EdChoice’s Robert Enlow on School Choice

The Learning Curve Robert Enlow

[00:00:00] Alisha Searcy: Well, welcome to the learning curve podcast. I am your cohost, Alisha Thomas Searcy and joined by my other cohost, Dr. Albert Cheng. Hey Albert. Hey Alisha. How are you doing? I am doing well. It is spring. I’m excited. Looking forward to seeing. More sun and warmth outside. How about you?

[00:00:41] Albert Cheng: Oh, yeah. I’d feel that too.

[00:00:42] We planted a tree last year and we’re seeing, you know, right, right. As the winter was coming and we’re seeing the, the buds coming out now. So it really marks the season. Sorry for all the listeners up in the Northeast and upper Midwest. I don’t know how things are going up there, but spring is springing.

[00:01:01] Alisha Searcy: Yes, it is. And I hope it’s spring in there, too. So we have a great show today. We’ve got Robert Enlow from EdChoice. So excited about that interview. But before we do that, it’s time to talk about some of our stories of the week. Would you like to go first?

[00:01:17] Albert Cheng: Yeah, sure. I’ll talk about one that’s happening right in Massachusetts, actually.

[00:01:21] The title is, uh, it’s an opinion piece. Voc Tech Schools Need Support to Build Tomorrow’s Workforce. And it’s a intriguing piece. I, you know, I was struck just Kind of seeing what’s going on in Massachusetts. I mean, we’ve talked about this on the show, I think a while ago, and there’s been plenty of research about the vocational technical high schools in Massachusetts and the good that they do to students, they increase educational attainment, prepare them well for the workforce and life after secondary education.

[00:01:49] So what’s going on now is that in January, nine South shore towns voted in a landslide. to build a new larger vocational technical high school for that whole region. And I mean, talk about elections being close these days. I mean, this one won 78 percent of the votes cast. So that’s a talk about landslide if you ever saw one, but so it’s going to be a huge new facility.

[00:02:13] And really, I think the author here is taking the opportunity to point out that, Hey, you know, These voc tech schools have been so popular in Massachusetts, and that’s really demonstrated by the kind of enduring and long wait lists that there are to get into these schools. And so, and so, you know, the author here takes an opportunity to point readers to the issue that, hey, look.

[00:02:34] Wait lists are showing this big demand. I’ve got a problem here, which is the lack of supply. And I think we might get into this topic a little bit with Robert later, but as we think about parental choice and increasing educational opportunity, supply of schools is, is such a big issue. And. You know, it takes no small chunk of change.

[00:02:53] I mean, here, I mean, at least these are public schools. And so you get to vote for bond measures and these kinds of things to create the capital you need. But, you know, if we’re going to talk about increasing education opportunity and all these other sectors, you know, the charter sector, the private school sector, you know, it’s a tough hill to climb.

[00:03:08] And we really need to be thinking about how do we increase the supply so that we can deliver on these opportunities? I mean, there’s clearly a demand for it.

[00:03:17] Alisha Searcy: That’s such a great point, both on the idea of having the supply for the demand. We know there’s demand. Even when you talk about charter schools, there are always thousands of parents on waiting lists.

[00:03:28] Yeah. And I think the more we talk about options and I’m a, as you know, a public school option person, you have to have those options available. I think in order for education to really work because of what we’re doing. That we have been doing for over 100 years, where all schools look the same, sound the same, feel the same.

[00:03:48] I think it’s clear it’s not working. And then when you talk about, you know, kids being prepared for the future, for careers, for life, right, for success, we also need to have those options to prepare them. So thanks for sharing that story. A really, really good one. Yeah, what did you see? So I want to lift up a story, and I’ve been talking about this already, so I hope I don’t sound like a broken record, but this is from ABC News.

[00:04:16] The Department of Education cuts expected to have huge impacts on teachers. So it’s an interesting angle to this story. I think we’ve all seen the headlines where almost half of The U. S. Department of Education’s workforce was cut last week. And that is going to have consequences that I think have not even been thought about yet.

