was kicking her over and over. by the end of the night, she decided she was not going to go anywhere. she wanted to protect democratic priorities. >> susan page tonight at 8:00 on q&a. you can also find all q&a interviews wherever you get your podcasts. ♪

>> secretary of state mike pompeo with the potential 2024 -- speaks on an event on school vouchers. this is about an hour. >> i guess we will get one of the microphones. i am david mcintosh. welcome to our first of the series of national forums on school choice. i want to thank everybody here at the new hampshire state bank theater. they have done a great job of helping us get set up and it is great to be in concorde. all of you from the granite state, thank you. you are such welcoming folks to bring us here. we have an exciting program i cannot wait to bring to you.

largest organization to fight for limited government and freedom. this is a first of a series of several forms where we will present the case for school choice across america. last year with covid, the school shut down and left so many students and parents stranded. that episode open their eyes to the fact that too often, politicians care more about their interest than they do about making sure every student has the best possible education. so we are partnering with betsy devos and other conservatives to capitalize on this moment and present a unique ability of school choice to lift our students and give them great

opportunities for a fantastic education. it's a structural solution to many problems we've been seeing. so i want to bring forward betsy devos, a leader and innovator and champion for freedom in education. she has fought tirelessly to get government out of the way and allow students and parents the freedom and resources and support they need to choose where, when, and how they learn. betsy devos. [applause]

betsy devos: thank you for hosting this forum and providing this opportunity to talk about this subject. thank you to mike pompeo and to all of you for being here. today more than ever is an important moment for the future of education and future of k-12 this last year has laid bare many of the problems that many families have experienced in a whole new way.

the union bosses and all of their allies and bureaucrats that support everything about the status quo have overstepped and overreached and now is an important moment to really introduce policies that are going to empower families and kids to find the right fit for education. fit for education. so thank you for being here to talk about this subject with us and i look forward to the conversation. [applause] >> i want to bring our next speaker, mike pompeo served under the trump administration as director of the cia. he was elected to four terms in congress from kansas prior to that and has an illustrious career in business and graduated

top of his class at west point. he served in a patrol unit at the iron curtain. he graduated from harvard law. i also want to ask him, given everything that has happened in afghanistan, to say some comments on that. mike, come on out. [applause] mike pompeo: thank you, everyone. good afternoon. thank you for coming. david mentioned the president just spoke about afghanistan and

i know we are here to talk about education on freedom but it is worth taking a moment to talk about freedom and what has happened these past weeks in afghanistan. i worked tirelessly to deliver a path forward where we could get our young women and men home in a way that was consistent with american values to make sure we got every american and all our equipment out in an orderly way. this ministration made a different choice. they made a decision to set a date and they never made a plan to make sure we got all americans own and the result was

chaos that ended in the deaths of 13 americans. those marines did noble service and kept us all safe. we should thank every veteran who served their for the work they did -- he served th -- who served there to keep us safe for the work they did. turning to today's topic, you must think it's odd that the former secretary of state is here. i taught fifth grade sunday school so i consider myself an educator. [laughter] not really.

although that is the best preparation for being secretary of state you can possibly imagine. [laughter] as i traveled the world, i watched a lot of bad actors. there was no threat. not chinese communist party, not north korea, not vladimir putin, nothing is more likely to undermine us here in the united states then the failure to educate. it's not a close call. we are on the cusp of losing it. we know the kinds of things our kids should be taught and who should make those decisions. the parents and families. they should have the capacity to make the decisions for their own

kids, the things they want them to learn. that's why school choice is imperative. we want to make sure these people learn real american history. the noble sounding of this exceptional country. we want to make sure they can read and write and do math. these are the things that teachers taught for so many years and we have walked so far away with the junk that is brought into the classroom today. we need schools to reflect the understanding that our founders brought. if we teach real american history and make sure kids are learning the character traits that will lead them to live good productive lives, this will continue to be the greatest

nation where my grandkids and great can kids -- and great grandkids are here. thank you. [applause] >> the next person i want to introduce is chris wilson, a poster -- pollster who has directed research for presidential candidates. he is a political analyst on fox news and msnbc. he is brilliant. we asked him to talk to parents across the country and elicit from them what they care about

in education and school choice and share that data with us. he lets the facts speak for the argument. let me give you chris wilson. [applause] chris: i'm sure everybody got up this morning excited to see abundance of chart. -- charts. i will try not to put everyone to sleep. i want to talk about the extensiveness of this study. it's probably one of the most thorough programs i've been part of.

