Speaker 1: Hi, Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: I got an email from a listener and she wrote
Speaker 1: in this, Hi, Carol, you talk about the importance of
Speaker 1: finding a relationship, but I'm thirty six. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that's of interest to me anymore. I sustain myself, I
Speaker 1: make myself happy. I can't see what anyone would be
Speaker 1: able to add to that. I'm not bitter or angry.
Speaker 1: I haven't had bad men in my history. I just
Speaker 1: don't see the importance of it. I wanted to have children,
Speaker 1: but even that want has waned. What's so good about
Speaker 1: being with someone? Then I heard this interesting exchange between
Speaker 1: podcaster Jen Cohen and professor Scott Galloway. I'll play it
Speaker 1: and then discuss it.
Speaker 2: If you are a woman who is capable and competent
Speaker 2: and can do all those things on your own, they
Speaker 2: don't want a man because the men out there are
Speaker 2: there's very few few that there are are going to
Speaker 2: be wanted by every single girl, so then they're going
Speaker 2: to go right. So it's like, what do you do?
Speaker 2: And that's basically what's happening. I know more single, great
Speaker 2: girls than I've ever had in my life. And very
Speaker 2: few eligible great guys, very few. And the guys I
Speaker 2: know who I'm friends with, they have the pick of
Speaker 2: the litter. They can go out with girls who are
Speaker 2: like literally more than half their age, and those girls
Speaker 2: are like buying for them and dying to go out
Speaker 2: with them.
Speaker 3: So we have.
Speaker 4: But both parties are blame. Okay, men young men for
Speaker 4: a variety of reasons, some societal some is on them.
Speaker 4: Are economically and emotionally unviable. They're less mature, they literally mature.
Speaker 4: The prefrontal cortex matures are the soler rate. They're not
Speaker 4: going to college. They're in there. They've been told by
Speaker 4: the wealthiest, deepest pocketed companies in the world. They can
Speaker 4: have a reasonable facsimile of life online with an algorithm.
Speaker 4: Why go out and make the effort to get friends
Speaker 4: when you can go on discord a reddit. Why get
Speaker 4: a job when you can make money trading crypto on
Speaker 4: coinbase or stocks on Robinhood. Why go through the effort
Speaker 4: and the rejection and the humiliation and establishing the skills
Speaker 4: and getting your mom or your gay friend address you
Speaker 4: working out, taking the risk, going to a place, putting
Speaker 4: up the bullshit in the rejection, of finding a romantic
Speaker 4: or sexual partner when you just have YouPorn and so
Speaker 4: you have an entire code of men who have sequestered
Speaker 4: from society. They don't get those skills. They go down
Speaker 4: a rabbit hole and they become almost sort of just
Speaker 4: non viable mates.
Speaker 1: Now, they don't include the age of these people in
Speaker 1: the clip, but if the guys who refers to or
Speaker 1: dating girls more than half their age, I have to
Speaker 1: assume they're at least forty hopefully. So like my letter writer,
Speaker 1: these people are set in their ways and wondering what
Speaker 1: the point of being with someone is. I don't have
Speaker 1: a great answer for that. I can tell you that
Speaker 1: it's a different level of happiness being cared for by
Speaker 1: someone and caring for them rather than not having that
Speaker 1: and all that warmth that comes with it, the family life,
Speaker 1: the security. It's all very good. And of course falling
Speaker 1: in love is amazing and magical. And you know, the
Speaker 1: woman who wrote in didn't say whether that's ever happened
Speaker 1: her before. But if it hasn't, it still could it
Speaker 1: should You should try to find it. But if you've
Speaker 1: reached a stage in your life where you think relationships
Speaker 1: just aren't for you anymore. Fine. What I would say
Speaker 1: to these people is make sure you're not just using
Speaker 1: a defense mechanism to try to make excuses for why
Speaker 1: you haven't met someone. It's okay to not have met someone.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of luck involved. Like I always say,
Speaker 1: don't take your ball and go home. If you really
Speaker 1: are happy, great, But I don't even think the men
Speaker 1: in that clip are happy. If there's a tiny part
Speaker 1: of you that thinks maybe you're not happy, don't give
Speaker 1: up on the idea of meeting someone, and don't assume
Speaker 1: that there was no one out there for you. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. I love getting your emails. I love all
Speaker 1: your questions. I'm going to do a few episodes on
Speaker 1: family issues in the next few weeks because I've gotten
Speaker 1: several emails about that. If you want something answered, email
Speaker 1: me at Carol Markowitz Show at gmail dot com. Or
Speaker 1: I post a form occasionally on x where you can
Speaker 1: email me anonymously. I think people seem to like that,
Speaker 1: so if you catch that form, send in your questions
Speaker 1: there or Carol Markowitz Show at gmail dot com. Coming
Speaker 1: up next and interview with Tommy Schultz. Join us after
Speaker 1: the break.
