Susan Pendergrass (00:00)
thank you so much for joining me on the podcast this morning, Matt Ladner of the Heritage Foundation. You are no stranger to Arizona education or school choice, right? Nor am I. I feel like I could be wrong, but we met at the Goldwater Institute around the year 2002. Does that sound right? It's been a minute and it was so

Matthew Ladner (00:03)
That could be yes, indeed.

Susan Pendergrass (00:28)
surprising to me to see in the Washington Post a week or so ago, basically a hit piece on Arizona education because oftentimes Arizona's held up like Florida as this, you know, one of the states that's really making strides in both test scores overall, but in particular in Arizona, test scores and growth scores for low income kids and really making, taking bold moves and making a...

an actual difference in outcomes. And yet we have this piece that says because Arizona is giving parents the option of a scholarship instead of an assigned public school, that is killing this poor Roosevelt Elementary School in Phoenix. I assume you saw the article.

Matthew Ladner (01:08)
I did indeed. Well, so I moved to Arizona in 2003. Of course, I was doing work here before I moved here. Just how we probably met the year before at the Goldwater Institute.

Susan Pendergrass (01:10)
What's your take? What's your hot take?

Matthew Ladner (01:24)
The first I heard of the Roosevelt Elementary School District was in 2005 when someone that I worked with had a child who was attending a Roosevelt School who was brutally assaulted. ⁓ And by brutally assaulted, I meant rushed to the emergency room based on what happened to this child. And at that time,

Susan Pendergrass (01:39)
my gosh.

Matthew Ladner (01:49)
You know, obviously the school administration did not react well to this. In fact, there was a question posed as to why this attack was provoked. Classic, you know, blame the victim sort of thing. So at that time, I put my coworker in touch with someone who did in very informally what we would today call navigation, right? She helped people find schools.

Susan Pendergrass (01:59)
Thanks.

Matthew Ladner (02:13)
And at that time, it was incredibly difficult to find a school for this woman's children. The school year had already started. There were charter schools in South Phoenix, which is where the Roosevelt Elementary School District is located. But they, you know, had wait lists. And we had scholarship tax credits. But again, the school year had already started. The money had already been committed. They were wait lists.

We had open enrollment, but open enrollment, school districts were not interested in taking students from the Roosevelt Elementary School District. In fact, I think as I recall, my coworker called about an open enrollment transfer. She was asked where her kids were attending now, and when she told them Roosevelt Elementary, they hung up the phone on her. Okay. And it was really, really visceral, right? Like this was, it struck me.

that my coworker was almost as stuck as she would have been in 1993, the year before Arizona started any kind of school choice at all, right? With a very tough situation. So you fast forward 20 years, no one in Arizona is stuck like that anymore. Every child in Arizona has access to a DSA program, right? And

Susan Pendergrass (03:14)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Ladner (03:29)
while only a minority of students actually use the essay program, it is available to everyone. And that is ultimately what I believe is motivating the sort of drive-by shooting journalistic exercises because of course there are very powerful vested interests that don't like people having the option of leaving. And in fact, if you read the Washington Post article, the unstated hypothesis of that article

is that the world would be a better place if people like my former coworker did not have the option of going somewhere else. And that's the...

Susan Pendergrass (04:04)
That's exactly right.

they're closing and it's Chronicle is a closing of an elementary school in that district. And people are sad and heartbroken and they're feeling anxious. And it's just this really a tragic story that the school that's closing because of dwindling enrollment and dwindling enrollment, probably less due to the ESA program and more due to the fact that in Arizona, you can pick any public school in the state as well. So open enrollment for sure.

And in fact, they cite one group of parents who started low income parents of color started their own micro school to not go to that school. And yet, as you said, the counterfactual thing is if only they didn't have the option of leaving, this school would stay open. We could have kept those kids in this failing school. And it's hard for me to believe that's the case in 2025.

Matthew Ladner (04:52)
Absolutely.

It's a deeply offensive hypothesis that the world would be a better place if people like my coworker did not have the option of leaving a situation that was not working for their child. the reality of this is that the largest form of school choice in the state of Arizona to this day remains district open enrollment.

Back in 2017, there was a study done of eight or nine Phoenix area school districts. And what they found was is that the number of open enrollment kids, this would be both within districts and between districts, approximately were twice as large as the charter school students. Okay. And we have the nation's largest charter school sector.

Susan Pendergrass (05:42)
about how many kids in

charter schools.

