On this episode of WonkyFolk, Andy Rotherham and Jed Wallace dig into the surprising 4-4 split from the U.S. Supreme Court on the controversial St. Isidore religious charter school case—and what it means for the future of public education, church-state boundaries, and the charter movement.

They also explore big-picture trends reshaping education, from the erosion of academic rigor in K-12 to the political dynamics behind school funding, college value, and the explosion of school choice across the country.

Plus, a deep dive into Steven Wilson’s new book on merit, equity, and excellence in education—and why it may signal a turning point for liberal education reformers.

👉 Topics include:

• Why the SCOTUS tie wasn’t just procedural—it was a signal
• The evolving politics of school choice and teacher pay in red states
• Are we underestimating the college-for-all backlash?
• Virtual schooling and its quiet but growing policy momentum
• Why merit still matters—and what Democrats risk by abandoning it

📝 Show notes include:

• Steven Wilson’s book
• Chad Aldeman on jobs
• Eduwonk (Andy's blog) post on books
• 4-4 Drummond decision
• Mark Walsh and Andy on SCOTUS cases
• The National Alliance’s standout amicus brief
• Jed and Starlee's conversation
• Texas virtual bill

Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review—every little bit helps us keep it wonky.

Hey, Andy. Hey, Jed.

Good to see you.

Good to see you too. I guess you got a new mic here. You know, every. Every time I see you, you just get a little bit more legit on me.

I wish I could say it's the same. It's the same mic, so.

Oh, it's the same mic.

Nobody should get their hopes up. I just. You got. You just watched me, like plug it in this time, so.

Ah, all right, well, it's in picture now, so I guess we're gonna have no excuse to, you know, sound anything other than totally polished.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. We should start by being polished and actually eating our producers constant admonition. This is a podcast. It's called Wonky Folk and I'm Andy Rotherham.

And I'm Jed Wallace. And it's great to be back together with you again, Andy. And yeah, guys, if you would subscribe and hit some likes and those kinds of things, it would help. We certainly appreciate that you can get.

This, I believe, pretty much anywhere you get podcasts.

Andy, did you notice before we came into the studio this time that there's a new feature there which is to make your visual look more polished? Did you see that? You have an option. So I don't know what you did, Andy, but I did not click on that. So.

Maybe it'll. Maybe it'll help. It'll help you. I still haven't gotten. I think I told you I was at a reception a while ago. Susan Sclafani, the reading expert, Burton, former administration official in the Bush administration, so forth. She came all the way. She saw me, came all the way across the room to tell me how bad my reading glasses were on the podcast. I need to do better. Ever since then I've been like, trying to find. But I still get to find a good non reflective pair. So we are, you know, we're like, we're slouching towards professionalism here.

I like it. I like it. Well, we just had our first graduate from college last weekend, so we were all in San Diego, a lot of fun. And so we were talking, you know, there when we were sharing our tearful celebrations of one another and all of the parenting flaws that my daughter seems to have survived. You know, if there just had been a button back then, you know, to like sand off your rough parenting edges, you know, like our, our recording studio is doing to our visual look right now, you may, maybe she would have had a, you know, a slightly more.

Fun childhood, but it sounds like she's doing great. You were a good parent. You were Engaged. I mean, yeah, we're, we're a little bit, we're a little bit behind you. Minor, minor in school. But yeah, parenting. I try to tell people it's like just try not to constantly make the same mistakes again and again. Just go forth and make new ones. But it's basically a constant set of mistakes. And then you just hope you get the big things. Hope you get the big things, right?

Yeah. And let your kids raise you. And Tess, fortunately post graduation has said she'll keep parenting me. So I'm happy about that.

But hey, listen, that's a big, big milestone.

Excited about it for sure. So, you know, I mean, and also this is totally out of left field. We sent each other like a few bullet items like let's talk about something. One thing I forgot to bring up in there, very interesting study out of Nber. You'll see it in my next kind of whip around. But looking at college attendance and you know, whether or not it is helping low income kids close the income gap and it's clear, there's no doubt about it. I mean all this hooey we have about college for all is not good. And oh, let's like go ahead and let kids go into all these other, you know, training programs and stuff downplaying the importance of college. We're going to realize we have a fever and we're going to go back and realize, you know what, encouraging people to go to college is actually a good idea.

But especially low income. Especially low income people. The data has been clear on this for a long time.

So the thing that this data showed, and like I say I'll send it to you, but it shows that the value add is still there. Definitely great. But it's about 1/2 as good as it was in the 60s. And they're trying to postulate what that is. It looks as though a lot of the Caucasian students and the more, you know, higher income students, they're gravitating toward different majors. Meanwhile, first generation kids that are coming in, they're going to different majors that pay less well, and so that is eroding some of the economic value of the college attendance. But what I wonder, what I want to suss out is whether or not there may be something here about the first gen kids not being academically ready, you know, to take on some of those other majors. And you know, does this again come back to be a K12 problem? Let's make sure our kids get to college fully able to choose whatever major they want. And then the value that we've seen historically of college will, you know, still be a part of the equation here?

