Freedom to Learn

Rep. Tim Walberg on Career Pathways, Education Options & Gender Ideology

Ginny Gentles Season 1 Episode 3

Congressman Tim Walberg (R-MI) envisions a more flexible, competitive system that better prepares students for the workforce—no matter the path they choose. In this episode, Rep. Walberg shares his insights on the evolving landscape of education in America, with a focus on vocational training, school choice, and the role of the federal government in shaping educational opportunities. Drawing from his personal background and experiences as a parent, Walberg emphasizes the importance of providing students with diverse educational paths, rather than pushing all students toward a four-year college degree. He discusses the need for more flexibility in funding, the challenges posed by the federal Department of Education, and the vital role parents and local communities play in shaping the educational journey of their children. Walberg also touches on the frustrations of teachers caught between unions and their desire to provide quality education, stressing the importance of putting students at the center of the education system.

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Ginny Gentles (0:00)

Welcome to Freedom to Learn, the podcast that champions choice in education, defends parental rights, and exposes the harm caused by school unions. I’m Ginny Gentles, director of Education Freedom and Parental Rights at DFI, the Defense of Freedom Institute in Washington, DC.

Washington, Twitter, and the education world are in a tizzy about what the recent elections could mean for education policy. In the midst of the storm, Congressman Tim Walberg is calm. A Republican for Michigan who is campaigning to be the incoming chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, Representative Walberg joins Freedom to Learn today to share his thoughts on strengthening pathways to the workforce, empowering parents with education freedom, and ensuring that schools don't keep secrets from parents. 

Congressman Walberg has represented Southern Michigan since 2011 and also sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Before coming to Congress, he served in the Michigan House of Representatives as a pastor and as president of a community foundation. During our conversation, Congressman Walberg will share his family's experiences with various education models and his thoughts on how the federal government can better support alternative education paths.

Stick around for the final segment of the Freedom to Learn podcast. Special myth-busting guest, Derrell Bradford, president of 50CAN, will tackle the claim that education freedom programs are designed to take money from the public system and write checks to private schools.

Ginny Gentles (1:26)

Congressman Walberg, welcome to Freedom to Learn.

Congressman Walberg (01:30)

Well, it's a delight to be with you. Thanks for giving me the opportunity.

Ginny Gentles (01:33)

So your mother was a teacher and your father was a machinist and a steelworker. And I heard that you worked as a steelworker to pay your way through college. How has your background and your family life experienced your policy interests and your priorities?

Congressman Walberg (01:48)

Thanks for asking the question. Background has a lot of input into what a person does educationally as well as vocationally. And my mother was a one-room schoolhouse teacher in Iowa. And it was the depression that took her out of that and ended up going to Chicago to earn money as a secretary stenographer and send back to her family's farm because the family had lost the farm. And so now mom and dad needed help.

And so that changed everything. But, for her two twin sons, when we finally came along, immediately she became a teacher again. And we learned to read, I think by to some degree, reading out of the Bible at age three and four. And so, books were always part of our lives. Mom would regularly take us to libraries and would take us to the symphony because she was a cellist as well at one point. So all of that was part of our educational experience. 

My dad was a guy who wanted to be an accountant, but the depression hit, lost his job at Bell Telephone Company and ended up becoming a chicken farmer to get through the depression. Then came back to the South side of Chicago, went to trade school, became a machinist and tool and dye maker at US Steel. In fact, the same, US steel that I worked at when I got out of high school and needed to provide for my college education.

So all of that kind of worked in the experience of a deep appreciation for education. My work at the steel mills encouraged me to stick it out and continue on my educational route at university. But it was an experience to learn what it really took to make America what it was. And that steel industry helped produce all that America is to this day. And so there's a great amount of appreciation for not only academic portion of education, also that vocational training that can be there that makes America strong and the ability to compete at any level.

Ginny Gentles (03:50)

I want to talk more about vocational training. I feel like that terminology, VoTech, was the typical terminology back when I was coming along and then fell out of favor. And then there seemed to be this fervent obsession with ensuring that all students came out of high school on a path to go to a four-year degree. And students right now are saying, no thanks.

That's not what we're interested in in increasing numbers. We have a number of high school graduates choosing alternatives to this four-year college degree path. What is the federal government doing to support them and what do you hope the federal government will do to support them?