before we started, we talked with a lot of subject matter experts and did some online studies in which we arrived at the conclusions i will present today. the first is that the covid-19 pandemic created an opportunity to foster school choice around the country. in the last six years, opinions have shifted in favor of school choice. school choice actually creates negative reaction in people who are supportive of the program but not the terminology. the printing -- branding needs a new look.

no effort that has the features of school choice, supporting messaging, and bring school choice to parents across the country. let's talk about what happened before and after covid. on the left, overall satisfaction and the growth since. stratification has -- satisfy dictation -- i have not seen any other issue that has had such a shift in such a short time. the red is on the issue of school choice. the green goes up a little and

the red goes up a little. there is some dissatisfaction with education in general. to arrive at this terminology, we use a discrete choice and the methodology, if you are testing a product to sell, like a television, you would test the attributes like the price, the screen, and then within the screen, parts of the screen. is it led, lcd, etc., what are the components within a product that cause someone to buy one television over another. so we look at multiple terms and they were randomized. i have used this methodology for

many companies. the words school freedom because people to be more supportive of the overall program. school choice and parental choice have negative connotations because they have been used by opponents of school choice and targeted toward negative aspects of the program. school freedom as a program and school choice as a component are the best ways to talk about what we are here today advocate for. i want to show you some percentages. i break this into urban and nonurban. school freedom works in both

better than anything else. several names and labels elicit support. school freedom elicits the most. then we go into features. we have tested some different features. this is broken down by party. the terms that have access to good education works for everyone. the top issue with republicans right now is crt.

access to good education works for everyone in urban areas. they are frustrated with their schools and what their students to be invested in. they have great amounts and movement in attitude because of covid. the messaging. the best message with democrats is freedom to allow students access to classes to help them grow and for parents to decide

where education will go. breaking it down by race, urban, african-american, school freedom would cut barriers to education and for hispanics it would personalize education for disadvantaged students. we want to look at as education decreased, who do people see is at fault. those in green are being blamed for the fall -- the loss of education. they do not see about teachers unions or school boards. in urban areas they see it as inadequate teachers but it comes

down to politicians and bureaucrats. it's important to know what words work and what don't. you don't want to make it about inadequate teachers were unions. crt doesn't work with anyone besides republicans. looking at republican primaries, this is becoming a major issue. it works in primaries but not in generals. i look at everything politically . it is a failing on my part. the question in the last two years, satisfaction has been diminished in children's education.

school choice has been branded as a term that doesn't really mean anything except vouchers. so school freedom is the way forward. the issue requires a rebrand. the public are not blaming teachers or teachers unions and crt is effective among republicans but no one else. features and messaging vary by location. there is no pluralistic message that works overall. it requires an understanding of who you are speaking to and where you are speaking.

[applause] david: betsy, the stages years. ms. devos: thank you for enjoying and appreciating that testimony from some awesome people who have become friends. mike, thank you for being here. interested in talking with you about the topic. you are a west point grad who served in the military for five years. served in congress, head of the cia, took the nation's top this plum is a job as secretary of state and have -- diplomacy job

as secretary of state and have a unique perspective about how students are prepared to take on college, workforce, or serve their country in various ways. why do you think school freedom or school choice is important? mr. pompeo: we should all work on tuesday. what a gracious young man filled with love. that was glorious. we know there are families who look at whether students are and they don't see it as satisfactory. they want something special for their student and they are trapped in a place where they can't get the education they need. there are few places in the american economy where monopolies dominate.