Yeah, we, we'll get to that when we talk. We're going to talk about Steve Wilson's book later. And, and yeah, it's entirely possible that telling kids that academics and merit and all that doesn't matter, like, has not had a fantastic effect on them. We can talk about that. I want to see. I haven't had a chance to read that study. I want to see it. Chad Alderman has a thing out today. He was just going through the new BLS data. And the unemployment rate for recent college majors who studied anthropology is 9 or 10%. Nine percent, I think. And then it's 1% or less for people who say special education because as we all know, there's special education teacher shortage right now. And so choice of major matters a lot. And I think that's gotten, you know, kids still, a lot of adults still focus on the, on the brand name and what school. And it really, really matters. Like, what do you, what do you study there? Yeah, and I think that's hard. That's hard for people to get their heads around. And some schools that are perceived as less prestigious are actually great choices if you're studying certain things and some schools that are more. Because they're more prestigious. If you make certain major choices there, you need to be aware you're really making a choice like that better. That better be your passion because you're, because you're making a choice there.

Sorry to spring that one on you. We'll circle. You're usually smarter on the higher ed stuff than I am and I'm always curious your thoughts about it. I'll give you a chance to read it. We'll return to it on our next call call.

But I know exaggerated. That's interesting. And I do, I do think I just descent from this idea. I mean, people should pursue what they want to pursue. And it's. I do think there was an arrogance around some of the college stuff that. And, and there's lots of great ways to make a living, have a purposeful life, contribute to your community and your society that don't involve going to college. And, and I think we should not be like, yeah, we need to be careful how we talk about this. But like, I find it just astounding. Panel after panel in D.C. of these people with like super soft hands who have their kids in private schools and are telling them to go to selective colleges, who are telling other people, hey, have you thought about H Vac and it's like. It's just that, you know, I think there's a. There's a romance to some of these. These are difficult ways to make a living again. If that's what you want to do and that's your aptitude, that's fantastic. But as soon as I wrote this years ago, as soon as a bunch of people who did a certain set of things to become successful start telling you those things don't matter. Grab your wallet. Be careful.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think what makes it different this time, too? Well, it just feels to me like, let's write the Perkins act all over again. And working in the next office over from Larry Rosenstock for all those years, and he had a direct hand in the rewriting of the Perkins act in the 90s, and. And he just would rail against how the Perkins act had not done what we wanted it to do. And we. And we track kids into different experiences, and it just seems as though we're no better equipped to make sure to do better now than we did back then in terms of, you know, certification programs and these kinds of things.

But the other changes, I mean, it's evolving, and I think we're. I think we're getting. I think it is a place. We're seeing progress, but there's still. Yeah, I just think there's a lot of reasons to be concerned also, like, to make sure kids are getting, like, credentials that are both in demand and they're also aware of, like, the economic prospects of those, because some of the credentials that are highly in demand economic prospects aren't great, and some just are credentials that are not in demand at all. And so kids are, you know, governors are getting to say, like, I've got all these industry certifications, but the kids aren't actually getting skills that. That they. That they need. And, I mean, I don't know. I'll say. I guess I think some of it's like virtue signaling. I think it's. Some of our colleagues are like, they feel. And so they're. They're like, hey, you know, I feel like they. They worry they're getting pegged as an elitist. So their solution to that is to tell everybody else that their kids should become lumberjacks. And I just think, like, we should. We should call, you know, look at. Look at the choices people are making themselves. That tells you. That tells you a lot. Look more at what they say than what they, you know, Excuse me. What they do than what they say.

Yeah. Had a call with the charter folk last week, and she's really focused on helping kids make the transition from high school to college. And she's also working with a bunch of colleges that are seeing their enrollment decline and so they're actually motivated to have a higher percentage of kids, you know, come through. But she was just talking about how the funding community is just not interested in things that are going to try and help kids be successful in college. And, and I was just like, be the contrary in there. Be the contrary. That is a fever that is going to break. And we don't know if it's going to be tomorrow or next year, but I don't think it's going to be long.

Well, you know, what's going to help kids be successful in college is giving them a good K12 education. I mean, there's something a little galling about like just sort of the tolerance for mediocrity and failure that goes on. And then these kids get to high school and people are like, oh yeah, they may not be college material, like, but you know, it's like, why don't. Why are we getting really serious about what's happening to kids, you know, K6, K8, before they get to high school? So then again, they can make a full range of informed choices because there's both the explicit tracking you talked about and then there's the sort of implicit tracking that happens, you know, depending what kind of courses you're taking, what kind of courses you're able to take. And that's always like frustrated me, whether it's like these fights about selective high schools and who gets in. It's like, why are we talking about that? So few kids can take these tests and do well on them. Why aren't we focusing on that? And that's a third grade problem, not an eighth grade problem. And then what happens when these kids get out of high school and they're just not prepared to take the classes that they, that they need to take. So I think that's the other piece of it. It's like. It is, it is like. It is. It is a debate that distracts attention from just this catastrophic failure to give kids what they need in the earlier grades.