[00:04:42] And before I even talk about the article, I just want to say this. We’ve all led things, right? You’ve led things. I’ve led things. I’ve led schools before. I own a business. We all understand when you are in leadership and particularly if you’re inheriting something, it’s so important to take the time to assess what’s happening in the environment before you make these huge decisions.

[00:05:06] I think that’s probably my biggest frustration right now. This administration is making all of these massive cuts, firing all of these people and not really assessing beforehand what the impact is going to be, what the functions of these people are in these departments. And so, when you talk about the U. S. Department of Education, that, by the way, is not deciding what kids are actually learning, right, not deciding how they’re being assessed, but making sure that. Title one funds, you know, are being spent properly and that’s for poor children or students with disabilities are being served effectively and that states and school districts are following the federal law.

[00:05:50] And so when you talk about cutting half of the workforce, you’re talking about a really. negative impact on students and certainly on teachers. And so this article talks about how it will affect teachers in terms of training in terms of particularly when you talk about like title one and how schools are supposed to spend those funds.

[00:06:11] A lot of those funds are spent on training and preparation and making sure teachers have the resources that they need. When you talk about IDEA, so you’re talking about students with special needs who have IEPs, those Individualized Education Plans, we want teachers to understand how to read them, how to meet their needs, how to make sure they’re in compliance.

[00:06:32] And so when you don’t have the staff in places like the Office of Civil Rights, which is an important function of the Department of Education, how do you ensure that students Rights are being respected, right? They’re being upheld. How are students getting what they need? And so this was an important piece.

[00:06:49] I won’t go on and on and on. I certainly could, but just thinking about the impact that this has on teachers, the teacher workforce, young people who want to go into teaching because some of these resources aren’t there. And so yeah, folks should definitely check it out. Clearly we’re going to be talking about this for weeks and months to come because we’re continuing to see these cuts, continuing to see elimination of departments and functions. And ultimately, we also, we’ve got to lift up how this is impacting students and teachers and educators.

[00:07:24] Albert Cheng: Yeah. Yep. That’s right. I mean, I’m feeling lots of the downstream consequences. Some of the decisions here at the university and yeah, a lot of things that are uncertain.

[00:07:32] So, you know, I hope it shakes out sooner than later. We have some kind of certainty to figure out how to get our jobs done. Yes, and

[00:07:40] Alisha Searcy: do them well on behalf of kids.

[00:07:42] That’s right. Well, we’ve got a great show ahead, so make sure you stay tuned. Up next, we’ll have Robert Enloe, who’s the president and CEO of EdChoice.

[00:08:04] Robert Enlow is the president and CEO of EdChoice. Before the formation of EdChoice in 2016, Robert was an integral part of the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. From its launch in 1996 and low has authored numerous articles, book chapters, and op eds that have appeared in journals, books, and papers across the country.

[00:08:28] He is also the co editor of liberty and learning Milton Friedman’s voucher idea at 50 and low attended Oxford university through the Oxford center for mission studies, where he studied theology. He received his bachelor’s from Seattle Pacific university. Robert, welcome to the show. We are happy to have you.

[00:08:47] You are a friend of all of ours, friend of Pioneer Institute, so we are happy to have you. So let’s jump in. You have decades of experience leading EdChoice and the Friedman Foundation and driving school choice policies into laws through strategic research, through PR campaigns and political coalition development.

[00:09:08] Can you talk to us about your background and your formative educational and professional experiences, as well as how you became interested in using choice in K 12 education to expand equality of educational opportunity.

[00:09:22] Robert Enlow: Well, that’s a big question, Alisha. Thanks so much. It’s so great to be with you and Albert and our friends at Pioneer.

[00:09:28] Thanks so much for having me. So quickly, a background. I mean, I got lucky. I got born. I got born into a family that had means. and a very small town. And it quickly became clear to me the kind of educational opportunities that I had that others didn’t. And so from early on, I realized that we needed to do something about that when I was a younger kid.