parents should have the ability to choose the product they want for their child. our son attended private school in his early years and then went to a big public high school. every parent will make a different set of choices but it is important for the kids to come out of school with confidence on the knowledge they have gained. we are competing all around the world and we want to make sure our children are raised with the analects and character they need to compete on the global stage. the ability to have freedom will improve quality of life for all of us. ms. devos: this year has been a banner year for school freedom. 21 states have expanded or

improved or started new programs in part because of school pro -- school closures and mask mandate and everything associated with covid. talk about the impact you think the shutdown has had on the expansion of school choice? mr. pompeo: it became politics, not science. parents are angry about what school systems did to their children. whether it was the unions were school boards, they denied their students the opportunity to learn for in a year in an environment where they could move. you only get 12 years. they took 8% or 12% away.

it gave parents a lot of insight. you saw testimony in the film by parents who were teaching their kids at home and then they had to go back to work and they got to see that the curriculum was not meeting their child's needs. they got to see the substance of what was being presented to their children and there's nothing like a mama bear who is in happy. there were a lot of unhappy mama bears. some of the state legislatures a new hampshire that made it happen, god bless you for doing it, you will make new hampshire better and it will give parents freedom to make good choices for their kids. ms. devos: parents had a window

like never before on their kids education on many are displeased. over one million children never participated in the distance learning and 11 million who were in some way at a huge deficit. that's 20% of the kids in the public school. this has been a challenging year for kids across the country. you talked about how the curriculum decisions might influence how parents and americans are viewing education today. david: when the parents got frustrated, they said, i want something different. i want something new. among parents with kids k-12,

the support for school choice is that 80%. 80% of them walked more impact on the decisions the schools are making on more authority over what is happening. i think the school choice education freedom program will empower parents and they will be able to make sure that the schools provide the education. that's the most remarkable thing from the data. increased support for something that many of you have worked on for years. now those with students in schools are seeing the light and i think it gives us an opportunity to move forward on it. mr. pompeo: i wonder who the other 20% are, who want less choice. right?

i want my child to be locked into the system. i think americans appreciate freedom and the opportunity to make decisions for their families and this is at the center of the. -- this is at the center of that. ms. devos: when we served together, mike, i worked hard with trump to introduce education freedom scholarship and it would be the most significant investment in kids on the federal level. it is a tax credit to bolster data-driven initiatives. it would provide rocket fuel to efforts already going on in states. and once it is law, it will

significantly impact billions of kids. do you believe the next administration and congress should pass a bill like this? mr. pompeo: i was working in a different space but i know this legislation and i know what it was designed to do. it wasn't washington driven. if you think you're going to just hand this over to those career progression -- career professionals, they think this is an attack on them. they have a power base they want to keep control of. i want the people of new hampshire to be able to make good decisions bidders kids -- decisions for their kids and this legislation would allow for

that. it allows good parents to make good decisions for their kids. this is a freedom loving idea and i hope we will find a federal legislature to do it. david: you in the trump administration put an idea forward during the covid relief package that the additional money that was going to schools should be directed to the parents and let them choose to the public school or to private school or home schooling. when you start thinking about directing the public money for schools, school choice or school freedom becomes also freedom for the public school students.

they will have much more direct authority over a school board or bureaucrat if they have to go to the parent and say, we need you to check off that we get the covid money. it is an empowering proposal. it failed in the senate along partisan lines by one vote but what we are seeing is more awareness that if we direct money through parents, is a way to accomplish school freedom. ms. devos: i like to use the metaphor of a kid with a backpack going to school with the things they need every day and having the resources attached to that backpack to find the right fit.

let's talk a little about american students'standing in the world. -- students' standing in the world. american students are lagging in reading, math, and science. the last data from the pisa test was 2018 before the pandemic. this chart shows the mean science and reading math scores. we are ranked 22nd. in math we are four years behind our counterparts in china. that is shown here on the chart. how do you think that impacts long-term economic competitiveness?

