Florida's Erika Donalds on School Choice, Edu Federalism, & K-12 Reform

The Learning Curve Erika Donalds

[00:00:00] Albert Cheng: Well, everybody hope you’re doing well. I am Albert Cheng coming to you with another new episode of The Learning Curve podcast, and joining me this week is Shaka Mitchell Shaka. What’s going on man? What’s up Albert, great to be

[00:00:35] Shaka Mitchell: back with you. Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving.

[00:00:38] Albert Cheng: I did, I did, and I hope you as well, you know, no drama, just standard, tradition and fair.

[00:00:43] I hope everything was great. Hey, Shaka, you know, I’m, I’m really looking forward to a show. We’re gonna have Erika Donalds join us to talk about some of her work in the school choice space and actually even leading a school and founding a school. But before I get to her, we should talk news as we always do on this show.

[00:00:59] And you know what, let me kick it off this week because I know throughout this show, or the past year or so, we’ve been. Kind of keeping an eye on what’s going on in Texas with their school choice program. And so I think folks probably know that the Education savings accounts program in that state has been enacted several months ago now.

[00:01:18] I think if I’m keeping, you know, I guess we gotta talk about in terms of months, the latest update is that we’ve got guidelines. And as you know, Shaka, you know, I mean. Getting a program written in statute is one thing, but all the rules making and guidelines and all that stuff gives the program a lot of shape.

[00:01:34] And so right now the state comptroller’s office has just released guidelines for this program. And so I wanna flag an article which will link on our website, but uh, just lists basic rules and final decisions that people have been paying attention to. Things like accreditation requirements, amounts that homeschooling families or families with kids with special needs or just other kids can get from this program.

[00:01:57] And also testing, you know, I know this is a big topic as we talk about school choice programs. So it looks like here in Texas private school students participating in the program will have to take a norm reference test. So I dunno if you have reactions to any of this. I know you always keep a, a pretty close eye to how these kinds of programs take shape.

[00:02:15] Shaka Mitchell: Yeah. Well, you know, as it turns out, I was just with Representative Brad Buckley from Texas. He is the education Committee chair, and I was with him at a conference just before Thanksgiving. We were on a panel together. I was moderating the panel. I got to hear from him and I thought his perspective was really helpful.

[00:02:34] He said, Hey, keep in mind that this is the first year of this program, which is a billion dollar program. Did. The way that rules go. The first year, he said, this is not necessarily carved in stone. We’re gonna learn things over the year. We’re gonna get better, we’re gonna improve. And I thought that was really helpful perspective, because I think that that folks on both sides, you know, folks who maybe dislike the rules for one reason or another, sometimes feel as if they’re never gonna change.

[00:03:04] But that’s not the reality. Legislation and rules. Yeah, that’s, they can change.

[00:03:08] Albert Cheng: No, and I, I mean, as you say that I’m reminded here of what’s going on here in Arkansas. You know, Texas is a neighbor here. You know, our program is gonna start its third year and different rules have changed as well. So the state definitely is trying to course correct or necessary.

[00:03:22] Shaka Mitchell: Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s right. And I think it’s reflected sometimes of definitely us learning things as we go, right? Because again, you’re talking about programs that now involve hundreds of thousands of students, so there’s no way that we could anticipate every possible permutation of how this could go at the outset.

[00:03:40] And so I think we have to be flexible. We’ve gotta appreciate that these are dollars that have. Kind of been entrusted to the general assemblies to the government, right? So there is a public kind of trust component, I think that’s there. And transparency, obviously there’s parent agencies, so there’s a lot of dynamics.

[00:03:57] And these programs are gonna look different from state to state and from year to year. That’s right. What did you catch in the news this week? Yeah, well, maybe a little bit related to that. There was a great sort of substack note from Rick Hess entitled, should School Choice Programs mandate the State Testing?

[00:04:14] So that’s something you mentioned coming out of Texas. It’s something in my state of Tennessee that is a component in a way. And basically the question is, when you participate in a private choice program, should students be required to take. A specific test or even any test. And here again, I think there’s a spectrum of perspectives.

[00:04:38] I’ll say for my part, to me we’ve gotta have some sort of academic data so that parents can make better decisions. Now that being said, I would not go so far and it AFC, American Federation for Children. You know, we wouldn’t go so far as to mandate what that test should be. State assessment or is the nationally norm reference test, whatever.

