Citizens for Free Enterprise CEO and former Arizona Governor Doug Ducey joined Hugh Hewitt to discuss how school choice is critical to unlocking the next generation’s future potential and the new education freedom initiative from American Legislative Exchange Council, Committee to Unleash Prosperity, and the Job Creators Network to expand school choice programs in states across the country. The Education Freedom Alliance is being chaired by Governor Ducey along with Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds with the goal of expanding school choice to 26 states by 2026.
Below you will find excerpts from the interview, which can be viewed in its entirety here.
Governor Ducey: I’m joining Kim Reynolds. We’re partnering on something with the Job Creators Network and the American Legislative Exchange Council to spread [school choice] throughout the land. There’s 11 states today, Hugh, that have universal school choice. Arizona was the first state in the country to do this. Iowa followed. Now nine other states have done this and we have a goal to get this done and to have 26 states doing this by 2026.
Hugh Hewitt: This is a powerful appeal to the American people because it’s common sense and they don’t like their public schools when there’s no choice.
Governor Ducey: Citizens for Free Enterprise is educating and advocating for free enterprise. We’re also getting more people involved in the process, actually participating civically, voting, understanding economic policy and making sure they hold elected leaders accountable for good economic policy and that they pay consequences when there’s bad policy.
Hugh Hewitt: Now, it’s interesting to me that Citizens for Free Enterprise plus the American Legislative Exchange Council plus the Job Creators Network have all joined to push something that’s not in their job title. They’re all pushing school choice and it’s not their job title. It’s not like Corey DeAngelis, who I love. Why did you guys settle on the joint effort around school choice?
Governor Ducey: Well, if you think about free enterprise, Hugh, it’s included under the umbrella of freedom and what’s happened in our American K-12 system has been a cartel system where kids are being indoctrinated, where parents values aren’t being supported at the local level. So this idea of education freedom falls under free enterprise. And these are going to be our our leaders, and employees, and entrepreneurs of the future. We want to make sure they know something of value. We also want to get back to some of the fundamentals. You know, these ideas of reading, writing, being able to analyze numbers, understanding American civics isn’t happening in many of our K-12 district schools. In our schools of choice — you’re familiar with Great Hearts [Academy] and BASIS [Charter Schools] in Arizona — and they began out of this choice movement that started with charter schools in 1994. That has resulted in what is today universal ESAs, or educational savings accounts. This really is the way forward, and at the state level for conservative governors and Republican legislatures, this is the number one issue in which you can move forward. This will support free enterprise. We’ll have more productive people, dynamic people inside the workforce and pushing our economy forward. And they’ll also know something of value versus some of the kids you see at our most elite universities today that really don’t know anything about what’s happening in the world and certainly didn’t follow their schoolwork.