>> there are near-term challenges and long-term implications. near term, best and brightest will want to come here and our businesses will want to hire them. but we want them to work with the kids from the united states. but they have to have the intellectual talent so there was a short-term challenge. long-term, it will put america in a second or third tier and we have not been there in american history before. this is a long-term trend. one reason for this is certainly the absent -- the absence of competition in the school space.

when you have a monopoly, to teach them only what you want and not what you don't, this is why freedom makes sense. my two -- my sister is a public school teacher, and my brother-in-law is a teacher. given freedom to actually create a curriculum and grow the kids in her space, she would have been all over it but she also was restricted. the fact that the kids are behind does not fall to the great people who have chosen to educate the next generation. it falls to the bureaucracy and union leaders who are not prepared to meet today's challenges while other countries around the world have managed to confront those challenges. ms. devos: thinking about

teachers, the central figures they are in this equation, more freedom gives teachers more freedom to teach as they need and want to. are you concerned about our ability from a military perspective vis-a-vis russia and china and now most treatments -- most recently the taliban? mr. pompeo: i'm worried about a lot of things. [laughter] it's absolutely the case that we for the last, at least since world war ii, to provide our intelligence operators and service members the finest equipment in the world. our text could shoot the farthest. we had the best optical student see the battlefield. we had the best technology.

everyone wanted to buy american equipment with american intellectual property inside. but now we do not have the best scientists and mathematicians and to the people who understand semi conductor technology. not just to have the best but to have them at scale with real volume to deliver complex components to the fighting forces, we absolutely run the risk that the next time we send them into harms way, they will be doing it with equipment that is not the highest standard. it would be unconscionable to do to them. ms. devos: let's look a own students preparedness to advance . the achievement gap widens

between the high-performing students and the lower performing students. examples from the nation's report card are from 2019, the most recent data. i focused on fourth-graders. the achievement gap between the highest and lowest performers has widened, and this is after $1 trillion was spent to close the gap. students in the bottom 10% are doing worse than they were a decade ago. you were a west point cadet. nearly one third of students who want to enlist cannot pass the academic portion of the entry exam for the military. is education failure also a national is -- national security failure?

david: yes. the gap is real. kids who come from parents with resources, one parent can stay home and send their kids to school in the right place. what new hampshire has done is to give the other parents who do not have all those options the same chance. why would we give parents with means the capacity for school freedom but not every parent that capacity? it's the right thing to do morally and for the individual and important for the country, to raise up many, not just a

handful. we have to make sure that every child has the opportunity to go to them to -- has the opportunity to go to a place that gives them a chance. ms. devos: let's talk about the role of the federal government versus the state in education. more than $1 trillion has been spent at the federal level as a way to close achievement gaps and it has not worked. why hasn't it worked? david: betsy, you saw this up close and personal running that department. mr. pompeo: if you try to do this at the national level you

just cannot appreciate all of the different conditions. in the western part of my state, a big city would have 500 people and a community might have one high school that has 600 kids. you go to wichita or kansas city and there is a much more urban environment. culturally very different with a different situation. it is not possible for a bureaucrat in washington to take that all on but it is possible for a school board in johnson county, kansas, to get it right. it's not necessarily that the federal people are bad or not trying, it's that to capture what is going on and understand what the students need, you need

to empower students and families and disempower bureaucrats in washington. ms. devos: one thing i proposed was -- if you were back in washington in a leadership role, would you commit to limiting the role of the federal government and education? mr. pompeo: this has been a long-standing conservative idea. sign me up. [laughter] there are resources that come from washington to protect us and keep us secure and they are in the appropriate place. national defense matters.

but schools and family, those are best left to local communities. all the things that impact families every day, from so many different environments, to try to have a uniform national standard, the task is too big. we should drive this money down and disperse it in a way that gives the decision-making authority to state or local government and i think we would see an improvement in our capacity to educate our students and more freedom. david: i am a big fan of block granting. my heart would say let's lock

grant to the parents and let each one decide where the money should go, school system or private schools. take the government out and let it go back to the schools. ms. devos: absolutely. we talked about the fact that school freedom enjoys broad bipartisan support and has grown this year. one of the investments the federal government makes is the d.c. action scholarship program. you fought hard in congress during the obama administration and it is under attack now. but even dianne feinstein supports the program. talk about why you supported the program and what should be done to protect it. david: these kids impacted are

the ones who live in some of the most difficult communities in our country. nearly every state has places like this. this particular fund was put in place on a bipartisan basis. school freedom should not be political. it was working. there were happy families and there was more demand than there was supply for these scholarships. then it became messed up in union politics is my guess. i watched democrats walk away from the commitment to kids in difficult conditions. some of them without parents to help them make the dish -- make the decisions. i could never figure out why there was so much opposition. ms. devos: washington, d.c. is the only place where the federal