Yeah, I think that one way to look at this is this is total Groundhog Day. We're going through the exact same experience and it's about academic rigor and are our kids ready and how good is our K12? There are some things, though, I think, Andy, that make things different now than prior generations discussions. One is just the political lens through which everything is pushed. I Mean, we're having this conversation right now, 24 hours after the Trump administration just announced that they want to take $3 billion away from Harvard and send it into career tech programs or whatever the heck it is. Right. And it just shows there's this, this political, just frustration, you know, with, with the high, with higher ed. And, and so many of us look through these lenses, you know, these problems now through the political lens in ways that we didn't when they were rewriting the Park Perkins act in the 1990s. The other piece, too, is just the outrageous increase in tuition that's happened in higher ed, too. And you put those two things together and we look at the same problem with slightly different, well, profoundly different perspectives and starting points. And I just think it's warping us from being able to see, you know, what's the underlying issue which, what you're surfacing. Are these kids ready to go to college or not?

I think so. And I don't think, look, it's. You have to hold always when thinking of higher ed, you got to hold a couple of things in your head at the same time. Like, yeah, it's too expensive. The schools are inefficient. They have not, you know, clothed themselves in glory these last few years. And it's also, in general, on average, it's a good idea to go. It's hard for people to hold. All those things can be true at once. Is hard. Why don't we.

We're going to tell.

We've made it this far into the podcast. We haven't talked about the Supreme Court's non. Decision.

That's where we're going first. Yeah.

Why don't we just stay with this and we can talk about the Steven Wilson book and then we'll come back to what the Supreme Court did or didn't. Didn't do. So you wanted to talk about Steve Wilson's book.

Well, I don't want to talk about the book. And like, I have it and I haven't finished it yet. Right. But also I, I know we'll promote it.

We'll put a link in the show notes. It's a good one.

All right, great, great. Have you finished it? Have you gone all the way through it yet?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, well, good. Then you're better.

I had an advanced copy, so I had a, I had a.

Good. Well, I've been Steven for a long time and I also, like, I hosted a consultancy for him at one of the Charter School Growth Fund gatherings and have always held him in, in high Esteem was chagrined or, you know, just appalled by, by what happened with his departure. All of those things. And now to see his book. Maybe I'll shut up for a second given that you've now finished it cover to cover. I win. Keep going.

You can keep going. You want to talk about, then I can, I can talk about. I'm not sure my review will be that illuminating, so go ahead.

Well, I want to. I'm thinking about reaching out to Stephen myself and, and, and getting. For a conversation, you know, either, either we could say this is a charter folk one. It's too charter centric. You take it, Wallace, or, or heck, and if you want to do it with me, I mean, it might be an interesting thing for the three of us to do together. I, I feel as though it's an, a really important issue. It's both kind of timely and not quite timely. It's timely in that I think if you look at a broader decades long time frame, is, is Stephen putting his finger on a really, you know, on the pulse of something? I think it's absolutely true. I mean, we've probably seen some overcorrection in, in Charterland, you know, away from academic rigor towards some of the things that, you know, now are characterized as dei and hey, perhaps restorative justice programs not addressing our discipline problems to the degree that we would want to. I think all that's good. My, my reading of the articles about it and you know, my scanning of the intro is that I feel like a, it may be slightly too broad a brush because yes, a lot of some charter school organizations clearly went in this direction, but I don't think all of them did or I don't even think the majority of them have or if it, if they have, they have not gone so far that it requires a massive correction as opposed to a tweak right now. So I think it's right. I mean, look, we've got, we've got, you know, cities that have previously reported that the charter school sector, you know, difference between, you know, their performance academically in the cities was just a huge gap. And we see some of those cities where the gaps aren't as large as they were before. Some of it, maybe a lot of it attributable to what Stephen is talking about. But at the same time, we have studies coming from PPI and elsewhere that talk about, you know, charter schools raising all boats and, and, and, and, and narrowing gaps at the same time too. Right. So it doesn't seem as though we've like Gotten so far off our bearings that we should be too. Too critical of ourselves.

You love that PPI studies will I paying you to tout that. It's a good study, but it basically shows the charters aren't doing any harm. It doesn't. They. It doesn't. I mean, you know, I'm fairly pro charter, but the data that's. That study has gotten. It's taking on. It's taken on a life of its own. And to the author's credit, they, they. They identify some of the limitations with it. Right. Right in it. They're not trying to hide the ball. But I think this. I think in general, the evidence. Yeah. Is. And I mean, to me, I was always struck like, you'd look at places like Boston and you'd see these just outstanding results. And in a healthy sector, you would've had everybody trying to go to Boston and figure out, okay, what are they doing? How do I visit these schools? And instead everybody's going to, you know, Finland or Singapore, where the lessons may not graft as cleanly onto. Onto our system. The thing I like about the Wilson book is I. Something you and I have talked about. I feel like people get. There's this idea that nothing's ever worked. We tried all this stuff. Nothing's worked. Right. An important part of the Wilson book is actually no, there was success and there were schools that were working. I think that's the first part of it that's super important.

Yeah.

