The Tom Dupree Show
September 21, 2024 – School Choice and Amendment 2
Guest: Jim Waters, President of Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions
🔑 Key Topics
-School Choice in Kentucky
-Upcoming vote on Amendment 2
-Charter schools vs. magnet schools
-Economic impact of education reform
💡 Main Points
Amendment 2: Aims to allow the legislature to create school choice programs
Benefits of School Choice:
-Options for students in failing schools
-Introduces competition to improve education
-Allows for innovative teaching approaches
-Potential economic benefits
Charter Schools:
-Must accept all students (first-come, first-served)
-More flexibility in curriculum delivery
-Not bound by teacher union rules
Current System Criticisms:
-Poor performance despite increased funding
-Lack of accountability
-Resistance to change
💬 Notable Quotes
“Choice is good for everybody. It’s good for parents. It’s good for teachers. It’s good for our economy. It’s good for the students.” – Jim Waters
“We need to fund students and not systems.” – Jim Waters
📊 Interesting Facts
-Kentucky is one of only 5 states without charter schools
-Florida has seen significant improvements in education after implementing school choice
🗳️ Call to Action
Voters are encouraged to vote “Yes” on Amendment 2 in the upcoming election.
🔗 Learn More
Visit BIPPS.org for more information on school choice initiatives in Kentucky.
TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome to the Tom Dupree show brought to you by Dupree Financial Group, where we make your money work for you. Joining us this week. We have a special guest from the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, President Jim Waters. And here’s our host, Tom Dupree. So I’ve known Jim for a long time.
We’ve been friends Affiliated. I’ve been on the board of BIPS twice and I’m on it currently. And, this is a really important vote that’s coming up in November. It, it, it pertains to school choice, but, um, this has also drawn the attention of, uh, a well-known, uh, political figure, Condoleezza Rice. And I’m going to play a statement from her regarding school choice.
So are you for school choice or not? We already have a choice system in education. If you are of means, you will move to a district where the schools are good and the houses are expensive, like Palo Alto, California. If you’re really wealthy, you will send your kids to private schools. So who’s stuck in failing neighborhood schools?
Poor kids. A lot of them are minority kids. So how can you say you’re for civil rights? How can you say you’re for the poor? When you’re condemning those children to not being able to read by the time they’re in third grade, they’re never going to read. So if you want to say that school choice and vouchers and charter schools are destroying the public schools, fine.
You write that editorial in the Washington Post, but then don’t send your kids to Sidwell Friends. Wow. So, this is kind of the core of why Blue Grass Institute for Public Policy Solutions is, this is the policy that we’re trying to get changed. It’s already passed. It’s law in Kentucky, but we can’t get it funded and so this thing I believe that’s coming up involves actually being able to make charters happen to make vouchers happen and Jim is a guy that writes He writes editorials.
He writes columns and there it’s carried by several newspapers across Kentucky. He speaks on this regularly So I’m gonna kind of let Jim take it from here and I’ll ask several questions. Maybe not even several Go ahead. Well, thanks, Tom. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. That’s at the core of it Amendment to which will be on the ballot.
It’s one of two amendments proposed amendments on the ballot this fall and this is an amendment to Uh, it will, uh, it will be like the constitutional bush hog. It will clear out the underbrush. It doesn’t create a particular school choice policy, but what it does is it states that the Constitution cannot be interpreted as prohibiting such programs.
And these programs are found. In most other states, including all the states that surround Kentucky. And so it’s important to understand that this amendment is not as much as what it is. It is not a voucher program. Our opponents have been calling this the voucher amendment, but it’s not, it doesn’t contain any specific program.
It’s not a tax credit scholarship program. It’s not a charter school program, merely. Says that the constitution cannot be interpreted as prohibiting the legislature from passing such. I thought we already passed something that allowed it. We did, but we did, but they’re saying the Constitution works, right?
The opponents have retreated to the courts and to the media to try to stop this, which they do, uh, when they can’t. That’s all Beshear did when Bevan was governor. I mean, that’s right. And nobody’s figured out how to do it to Beshear. So. Right, so anyhow, they’ve retreated to try to stop it in the courts, and you know, the legislature’s done a good job on this.