[00:04:59] But we do think that having some kind of academic assessment component is pretty valuable for parents. But in my opinion, that doesn’t mean you’ve gotta be so prescriptive that you, you need to say, and here’s exactly what the assessment should be. You should leave that up to school leaders. But Rick had a great conversation with Ashley Burner from Johns Hopkins about this, and she brings some perspective from international programs as well.

[00:05:22] Sure. What about you? How do you think about this, Albert?

[00:05:24] Albert Cheng: Pretty aligned with you. You know, I think we need some measure Now. There is a question of what you do with that measure, right? So that you could go one extreme of, you know, if kids don’t make the cut, there’s some intervention that the state, I’m not sure that I, I’d go that far.

[00:05:39] I think my position is, look, let’s get some information out there and some information that’s relevant and important. And I think achievement in, in basic academics is one. Look, we wanna balance autonomy and accountability here, and I think one way to do that is to, in requiring testing, to offer testing choice, I’m constantly reminded of an op-ed that one of my former students, Cassie sif, wrote the title was, you know.

[00:06:03] I’m not quoting exactly, but essentially it went like, if we want school choice, we also need testing choice given the diversity of, of curricular approaches and educational models that are out there. So I think there’s, as you say, there’s a spectrum out there and folks can find this middle ground that will make it work for their state wealth.

[00:06:21] So that’s my take on it.

[00:06:23] Shaka Mitchell: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and again, I think this is a place where, because we’ve got the laboratory of the states That’s right. We are seeing different programs approach this in different ways. And then, yeah, let’s, let’s see what happens. Right? So when I take kind of a macro look at this too, I kind of go, alright, great, well you, we’ve got.

[00:06:40] Different states that are approaching this differently. And you know, you’ve got a state like Florida where students do take tests, that’s half a million students, so it doesn’t seem to have limited growth. Likewise, you’ve got other states that are much more permissive and I think we’re gonna, we’re gonna see what happens in those states.

[00:06:56] So yeah, I think we can both appreciate that parents need to have the most agency and also appreciate that most parents wanna know that their kids can read on grade level. Yeah, that’s right.

[00:07:09] Albert Cheng: Well, great conversation and these are fresh questions that I think we all are wrestling with and so, uh, let’s continue to wrestle with them.

[00:07:16] But we’re gonna set that aside a little bit for now. ’cause coming up we’re gonna have Erika Donalds so stick around for our interview with her.

[00:07:34] Erika Donalds is America First Policy Institute’s Chair of Education Opportunity and Chair of A FPI, Florida State Chapter. She is known as a national expert on education, policy and school choice, and is a frequent media commentator and speaker, a seasoned business executive. Erika has offered her expertise to help further the expansion of high quality school choice programs, and she’s passionate about bringing accountability and innovation to America’s schools.

[00:07:59] She’s the founder and chairman of Immersive ed tech company, Optima Ed. A former elected school board member and university trustee, founder of six classical charter schools, an advisor to numerous education organizations and companies. Erika spent 20 years in the financial services industry. She was chief financial officer, chief compliance officer, and managing partner at a multi-billion dollar investment management firm, responsible for finance, compliance, and operations.

[00:08:28] Erika and her husband Byron, live in Naples, Florida. Erika, welcome to the show.

[00:08:33] Erika Donalds: Thanks so much for having me.

[00:08:35] Albert Cheng: Well, you know, as we just read in your bio, you’ve got quite the background, not just in education, you know, doing policymaking, founding schools, but also some background in finance. So say a bit more about that.

[00:08:47] Tell our listeners a bit more about your background, where there’s some formative educational experiences you had and, and how did you become so passionate about school reform?

[00:08:56] Erika Donalds: I knew having grown up in a bit of a rocky household, I needed an education in order to change my statistical trajectory, if you will.

[00:09:06] So I went to college, worked through college, paid for it myself, and you know, really found a way through accounting and the finance profession to really find a way into the middle class, if you will. But spending 20 years in finance, I did what most middle class families did in school choice was buying a house where you wanted your kids to go to school.

