For most of human history, economic production and household life occupied the same place. Families sourced and prepared food, made clothing, practiced trades, taught children, and cared for relatives as part of a shared household economy. Home was where economic life happened. Only recent history makes this seem like an odd statement.
The Agrarian era enabled larger settlements, diverse markets, and more complicated divisions of labor, but the household remained a center of production. The Industrial Revolution pulled the two apart. Higher-wage work moved into factories and, later, offices. Children left for schools. Caregiving, education, and social welfare became increasingly specialized or were taken up by the state instead of being responsibilities for the family and local community.
Industrialization made the world richer, healthier, and better educated. But it also atomized family life. In the countries where industrialization delivered its greatest benefits, it became normal for parents and children to scatter every morning, spend nearly all their waking hours apart, and reconvene for an evening meal, if schedules allowed, before going to sleep and doing it all over again.
The best incomes, education, and resources a family needed were somewhere outside the home. Family members had to leave home to get them. Western social structures are built around this. The suburbs were created for a commuter class. Schools and daycares are built for moms and dads who are out of the house from 9 to 5.
Digital technology has changed that physical fact for millions of people. A growing share of economic activity can now happen wherever there is a computer and a reliable internet connection. The result is a modern version of the household economy, one that retains the prosperity and specialization of industrial society while giving families greater control over where their lives take place.
Artificial intelligence is now widening that opening. It does not just move existing office work onto a dining-room table; it reduces work that once required a building full of specialists, and it puts more capability back into a household.
We have experienced this ourselves. We both work in public policy, and we can do most of our work from home. Although we travel, attend face-to-face meetings, and spend time in offices to do our jobs well, we don&#8217;t need to be outside the home from 9 to 5 every day.
This shift is especially meaningful to us.
A few weeks after our first child was born, Rachel was diagnosed with a rare spinal cord tumor. The tumor and the surgery to remove it left her a quadriplegic. Suddenly, ordinary parts of life required far more planning. A trip across town could involve accessible transportation, building entrances, elevators, bathrooms, and the possibility that any one of them would fail.
Remote work removes these obstacles.
Rachel leads organizations, writes, speaks, builds coalitions, and participates in national policy debates without first completing an accessibility obstacle course. Taylor can pursue his own career while remaining present for the unpredictable demands of family life. We now have three young children, two careers, and a household that functions because technology gives us room to arrange those pieces ourselves.
On Instagram, accounts of two working parents who homeschool multiple children throughout the day are growing, reflecting a shift in the household&#8217;s economic center.
AI has made that more practical. It drafts, summarizes, captions, and organizes. It turns voice into text and a pile of documents into something a person can act on. For parents, it takes some of the mental load. “The Cut” profiled <a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/jesse-genet-ai-agents-household.html">Jesse Genet</a>, a mom with a team of AI agents that assist her with the daily work of homeschooling a family of seven.
We’ve used it this way. When one of our boys had a tick behind his ear, we could get a first read on the risks while we waited for the pediatrician. We have used it to plan a Cub Scout hike and to generate practice problems when a child is struggling with a question. Let’s be clear, this does not replace a doctor, a scout leader, or a parent. It means the household does not have to wait on an institution for every next step, and it multiplies our capacity.
The Industrial Revolution organized family schedules and geography around centralized production. Digital technology gives employers and workers more room to experiment. It makes being present at home possible. Some companies will decide they operate better in person. Others will be fully distributed. Most will probably land somewhere in between, and those decisions will change as technologies, jobs, and individual circumstances change. The opportunities of family unit entrepreneurship are diverse and growing.
We should let them.
For generations, we became accustomed to thinking of home as the place where economic life stopped. Serious work happened elsewhere. That division now feels natural, although it was created by a particular period of technological development and is historically unusual.
We have no interest in recreating a romantic version of the preindustrial household. That world included grinding poverty, limited opportunity, and rigid social roles. We do think it is possible to keep the abundance of modern life while recovering some of what industrialization weakened: the household as an active center of work, care, education, and community.
The U.S. reached its lowest fertility rate ever this year: just under 1.6 births per woman, below population-replacement levels and below what many women report as their desired number of children. This revolution could help address this alarming problem. For many women, having children can feel like an impossible tradeoff between economic security and stepping away from the workforce, even temporarily. Imagine a future where our culture and public policy embrace the flexibility technology makes possible — so moms and dads no longer have to choose between meaningful work and meaningful time at home, but can do both.
For a long time, earning a living usually meant leaving home. Digital technology, and the AI now layered on top of it, means fewer families have to accept that separation as the price of economic participation. The economy is coming home. We should give families the freedom to decide what to do with it.
***
<a href="https://abundance.institute/about#taylor-barkley">Taylor Barkley</a> is the Director of Federal Government Affairs and Policy Advisor at the Abundance Institute. <a href="https://ableamericans.us/rachel-k-barkley/">Rachel Barkley </a>is the Director of <a href="https://ableamericans.us/">Able Americans</a>. They are parents of three children.

