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PODCAST: | “Freedom to Learn:” Voters—Especially Parents—Want More Educational Freedom

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AFC National Press Secretary Brian Jodice joins Freedom to Learn to discuss recent school choice polling

The findings of the American Federation for Children’s (AFC) recent National School Choice Survey are clear: Voters across the political spectrum support educational freedom.

Three key takeaways:

• A majority of voters favor the new Federal Scholarship Tax Credit, which was enacted into law as part of the Working Families Tax Cut Act.
• Parents are especially enthusiastic—66% of public school parents support the credit.
• Nearly two-thirds of voters (64%) say their state should opt in, with support spanning party and ideological lines.

Brian Jodice, AFC’s National Press Secretary, joined the Freedom to Learn podcast to discuss the polling, the popularity of education savings accounts (ESAs) and the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit, and North Carolina’s school choice story. Brian previously served as the Executive Vice President of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina (PEFNC).

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Below is an edited and abridged transcript from our conversation. Make sure to follow or subscribe to Freedom to Learn on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are released every Thursday!

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A new poll from the American Federation for Children found that “Americans strongly support school choice and will vote accordingly.” Tell me about the poll.

Brian Jodice: We were in the field in early September, a thousand registered voters. We actually weighted heavily for families that had K-12 age students. 73% of voters believe school choice should be open to all families, very consistent with what we’ve seen in national polling over the last few years, including 55% who say it should be open to all regardless of income or geography. This idea of regardless of income, what your zip code is, families should have access to school choice, still wildly popular.

And it really is a political motivator. The majority of voters, 57% would vote for a school choice candidate, while only 20% would go out of their way, to vote for an anti-school choice candidate.

Top lines also include initial support for this new Federal Scholarship Tax Credit signed into law by the president through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on the 4th of July. 58% in support among voters, and then when we told them a little bit more about it, support jumps to 64%. Support among parents was even higher; 66% of parents with school-aged kids were in support of this idea.

So it really just shows that regardless of political party, people are in support of school choice. We’ve seen more people moving in this direction and this is not just the niche issue anymore. This is something that is wildly popular across the country.

You said that the findings show widespread support for school choice being open to all families. Can you break that out and the significance of that compared to the way we’ve approached school choice in the past?

Brian Jodice: One of the things we found too is while voters are satisfied with their local schools, fewer than half would actually choose to stay there if given other options. You still have the vast majority of Americans who have their kids in traditional K-12 schools, what we call public schools, but a lot of them would still look for other options. We asked about things like open enrollment, education savings accounts, school vouchers, opportunity scholarships. And obviously open enrollment, very popular. This idea of you should be able to pick public schools to go to. It’s popular. 77% of Republicans that were identified in the poll liked open enrollment. Independents, 72% liked it. Democrats, 72% liked it. So everybody likes the idea of open enrollment.

Education savings accounts, the newest kind of school choice, really popular as well. When you ask Republicans about education savings accounts, 74% were in approval of it. Pure Independents, 66% and 66 % Democrats like open enrollment. And then minority Democrats, 72% supports ESAs.

Can you explain what education savings accounts are?

Brian Jodice: The big idea of this is that families should be able to send their kids to the school that best meets their needs. But to be able to do that in state legislatures and in state-passed policies, there’s been different vehicles. So for the longest time, vouchers, scholarships were the way in which to be able to do that. And that is, families get awarded a scholarship. They endorse it, the funds head to the school in their kid’s name. Same thing with tax credit programs. The way they’re funded is different. Vouchers are funded through state funding. Tax credits are funded through donors giving to scholarship granting organizations. But the mechanism, the way in which the money follows the kid to the school of their choice, very similar.

We want to put the dollars in the kid’s backpack to go with them where they want, but then to also be able to use for other educational expenses, that’s what education savings accounts really are. More like empowerment accounts or spending accounts. It’s a way in which dollars can be allocated towards a family, towards a student. And then they’ve got some freedom and flexibility, depending on how it’s set up in their state, to then be able to use it for things like tuition, or maybe even some tutoring assistance, or maybe even some other educational needs.

We’ve seen kids with special needs in North Carolina be able to use it for things other than just tuition. A young lady here in North Carolina has this very rare disease where she can’t speak. She has no auditory skills. It’s called BPAN. She uses an iPad with her eyes to be able to speak. Her ESA was able to pay for that technology.

No wonder there’s widespread support once you explain what this is.

Brian Jodice: Vouchers for us has been a word we’ve always used, but there were times where voucher had a negative connotation. We can obviously chalk up a lot of credit to the big influence of the big school and teachers unions to try to make it seem like a dirty word. But even when you ask about vouchers, 70% of the Republicans we asked automatic support, 56% of independents, and even 51% of Democrats liked it. Among non-white minority Democrats, 64% in favor of school vouchers.