[00:09:48] And then I went to England for six years, ended up doing some postgraduate work in liberation theology. So I was a little bit of a radical lefty back then, as it were. I came back and met Milton Friedman, and I consider myself a transition from liberation to liberty, this idea that, that we have to create an opportunity for all families to have the kind of blessings that those of us with means did.

[00:10:11] So, let’s talk about what that means for a second, in terms of history. Education in America. Whether you’re on the right or the left has been created by zones of attendance and back when there were 180, 000 school districts in America, maybe that was okay because your house price didn’t matter as much.

[00:10:32] But as we are now down to less than 14, 000 school districts, your house price means a lot. It means a lot to the power to move. And so it’s really rather unacceptable redlined families. who can’t afford it and can’t afford other options. And so Milton Friedman came up with this idea in 1955, and I thoroughly agree with it.

[00:10:51] It’s fairer, more acceptable, more efficient to separate the government financing of education from the government administration of schooling. And so I have been trying for the last 29, almost 30 years to ensure that people from all walks of life, right, left, center, pink, brown, blue, whatever, Understand that the idea of educational Liberty is one that it should appeal to all sides, both right and left.

[00:11:16] And we’re in a moment right now. That’s a little bit more where it’s on the right side in the early nineties. It was a little bit more on the left side. And so that’s just the way politics works. But the policy is that every family. Should be free to choose. And that’s what my background has been about trying to make sure that every family has been free to choose.

[00:11:33] We have to do something in this country. Rose Friedman said it. I think the best, if you can’t read, you can’t write, you can’t do arithmetic. Who’s going to govern the affairs of our country. And we’re in a sore place right now. If we think that we’re doing a good enough job educationally. So my background is basically been trying to upend the system that we have and give parents more power and freedom.

[00:11:55] Alisha Searcy: So you talked about reading and writing. For several decades, and well ahead of the COVID pandemic, NAEP reading and math results and performance of American K 12 education on international measures have largely been flat or declining. So can you talk about why, despite the enormous expenditures of more than 800 billion annually, American education has such difficulty improving basic academic achievement and upholding students birthright to a quality education?

[00:12:28] Robert Enlow: Uh, I think the answer to that is simple, but yet the implementation of it is very complex. The answer to the reason why our performance has been poor, and this is again, I can talk to you about this from the right or the left, is because we have a structural system in place that denies parents the freedom to choose.

[00:12:47] And from the right, you would call that a monopoly. That’s terrible, right? We have a monopoly that stops the rising tide from lifting all boats. You don’t have competition. From the left, you might say, this is a systemic oppression system that is set up to, as my friend Darrell Bradford says, work exactly as it’s intended to for poor families.

[00:13:06] And so this is about the institutional arrangements and that’s what Milton Friedman was most concerned about, the institutional arrangements between the parent and the provider. And when you actually create a monopoly, you create a product that doesn’t actually have to care about what you want. And it just doesn’t have the basics of, of sort of parental freedom and competition.

[00:13:25] And so what we have in America right now, and I would argue very clearly, That when you see areas of robust choice, and Albert can back this up or not, when you see NAIPS scores rising up and down the best, it’s in states that have a really robust set of options, like Florida, like Arizona, and like Indiana, and places like that.

[00:13:46] It’s not universal, but as you start to work on a system sort of changing structure, you’ve heard this a thousand times. It’s the only system where we actually provide the same thing that we did 150 years ago. We are not doing much to upend the way we deliver education. And so I think the structural arrangements of K 12 education are the largest reason why we cannot see progress and why, frankly, money doesn’t matter, right?

[00:14:11] You could pour more and more money into a system, but if it’s not going to actually change its incentive structure, it’s not going to be helpful for kids.

[00:14:19] Alisha Searcy: I appreciate your ability to talk about the right and the left and bringing those perspectives. So thank you for that. Over the last decade alone, public charter school enrollment has nearly doubled, where there are now 3. 4 million students attending in roughly 7, 700 schools and campuses. Can you talk about the states that have experienced the largest growth and the ones that have lagged behind, and the role that charter school expansion and performance plays in democratizing public school choices?