Speaker 5: Welcome back, to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My
Speaker 5: guest today is Tommy Schultz. Tommy is CEO of American
Speaker 5: Federation for Children. Hi, Tommy, so nice to have you on.
Speaker 3: Hey, thank you for having me Carol.
Speaker 5: So, did you always want to be the CEO of
Speaker 5: the American Federation for Children? How did you get into that?
Speaker 3: Well, that's a funny question.
Speaker 6: I didn't always know, because I didn't know the American
Speaker 6: Federation for Children existed untill probably about ten years ago.
Speaker 3: It's an interesting story.
Speaker 6: I was, you know, initially, I went to college wanting
Speaker 6: to be a doctor. I had this sort of high
Speaker 6: minded notion that I wanted to help people. Long story short,
Speaker 6: that we could maybe get into later. I felt that
Speaker 6: wasn't the right path for me. A lot of challenges
Speaker 6: sort of did fall in love with this notion of
Speaker 6: fixing some of these societal problems or things that I
Speaker 6: felt were hindering our ability to be a great country.
Speaker 6: There were a few moments in college that really kind
Speaker 6: of woke me up to that. And along that journey
Speaker 6: I was working in politics, and then in between one
Speaker 6: of the political campaign cycles, I had heard that this group,
Speaker 6: the American Federation for children was really great. They were
Speaker 6: looking for somebody on the team, and the timing was right,
Speaker 6: the location was right.
Speaker 3: I said, I'd love to join that.
Speaker 6: And I only had this high minded notion around, you know,
Speaker 6: school choice, school vouchers. I think I had read the
Speaker 6: Builton Friedman essay from back in the nineteen fifty that
Speaker 6: he had written, But it was really this particular moment
Speaker 6: in time where I had suddenly started visiting schools, these
Speaker 6: incredibly high performing just jewels of schools that were at
Speaker 6: that time in Memphis, Tennessee, that were high performing but
Speaker 6: with a high poverty kind of student body. And it
Speaker 6: was really crippling to know and understand that, like, gosh,
Speaker 6: if we didn't pass a school choice program, this school
Speaker 6: in particular was really benefiting from anonymous donors who had
Speaker 6: given some gifts that were essentially running out.
Speaker 3: And you get to think.
Speaker 6: About, how, my goodness, we have this education system that
Speaker 6: we've designed that is designed this way that basically you
Speaker 6: really need this golden ticket to get out and to
Speaker 6: get a good education, or you need to be really
Speaker 6: lucky and born into the quote right zip code to
Speaker 6: go to that quote good school. And so it was
Speaker 6: just this really personally humbling experience that I had that
Speaker 6: I said, oh my gosh, like, we have to fix this.
Speaker 6: There is urgency because if we didn't pass that school
Speaker 6: choice program at that time I'm in Tennessee, those kids
Speaker 6: would be going to some of the worst schools in
Speaker 6: America just down the road, and you when you multiply
Speaker 6: that at scale across the entire country. I really had
Speaker 6: this almost spiritual awakening that I said, this is my
Speaker 6: life's mission, this is what I want to focus on.
Speaker 6: And so that led to me eventually kind of taking
Speaker 6: over the company a couple of years ago, and we've
Speaker 6: had a lot of success since. And I know you've
Speaker 6: been following the school choice issues. Yeah, and you yourself
Speaker 6: had a lot of personal experiences with education, so you
Speaker 6: know how important it is, especially at the K through twelve.
Speaker 6: K through twelve level can be such a vector change
Speaker 6: for your kid's life. So that's how I again, I
Speaker 6: didn't know I wanted to do this, but I think
Speaker 6: God kind of smacked me over the head at some
Speaker 6: point in my life.
Speaker 5: So you're going to go back and go to medical
Speaker 5: school or absolutely not.
Speaker 6: I mean the story there was you know, I probably
Speaker 6: wasn't thinking too far ahead when I was jumping fully
Speaker 6: into this and didn't realize I mean, and especially at
Speaker 6: this time, they were, you know, Obamacare is being debated,
Speaker 6: and I talked to so many doctors at that point
Speaker 6: who said, physicians, you name it that were like, look
Speaker 6: the paperwork, the administrative burden it's getting. It's already bad enough,
Speaker 6: and we're quite worried for what's down the road. I
Speaker 6: wasn't liking the you know, the chemistry and the hard
Speaker 6: sciences aspect at the college level with it, especially at Stanford.
Speaker 3: So yeah, not going back to medical school, that's for sure.
Speaker 5: I also actually was going to be a doctor, but
Speaker 5: that's only because my parents are from the Soviet Union.
Speaker 5: And you know, that's one of three careers you were
Speaker 5: to choose.
Speaker 3: So lawyer, a doctor or something like that.
Speaker 5: You got, you got two out of three. How'd you know?