[00:09:28] And I thought that for my three boys, that was enough, right? Picking an A school was gonna work for all three of them. And I found out quickly that wasn’t the case. That one size does not fit all. And despite having the label of an A that my school of choice didn’t work for, especially my middle child, that’s when I started looking.

[00:09:48] For an alternative, I discovered classical education, but I also discovered that the public schools were not responsive to parents and especially me, and in fact, you know, some of their solutions, like putting your child on medication was not really what I was looking for, and that’s when I ran for school board, helped to start my first charter school and really decided that this was where I wanted to spend a lot of my energy to help parents like me to find the education that was gonna work for their children.

[00:10:15] Shaka Mitchell: Erika, that’s really interesting. Let’s stick with this experience once you got into the school leadership roles, ’cause you’ve been the founder of a school, you’ve been connected with a bunch of schools. As someone who did that here in Nashville, I know that that is. Hard work. Starting a school is not for the faint of heart, so congratulations and thank you.

[00:10:38] And you could probably still use a nap from all that work, but because you helped start some classical schools, I wonder if you could discuss the relationship between the high quality academic curriculum and how it really shapes the intellectual outlook of the students who are participating in those schools.

[00:10:58] Erika Donalds: When I found classical education and discovered the difference between a classical, more traditional option, including explicit phonics, explicit grammar, reading the great books, as opposed to reading excerpts or paragraphs and more of a, you know, test taking focus. I was wondering why my kids in an a public school weren’t learning in this same manner.

[00:11:25] And I was upset about it. You know, I know we pay great taxes here in Collier County, Florida. You know, why are my kids not getting that higher quality education? And so I got very interested in learning more. At the time, Hillsdale College had just launched their charter school initiative where they were curating all of this great curriculum and training teachers how to teach classically.

[00:11:51] And so that’s. The schools that I helped to start were all participating in that program that helped us not just learn about classical education, but our administrators and our teachers how to teach classically, which I witnessed for myself, my own children, and the children of others who were enrolling.

[00:12:09] Really thrive and learn so much more information, knowledge, content, cultural literacy that help them with the skills of reading and mathematics and history and science. So it really all worked together and opened my eyes to how important that high quality curriculum and materials, and then of course, teacher training is.

[00:12:34] In the school’s performance, but also what the education outcomes should be writ large, not just for test scores, but what type of students do we want to produce out of our schools?

[00:12:46] Albert Cheng: Well, you know, Erika, I mean, I think folks know that I’m a big fan of classical education as well. And as you say, you know, the philosophy of it is to shape character, to help students grow in wisdom, um, but also to improve achievement, right?

[00:12:59] To help ’em succeed academically. So I wanna ask maybe a, a, to take a step back and ask a larger question. In education policy circles. Now we, we often talk about declining APE scores, which already were happening before the pandemic, and everyone’s still talking about the big drop post pandemic after schools closed.

[00:13:16] And so would you say classical education as a role to play in addressing this kind of under performance and why achievement gaps or are there other things that we might do policy-wise?

[00:13:29] Erika Donalds: Yes, but it’s really because classical education ascribes to the basics such as the science of reading, which doesn’t have to be limited only in classical schools, right?

[00:13:40] The state of Mississippi has shown us what science of reading can do even in schools that are not, quote, considered classical, but certainly we find those elements in classical education in terms of teaching those explicit phonics and explicit grammar that helps students to read proficiently. Much earlier and for a prolonged time period.

[00:14:01] And same thing with math. You know, classical education utilizes the Singapore math memorizes math facts in the early years, which we know helps students to perform better in their math proficiency on an ongoing basis. But I don’t think that it is necessarily limited to classical schools, I believe, and what we have.

[00:14:23] Long advocated for that. Every school, regardless of whether it’s a STEM school, a tech school, a classical school, or any traditional public school, should be changing over to these research based methodologies that have proven to help students perform and to obtain the knowledge that’s necessary for them to have better comprehension, and then of course, better mathematics performance overall.

[00:14:52] Shaka Mitchell: Erika, when you think about how our students are doing, and I mean, obviously there’s the, I think, intrinsic value of education and what it does for kids personally, but thinking even beyond that, I mean, going back to a nation at risk in 1983, you know, we know that. There has been this growing knowledge bank about the relationship between K 12 educational attainment and global competitiveness, right?