[00:14:52] Robert Enlow: So this is a really interesting question because, you know, I think you have to think about it.

[00:14:56] in the following way. And that’s from a public funding perspective. And so we as taxpayers say we’re going to fund K 12 education and we’re going to fund K 12 education and deliver it directly to public schools that are run by the government and owned by the districts, right? We as taxpayers agree that we’re going to fund education, but we’re going to fund independently run charter schools that are approved by the government.

[00:15:20] We say as taxpayers, we were going to fund K 12 education. We’re going to do so by giving parents the freedom to choose a private school. And now we’re going to say we as taxpayers are going to fund education. We’re going to fund it to parents to pick and choose and customize through an education savings account.

[00:15:34] The point I’m making here is it’s all about we as taxpayers and how we fund it. In charter schools, because there are states that don’t have a lot of private school choice or E. S. A. S. Or education scholarship accounts have been growing dramatically in places like California and Texas and New York and Michigan places where families don’t have the ability to pay twice once in taxes and once in private school tuition.

[00:15:58] And so what we’re seeing is growth in charter schools. In fact, we’re seeing a growth in all school options, right? Homeschooling You’re seeing major growth in charter schools. You’re seeing growth in private schools, and that should be telling the traditional schools something, namely that their parents, their customers, are tired of the way it is.

[00:16:17] Now, when we do polling, EdChoice does polling every month of families, every single month for the last four years. So, we have one of the largest data sets of parental choice and parental ideas on education in the country. What they’re telling us is they’re moving schools because they’re They’re tired of the kids being bullied.

[00:16:35] They’re tired of the kids being anxious and depressed. And they’re tired of the kids not getting a quality education. Charter schools and private schools are handling those issues in a significant way better than our traditional schools. And for the most part, in my opinion. And charter schools have seen this growth because Families are getting a more direct consumer experience, a more direct, powerful experience where they can own the education.

[00:16:56] And that makes a difference. And so they don’t have to go off and buy a 400, 000 house to get a good education. They can go to a charter school. And that’s one of the reasons why charters have been so successful.

[00:17:06] Alisha Searcy: Interesting. Since the 1990s, there’s been a right left coalition of reformers who drove many state and federal policy changes.

[00:17:16] It’s part of how we met. And with the increasingly polarized and divided nature of American politics, can you talk about the likely coalitions for reform or the regions of the country you see as being able to put together the compromises for successful school choice policies?

[00:17:36] Robert Enlow: So, this is, well, that’s a very interesting question, Alisha.

[00:17:38] Thank you. First of all, I don’t know if we should compromise on quality, right? So, to me, we’re talking about the concept of choice and quality. There should be no compromises. Families should be free to choose all the options, right? We can quibble about what kind of accountability and stuff like that, but there should be equal access to all the options.

[00:17:57] And I think part of our conversation in the early 90s, and I was there at the beginning, building that, by the way, Based on only one agreement together, which is we believed in school choice and all those other issues went to the wayside and throughout the 90s. I would argue instead of there were places where there were collaborative works between sort of the right and left.

[00:18:17] I would argue early Georgia as you were as you were part of that way back in the day. In the mid 2000s with the original tax credit program, there was a lot of synergy between the right and the left advocates, but mostly around the country. I got to be honest. I think what I saw is a sort of not necessarily not collaborative, but I mean, they were just parallel.

[00:18:35] So charters were working private school choices working and they basically had a detente that said, let’s get together in the same room and we won’t kill each other. We’ll talk to each other, be part of each other. I think that changed in 2016 for a whole host of reasons. And it certainly changed in 2020 and certainly has now changed again.

[00:18:53] So I’m hoping that what was a period of episodic right and left working together, this sort of fractured in 2016 and fractured, I would say quite famously and unfortunately, because I think both sides, and we can talk about this, have decided that. Politics is more important than policy. And I think that’s a real problem when it matters to you more with whether Democrats are elected or Republicans are elected versus whether kids get freedom of choice.