Speaker 5: So what does the American Federation for Children focus on
Speaker 5: other than school choice? Or is it mostly a school
Speaker 5: choice organization?
Speaker 6: We are a singleish organization at least kind of what
Speaker 6: the policies that we pass seek to give families the
Speaker 6: best opportunity to go send their child to the school
Speaker 6: of their choice. So public private charter we're agnostic on that,
Speaker 6: but a real thing that is just needed in the
Speaker 6: marketplace and has been needed for the last forty years
Speaker 6: or more, is that we really do need a vibrant
Speaker 6: kind of diet yamic set of options within each kind
Speaker 6: of local community, and that charter schools took off in
Speaker 6: the nineties and then early two thousands had a lot
Speaker 6: of bipartisan support, but there were only kind of there
Speaker 6: was a slower, longer tail when it comes to know
Speaker 6: the growth of voucher programs, you know, any kind of
Speaker 6: program or mechanism that allows a kid to go to
Speaker 6: a private school. And so our team had been focusing
Speaker 6: on that for quite a long time in various forms,
Speaker 6: and in the last ten twenty years we've really accelerated
Speaker 6: the pace of growth of voucher programs or ESA programs
Speaker 6: or tax credit scholarship programs. These are all different mechanisms
Speaker 6: that allow a student to go to a private school.
Speaker 6: AFC is unique in that we do political elections at
Speaker 6: the state level, because that's how you change these laws
Speaker 6: at the state level. That creates a permanent change to
Speaker 6: the education system. Whereas you know, many of our founders,
Speaker 6: board members and many people who are especially in the
Speaker 6: last few years, getting into the world of education, they
Speaker 6: feel the only way to change things is to go
Speaker 6: to your local school board. And that is indeed an
Speaker 6: important factor in all this, but it doesn't do systemic
Speaker 6: change right. You're making changes on the margins to certain
Speaker 6: kind of budgetary decisions or certain kind of curriculum decisions
Speaker 6: here and there. But when you're talking about systemic change,
Speaker 6: you have to change laws right at the state level
Speaker 6: in particular, because ninety percent of education and K through
Speaker 6: twelve at least in this country, it's really dictated by
Speaker 6: the state level dynamics. And so when you pass these
Speaker 6: laws that allow families to go and take their funding
Speaker 6: to the school their choice, such a difference maker, and
Speaker 6: we've seen that in Florida in particular for the last
Speaker 6: twenty years.
Speaker 3: You can go in depth about that.
Speaker 6: But AFC would do the elections to help kind of
Speaker 6: change the makeup of the state legislature. We do the
Speaker 6: lobbying and advocacy during the legislative sessions, and then we
Speaker 6: also help families and role in these programs.
Speaker 3: So those are the kind of three legs of the
Speaker 3: school How we do our work.
Speaker 5: One of the biggest roadblocks to the kind of systemic
Speaker 5: changes you want to make.
Speaker 6: Oh, that's usually a pretty easy one. The biggest roadblock really,
Speaker 6: it's the teachers' unions, their power, their money. You know, Carol,
Speaker 6: if you had AFC, we've raised about thirty three million
Speaker 6: dollars last year and deployed that across the country.
Speaker 3: Carol, how much do you think the teachers unions brought
Speaker 3: in in.
Speaker 6: Terms of their revenue four times that you were close?
Speaker 6: I mean they bring in about three billion dollars in revenues. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean, yeah, I was gotten by about, you know,
Speaker 6: more than one hundred times. It's that and people just
Speaker 6: don't understand the scale of what that means, right, because
Speaker 6: if they're deducting right out of every teacher's paycheck, right,
Speaker 6: hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars a year, you multiply
Speaker 6: that not only to teachers. It's almost a misnomber to
Speaker 6: call them the teachers unions. Schooling unions is probably the
Speaker 6: better term, because they'll take any employee that is part
Speaker 6: of the school system. And that's why you notice when
Speaker 6: they're fighting at the state legislatures and they're lobbying and
Speaker 6: putting so much money, they're always wanting more personnel, right,
Speaker 6: and they'll find any sort of personnel to do it.
Speaker 6: They'll say, you know, during COVID, we need more counselors, right,
Speaker 6: And it's like, well, maybe let's discuss that. But then
Speaker 6: all of a sudden you realize, no, no, it's all about
Speaker 6: the dollars for them. It's every new employee is a
Speaker 6: new paycheck going into the conference of the unions. And
Speaker 6: so when you have this three billion dollar machine, I mean,
Speaker 6: I mean, I don't know what the final tally was
Speaker 6: for this year in the presidential elections, but for the
Speaker 6: last couple of decades, I mean, that's the amount of
Speaker 6: money that was spent at a presidential campaign level. And
Speaker 6: they're doing that year over year at the school board level,
Speaker 6: at the state level, at the federal level. And so
Speaker 6: their influence on politics, particularly in democratic politics, really a
Speaker 6: stranglehold on things. Whereas if they weren't able to you know,
Speaker 6: collect that money, and there's all these kind of state
Speaker 6: laws that are trying to push for that that you
Speaker 6: can't automatically deduct the dues from you know, employees in
Speaker 6: that fashion. If you took that money element away, I
Speaker 6: think that's probably, you know, the biggest it would have
Speaker 6: the biggest downstream effect in terms of our kind of
Speaker 6: ability to get good reforms in the education system, because
Speaker 6: especially on the you know, the democratic side of the equation,
Speaker 6: there is such this fear that a Democrat, they tell
Speaker 6: us this privately off.