Aerial View Of Mother Working In Office At Home With Daughter

How The Digital Revolution Is Reclaiming The Household Economy

fertility rate

homeschooling

household economy

opinion

remote work

American education is overdue for disruption. For generations, we have educated children in roughly the same way: grouping them by age, following a standardized schedule, ringing a bell, and sending them to the next class. Whatever the merits of that model, it was built for a different era, and as Americans, we should be asking whether it is still the best way to educate our children today.
It makes sense then that <a href="https://alpha.school/">Alpha School</a>, an innovative new education model, has received so much fanfare, including Education Secretary Linda McMahon recently praising it on CNN. Alpha School flatly rejects the “teacher-at-the-front-of-the-room” model. It rejects teachers completely, for that matter, while claiming that its AI can teach students “2x in 2 hours.” For a minimum of $40,000 a year, your child will spend an average of two hours each morning completing core academics through customized, AI-driven tutoring, then spend the rest of the day developing skills like entrepreneurship, leadership, public speaking, and financial literacy.
There is much to laud in this model. It embraces the very principles that the homeschooling movement has understood for decades: the traditional 7-hour school day is a relic, most children can be autodidacts with assistance, and parental ownership of the children’s education is non-negotiable.
Alpha School has released non-independently verified data to back up their claims, and their standardized scores are impressive. But measuring the success of their method on the motivated children of the top 1% is a little like asking Michael Jordan if his shoes helped him dunk a basketball. When the outcome is more or less inevitable, the interventions are cosmetic.
Replacing human teachers with software in the name of disruption is problematic, as is Alpha apparently <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/ai-teacher-inside-alpha-school/?_sp=62c45d7d-3fbf-4d10-9797-6aa2ab1aed74.1787888712242">surveilling children in their own bedrooms</a> in the name of accountability. And I worry that Alpha’s AI-as-teacher approach and American educators’ broader embrace of tech in the classroom rest on an unexamined premise: that mandatory hours of screen time over traditional methods have no downside.  Given what we know about how the <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10194945/">brain processes reading on paper versus screens</a>, as well as the benefits of <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11943480/">writing over typing</a>, both of these processes are crucial to recruit more of the brain to work together through neural integration, which then leads to more lasting memory.
Alpha’s gamified, metric-heavy approach is also concerning.  Think Khan Academy, but infused with an Orange Theory Fitness metric-based vibe. The constant assessment, while motivating for some, can easily grind down the wonder inherent to a child’s constitution. And hotwiring a child’s internal dopamine regulation system to achieve results may also have long-term negative effects. Learning is not meant to be easy or even fast. Confusion, frustration, and failure are not bugs in the process. They are part of how competence is built, and technology that circumvents the human element is likely to be a long-term detriment.
And while knowing the etymology, spelling, and meaning of every word helps you ace standardized tests, should that come at the expense of getting to sit with your elementary school classmates, the windows open to the sweet spring breeze, while your teacher reads you Jack London’s “Call of the Wild” or E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web?” Can an AI replicate that experience with a screen and headphones?
By uncoupling judgment, depth, and emotion from knowledge through their choice of software over humans, Alpha seems to be arguing that knowledge in and of itself can beget judgment. But human teachers naturally pass on much more than sterile knowledge; they pass on how and when to apply that knowledge to the broader world through empathy and wisdom.
Every generation gives children new tools. In the broader education landscape, the question is not simply whether the tool is powerful, but whether the child has first developed the judgment required to use it well. That becomes especially important when the tool promising to accelerate learning can increasingly perform the thinking itself.
My concern is not what we don’t know about AI, but rather what we already know about human beings. We tend toward the path of least resistance. LLMs in the hands of experts, people who have already done the difficult work of learning, failing, struggling, and developing judgment, is a reasonable proposition. It can augment abilities that already exist. AI in the hands of children is an entirely different proposition.  LLMs effectively hobble their users’ ability to originate thought. Outsourcing that capacity before developing it should give us all pause. Descartes rightly connected thinking to human existence itself, so why then surrender even a part of that most essential human function?
As a civilization, we are now grappling with the &#8220;Matrix&#8221; problem: do we prefer a sterilized version of reality to the real thing? &#8220;The Truman Show&#8221; or Solzhenitsyn? AI-composed jazz or Miles Davis? Is there a difference? And if so, do we need our children to be able to discern the difference? And if we do, does the difference even matter? I would answer in the affirmative to all three.
In addition, an LLM is predisposed to flatter its user to the point of <a href="https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8f65w258">sycophancy</a>. It imitates confidence while devoid of it, emulates originality without possessing any, and does so because it was told to, but not because it wants to. In the words of a Christian apologist, “How can an object that wants nothing, fears nothing, enjoys nothing, needs nothing, and cares about nothing have a mind?” 
And this leads us to the following paradox: that the best preparation for an AI-infused world may be a largely analog education. In short, a disciplined, sound mind is the best way to delineate the superficial from the real. The student with a grounding in history, a command of philosophy and mathematics, and a developed capacity for independent judgment can use AI as a tool without becoming dependent upon it and will most certainly not be technologically incompetent.
Conversely, the intellectually ill-equipped who have outsourced their thinking may become the most dependent upon AI while simultaneously being unable to discern its errors. That asymmetry should matter enormously to educators because intellectual skill is not just producing an answer but knowing whether the answer deserves to be believed.
As McMahon herself articulated later in the same CNN interview, speaking about higher education, it is open debate and the “collision of ideas” that move education forward. She’s exactly right. But so is Princeton professor <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/07/conservative-students-college-ideology/678934/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&amp;utm_content=true-anthem&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter">Lauren Wright</a>, who has found that conservative students at progressive universities get “sharper and sharper” because they are forced to encounter arguments they reject and defend their own beliefs. This friction builds intellectual grit.
Our children need to be challenged, not placated. We have no longitudinal evidence showing what happens when children outsource learning to artificial intelligence, especially in their earliest years. Our children are, in a very real sense, the experimental group, and by the time we understand the consequences, it may be too late.
The Trump administration has an extraordinary opportunity to rethink an educational model that no longer serves many American children. It should be ambitious enough not merely to digitize the old one.
In one telling of the legend, Arthur was not worthy because he possessed the sword, Excalibur; he possessed Excalibur because he had proved himself worthy. Before students are given a tool capable of doing so much intellectual work for them, they should first develop the intellectual and moral capacity to wield it.
Perhaps Alpha’s most important lesson is not that children need more AI, but that children need more life. More conversation, competition, failure, responsibility, and all the messy human experiences through which children develop. Teach children to think before a chatbot thinks for them. Teach them to write before AI writes for them.  And above all, teach them to look for the “why” instead of just the “what.”
The goal of American education should not be to prepare children merely to operate the technologies of their time. It should be to prepare them to judge those technologies wisely.
***
Dr. Benjamin Chacko is an Emergency Medicine Physician and the father of two sons.

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The Best Preparation For An AI World Is An Analog Education

