private school autonomy?” I can assure you, they would not have signed on unless they were assured of that. In addition to that, we had the Institute for Justice take a look at it and they blessed it from a constitutional standpoint. So these are all good things.
I mean, if you’re trying to find the way that you can facilitate educational freedom and opportunity around the country without the great hand of the federal government coming in, this is the way to do it because you are directly empowering parents. For all of my friends on the conservative and libertarian side of the aisle who believe that what we really need to do is liberate all the money. Well, I’m with you. We do need to liberate all the money.
The way to get there is you start with this because if you can get this done, if you can get this tax credit passed, a $10 billion federal tax credit and you’re going to empower the parents of another two million students, you’re creating another constituency. A bigger and broader and bigger constituency that can come into play when we’re trying to do the bigger reforms down the road when the landscape is right. Because I’m telling you, you got to have a coalition and we’ve got a very large coalition supporting this. We have 24 national groups, we’ve got 45 groups from 24 states around the country. We have united, pretty much all of the school choice movement behind this legislation with a few minor exceptions.
Everybody is for this. I tell you, for me, having been working the school choice issue in Congress for 20 years, to see the difference in the minds of policymakers, particularly rural policymakers. I mean, as you know, Ginny, rural Republicans have never been great fans of school choice over the years, for a variety of reasons. To be out there and talking to these policymakers about what this bill could potentially mean to urban, rural, and suburban families all across America, the light bulb has gone off. Folks are starting to get this because they understand how important it is to directly empower parents.
Ginny Gentles:
So in addition to those various organizations that you mentioned, I believe you have over a hundred House members who are co-sponsors of the legislation.
John Schilling:
Yeah, so now we have 112 co-sponsors in the House, which is a majority of the Republican caucus. We have 27 co-sponsors in the Senate, which is a majority of the Republican caucus in the Senate. So we’re making very good progress in building support. This bill now has more support than any other federal school choice bill ever in Congress. So we’re real happy about that.
Ginny Gentles:
All right. Well, are any of these members or any of the members that aren’t signing on expressing concerns about the Department of Treasury and any regulations that they might put on the tax credit?
John Schilling:
No, the bill is pretty explicit by design because we want to make sure that there’s not going to be any sort of federal overreach here. I think when we talk with members and we get some credits, we get some questions about what is this mechanism going to look like and how can this possibly be done because this has never been done at the federal level before. The answer to that is pretty quick and simple. We have 22 states that have state tax credit scholarship programs. So there’s a pretty clear record of how to go about doing this. States have been doing this successfully since 1998.
I happened to be in Arizona when the original individual tax credit scholarship program was being litigated. In fact, the guy for the union arguing against it was Bob Shannon before he retired. So I’ve been doing this for a long time and states have clearly made this work. Our tax policy experts believe that the IRS has the existing infrastructure to do this. They had the existing infrastructure to do this before Congress decided to add another 80,000 agents. It is an easy thing to do and again, there’s a track record of doing this successfully across the country.
Ginny Gentles:
All right. One final question on the tax credit and something I heard recently from a state level group, what kind of impact will this have on the existing state level scholarship granting organizations?
John Schilling:
None whatsoever. I mean, the federal scholarship can be stacked on top of an existing state offering. So if you are a state that has an existing tax credit scholarship or an existing ESA program or an existing voucher program, the federal scholarship can come on top of that. So what does that mean? So in most states around the country, you typically don’t have high scholarship amounts.
So if a family gets a state scholarship, maybe it’s going to get them most of the way there in terms of K8 tuition, but it’s not going to get you all the way there for high school tuition, which is more expensive than K8. So this is an area where the federal scholarship coming on top of that is going to help those families who want their child to continue into private school through high school. So that’ll be very, very helpful.In the states that have now passed universal choice programs, the federal scholarship will be helpful in that way because it’s going to boost it, help for the tuition into high school.
For all of the other states, because it comes in over the top, what it’s doing is it’s increasing the purchasing power for families and it’s going to add a lot more students. For the 19 states that don’t have any sort of private school choice offerings, and by the way, that’s about 46% of the K12 population in America that does not currently have a private school choice offering. Most of those are in blue states with entrenched political opposition who will never get this, if not for this federal opportunity. So it’s just a tremendous opportunity and we’re hopeful that we can get this over the finish line.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, I am the mother of a child in a K to eight private school and a child in a high school, private high school. I can say that the high school is probably about two and a half times as much as the K to eight when it comes to tuition. So what you explained just now makes a lot of sense to me. All right, our last question, we always ask our guests to tackle the school choice myth that bothers you the most.
John Schilling:
There are so many. Probably the biggest one is, and this has long been a frustration of mine, it’s very easy for the other side to say vouchers drain money from public schools. I mean, this has been the refrain for 30 years, as long as I can remember. It is such a myth because children are the ones who generate funding. The idea that these programs drain money from private schools is just utterly ridiculous. It’s a myth that has just bothered me and bothered me.
Part of the reason I’m frustrated by it is I think that for too many years, school choice advocates had difficulty coming up with a phrase that was equally persuasive as vouchers drain money from public schools. To some degree we’re still working on that. I think what Secretary DeVos talked about when she was secretary, about this whole concept of education freedom, I mean, she relentlessly beat this drum. I think that’s kind of our best catchphrase now.
I mean, parents of school aged children, they want education freedom. I mean, they want to be able to choose the best educational environment for their child. That just seems like a basic right. I think we’re slowly turning the page on this vouchers drain money from public schools kind of nonsense. We just have to keep at it. I think that this incredible momentum that we are experiencing around the country, this is a result of the great work of the American Federation for Children and all of their state and national allies across the country who have been doing this work relentlessly for so many years. It is finally paying dividends.
The pandemic was so horrible on so many levels, but the silver lining for education freedom is that it really opened the eyes of a lot of policy makers, which we’re heretofore very skeptical about school choice. That attitude has also made its way to Capitol Hill. States always go first. Congress always lags behind. I feel pretty good about where the Educational Choice for Children Act is. I feel pretty good that we’re going to get this over the finish line.
Ginny Gentles:
Well, John, I am so grateful for all that you’ve done over many years to advocate for the students in DC who benefit from the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, for students across the country who benefit from the programs that you advocated for with your years at AFC. I’m intrigued and interested to follow your federal work here with the tax credit. I want to personally thank you for all the opportunities that you’ve given me to work in the school choice field.
You’ve been a friend and an advocate for mothers returning to the workforce after having children. In a time when that wasn’t just normal, it gave me the opportunity to work in a flexible way when I had young children. That really matters to me. It matters to women at Independent Women’s Forum. We value that flexibility and the opportunity to balance our work and home. So thank you for all that you’ve done for me personally, and for the School Choice Movement and for talking with us here today.
John Schilling:
Well, I don’t want to say that I’m biased, but you are one of the finest people I know and it has just been my pleasure to have worked with you for so many years in a professional capacity and to call you my friend.
Ginny Gentles:
Thanks, John. All right, we hope listeners found today’s conversation informative and encouraging. If you enjoyed this episode of Students Over Systems, please tune in to our episodes every other week and share this episode with your friends. We hope that you’ll also leave a rating. For finding out more information 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.