They have passed, uh, a, an Education Opportunity Accounts Bill in 2021, uh, and then they passed a Public Charter School Funding Bill in 2022. They had already passed Charter School Bill in 2017, but they didn’t fund it, as you said. So when it got to the funding aspect of it is when opponents, uh, went to court to stop it.
Something interesting I’ve seen. This is almost, it appears to me, entirely grassroots at getting this thing put on the ballot. Because when you s When you ask legislators, whether they be Republican or Democrat, they back away. They, they, very few of them will come used to, uh, well, I had one on the show recently and this individual danced around it.
Well, they’re very afraid of the teachers union. Well, the recent, the most recent school choice legislation that has passed, I think it was the charter school funding bill had like 35 co-sponsors including The speaker, including the speaker pro tem, including a representative Neimus, who’s the majority whip.
Uh, they hadn’t in Suzanne Miles, who’s representative Suzanne Miles, who was the sponsor. She’s probably no Democrat. So, uh, no, but in other states it’s been Democrats. It’s been minorities into Condoleezza Rice’s point. It’s been black leaders in Washington D. C. That have one of the most robust school choice programs in the country.
That’s not a right-wing city at all. No, not at all. New Orleans, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, all of them have had robust school choice programs led by minorities because as she said, it’s the minorities and low-income kids who are most likely to be stuck in a failing school. Well, if you’re not willing to do something To fix schools, quit talking about economic development because you cannot have economic development and failing schools.
It’s simply cannot take place. People are not going to want to come here and put their kids in failing schools. You’re not going to educate a workforce. That will stay in Kentucky and be able to do these kinds of jobs in the new economy. It’s just not going to happen. Even more serious is you might not have freedom for long.
Yeah. Because Jefferson, as he said, if society expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be. Can’t happen. And that’s a paraphrase, but that’s what he was talking about. So that’s, what’s so serious too about this, both the economic impact and also the fact that we’re going to raise a generation of kids that can’t think critically and read and are not educated.
I think it’s, I’ve seen some young people, my sons included, realizing that having come through public schools and then a college, there were some gaps. In their education, they have taken it upon themselves to start reading things, you know, that they never had in school. They, they, you begin to find out there’s a big world out there.
The best that school or college can even do for you is get you thinking. And then ultimately, you know, you’re going to have to do a lot of your own research, but you know. We’re set up so that you learn to read by fourth grade, so you can read to learn. That’s exactly right. And she was talking about how they’re not reading, and if they don’t read, how are they going to learn?
So a majority of our kids in the Kentucky public school system, whether you look at the national assessment or state assessment, a majority of our students are not proficient in math and reading. And if you look at the minorities, It’s down in the teens and I was just out in Jackson County, Kentucky, not long ago, Jackson County, rural area.
Foothills of the Mountains, they’re spending more than Fayette County is per pupil, over 23, 000 per pupil, and only 8 percent of their 8th graders can do math proficiently. And this is represented now, Why is that? This is represented, the district is represented by a Republican, who voted against school choice, he’s an elementary school principal, he voted against school choice, voted against the amendment, And so that’s a problem because here we have a rural school district that our kids are not being educated.
They’re not being prepared. And, that’s in the eighth grade. That’s, that’s later on. That’s too late. I know about Jackson County. I own a little property down. And I have had many people who have said to me, I realized after I graduated what I did not get when I was in school. And that’s been a regret that we’ve heard.
A lot from public education. Now this isn’t thought about, this is not about the, the ironic thing here is this is not a school choice that does not destroy public education. It doesn’t diminish it. It actually forces it to do better. Uh, we found this across the country and Florida, for example, when Kara passed here in Kentucky, Kentucky 1990, 1990, Florida trailed Kentucky and key academic areas of math and reading and some other areas.
Today. They’re near the top of the nation. They’ve increased spending less per capita than Kentucky has. And Kentucky is still down, still way behind where we were largely stagnant in our performance since Kara. We’re spending a lot more, but our academic outputs are not matching that. So what was the major difference between Florida and Kentucky over those years?