alpha school

artificial intelligence in education

linda mcmahon

screen time

Dixie Dillon Lane’s &#8220;Skipping School: How Homeschooling in America Went Mainstream&#8221; suggests that the first homeschoolers weren&#8217;t just iconoclasts; they were brave. The earliest homeschooling families were not protected by the law. In fact, they often broke it to educate their children at home, and they experienced overwhelming societal disdain. Yet these families doggedly pursued what they believed to be the best form of education for their kids. 
As someone who was homeschooled K-12, I saw the culture I grew up in reflected in Lane’s careful historical sketch. I learned much about the roots and history that gave rise to the current state of American homeschooling and felt a sense of pride in my people. 
Lane states her thesis clearly: “American homeschooling in the present day has deep roots in a long-held American belief that parents should hold primary influence over their children&#8217;s schooling, an influence that has been slowly lost over the past seventy-five years.” Beginning her survey in the 1950s, Lane documents how Cold War fears of communism led to increased federal control over education even as Americans began to grow wary of the government. The first homeschoolers, Lane says, “foreshadowed a new American paradox: a nation plagued with distrust yet booming with consolidation.”
Early homeschooling was deeply unpopular with the public. Even in the 1980s, Lane points out, a poll found that 75% of Americans thought homeschooling was bad for the country. Homeschooling was either illegal or unclearly legal. So, most families stayed under the radar, forming small communities with like-minded families. 
Beginning in the late 1980s, organizations such as HSLDA fought for the rights of homeschoolers. As the law began to turn, homeschoolers gradually came above ground. With legal protection, organizations such as the California Homeschool Network formed to consolidate homeschooling into a movement. 
The turn of the century brought increased freedom and options for homeschoolers. Partnerships with local public schools, online classes, co-ops, and university-model schools allowed for even more flexibility. The COVID-19 pandemic thrust many into homeschooling and brought to light for lots of parents the pitfalls of public schools.
Today, the normalcy of homeschooling — thanks to decades of hard legal work, cultural shifts, and the pandemic — means its demographics reflect what America is. 
Lane writes that while “a majority of twentieth-century homeschoolers were at least in part religiously motivated,” nowadays “the movement itself is not primarily a religious one.” Religion is still an important factor for most homeschoolers, but it is often not a definitive one. Much more common is the belief that homeschooling will offer a better education than other options. 
Although popular culture still sees homeschooling as predominantly white, it is actually quite diverse. A U.S. census survey taken in April and May of 2020 “found that homeschooling parents were nearly evenly split between Caucasians and people of color.” 
&#8220;Skipping School&#8221; works on many levels. It is self-labeled as an account of American homeschooling from within the community itself, letting homeschoolers see their heritage clearly. Lane doesn’t hide the fact that her family homeschools, and her book occasionally myth-busts the worst critiques of homeschooling. These aren’t knocks against the book. It’s not self-serving propaganda. Everyone can glean much from it.
The book is a work of careful historiography, with thorough yet accessible data, personal stories, and cultural context. &#8220;Skipping School&#8221; reasonably defends the practice, enables the reader to understand the homeschooling mindset, and compellingly recounts a true historical narrative. 
The times the book drifts into direct polemic are rare and restrained. They are nonetheless effective. Take, for instance, when Lane discusses the ubiquitous criticism of homeschooling: “Won’t your kids not be socialized enough?” She does the thing few people do: defines her terms. If by socialize, one means engaging in society, homeschoolers demonstrate above-average interaction with activities such as voting, engaging in community service, going to church, and more. 
There’s no question that public schools in America are far from an ideal option, but as Lane shows us, homeschoolers are realists. Speaking personally, she writes, “Like so many other homeschoolers today, we are not antischool, even though we have serious objections to our local public options. Indeed, we are pragmatists who do what works for our family.” 
As homeschooling moved out into the open, options proliferated. Online academies, a variety of curricula, and charter schools have been popping up everywhere in recent years. Several experienced homeschoolers expressed their reservations to Lane. Such options, they said, risk losing pure homeschooling&#8217;s advantages, such as full parental control over curriculum and more flexibility.
There are as many pragmatic approaches to homeschooling as there are homeschooling families. This means an abundance of options and a potential end to the scrappy, DIY, tight-knit communities of pre-2000s homeschooling. 
Some homeschoolers would do well to consider Lane&#8217;s thesis: Americans have always felt that parents should have a strong say in the education of their children, and homeschooling is the most recent manifestation of this fact. Many homeschooling families I know seem to view homeschooling as the universal norm. I would suggest that conservative Christians should see it more as a prudential necessity. 
Ironically, white Protestants were the first to establish mandatory attendance laws, as in an 1852 Massachusetts law. They were thinly veiled attempts to Protestantize Roman Catholic children. 
Nineteenth-century educational reformer Horace Mann certainly went too far in his statements. (See: “Our common schools &#8230; reach, with more or less directness and intensity, all the children belonging to the State,—children who are soon to be the State.”) The Supreme Court thought these inflexible laws went too far as well. 
But a community requiring the education of children goes back to Plato. Martin Luther argued for it as a way to help the laity learn to read the Bible. Yet, as we have seen, absolutizing the community’s interest leads to indoctrination. However, simply saying society has an interest in the quality of the education its citizens receive — an interest that must be weighed against the right of parents to raise their kids how they see fit — is not totalitarian. Thus, communal accountability must be local to ensure the best balance. 
The best thing about &#8220;Skipping School&#8221; is that it will provide something for every reader. No matter your preconceived notions about homeschooling, you will leave with a transformed perspective. This is the highest kind of history: true to the facts and challenging to our biases. Skeptics of the practice may walk away viewing homeschooling as much more reasonable; hardcore conservative Christian homeschoolers may see the history and current situation as less monolithic. While Lane’s book corrects the excesses of anti-homeschooling myths, it will likely also serve to bust some myths homeschoolers believe about themselves too. 
Although Lane demonstrates that homeschooling in the 21st century cannot be claimed by a single group, I think it can. It can be claimed by Americans. Homeschooling is as foreign in Europe as ice in tap water. Americans’ deep desire for freedom and suspicion of the state mean our soil is ripe for the practice. 
In this way, defending homeschooling unites most of modern America, even if only a small percentage of total children receive this kind of education. In another way, it reinforces our cultural divisions. Public schools used to provide a unifying education for all American children. Now, in a pluralistic society, the trade-off for parents taking exclusive charge of educating their children is that existing fractures continue to grow. 
&#8220;Skipping School&#8221; has the right nuance to tackle such a significant subject. I developed a new appreciation for my forebears, reconsidered some of my critiques of the practice, and came to see this issue with greater clarity.
***
Cooper Cobbs (<a href="https://x.com/CobbsCooper" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@CobbsCooper</a>) is a 2026 Chesterton media fellow at New Guard Press. A rising junior at Patrick Henry College, he is the incoming student body president and will be the editor-in-chief of PHC’s student newspaper, the Herald, this fall.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

Overhead view of cheerful small boy playing with wooden toys at home.