Matthew Ladner (05:44)
So today it's around 21 % of the total public school enrollment is in charter schools. so, and this study was finding, you know, back in 2017, it was finding 20 something percent of kids were actually doing open enrollment and it was only 16 % of charter schools kids at that point. And this was all K-8. And so,

Open enrollment is actually the King Kong of school choice. We're talking about a school choice justice league in Arizona. Superman is district open enrollment in terms of size. And then comes the charter schools and then trailing far behind the charter schools is private choice, right? So the reality on the Roosevelt situation is that I do understand that people do not like

school closures. They don't. We have an irrational kind of emotional attachment to, you know, it could be a school that is, that's been underperforming for a long time and is under enrolled and, you know, half empty and all that's inefficient to run. But when you move to close it, there are people that show up and say, my grandfather graduated from that school. How dare you close it, right?

Susan Pendergrass (06:33)
No, yes.

Matthew Ladner (06:55)
So it's just a thing, okay? It's a reality, something we're dealing with. But the reality is that there are the state data reports, both from the Arizona Department of Education, first of all, on open enrollment, shows that, well, the total picture of Roosevelt is that there are 6,500 kids that live within the boundaries of Roosevelt and attend a Roosevelt school.

There are 5,700 kids that live within the Boundary of Roosevelt Elementary and attend a charter school. There are 2,700 kids who live within the Boundary of Roosevelt but attend a different school district. There are about 800 kids that live within the Boundaries of Roosevelt and use an ESA. less than a... Yes, yes. So it's less than a third of...

Susan Pendergrass (07:40)
which was the focus of the article, right?

Matthew Ladner (07:47)
of what go to other school districts, okay? But then a final state of Arizona report shows the number of students who live within the Roosevelt School District boundaries, use an ESA, and had previously attended a Roosevelt Elementary School. That number was 129, okay? Now,

If you are running a 6,500 student school district, you do not close five schools over 129 students. The Washington Post article was fundamentally misguided and misleading, right? Because it gave a platform to people who work within the Roosevelt School District to tell their sad story about how old ESAs are dooming us and all we.

Susan Pendergrass (08:24)
Thanks.

Matthew Ladner (08:42)
Yes, maybe we used to be have problems and it's difficult for us to overturn our reputation and all that stuff that is in that article. Right. But the reality is it's mostly public school choice that has been having Roosevelt's, know, Roosevelt's enrollment has been declining since something like 2006. OK. There's nothing new about this. And then, of course, there's also a baby bust on. Right.

Baby bus started in 2007 and Arizona's got it worse than most states. So yeah, it's every.

Susan Pendergrass (09:11)
Losers got it. We have it. mean,

but in addition to all of that terrible reporting, it says that this ESA program that's killing Roosevelt Elementary School District offers a window into the GOP vision for K-12 education. In other words, nothing to do with what parents want. This is a GOP political strategy to kill public schools. Not when you open the doors and everyone leaves. It's because they didn't like it.

but this is somehow a strategy to kill public schools. And that I think is what is really potentially damaging because a lot of people simply don't read past the headline and they're like, yeah, this is a perfect example of how this can happen. And in Missouri, I'll tell you, we don't even have open enrollment. Like you guys have had that for 30 years. We don't even allow kids to go to a different district. And when it's been considered by the legislature, which it is every year and they never do it, no one has the political will to.

Matthew Ladner (09:58)
Right.

Susan Pendergrass (10:08)
to take a stand for parents, by and large, some of the lowest performing districts will say, okay, but you gotta carve us out. Not carve us out from taking kids in, but carve us out from letting kids leave. So some of the lowest performing districts are like, that's fine, but you can't let kids from our district

leave because they believe they'll all leave, first of all, which is something. And also then they'll have to close because of the money that those kids bring with them. So you cannot let those kids out the door, even though...

Matthew Ladner (10:26)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Pendergrass (10:35)
You know some of our districts. We have new test for data, so this is not that, but in Ferguson, Florida, for example, 3 % of 8th graders were proficient in math. They do not want to let kids leave that district, even though I would argue they're not even doing their constitutional right to provide a free and fair public education, because really no one's being educated. So, but they do not want to let those kids out and there is just a fear that if we open up the district lines all those kids from these terrible.

you know, low performing districts who are mostly poor are just going to flood the high performing districts and they don't, but they just don't want that to happen.

Matthew Ladner (11:02)
.

Yeah, it's just it's so bad all around, right? And I've written extensively on this and did I know Susan you're familiar with the the Fordham Institute's like open enrollment map of the state of Ohio, right? Yeah, they they've they've taken the entire state of Ohio divided up by school districts and color coded the districts as to whether or not they participate in open enrollment and.