[00:19:21] That’s to me as a problem. I understand it, but that’s a problem. And so the wave of the future I’m hoping is the incredible. Um, and I think it’s going to be a real growth in the number of folks on the left that are doing choice, that are experiencing choice, that are doing micro schooling. The right left of the future is going to be the right left of building new opportunities, building new schools, stop fighting about policy, and start getting the job done.

[00:19:43] Albert Cheng: Well, I guess we could have mic dropped the interview, you know, right here and end it. But, Robert, I got a few more questions since we have a bit more time on the show. Let’s continue wading into some tough topics. So within the last five years, let’s talk about the Supreme Court and what’s been going on.

[00:19:57] We’ve seen a bunch of rulings in favor of school choice policy, Espinosa versus Montana or Montana Department of Revenue, Carson v. Mencken. So we talked about these cases on the show a bit, but we’d like your take. What do you think the impact of these cases on the legal landscape for school choice would be?

[00:20:16] And I want to add maybe, you know, what opportunities are you excited about because of them and what concerns you?

[00:20:22] Robert Enlow: The cases of Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson basically took apart what was the old Lemon v. Kurtzman decision, which basically said If you’re going to have choice, it had to follow these three rules, right?

[00:20:33] It had to be truly neutral, truly private choice, neutrally applied across all schools, and it couldn’t create excessive entanglement. Those three cases basically destroyed that precedent. And what they did is they basically said, okay, it’s acceptable in our eyes to have public funds go for a common use of playgrounds.

[00:20:53] That was Trinity, right? So it doesn’t matter if you’re religious. Or not a religious entity or not. If you’re having a playground, that’s a common use in Espinosa and Carson. What they did is they said, Hey, let’s extend that. It’s okay. If a government says we will fund an individual uses their scholarship at a private school, and then we will also allow for them to teach religion.

[00:21:14] So it’s the sense of use and content. So like the status of the school, right? Whether it’s religious. And the use of the voucher in religious education, these three cases basically have said, as long as you fund families to go to whatever options, including religious private schools, it’s fine. What that does, in my opinion, is set the conditions for a dramatic change in the ecosystem.

[00:21:38] And you’re beginning to see that now. Why should a state, let’s say, like Georgia, Not say we’ll fund everything, including religious schools. Why don’t we fund micro schools? Why don’t we fund more charter schools? Why don’t we find a whole host of options? Because now that the Supreme Court said that Blaine amendments, and for those of you in the audience don’t know that Blaine amendments, they basically were put together by a guy named James Blaine in the 1800s who hated Catholics and wanted to say no public money should go to those papers.

[00:22:06] And he was successful in many states and failed at the United States Senate by one vote, thank goodness. But went around and got these amendments put into state constitutions about the ability to prohibition of public funds for religious purposes. Those are now being overturned. And I think the future is, now that the conditions are set, the ecosystem can change and grow.

[00:22:27] And I think the next case in this one is the Oklahoma Charter School, Religious Charter School case, which we will see argued this term.

[00:22:35] Albert Cheng: Well, let’s also talk about other things that have been going on recently, and particularly I’m thinking about the enormous growth in ESAs and tax credit programs and, you know, a lot of states going to universal eligibility for their programs.

[00:22:47] So, we’d like your inside scoop or your observation, just being on the front lines of advocating for these kinds of things. Talk about the relationships and alliances among state legislatures and private school choice advocates like yourselves, what made it possible to achieve these kinds of results?

[00:23:07] Robert Enlow: That’s a great question. And there’s a lot to it. First of all, I think when we’re talking about universality, the first thing to note is public schools are universal. Anyone can go. Second thing is charter schools are universal. Anyone can go. There’s no means testing of charter schools. There’s no limitation to charter schools by any other measure.

[00:23:24] And so the public private school choice advocates are saying the same thing. Why can we not just have universal choice across the board? We’ve been at EdChoice saying that. EdChoice. org From the beginning of our organization and from 2016, when we made a strategic plan to move directly into states where we thought we could get universal choice, by the way, those are all the states that have it now.

