Just four years ago, no states gave parents scholarships that let them send their children to whatever school they wanted. Now nearly a dozen do. It is not a random sampling of states, either. It’s the red states. Corey DeAngelis, national director of research for the American Federation of Children, talks with me about it for the Overton Window podcast. His new book, The Parent Revolution, delves into the reasons behind so much change.

“I dedicated the book to Randi Weingarten and the teachers union for overplaying their hand and waking a sleeping giant,” DeAngelis says.

“It’s really their fault for keeping the schools closed as long as possible. They were fearmongering every step of the way. They were lobbying the Centers for Disease Control to keep the schools closed as long as possible. They were trying to hold children’s education hostage to secure ransom payments from taxpayers,” he says.

Parents were upset by the options they had during the pandemic. They were frustrated by what they saw being taught in the classroom. And they could see that school administrators were not on their side, DeAngelis argues. He and the school choice coalition saw that Democrats around the country were not interested in any changes that would upset teachers unions. It was on Republicans to listen to parents.

“If you market school choice as a bipartisan thing — and I think it is; voters from all political parties support it — it just so happens that the Democrat party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the teachers union,” DeAngelis says.

“For far too long, education policy reformers were trying to appeal to Democrats too much. We were using lefty arguments to pass school choice, but it wasn’t translating into Democratic votes,” he says.

He mentions the 2021 governor’s race in Virginia. The Democratic gubernatorial candidate said that he didn’t think parents should tell schools what to teach. The Republican candidate said that parents should be in charge.

“The status quo quadrupled down on their anti-parent rhetoric,” DeAngelis says. And parents responded by voting the Republican candidate into office.

It sent a clear message to the people running for office: The way to stay in office is to support school choice. DeAngelis gleans a point from Milton Friedman. “The way that you change things is not about getting the right people into office,” he says. “Obviously, that helps if they’re advocating the right policies. But the way that you truly change things is by creating a climate of opinion where it becomes politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.”

DeAngelis also thinks he can win Democratic votes by ensuring that Republicans win on the issue. “The red state strategy is to lean into parental rights as a political winner for Republicans. We can get to something I call in the book bipartisanship through hyperpartisanship.”

Elected officials in Louisiana are negotiating a bill to offer education scholarships to every child. The bill passed the House 72-32 and 20% of Democrats supported it.

In Florida, 11% of House Democrats voted for a universal school choice bill in 2023.

In other words, there has been bipartisanship even when the path taken to a bill’s passage has been partisan.

“Republicans need to win on the issue because politicians respond more to power than logic. We need the Democrats to come along. Some of them are listening to the needs of their constituents,” DeAngelis says.

A couple of Republicans stopped a proposed scholarship program in Texas. DeAngelis’ coalition worked to ensure that they did not win reelection. “They got torched. It was a political earthquake that rocked Texas on Super Tuesday. And it was their own damn fault,” DeAngelis says.

School choice was a popular issue in Texas and elsewhere. Some Republican politicians voted against it, however, and Republican primary voters voted against them. “Next year, finally, in my home state, the Lone Star state, the state of freedom in other ways, will finally have education freedom, too,” he says.

“If Democrats are smart, they will lock arms — just like the parents have — to break free from the stranglehold of the teachers union,” DeAngelis says. “If enough Democrats said that, the unions would be powerless.”

He also has a message for the parents still fighting to get better choices for their children. “Continue making the logical case. Continue making the moral case. And don’t be afraid to call out the radicals ruining our schools.”

Check out our conversation at the Overton Window podcast. And buy The Parent Revolution

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