What up, you beautiful bastards? Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show. It is Friday,

which means you're getting a very special edition of the show. It is from the bastards. So what that means is that you have control. You'll sit in questions or topics you want us to break down and we do our Philip DeFranco Show thing and get it out to you. So, hey, hit that like button and let's dive into our first question and topic. And first up today, we've got Nick, who's actually worked as a teacher in Dallas, asking a question, I think a lot of parents are genuinely

wrestling with right now. In the past 10 years, the education system doesn't seem what it used to be back in the day. It kind of scares me to see the way it's been dissolved as far as what we're allowed to teach kids and what we're allowed to allow them to learn. And it's kind of surprising to me. As a parent, would you allow your kids to go to the public school system that they have nowadays? So this hits close to home for me. My wife's even running for the school board here because we really, really care about the public school system. But before I give you my answer, let's actually look at the state of public education in America, because the data is actually

sobering. And we'll start with the most straightforward measure, are kids actually learning? Right, and to answer that question, we need to take a look at results from national assessment of educational progress, which is a series of standardized tests, widely known as the nation's report card. When you look at the most recent data from 2024, it shows that 12th grade reading and math scores, they'd hit record lows.

Just 35% of high school seniors were proficient in reading, 32% scored below the basic level. And math was even worse, only 22% of seniors were proficient and nearly half scored below basic, half. So the gap between the highest and lowest performing eighth graders, it's the widest it's ever been.

And experts largely point to the pandemic as the primary cause, but it's also not the only one. Chronic absenteeism, more screen time, shorter attention spans, and a decline, and kids reading longer form content are all contributing factors. And here's the thing that makes it worse. The Trump administration has cut roughly a dozen national and state student assessments through 2032. So on top of scores dropping,

we're also going to have less visibility into how much they're dropping. And the people

inside of the system, they are not optimistic. A Pew Research Center report from 2024 found that

82% of teachers said that the overall state of public K-12 education, it has gotten worse in the past

five years. Where than half said that they wouldn't advise a young person to even enter the profession. You had a 2025 Gallup poll finding that 73% of Americans said they were very or somewhat dissatisfied with the quality of the U.S. public education system. And overall, the percentage of adults who were still satisfied is the lowest it's ever been since Gallup started asking the question back in 2001. Also about half of all U.S. adults say public K to 12 is going in the wrong the wrong direction. And then, you know, there's the curriculum debate. And that's been its own firestorm. I mean, from 2021 to 2024, nearly one-third of states have banned K-12 school curricula that offer critical perspectives on America's racial history. During that same time period, legislatures in at least 40 states introduce more than 200 pieces of legislation to restrict what teachers can discuss and actually punish them for teaching what some call divisive topics. As supporters argue, this protects kids or in political indoctrination, but critics argue it does the opposite, that limiting complex, honest conversations about history, it leaves students with a simplified and distorted picture of the world. So with all of that context, you know, what are families actually doing? Well, a lot of them, they're leaving. Private school enrollment? It has surged post-pandemic with roughly 40% of private schools reporting enrollment increases in the 2023-2020 school year. And a big driver of that has been the expansion of school programs, government-funded vouchers that let families use taxpayer dollars to pay for private school. Right before the pandemic, just over half a million students were using those programs, and now, I mean, that's above 1.3 million. And you're seeing things like an Ed Choice survey finding that 50% of parents would send their kids to private school or homeschool if given the option. Now with that, you know, private schools do consistently outperform public schools and standardized tests and college placement, but researchers are very quick to add here. There's important context. When you control for socioeconomic

status, that achievement gap shrinks dramatically. The 2018 analysis found that a student's success

is less about the type of school they attend and more about the attributes of their family,

parental education levels, income, access to tutors, having a quiet space to study at home,

things like that. So essentially, private schools often look better on paper, partly because they serve wealthier students who are likely going to do well regardless. But that said, the post-pandemic achievement gaps between public and private schools, they've just grown and lower-income communities are bearing the brunt of all of it. And then, you know, it can get complicated. Critics are the school choice movement, they argue that pulling students and the funding tied to them out of the public schools, it's just accelerating a death spiral for those institutions. So you see things like between 2019 and 2023, enrollment declined by 20% or more at nearly one in 12 public schools. Around 1,000 public schools close every year. And also a Stanford analysis found that majority black public schools are far more likely to be among those closures. And the argument being you drain public schools of students and money that the quality then drops, more people leave, the quality drops further, and eventually the school just shuts down. And this is happening disproportionately in communities that already have the fewest options. And so this question of whether you send your kid to public school, it ends up not just being a personal one. It becomes a deeply political one with real downstream consequences for communities that don't have the option to choose. And so for us personally, we've decided to send our kids to public school. We have the money to go private, we've done it in the past, but this is what feels right to us right now. And you know, part of that, it's also connected to my belief that the best school for you, especially K to 12 is the one that's closest. The schools, the infrastructure, the staff, all of that, it matters. But also something the data has shown is that kids are really able to thrive when they're able to maximize the time they have out of school. And so part of that's connected to how much time are you losing on the drive or the bus into school and back? Or the kids, your kids are around at school, also close by, is there sort of a community thing? And a lot of that it's connected to, you know, we're stronger and better together. There's also a whole thing I could talk about with kids being lonelier than ever, and so it's important that we're maximizing and doing things that help socialize and benefit kids outside of school. So again, while I understand, you know, what you do with your kids, it is a very personal issue. This is how I currently look at it, and I wanna try and help build up something rather than strip something down and run away. And then there's more we're gonna dive into based off of your questions, but first, let me take a minute to thank a sponsor and say, you know, remember when changing your password meant adding a number to the end? Well, it turns out millions of people's Gmail passwords didn't stand a chance, and that's just another reason why today's sponsor, NordVPN, it's a must have. Security researchers have confirmed that Gmail usernames and passwords were included in a massive leak, part of a 183 million online accounts that are floating around the dark web right now. And the worst part is that even if Google wasn't hacked, your reused passwords across apps makes it insanely easy for hackers to break into everything else you own. The NordVPN's dark web monitor alerts you the moment that your email or password shows up in a leak, so you know before any hacker tries anything. You know, all your internet traffic stays encrypted, meaning that your data is yours, even if the website that you're using is held together with duct tape and hope.

Plus, NordVPN has a strict no logs policy. They're not tracking you, storing you or selling you.

They protect you, period. And you know, I'm protected and you should be too. Right now, you can get an exclusive discount on a two-year plan, plus four extra months free when you use my link. It's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee.

Just scan that code or go to NordVPN.com slash Phil.

That's NordVPN.com slash Phil.

But that next step today, we've got Maddie from Canada coming in with a question that I think honestly, a lot of Americans have thought about, at least over the last year and a half. Hey, Phil. I was just wondering if you would ever consider leaving America if things get really, really bad. So where I'll start is with polling. Because the numbers, they've shifted dramatically in a very short period of time. A 2025 Gallup poll found that roughly one in five Americans want to move abroad permanently. And while that sounds like a lot, and yes, it definitely is, here's what really makes it crazy. That is more double the number who said the same thing a decade ago. There's been a steady climb since 2014, and then it's just been accelerating.

A Harris poll last year found that foreign 10 Americans

have either considered or are actively planning

to move outside of the United States.

...