[00:15:18] So it’s not just the individual, how a student is doing on this test or even the skills and knowledge that he or she’s acquiring, but what does it look like in a global context? Could you talk about how international testing like the Pisa and the Tims have sort of expanded our understanding and your ex understanding of that urgent need.

[00:15:38] For American education policy makers to improve academic quality.

[00:15:43] Erika Donalds: It has been critically important for the nation to know how far behind Americans are globally when it comes to our academic performance, and I often say this is a national emergency and we can no longer leave this responsibility in the hands of those who have failed.

[00:16:04] For decades, and in fact, generations when you’re talking about the teacher’s union, the Federal Department of Education, and even the education monopoly in the various states, it’s not enough. Even we’re talking about a state like Florida, my home state, that we’re in the top 10 in the country when America is in the bottom, you know, 35 in the world, we are.

[00:16:26] Losing our global competitiveness, and thankfully we know that because of these international tests that we need to continue to emphasize. We’re not looking at the right measurements of success, I believe, here in America overall because we’re comparing state to state and that’s just not good enough. We are way behind when it comes to our academic performance in K to 12, and I don’t believe that we have the right sense of urgency down to the local level to really perform well beyond the growth that we’ve seen.

[00:17:00] In recent years or in recent decades, we have to have drastic changes in the way that we see reading and math performance because these small incremental changes are not enough to keep America as a world leader, especially with the onset of all the technological changes that are happening right now with AI and.

[00:17:24] Really being in this global marketplace. I think it’s a national emergency and I think God, for tests like that, that are showing us this urgent need.

[00:17:33] Albert Cheng: Well, let’s pivot a little bit to school choice. I mean, you’ve brought this up when you were showing a bit about your background, about the way you exercise school choice by mortgage.

[00:17:42] Now we’re seeing in the last five years, especially the ability to exercise, school choice, expand because of the programs that have been newly enacted in some states, but also expanded like in your state in Florida. Let’s just kind of look ahead with school choice, you know, ESA programs and the like.

[00:18:00] What are the core principles you think that paid 12 policy makers need to look to for guidance if they want these kinds of programs to be expanded, to be strengthened across the country?

[00:18:10] Erika Donalds: I think in the same way that we need to be radical about the solutions to our academic woes, we need to be radical about the solutions to breaking the bureaucratic monopoly that public education has enjoyed for the last generation.

[00:18:25] That, as I mentioned previously, has failed us. We need every education dollar to be parent directed, and that will give rise to an education economy that will bring more innovation, higher quality, and better access to every family in America. We have. Again, made more incremental changes when it comes to school choice.

[00:18:49] I mean, the first charter schools and the first school choice programs coming about 25 to 30 years ago, and we just now over the last few years are seeing univers. Programs or programs that can be more customized and more modular. And so while I’m very appreciative of the ESA programs that have passed, I don’t think we are going far enough to really create the education, economy and ecosystem.

[00:19:15] Um, that is going to showcase the best available out there for families. I talk to families in Florida. We know that only one in three parents actually know they have access to a scholarship program that would pay for private school or homeschool curriculum. And so we have a lot more work to do. And again, I think that the solutions are going all the way.

[00:19:39] Complete choice, a hundred percent participation where every family is having to make choices and becomes a consumer in this larger education economy.

[00:19:50] Shaka Mitchell: Erika sticking with Florida for a little bit because you know, it’s really been such a leader for years in the school choice space and the state itself.

[00:19:58] It’s really known for. Being committed to local self-government, sort of decentralized, you know, state policy making, at least with respect to K 12 education. You mentioned a little bit, you kind of alluded to the importance of empowering parents and local communities to do this, to do things that are.

[00:20:16] Outside the legacy public education system, but would you talk a little bit about how empowering parents and communities, you know, for political support, for school of Choice is necessary? And also maybe talk a little bit about how you’ve seen competition ensure. Equality of opportunities for, you know, especially students that have lacked those, maybe because they are lower income, maybe because they’re minority students haven’t lived in, in neighborhoods that have had, you know, access to high quality schools.

[00:20:48] How does that competition affect that?

[00:20:50] Erika Donalds: This is why it’s so important for school choice programs to be universal. Because when we have programs, and we’ve seen this Shaka, you know, around the country that are limited only to low income students, you don’t get the plethora of options. You have schools and God bless them, charter schools and even private schools that are focused in on those.

