Over 70 Percent Of Parents Want Their Kids Out Of Government Schools – Parents are starting to stand up and protect their children from Government control in schools. Poll shows over 70 percent of parents want their kids out of Government schools, and school enrollment is suffering as a result. Tune in to hear this and more today on good news Friday!

Air Date: 08/13/2021

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

 

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live, we’re talking about the hot topics of the day and policy, culture, all of these different things, but we’re looking at them from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. And a little bit different perspective on Fridays, it’s called Good News Friday. So we’re bringing you some of those good news stories that have not been covered by the major media. And frankly, most of the good news stories I hear from David and Tim, I hadn’t heard about anywhere.

So I’m really thankful for the research, and getting the good news of the things that are working well across the country, because we always hear the negative. We know bad things are happening in DC and in some of our states, but there’s also a lot of good things happening because of people of faith getting involved in the culture. So we’re going to cover as many of those stories as we can today on Friday. As I said, we’re here with David and Tim, that’s David Barton and Tim Barton. David’s America’s premier historian, and our founder at WallBuilders, Tim Barton’s national speaker, and pastor and president of WallBuilders, and my name is Rick Green, I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach.

If you like the good news, you’re here today and you need even a little bit more, go to wallbuilderslive.com, jump into those archives, you can scroll back to the last few weeks and months and listen to more of the Friday programs as well as the interviews and the Foundations of Freedom Thursday programs. So there’s a lot of great information for you there at the website wallbuilderslive.com. That’s also the place you can make a one time or monthly contribution. We appreciate all of you across the country that have been doing that. Thanks for your support.

David and, Tim, let’s jump in and get as much good news out there as we can today, David.

David:

Okay, Rick, we’re going to start with a national poll that’s out on school choice. Now, this is an issue that we have seen for a long time, has growing support, and you know, Rick, back in your legislative day, school choice is big issue. And it’s just so hard to get legislators to bring this up. And it’s hard to get legislators to say, hey, we want parents to be able to choose which schools their children attend. We call this for years, we call it parental empowerment, because that’s what school choice is, is slightly and parents choose where they want their children to attend. And a lot of times, there are some really bad schools, particularly in urban areas, and parents don’t have a choice of being able to send their kids somewhere else.

And so back under President Bush 43, he particularly in Washington, DC said Washington, DC schools are notoriously bad, and at least from the federal level, going to offer scholarships for these kids to choose any school they want to and man, those scholarships instantly went away. I think is 4,500 is what they started with. And so, I mean, it was so significant for so many parents who wanted to get out of bad schools and just couldn’t do it.

So school choice says, you parents know what’s best for your kids, you know how you want your kids raised, what they should be trained with, so you should make the choice about where they go. And yet a lot of states won’t do this, won’t support it. I think even here in Texas want at 68% of Texans want school choice, want parents to be able to choose the school of their choice. We pay taxes to the state to be able to have education. And that’s not just government education, we want kids to be able to read and write and do math and whatever.

And there’s some government schools that are just going to be really lousy at that. So if we can get that at a private school, or a charter school or something else, why can’t we go there and have our kids fully equipped? We want good citizens and parents, above all want those kids to be fully equipped with knowledge. So why can’t they make those choices.

And so in Texas, and other states, it’s really hard to even get a bill introduced, because the public school and I don’t even want to call it public school, I’ll say the government school teachers unions are so powerful that they will take out any representative who will say we want school choice. So it really has turned into a government school mafia, a bunch of thugs that will take out anyone who disagree with them. They don’t want competition. They don’t want any kind of challenge to what they do.

So looking at it nationally, it’s interesting, a new poll is out that once again affirms how strongly parents support school choice. This one shows that right now 65% of the nation, that includes all the blue states as well, they support school choice with only 19% opposing it. So you’re about 3.5:1 in support of school choice and it goes across party lines. This poll said that 75% of Republicans support school choice, 60% of Independents, and 61% of Democrats. So they think that parents are already paying taxes, parents should be able to choose the school where they want their kids to go private, public, or otherwise.

And it’s interesting too that for a long time it had been the highest support preschool choice was among black citizens. And that’s where so many of the urban schools are in inner city schools and they are just notoriously bad. And so now that’s more leveling out with that is 69% support among blacks and 64% among whites, so that’s getting pretty close now. And what they found that overall, 70% of families they want to send their child to a private, a virtual, or a homeschool.