And so like, we're not like this animal. We're hunt is not like the snow leopard. Right. Like, people, people. People see this thing on the regular and we just chose not to. I think that's the first thing that's. That. That's important. I think the second thing, there's a political angle to it. I mean, you know, David Shore, the Democratic pollster, you know, he polls like a range of sort of issues and people's preferences on them and so forth. And he was saying more of the ones that absolutely polls at the bottom across, like all. All issues across lots of issue areas, is this idea of getting rid of merit, whatever you want to call it, getting rid of merit, getting rid of advanced classes, getting rid of those advanced class tracks for kids. People hate it. It polls terribly and it's highly associated with the Democrats. And so I think Stephen's book and sort of similar things start to create. To use the. The popular Tim Walz formulation of permission structure to perhaps talk about some of this. And the Democrats should be a party of merit, which brings to the Third point that I think is really relevant about the book is he does offer. There's literally a chapter called A Way Forward. And Stephen is not some reactionary. He's a liberal. And I think actually the reaction to the book has been kind of funny. People don't see liberals in the wild so much, and so when they see one, they don't quite know what to make it. But I forget the exact headline. There's like a thing in the New York Times about it, and it was like, it was, it was like this exotic creature. And you're like, no, he's basically like. I don't say it's like, pejoratively. He's just basically an average liberal in terms of how he approaches things. Right.

It's very similar.

Like, it's familiar to me. It's very similar to how I think about many things. And he offers that you don't have. The choice here is not between, like, we're going to do social justice or we're going to do maga. That's a completely false choice.

Right.

The choice here is simply, how do you do, how do you make sure you're building an inclusive, socially mobile society, but in a way that's actually kids first and focused on kids. And a lot of this stuff is just adult, you know, politics. It's not about kids. That's why I think it's, I think it's a useful book. We should talk about it. I do think it's alarming how quickly sort of people folded their tents on, you know, excellence in merit and so forth. The Republicans kind of got that issue by default, right? Like, they weren't really doing anything. It was just the Democrats were, were starting to do all this other stuff, cap, advanced class and so forth. The Republicans were like, okay, we're not going to do that. And suddenly they were, you know, they drew even on the education issue. And so I, I, I think that, I think for those reasons, it's a book I would recommend. I will throw in the show notes. There's a couple of recent books I did a blog post on a couple of weeks ago that I would recommend, and this was, this was one of them that I just think help kind of explain where we are politically on education, and at least we'll offer some food for thought on how we move forward.

Yeah, well, maybe I should shut up until I just finish the whole book and we can return to. Yeah, I want to rest your thoughts on it. It's good, but, you know, he deserves.

Credit because he didn't just grind. He could have just ground axes for a couple hundred pages and he doesn't do that. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's an elevated look at these issues. And he deserves some, he deserves some credit for that.

All right, I like that. And, and you, and I can return to this because what's the difference between merit and the state separating you from the opportunity that you want? And, and that's because when you, when it comes to you, and you know, we fight about this all the time. We're, we're going to keep fighting about it because I, I think there are ways for us to keep multiple things in place at the same time. We're not going to like, tell people that they are, the state tells them, sorry, you know, and, and where does merit end? We, we, we have merit starting in freaking kindergarten. When you're testing kids coming into school in kindergarten, fifth grade, fifth.

Here would be a good example of that. Like, if you're going to test kids in kindergarten, you should be testing all of them. Like, to me, a very easy tell on sort of where people are in this stuff is are you for universal screening for things like gifted education? And if someone's not, you want to know, okay, why, why are you not? Because right now you have a system still in some places where affluent parents can take advantage of this. And if you do, you know, like a huge part of our gifted parents population is going to be low income kids who are overlooked right now. And if you don't take measures to make sure they're not overlooked, that will continue. And that is what structural inequality looks like. And so I feel like there are, there are things you can do. Right? And those things, whether people are for them or not, it tells you, are you, are you sort of a person who. An opportunity hoarder, as they say, or are you someone who's like, trying to expand opportunities? I think where you and I agree is like, is this about limiting the top or is it about lifting the bottom? And, and we've had more energy the last few years. That's what Wilson gets at about limiting the top rather than what are we going to do to lift the bottom and give kids real opportunity?

Yeah. What I really like to see is schools that just retain very high standards for getting out, whatever that may be, elementary, middle and high school, and yet also make the extra effort to welcome as many kids into that program as they possibly can, those that are clearly ready for it on the, on the very first day and those that may take an extra year or two to get through the program to get to the same standard that we know is one that will, you know, going back to our prior topic, allow them to succeed in college or do whatever the heck they want to do. What I think we see now is we have kids that get in. And when you have a diverse group of students, then the graduation standards or whatever are reduced. That's terrible. That is terrible. But I don't think there's any reason why we can't admit a diverse group of students even from, you know, from a current academic capacity standpoint or capability standpoint, while also retaining those, those high exit standards.