Susan Pendergrass (11:21)
Yup, talk about it all the time. Need to like carry it with me.

Matthew Ladner (11:33)
Very quickly, you see this really, really big pattern where every single urban district in the state of Ohio is surrounded by school districts that choose not to participate in open enrollment. Arizona is on the opposite end of the spectrum on that. Every school district in Arizona with a few small rural exceptions that have very few schools that basically collude with each other not to do open enrollment. For the most part, all the school districts in Arizona

do open enrollment, including our fancy ones. So Scottsdale unified right now is about 25 % of their enrollment is coming from out of district. Okay. And that is really unusual, right? There are not very many, you know, you have to plunk down seven figures to buy a house in this school district that are taking open enrollment kids. Right. Now the reason Scottsdale unified, I believe is taking

such a high percentage, you know, they're getting as many open enrollment kids basically as they can get. The reason they're doing that is they take about 5,000 open enrollment kids. Well, they've got 9,000 kids that live within the boundaries of Scottsdale Unified, but go to school somewhere else, either charter schools or other school districts or, you know, or they participate in one of the private choice programs, right? So it is possible.

You can't order the gated, sort of the gated, moded communities to take open enrollment kits, but you can, what you can do is structure the financial incentives where it's very much in their interest to do so, right? That's what's happened in Arizona. It's been the external pressure, especially from charter schools, which has basically cracked open the suburban school districts. Now, how funny is it to see someone like

Susan Pendergrass (13:10)
Right.

Matthew Ladner (13:23)
You know, the Washington Post reporter claiming that this is the GOP vision of, you know, like, I mean, yeah, you know what, maybe it is the GOP version. Maybe the GOP doesn't want racial and economic segregation in schooling or what. it's a happy side effect. I don't know, but this is not about partisanship. It's about a fundamental commitment to, you know, giving people dignity, right? To giving people autonomy.

And the underlying hypothesis of that article was is that the low income Hispanic and African American parents in the Roosevelt Elementary School District are doing something bad by making the best choices for their own children, right? And it's really offensive and bad reporting on top of it.

Susan Pendergrass (14:14)
Right. mean, we have a website that ranks all Missouri schools, academics and finance. And on the academic side, we give them letter grades for 10 different academic indicators. And when we first launched this website, like five years ago, I was told actually at the launch, we had protesters who said it was racist because a lot of the schools are going to enroll a lot of brown and black kids. I'm like, that is correct.

That is right. Brown and Black kids are relegated to F schools. Shouldn't we let them out? But it's not me saying they're F schools that's causing the problem. It's that you don't want them to know that they're at an F school. And of course the parents know. And you don't want to let them out of the F schools. Like, know, Florida, 30 years ago, if your child was attending an F school for one year or a D school for two years, you got an automatic ticket out of that place. And now they just have complete open enrollment.

Rather, they're like, A, let's not tell them that's enough school. And then if they do find out it's enough school, let's not let them out. And that is to me just so insulting to the parents of children who go to those schools. Little kids are going to start kindergarten, I don't know, this week, next week in St. Louis. And St. Louis is a complete debacle. Financial mismanagement, administrative mismanagement, they're losing kids right and left. And yet they passed a moratorium, which is just kind of meaningless, on any new charter schools opening in the district because

Matthew Ladner (15:23)
you

Susan Pendergrass (15:36)
They know if a charter school opens, it's going to fill and have a waitlist because parents want out. ⁓

Matthew Ladner (15:42)
right.

Susan Pendergrass (15:43)
it's bananas to me. what do you think? What is like your more global view of this? OK, so the media in Missouri, we have a lawsuit against our scholarship program. There's lawsuits across the country. Wyoming's got a new lawsuit against her scholarship program. Do you see this as like a last gasp of the people who have been in power forever or or or what do you think is going on?