So 70% of America’s parents want their kids out of the government schools, but 82% of those families are attending government schools. And so they don’t have a choice. They’re at schools they don’t want to be at. They know the schools are not doing what they should to perform, and so they want out of those schools. Now, the bad news about a poll like this is it shows overwhelming numbers. But unfortunately, parents don’t vote on that as the issue. They’ll vote on other things that election coming up, they’re going to look at COVID stuff, or they’re going to look at business or economics. And so unfortunately, school choice, while there’s high support for it, it’s just not one of those things that comes up really top on parents list when they go vote. And until it does, we’re probably not going to see much change.

But what we are seeing is that because of COVID, and because somebody’s school shut down, and because so many parents had to stick their toe in with homeschooling to teach their kids at home, a lot of them had said, hey, this is not as bad as I thought it was, this is not as difficult as I thought is going to be, and hey, the kids are doing really well. I was talking to a parent up in northwest Minnesota just a couple nights ago, and they said, hey, I’d never done homeschooling, didn’t want to do homeschooling, but the school shut down, I had to, and my kid got two and a half years of math done in that one year. It was amazing. And he is loving it. He’s getting more knowledge and growing. He’s hungry for more knowledge. He’s just exploding his knowledge. And I found that it’s really not that hard to do, and he’s doing really well. And so that’s what a lot of parents have found out.

So what we see number-wise, is that while we’re not getting school choice stuff done in legislatures, we’re seeing it done with parents and voting with their feet. We’ve seen the number of homeschool families rise from 4.2%, now it’s up to nearly 13% of parents who’re homeschooling their children is resulted COVID. So that’s a big change.

The other thing that goes with that is, while we have a growing population in America, public schools have actually lost population by 3%, which is actually more than 3% when you consider the growth rate that should be there. So public schools are starting to feel it. If they continue to feel it, they’re going to have to recognize this as a free market, and they’re going to have to start doing a better job of what they’re doing. But the good news is that parents are starting to vote with their feet. Hopefully, legislators will let them start voting with dollars as well.

Rick:

Alright, guys, we’ll take a quick break, we’ll be right back. Folks, it’s Good News Friday, you are listening to WallBuilders Live.

AMERICAN HISTORY

Hi, friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don’t know much about American history or even heroes of the faith. And I know oftentimes we, parents, we’re trying to find good content for our kids to read.

And if you remember back to the Bible, to the book of Hebrews, it has the faith Hall of Fame where they outline the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity in our faith as well.

I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called The Courageous Leaders collection. And this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright brothers. And there’s a second collection called Heroes of History. In this collection, you’ll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman; friends, the list goes on and on. This is a great collection for your young person to have and read and it’s a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at www.wallbuilders.com. That’s www.wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us on this Good News Friday. Tim’s going to have the next piece of good news. But real quick, I’m going to read an email we got from Doug in Lone Jack, Missouri. I love this. He said “I wanted to let you know my wife is a graduate of Loan Jack High School of 2004 all of 43 students, and I’m from the town next door, Lee’s Summit, Missouri. And we’ve been married for 13 years, had our fifth kid last year.” Congrats on that. “And I have been faithfully serving this country for 17 years in the Marine Corps, and currently stationed in Okinawa, Japan. We’ve been faithful listeners to WallBuilders Live for the last 10 years.” Guys, that’s pretty cool.

“I have purchased several of David Barton’s books, he’s written about original intent and who our Founding Fathers really were. It’s greatly impacted my misunderstandings I was taught in high school, and I constantly recommend him as an author that should be read by my young Marines that are serving today. Their illiteracy of our foundation and Constitution is mind boggling. Please keep up the great work. I look forward to meeting you all one day. That’s from Doug and Jamie, God bless you all.”

Thanks for serving. And just thanks for the good email and the good news that you have been listening that long, and that you’re a force multiplier, that you’re sharing the program, that you’re sharing David’s books with your friends and family and with those other Marines. Pretty cool, guys. I know, you know, you’ve got family in the military. It’s just cool to know that all the way over in Okinawa, Japan, members of our military are listening to WallBuilders Live and studying the book. So let’s jump into our next piece of good news. Tim, what you got?

Tim:

Alright, guys, this one is from Arizona, and dad, even as you’re mentioning, schools changing a little bit, some school choice. One of the things that we know is impacting a lot of parents decisions to go a different direction. One of those things is critical race theory, the 1619 project, critical race theory are things that are being embraced, unfortunately, in all 50 states, on some level by different professionals, by different school districts by different teachers. And this is one of the reasons that parents are going, this is crazy, I don’t want my kids learning this nonsense.

We’ve seen so many parents showing up to school board meetings, telling school boards that we don’t want this nonsense of critical race theory taught in our schools, we don’t want to tell kids that they are inherently racist because of the color of their skin or that inherently they are victims, and they are oppressed and they won’t have the same opportunities because of the color of their skin. That is not the American message. Is not the right message to send kids. It’s not true. And ultimately, it’s very destructive.