[00:21:14] Kids or targeting low income communities, 9% free and reduced lunch, et cetera, and doing great work with those communities. However, you will find the most options available when you have universal applicability and all families participating are bringing more. Vendors, more schools, more options into the marketplace that allows for poor and minority families to select from all of those options as opposed to only having the option of their school in a low income or low performing community.

[00:21:49] Versus another school that is made up completely of scholarship students, tax, credit, scholarship, et cetera. Students, they will now have lots of options that have a more diverse audience, a STEM school, you know, different types of schools available to them. When it comes to the politics, this is so critical because there is such an information gap.

[00:22:10] You tend to see more middle class families who are more involved in the political process and. It is important that we bring everyone into the fold because it’s so offensive to me when people are like, well, those parents won’t make a choice because they don’t. They have two jobs and they’re too busy to make choices for their kids.

[00:22:31] No, that is not true. I like to use Miami as an example, and I’m just gonna go into this real quick. Miami-Dade County majority, minority County majority non-English speaking majority low income, fourth largest urban school district in the country. 75% of students in Miami-Dade County public schools are attending a school that is not their zoned school.

[00:22:55] That means 75% of those families made an active choice of where they want their child to go to school. And you have to assume that of the 25% there is 10 to 15% that are choosing their own school. Maybe ’cause they live there or that’s, you know, what they want for their child. And so that proves the point that it does not matter whether they are immigrant families, poor families, minority families.

[00:23:19] Middle class families, they want to select a school that works for their children. And when you put that responsibility and ownership on parents, they’re gonna be more involved. Miami-Dade is a, a school district. It’s one of the top performing urban school districts in the country as well. I think those are all connected.

[00:23:37] That those families we found out in Florida are then the most active. Once they have the choice, they know about the choice and they’re exercising it. They are the ones who are most vocal about making sure that they keep it because they are dependent upon that choice for the quality of education that their children are getting.

[00:23:54] Shaka Mitchell: Yeah. That’s super helpful. Thank you.

[00:23:56] Albert Cheng: Thanks for sharing that story about Miami-Dade families and I think that’s a nice segue to my next question because, you know, I’m struck that empowering parents here actually in some sense increases their civic engagement. They’re vested into improving their schools, making sure their schools are, are operating, and who knows, maybe you know, that’s gonna spill over to lots of other.

[00:24:16] Other institutions in their community. And so I wanna ask a question about civic education. You’re probably aware that we’re not doing very well on civic education, at least if you look at Civics exam scores on the nap, and I’m pretty sure you could probably ask anyone you run into, you know, how are we doing as a country engaging with each other civically.

[00:24:35] I don’t think anyone’s really happy with the way things are. So. Look, schools have a vital role in this. In your view, why does our country continue to struggle to teach Civics, and why is that so vital? What’s your take on that?

[00:24:50] Erika Donalds: This is the reason why the Department of Education has focused their 250th initiatives on Civics education.

[00:24:57] I’m co-chairing the America two 50 Civics Education Coalition in partnership with the Department of Education, 40 other groups as well, to focus our efforts on improving civic literacy around the country and really raising awareness to its importance. I think part of the reason that civic literacy has gone by the wayside is that in our quest to focus.

[00:25:18] Our attention on reading skills, which the science of reading has proven not to be effective, and that we should be also elevating a knowledge rich and content rich curriculum for the purposes of reading comprehension. We’ve heard from educators that. Students will only read the things that they’re interested in, and according to them, students are only interested in what I call the cotton candy of education.

[00:25:45] You know, Mr. Frog goes to the mailbox or Captain Underpants. You know, the type of things that I don’t allow my children to read because. It’s not content rich. Instead of them reading history, science and biographies and things about our founding fathers, where that should be the core of our reading curriculum that they should be reading about things that matter.

[00:26:10] And because we’ve taken that away and have tried to emphasize only on skills and not on content that civic literacy certainly has suffered by that then comes the conundrum, if you will, of people’s differing views of United States history and world history and how it should be presented. And because we’re trying this one size fits all approach, everyone has to agree on everything that is.