government has a role in education because of the nature of the district. thank you for championing the program. mr. pompeo: there is a movie that dramatizes that movie called miss virginia. ms. devos: a great movie. we know that school choice is a political winner. governor desantis was a beneficiary of their support for the program in florida and it was because a lot of democrats who support school choice voted them, including minority and

female voters who might not have otherwise supported them. should conservatives be leaning into this issue more? mr. pompeo: i worked on this a long time ago before i ran for congress. the kansas group i was part of, we had a good sized homeschool organization but not good charter school laws so the freedom for students to get outside the government monopoly was not widely available and what i could see was it was in the finest conservative tradition to give those powers to families. but everyone realized it was not politically useful, it was also important for the young people. ms. devos: one last question.

we are in back-to-school season and we see a lot of activities. what is your message to parents and students across the country as they go back to school? mr. pompeo: it's reminds me of what i used to tell my son. work hard, tell the truth, keep your faith. i think that applies to the young people headed back to school. be a voracious learner. learn the things your parents and family want you to learn. work hard at this. keep your faith. understand who you are. be centered in the things you know to be important and the people involved can set the course. we have the responsibility to reward the young people who make

the choice to work hard and tell the truth and keep the faith. if they do those things we have an obligation to them and i hope this is a school year full of kids in the classroom learning reading, writing, around their peers and engaged all of the things we have learned. it's important we get our kids back in the classroom and that we have schools that parents love and want their children to be part of. ms. devos: thank you. [applause] david: thank you, betsy and mike. as you are talking about if leaders should be talking more about this, i want to ask the audience, you are from new

hampshire. every four years you see a lot of politicians come and go. maybe by round of applause, would you like them to talk more about school freedom when they come into town? [applause] that is great. because in order to promote and encourage and pass school freedom bills, we will need an army of leaders who will step up regardless of party and do what is right for the children. i appreciate you coming here. join the army. we have some papers you can fill out if you want to stay in contact with what we are doing around the country. betsy or mike, would you like to make any closing remarks? ms. devos: thank you and club

for growth for this opportunity to talk about this important issue and in a way that is forward leaning and i think we have such good ideas that are proven in states across the country and we need to continue to build on those and support children and their families to find the right fit for them, because we know it is critical to the future of our country to ensure that every single child has the opportunity to fully develop themselves and their gifts and talents. so again, thank you for this opportunity and mike, thank you for your commitment to this issue and expanding opportunities for kids. mr. pompeo: thank you for giving me this opportunity and thank you all for being here. this is an important issue for the next generation. you took time to be here with us

and talk about this and be part of this. thank you to new hampshire for heading down this path in a serious way. it's incredibly important. you lead the nation in so many ways. make sure you hold your elected officials accountable to get this right in new hampshire and we will do our part to make sure other states do it as well. [applause] david: thank you. that concludes our program. ♪ announcer: c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more including charter communication. >> broadband is a force for

empowerment. that is why charter invested billions both in infrastructure, upgrading technology, empowering opportunities in communities big and small. charter is connecting us. announcer: charter communications supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. announcer: today on "washington journal," we hear from r street institute's jerry theodorou. he will discuss insurance issues related to natural disasters and climate change. inside elections's jacob rubashkin will talk about the issues and races that could determine which party controls the house and senate in campaign 2022. afterwards, former national association of business political action committee's president dan ekstein discusses how the pandemic has impacted

lobbying and advocacy efforts on capitol hill. be sure to join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, text messages and tweets. "washington journal" is next. announcer: we are having a technical problem -- ♪ host: good morning. it is sunday, september 5, 2021. we talked campaign 2022, lobbying in the age of covid, and the impact of climate change on disaster insurance. we begin with the question on the standing of the u.s. and the world today. as you look at the state of the country in september 2021 we want to know if you believe the united states of america is the greatest country in the world. democrats can call (202)-748-8000, republicans (202)-748-8001, ind