You know what it was? It was giving parents choices. It was the more choices they gave parents, the better their public education system, uh, perform the better it improved. The more it improved. They closed gaps between black and white students. Bluegrass Institute not long ago posted a report comparing Florida and Kentucky and the black students in Kentucky’s charter schools are outperforming their black peers in the traditional public school system and they’re nipping at the heels of the white students.
In the black students in Florida, not Kentucky, black students in Florida, in charters in Florida. Cause we don’t have them here. That’s right. Black students in charters in Florida. And in this report we did, we talked about this, how black students and charter schools in Florida. are outperforming the black students in the traditional public schools in Florida.
And they’re also nipping at the heels of the white students even in Florida. That’s great. So in Kentucky, uh, without that pressure created by options and competition, The public education system has no motivation to listen to what parents have to say to respond to them and to improve our education. We absolutely see that here in Lexington.
We just did a show, uh, Warren Rogers was on, on here last week. Uh, and, and we’ve got, uh, some folks that are going to be running for school board that’ll, that’ll be on this show in the next couple of weeks. But unless the system gets changed. It’s just musical chairs. You, you can’t, you can’t, you’ve got to change the system.
Well, you know, the best way to do that is to focus on the needs of students, right? And whatever’s best for students, let the system adjust. to what’s best for students. Let it respond when we give parents the option. But if it’s a monopoly that can’t be challenged, it’s not going to respond. And it’s even going to do like what they’re doing in the Fayette County school system.
They’re now making it harder and harder for you to even approach them or talk about it. They’re withdrawing into their ivory tower of non-accountability. And they’re even talking about trying to make The central office staff have tenure. You’re talking about the school board, right? Yeah, well, we’re talking about Fayette County Public Schools.
So, this is what happens when you have a monopolistic, um, school, uh, uh, operation. We’re largely doing education like we were in the 1950s. That’s right. And everything else in our state. World in America changed. There are no monopolies because they didn’t work. We found out that’s right But except for education because the teachers’ unions and the educrats they are defending their turf for them That by the way, the opposition to this effort is called protecting our schools But why isn’t it serving our students?
Why isn’t that the, why isn’t that the mantra? You know, why isn’t the focus on the students? So we need to fund students and not systems. Uh, that’s been a problem. And if you listen closely to the opposition, they talk about, well, we can’t have a new system. Well, no, we need to fund students. We need to focus on what’s best for students.
Well, they used to drive these trucks around Fayette County that said it’s about kids. I haven’t seen those lately. They changed that. Right. Cause let’s don’t, let’s don’t even kid ourselves. It’s about jobs. It’s about, well, and, and if you want to about bureaucracy if you want to find out more about some of those particulars of Fayette County schools, their per-pupil spending, their gaps between black and white students, haves and have-nots.
They’re teacher salaries, which, by the way, have not begun to keep pace with the tremendous increases. The money’s all going to the central office. So there you can find it on our website. Yeah, a lot of people. Uh, but, but look, uh, there’s going to be a lot of, there’s been a lot of fear-mongering about this on the part of opponents.
What they’re saying is that. Um, school choice programs will diminish funding for public education. And yet, when you look at Kentucky, since CARA, we have increased per pupil funding by 122 percent inflation-adjusted. So if you take 2023 dollars, in 1990 we were spending less than 10, 000, and now we’re spending almost 22, 000 dollars as a state, per pupil.
Coming from state, federal, and local sources. So, uh, the funding has greatly increased. And yet, when you look at the performance, it hasn’t, it hasn’t increased. And the gaps, as you mentioned, and Condoleezza Rice mentioned about the gaps, the gaps have grown wider most years. And spending has increased most years, most of those years.
I mean, year by year. Except around the Great Recession time there, some of the spending was stagnant, the state spending, but still you have local property tax dollars, which if a county loves to raise, they love those dollars, don’t they? And they love to increase them. So, so, um, I’m going to ask him if they want to buy my house for, for what they’ve assessed it for, you know, well, and another thing the opponents have to make this about.
They have to make this about either or they have to paint it as us versus them. They’re painting it as you either have a public school system or you have a school choice. That’s a false choice The choice is we have expanded opportunities in addition to public education But see that’s both and not either or but they have to fit their narrative They have to make it either or it has to be either or it has to be a voucher amendment.