Speaker 3: And they're like, look, I'm with you.
Speaker 6: Maybe when it gets to the vote, I'll be with you,
Speaker 6: but I cannot stick my neck out or else they
Speaker 6: will wipe me out into primary, right, And that's that's
Speaker 6: really harmful to the politics because it's also this nefarious
Speaker 6: I mean, it's a taxpayer funded initiative essentially, right, because
Speaker 6: our tax dollars are going to the school employees. Their
Speaker 6: money is then getting shuffled over to the teachers unions automatically.
Speaker 6: Not that's not a good sign dynamic here. And so
Speaker 6: but aside from that, the last couple of years, parents
Speaker 6: have really made their voices heard. They got to see
Speaker 6: what happened during COVID. We've been much more effective at
Speaker 6: getting our message out there to those parents directly. So
Speaker 6: we've been able to actually beat them, even though we're
Speaker 6: well under resource relative to them. As we kind of
Speaker 6: talked to.
Speaker 5: What's step one in fighting their dominance and actually ending that,
Speaker 5: you know, taking money out of every teachers and every
Speaker 5: employees paycheck. I mean, is there a way to stop that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 6: I think there are a number of states of past
Speaker 6: laws where you know, you had the voluntary contributions have
Speaker 6: to be voluntary and they can't be automatic, right, And
Speaker 6: there are a couple of Supreme Court cases that kind
Speaker 6: of dealt with this at the federal level that made
Speaker 6: it such that you couldn't just you know, automatically take
Speaker 6: money out of, you know, the teacher's paychecks. Jana's decision
Speaker 6: was pretty notable in that regard. But then of course
Speaker 6: the unions had already been seeing that the writing was
Speaker 6: on the wall here, so they have their thous of lawyers.
Speaker 6: They had worked out different ways to say, sure, you
Speaker 6: won't be automatically joined into the teachers unions, but the
Speaker 6: way that you have to like opt out is there's
Speaker 6: this one Saturday at this random time and you have
Speaker 6: to have your original teaching certificate that you got to bring.
Speaker 3: So they created all these kind of.
Speaker 6: Artificial ways to keep keep the doors from like you know,
Speaker 6: them flooding for the exits. So there's a lot of
Speaker 6: really good groups other folks that you should certainly talk
Speaker 6: to in your podcasts that are working on that issue
Speaker 6: in particular. But for us, you know, it does actually
Speaker 6: go back to the school choice laws in that if
Speaker 6: you are giving parents total control of their child's education
Speaker 6: funding and they're able to kind of freely choose the
Speaker 6: location or the type of setting home, you know, brick
Speaker 6: and mortar, you name it, suddenly you know the power
Speaker 6: of the unions and the power of the blob, all
Speaker 6: the bureaucratic elements of this that has been just rising
Speaker 6: dramatically over the last thirty years.
Speaker 3: When parents are in.
Speaker 6: Control, suddenly there becomes a marketplace. Florida we've seen this
Speaker 6: the most where they've embraced all of the options right, public, private, charter,
Speaker 6: all of the public schools have gotten better in that
Speaker 6: regard because of it.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: So again, when parents are in charge, that's usually the
Speaker 6: biggest lever. And then there is this kind of element
Speaker 6: on the margins. I think that is an important part
Speaker 6: of it, but where it's like, hey, we need to
Speaker 6: really rethink how the teachers' unions and these kind of
Speaker 6: public sector unions are able to operate in this you know,
Speaker 6: unlimited fashion in a lot of ways within our kind
Speaker 6: of public discourse, in our politics, so a lot of.
Speaker 5: The time, and I admit that this is true for me.
Speaker 5: People only start to care about things like what they're
Speaker 5: teaching at the local school, or school choice or any
Speaker 5: of this when they have kids in the system. You
Speaker 5: mentioned before we started, you have two small kids, so
Speaker 5: this isn't actually personal for you yet. How did you
Speaker 5: become so passionate about this?