How American Families Built The Ultimate Counter-Culture Movement

book review

dixie dillon lane

education policy

lifestyle

public school system

Ask your average conservative how he came to be Republican, and he might say he reached an epiphany after reading Thomas Sowell’s &#8220;Basic Economics.&#8221; Maybe she remembers watching Charlie Kirk on YouTube or witnessing the likes of Ben Shapiro destroying leftists in debate. For me, I attribute my path to conservatism primarily to Pokémon.
It all started when I was gifted by one of my friends a trading card of the Pokémon Fletchinder. I remember holding that worn cardboard card in my hands, cherishing the delicate beauty of its artwork. From that moment on, I was determined to make an impressive card collection. Thanks to the generous support of my grandparents and aunts, I was able to amass a collection that would make any other 10-year-old jealous (I recently appraised it and found it to be worth up to $2,000). 
Before my Pokémon craze, I was a recovering public school student. I spent a year in the local elementary school, where I was brainwashed by my leftist elementary school teacher. I was taught not to talk about my faith in Christ — in order to not be seen as hateful — and to be more germaphobic than Dr. Fauci. My mom recovered an essay from that time in which I parroted the teacher and said that if I were president, “I would focus on science and make everything free.” I was the poster child for the perfect Democratic youth.
After that ordeal, our family started homeschooling. Every Friday, we went to a local homeschool co-op, where I found a small but passionate group of fellow card collectors, who would congregate and trade every lunch. Seeing many of my rare cards (especially my $150 full-art promotional Pikachu EX card), they happily welcomed me into their group.
Within a few years, the Pokémon trading card community I joined grew to impressive levels and I met many of my friends through the hobby. Even today, my friends joke that I was the “Godfather of the Pokémon cards” in that group. I fondly remember welcoming in students new to the co-op to the trading card game, appraising the value of their cards for them, and chatting about my favorite Pokémon. 
The beginning of the end happened when my co-op leader saw the thriving card market and was filled with worry and disdain. She was likely concerned about Pokémon cards being a distraction during class hours and the fact that younger children could get scammed by older students. 
These were points I agreed with, and I was willing to work with the higher-ups to make sure the Pokémon market was properly regulated. I commanded the love and obedience of the other collectors, and I could make sure they did not let Pokémon become a problem.
But the co-op leader’s main argument was that Pokémon was satanic — not because of any designs, but because the Pokémon card game has “energy” cards. That energy reminded her of chi from eastern spirituality, which she saw was directly from the devil himself. She walked up to the front of the auditorium at lunch break one day, and told the co-op’s 200 or so members that Pokémon would be illegal from then on.
When she announced her Pokémon ban, I felt disheartened. It wasn’t just about the cards; it was about the community we made around them. I knew that the culture of the co-op would wilt because of her decision, and as the de facto leader of the thriving Pokémon industry, I knew something had to be done.
So I made a petition, going to each of my peers trying to get signatures. A few said that I should just listen to the co-op leader and not rock the boat. But many of them, even those I&#8217;d never met, said they liked what I was doing in trying to get the community back and signed their names.
I proudly delivered the petition to the co-op leader to her surprise, but she ignored it. Even worse, she forced me and my friends who helped with the petition to spend the next few lunches being reeducated on why Pokémon was evil. I tried crafting a logical defense, but I was unskilled then in research and debate. I only later learned Pope John Paul II gave Pokémon his blessing, <a href="https://saintjoachim.net/vatican-corner-9-11-16/">saying</a> that Christians should not worry about “any harmful moral side effects” with the trading cards and telling parents the game was “based on ties of friendship.”
During the whole adventure, I learned major tenets of conservatism.
The destruction of civilization comes from people who think they are more enlightened than the average person, who have a hatred for the values normal people espouse.
Rule by enlightened, unelected experts is tyranny. It doesn’t matter if they come with good intentions or from an ostensibly religious high ground.
We will always have to legislate morality. When we pass laws, we indicate what we believe is right and good. However, moral issues must be deliberated within families and churches, and the government in place must take heed to follow the moral sentiments of the people. Tyranny happens when a ruling body imposes a foreign idea of what is right and wrong.
Tyranny also exists when a government tries to save people from themselves. Tyranny relies on the stifling of free expression, the labeling of organic movements as destructive, and the imposition of words and ideas as “hate speech.”
Free markets are one of the greatest methods of creating human flourishing and liberty. The capitalistic system isn’t inherently good, and it requires some guidelines for the protection of buyers and sellers. But in the long run, an economic system built on voluntary transactions will make everyone happier.
Virtue-signaling exists. People use it to gain favor with those in power or do it out of fear of punishment from the powerful.
Lastly, to save civilization, we need a group of self-governing citizen activists who actively monitor the government for tyranny. It is a government by the people, for the people, for a reason; we will not get representation unless we act as an active check on state, local, and national officials. Citizens must be educated on civics and have the ability to winsomely defend their ideas.
I was determined from then on to be equipped to defend what is true, good, and beautiful the next time the need came around. To be a better speaker, I went through homeschool speech and debate for two years. I then signed up to intern at the Convention of States: Emerging Leaders Program to learn with other interns about how to become a more self-governing citizen.
For me, Pokémon is not just a children’s game, but a symbol of the beauty of free markets, the good of self-governance, and the need for resistance to tyranny. Leftism focuses on ungrounded ideals of goodness and truth that ruin civilization when applied. My Pokémon journey taught me that conservatism provides a logical road map for the realities of human nature and life.
***
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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How A Pokémon Card Fight Became My First Lesson In Freedom

conservatism

upstream

Defeating the Democrats is really important.
They need to lose because they just keep getting more and more and more extreme. The mainstream Democrats are embracing the commies.
There was a House Democratic resolution promoted by Thomas Massie — the bewilderingly insane Republican who was ousted in the primary — to defund all military aid to Israel.
How many Republicans voted for it?
One.
The resolution is not a sentiment that has much traction within the Republican Party. A majority of Democrats in the House who voted did so in favor of defunding all military aid, because immorality on both the foreign and domestic front have become a litmus test for radical Democrats.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-show-ep2465?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
And the normie Democrats, the people who are supposed to be moderate, are just accepting this. They&#8217;re swallowing it whole because they, too, are trying to look for love in all the wrong places.
Andy Beshear, who will be the first person eaten by the Democratic Socialists of America, said there&#8217;s really nothing wrong with them. They&#8217;re just too “passionate.”
He stated, “Many who are running under the Democratic Socialist brand or the progressive brand are making their case with just extreme passion. They are convincing voters that they will work as hard as they can and that&#8217;s what voters are asking for right now.”
They just want the extreme passion of the communists.
John Fetterman, the last sane Democrat, said yesterday, “Now here’s more Democrats to ‘defund the police.’ Here we are back to part of the worst impulses that we just can’t resist. We forgot the crazy things that we said, and that cost us the election in 2024. Now we want to revisit that — if anything they’re coming back in the strongest kind of terms. Look at the people who are winning.&#8221;
He is right about this. Democrats continue to make room for the psychos. They will be embracing every psychotic position they possibly can by the end of this election cycle, and certainly going into 2028. If you are perceived as moderate, you have nothing. You&#8217;re going to get outflanked — dramatically. And they will keep going crazier and crazier.
Many of the faces in their beloved media ecosystem seem more insane every day. Take Jennifer Welch, for example. This is someone who I will never understand how she has an audience because she&#8217;s awful on camera. Truly awful. And I speak as someone who&#8217;s not particularly amazing on camera, but Jennifer Welch makes me look like Laurence Olivier. She was on her show, ripping into homeschooling like this:
<blockquote>They are incapable of critically thinking. They&#8217;re incapable of deduction skills. And what pisses me off about this the most is how many parents project a script onto their kids. “I&#8217;m a dumbass, so therefore I&#8217;m going to make sure you&#8217;re a dumbass. I&#8217;m an f***ing idiot. I made D&#8217;s as our caller said, Ellie &#8230; the dumbest people she knew in college were homeschooling their kids. And so this is trickle-down stupidity. This is MAGA on steroids. This is MAHA. This is trad wife.</blockquote>
First, homeschoolers generally outperform public school students. Second, this bizarre hatred for parents schooling their own children and extraordinary faith in the public school system, which is failing all over the country in a wide variety of areas, is pretty astonishing.
The hatred doesn&#8217;t stop there. Welch has a co-host, Angie Sullivan, who says she does not trust parents who want to be with their children:
<blockquote>You would not believe how many people in Bible study homeschool their kids. And you just think, “Oh, I worry about that.” And then you see those witness booklets or whatever they&#8217;re called that the Duggars use and they&#8217;re like, top out at eighth grade. I mean, I just think homeschooling is a bad idea from soup to nuts. I don&#8217;t care if you&#8217;re a nuclear physicist. I think it&#8217;s just f*cking weird as f*ck that you want your kids around you all day, every day and all night and just the socialization. For me personally, it was that I would have gotten up on my hands and knees and strapped them to my back and crawled to get them to school every day just to get them where I wasn&#8217;t. So I don&#8217;t trust somebody that wants to be with their kids 24/7. I think a lot of dumb people do it because it&#8217;s just easier, and that&#8217;s a concern.</blockquote>
Homeschooling is absolutely, 100% not easier. Not easier at all. This lady is crazy, and this is a crazy thing to say. First of all, you don&#8217;t trust parents who want to be with their kids? What is wrong with you? Seriously, what is wrong with you? Do adults sometimes need a break from their kids? Sure. Do good parents want to be with their kids a lot? Absolutely.
I&#8217;m confused. You don&#8217;t trust somebody who wants to be with their kids. You just trust somebody who wants to be with other people&#8217;s kids.
The Democrats will embrace all of this. So when I say that I want the Democrats to lose, it&#8217;s because I want them to lose in policy. I want zero of the policies that the Democrats are pushing.
I don&#8217;t want a weak foreign policy. I don&#8217;t want a hatred of free market economics that is being propped up by a bunch of lies about how income inequality damns all of us to the loss of the American Dream and all the slop they&#8217;re peddling. I&#8217;m not interested in a bunch of conspiracy theorizing about how the American Dream is dead, and you can&#8217;t get ahead, and therefore all meritocracy must be ground under.
I don&#8217;t want that. I don&#8217;t want it from Democrats. I don&#8217;t want it from Republicans.
People very rarely get what they want in politics, but that doesn&#8217;t mean that we shouldn&#8217;t call out bad policy or ideology when we see it, because it is both a bad strategy and a bad principle.