It has to be a scholarship amendment. It can’t just be an amendment to allow the legislators to come back and prepare a good school choice policy without the courts and Judge Philip Shepard, who’s elected by the teachers’ unions and public retirees being able to knock it down. That’s Frankfurt, uh, Franklin County district circuit court circuit court.
And now the Supreme Court though, was just as bad, uh, in 2022, they struck down the education opportunity accounts bill because it would have allowed some students in some counties to use some dollars donated by individuals and businesses to go to a school, a non-public school, pay the tuition that works best for them.
And yet in America today, we have 5 million students. That are in 8, 000 charter schools and all of 80 different private school choice programs who are getting an education. They never would have been able to get without those programs. This is not a new idea. It’s not a radical idea. And for them to say that this will destroy public education.
Florida, Arizona, and even California, California has 1, 220 charter schools. If this was going to be the thing that destroyed a state budget, wouldn’t we have seen it by now? Instead, what we’re seeing is surpluses in the education budget. Jim, what keeps you going on this? What, what makes you excited about getting up every day, uh, to do this kind of work?
Well, I’ve, I’ve stood in the living rooms and front yards, uh, The homes of single moms in West Louisville, whose kids are trapped in a failing school, you know, and the mother’s working two or three minimum wage jobs to keep food on the table and keep the lights on. And she knows her child is trapped in a failing school.
Our system doesn’t even acknowledge there are failing schools, but she knows it. And yet she says, what can I do? I don’t have the money. I don’t have the connections. I can’t up and move. And that’s what Condoleezza Rice was saying. If you’re wealthy in Kentucky, you have school choice. Our governor said, Hey, I don’t mind you having school choice.
I put my kids in a private school, too. But I just, just don’t ask me to help you. And this is very, he says that, well, that’s what he was saying. He was saying you can have school choice, but don’t ask us to pay for it. Don’t ask taxpayers to pay for it. What else can that be interpreted as? But Hey, I don’t, don’t ask me to help you do this.
If you’re, if you’re fortunate enough to be wealthy and live in a certain zip code, you have options in Kentucky, but if you’re not, and you know, by the way, that single mom in West Louisville. They’re bussing her kid, you know, an hour across the city. She can’t be involved in his education. She wants to be, but she has no options.
She has no choices. She has no freedom. This is not the way it should be in America. And when I talk to those pastors in the inner city over there and hear this, I think anybody that cares about our students would be affected by that. But you know, We don’t see the elites going into those communities.
They’re sending their kids to, uh, private schools. They’re not sending their kids to the public school. So that’s what, that’s really, I care about the most about this. This has been why I’ve done this show for so long. The hypocrisy of the left, and I’m talking about the wealthy left. I mean, I almost can get down and understand a poor guy.
Who’s a left winger? That’s all he thinks it’s his only hope. But when you look at people like in this County that has inherited money, that’s been passed down for several generations and this arrogance that they have about feeling like they need to preach to others and, and, and basically, um, endorse these policies, these, these left-wing policies that disadvantage the poor really, and.
This idea that Fayette County can’t be developed because horse farms are more important than people. That’s a big part of what we have here. This kind of thing, and you know, folks need to start seeing what kind of world we’re creating. You think the crime rate in Lexington is an accident? When people are crammed into an area with failing schools and low economic opportunity, You think there won’t be crime?
You think people won’t deal in drugs and that kind of thing. And this creates this whole thing that we’re having to deal with. You know, um, in America, a low-income minority student is the most likely to be in a failing school. A majority of the kids in charter schools in America are low-income and minority students.
So it’s a real miracle for them. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a lie. That the left is telling that says, Oh, this is welfare for the wealthy. These they’re picking and choosing. who they want to be in their school. They don’t accept special needs kids. It’s not true. It’s not true. In fact, increasingly charter schools are marketing to learning children, and families with learning-disabled children to come to their school and they’re getting educated where they weren’t getting that in the traditional public school system because the public system could not accommodate what they needed.