So we’re talking support when you break down the individual types of school choice into the ESAs, the tax credit scholarships, the vouchers, and the open enrollment across parties.

Brian Jodice: We focused a long time at the American Federation for Children and across the school choice movement for years to ensure that those in the most need were able to get access to school choice programs. Obviously, a huge focus on low income minority students, those who are trapped in a system that’s no longer meeting their needs. They need that mobility. They need that equal access. They need that real game changer in their lives.

And so we’ve always heard from minority communities saying, really, we love school choice. We want this idea. Poll after poll continues to resonate with that and it shows it here. In fact, when we talk about the federal tax credit here in a minute, we’ll show you just how much of those families also want to have access to this thing as well.

We have historically supported vehicles that focused on students who are from low income families, students with disabilities. There has been a shift in the movement towards a more universal approach and your findings support that direction.

Brian Jodice: Majority of voters that we polled are all in support of this idea of sort of universal school choice. Again, we’ve known this by just talking to people. In the work that we’ve done, you and I and this greater movement, the best part of our job — and I would tend to think that you agree with me, but you I don’t want to put words in your mouth — the best part is being able to go visit with families that could be or that have been impacted by this. Because then the partisan divides really come down.

We’ve sat sat at schools or even at kitchen tables with parents. And they really, Republican, Democrat, independent, none of that really matters… we just want our kid to be able to find the environment that’s the best fit for them. But by creating more universal policies across the country, you’ve also then seen people say, ‘yeah, we like that, we want more of that.’

I would say the absolute best part is hearing from the beneficiaries of the programs when they grow up. AFC, the American Federation for Children, has the fellows, the young people who have benefited from the scholarship programs.

Brian Jodice: When I moved back to North Carolina in 2016, we were doing a parent information session about Opportunity Scholarships. And we got to meet this young man named Amoree Brown. He was in the fourth or fifth grade at the time, just a little kid. And now he’s all the way through high school, into college, making his way through college. He’s become a fellow at the American Federation for Children. So to watch him grow up through this whole program and his story is incredible. I mean, his mom was awarded an Opportunity Scholarship. Our parent liaison team called him. She hung up because she didn’t think it was real. She thought it was too good to be true. She hung up and we had to call her back and say, ‘Hold on, hold on. This is a real thing. You guys qualified. You’re going to get this scholarship.’ It’s changed his life.

I actually had someone who benefited from a privately funded scholarship program that I helped launch in Ontario, Canada reach out to me — this young adult who’s now working in school choice advocacy in Canada, who was one of the first beneficiaries. I’d say it made my day, but it was like more than that, it made my month.

Brian Jodice: We’ve been saying every state will have school choice soon. Hey, you know, our friends in the north deserve it as well.

What you’re talking about when you say every state will have school choice soon is the American Federal Scholarship Tax Credit. And as you mentioned that passed as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Brian Jodice: It was formerly known as the Educational Choice for Children Act, and now we’ve been referring to as the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit. And you know, it really is incredible. And you I don’t know that anyone’s covered it more than you have here on this podcast and talked about it at length. And it really is amazing to think about where we came from. If you go back to President Trump in the 45th iteration of our presidency and the groundwork that was laid then by then Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and senators like Ted Cruz.

We’ve made a lot of incredible progress in states across the country. We’ve seen more school choice programs, nearly 20 universal school choice programs, choice programs in over 30 states.

We’ve seen a lot of great work there, but there are still places where families can’t get access to anything like this. And what can we do? What can we do from a national standpoint to be able to create more access like this? So this idea of this tax credit, Florida style tax credit, from a national standpoint that could help bring school choice to all 50 states started, you know, started developing. And then obviously when 47 comes along and you just get more incredible momentum.

You’ve been talking about it for the last year, but really last half of a year, to what this was going to look like in the reconciliation package. And there were a lot of really good pieces of the Educational Choice for Children Act that unfortunately had to get sort of pushed to the side as we went through the political process of getting this done.

A real kudos and a lot of attention goes to the president for championing this so much and obviously Senator Cruz out of Texas for just fighting tooth and nail. Really to the 11th hour, he was in fighting for this to ensure that we were able to get this done. So what’s going to create is this very revolutionary change of the tax code that’s going to allow individuals, citizens, taxpayers across the country to donate to state-based scholarship granting organizations.

States are going to have to opt in. We encourage every single state and every single governor to opt in. We’re going to be able to donate to these SGOs, which are going to help provide scholarship for kids in the state. It’s great for taxpayers because you can get up to a $1,700 credit right off your tax bill. It’s great for students and families because they can get scholarships. It doesn’t cost states a dime. There’s no state dollars that are associated with this. They can stop with their ringing of the hands, claiming ‘this is going to siphon all this money away.’ We can get to really creating something pretty powerful across the country.