Magical Fatherhood: Enchanting Encounter of a Dad Carrying his Baby Toddler on Shoulders, Creating a World of Wonder and Joy in a Field at Sunset, Embracing the Magic of Father-Child Connections. Banner and copy space. Back view

The Left’s New Problem With Parents

andy beshear

democratic party

democratic socialists of america

john fetterman

politics

Angie Sullivan, of the &#8220;I&#8217;ve Had It&#8221; podcast, told her cohost Jennifer Welch that she was inherently distrustful of parents who actually enjoy spending time with their children.
Sullivan made the comments in the broader context of a conversation about homeschooling — which she also does not like, for a variety of reasons — and she said that it was &#8220;weird&#8221; to imagine mothers wanting to spend all of their time with their children.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
‘I’ve Had It’ co-host Angie Sullivan on homeschooling&#8230;.
“You would not believe how many people in Bible study homeschool their kids, and you just think, ah, I worry about that.”
“I just think homeschooling is a bad idea from soup to nuts. I don’t care if you’re a nuclear… <a href="https://t.co/GKbhROgDGs">pic.twitter.com/GKbhROgDGs</a>
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) <a href="https://x.com/CurtisHouck/status/2077129530045559032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 14, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Sullivan began by suggesting that it was a red flag that so many women involved in Bible study also chose to homeschool their children.
&#8220;You would not believe how many people in Bible study homeschool their kids, and you just think, eeehhhh, I worry about that. And then you see those witness booklets or whatever they&#8217;re called that the Duggar&#8217;s used, and they&#8217;re like, top out at eighth grade &#8230;&#8221; she said, scrunching up her face in obvious revulsion in a clear attempt to tie all Christians and homeschoolers to the Duggar family&#8217;s more recent trials.
&#8220;I just think homeschooling is a bad idea from soup to nuts. I don’t care if you’re a nuclear physicist. I think it’s just f*cking weird as f*ck that you want your kids around you all day, every day, and all night,&#8221; she added, suggesting that she would have strapped her own children to her back and &#8220;crawled&#8221; if that was the only way to get them out of her house and to school each day — if only just &#8220;to get them where I wasn&#8217;t.&#8221;
&#8220;So, I don’t trust somebody that wants to be with their kids 24/7. I think a lot of dumb people do it because it’s just easier, and that’s a concern,&#8221; she said, arguing that homeschooling was somehow &#8220;easier&#8221; for parents than putting children on the bus and washing their hands of the entire situation.
She then complained that kids who homeschooled could get all their work done in a few hours because they were not tied to the school&#8217;s schedule, arguing that gave the kids too much free time: &#8220;I just can’t think of very many good things about homeschooling.&#8221;

One Story. One Future: GLAAD Celebrates Pride 2025

Popular Leftist Podcaster Doesn’t Trust Moms Who Like Their Kids

Liberal Woman Doesn't Trust Moms Who Actually Like Their Kids

education

jennifer welch

media

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Our homeschool journey with our firstborn has come to an end. This weekend, our guinea pig for this counter-cultural educational choice dons the cap and gown and packs away her spiral notebooks filled with her assignment lists and spelling tests. It’s over, and she made it.
So did her father and I. Closing the curtain on this milestone has made us both reflect on how quickly it went by, how much simpler it was than people want to make it out to be, and how different it is from the thousands of negative comments we have received.
When our eldest was five, we did the only natural thing and enrolled her in kindergarten. It was a wonderful little school (still is, actually) and the very place both her dad and I spent our elementary years. It was simple, sweet, and about everything you could ask for. No screens, plenty of imaginative play time, and an atmosphere where imagination, reading, and personal responsibility are fostered. We loved it for her.
For a short time, we even enrolled her younger sister in the adjoining preschool because, why not? Mom could have a free morning or two, and the kids could be “socialized.”
At this time, my husband was a homeschool skeptic. I had dropped hints from time to time, but it was foreign to us — especially in Southern California. You had two kids, and you put them in the best public or private school you could manage. That was the deal.
But everything changed when my husband picked up the girls from school one day. It changed so quickly for him that, as soon as he got home, he told me, “Let’s think about homeschooling.”
Sean walked through the gates to pick up our sweet preschooler, and before she saw him, he lingered and watched her play. He said he stood there for about five or so minutes as she bounced on rubber mats, walked to the sandbox, and talked to what seemed to be an imaginary friend. Her hair was in pigtails. She quietly roamed around by herself until she saw him and excitedly ran into his arms. Of course, this is nothing out of the ordinary, but for my husband, who was constantly the last child picked up from day care each and every day, it hit him.
We are missing thousands of hours of our children growing up if we put them in school. By some <a href="https://rickhess99.medium.com/time-is-a-schools-most-precious-resource-where-does-it-go-c2c575d83d74">estimates</a>, a child will spend 15,000 hours at school from ages five to 18. We knew we would be missing hundreds of conversations. We wouldn’t be witnesses to the beautiful, ordinary moments that made them laugh, or the random spark of creativity that fluttered before their eyes, only to be forgotten when they were due back in their classroom.
By taking the prescribed route that we had thought was best, we would forfeit thousands of hours learning about who they were — roughly two years of their lives that would be a mystery to us. We started homeschooling the next fall; our first day of school was about four days before I was due with our third child.
As I prepare for our 18-year-old’s graduation party, I reflect on the younger mother who was afraid to buck norms and try something that seems revolutionary to many. Through the years, there were times when I felt unequipped, exhausted, and challenged beyond my capacity. I allowed the comments to get to me: “What if your child is weird?” and “They won’t meet standards!” were just two of many.
There were moments when I threatened to throw them on a school bus (never serious, but always effective). There were years when the curriculum didn’t fit and months when tears became a mainstay during math worksheets. There were also moments of extreme gladness: watching my girls each learn to read on our couch, seeing them flourish as artists, musicians, and writers in their own time and in their own way. We spent our days baking, listening to audiobooks (yes, I have every Ramona Quimby story memorized, word for word), and taking walks where they poured out their souls. I watched them help one another with spelling or geography.
The past 13 years have been like living inside a laboratory of learning and development. Our house is like a cabinet of curiosities, with books, binders, and random nature bits strewn all over the place.
Now, it all feels like a dream. Yes, I still have three more daughters to graduate, but our time all together is coming to a close. 
Parenting, no matter how you slice it, will be marked by seasons of questioning and difficulty. That’s not unique to homeschool parents; it’s universal. Regardless of whether you send your children off to your local middle school, find a nice Christian school in your neighborhood that you can afford, or decide to take on the charge as “teacher” yourself, it will be hard, and you will question whether you’re doing the right thing at times.
But one thing I feel so deeply grateful for that I would never trade, not for a million dollars, is those 15,000 hours with my daughter. I will hold those moments so closely to my heart: the joyful ones, the sad ones, and, yes, the hard ones. What a gift they have been and how quickly the stopwatch moved. It is now over, and I can never go back, no matter how much I wish I could. 
I can only sit here and sing the praises of homeschooling to someone who might be considering it. It’s not easy, but one thing you’ll always be able to carry with you is those missing hours. They are yours, and they are a treasure.
***
Rachel Reeves is a wife and homeschool mother of four daughters. She works in political commentary at Here Are The Headlines, both on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/herearetheheadlines/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://www.herearetheheadlines.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Substack</a>.