It wasn’t that they didn’t want to, but they couldn’t. So why would we deny that child the opportunity to get an education that’s going to change their life and then turn around and make this look like it’s just wealthy people taking advantage of it? The wealthy already have those options. Well, it’s about bureaucrats and education folks, educrats if you call them, keeping their power.
It’s about power and money and they’re about the adults, this has to be about the kids. You’ve been listening to the Tom Dupree Show brought to you by Dupree Financial Group, where we make your money work for you. Our guest this hour is Jim Waters from the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions.
Stay tuned. We’ll be back with more of the show in just a few minutes.
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Welcome back to the Tom Dupree show brought to you by Dupree Financial Group, where we make your money work for you. Joining us, Jim Waters from LaBugasse Institute for Public Policy Solutions, and here’s our host, Tom Dupree. So we’ve been talking about this upcoming amendment that’s on the ballot for November.
It’s something you need to take a look at. But Elizabeth came up with a really good question. Imagine that. Okay, here, here, here goes, here goes, here goes. What is the difference between a magnet school and a charter school? Great question. The difference is a charter school knows that now it’s just, okay, we’ll move it.
No, no, no. Go on. So, uh, charter schools, uh, cannot restrict entrance to anyone. It’s got to be a first come first serve basis. So they have to accept every child that comes as long as they have seats for them. If they don’t have space, they have to have what’s called a random lottery. Now we have 45 charter school laws in the country and Washington, D.
C. has a charter school law. So every one of them is like that. Every one of them requires first come, first serve. You can’t pick and choose your students. So wait a minute, a magnet school out of 50 states, Kentucky is one of only five that don’t allow charter. Yeah. Well, really? Yeah. And, and a couple of those states like North Dakota, you know, and these states that have lots of, they’re, they’re very rural areas and populations a lot different, but we’re surrounded by states with school choice, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio.
So what you’re saying is that in every state that surrounds Kentucky, you can have a charter school except for Kentucky. That’s right. In fact, Kentucky is the only state in America that has a charter school law. But no charter schools, that is the most unbelievably backward view on, and it just, you know, it’s what we’re fighting in this state, you know, um, Mark Twain gets credit for saying Tom that, uh, when the world comes to an end, he wants to be in Kentucky because we’re 20 years behind now.
And now the upside of that is. We know what’s worked across the country when it comes to school choice. We know what’s worked and what hasn’t worked. We know what programs are good and what hasn’t been good. So we have the benefit of establishing great school choice programs. But as long as a black road jurist in Franklin County can stop that and the Supreme Court can stop that, we have to do something about that’s what Amendment Two is about.
Okay. So let’s get back to that question. I have to answer the rest of the question. Yeah, it was my fault. I know. So. So every one of those states that has a charter school law requires that it be first come first serve. If you have more people that want to take advantage of it than have seats, you take, you have to have a lottery, a random lottery.
A magnet school can restrict that. entrance. A magnet school can be based around math and science. For example, the Gatton Academy at Western Kentucky University. Ironically, one of the top-rated high schools in the country in a state that has no school choice for everybody else. But they’re one of the top-rated schools out there in Lexington.
And that’s another one. And you have the Craft academies the same way. So you restrict entrance based on a student’s academic performance and, and, and focus or talent or talent. So that’s not a charter school. That is not a charter school. Gatton Academy has students from 60 counties that come in Kentucky to that school and it’s a magnet school.
Now we consider those to be public schools and, and. Louisville has, uh, magnet schools as well. We consider those to be public schools. They’re publicly funded, but they can restrict interest to who comes. I think Fayette County essentially disbanded its magnet schools on the recommendation of the equity council or something that it was not equitable.
Now, let me say, I’m not opposed. , I want to see all kinds of choices. So we want to see magnet schools. We think that’s a bad move as well to not allow that. But what we also think is equally wrong is to restrict that. And, you know, the career journal does a survey about magnet schools in Louisville, not long ago about how.
Parents with influence were pulling strings to get their kids into those schools. Sure. Don’t tell me that parents don’t know which schools are the best. But that’s the major difference. A Magnet school doesn’t have to take everybody who applies. Charter schools do until they run out of space. And around the country, charter schools have thousands of students on waiting lists wanting to get into these schools.