Speaker 6: Yeah, again, it goes back to that story where I'm
Speaker 6: you know, touring these beautiful schools with these in these
Speaker 6: like high poverty areas that are doing so well for
Speaker 6: these kids. You're talking to the teachers about the student
Speaker 6: body and their challenges. The teachers are saying, roughly fifteen
Speaker 6: percent our kids are homeless, or you know, you have
Speaker 6: all these other ailments. You know, parents that you know,
Speaker 6: single parent households that are really in deep poverty, but
Speaker 6: they are getting their kid into this great school, which
Speaker 6: is their ticket to end generational poverty in many ways,
Speaker 6: and you're thinking about the fact that the unions are
Speaker 6: trying to essentially either close these schools make sure they
Speaker 6: don't get any state funding.
Speaker 3: And it's just when you're.
Speaker 6: Looking at the kind of dichotomy here of how enough
Speaker 6: farious it is that there are people that they do
Speaker 6: not actually care about the student's success, especially of these
Speaker 6: kids in deep poverty. And you know, lower income families
Speaker 6: have been screaming about this for generations, and lawmakers and
Speaker 6: others will say, well, no, you know, the schools I
Speaker 6: went to, they were good, and we just need to
Speaker 6: do do like we did in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 6: It's like, you know, there are really deep, deep cracks
Speaker 6: within our kind of public education system that we need
Speaker 6: to fix, and there's this sort of moral imperative that
Speaker 6: we should all have about that. And to your point
Speaker 6: about parents not really you know, understanding this or paying
Speaker 6: attention to us until their kids are going into it.
Speaker 5: Too late, it's like too late to make changes once
Speaker 5: your kids are in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 6: And thankfully there were visionaries kind of a people that
Speaker 6: founded AFC who were you know, both philanthropus. They were
Speaker 6: giving out lots of scholarships, but they felt at that
Speaker 6: time in the nineties they're like, look, we could give
Speaker 6: out the entire fortunes of every kind of major family
Speaker 6: in the world here, but we're not changing the system. Right,
Speaker 6: we're giving a lot of you know, we're giving out
Speaker 6: a lot of proverbial lifeboats. But the system remains unchained
Speaker 6: and actually was only growing, and it's kind of power
Speaker 6: and influence. And so therefore thank God for the people
Speaker 6: like you know, Betzy to Voss, even the John Walton
Speaker 6: Bill Obendorf, who at the early stage of this said
Speaker 6: we need to fix this American education system or else
Speaker 6: it's going to be too late for the future country
Speaker 6: and everything. I mean, we could have a long debate
Speaker 6: about poverty, right, but it's so much of it stems.
Speaker 3: From a poor education system. Right.
Speaker 6: And for parents at the individual level again, I almost
Speaker 6: I love when a parent really kind of comes to
Speaker 6: this with like the zeal of a you know, convert,
Speaker 6: where they go, oh my gosh, I didn't realize how
Speaker 6: it was you. And again, this is the nature of
Speaker 6: our system, where if you grew up in this system
Speaker 6: that just said, hey, it's your zip code and this,
Speaker 6: I mean, when the game is sort of set that way,
Speaker 6: you're not really thinking could this be different and should
Speaker 6: we change it? And I think again COVID really had
Speaker 6: this seench of sketch moment on the American consciousness that wait,
Speaker 6: all these other countries aren't doing it like we do, right,
Speaker 6: and we can actually have a free and open system
Speaker 6: where we control our education funding. Especially when we're spending
Speaker 6: about twenty thousand dollars per kid per year in American
Speaker 6: kind of education, we should be getting a little more
Speaker 6: for that money and we can probably improve outcomes make
Speaker 6: parents happier. And again we're seeing that in places like Florida,
Speaker 6: and you know it's soon to be Texas once we
Speaker 6: get that across the finish line next year.
Speaker 5: For this year, rather, it just impresses me so much
Speaker 5: when people don't have skin in the actual game, and actually,
Speaker 5: like the wealthy people you mentioned who have donated, they
Speaker 5: could have just kept their money and done something else
Speaker 5: with it, or you know, they clearly could live in
Speaker 5: the best zip codes and send their kids to private
Speaker 5: school and just move on with their lives. With the
Speaker 5: fact that people get involved in this way, it just
Speaker 5: gives me a lot of hope and optimism for our country.
Speaker 5: I think there's a lot of places where I don't
Speaker 5: think that philanthropy works like that, and that people make
Speaker 5: differences in the lives of people that you know aren't
Speaker 5: in their world or in a completely different sector of society.
Speaker 3: I'm just I'm impressed with all of that.