GettyImages-523289418

The 15,000-Hour Reality About Childhood More Parents Are Waking Up To

Our son Samuel is 15 years old, and he loves to run. When the school day ends, he laces up his shoes and heads out. Running has become a meaningful part of his life, strengthening his body, steadying his mind, and shaping habits of discipline and perseverance.
Samuel ran track and cross country through middle school. He trained hard. He competed alongside his peers. He got better.
Then he entered ninth grade, and Virginia told him to stop.
Not because he isn’t fast enough. Not because he isn’t dedicated enough. Not because he did anything wrong. Samuel was told he could no longer compete in track and cross-country events sanctioned by the Virginia High School League (VHSL) because we educate him at home.
Our decision to homeschool Samuel is rooted in our faith. It is a deeply personal choice — one Virginia law fully recognizes and protects. Each year, we file our notice of intent with the superintendent and provide a list of subjects he will study. Samuel completes assignments, reads widely, writes regularly, and takes nationally-normed, standardized tests, where he performs well. Stacie, Samuel’s mother, is a formerly licensed public educator who has taught hundreds of students across multiple disciplines. We would gladly meet reasonable academic reporting requirements if doing so meant Samuel could run alongside his peers at Northside High School.
But none of that matters under the current rules.
The VHSL’s policy, in place for nearly 40 years, requires students to be “bona fide” full-time enrollees of a member school. Homeschoolers do not qualify. Period. It does not matter how rigorous the academics are. It does not matter that we pay the same taxes that fund the very schools and athletic programs from which our son is excluded. It does not matter that more than 66,000 Virginia children are homeschooled — a number that grows every year.
The door is shut.
What makes that exclusion even harder to justify is the group permitted to pass through that door. Public school students can compete, of course. Private school students can participate in VHSL-sanctioned events. Even students enrolled in full-time virtual public school programs — students who never set foot in a school building — are eligible. But a homeschooled student who lives in the district, whose family pays the taxes that fund it, who meets every academic standard set by the state, and who simply wants to train and compete receives no such opportunity.
There is no coherent principle behind that red line, and the VHSL’s own exceptions expose the problem.
We tried to work within the system before we ever considered a courtroom. We approached the VHSL and even offered to present our case. The response, to paraphrase, was simple: the policy is what it is; the board supports it. In effect, we were told not to waste our time.
That was a difficult moment for our family. We respect authority, and we teach our children to do the same. Samuel himself has said he was raised to follow the rules — but also this: when those in authority step outside constitutional bounds, the Constitution provides a path for citizens to seek a remedy.
We are grateful to have found allies in this fight. The Founding Freedoms Law Center, the legal arm of The Family Foundation of Virginia, is representing our family pro bono. For years — decades, really — efforts have been made to fix this through the legislature. Session after session, lawmakers have introduced what is commonly known as the “Tebow bill,” legislation that would allow homeschooled students to participate in public school athletics, as they already can in roughly 30 other states.
Repeatedly, those efforts succeeded and the legislature passed the bill. Every single time, Governor Terry McAuliffe vetoed it — closing the door just as it was about to open.
The legislative path has been tried. It has been blocked.
But what legislation has not yet accomplished, the Constitution already secures. The government cannot deny access to a publicly funded benefit because a family lives in accordance with sincerely held religious convictions. Nor can it deny equal protection under the law based solely on how a child is educated.
That is why, on March 30, 2026, we filed a federal lawsuit against the Virginia High School League and the Roanoke County School Board. Our case argues this blanket exclusion violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the religious liberty protections in Virginia’s Constitution, and the Virginia Religious Freedom Restoration Act. We are asking for a jury trial in federal court in Roanoke.
We want to be clear about what this case is and what it is not.
This is not about guaranteeing Samuel a spot on a team. It is about giving him the same opportunity as any other student: to try out where tryouts are held, to participate where they are not, to earn a place, and to compete. It is about the simple principle that a taxpayer-funded benefit should not be withheld from a child because his parents, guided by their faith, choose to educate him at home.
It is not just about Samuel.
When we told him we were considering this lawsuit, his response moved us. He said he wanted to do this not only for himself, but for his friends, and for the child he has not even met, a homeschooled student somewhere in Virginia who might one day have the chance to compete because this barrier was finally removed.
Other states have already shown this works. Homeschoolers participate. Standards remain intact. Teams function as expected. The sky does not fall.
Virginia refuses to follow where the evidence already leads.
Meanwhile, Samuel’s high-school years continue to slip away. Every season he cannot compete is one he will never recover — a season of training with teammates, testing himself in real competition, and learning discipline and perseverance in ways only organized athletics can teach. He dreams of one day being fast enough to run for Virginia Tech. It’s a long shot, but it should be his shot to take. Without the opportunity to compete at the high-school level, that door is closed to him.
We have also filed for a preliminary injunction, so Samuel can run while this case proceeds. Time flies, especially for a 15-year-old who runs.
We did not seek this fight. We are a family from Roanoke County who wanted our son to run track. But when we encountered a rule that treats our child as less than equal for no reason other than where he sits during the school day, we knew we had to act.
Not just for Samuel, but for every family in Virginia who has been told their children do not belong.
Our message is simple: Let Samuel run, and let the kids play.
***
Daniel and Stacie Palmer are parents living in Roanoke County, VA.