And people hate that. That's what I was saying. Politically, they hate. And you knew we were in trouble when equity started to no longer mean. We're going to lift the bottom. We're going to give everybody an opportunity. We're going to make sure all kids have an opportunity to succeed. When it became started to be these individual equity means, we can't have. You can't take advanced math until your senior year. You can't do. You knew we were in trouble. And the public revolted against that. They hate that. That's what I was talking about earlier with that polling data. And so I think there is a way through, through this that doesn't just replicate an old system that wasn't, you know, wasn't equitable, wasn't fair and all that, but also doesn't like say these things don't matter and we're not going to do them. Doesn't basically drive more parents out of the public school system and leave a bunch of kids by the sidelines because they're not getting, they're not getting what they need.

Well, one thing I tell charter school advocates across the country now this is all intuition. I got no polling on this. I want to have more polling. But my sense is that the public is right with us on not only the issue that you're talking about, but also in the way that we fund schools too. Right now we have school systems that are sucking money away from successful schools that parents want to send their kids to to subsidize under enrolled schools that parents don't want to send their kids to. And, and this, the discrepancies can be huge. We can be talking about, you know, 30, 40, $45,000 per kid spent, you know, at one of these under enrolled schools. Meanwhile, you know, the schools that kids want to attend, they're having two or three thousand dollars per kid sucked away from it. So this program is not as good as it should be. I feel like we should charge straight at that, straight at that and say we want these programs, that parents want to be fully funded, not to take any more money, not suck money away from other kids who, who's, you know, who should clearly be entitled to that. But all the kids that attend that school, no one should be taking funds intended for those kids away. And we're seeing it happen all over the place right now. All over the place. And I think it's a huge opportunity for it.

We're going to have a huge reckoning on, on finance just because of, you know, enrollment trends, demographic trends, enrollment trends, including things caused by people making different choices, demographic trends, which are broader and structural. And, and there, there's a reckoning coming, but we can pivot a little bit. The reckoning is slightly delayed, at least because the Supreme Court in the Oklahoma, the Drummond religious charter school case, it did come back, as we discussed in might. 4 to 4. Yeah. Although after her argument, we're pretty sure.

Well, you made me go first last time and then you kept coaxing me. You kept coaxing me, had me going for like 15 minutes before you finally shared some thoughts on the. So let's, let's turn tables here. What, what are your thoughts here as, as, as you saw all this?

Well, I was surprised only because after oral arguments, I was thinking it was potentially going to be 5 to 3, maybe a narrow, complicated 5 to 3 with lots of concurrences, but that like, I, so somebody, you know, Robert, seems to be the likely culprit. Who knows? But somebody decided this was a bridge too far, which, you know, I, I, we can put some stuff in the show, notes I've written. I don't, I don't lose any sleep over that. I think it's, I think it's the right outcome. But I was not, I, I, I originally had figured 4, 4. And then after the argument's 5, 3 and so back to it, it turns out it was 4, 4, which I guess shows you always have to be careful about putting too much stock in the arguments because they all come in and they've already read the stuff and so forth by that point. So, I mean, look, I think it's probably a delay. Here's the question. Is there a religious charter school case out there that Amy Coney Barrett's close friend and in some cases, I think former colleague on certain issues working together, hasn't touched that would be what they call a clean vehicle, where she Wouldn't have to accuse herself. And, and if you see that case emerge, pay attention because we did have this, we saw this movie once before when Justice Scalia passed away unexpectedly. Right. You had a 4, 4 decision in the Fredericks case. And a couple years later, a new plaintiff, a guy named Mark Janice came along. This was the case about compulsory union, public sector union dues. And he won 5, 4. And so like now, now justice passing away is different than an issue where you have a recusal issue. But that's, I would, I'm not, I'm not sure this issue is over so much as in abeyance in advance for a little while. And because of the way the case came down, we'll put something in the show notes you don't get, you don't know which justices voted which way, although you can obviously infer to some extent, but not entirely in terms of who was that fourth vote. And you also don't get any reasoning. There's no, you know, it's a very procedural non decision coming out of the court. So there's not a lot to analyze in terms of like which of the arguments that were put forward or came up in the amicus briefs that they, you know, found compelling or not because we just don't know.

Yeah, I was rushed this weekend because I had this graduation, so I really couldn't write an extensive piece on this. If there was ever a moment when I would have liked to have written something extensive, it would have been now. So I did something quick on the seven AHAs out of there. I think you're right. It's, it's difficult to make too many inferences about where the justices stand. I do think that there's some interesting new stuff in the landscape that has been kind of demonstrated here. The first, there are several of them. But what I would turn to first is the religious liberty advocates really have no answer to what is supposed to happen to, to charter schools if this religious thing. I think for a long time people thought either a, they would, you know, pump, pump the brake if they saw that a train wreck was going to happen to the charter school movement. Or maybe they have a really sophisticated argument about, hey, this is the way that you can feather in religious liberty, religious charter schools into the movement without it doing fundamental damage to all these other places. And essentially over and over again through the entire presentation of the St. Isdor case, the response from the religious liberty advocates has been no response whatsoever. It's, it's actually, you know, if you need to have all These charter schools become directly controlled by the government again. Okay. Oh, so what? So what? And that I think is sobery. It basically says to the court, yeah, if you're going to do this thing, just the, the religious liberty advocates themselves admit potentially millions of kids educations are going to be adversely affected because of this. That seems different to me. That seems new. And if, if we take a run at this again, what do you see? What do you, what do you say to that?

