Welcome to the Freedom to Learn podcast.

I'm your host, Ginny Gentles.

This season, we're diving into what it means to return education to states, communities, and families.

And we're exploring what becomes possible when education is freed from union dominance and federal control.

Auschwitz states invest limited education dollars to raise student achievement.

New research from the American Federation for Children asked this question,

and the findings may surprise you.

Patrick Graff, Senior Fellow with AFC,

compared the best research in the competitive effects of school choice programs and the best research in K-12 public school spending, both of which were published in top economics journals.

He found that Florida's school-rich-policy environment benefited both public and private school

students and the effects of competition created a return on investment much larger than simply

spending more on public schools.

He joins us today to explain this research and his findings.

Patrick began his career as a third grade teacher in Florida and later served as Associate

Director of the Alliance for Catholic Education or ACE Teaching Fellows Program.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame,

where he specialized in education and quantitative research methods.

Patrick Graff, welcome to Freedom to Learn.

Great to be with you, Jenny.

We're here today to talk about your research that found that Florida's investment in school choice is 11 times more cost effective than increasing public school spending.

I was excited to release this new research paper last week.

And really, I'm building on the research that others have done looking at this question in Florida.

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