Legs and feet on a red track

Virginia Doesn’t Let All Kids Participate In Sports; Our Homeschooled Son Wants To Change That

DW Opinion

High school sports

virginia

The recent victory of Donald Trump at the national polls ushered in “morning in America” as much as it indicated a repudiation of wokeness. His vow to dismantle the Department of Education offers the US an enviable opportunity and appointing the media tycoon Linda McMahon indicates a welcome, business-minded (read: meritocracy-based) approach. To effectively revamp our schools and the specific ways we invest in, approach, and even define education, depends on some hard truths and our willingness to confront them.
Americans have spoken by refuting the Division, Exclusion, and Inequality movement taking over our culture and our schools. Parents rejected the leftist push for gender ideology, critical race theory, and pornography in our schools to support girls-only locker rooms and their hard-won Title IX sports.
Yet the war is far from won and success in this battle only slows the advance. To preserve our traditional values, we must examine how we arrived where we are today, fighting culture conflict within our own families. While President-elect Trump addresses education on the federal level, our communities must tackle these issues locally at the same time. We can celebrate our public victories against Bud Light and Target, but if the battles for the hearts and minds of our young people continue inside our schools, we may snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
According to <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pew Research</a>, the U.S. ranked an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/on-the-world-stage-us-students-fall-behind/2016/12/05/610e1e10-b740-11e6-a677-b608fbb3aaf6_story.html?utm_term=.e99466bb5b12" target="_blank" rel="noopener">unimpressive 38th</a> out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science on the most recent international academic achievement studies survey taken in 2015. We currently spend more per student than almost any other country to achieve those discouraging results. Why are we fighting to preserve such a spectacularly failing institution while the world sprints past us? Because school is good. That’s the resounding mantra we all ingested.
Schools are where we all learned to trust the experts, especially the educators, so it’s nearly impossible to repudiate the efficacy or validity of our &#8220;factory schools&#8221; and teachers. Despite our reluctance, analysis of the problem demands transparency and candor.
First, for decades, schools have coached pupils (us) to believe that their highest goal is college prep and career readiness (read: money). Where decades ago we believed in entrepreneurship, integrity and independent innovation, now culture holds that the only way to the money is the institutional road. It’s no wonder parents would sacrifice their children on the school’s altar! Save the schools or my child will not succeed! As parents see the blatant lies in our schools, the pornography, the abject ignorance, and the abysmal academic performance, belief in that ultimate fiction has recently (finally) been unseated, and we can (and should) criticize our schools.
The Marxist principles of the teachers’ unions directly contradict traditional American values, but with their market stranglehold they can afford to ignore our condemnation. Inflicting their evil dogma on impressionable minds is their second incentive to preserve their institutions. We are now in a race to see who converts the culture first. If we, however, continue submitting our children to their indoctrination, we will soon reach the tipping point where our own offspring will vote down the Second Amendment and for a surveillance state. And while laws may countermand the Marxist mantra, many ideological teachers don’t heed the law.
Enter the school choice debate. On the surface, government funds following the child makes sense. The parents can vote with their feet and their dollars. But financial infusions typically inflate costs, negating the value of injected money. Further, government intrusion disrupts honest brokerage: in the case of education, it will oust any educational endeavors unwilling to subject themselves to government scrutiny – which would be the only authentic players in the game. Universal school choice (read: single-payer education) would kill innovation, putting us right back to where we are now.
<h3><a href="https://get.dailywire.com/gift-guide/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE</a></h3>
The future is uncertain, and foundational transformation is the only way to prosper. That’s why Trump has floated tax credits for families with school-aged children. This might afford them more flexibility to raise and educate their children without the strings of government forcing its ideas on them.
The most radical idea in education is reverting to first principles — training the student to teach himself. This is how education used to work, before we began our modern &#8220;factory school&#8221; experiment. It is how the founders – those geniuses who devised our representational republic that so few of our citizens currently acknowledge – became educated.
The education revolution begins with the recognition that it doesn’t take an “expert” to train a child to be an adult; parents should do that.
Parents want a better route forward for their families and their children’s futures, and home education offers that pathway. Most parents are smart enough to be their child&#8217;s teacher. Indeed, the parent’s level of schooling is not reflective of academic outcome for the homeschooled child. Ultimately, all wisdom is self-taught and children need wisdom more than they need to drill math facts, memorize dates, or learn about lubrication.
Many parents still feel enslaved to the system, brainwashed to conform by its past self-proclaimed glory. The new learning model, however, is independent of what any woke “educators” recommend, and for good reason. Independent-minded parents choose home education instead, to foster in their children a devotion to truth, appreciation for wisdom, and the love of freedom.
* * *
Sam Sorbo is an education freedom advocate. A successful Hollywood film actor, producer, and writer, Sam took a step back from her career to homeschool her three children. She has authored numerous books, including her newest releases: “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Parents-Guide-Homeschool-Making-Education/dp/1630063002/ref=sr_1_1?crid=HFWW0GGBD8Z8&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.yVYc1H-XpcJF2RaoepopgHFxrEhbmBVVmI0sH01FpWOXkzwvNBVNwmS-AtJu2G3FDKvoxBHkGGNNXkFFjoiBsinUChM9L5HNlpcD7m8QJ3Gm_8gxVwSQ33qiNOxwx1FlRG7ekd3i83bTCrSoSfxHOImdLZD5O_1lrJp2g6Ty8NZVtmVxBisE23eAn-mqaiAjNMUQ7YcHm_GYRo_E4y40RZq-WtC0Scz-iw9HmLCjICI.paIAaZz6m84aTGbMCODe3GFah6-u91YqwIC5zNIX5Ss&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=Sam+Sorbo&amp;qid=1733341621&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=sam+sorbo%2Cstripbooks%2C104&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Parents’ Guide to Homeschooling</a>&#8220; and &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Christmas-40-Days-Devotional-Celebration/dp/1630063029/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Christmas 40 Days Devotional,</a>” with husband Kevin Sorbo.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Listening intently to our teacher

An Education Revolution Is Needed Now More Than Ever

donald trump

kevin sorbo

Schools

title ix

Tennessee unveiled a broad new school choice initiative this week.
Governor Bill Lee (R) <a href="https://www.tn.gov/governor/news/2023/11/28/gov--lee--legislative-leadership-call-for-statewide-school-choice--unveil-education-freedom-scholarship-act.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> the Education Freedom Scholarship Act on Tuesday at the Tennessee State Museum alongside Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R). Arkansas adopted a universal school choice policy earlier this year.
Lee&#8217;s proposal would establish universal school choice for every public school student across the state.
Next school year, 20,000 scholarships would be available. Half of those would go to Tennessee students at or below 300% of the federal poverty line, who have a disability, or are eligible for the existing Education Savings Account pilot program.
By the school year that starts in 2025, all public school students would be eligible for a scholarship.
No bill has been formally filed in the legislature yet, but Lee <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2023/11/28/tennessee-school-choice-vouchers-gov-bill-lee-unveils-expanded-statewide-program/71714741007/#" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> his office would work with the legislature on the &#8220;final details&#8221; when the General Assembly reconvenes in January.
Families could spend their child&#8217;s scholarship money on tuition at a private or religious school, uniforms, technology, transportation, or home school expenses. Families can also spend the money on tutoring, after school programs, and SAT and ACT exam fees.
Lee also said the scholarship program would be funded separately from Tennessee&#8217;s Investment in Student Achievement funding structure for K-12 education.
Lee said Tennessee should do two things at once — strive to have the best public school system in the country and provide families with school choice.
&#8220;These two ideas are not in conflict, and conservative states across the country are proof,&#8221; Lee said in a statement provided to The Daily Wire.
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Lee added that he has &#8220;firsthand&#8221; knowledge of the benefits of school choice since his children have been in public school and private school and been homeschooled, and his wife is a teacher.
&#8220;We can all agree that every Tennessee child deserves a shot at success. Every student has unique needs and every classroom offers unique value,&#8221; Lee said. &#8220;Parents know best and should have the freedom to choose the right education for their child, regardless of income or zip code.&#8221;
Sanders praised Tennessee&#8217;s school choice plan, <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2023/11/28/tennessee-school-choice-vouchers-gov-bill-lee-unveils-expanded-statewide-program/71714741007/#" target="_blank" rel="noopener">calling</a> it part of &#8220;an absolute conservative education revolution in our country.”
A wave of school choice bills have worked their way through state legislatures in recent years. Arizona, Utah, Arkansas, Florida, Oklahoma, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/23689496/school-choice-education-savings-accounts-american-federation-children" target="_blank" rel="noopener">were all</a> successful in creating or expanding school choice programs.
During the pandemic, parents across the country became frustrated with school COVID restrictions and controversial curriculum content, <a href="https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/parents-are-pulling-students-from-public-schools-at-record-rates-students-covid-pandemic-remote-learning-homeschooling-charter-private-mountain-districts" target="_blank" rel="noopener">leading</a> many families to pull their children out of public school permanently.