Congressman Walberg (04:29)

Well, I don't think we're doing enough right now to encourage that. In fact, we have hurdles in the way. You think of short-term Pell, we've been attempting to move that forward. So, for certification programs, apprenticeship programs, as well as two-year education programs at a community college on up to the four-year programs and beyond for higher education, if you are educating yourself or training yourself toward a vocational goal, that should be our main interest in government. 

First and foremost, we ought to take the roadblocks out of the way, unnecessary requirements and stipulations. But we also ought to give those opportunities to incentivize that if you are going to be in the tech industry, you may not need a four-year education. Or you may need it, but let's make it work where you're going. I know people in the communications area now that will be climbers of poles and putting up an amazing media array and communications array up on towers. 

It doesn't take a four-year education but it can provide six-digit salary figures if you get through that training program which could be 16 months, two years, and now you're doing something that will be there for a long time and very necessary. 

So let's incentivize that as opposed to cloistering off toward one mode of education. I think that's for the security of the country as well. I think what we've seen with the anti-Semitism that broke out after October 7th, we've had a chance to see the indoctrination,

the wrongs that have taken place at our four-year institutions, and what's developed when we really assign or move people toward one approach to education, and sometimes that's done in an untoward fashion. And we see anti-Semitism, for instance, but we've also seen anti-Americanism take place. And I think when we have a broad spectrum of education that goes to the values of the student and the young person or the young adult, they make those choices based upon their values. We lay the buffet before them and we say there are means by which we can assist you to achieve that goal, short-term or long-term. 

And ultimately, we take away the overriding control of a big government and put it back in the individual and especially as I think about education, into the home where mom and dad and student decide what direction they're going with counselors that may be in their high school that assist them in the process, but still that family unit is encouraged to be the unit that brings forward the educational opportunity for the kid.

Ginny Gentles (07:27)

Well, you mentioned counselors and that actually is a personal concern of mine. I look at my daughter, a high school junior, and what the high school counselors are focused on, which again, is that one idea: You need to be prepared to go to this four-year college. I wonder how many guidance counselors are out there who are prepared to help these students navigate alternative paths, to find apprenticeships, to find internships, to understand what programs might be available to support them that have nothing to do with four-year college, but have everything to do with preparing them for a successful career pathway and a successful life. 

Are you concerned about the idea that increasingly we have federal programs that fund guidance counselors who are not equipped to help students navigate these pathways?

Congressman Walberg (08:17)

I am. I mean, they're all trained at the same place, generally at the four-year institution. That's their experience. And as you said early on, VoTech took on a negative connotation that these aren't your words, but they'd be words I've heard, “Haha, you're dumb. You go to VoTech. I go to college prep.” And that made me just the opposite. That person, like my daughter, for instance, we had the opportunity because of who we are, our capabilities, our financial status, our freedom opportunities, to decide where we would send our kids to school. And all of them had an opportunity at public, a home school, and in private school, a religious school. Our daughter was struggling. Socially, Heidi, she met 100% and beyond. She was a social butterfly. She loved that.

But academics didn't make it and we struggled in home education to try to get to that point and almost gave up until we said, well, "Why not check the vocational route at our VoTech center, career education center?" And we gave her the opportunity to take a pick and she saw dental assisting as interesting. And she got in the dental assisting program, make a long story short, it brought reality to why she needed education.

She went on to junior college, community college, and got her associate's degree in dental hygiene. That motivated her to go one step further and get her bachelor's degree in applied science. And she's the only one of my three children, and her brothers were academically gifted. One was nominated for a Pulitzer and came and run her up for a Pulitzer. The other son is a self-employed blacksmith doing amazing work there.

But she was motivated ultimately because the choice became for her something that met her real-world expectations. And she was good, very good at dental assisting and then at dental hygiene. And she's made a career out of that. And an opportunity ultimately to go to master's program And this was a girl we didn't think we were going to get out of high school. 

So that, it's personal to me to say know your child. And I believe parents, generally speaking, there are bad examples, but generally speaking, parents love their kids. They want the best for their kids. They want a future for their kids. And if given the opportunity to see the options available and not have roadblocks in their way, they will assist their young person to get into the training program, the educational program that will meet their needs.

Ginny Gentles (11:06)

I love hearing that you have this background with raising your children with public, private homeschooling. Did you become an advocate for school choice, for education freedom based on your own family's experience, or were you already aware of these options and their ability to help parents make sure that their children's unique needs were met?