With that being said, Arizona is one of the places where their governor came out, Governor Doug Ducey came out and he assigned some legislation to try to prevent local governments from teaching critical race theory. Specifically, Arizona House Bill 2906, it says “It will prohibit the state and any local government from requiring their employees to engage in orientation, training, or therapy that suggests an employee is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

And this is one of the reasons that some of this stuff becomes interesting. You can’t just ban and say, we’re not going to allow you to teach critical race theory, because you’re going to have teachers that will rename what they’re teaching and say, well, this isn’t critical race theory, this is historic fact, and we’re just teaching history. And it’s not critical race theory. And so the fact that they’re able now to say we’re targeting very specific things that are being taught, telling someone that they’re inherently racist, or sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously, or subconsciously, because of the color of your skin we will not allow that to be taught in any of our local governments in need of our agencies. So this is a very good strategic way to handle this.

David:

It’s interesting, Tim, that you say don’t put critical race theory in the bill. And we’ve talked to legislators about that. Because if you call it that, they’re going to rename it something else. It’s like, if you passed a bill that said you cannot use the color pink anymore at all, I would say great, I won’t, I’m just going to use red and white. And I can make pink, but I’m not using pink, I’m using red and white. No, I’m actually using maroon and cream. I’ll find a dozen ways to get the same objective. And I won’t use what you told me I couldn’t use, but I’m going to get the same way. And so that’s why it’s so good to have a bill like that that actually calls out the ingredients and not necessarily just the title that’s now been assigned to it.

Tim:

Well, guys, also, Governor Ducey signed a bill not just relating to local governments, but also actually to schools. And they signed a law banning the teaching of critical race theory in schools, again, defining what it was to make sure that we’re not just banning the title of something, we’re not just banning the words critical race theory. It’s actually the underlying message that’s being taught in critical race theory that we know is destructive. And so that’s something Arizona has done. It’s very good news.

Along the lines of Arizona, Arizona, Texas, put out a call for help with the border, looking at this influx of illegal immigrants coming across the border. And guys, I mean, so much hypocrisy, whether it be as now the CDC is encouraging new levels of mask mandates for Americans, whether you’re vaccinated, whether you’re not vaccinated, whether you’ve had COVID, or haven’t had COVID, everybody wear a mask. As all this stuff is unfolding, what’s super interesting is literally immigrants are coming across the border and they’re being released without coordinates being set.

And we know that many of them, it’s reported, many of them have COVID as they’re being released into the interior. They haven’t been vaccinated, right? Presumably, they’re not always masking either, so just so many silly levels of hypocrisy. But with this border crisis, Arizona and Texas have both put out calls that they would like help. And so far, there have been six states that responded and actually, Ohio is the most recent state. At the beginning of the summer, they responded, they said that they would send help, and they’re actually sending part of their national guard.

And of the six states that have responded to the calls from Arizona and Texas for help, you have Arizona, South Dakota and Ohio, who all sent National Guard members, but then you have places like Florida, or Nebraska or Iowa who actually sent state troopers or police officers along the way. And so this is where, at this point, the Biden ministration has said they’re not going to help secure the border. And yet one of the things we know constitutionally is that there is a level of state sovereignty in federalism, that the states have the ability to run and operate their state. And certainly, if you have a federal government that is negligent and doing the job, the constitutional job they have which is protecting and defending the nation, then certainly a state can step up to the plate, so to speak, and can defend their state. That’s what Texas and Arizona are trying to do.

That’s why Governor Abbott has passed new orders and new legislation. And they’re actually arresting people, immigrants who are breaking the laws in Texas, and they’re holding them in jail. And the Biden ministration right now is actually suing Governor Abbott, they’re suing Texas for some of these policies. But literally, the Biden ministration is ignoring the current federal laws on the books. They’re not following their own laws that their government has in place.

And so anyway, Texas and Arizona have stepped up. But they’ve been joined by six other states who have sent aid and help. All six of those states, again, were Republican lead states where Republican governors have sent aid and help. But guys, it is good to see that in the midst of the federal government not doing what their job is to see state stepping up, and this is one of the things too that we’ve often talked about the role and purpose of government. And we definitely believe in limited government. And we think the federal government is doing way too many things they should not be doing. They have got too many irons in the fire. They’ve got their hand and way too many cookie jars of things that… You’re not supposed to be in that. That’s not one of your jobs. That’s not what you’re doing.

