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The unofficial title of used to be a fairly coveted one in U.S. politics, describing a state leader distinguished for his commitment to schools and willingness to spearhead bold reforms. Bill Clinton was an education governor, as were George W. Bush, Jim Hunt, and a handful of less-remembered figures from the 1990s and 2000s.

If anyone pursued the honorific over the last decade, it was former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. 

A Republican, he worked to raise the state鈥檚 academic standards and revise the standardized tests aligned with them; accelerated the development of over a dozen ; pushed for bipartisan legislation that ; and launched a $400 million effort to combat COVID learning loss with tutoring and supplemental learning time. 

Even more significantly, Youngkin put K鈥�12 schools at the center of his politics, kickstarting a period of vaulting policy ambition for his party and considerable challenges for Democrats. During an off-year 2021 campaign in which bathroom policies and critical race theory came to dominate the closing weeks, the GOP鈥檚 new star candidate was able to channel parents鈥� frustrations over nearly two years of COVID-related tumult in schools. 

Those attack lines were soon echoed in other states, with other Republicans racing to codify parental rights and adopt new school choice programs. For several years, the party took the initiative on the issue, enjoying a rare polling lead in many surveys as the public began to sour on the Biden administration鈥檚 agenda. Yet Youngkin himself 鈥� prevented by state law from seeking a second consecutive term, and never enjoying unified Republican control over the legislature in his four years in office 鈥� couldn鈥檛 aim quite so high, and his attempts to and of certain 鈥渄ivisive concepts鈥� were defeated.

Even after leaving office earlier this year, however, the former governor still hasn鈥檛 walked away from schools. In August, he of Empowering America鈥檚 Parents, a group advocating for more school choice and family autonomy in education. For the moment, its principal focus is the further spread of the , which allows students to receive scholarships to use on expenses like tutoring, curricula, and private school tuition.

Through the initiative, taxpayers around the country can receive a credit of up to $1,700 for donations to scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs), but governors and lawmakers must affirmatively opt in for families in their states to receive those resources. An earnings threshold is set at 300 percent of a given area鈥檚 median household income, making the vast majority of U.S. students eligible.

Youngkin is now working to persuade state leaders to sign on, but thus far, just a handful of blue-state governors have given their blessing, with many Democrats concerned that the credit is a backdoor voucher program. Youngkin sees the venture as an extended exercise in persuasion. 

In an interview with 社区黑料鈥檚 Kevin Mahnken, Youngkin discussed his support for school choice, the challenge of moving quickly in a politically divided state, and his mission to spread awareness of the school choice credit.

鈥淰ery few people understood that this opportunity for their children existed, and if they knew it existed, they didn’t understand how it worked,鈥� he said.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

社区黑料: What is the case you make to governors to participate in the Education Freedom Tax Credit? I’m especially thinking about leaders in states, red or blue, where K鈥�12 enrollments are shrinking, and voters may be leery of potentially extending public support to private education.

Glenn Youngkin: The first stop is to remind governors that their citizens want this. The data is overwhelming: , and over 70 percent of voters overall, want school choice in this format. It’s an overwhelming number for both Democrat and Republican governors to understand. This is not a partisan issue at all, it’s just what families want.

The second stop is to make sure they understand exactly how these scholarships are funded and how they can be used. You have to knock down the misperception, or the misinformation, that these scholarships deplete funding for public K鈥�12 education 鈥� because they don’t. The funding comes from private donations and a federal tax credit, not from the state. I think that’s something that a lot of elected leaders don’t fully understand because they’ve only been briefed by partisan folks.

Finally, you have to make it clear what these can be used for. Of course, they can be used for tuition support for students who want to go to private schools. But they can also be used for public school students who want tutoring, afterschool programs, or weekend support. They can be used by families with children who have developmental disabilities and need extra services.

The broad nature of the Education Freedom Tax Credit sells itself once people understand that it doesn’t restrict use only to tuition for private school access. In fact, it opens up all kinds of education supports for all students. Across America, 90 percent of kids are eligible for this. Oftentimes this aspect is part of the persuasion process with Democrat governors: The funding not only supplements their public education budget, it actually opens up programming that is not funded in public education. 

This is why I think there’s been real success in waking folks up, and it’s why these efforts are so important. Very few people understood that this opportunity for their children existed, and if they knew it existed, they didn’t understand how it worked. So part of our work, particularly in states where governors haven’t opted in yet, has been to make sure people understand how it works.

I’ve heard similar points made by the Democrats like Arne Duncan. But I’ve also heard concerns from progressives that this program will offer public support to religious schools, and that they may discriminate in their hiring or admissions decisions. Is that point a concern for you, and how would you address it if raised by others.

Clearly it wasn’t a concern for me, because I was the first governor in America to sign up for it. And it was something we worked intentionally to get done before I left office in January, because I believe that we’ve got to open up this avenue for parents to decide what fits their families’ needs. 

That’s what’s at the heart of the Education Freedom Tax Credit; It empowers parents and gives them the full panoply of options to choose from. It’s extraordinary. When we go talk to folks who may have an argument like you just laid out, I just remind them that it’s parents who make these decisions. It’s not an SGO or a state bureaucrat making them, it’s families deciding what’s best for their children. This tax credit enables them to have options, and one of the most important things to remember is that these scholarships can be used to supplement what your child is getting in a public school environment. 

At the end of the day, that’s what’s at the heart of this. The credit doesn’t restrict what they can be used for exclusively to private school settings, and they’re open to the vast majority of American kids. The threshold is just that extra-wealthy kids don’t get it, but everyone else can. That, to me, is as democratic as it gets.