That’s the difference. Do you understand the difference? Yes, at this point. Now can I ask a question? You know what the difference is between a public charter school and a traditional public school? That’s a good question. Would you like to talk about that? I’d be more interested in knowing what makes the difference.
Because when I say that I mean What are they teaching in the charter schools that they’re not teaching in the regular public? It’s not about what they’re teaching. It’s how they’re delivering it. It’s how they’re teaching. So, for example, A charter school can deliver education differently than a traditional public school.
They can be more innovative. They can be more creative. So the traditional public school is locked into the curriculum. Let me give you an example. And the whole, they do it, it’s standardized. Yeah. And the charter schools have to abide by the same curriculum. But what we’re seeing is that. They have a lot of flexibility in how they do that.
And just that little bit of choice, uh, flexibility, Tom is making a huge difference in these schools. But, uh, but that, but that’s a major difference is this. It’s one thing for the government to say, we’re going to ensure that children have access to quality education, but that doesn’t mean the government’s the best.
One to deliver that education to every child. And that’s what we’re finding. Charter schools are another big difference. Another big difference in a charter school and a traditional public school is charter schools don’t have to hire who the unions say they have to hire. They’re not beholden to the teachers’ unions or to the establishment in that way.
If you have a charter school that focuses on math and science, which we do around the country, or charter schools that focus on the arts, or vocational learning, or on special needs, you can hire the teachers that best fit that, those students that best meet the needs of those students. They don’t have to hire who’s next in seniority by the union.
They don’t have to do that. They don’t have to abide by the union, uh, uh, rules. And we’re finding this is a big difference. And think about that. They’re still having to do the same curriculum but look at the difference they’re getting in results. Let me ask you, I just thought of, is there any element of the charter schools, if they get up and running that, uh, entrepreneurs can get involved in helping them roll.
In other words, Let’s say you go down to Jackson County, which has got a very low, uh, literacy rate, and say, okay, now you can do charter schools, but nobody, if it had to be a purely local thing, there might be not by anybody there that would know how to do it. Is there any way that you’ll have groups of people that will help manage local efforts?
Yeah, and it’s all going to depend on how the law is set up and what we’re pushing for, and what our previous laws had that were passed was a rigorous process whereby groups applied and open the charters. When you say groups, well, could it be a business? It could be a nonprofit organization. It could be, you know, It could, well, it depends on how the law is written really.
And so that’s why there was a guy years ago. You remember that guy, Chris Whittle, he, he was in Knoxville and he had something called something one. And it was, it was well before it’s time he was friends with Steve Jobs. He was trying to put these TVs in schools all over the country to deliver curriculum in, in essence, in a better way, would there be a place for somebody like that?
Let’s see an, an Elon Musk. So what we’ve got involved in education. So what we’re seeing around the country is charter schools are getting additional, they’re, they’re, they’re public schools. They’re publicly funded, but most of the time they don’t get the same amount of funding per student. traditional public school has.
And so we see all kinds of innovative approaches to education entrepreneurs coming in and doing this. There’s a chance that somebody could come out there and instead of spending 23, 000 a pupil and getting nothing, they might spend 12, 000. They could spend five or six and we’re seeing here’s that there’s, there’s a lot of stuff available for free.
That you can use, but for educate people, but for a county like Jackson County, the opponents say, well, there’s no interest in school choice. There are no options there. That’s what they say. Yeah, I was asking, they wouldn’t know it, but they have two non-public, they have two private Christian schools in Jackson County, so it may not be a charter school that does, it may be.
It may be that parents would have the financial means to send their children to a non-public school. What people are upset about is that if a charter school starts, it gets some of those public dollars that would have been directed. Yeah, but okay, and that leads to the next question. What is the funding for?
What is it for? It’s for educating students. So it’s basically the same thing is if they get educated, they’re getting capital outlet. They used to, the state used to have a thing called the capital outlay plan and they would get money. Based on the amount of students they had so I Know why a lot of these bureaucrats are upset about it. They think it’s gonna decrease their capital outlay money. Here’s what’s gonna happen depending on how the law is written and many of the laws we’ve seen Have been where just a portion of the funding that school districts are getting.