And again, this is the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit, formerly known as ECCA, Educational Choice for Children Act. You all included this in your polling and asked people about it. And what’d you find?

Brian Jodice: So when we initially asked right out the gate, and this is just to everybody on the poll, 58% in approval of this. And then when we start to give a little more information, it jumped a little bit from 58 to 64%. If they had kids that were under 18, 66% of the parents that we polled were like, ‘yes, we should have this thing. Let’s get this going right away.’

We’ve created a tax credit that you can donate to and get $1,700 off your tax bill and support kids in your state through scholarships. It’s a great idea.

You mentioned over 30 states have programs in place right now. Unfortunately, in our country, we do have a red state, blue state divide. We had Illinois with a program, but the legislature killed it rather than renewing it, which is so unfortunate.

Brian Jodice: That’s why sunsets and dates where these things can fade out are terrible because they don’t give families a chance to know they’re going to be around and they deserve to know that it’s going to be there.

So again, red state, blue state divide, who has choice, who doesn’t. Was any of that explored in the polling?

Brian Jodice: We asked if SGOs should they be able to operate. And there’s a lot of support for that. What I find really interesting is ‘should your state participate? Should your state opt in to be able to do this?’ And we’re very early in the process. We’re still waiting on the Treasury Department to set rules for this. I think you’ll see a real groundswell of states opting in in the near future.

Interestingly enough, a couple of governors were very quick to say ‘no, we’re not gonna participate in this.’ The scholarships can be used for private school tuition, but also tutoring, curriculum, transportation, special needs services. So there really are ways in which these SGO scholarships can help kids across different makes and models. And when you sit and focus on how can this actually help students, the governor is going to look at this and say, but I could have public school students who’d be able to get some extra tutoring services. This is a really good way to be able to do that. As long as no one’s excluded from the process, right? The intent of this is educational freedom to be able to provide families with options, maybe outside of what they traditionally have. Can’t lose sight of that either though, because the idea of, we’re just going to create public school SGOs. That’s not the intent here. And that’s not going to help serve kids.

So here’s what’s pretty cool though, when you ask about should our state participate? Obviously Republican voters think that their state should participate, but conservative moderate Democrats, 65% of them said they want their state to participate. Non-white Democrats, minority Democrats, 64% of them want their state to participate. Non-primary voters for Democrats, 67% want their state to participate. So when you get outside of the traditional stronghold, very vocal Democrat voter, the other groups here really want their states to be able to participate. And it speaks to maybe being in a state where there aren’t options like that. You think about California and New York, New Jersey, these sort of blue strongholds, where they won’t even pass the most modest of school choice programs. Something like this could be a real lifeline like they’ve never had before. And it’s why it’s worth exploring.

So we might have a red state, blue state policy divide, but we don’t have a red voter, blue voter policy divide, is what you’re saying.

Brian Jodice: Exactly. And I also think you’re going to have some blue state governors who know, who really do know this is the right thing to do that are going to have the opportunity to do this. You think about Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Maryland, there are some places where I know these governor’s know the right thing to do.

And we’ll be very interested to see the way that that plays out here over the next few months. Tony Evers claims that ‘this is going to be catastrophic to our public schools….’ It’s not impacting your state budget whatsoever. This is like free dollars coming in. Voters want this. Your constituents across your state want this.

But let’s say you don’t opt in the federal scholarship tax credit. So now you’re incentivizing your taxpayers in Wisconsin to send those dollars to Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, other states? Wouldn’t you want to keep that in your home state? I think you would.

In a way it’s good that this program is not going to be enacted until the beginning of 2027 because we do have an opportunity to continue to explain what this program is, to see how the rules unfold that are going to be underway soon by the U.S. Treasury Department and to make sure that governors learn about polling results like this and make that correct decision to opt in.

Brian Jodice: For sure. Especially as Wisconsin’s got a gubernatorial race that’ll happen between now and then. Michigan does, other states do as well. So there’s time to educate about what this really is, how this really can benefit kids across your state, and then to also educate voters too about what these programs are and to be asking those questions: ‘Okay, Governor, if you get elected, what’s your plan for the federal scholarship tax credit in this state?’ I’d want to know that answer.

For those of us who live in states that are far, far behind when it comes to school choice, how do you suggest that we share these polling results with policymakers?