[00:26:33] Taught, and we can’t teach differing opinions, and so we should just avoid teaching things at all. And that’s what has happened to civic literacy in this country. I think people are often surprised to learn that in classical schools. We do have students read Karl Marx as well as books above the founding fathers.

[00:26:51] They read Frederick Douglass, they read the Federalist Papers, they read John Locke. They read all types of. History and what we call the great books doesn’t mean it’s the great books because we agree with everything that it said, but that it is what was thought to be the best writers about whatever it is.

[00:27:11] And so I think we need to get back to getting kids a full picture of the history of not just America, but of the world so they can start to decipher and make their own opinions instead of with this. Extremely narrowing and continued narrowing of what Civics is and civic literacy is, and I think that has certainly made a resurgence.

[00:27:34] One of my initiatives is to teach Civics every day in every grade. I know in a lot of schools, they’re limiting that to every other day, such as like science or like an elective. But if it’s made part of your reading curriculum and also a history sequence. It should be taught in every grade and every day, and it should be elevated to the level of importance of reading and math, and hopefully we can make that happen.

[00:28:02] Shaka Mitchell: Thanks, Erika. So now is the point in the show where we kinda have to eat our vegetables a little bit, and by that I mean we’re gonna talk about the federal government, which I know is not always our favorite thing to do. But you know, obviously in recent years we’ve just seen massive federal K 12 education expenditures.

[00:28:20] You had obviously COVID relief. Money. But you know, in addition to that, you have raised to the top ESSA Esser, and despite all this nap reading and math scores have declined, achievement gaps are largely unchanged or even widening in many places. And on the one hand, you can. Understand why people would want to spend more because they see such a need, you know, for academic improvement.

[00:28:47] On the other hand, there’s clearly a weakness when it comes to federal K 12. Spending and policymaking. I wonder if you would talk a little bit about those weaknesses, why that seems to be so baked into the federal education role, and maybe talk about the US Department of Education’s role in America’s ongoing struggles in education.

[00:29:09] Erika Donalds: I have long been a supporter of dismantling the Department of Education, returning education power to the states. How I initially got involved in education policy was around the common core era, and a lot of the ideas. Some of which could have been good decisions being made so far away from my child’s classroom that I as a parent had absolutely no influence, no ability to give feedback to the folks who were making those decisions, and it has been an abysmal failure if it’s supposed to have increased academic performance.

[00:29:44] Obviously, as we talked about earlier, that has not happened. And it’s very difficult to hold people accountable for the performance of your schools, for the efficient spending of education dollars when some of the money and a lot of the bureaucracy and decision making is being made in Washington DC where even if you have a very good relationship with your congressman like I do, which you do, yeah.

[00:30:10] You can’t go to your congressman and say, I need you to go down to the Department of Education. Figure out why my child’s not learning. You hold the people accountable at your local level, preferably the teacher, the principal, and if necessary, the school board. But someone has to be the place where the buck stops and it cannot be Washington, DC has to be your elected officials at the very most, at the state level who are overseeing the overall.

[00:30:42] Education, expenditures and performance for your state, and there’s absolutely no reason anymore for this Department of Education to exist. The Civil Rights Enforcement can be done by the Department of Justice. Any additional funding that unfortunately we’ve come to rely on for students with disabilities or low income students, can be funneled through HHS as the Department of Education has planned to do.

[00:31:08] Ultimate responsibility to ensure that the services are performed, that students are getting what they need and what they deserve, and that equal access is being enforced, can be done, and should be done at the state level, and we’ve gotta get out of trying to solve local problems. At the federal level, it’s a complete failure, and the experiment is done.

[00:31:31] We need to finish it, and hopefully Congress will cooperate with President Trump in fulfilling his promise to the American people to get rid of it.

[00:31:40] Albert Cheng: Let’s keep hammering on this topic. You know, you’ve kind of outlined reasons for the federal government to take a step back and turn a lot of autonomy and authority to the states and local governments.

[00:31:51] Could you talk about some of the specific efforts that the, uh, Trump administration is doing now to, you know, realize this vision and also I wanna kind of fold in a, a another. Part to this question and ask you about the National Education Tax Credit program. Yeah. What are the contours of that program and how does that fit in with perhaps this larger aspiration to peel back the federal role?