[00:23:44] So we started at ed choice, working on this in 16, basically saying any kind of choice isn’t good enough. We need universal choice. And the universal choice is important because people complain, well, we should not give rich people a lot of money. To go to a private school and I’m arguing where you’re giving them significantly less money than if they buy a gated, segregated community house project in a public school district and you’re giving them 20, 000.

[00:24:07] So just make sure we’re clear about what you’re saying. You’re saying you’re okay with giving someone who’s a billionaire 25, 000 in New York or more than that to go to a specific private school. Public school because they bought a house there, but you bought giving them five grand to go to any school So if the friends who don’t like universality in private schools because rich people get it are going to be logically consistent They’re going to argue for the means testing of public schools.

[00:24:31] Now, of course, they won’t do that So there’s a question of effectiveness and efficiency and equity and equality So that’s point number one point number two. One of the reasons Universal Choice. So Ed Choice was fighting really hard for Universal Choice from 16 onwards. And this movement was happening.

[00:24:47] We were growing towards universality. It was a little slower. It was a little slower. We were getting there every year from 2011 where we got Mitch Daniels to go to 150 percent of free and reduced price launch to the 300 percent to then 400%. But what happened was As we’re making these moves and trying to advocate on behalf of parents, COVID comes along and supercharges it and puts parents front and center.

[00:25:11] And so what, what happened with ESA is it’s a very interesting phenomenon. So a lot of groundwork had been put in, in a lot of these states for a lot of years, and that made a difference. Two, parents getting put front and center saying, I’m done with this. I’ve seen this. I don’t want this anymore. Mixed with legislators having a policy vehicle and an ESA that is no longer an us versus them.

[00:25:33] Look, charter schools and private schools, whether you like it or not, are you’re choosing a private school over a public school, or you’re choosing a charter school over a public school. So it’s an us versus them mentality. Some ways, ESAs are not that, ESAs are basically saying, I’m coming alongside a parent and letting them choose.

[00:25:48] And if they choose a private school or a public school or a charter school or a mix of all three with a bunch of tutoring in between, we’re fine with that. And so legislators, I think, embrace the idea of ESAs because it allowed them to come alongside their constituency and say, we’re voting for parents.

[00:26:06] We’re not voting for private schools. We’re not voting for charter schools. We’re voting for parents. So I think those three. You know, from 2016, almost a decade of work by Ed Choice and other groups, the rise of the pandemic that put parents front and center and the legislative, the change in policy approach that allowed legislators to come alongside parents.

[00:26:24] Albert Cheng: Thanks. That’s a great point. I’ve never thought about framing all of this as, I mean, I guess I have, but you just made it explicit, placing parents front and center. I mean, what a novel idea, I guess.

[00:26:34] Robert Enlow: Shocking, right? Yeah. Parents front and center of education. It’s amazing.

[00:26:38] Albert Cheng: Well, speaking of parents driving education, another development within the past few years is the growth of homeschooling, and then all these other models.

[00:26:48] Microschooling, pandemic pods, I guess the name changes every day. I mean, there seem to be these radically decentralized, choice driven modes of K 12 education that, I mean, they’ve been around, but They’re really gaining a certain kind of popularity, I guess, that we haven’t seen recently. So give us your thoughts about these recent developments.

[00:27:07] You know, what are the strengths, the educational academic strengths and weaknesses? And how do we think about accountability with that? And I guess let’s get your take on what the future holds for these, these models.

[00:27:17] Robert Enlow: Wow, Albert. Let’s make sure that’s a lot. So the growth, the academics, I’m gonna leave that to you since you’re the expert in the academic side of the world.

[00:27:25] Look, my friend, Mike McShane, who, you know, very well, and I talk about this all the time. We, a little while ago, we started looking at the documentation on what happens in education. When you have a government involved and the idea of institutional isomorphism for a mouthful in the morning comes up, which is, you know, the tendency of all things to morph into the same thing over time.

[00:27:46] That’s a problem. School choice and particularly private school choice was intended to do one of three things, but certainly all three, but you can fill seats in existing schools. You can build new seats in existing schools, or you can build new schools and learning opportunities. For the longest time, school choice, private school choice, was really only filling seats in existing schools.