Trinity Alps Unified School District

Tennessee Governor Unveils Bold New School Choice Initiative

bill lee

Charter Schools

Private Schools

Public Schools

Republicans

school choice

tennessee

U.S.

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/illinois">Illinois</a> Democrats allowed the state&#8217;s only school choice program to expire this week.
The Invest in Kids tax credit scholarship program will sunset at the end of the current school year after Illinois legislators ended the fall legislative session on Thursday without taking action to renew it.
The $75 million program <a href="https://www.wbez.org/stories/illinois-controversial-private-school-scholarship-program-is-ending/849c1d35-b525-4dde-adbf-9147aa38a224" target="_blank" rel="noopener">awards</a> an income tax credit to taxpayers who donate to scholarship funds that allow lower-income students to attend private schools.
About 9,700 Illinois students received scholarships last school year. The average family income for scholarship students was $45,000, <a href="https://empowerillinois.org/wp-content/uploads/EI_Y5_Report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to Empower Illinois, the state’s largest scholarship granting organization.
Republicans and some Chicago-area Democrats had pushed to renew a slimmed-down version of the program for five years. The new version would have cut the program to $50 million, slashed the tax credit amount, and reduced the donation cap from $1 million to $500,000 as well as focused more on low-income students.
However, the majority of Democrats in the state House never backed the proposal, and Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, a Democrat, declined to call the bill to the floor.
On Monday, a group of Illinois House Democrats <a href="https://twitter.com/janschakowsky/status/1721674773669834859" target="_blank" rel="noopener">called</a> for scrapping the program, arguing that school vouchers &#8220;perpetuate and deepen the education inequities that plague Illinois&#8221; and complaining that many of the private schools are &#8220;run by religious groups&#8221; and &#8220;openly discriminate&#8221; on the basis of things like gender identity.
Meanwhile, hundreds of parents and others with signs reading “Save My Scholarship” rallied at the House <a href="https://www.wbez.org/stories/illinois-controversial-private-school-scholarship-program-is-ending/849c1d35-b525-4dde-adbf-9147aa38a224" target="_blank" rel="noopener">during</a> all six days of the fall legislative session.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Right outside the House Chamber!
SAVE MY SCHOLARSHIP KIDS OVER POLITICS CALL THE BILL <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisWelch_JD?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ChrisWelch_JD</a> <a href="https://t.co/hUZsBb8ZKD">pic.twitter.com/hUZsBb8ZKD</a>
&mdash; Illinois Freedom Caucus 🇺🇸 (@ILFreedomCaucus) <a href="https://twitter.com/ILFreedomCaucus/status/1722680484663017488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 9, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The Republican House minority leader, Tony McCombie, promised to fight to reauthorize the school choice program next year.
“I think there is some things that we can do to make it a better program, a more effective program, that could serve more students as well,” McCombie said.
Teachers unions were the main opponent of the Invest in Kids program.
The president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers celebrated in a statement on Thursday, saying there is a &#8220;nationwide push to divert public dollars from our public schools.&#8221;
“Illinois lawmakers chose to put our public schools first and end the state program that subsidized private, mostly religious schools, many of which have discriminatory policies,” union President Dan Montgomery said.
Over the last few years, the school choice issue has taken center stage in several states.
Florida expanded its school choice program and has <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/florida-expanded-school-choice-defies-doomsday-predictions-as-tens-of-thousands-of-students-enroll/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">over 90,000</a> more students enrolled in private schools and other alternative education programs than last year.
In Arizona, more than <a href="https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/2-arizona-school-choice-leaders-resign-as-controversy-over-the-program-continues" target="_blank" rel="noopener">60,000</a> students have used the state&#8217;s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, a number that skyrocketed over the last year.

Parents Call For Childcare Subsidies

Illinois Democrats Kill State’s Only School Choice Program

Illinois Democrats Kill State's Only School Choice Program

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Homeschooling has become America’s fastest-growing form of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/education">education</a> and continues to explode in popularity long after pandemic-era remote learning has ended, a new Washington Post analysis shows.
The dramatic rise in homeschooling that began during the pandemic continued through the school year that ended this past spring, according to the Post&#8217;s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/2023/homeschooling-growth-data-by-district/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f003?utm_campaign=wp_main&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter" target="_blank" rel="noopener">analysis</a>, which looked at data from nearly 7,000 school districts across the country.
Homeschooling&#8217;s continued popularity flies in the face of predictions that most families would go back to in-person classes at schools once controversial pandemic restrictions like mask mandates ended. Another concern parents had after the pandemic is learning loss in public schools, which may also be driving some families to homeschool.
&#8220;Home schooling’s surging popularity crosses every measurable line of politics, geography and demographics,&#8221; the Post&#8217;s analysis stated.
The analysis looked at data from 32 states and the District of Columbia, which represent more than 60% of school-age children. The data is incomplete because some states do not have reliable tallies of homeschoolers, and 11 states, including Texas, Michigan, Connecticut, and Illinois, do not require families to notify the state when they decide to homeschool.
Nevertheless, the numbers that are available indicate that homeschooling has become a &#8220;mainstay of the American educational system,&#8221; the Post said.
Before the pandemic, there were 1.5 million homeschoolers in the U.S., according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Now, there are between 1.9 million and 2.7 million homeschoolers in the country, the Post&#8217;s analysis estimated.
Only two states, Georgia and Maryland, have seen homeschooling return to pre-pandemic levels.
With more than 154,000 homeschoolers, Florida has the largest homeschool population among the states with available data.
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However, the state with the fastest growth is blue New York, where the homeschool population has more than doubled since 2017 to almost 52,000 kids. Perhaps surprisingly, the trend is moving fastest in deep blue New York City, according to the analysis.
In 24 of New York City&#8217;s 33 school districts, the number of homeschooled children rose by at least 200% over six years. Brooklyn and the Bronx saw the highest growth rate — some of those boroughs&#8217; districts saw more than 300% growth.
Homeschooling&#8217;s popularity is also not confined to poorly performing public school districts, the analysis found.
Last fall, more than 60,000 students were homeschooled in districts that rank in the top fifth for academic achievement in the country.
Despite homeschoolers often <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/09/study-of-the-day-home-schooled-children-score-higher-on-tests/245036/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">outperforming</a> their public school peers, critics continue to push for more government oversight.
&#8220;Many of America’s new home-schooled children have entered a world where no government official will ever check on what, or how well, they are being taught,&#8221; the Post noted.

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