Yeah, I mean I don't think, I don't think the religious liberty advocates are like out to get charter school. So I, I, I, I, I, I don't discern any like malevolent intent, but I do discern just a high degree of indifference to what happens to charters. They are fighting about their view on a proper, what they consider a proper church state relationship and what that should look like. They've been fighting that fight for a while. Again, as we've discussed, this case is at the sort of tail end of a number of cases expanding use of public dollars for religious purposes. And so their argument is almost different. The fight is about charter schools and that's what we're talking about. But it's a bigger fight that they are having. And so they don't. Again, I don't think they wish ill on charters, but I don't think they lose any sleep over it either if that's what it takes to get where they want to go. And that's the second point. I just think what people, I don't think realized this was not necessarily like an and like now and we're going to have religious charter schools. This was potentially going to be an OR where it could lead to all kinds of re regulation of charters. If you didn't want them to be religious, the structure could be different. They could bring them like instead of being sort of independent public schools, it could bring them right back under that umbrella and make them indistinguishable essentially from district schools. Like all that risk there. I don't think people would focus on that. And now, and now they are aware again, will that matter? I think all that matters is is there a cleaner case out there that that's going to, that's going to come. But I think the fact that those things have been surfaced is not the line is significant.

Yeah, I think that a second thing that is, we know is different is that if we look at the three cases, Trinity and Espinosa, third case, Makin.

The main case.

Yeah, the main case. Each of those was decided one was decided six, three. Two of them were decided seven, two. So. And essentially the religious liberty advocates argued that there is nothing different about this case than, than those three cases. Well, even if we don't know who's voted, just the raw numbers already show no multiple justices. Multiple justices think this case is different than those three. Now, is it different enough that it'll ultimately be protective if they decide to bring it back again? I don't know. But I do think that Roberts was very clear in his questioning. You know, when he talked about. I think it was the. I always get these three cases confused. The, the, the case about wood chips, you know, about playground. Was that, Was that Trinity Lutheran? Yeah. You know, he basically says, look, the state authorizing a charter school and deciding which should open and close and regulating on an ongoing basis, a lot different than the state, you know, distributing wood chips to a, to a private school that's going to spread them on the playground. Aren't these things different? Aren't they different? And basically the same Isadore side saying, no, they're not different. The only thing is different that. The only thing that matters is that it's a religious institution that's being, being excluded, not what they're being excluded from. I think we've seen that is. They may want to stick with that argument because they might think that they just have another person that's with them on that thing, or they're going to have to start thinking to themselves, what is it that we can say to, to Roberts this time around that's not just. It's stonewalling him.

Yeah, well, he. Someone. Yeah, someone clearly does not buy that. There's no difference here. As, as you said, Roberts clearly, I think, gets the gravity of it that like, this is not. This case is. Is sort of. I don't know what the right metaphor is. You could argue we've already crossed the Rubicon. But like, this case is a big. This case is a big deal from. This is not. He didn't. He. Whichever side he comes down on, he did not seem convinced that this was just an incremental continuation of what we've, what we've done. I think he saw this. This would be a significant redefinition of church state, which I think it, which I think it would be.

There's a lot to this case, though, that's just, it's very unique when we have, when we have. There. There was the 4. 4 decision when Kagan recused herself on a case. I think it was within the last 15 years, but before that, aside from Scalia's unexpected passing away that resulted in, you know, there being a smaller number of justices than they think, you really have to go back to the early 70s before you see the court tying on a, on a, on a vote like this. So it just, it's very difficult to make inferences about what's going on here. Why. Basically people say, hey, why would they have accepted the case? They know that Barrett's going to like, recuse herself. They must have thought that they had five votes at that point, but now we see they didn't actually have five votes. I just.

Did we know. Did they know she was going to recuse herself? You know, the justices make those decisions themselves and so forth. And so they may not have. You know, we don't. And again, we should be very clear. We don't know the actual reason. Justice is all civil reasons. Everybody's assuming it's because of her relationship with this law professor and some stuff she's, she had done previously, but who knows? And so, like, it will not be straightforward to be like, oh, here's the reason we need a case to avoid. It could be. It could be, you know, it could, it could be a range of things. I'm not a historian of the court, so I don't know. I do know. Yeah. Kagan has recused yourself when it's been stuff that you worked on, when, you know, in, in the administration and so forth, which seems appropriate. Yeah. But I don't know how like more or less, more or less common is on, on these various issues.

So I take the cynical approach.

One thing it does point out, though, Jen, is like, most of these cases are not five to four. And so I think recusals get less attention. I mean, I'm aware of a few others that they get less attention because they're not consequential. Because I think, you know, the high profile cases get all the attention. Like most of the cases on the court are regulatory matters and so forth. And like, they just play out differently.