And yet this is clearly one of their jobs, protecting and defending the border, protecting defending the states. And they’ve neglected this job. Nonetheless, we are seeing different states stepping up and sending different National Guard or police officer state troopers. So there is positive things happening in the midst of the craziness and chaos at the border.

David:

And I think one of the things that send the story to that that may not be recognized by a lot is the fact that you should ask the question, why would Dakota and Ohio send troops to Texas and Arizona? And it’s not because what we’re all Republicans, we help other Republicans. No, it’s because immigrants, illegal immigrants are also having an impact in those states as well. It’s affecting their budgets, is affecting their laws, is affecting their crime rates, is affecting everything that goes on. This is not just a border issue. When people say, well, we need to protect the borders. No, you need to protect all 50 states in the United States, and that begins with protecting the borders, which is why these other states are so willing to jump on and help Texas and Arizona, because it doesn’t just stop with Texas, Arizona, it goes all the way to every one of those other states all the way up the Canadian border.

Rick:

David, what do you got?

David:

 

We’re going to jump overseas for a little bit. Israel finds itself back in the news, often finds itself in the news. But it now finds itself in the news because of an American company, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream has decided that they’re going to stop selling Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in Israel in what it calls the Israeli occupied territories.

Now, see if I can get this straight here or make an analogy, perhaps. Let’s say that in Canada, Canada really likes Minnesota. And so Canada starts sending its people into Minnesota, and they get a bunch of people in there and say, hey, Minnesota is ours, it belongs to Canada. It’s really like us. The woods and forests are the same. There’s a lot of lakes here. People are nice on both sides, and this is really ours. And so what happens is Canada will start saying this is American occupied territory, they need to get out of our territory because we claim this and we would respond, no, you can claim it, but it is our country. This is our sovereign territory. Just because you move into it doesn’t mean we’re occupying your territory.

Well, that’s what’s happening in Israel. This is Israel as a sovereign nation is their territory, and because Palestinians have said, hey, it’s our territory, you Israelis need to move out of ours. No, this is Israel. This is the land, the nation of Israel. Israel has borders. Israel owns what’s within those borders; that is the sovereign nation of Israel. And so what happens is Palestinians are saying, hey, that’s not fair, we want this. Well, great. There’s a lot of stuff I want, but I don’t get everything I want. I would love to have a ranch of 25,000 acres, but I can’t do that because I don’t have access to it, and I don’t own it, and I can’t go take it from someone else.

So what’s happened is Ben and Jerry’s like many leftist organizations, many progressives, they have sided with the anti-Israel against the Israel. And so since this is a group that wants to throw Israel out, we’re happy to join on with that as progressives. So they did that. And Ben and Jerry, they’re not going to sell their ice cream over in these Israeli occupied areas of the West Bank or other parts that are sovereign to Israel.

So this is where it kicks in back on the other side of the ocean. Because this is part, when Ben and Jerry do that, they’re getting into what’s called the BDS movement. BDS stands for Boycott Divestiture and Sanction. In other words, we need to boycott Israel to get them out of the areas that the Palestinians want. We need to have divestiture. In other words, we’re going to pull our money out of any company that does business in Israel. We’re going to punish Israel economically till they move out of those territories that the Palestinians want. And then we’re going to use sanctions, we’re going to make it hurt Israel in some way.

And so BDS, what’s happened is over here in America, 35 states have passed anti-BDS laws. And those 35 states say okay, any company that participates in this Boycott Divestiture and Sanction, you can no longer do business in our state, you can no longer be part of our state funds. If you’re part of a company, we will not invest in your company. And that literally is tens of billions of dollars that can be withheld from these companies.

So with Ben and Jerry announcing that they’re doing this, that kicks in due to action in a lot of states. For example, Ron DeSantis has said, okay, you guys are going to BDS, so we’re going to look at removing all state funds from Florida from anything related to Ben and Jerry’s. And by the way, Ben, and Jerry’s is owned by the greater company of Unilever. Unilever is diversified: they have a lot of different companies in their portfolio.

And so now you’re going to have states like Florida pulling out of that, and saying, Unilever, you may have a bunch of other companies, they may be really good, but because Ben and Jerry is part of your portfolio, we’re not doing any investing with state funds in your state. And that could be the teacher retirement funds, which could be hundreds of millions of dollars. It could be the public employee funds, the retirement funds for the police officers or whatever else, so it’s huge.

And then we’re talking in Texas and talking to legislators here they said, yeah, this is really big stuff in Texas as well, because with Ben and Jerry’s doing that, we will not allow Ben and Jerry’s to be sold in any state operated-facility. Which means, for example, that the University of Texas has a big Ben and Jerry’s ice cream shop on the University of Texas, that now has to be shut down. So Ben and Jerry’s loses that business, because if they’re going to punish Israel, we’re not going to reward them with state funds here in Texas.