[00:28:09] Because as you know, the track of enrollment in traditional private schools was significantly reduced. Charter schools were coming along like this, private schools were particularly going like this. And so private school choice has stemmed that tide. And as we’ve grown the number of kids eligible for these programs, you’re beginning to see the other two parts of a marketplace come into play, right?

[00:28:31] So marketplace requires an empowered consumer. Plenty of options where you have freedom of entry to become a provider and lots of good information. And so private school choice has pretty much done one. Charter school movement has done really well on building new supply, but now they’re realizing they built supply like public schools, and that’s going to be a challenge in the future, I think.

[00:28:50] What happened with pandemic pause and all these new options is We’re beginning to build supply in a new and different way. And it’s coming about because parents are more empowered and it’s not coming out because of the private school choice, public money only it’s happening. Regardless, sort of, I call it, it’s a bottom up and, and sort of policy top down structure that’s happening where you have parents who are paying for it, who are paying for it with their own money.

[00:29:14] Who are poor, who are paying for their own money, right? Because they’ve seen what the system is doing to their kids. And so what’s happening really excitingly is you’re beginning to see finally the growth of new learning models. People ask me now that I’m old or in this movement, people say, Oh, well, Robert, you know, what do you think the future will be?

[00:29:33] And my answer is if we’ve done all this work in 28 years to get to universal choice and the delivery of education looks the same 20 years later, The IE teacher in front of the classroom and in a school building, then we failed miserably. We have to do a really good job of building and trying new supply ideas.

[00:29:52] What this means, Albert, is we need to take larger risks, right? And that means risk in the type of schools we’re going to try, which means we’re going to have to accept failure more than we’ve accepted fair. Let me rephrase that. We’ve accepted a lot of failure in our public schools, but we’re okay with it just because it’s public, right?

[00:30:06] So if it’s public schools, we’re fine with this failure, right? We’re going to need to accept failure of a marketplace for a little while. So we won’t necessarily know how they’re going to be doing, right? Now we want as much research as we can from people like yourselves and ourselves on on academics and on attainment and on Civic values, a whole bunch of things, right?

[00:30:26] We want to get as much knowledge as we can, but we’re going to have to allow the marketplace to work for a little while to let people see it in action. And I think that’s where we’re going right now. We’re going to see this vibrant, dynamic marketplace continue to grow, and that’s what we want. We want a vibrant, dynamic marketplace of a whole bunch of different options.

[00:30:45] I want a surfskate science which teaches kids how to learn geometry by surfing. I want the farm based education where kids are going out and learning a whole bunch of things through animal husbandry. I want the neurodivergent schools like the one in the National Tennessee Templeton Academy. I want all these school options because the more we create a diversified marketplace of options for families, the better we’ll be.

[00:31:08] And that’s particularly true for poor people.

[00:31:11] Albert Cheng: Well said, you know, and Alisha and I often say on the show, you know, at least we, we encourage our listeners to think of ways to get involved. I mean, not all of us are always in the trenches fighting policy battles or doing that kind of work, but there’s a lot of everyday stuff, everyday things you could do to get involved in support new schools and come alongside.

[00:31:28] Families in your neighborhood, even so. All right, last question for you. I mean, you’ve hinted at some of these things, but give you the last word here. Lots of major legal wins piling up. Lots of new policies being passed. Things are kind of pointing in the up and up. But what concerns you? Where are the next legal and political battles, and how might you anticipate opponents of choice perhaps striking back or undermining some of this work?

[00:31:54] Robert Enlow: It’s a great question. So let’s just give my pioneer. So I’m always concerned as Milton was concerned about creeping communitarianism, right? This concept of Over time, we’ll continue to over regulate and come back and re regulate and re regulate this institutional isomorphism. You know, we have to always stay diligent about the regulatory environment.

[00:32:16] We need to create schools run by folks that don’t have to jump through every hoop. I mean, you’ve seen this, Alisha, I know in the charter movement where, hey, if you’re a big charter group, you know how to put together a 400 page document that’s going to get you a charter. There are a lot of places that don’t, so you need to think this communitarian, sort of socialistic, you know, and I would argue any way where there’s a directive from top down saying this is the way it should be.