Matthew Ladner (16:03)
It's not a last gasp. The struggle is going to continue past our lifetimes, I'm afraid. But we are making progress. And the reason you see these lawsuits, the reasons you see these, you know, very agenda-driven forms of journalism, and you know, it's not like the Washington Post story is the worst of it, by the way. There's even worse examples out there, to be fair, grading on a big curve here.

but, yeah, I mean, I think that, that the big picture thing is, is I think there was really an awakening during the COVID-19 pandemic. I think that a lot of people, a lot more people became aware of some basic political realities. And those political realities are, is that the, the district school system is not being run on behalf of parents.

because of what economists call regulatory capture. Basically, in these low turnout elections, low visibility, low turnout elections, the average American doesn't know how many school board members there are in their district. They don't know any of their names. They don't know any policy positions they have. And so in that kind of low visibility environment, we've seen the capture of the district system by mostly by unionized employees interests.

and also by major contractors who were also getting theirs in all of this. And, you know, the schools are not about you. not about your kids. It's not about taxpayers. It's about it's about the employees in the in the district. And I think that what we've seen in recent years is the rise of basically a self-reliance. Well, you know, there's a there is is literally a self-reliance and education movement going on around the country. And it has a lot of different manifestations.

it's one of which is the, the very strong support for passage of school choice programs, but it's also homeschooling and co-ops and, know, sort of D do it yourself education. Right. And, in the long run, this was, I, I cannot imagine how Randy Weingarten could have played her cards any worse than what she did. I think she is kind of.

I don't think she's necessarily the cause of all this, but she is kind of the poster child for it, right? ⁓

Susan Pendergrass (18:18)
in terms of keeping

the schools closed and how she reacted?

Matthew Ladner (18:21)
yeah, absolutely. Right. mean, like, you know, if you, if you didn't pick up on the fact that the school system is all about the school system and it's not about you during COVID-19, know, I, somebody needs to draw you a picture, you know, because.

Susan Pendergrass (18:33)
I mean

the protests with the coffins in the street that we were sending teachers to their deaths. Yeah, they overplayed a bit, just a bit.

Matthew Ladner (18:37)
yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All

of it. All of it. Right. I mean, so, I mean, I think we're in a fundamentally different environment now. Young people I've talked to are all like, man, there's no way I'm not even thinking about sending my kid to a district school. I hear it all the time. Right. And, you know, so.

Susan Pendergrass (18:54)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew Ladner (18:58)
That's not to say that everyone that works in a district is bad. There's a lot of good people that work in school districts. Nobody went into teaching, you know, thinking, Hey, wow, wouldn't it be great if I got to wake up every day and, and, and miseducate kids and not teach them how to read. But it happens every day. It happens every day because there are good people trapped in a bad system. And I think the most exciting thing of all about what's going on is actually, I mean, every day in Florida, Susan, I mean, I mean, every single day.

some great teacher that's worked their entire career in a public school district walks out the door with plans to start their own school. And right now in Florida, there is nothing stopping them. And there's lots of challenges, but there's nothing stopping them, right? And it's just a beautiful and fantastic thing to see.

Susan Pendergrass (19:46)
Yeah, I talk about that a lot in Missouri. We've cut off the whole teacher as entrepreneur option as another thing that Missouri people don't need, which is too bad. I mean, again, we are making some progress and it's baby, baby steps through our scholarship program, but it does really burn me up that we can't get to at least open enrollment, universal open enrollment for parents. Every year in the summer is no exception. I have a parent reach out to me saying, hey,

I don't know where else to look, but I saw your website and I really need to enroll my child in a different district because of this reason, the high school is too big and they came out of foster care or they're being bullied. And I really, how do I make that happen? And every time I have to say, I'm sorry, I have no, I have nothing for you. The only option is to pay very high tuition to go to a bunch of different public school district. And I hope that our legislature, you know, gets behind that idea because it's absolutely everywhere else. it's just like your friend who you worked with, who was stuck in the Roosevelt.

And they're like, well, you can move. Not everyone can move. Nor should they have to. Your housing decision, they shouldn't have to. And you might just have one of three kids that's really struggling. You don't move for one when the other one's doing well. I do think it's great. I assume, because I know there's been a lot of negative reaction to that article, that the author maybe has felt some pushback at least.

Matthew Ladner (20:49)
Right.

Susan Pendergrass (21:09)
When I see things like that in a major news outlet, I just can't believe it's in 2025, we're still seeing that ESAs are killing public education when these are poor parents, low income parents by and large, who are finding an alternative and now being accused of killing their public school in doing so. That's sad.

Matthew Ladner (21:28)
Yeah, mean, the reality is, it's not up to me to decide what the school makes is in Roosevelt. It's not up to any state lawmaker. This is a decision that is being made on an ongoing basis by the actual families who live in Roosevelt Elementary School District. And that is as it should be. We have nothing to apologize for that. And it should not be any other

way.

Susan Pendergrass (21:55)
Well, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it. We got to keep the stuff out there in front of people too. So I really appreciate you coming on the podcast to tell us about it.

Matthew Ladner (22:05)
Thank you, Susan.