Oh, yeah But it, the rest of it stays with the district. So even though that student leaves, that district no longer has the responsibility of educating that student. So they actually benefit as well. Well, I recall years ago talking to a man down in Clay County and, uh, there’s a, there’s a school there called Onita Baptist Institute.
It’s been there for years. It’s got private funding that comes from all over the place. And a lot of the. A lot of the, uh, students came from places all outside that County, but this old guy who is a hardened Eastern Kentucky, uh, politician said, It’s a shame that place is out there that’s taking money and kids away from clay County schools.
That’s what this guy said. You’re dealing with this attitude of absolute backwardness. And it’s not just in the mountains, it’s in central Kentucky too. It’s this Kentucky back Uh, ass backwards attitude that has to change. It has changed in a lot of areas, but it’s got to change in education and in government, you know, and even our governor’s out there, he was in a rural area saying and scaring the people, you know, saying this is going to divert money from your district to some wealthy family in Louisville and Lexington.
It’s absolute nonsense. But here’s the question I have. If a student gets educated, they take those dollars and they get educated. The Democrats have. For years, preyed upon Kentucky. It’s being poor and not smart. I remember Greg Stumbo saying we are a poor state. It’s gotta be, we’ve got to act like a poor state.
That’s basically what he said. That’s, that’s, that’s how the governor’s acting. Yeah. Okay. But listen to this, whether a good education comes. A traditional public school, a charter school, a magnet school, a private school, Christian parochial. If they’re using the dollars and they get a good education, then the dollars have been properly spent.
That’s what they are for. I agree. Couldn’t agree more. And That’s not happening with the majority of our students. If it was, this might be a different discussion, but it’s not. And we’ve shown this. And that’s another thing I really have a concern about is a failure of the establishment and the political establishment, especially the Beshear administration.
He never talks about the failure of academically of our system. He never talks about public charter schools and he never talks about what we’re spending right now. And I don’t think you can convince any reason. I don’t think many Democrats, including the one that’s running for president, have any idea about financial stuff.
They that’s just not something they, they just think the money’s always going to be there. And same thing with the, uh, the mayor of this city, there’s just an incredible lack of financial acumen going on in government. These days before we run out of time, there’s one other thing I wanted to mention about your question about what’s the difference between a charter school.
And while you ask between the charter school and the Magnet school, um, actually there’s a similarity there. And the similarity is that parents choose. That’s right. But the difference between a traditional public school and a public charter school is in most cases, kids are assigned to the traditional public school.
But the parents have a choice. Now this is important when it comes to charter schools. And this is important because the opponents are talking about accountability. Okay. Accountability, which is ironic considering a majority of our kids in public schools are not being educated adequately, but they want to turn it around and say that these charter schools will not be accountable, even though it’s parents who get to choose.
Whether or not their children go there based on whether they’re satisfied that they’re getting the education they need. And that’s the ultimate accountability. Now I could, I’ve said it that way. So one thing, one thing I’ve read about is in some States, that’s right. You have schools where a child chooses to identify by another sex or becomes transgender or something, and that the people at the school don’t even share it with the parents.
In other words. The parents are being told, this child does not belong to you anymore. He or she is sort of the property of the state. My guess is that’s one of the reasons that the, uh, educrats are pushing back on this because that’s one child that’ll get out of their grasp and that they can’t control the way they think, you know, there’s a socialistic element of this and here it is, here it is.
If your child wants to excel and would excel at a non-public school and they, but you don’t have the, you’re not wealthy, but we would give them some dollars to go to that school, then you’re, you’re, you’re harming the collective good of the whole system. That’s socialism. It absolutely is. America was based on individuals.
And the other, the real cynical side of it is we don’t, we’re not able to control the way that child thinks. And that’s, that’s the reason for that. That’s exactly right. But here’s the interesting thing is. Whatever, there are a million reasons why parents want choices. There are lots of reasons. And somebody says, well, what about sports or what about this?
Look, to me, it’s up to the parent. They know what’s going to be the best for their child. And I believe most parents are going to do what’s best for their children. And even the ones, because we, we hear this all the time. What about kids that are left in the public schools? Their parents don’t care.