[00:32:41] So, number one, fight that. Number two, I think you’re going to see opponents of school choice coming from different places. You know where they don’t come from? Low income families, you know where they don’t come from. They don’t come from families who are the middle class trying to get ahead. They don’t come from families who are making choices already, where they come from now are people who are ideologically and politically so far to the left or so far to the right.

[00:33:07] You might find it a joke. But Ed Choice gets called out for being a UN stoogey, right? Now, I find this hysterical, right, that I am considered to be a UN stoogey given that our office, one person in our office, Leslie Heiner, has spent the entire last five years or more than that of her life trying to fight the establishment of what is called the Abidjan Principles.

[00:33:28] But you have some folks on the alter right who are suspect, in my opinion, bringing up this idea because they want to scaremonger people because their view of reality is that only Homeschoolers should homeschool and that’s silly to me, right? The reality is, is let’s just even say the ideal is parents taking charge, which it is parents having total charge of their education.

[00:33:49] You can’t tell me that you can get to that ideal without going through the practical realities of school choice because you can’t, right? You need this system that changes from here to there. And so you’re going to see. Different people coming from the right and the left, mostly it’s on the fringes, and I think you’re going to see the future is a lot of people working together just to build new ideas, build new supply, and I think that’s what’s most exciting about the future.

[00:34:15] You know, I think the right left coalition that was supposedly around in the 90s that I think was around, but not as always as functioning as people like to think it was. It really has a chance in the future because of the fact you can build new supply together. And you see this in these micro schools and you see these in the pods and you see these in the development of new religious schools and so, and new charter schools.

[00:34:37] So I’m excited by that. I think there’s a lot of opportunity for the future. I think the biggest thing for us, Albert, you and I and others like us, we need to create feedback loops so we can learn faster. One of the things education has done very poorly is learn fast. And so we need to do as many studies as we can on how parents and vendors are using these programs so that we can quickly understand how to offer policy changes for them.

[00:35:04] Albert Cheng: All right, well, Robert, thanks for your time and your wisdom and sharing all your experience with us. Really appreciate it.

[00:35:12] Robert Enlow: Thanks

[00:35:13] Alisha Searcy: for pushing my thinking as always.

[00:35:16] Robert Enlow: Thank you, Alisha, for you being in this movement. I got to be honest with you, Albert is you guys are the future, not me. So thank you.

[00:35:35] Alisha Searcy: Well, Albert, as to be expected, Robert and Lowe’s always very good, very passionate and

[00:35:41] always challenging my thinking great interview. Right. Yeah, that was a, that was a real treat. Lots to think through. Yeah. We got our work cut out for us. Yes, we do. We’ve got smart people like you and like Robert. Oh, come on.

[00:35:55] We appreciate that. Well, we got good leaders like you as well, and we need all of us, don’t we? Yeah. That we do. We do. We can agree on that.

[00:36:02] Alisha Searcy: Well, before we go, we’re going to have our tweet of the week. It’s from Education Next, but little is known about the relationship between charter school growth and Catholic school decline.

[00:36:13] Does one explain the other? Can we predict which Catholic schools will close based on where new charter schools are opened? End quote. Very interesting tweet. And of course, very timely given the Supreme Court decision that is pending. So, folks should check that out on Education Next. Albert, as always, great to be with you.

[00:36:35] Great interview today with Robert Enloe and our next episode, we’ll have Dr. Paula Byrne, also known as Lady Bait. She’s a biographer of Jane Austen. Wow. That’s going to be a real treat. It is. And I think you will be out. We will miss you, but look forward to being with you again soon.

[00:36:54] Albert Cheng: Yep. See you soon and see everybody else soon.

[00:36:57] Alisha Searcy: Take care. Hey, this is Alisha. Thank you for listening to the learning curve. If you’d like to support the podcast further, we invite you to donate at pioneerinstitute.org/donations.