Congressman Walberg (11:28)

Yeah, all of the above. I was in the state legislature. I was on the education committee there in the state legislature. And I became aware through meeting with other legislators around the country that there was this thing called home education. Now it's as old as mankind, but it was taking on a new vitality back in the early 80s. because of some challenges with the loss of educational opportunities in our public school systems in Michigan because of downturn in the economy and restrictions on the dollar amounts that were going to schools, we were losing some things we thought were important at our children's school, at the local public school. So ultimately we looked for alternatives and ultimately glumped on home education and it worked for us one year at a time. One year at a time, that's how we did it.

That was when homeschools were somewhere being threatened with going to jail for not having their kids in public schools. So it became a purpose for me. Back then I became acquainted with Betsy DeVos and her knowledge base and education and her desire to see choice. So I moved into that realm as well as a proponent for all of the above. 

Whatever works best for your child, whether it's the public school, if it is, then take control as a parent of your public school. Spend time there. Support, assist, be involved. If it's a private school, that works best for your kids. Find a religious school or home school, but make sure all along the way that you know that you, as a parent, have the choice and you can move from school to school. Educational opportunity, educational opportunity.

And again, education ultimately is not only to enrich, to expand our minds, but it's to make us capable of being employed. Regardless of where you go, education is to make you employable, to make a difference where you find your spot, your gap to fill in the world in which you live.


Ginny Gentles (13:34)

Right, employable, and able to live out your purpose in life and have that academic background, but also those skills and then lifelong ability to keep learning.

Is there a role for the federal government to support the expansion of school choice, of education freedom, of ensuring that families have options and children have opportunities?

Congressman Walberg (13:56)

I think there's a priority that we make sure that dollars are controlled by the parents. The majority, if given the incentive and having the resources back in their own pockets, through either a credit or a voucher, I prefer a credit, that they can prove that they are providing the education opportunity for their youngster, that will, I think, spawn a lot of competition and a lot of choice. And I think with competition and choice, you'll also increase the quality in any given state. 

And I know for a fact that there are people that have moved to a portion of my district, Hillsdale College area specifically, so they could put their kids in Hillsdale Academy. They moved across country to do that. Did they have to? No. But they felt because of the choice opportunity, and if they would have had the choice with their tuition dollars as well, that they didn't have to add to it themselves, I think you'd see more people going where education and even moving into states that foster quality education and ultimately making states like Michigan with a governor and leadership that right now is trying to push people all toward one form of education at the expense, I think, of kids and their futures. You'd see a vast advancement, I think, across this country. Stop and think about the amount of money we spent. 

As Betsy DeVos has often said, a trillion dollars since we developed Department of Education and we've seen nothing but a decline in education since then. We have 9% of the money resources going to our K-12 schools, but 90% burden of the regulatory costs on the schools as well. Let's divorce ourselves from that. Let's get the federal government out as much as possible, allowing states to compete, turning the control and even the dollars, and we need to be very creative on how we do that, but get those back to the states and the local communities and the local schools and the parents foremost in using those dollars best for education.

Ginny Gentles (16:16)

Well, there's certainly a lot of discussion right now about what to do about that Department of Education, about the growing role and the strings attached from the federal government. Do you see abolishing the Department of Education as something on a congressional agenda? or do you see something more like devolving some of those grants and funding streams more to the state and local level?

Congressman Walberg (16:43)

I've talked about abolishing and the need to abolish the Department of Education all my legislative career. But I also have said numerous times, Ronald Reagan said it so well, that the closest thing to eternal life on this earth is a government program or agency. And that's so true. But, we have at this point in time, a president who has not only thought about that in his mind, but has made it a campaign issue talking about abolishing the Department of Education. 

Now I don't know for sure whether he actually means a full abolishing of it, leaving all the lights off in that Department of Education building. But sadly, which are for the most part right now because they're not working from the office. In fact, if we required them to go back and that may be be Donald Trump's approach, require them to go back five days a week to the Department of Education building, you might have attrition that mounts up huge. And we end up abolishing the department. But I think realistically speaking, if we can't do that, and that's a big lift, we can devolve their control and their regulatory control especially, that has huge, huge impact on hamstringing our local schools. 

