Something unexpected is happening in American education. Parents are taking control, and the results are nothing like what anyone predicted.

"It's not one size fits all," says Corey DeAngelis, author of the best-selling book The Parent Revolution and one of the nation's leading advocates for educational freedom. "It's one size fits none. We should let a thousand flowers bloom instead."

DeAngelis joined us on the OpenEd podcast to discuss how 17 states have quietly revolutionized education by doing something simple yet profound: letting education dollars follow the student rather than the system.

Transcript

Isaac Morehouse: Your book is called "The Parent Revolution," not "The Education Revolution." Why parents specifically?

Corey DeAngelis: Parents have woken up. They're never going back to sleep. For decades, the only organized group in education represented the employees. Now there's a new sheriff in town. They're called parents. And in the past four years, we've had more advancement on school choice than in the preceding four decades.

Isaac: I live in Florida and we homeschool, I guess, but my daughter attends a three-day-a-week school, plays volleyball at a different private school, does some online learning... I don't even know what to call it anymore.

Corey: That's exactly right. And that's the future of education. Not everyone's doing this hybrid approach yet, but more families are discovering they can customize education to fit their child's needs. You can use some funding for home-based education, some for private school courses, some for online learning. The rigid categories don't matter anymore.

Isaac: This seems to challenge the whole premise of traditional education.

Corey: Think about how we actually learn. How do people learn to walk? How do kids learn to talk? The reality is most of our learning, even now, happens outside the traditional school system. It should be self-directed. It should be based on interest.

When I was in school, I'd go home and read about topics that interested me, then come to class prepared. I didn't absorb information being force-fed in class. That's how human beings naturally learn.

Isaac: What changed to make this possible now?

Corey: Parents got to see behind the curtain. They saw their kids could learn more in a fraction of the time. Kids were less anxious. Parents realized they were more capable than they'd been told.

You know, parents were always told, "You're not an educator, you can't figure this out." But you don't have to be an engineer to choose your child's math teacher. You don't have to be a surgeon to choose your child's doctor. And you don't need a teaching degree to know what's best for your child's education.

Isaac: Tell me about the teachers in all this. It seems like this could benefit them too.

Corey: Absolutely. The Washington Post of all places wrote about this occurrence during COVID in New Jersey. They were covering a public school teacher who had been in the system for decades, decided to leave and created her own micro school. She was making the same amount of money as a tenured school teacher but had a fraction of the class size—I believe like 10 as opposed to 30. And she didn't have to deal with all the red tape.

This isn't just a win for parents and students. It's also a win for teachers too. They get more autonomy, smaller class sizes, and can focus on what they do best—actually teaching kids.

Isaac: What about parents who feel overwhelmed by choice? Who worry they're not qualified?

Corey: Look, in Chicago they have 30 to 40 schools with zero percent math proficiency rates. Zero percent. Come on, you can do better than zero percent.

How did you figure things out before kindergarten? You are your child's first and foremost educator, and I would argue the best educator your child's ever going to have. You taught them to walk, to talk, to navigate the world. Why would that suddenly stop at age five?

Isaac: So what can parents do right now, regardless of their state's policies?

Corey: First, look at which policies are already available in your state. Most states—I believe like 48 of them now—have charter schools, for example. And even states like California have virtual charter schools where, if you're doing home-based education, you can have like three or four thousand dollars per student per year. A lot of people just don't know about these things.

Second, trust yourself. You know your child better than any system ever could. You see their struggles, their interests, their potential. No standardized approach can match that knowledge.

Finally, connect with other parents. This revolution is happening because parents are sharing information, supporting each other, and demanding better. Your voice matters more than you think.

Isaac: Any final thoughts for parents considering their options?

Corey: The question isn't whether traditional schools are good or bad. The question is: which of these adults get to decide what's best for a particular child? And I think parents are in the best position. They have the most information on the ground. They're the closest to that member of their family. It's their child. No one else is.

Just because you live in a state that doesn't have education savings accounts right now, I think that's going to change soon, but it's going to rely on people like you working alongside other parents and grandparents and members of your community to push for the right thing.

You figured out how to raise your child before they turned five. There's no reason that wisdom suddenly disappears when they reach school age. Trust yourself. You've got this.

The parent revolution isn't about tearing down what exists—it's about building what our children actually need. As more states embrace educational freedom, families are creating learning experiences as unique as their kids. And that's exactly how it should be.

Listen to the full conversation on the OpenEd Podcast.

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