Corey DeAngelis, a school choice activist and senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, applauded the 2024 Republican Party Platform for including universal school choice in its 20-point agenda released earlier this week.
On Monday, the Republican Party unveiled its 2024 platform, which consists of 20 promises Republicans intend to deliver on if Trump is elected back to the White House and Republicans obtain majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate.
The platform is a total of 16 pages which includes 10 chapters further elaborating on the list of promises.
Chapter 7 of the GOP’s new platform, titled “Cultivate Great K-12 Schools Leading to Great Jobs And Great Lives for Young People,” reads, in part:
Our Commitment: Republicans offer a plan to cultivate great K-12 schools, ensure safe learning environments free from political meddling, and restore Parental Rights. We commit to an Education System that empowers students, supports families, and promotes American Values. Our Education System must prepare students for successful lives and well-paying jobs…
Republicans believe families should be empowered to choose the best Education for their children. We support Universal School Choice in every State in America. We will expand 529 Education Savings Accounts and support Homeschooling Families equally.
DeAngelis said it is “great news” that the Republican Party is advocating for universal school choice on a national level.
“It is great news and they didn’t just call for school choice in general. They put it in the best form possible – they called for universal school choice. Full throated school choice, no more picking winners and losers. Everybody should be able to take their kids, with taxpayer funded education dollars, to the school that works best for them, whether that’s a public private charter or even a home based educational setting. So this is great news. It should incentivize GOP politicians at the state level to introduce and pass school choice,” DeAngelis said on Friday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
DeAngelis called school choice a “GOP litmus test issue,” noting how a dozen states with GOP trifectas have passed school choice legislation.
“There are a dozen of states with GOP trifectas that have passed [school choice] so it is a GOP litmus test issue. It has been for a while, especially after COVID when families got to see what was happening in the classroom through Zoom school. Parents thought the curriculum wasn’t aligned with their values, and so now it’s really crystallized as a political winner, particularly in Republican primaries,” DeAngelis explained.
DeAngelis also pointed out how school choice is denounced by entities on the left, including teachers unions, as such groups crave “more money” and “control.”
“They just want more money. They want their political agendas poured into the classroom and they want to make sure that they can control the minds of other people’s children. That’s why they’re freaking out about school choice right now because families are getting to escape their control. They’re a bunch of control freaks. They’re in a cult and they worship the government and detest parental rights in education,” DeAngelis said.
To this, DeAngelis further said Republican lawmakers who reject the idea of educational freedom in the form of school choice are “Democrats with an ‘R’ next to their name.”
“If you want to know if someone’s a conservative or not, you can basically ask them if they support school choice or not. If they don’t, they’re aligning with Becky Pringle, Randy Weingarten, the people who close the schools, the people injecting critical race theory and gender ideology into the classroom, and far-left organizations,” DeAngelis said.
“If you’re opposing school choice, you have no business running as a Republican,” DeAngelis added.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Corey DeAngelis” by Corey DeAngelis.