You entered office hoping for a big expansion of charters and private school choice, and those aspirations weren’t realized. Did the political constraints at the state level inform your support of this federal program?

I’m wholeheartedly for the creation of this kind of education freedom account. That position wasn’t increased or accelerated by my experience as governor; it’s just my basic philosophical opinion that it’s right to give parents the ability to choose where their children can get the best education.

With that said, what we found in Virginia was that when we created 15 lab schools across the commonwealth 鈥� which was our way to address the fact that our state constitution makes charter schools very hard to implement 鈥� they became wildly popular everywhere they opened up. There were all kinds of them, from coding lab schools to health care lab schools to ones focused on the marine trades, and we saw waiting lists and massive interest from families. It was a chance for parents to choose a pathway for their child within the public school system.

This is why I think the Education Freedom Tax Credit should have universal appeal. It will provide incremental funding for exactly the kinds of things that anti-choice people have historically argued for. The reality is that, for the kind of innovative schools offering unique pathways to children who aren’t getting one otherwise, they now have a way to fund their work. What’s so exciting is that it’s empowering parents to make every decision they want to make for their children. So it’s up to school systems to provide options, and it’s up to families to investigate those options and truly decide the educational path for their children.

When you look back at your term as governor, what do you think your administration got right about K鈥�12 education? And what, if anything, did you get wrong?

When we came in, we identified that there had been a substantial decline in expectations for kids in Virginia. And as the honesty gap 鈥� the gap between what was happening in the state’s Standards of Learning assessments versus the Nation’s Report Card 鈥� widening, it became very clear that the first thing we needed to do was assess and raise expectations. We worked hard to do that.

The second thing we did, in association with that, was create optionality, flexibility, and multiple pathways in schools to provide students with more options along the way. 

One-size-fits-all doesn’t work for students, and we wanted to open up avenues for students to be able to pursue career and technical education in a way they’d never been able to before. One of the things I’m most proud of is the fact that we raised expectations, matched them with harder SOL tests, and watched students do better. And on top of that, we created these multiple pathways such that nearly 90 percent of students in Virginia graduate with either a credential or a certificate.

Those two facts are part of the education transformation that our administration brought to the state, and one of the other biggest steps we took was getting cell phones . I have to say that the combination of reducing expectations for kids 鈥� which was done systematically by the two predecessor administrations to mine 鈥� and the introduction of an unfettered use of smartphones was so detrimental to the mental health, academic performance, and safety of kids. I was proud of the fact that we addressed all of that very aggressively and have had spectacular outcomes.

Anything you’d like to do over from those years?

Innovation in schools is hard. We had an extraordinary model of rolling out lab schools with funding and collaboration with businesses and the university system. We were successful in getting 15 done, but I would have loved to get 50. If Virginia had a different constitution, and the governor could actually succeed himself 鈥� which you can’t 鈥� I really believe the momentum that showed itself in Years Three and Four of our lab school initiative would have translated into universal adoption across the state.

One of the frustrations of being Virginia’s governor is that you get four years. You run as fast as you can every single day, and there were fundamental things that really did take us 18鈥�24 months to get off the ground. I wish we had another four years to continue to scale it.

As you mentioned, your administration raised the minimum passing scores on state exams 鈥� a move your successor has . Yet it took most of your time in office for those benchmarks to take effect. Do you regret not moving faster?

It’s a great observation, and no business person going into government is comfortable with the pace of anything. But what we laid out when we went into government were the systematic changes needed. They started with curriculum, then standards, and then we had to change the testing in order to reflect the standards. 

We got all of it done, and it’s all in place. Of course, I wish we could have done it in Year One. But one of our great accomplishments was that we laid out a plan during the gubernatorial transition and then meticulously executed against it for four years. It is a huge vote of confidence to see that the new administration, which has not demonstrated a great deal of philosophical overlap with mine, does in this area. And I deeply appreciate it.

I imagine you also approved of Gov. Spanberger’s decision to veto legislation that would have mandated collective bargaining rights for teachers throughout Virginia.

Absolutely. I firmly believe the business community and local leadership around the state stood up in unison and demanded she veto that. To me, that’s Virginians speaking out loud.

You had mayors and city councils and boards of supervisors all saying that legislation would have been completely detrimental to both the functioning and cost of schools across the state. So I don’t think she had much of a choice.

Your emergence on the political stage augured a change in education politics, moving questions of curriculum and parental rights into the heart of the debate around schools. For a few years, Republicans even seemed to seize the advantage on the issue of education. Do you think there are lessons to be drawn from that experience?

I do. I also believe that Republicans are on our front foot when it comes to education politics. 

First, we’re empowering parents to make decisions for their children. And second, we’re continually raising expectations for children because they can meet them. The worst penalty you can ever impose on a child is to have low expectations for them.

Third, we’re opening up different pathways for kids so there isn’t just one route where you have to go to college and you end up with a degree that doesn’t translate into a job. Now we have workforce opportunities presenting themselves that don’t necessarily require college degrees 鈥� everything from the skilled trades to the massive technological innovations going on today. 

All of these principles are core tenets of what I ran on, what I did, and what Republican elected leaders are emphasizing as the fundamentals of American education going forward. 

All of it is driven by the fact that parents, whether Democrat or Republican or Independent, want their children to get a great education. They’re absolutely open to that coming through the public education environment, which is critical to the future of the country. But if their child needs an alternative path, whether through a private school or homeschool or technical education, that can work too.

All of that reflects the Republican perspective that parents know best. We’re going to meet the kids where they are and help them to obtain an extraordinary education that prepares them for opportunity in America. That, I believe, is a winning education strategy. 

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