Speaker 6: So now well and it's I think again they felt
Speaker 6: that moral paying right that unlike I mean, it's probably
Speaker 6: a bad analogy, but unlike healthcare, where it's like, look,
Speaker 6: we're talking about a lifetime of decisions and a lot
Speaker 6: of you know, a lot of factors that key into
Speaker 6: how we're thinking through you know, having a healthy you know,
Speaker 6: make America healthy against kind of situation. Whereas education is like, look,
Speaker 6: you've got this essentially depending upon the kid, but you
Speaker 6: know this twelve to fifteen year window where you only
Speaker 6: get this one shot to do it right. And some
Speaker 6: of these early decisions, I mean a lot of people
Speaker 6: got captivated in the nineties and two thousands when they
Speaker 6: started seeing the research that like, look, if you're unable
Speaker 6: to read by third or fourth grade, you're really not
Speaker 6: going to you know, get that back over the years,
Speaker 6: and that's going to just you know, put you into
Speaker 6: this pipeline of poverty.
Speaker 3: Or worse the rest of your life when.
Speaker 6: You go when you kind of start factoring in all
Speaker 6: these facts, all these ideas around education, how important of
Speaker 6: a vector change it can be with these sorts of
Speaker 6: early internet. You know, how many people do you know, Carol,
Speaker 6: in your life to talk about that one great teacher, right,
Speaker 6: or that one kind of even if it's just a
Speaker 6: social setting of like the right students in your kind
Speaker 6: of cohort, that one grade where it's like, you know,
Speaker 6: that's when everything changed for me and I really propelled
Speaker 6: through middle school and then high school because of it. Right,
Speaker 6: So all these things like gosh, education is the silver
Speaker 6: bowl to all of these things in life, and we
Speaker 6: got to get this right. And where it's too great
Speaker 6: a country to have, you know, minimal dreams or kind
Speaker 6: of mediocre kind of notions around education is fine, we'll
Speaker 6: fix it. You know, so many of these students that
Speaker 6: we bring into our team, who they themselves benefited from
Speaker 6: a school choice program, they often have a very similar
Speaker 6: story that you know, their mom, dad, we're fighting tooth
Speaker 6: and nail to get them into that better school. The
Speaker 6: local terrible public school was telling them, no, no, no,
Speaker 6: We've got this ten year plan. We're going to fix it.
Speaker 6: It's like ten years is too late for almost everything, right,
Speaker 6: and lo and behold, Carol, they never got that ten
Speaker 6: year plan in place. They got a lot more money,
Speaker 6: they didn't fix the situation. So again, this is where
Speaker 6: it's like, if you can put your kid into a
Speaker 6: great school tomorrow, their whole life can be changed, Their
Speaker 6: whole family's life can be changed, especially if they're in
Speaker 6: dire poverty.
Speaker 3: What do you worry about, Well, I think we've been
Speaker 3: talking about it.
Speaker 6: I mean I do worry, you know, I tell you know,
Speaker 6: I often reflect upon when it's like graduation time, you
Speaker 6: know it's May June. You know, you really do reflect upon, like, gosh,
Speaker 6: the urgency of this issue, and that if we didn't
Speaker 6: pass that school choice program, how many more graduating classes
Speaker 6: of kids, especially you think about like a freshman or
Speaker 6: sophomore where it's like, if you could have put them
Speaker 6: into a better educational environment, maybe that's what actually propels
Speaker 6: them into college for the first time in their.
Speaker 3: Family or so that kind of that moment where we're thinking.
Speaker 6: About the losses that we have in terms of the
Speaker 6: state legislative fights where it's like we weren't able to pass
Speaker 6: that program. I do always worry about kind of those
Speaker 6: kids that fell through the cracks that we know we
Speaker 6: could have helped, We know we could have put them
Speaker 6: on a better life path. And I mean, we're talking
Speaker 6: millions and hundreds of thousands of kids, and what does
Speaker 6: that mean for society ten twenty years down the road?
Speaker 6: And I remember at the early outset of COVID and
Speaker 6: the kind of the lockdowns of the teaching union started
Speaker 6: to orchestrate, and as you know, in some places they
Speaker 6: locked schools down for two years. There were studies that
Speaker 6: com yep, exactly right. And then when you look actually
Speaker 6: right across like the proverbial street, at how ninety percent
Speaker 6: of private schools were opened by October twenty twenty, you
Speaker 6: started to go, wait, what's going on there? Right?
Speaker 5: That's that's unjust where's the science? How is the science working?
Speaker 5: How are the private school kids safer than the public school?
Speaker 6: Right? Political science was ruling the day in that regard.
Speaker 6: But when you looked at how in particular, and this
Speaker 6: is getting back to your question about what I worried
Speaker 6: about at that time, there was a study to come
Speaker 6: out saying there's basically three million kids that we don't
Speaker 6: really know where they are, particularly in these kind of
Speaker 6: blighted communities, high poverty situations. And it's just devastating because
Speaker 6: when you really think about the long tail of that.
Speaker 6: We have roughly three million people going through our kind
Speaker 6: of prison system. And if you think that, like Gosha
Speaker 6: down the road, of some higher percentage of those kids
Speaker 6: that are on the proverbial streets or are not getting
Speaker 6: a great education and they're relegated to these kind of
Speaker 6: terrible life paths, you just really think about the impact
Speaker 6: on our welfare system, right and the quality of life
Speaker 6: overall for a society.