So all across the nation, now, Ben and Jerry’s, run into a bus stop they didn’t expect. But it’s because people choose to support Israel rather than support progressives. And that’s a great choice to make.

Tim:

Let me also point out I would just support saying, let’s send Bluebell to Israel, it’s a much better ice cream. They would enjoy it a lot more. And I’m not sure where Bluebell stands, they should be pro-Israel, if they’re not. And actually, I know some of the listeners in other parts of the country are going no, there’s other ice creams we like better. Everybody’s entitled of their opinion. Not everybody always has to be right, but Bluebell is the best. So we’re just going to let that one rest.

David:

The national ice cream of Texas is great stuff. It ought to be the national ice cream for every nation.

Tim:

Alright guys, I’m going to go to Florida. And looking at governor Ron DeSantis, there’s been so many things he’s done that we’ve been so impressed with. And one of the things, I remember talking with a friend who was the principal of a school, and their school was really starting to do a lot of remarkable things in the midst of the Christian school division they were in and a lot of growth, and they were excelling in a lot of areas.

 And I joked with him one day I said, you know what’s crazy, is that what you guys are doing is not that special. It’s just that we live in a world and culture where everybody is being absolutely crazy and going the wrong direction, and because you’re just not being crazy going the wrong direction, it makes you look even more special. This I feel like is basically, Governor Ron DeSantis that when so many states are not following the Constitution, for someone to actually to have this novel position they’re going to follow the Constitution, it makes him seem even more exceptional, when the reality is they’re just doing what every governor should be doing. Governor Ron DeSantis is just doing largely what every governor in the nation should be doing. And Florida is benefiting as a result of these policies.

But one of the other things that’s interesting is that Ron DeSantis, and this is what the article relates to, he said that all disrespected police officers can relocate to Florida, and we will take care of you here.

David:

Good for him.

Tim:

One of the great things in the midst of this, as you look across the nation, obviously, if you back up to George Floyd and the death of George Floyd, there was a big movement after that referencing defunding the police and so defund the police became a big movement. There were a lot of major Democrat politicians who were advocating to defund the police. There were a lot of major cities that began following that notion. You had cities like Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York City, Seattle, Minneapolis, Portland, who all cut police funding, they all follow this notion of defunding the police.

And one of the things you saw is there were a lot of city councils, there were a lot of mayors, there were a lot of governors who would no longer back and support police. And actually, they had what’s recently become known as the George Florida effective police officers where police officers said we don’t want to put ourselves in situation where somebody might accuse us of doing something wrong when we’re only trying to do our job and our duty and then we lose our job and we get sued and we go to jail. And so police officers in many scenarios have stopped being as aggressive in enforcing the law.

And what it’s done is it’s hurt a lot of minority communities, it’s hurt a lot of minority portions of the city, and it’s made cities worse for it. And actually, you’ve seen a wave of retirements and resignations. And by the way, I’m not at all trying to discredit the fact that a lot of really good officers who are fighting uphill battle trying to do really great things. But you’ve seen a wave of retirements and resignations. And it’s because you have so many cities and mayors and city councils and governors who are not supporting police, who, by and large, the vast majority of police officers are very honorable people trying to do a very good job.

This is why it’s so encouraging to see what governor Ron DeSantis said, look, we’re going to support our police officers. The people who are out there, we’re going to give them a better workplace, a better culture, a better environment. So this is just one more reason, guys, that I continue to be impressed with Governor Ron DeSantis.

Rick:

Well, good news across the spectrum. We’ve got a lot more available. I know you guys got big stacks there and you didn’t get to all of them, that that good news is going to have to stay and wait until next week. So folks, you don’t want to miss next Friday with more good news.

We do have some in the website right now. So if you get a wallbuilderslive.com, you can click in the archive sections and get some of those past Good News Friday programs. And I would encourage you to listen every week, especially with everything that’s going on, get that pick me up, get that reminder that the system does work and how the things that people are doing in their community, some of the positive things that are happening out there that you could duplicate right there in your hometown as well. So get all of that at wallbuilderslive.com.

And while you’re there, look at that donate button and we sure would appreciate your support. We got a lot of folks that give one time, some people give monthly all over the country, and you can be a part of that team. You really are coming alongside us and helping us to get our message out there to more people, reach more stations, train more pastors and young people and legislators, and all the different things that we do. Thanks for being a part of it. Thanks for listening today to WallBuilders Live.