Some of our public schools want to do better, but they know they can't. They don't have flexibility. They have to take the money for this when they may not need it. They may need more for mental health than the other school in the next county and vice versa. But they are constrained to use it. If we could at least put more flexibility, more choice in how we use those funds if we still have a department of education that meets that out, that's one thing, but I think right now we have because of COVID, because of parents seeing what's going on, because of parents stepping up to school board meeting microphones and expressing their concerns and their ideas, we have an opportunity to say, you know, we did pretty well up until 1979 in fostering an economic revolution, an agricultural revolution, industrial revolution, leading the entire world in all of those areas, and we didn't have a Department of Education. Let's find a way to make them more of a reporting agency as opposed to a bureaucratic monstrosity that impinges upon the creativity of local districts. 

Faculty teachers are frustrated. They're frustrated with their unions, but they're also frustrated with the Department of Education in what they are expected to do and not given resources but lot of regulations to do. 

So, I think this is a time, I think this is really a time when we have the opportunity to not just simply talk about abolishing the huge impact of the Department of Education at least, but to make it smaller and impinge on much less of what we need to move our country forward academically.

Ginny Gentles (19:50)

That's something that we talk about at the Defense of Freedom Institute and something that we want to help make sure people understand what that looks like, what that means. And the fact that we might shrink the department, abolish the department, change the funding flows in some ways, that does not mean that there's any less of a commitment to the students and to the teachers in the country.

Would you have advice for legislators who are tackling these tough topics?

Congressman Walberg (20:17)

Absolutely, stick with your teachers. The majority of teachers want to teach. They want to succeed. During COVID, I talked to numerous teachers who said, I need a kid fix. I'm tired of doing it online. I'm tired of doing it Zoom. I need a kid fix. I need a student in front of me. 

So teachers have been, they have been frustrated with the education industry union. they are being put in a bind between the student that they've been, at least they thought they were trained to educate, and the union that supposedly speaks for them and really doesn't, speaks for its own interests.

Several things have taken place subsequent to COVID where parents and educators, teachers themselves have said enough's enough. We need to get back to the main purpose being the main purpose and that's a student in the classroom. Learning the subject, not simply to gain the subject, but to learn what it means to learn, how to learn and enjoy the learning process so that truly you see education as a life-long privilege and not an obligation.

And I think that's where if we can get back to the teachers outside of the unions, and I'm not an opponent of unions where it's needed. I was a member of the United Steelworkers and I know that they made my position at the number two electric furnace much safer and stronger than my dad had it when he was there. And unions did that. But sometimes unions get out of whack and they become the purpose for their purpose and not for the reason they're there in protecting teachers and enabling them to do the job. So, I think we need to talk in such a way that we encourage our teachers. We encourage young people to desire to be teachers. We're losing that because they've seen all the upheaval that's gone on.

We have to get back to the main thing being the main thing. That's education and not simply work experience, job setting, and the control over whoever we need to control. So that's where unions can be helpful, but they can get out of whack.

Ginny Gentles (22:33)

As we wrap up, I wanted to talk about a topic that is taking schools and educators and students away from the main thing. And that is gender ideology. And I really hope this is not a topic that we'll have to talk about in a year, in two years, that it will have abated from the control that it has over our society right now and the harm that it's causing to emotionally vulnerable young people. 

You seemed to become aware of this harm earlier than a lot of legislators and You proposed something called the Protect Kids Act, and you were adamant about moving that proposal forward. Tell us what your goal was with the Protect Kids Act, and also I'm curious, how did you find out about these transitions that were happening in schools that were being kept secret from parents?

Congressman Walberg (23:32)

Yeah, you know, I've had contact with Riley Gaines, for instance, now in numerous instances. She spoke at the graduation of Adrian College student body this last year, told her story. But before that, I'd had contacts from parents and grandparents, community members with concerns of what they were hearing going on in local schools. 

So I began checking into it.

I heard from my colleagues here as well, some of the same concerns that this wasn't something that was just talked about amongst a few, but it was happening all over where there was an intentional promotion of transgenderism, and almost a normalizing of that.