Speaker 3: And again, it's.
Speaker 6: Such a simple thing that we can have the best
Speaker 6: education system in the world. We should for some populations
Speaker 6: within America. We really do. We can bring that at
Speaker 6: scale if we just made some of these systemic reforms.
Speaker 6: And again, I think COVID was really that slap in
Speaker 6: the face for so many families, and I'm so glad
Speaker 6: it is. Even so many politicians got up to it saying, oh, yeah,
Speaker 6: we were our assumptions about our education system were incorrect.
Speaker 6: We need to implement school choice right now. And thankfully
Speaker 6: we said, look, we've got the plan in the drawer.
Speaker 3: Here's how you do.
Speaker 6: Here's the lessons of mistake that we've learned of how
Speaker 6: to create a really successful, thriving type of program.
Speaker 3: So the things I worry about again. It always comes
Speaker 3: back to the kids.
Speaker 1: More coming up with Tommy Schultz. But first January twenty
Speaker 1: seventh was International Holocaust Rememberance Day, a day to remember
Speaker 1: the great evil of the Holocaust, when millions of Jews
Speaker 1: were slaughtered during the Nazis reign of terror. Today, the
Speaker 1: rise in global antisemitism and the constant attacks on Israel
Speaker 1: show us that it's more important than ever to remember
Speaker 1: the atrocities of the Holocaust to ensure it never happens again.
Speaker 1: That's why I've partnered with the International Fellowship of Christians
Speaker 1: and Jews. They provide food, shelter, and safety to Jews
Speaker 1: in Israel and around the world, including those remaining Holocaust survivors.
Speaker 1: Your donation today will help provide food, water, medicine, and
Speaker 1: other basic necessities to Jewish communities, and through your gift,
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Speaker 1: four three two five.
Speaker 5: What advice would you give your sixteen year old self
Speaker 5: other than you're not going to be a doctor.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it's interesting because I feel I have lived
Speaker 6: a twenty different lifetime since my sixteen year old self. Again,
Speaker 6: when I was moving all around across the country, you know,
Speaker 6: working on political campaigns, that was a different subset of
Speaker 6: my life when I was sixteen, you know, still in
Speaker 6: high school, but I was really I was working. They
Speaker 6: were spending a lot of time as a competitive trapshooter
Speaker 6: going around the country, and so I was really focused,
Speaker 6: even potentially on making an Olympic run at that point,
Speaker 6: should I even go to college and all these things.
Speaker 6: So I feel like my life advice of my sixteen
Speaker 6: year old self wouldn't be that much of a difference
Speaker 6: maker because everything in life there were so few variables,
Speaker 6: So you know, you're so singularly focused on just a
Speaker 6: few things like school and athletics. But I think if
Speaker 6: I were to give general advice to my younger self,
Speaker 6: and I think to anybody, in some ways, it's mindset
Speaker 6: really matters. How you kind of talk to yourself about
Speaker 6: your goals, your dreams, how you're evaluating your life path
Speaker 6: against something I didn't do as well when I was
Speaker 6: thinking I'll just go and be a doctor, you know,
Speaker 6: not really evaluating that and thinking through, hey, maybe are
Speaker 6: all my assumptions correct, but everything else too. That There's
Speaker 6: a great book called The Luck Factor where I don't
Speaker 6: know if you've read it, but they talked to They
Speaker 6: were kind of these longitudinal studies around people who are
Speaker 6: they view themselves as lucky, right, and some people and
Speaker 6: the more that these people viewed themselves as lucky, it's
Speaker 6: low and behold lucky chances seem to come their way
Speaker 6: more and it's less about like some mystical notion that
Speaker 6: the universe like tips the scales in favor of them.
Speaker 6: But they'll do these scientific studies where it's like, are
Speaker 6: you walking by this, like this dollar bill or something,
Speaker 6: and we did that person.
Speaker 3: Pick it up?
Speaker 6: And the unlucky people always view themselves unlucky, like they
Speaker 6: will miss that dollar bill because they're not looking at
Speaker 6: and their brains just aren't subconsciously kind of thinking through
Speaker 6: these issues. And this again goes to every day decisions
Speaker 6: around you know, goal setting and am I making the
Speaker 6: right goals and do I have a dream and ambition
Speaker 6: or something that I want to work on that is
Speaker 6: actually exciting. And then that goes to the negative end
Speaker 6: of it two, where how many people do you meet
Speaker 6: in your lives that are so down on themselves or
Speaker 6: they have this negative script or nothing's going to work
Speaker 6: And it's like, well, lo and behold, I things aren't
Speaker 6: going to work out if you're always looking at it
Speaker 6: the wrong perspective. And there's plenty of other great books,
Speaker 6: you know, mindset Carol dwack All, the kind of other research.