[00:32:15] Erika Donalds: Since Secretary McMahon took the mantle within the first week, I believe it was, she cut half of the jobs at the Department of Education and really didn’t miss a beat. You know, as you would might expect over the summer, getting everyone back up to speed ready for the new school year. Funding continued to flow over the last week or two.

[00:32:37] There have been inter-agency agreements signed for another. About a quarter to 30% I believe, of duties and employees to be reassigned or assigned out to other departments, including HHS Interior and the Department of Justice as well for duties that, again, will continue but do not need to be in the department.

[00:32:58] So we’re down to, well, less than half of the functions that, again, they’re continuing to work on peeling back. So I think that. Continues and I fully support those efforts. But as you alluded, the best thing happening at the federal level when it comes to education has nothing to do with the Federal Department of Education, but it’s actually a tax regulation that was passed in the one big beautiful bill, the first ever federal tax credit scholarship program, which allows individuals across the country starting in 2027 to make a donation of $1,700.

[00:33:34] And receive a dollar for dollar tax credit. That means it reduces the amount of tax that you have to pay to the federal government by that $1,700. So anyone who pays more than $1,700 in taxes should be making this donation to a qualified scholarship funding organization approved by a state. Any state doesn’t have to be your state.

[00:33:53] And then those funds can be compiled and used for scholarships for students to go to a private school to have special services like tutoring and other. Special needs, supplemental services, online programs, dual enrollment certifications and the like. And really this could be the largest expansion of school choice in the history of our country if done correctly.

[00:34:18] We hope that this will continue to expand and allow for individuals in blue states who cannot get a diversion, if you will, of funding for their student, the money that’s assigned to their student to go to a private school. This could provide school choice where it will not be available politically in states across the country, so something that we’re really promoting and very excited about.

[00:34:40] Treasury is inviting feedback from groups like yours and mine across the country to help make the roles that we’ll implement this in the coming year.

[00:34:49] Albert Cheng: Well, Erika, thanks so much for joining us and letting us all your insights. You’ve been around and experienced a lot, and I know I’ve really gained from just hearing your perspective, and I hope our listeners will as well.

[00:35:03] Erika Donalds: So thank you guys for all that you do as well. It definitely takes a village to spread the good news about this. It’s a new way of thinking, but thankfully we are accelerating and bringing parents to the realization that they are the best people to make decisions for their child’s education.

[00:35:31] Albert Cheng: Shaka. I really enjoyed that interview. I mean, I know you get to sit and meet and chat with lots of state leaders and folks operating and running schools, and it’s always for me, a treat to hear their perspective and, and learn from their wisdom and experience.

[00:35:45] Shaka Mitchell: Yeah, for sure. And Erika, you know, brought so much experience kind of from a range of different perspectives in the education space, you know, having been a business leader and school leader and now, you know, working on policy.

[00:35:57] And I think all that perspective is just really helpful. Interesting to hear how she thinks about things.

[00:36:02] Albert Cheng: Indeed. So everyone, that’s gonna bring us to the end of our show. But before we say goodbye, Shaka, I just wanna thank you again for co-hosting with me. That was great. To be back on. We wanna leave everybody with the tweets of the week.

[00:36:15] This one comes from real clear education. AI will make knowledge cheap, and that’s something that grabbed your attention. But check out that article I found it gave some interesting perspective about how universities and institutions of learning have had to adjust to new technologies. There’s. Mention of the printing press, but you know, now we we’re on the verge of another big change with ai, so check that article out and make sure to join us.

[00:36:40] Next week we’re gonna have Julie Young, the founding president and CEO of the Florida Virtual School and former Vice President and managing Director of a SU Prep Academy and a SU Prep Digital. She’s gonna be joined by Julie Peterson and Kay Johnson, and all three of them are the co-editors of the book, virtual Schools, actual Learning.

[00:37:01] Digital education in America, which has been released last week by the Pioneer Institute. So if you haven’t seen that book yet, go visit the Pioneer Homepage or Amazon and you’ll be able to find a copy to purchase. And why don’t you just join us next week as we interview them about their work. Until then, be well.

[00:37:20] Have a great day and see you next time. Hey, it’s Albert Cheng here, and I just wanna thank you for listening to the Learning Curve podcast. If you’d like to support the podcast further, we’d invite you to donate to the Pioneer Institute at pioneerinstitute.org/donations.