Remember what I said. School choice makes the public system do better. Yeah. Even those kids are going to benefit from a rising tide that lifts all the boats. And one other thing you want to hear, you want to hear who else does better teachers really, because we’re seeing across the country, the board choices, the parents have charter schools, magnet schools, private schools.
The more options teachers have, and that’s forcing the public system to treat teachers better. And it’s forcing them to get better pay. Now, we’re not there yet, but we’re getting there. It’s, it’s having an impact. Choice is good for everybody. It’s good for parents. It’s good for teachers. It’s good for our economy.
It’s good for the students. That’s where our focus ought to be. And look, as long as the system, and to bring it, to talk to your example, as long as the system, the school board, for example, here, I don’t know which is worse, Fayette or Jefferson County, in terms of how they’re doing. Deaf. They are to what parents want or ignoring them.
But until they know that that parent is empowered to make a decision that would affect their bottom line, they don’t care about the students. It’s about the bottom line. It’s about the, it’s about the system. And I won’t say they don’t care at all. Some of them do, but they’re not doing this the right way if they do because they’re concerned, their only concern will be if they lose money and power and turf.
And then you begin to control. And the way to control control it’s not COVID during COVID parents found out. What was and was not happening in their public schools? And that could be one of the best things. I think that did more to help our school choice movement in terms of grassroots, in terms of parents becoming engaged because they saw for themselves, even after the CDC said, you can reopen the school safely, the Jefferson County public school board says, talk to the hand.
The union doesn’t want to open. So we’re not going to open. And there were no consequences for that. There have to be consequences in the elections. There have to be consequences for that. As long as there aren’t, it’s not going to change. Bottom line. Yeah. Well, and what I think is so mysterious, and once again, it kind of defies common sense.
If I were on. If I were in government, if I, uh, in the state of Kentucky, would I not want to leave, leave a legacy? Of good test scores and good schools, because what makes a state stronger, as I’ve said before, it’s what draws companies to states. It’s, it, it is as integral to the economy as anything is. A few years ago, uh, Pella windows, Pella windows, uh, wanted to expand and there were some cities in competition.
One of those was, was, uh, Murray, Kentucky. Kentucky. And so Pella ended up expanding into Murray. They chose Murray. And the reason they chose Murray was, they said, because in Murray, parents can go to either the independent school district there, which is just, in terms of college preparation, just leaving, the Callaway County schools way behind.
And that’s just inter-district choice, but that’s why they moved there. After they did, the Callaway County School District said, we’re no longer going to allow parents to take their kids and have that option. Well, now this law is, we’ve changed the law where they have no choice, as long as Murray wants to accept them.
My point in that is, the economic benefits of choice we know will happen. And all the states we compete against, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, all those states, all of them have robust school choice programs. And we know that companies look at these things. They look at, how is your workforce. Are they educated?
A few years ago, a company came to Louisville and they wanted to hire minorities. That was their goal. We want to give minorities good jobs. They could not find enough of a workforce that could read the safety manuals. They had to go to Indiana to find their workers, but they wanted to. And then the next weekend, the Career Journal had a.
A front-page picture of black leaders marching down the street saying, we demand good jobs. We demand good jobs. And their company was trying to give them good jobs, but they couldn’t find the workforce that was even educated enough to read the safety manual to do it. Well, and that, and that, that’s another side of the equation.
It’s not just drawing the good companies. It’s producing the Workforce to work for briefly, very briefly. Do you want to vote? Yes. What’s it called? Amendment to just remember in Kentucky. We’re for the Second Amendment. Is that what it is? It’s amendment number two. It’s the second amendment vote. Yes. I can.
All I can do is educate you about it, but you could say vote. Yes. Yeah. Yes. To the second amendment. I’ll say it again. You’ve been listening to the Tom Dupree Show, brought to you by Dupree Financial Group, where we make your money work for you. Special guest, Jim Waters with Blue Grass Institute for Public Policy Solutions.
We thank you for joining us. It was an information-packed hour and it went fast. Ips. org. Thanks for listening. VIPPS. org.