Let's talk a little bit more about school choice, so school choice vouchers, they tend to be statewide programs that take public funding away from public schools. And redirects that money to private institutions that do not have to abide by [00:00:17] similar standards, education standards that public schools have to abide by. And so how do you consider the lack of standards and how that might play a role in a system in which voters would [00:00:33] not have the right to vote unless in your dream scenario, they pass a civics test? What if those public dollars are being funneled to certain religious private schools that do a poor job in educating their students about American history, [00:00:51] civics basically what they need to know. The education they need in order to pass the civics test that you think people need to pass in order to be able to vote? >> Speaker 2: So as it relates to standardized testing as one metric among many, and other metrics also track it, [00:01:06] it's actually the reverse that you see that's true. Public schools are badly failing across this country, and if you look at the correlation between the schools that spend the most money per student Ana, those are the schools that achieve the poorest results 90% of the time across this country. [00:01:25] So the irony is, if a parent is moving a kid from a school that spends more money per student to a school that spends less money per student. 90% of the time they're moving to a school that actually has higher achievement as it relates to standardized tests and other metrics. So my view, I actually have a somewhat radical idea on this, [00:01:42] let's say it's in New York City, where I can give you the actual numbers. It's $40,000 per student per year in the failing public schools to good charter schools or private schools, or even better public schools that are spending $20,000 or $15,000 per student per year. I think that that parent, [00:01:58] that kid should be able to take half that difference with them. If you put that in the kid's account, invest it normally, that kid graduates with a quarter million dollar graduation gift, it's not even close what accounts for a better use of money. Now, here's the problem, those schools that are producing those poor results, [00:02:17] they have one constraint that a lot of those private schools and charter schools don't. Those are teachers unions, and so I've had actually both experiences in my own life. I went to a not great public school first through 8th grade, and then my parents decided to work extra hard and make some sacrifices to be able to [00:02:33] send me to a private school for high school in Cincinnati. Just look at the last several years in the COVID pandemic, the Cincinnati public schools were closed for a full year and then almost a full next year. This high school that I went to, there were four total days that were closed the entire time. [00:02:50] So it's not that COVID only affects kids at public schools or teachers at public schools. To the contrary, these teachers unions are failing our kids, failing the very constituents, the very members of the public they're supposedly serving. So yes, I do think competition there's no perfect solution, but [00:03:06] I think competition is the next best solution to perfect. And that, I think, is gonna hold the public schools teachers feet to the fire, get rid of those teachers unions. And yes, we ought to compete such that our educational system goes back to being about the achievement of our students, rather than employment opportunities for [00:03:22] these union members, and that's just the hard truth