And I won't. I'll tip my hand. I'll take the cynical interpretation here, but I'd love to answer, ask you. So what do you think is the significance of the NEA, the AFT, the School Board association, you know, whatever it is. 10, 12, 15 start status quo organizations having filed an amicus brief saying that charter schools are public schools, when many of these organizations accuse charter schools of being privatizers, is the fact that there is now in the landscape something so formal and so considered from those groups going to change anything going forward about, you know, whether or not they present us as public or privatizing?

No, I think they appropriately know, like you, that you take a legal position and amicus brief because you need to do that. And then there's the whole political fray around these things and never the train shall meet, as they say. I just don't think, and really I just don't think like in a political debate about these, like, is anyone, you know, like, look, we got a bunch of people in Virginia who don't like charter schools, right? And they don't want us to have charter schools. I don't think they're going to be moved one iota if I'm like, hey look, here's an amicus brief and the NEA says they're public. I think that has zero effect on the, on changing people's appetite to have more charters. I just think it's a non issue. Everybody puts forward arguments and amicus briefs that they think are going to help them with regard to the case.

I think you're right. I think every once in a while, in a few settings that don't matter that much, but small incremental, to have more evidence of just the two face ness of the status quo on these issues is a little bit helpful. I do believe. Our world is completely, many of our teachers are just very, very naive about the messaging that they're getting from folks and they, they can't believe any inconsistencies that are shared about them, about, about the unions coming to them. And something else that's a clear piece of evidence helps maybe a little bit.

I guess. I just think also people are generally confused about this. You know, you have a lot of parents in charter schools who don't realize their kids are in charter schools. You see that show up in, in political behavior and so forth. You have like people get these, these lines in public, private, the average parent, they want a good school for their kid. And so there's people like, who like work in the sector and different roles, people like us who get more hung up on different kinds of school type and so forth. So I just don't know how much like the, the, you know, the public wants more choice that's very clear both in polling and in their political behavior. It gets bottled up in various kinds of special interest politics and so forth. So I think these are two, these are two somewhat disconnected kinds of, kinds of things. So I think it'll be, it'll be, it'll be fun in certain venues, but I just don't know that it's going to have huge. I think what's going to have a bigger effect on all this is just this remarkable move towards choice that we are seeing. And I know you want to talk about virtual schools. There's been some action on that in a couple of states. But like.

Yeah, let me just ask you one. I mean we may, we're not gonna have enough time for virtuals. We'll have to jump off it and do it last time. But let me just ask you. We have two more questions about, about Supreme Court do I know this is not a legal argument and the justices should only care about a legal interpretation of things. But from a political standpoint, the number of states now that have approved private voucher, ESA and tuition credit programs that would allow parents to access religious education via public support is much, much larger. I mean I went through it and I, I saw 30 plus programs and states that now have something that wasn't there when the St. Isidore case was first filed. Do you think that changes the discussion at all? Hey, there clearly is a, A, a path. There is a lane for that. It's just not the charter school lane. Or does that change in the landscape really not affect the, the court at all?

I don't know. I don't know if it affects the court. It certainly influenced my thinking just in terms of like, I was like, I don't know that this is needed because you have this on offer in so many places. And I think this is, you know, he says, I understand church state. It seemed suspect to me and it was not. I was increasingly, even if you're low income, it was in more and more places you were not going to be denied your ability to access a parochial education if that's what you wanted with some degree of public assistance for that. Like. So I was like, why do we need to, why do we need to go here? Just as a practical matter. But yeah, to that. I don't know if they, I mean the court pays attention to politics and they pay attention to those things. I mean, I wouldn't want to hazard a guess on how it would influence people's thinking. And as we said, I think there's probably a couple of hard yes, hard no votes there regardless of the rest of this. And then there's a few here moving around.

Well, because even in Oklahoma we have a large, it's a much bigger private school program now in Oklahoma than just three years ago. Hey, it's Isadore. Just open up to private and start accepting these Other forms.

Yeah. This wasn't about Saint Isidore sincerely wanting to do this and this was the path. This was about a broader effort to redefine church state. And that's, I mean, I think that's important to keep in mind. It was, it was an education case and so forth, but this was fund fundamentally about much bigger sort of plate Teutonic level stuff around church state, which is, and, which is, and as I said, and you know, we, we've beaten that to death, I think enough here. But it's not, this was not an education case per se. I just think the bigger, the bigger impact on all of this. Everything we've talked about, finance, all the rest of it is going to be just this increase in choice. It is remarkable and it's happened so fast alongside so many other things that I just don't think it's gotten the attention and it's going to be huge for the sector.