Speaker 6: I really wish I'd stumbled upon this stuff earlier, and
Speaker 6: I think more young people would benefit from that type
Speaker 6: of you know, that kind of psychology and training around mindset,
Speaker 6: and even the studies when you look at young children
Speaker 6: in their education where you know, telling someone you're so
Speaker 6: smart versus telling someone you worked really hard at that, right,
Speaker 6: and then you kind of all these amazing interventions that
Speaker 6: show like, yeah, actually your mindset is almost the most
Speaker 6: important thing versus these kind of having this belief around
Speaker 6: like immutable traits that you just can't control, and there's
Speaker 6: these factors always outside of your outside of your decision framework.
Speaker 6: So I think in general, with my younger self. I
Speaker 6: whish I had stumbled upon some of this earlier.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 5: I definitely consider myself lucky, and I think that I
Speaker 5: could see how it perpetuated itself. Absolutely, you know the
Speaker 5: fact that I got to be American just starting right
Speaker 5: from there and moving on to the rest of my life.
Speaker 5: I think I feel like I've walked between rain drops
Speaker 5: the whole time.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to.
Speaker 5: Read that book.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And in this matter of luck, I mean, this
Speaker 6: is what I hate about our education system, right, where
Speaker 6: so much of it is predicated on luck. Are you
Speaker 6: born into the right zip code right the last five
Speaker 6: arbitrary digits of your home address? And we've built this
Speaker 6: because of partly the Jim Crow era where there's segregating
Speaker 6: communities based upon race, and therefore, like we've just sort
Speaker 6: of kept a version of that system where hey, again,
Speaker 6: your home madres dictates your entire educational pathns.
Speaker 3: There's some of these communities where you.
Speaker 6: Know, from elementary then to middle then to high school,
Speaker 6: some kids, every single school they will go.
Speaker 3: To is one of the worst in their state or
Speaker 3: even the country.
Speaker 6: It's like, gosh, I think about even you had that
Speaker 6: one one outlet even at any point in that chain
Speaker 6: of elementary school you went to a great school, or
Speaker 6: middle school you went to a great school.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden that just I mean.
Speaker 6: Luck should not play a factor in our education system,
Speaker 6: especially how much we're spending, how important it is to
Speaker 6: the future of our country.
Speaker 5: Absolutely well, I've loved this conversation. This has been really
Speaker 5: eye opening in a lot of ways. I've enjoyed it
Speaker 5: very much. And here with your best tip for my
Speaker 5: listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think you know, we were just talking a
Speaker 6: lot about mindset. I think really people both understanding the
Speaker 6: mindset plays such an important role in your day to
Speaker 6: day life right personally. It's hard to give general so
Speaker 6: the entire population of your listeners, but I think that
Speaker 6: will be you know, that's the importance of understanding both.
Speaker 6: If you're setting these really ambitious goals, exciting goals for
Speaker 6: yourself personally, for your family, for kind of your work
Speaker 6: as well, I mean, you're going to get so much
Speaker 6: more out of life. Our country needs that kind of
Speaker 6: you know, type of spirit alive and well today. Whereas
Speaker 6: if people are you know, if their mindset and if
Speaker 6: they're hopeless they feel everything's going to be a dead end,
Speaker 6: and some of this is being driven by the government's
Speaker 6: bad policies, whether it's in education or otherwise. Again, having
Speaker 6: that ambition, having those big dreams, having the mindset that
Speaker 6: we can actually do this, we can actually your day
Speaker 6: to day existence, you can be you know, light the
Speaker 6: spark that changes the world. You know, I'm Catholic, and
Speaker 6: if you really look at the lives of saints and
Speaker 6: how like even you know, people as humble and as
Speaker 6: poor as you know, Mother Teresa's the world, how they
Speaker 6: can truly change things by individual action.
Speaker 3: This is what this all comes down to.
Speaker 6: So I hope more people understand just how important their
Speaker 6: lives can be and that they can really make a
Speaker 6: difference in their day to day their families at the localist,
Speaker 6: you know, the most local level, and then with their
Speaker 6: work that they're doing on a day to day basis.
Speaker 6: And so a lot of gratitude you for kind of
Speaker 6: putting this out into the world with your own work
Speaker 6: where you've kind of had these positive enough lifting conversations.
Speaker 6: I know you're focused at big on education, You've written
Speaker 6: books on these things. So thank you so much for
Speaker 6: thank you being such an important kind of I think
Speaker 6: vector change for a lot of other people's lives.
Speaker 5: If he's Tommy Schultz, he's the CEO of American Federation
Speaker 5: for Children. Check out that group. They are fantastic.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Tommy, Thank you, Carol, talk to
Speaker 3: you soon.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marcowitz Show.
Speaker 1: Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.