Brian Jodice: Empowerment is having your voice heard. So taking these results and we’ve got them all at federationforchildren.org. I’m at @afcpress on X. My DMs are open so we can send information to people as needed. The more that you go in with facts to be able to back up, not just ‘I want this’ or ‘we feel this’ or ‘my friends say that,’ which is obviously great to have your voice heard, but to be able to show really where these different subsets of their voters are. If you’re talking to a Democrat leader, show them the subsets of voters here that really are in support of this. ‘Your message is not in alignment with the majority of people in your party.’ Yeah, there’s a very vocal minority that is screaming from the hills that school choice is the worst thing that could ever happen. We know that’s not the case, so show what the numbers bear out and show that people have their back on this, be courageous and step out and take a lead on what’s right. Look, the teachers union is going to yell at you, but that’s OK. We’re in the business of combating that and helping you get through it. And we’ve seen that play out in states across the country where leaders have taken a strong stance on school choice, even leaders from the Democrat side of the aisle. And it’s what families want and you’re able to help get them over the finish line. And so look, we’ve got to fight the teachers union over it, that’s fine. We’ve been doing that for a long time now.

You previously served as executive vice president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina. You shared a little bit about a family’s story there. Tell us a little bit about what’s happened in North Carolina with school choice. It hasn’t been easy.

Brian Jodice: No, it hasn’t been. And if you’ll allow me to go down memory lane a little bit, life as a military kid is interesting. You move around a little bit and you kind of come and go to different places. We were very fortunate when I was going to the fourth grade. We moved to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, and we got to live there for six years in a row, which is pretty rare in that kind of lifestyle. And our parents wanted my brothers and I to go to a small Catholic school, and we were able to do that. This was the early to mid 90s, and there weren’t any programs like this at all. And I remember classmates who really struggled. And one of my best friends in the fourth and fifth grade, his mother tragically passed away. And his dad was an auto mechanic. They scraped by and I’m sure the school community helped them ensure those two boys could stay in that school because it meant so much to them. If the Opportunity Scholarship Program had existed at that time, it would have been a lifeline for many more. So it’s always meant a lot to me. To get the opportunity to come home to North Carolina in 2016 and join PEFNC and get the fight for families across our state has been a blessing of a lifetime.

When I joined Parents for Educational Freedom in 2016, we had a couple thousand families on the scholarship program. We were fresh off a lawsuit victory and deemed constitutional by our state Supreme Court, rightfully so. And so we saw consistent growth in the program, but we also had some issues. We had a scholarship that was capped at $4,200 and we had some income caps on it. And so we’ve been able to work very methodically, but also with intentionality to expand the program where today, there are nearly 100,000 kids on Opportunity Scholarships in North Carolina.

We’ve got a tiered system where based on family income, your award is then higher for lower income families. So we’ve been able to keep the real heart of this to ensure that those in the most need get the most support in North Carolina. They’re first in line. So the tier one families are first in line to get scholarships. They get the most amount and then we tier it up to tier four and then those families are able to get it as well. And it provides this universality. We believe families should be able to tap into their tax dollars to go with their kid to the school of their choice, but also ensures that families that need the most help get it. And to think about almost 100,000 kids on the program is really amazing. And that’s a lot of lives have been changed.

That’s exciting. I feel like we need to schedule a separate conversation just about North Carolina. a state that I love.

Brian Jodice: What we’ve done in North Carolina from a parent engagement standpoint is really special. We really put a lot into building relationships with families. The organization was founded in 2005 and the first five years was just building relationships and building trust. We didn’t see a lot of movement in the legislature until 2010. We got a special needs tax credit and we got the cap removed off of public charter schools and 2013-14, we finally got opportunity scholarships. So it’s a long haul. It’s a lot of work, but it’s also a lot of building trust, building relationships and the secret sauce into what has made North Carolina so successful (outside of a legislature over the last 12 years who’s really been helpful on this) is the parent liaison team that’s second to none. It’s moms helping moms and dads, and it’s real relationship that gets it done. So shout out to Kwan Graham, Alison Gunther, that whole team at PEFNC; that parent liaison team is special.

Over the years, you’ve heard some education freedom myths. Is there one that is your favorite or that bothers you the most that you’d want to tackle today?

Brian Jodice: The siphoning money away from our traditional public schools is one that I’m always happy to address because in my home state here in North Carolina, the largest line item in our entire state budget is for education, for traditional K-12 education. That’s probably the case in states across the country. And so this idea that the resources aren’t there… You and I have both seen this graph that’s shown over the last 10 years how admin of K-12 schools has only increased, yet per pupil funding has stayed here. So it seems like we have the resources to be able to do it. Maybe it’s an allocation issue and we just get so focused on adults and buildings.

I’ll give you an example. Folks often say, our public schools are drowning. You guys are siphoning money away. The superintendent in Wake County Public Schools, where I live, got a two-year severance package of $600,000. Seems like the dollars are there. And so that argument of sort of siphoning money away, I just can’t stand it. It’s just, it’s so much divisive rhetoric.

How can people follow your work?

Brian Jodice: We’re at federationforchildren.org. School Choice Now is our social media handle. I’m @afcpress.

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Listen to our full Freedom to Learn conversation on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. If you have suggestions for future guests or topics, please send them to podcast@dfipolicy.org.

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