We don't have time to talk about all this, but maybe we'll just introduce the topic. In Texas, we've seen Abbott get his voucher program or his ESA program. It's a billion dollar program. Yeah. So this is obviously a very, very big deal. I think it's interesting also though the Texas program is really not a universal program, it still has some real requirements that the vast majority of the value comes to lower income Texans in ways that some of the other states have not done. I'm wondering, is that just happenstance, that's what he had to do to get something done politically? Or does that reflect, hey, some evolution of thinking how do we actually want to target the benefit within a choice program like that? But the other thing that we're really not focused on at all is in Texas there is a very big bill going forward right now about virtual and hybrid education. And people looking at the state of Texas having basically had a number of problems in their statute that's preventing the growth of these hybrid and virtual programs at the pace that parents want them. Now, there's all sorts of reasons to be sobered about this. We know that virtual schools in many instances don't perform as well as other schools and all that stuff. But in terms of parents wanting them and whether or not the impediments to virtual growth are going to be going to be removed from the landscape or reduced in some way. If that happens, I don't even know. In Texas, 10 years from now, what are we going to say was the bigger thing the private school choice bill that just passed or this voucher thing it seems like a toss up to me right now.

Hard, hard to know. I mean, I do think these ESAs are evolving. People are realizing some of the issues. And so you're, you are seeing, okay, let's add a thing. I mean Texas, Texas has accountability. There's testing in is. It is different. To me, the more interesting feature about that is simply to get that done, Abbott had to go primary a bunch of Republicans. And I think it speaks sort of the polarization of our times is the action on this increasingly the left fighting the left, the right fighting the right more than fighting across the aisle. And that is not how choice politics used to operate. Choice politics used to operate with these sort of interesting political coalitions. And it's just another sign of sort of the polarized times that we live in.

Well, at this graduation ceremony this weekend, one of our family members fiance has been an art teacher in, in Des Moines and he was talking about what a huge difference Reynolds presence has made in Iowa because they've made all sorts of increased investments within traditional public schools and they now have minimum thresholds for the hiring of teachers in terms of what their starting salaries must be. So it also speaks to, hey, in order to push through some of these private school choice.

Yeah, win.

They've also had to like make some gestures within traditional public schools that doesn't necessarily get as much attention. Imagine if there had been no, no private school choice stuff in Iowa, but they raised all teachers salaries to 50,000 bucks a year, which she did. It would have been a huge, huge story and no one's paying any attention to it whatsoever.

Yeah, that's happened in a bunch of these states. And I think it's like a conspiracy of silence. Not like an overt, but just an implicit conspiracy of silence. The Democrats aren't going to talk about, hey, look at these Republicans are spending much money on public schools and the Republicans don't want to talk about it because some of them are based, don't like it. And so but it is hard to miss that. You see that trend state after state. These Republican governors are spending money in a bunch of places to address education. And I don't know, the alignment is changing a lot. You look at these states on literacy and in some cases on math in particular on literacy. A lot of them are red states. The alignment is changing in some interesting ways. And I think a real challenge for the Democrats going forward, 2026 will be a referendum on Trump. But going forward after that, what are your ideas? What's your agenda going to be? And what do Democrats have to get back from the game? Because the old playbook just simply doesn't work anymore. They are even or a little behind in a lot of these places on education. So what are you going to do? What's your compelling set of ideas to get people energized?

Yep. All right, before we jump off here and look, I'll disclose for the national alliance. They dispatch me on advocacy things. Hey, hey, help in this place. They're a client of mine for sure. So I've got my conflicts, but also I give the national alliance a hard time when I think that they stink at things and, and yet when I, when they're doing great stuff, I also think they deserve some kudos. You know, this was a tough one for the alliance. This was a tough one. There were a lot of people that were thinking, hey, maybe this four. Four was not even possible. Why are you throwing so much into it? This is one. They threw everything into it and they got exactly what they would have wanted. This is a pretty impressive thing they pulled off here.

Harley's done, I think, a good job there. I would recommend. I could throw the show notes your interview with her that you did recently. I mean, they got a bump up on the federal charter school program, which it hasn't seen in years. You know, not, not insignificant bump up. She. I think she's playing her. She's. She's playing her hand quite well. And this was dicey for them. And I think she kind of came through with a poem. I should disclose I was a founding board member of the alliance and Bella, there's a. Times work with them. So. But I would say that regardless, I think she's done. I think she's so far done quite.

A good job and long standing for the Alliance. They had made this national network of lawyers and they'd been gathering for 15 years. And I just feel as though our depth on legal issues is. Is. Has been increased by that long effort that they've made such that when the moment arose and we needed to have a lot of legal minds properly focused on the most important stuff, they were there.

So I would recommend their amicus brief. Very, very interesting, sophisticated brief that again, because I think this issue is probably coming back would be worth your time. Worth your time to read.

I agree with you there. Amicus was phenomenal.

That in the show notes as well.

Yeah. I mean, should I. I mean that one. That statement in there too, where. When he talk. When the, when they talked about the number of states that have allowed this and the. And their conclusion is if this is a violation of church and state separate freedom, it's the largest one that's happened in the United States in whatever. I don't even remember what they said exactly, but that really was a great way to frame the overall argument they were making. So it was a terrific document.

Well, Jed, good to see you. We will next time we can get more into virtual schools and we can talk about what's happening in Washington. Then you have a big school choice component to the record $5 billion school choice component to the House virtual the reconciliation bill. We'll see what happens to that in the Senate. And we can talk more about the federal charter school program and all of that. In the meantime, enjoy your celebrations.

All right. Take good care. Talk to you next month.

See you.

Okay. Bye. Bye.