I believe that there are only two sexes, or as some would call them genders, it's the same thing, and that's male and female. And yes, there are mental issues, there are emotional issues, there are peer pressure issues, but I think education is about affirming our children to be who that God created them be. If you don't believe in God, then who, who you were meant to be in the universe. And science can show us that way. And to divorce ourselves and go back away from that and say, okay, we're gonna accept anything. And now, we're gonna push back on anybody, including parents, if they have a concern about their own child that they brought into this world that they love beyond life itself that we're gonna hold that information back from when the child says, you know, I like my pronouns changed. Why do they want that? Well, maybe it's just peer pressure. I can do it. I'm bustin' up against society norms, and so I'm gonna do it. I'm a kid. I was a kid once. I remember some of those same rebellious feelings in other areas. 

To say, we aren't gonna tell parents about it. In fact, like California, we're gonna put laws and regulations in place to prohibit teachers from telling a parent that if their child, their student, wants to change their gender. That's just wrong. And so, I felt that that was something we ought to push back against and say, wait a second, if we're giving federal dollars to your school, and you don't require your teacher in the classroom, if a student comes up and says, "Ms. Smith, I want to be called by a different pronoun." from here on out. "I want to use a different bathroom." You've got to tell the parent or the guardian. And if you don't, we're going to remove federal funding from you. 

I think it's a positive incentive against a perverse incentive to undermine the family, the home, the parental responsibility and authority and really to, in the long run, hurt the child from having the care that he or she needs to get past this situation and understand that I should affirm who I am. I should grow to be all that I can be, and that I should push back against peer pressure or whatever that would say that I am not the person that I was created to be. And I think that is normalcy.

And in fact, we know that better than 80% of people responding to the issue of whether children's parents should be notified if a child intends to change their pronouns or their bathroom or whatever else, or they want transgender counseling, that a parent must be notified. So I think we're on the right track. It's common sense. 

And to break down the family, to break down morality and authority any further, undermine the home, the basic building block of society in this country, this great country, is something that we ought to see as an enemy of the purposes of the United States and its freedom.

Ginny Gentles (27:42)

Congressman Walberg, so many legislators, so many public figures have run from this issue. And so I just want to thank you for running to a solution for being on the side of the emotionally vulnerable children who are impacted by it and for protecting fundamental parental rights. And thank you also for your long-standing commitment to education freedom. I think you're known out there as a workforce guy, but you have been there on behalf of education freedom for a long time.

Congressman Walberg (28:15)

Well, you don't have a good workforce unless they're educated. And they go hand in hand. And that's what I said in our conference yesterday as we spoke just before the president came to speak to us. I said, I hope while we look at the budget, we look at the deficit that's going to destroy our country and its future if we don't grapple with it, yet we have an opportunity here to make education and workforce key components of all of that. Because if we grow the economy through a great workforce that's out there, making products, but also getting incomes that they now invest, save and put in the economy, we can grow ourselves gradually out of the problem that we have if we control our spending. But if we don't have a trained workforce well educated in the in the areas that they deem best for their life and they want to grow and motivate themselves in, we're going to miss the opportunity. And so now with the president who is standing up for education and getting back to local control, let's use it. This is the opportunity. Let's not miss it. And we'll benefit both education as well as the workforce.

Ginny Gentles (29:25)

I'm looking forward to seeing what you and your colleagues accomplish in the 119th Congress. Congressman Walberg, thank you so much for joining Freedom to Learn.

Congressman Walberg (29:35)

Thank you for having me.

Ginny Gentles (29:39)

Well Derrell, thanks for returning to Freedom to Learn and tackling school choice myths with us today. Love talking through these things with you. Those myths are pervasive. They are out there and we will continue each week tackling them together.

Let's talk about this idea out there that the school choice programs let the government to start writing checks to private schools and taking the funds from the public system. Isn't this awful? What's your response to that?

Derrell Bradford (30:08)

There's no school choice program in America, to my knowledge, that writes checks to private schools. 

Most states have constitutional language that would prohibit state government writing checks to private schools, because that would violate the Establishment Clause. There's Supreme Court precedent that says that when the state gives a family money, they make a decision, that's totally legal, which is what most states are doing. So I would just say that the argument is wrong on the law. But more importantly, it's wrong on the facts. Because right now, state governments send state money to private schools all across the country. This is already happening. 

So in my blue enclave, of New Jersey, if your school district does not bus kids and the school is like more than a certain amount away, the state gives you money so you can drive your kid to private school. We have state-mandated pre-K at like $13,000 a family where you can choose any pre-K you want, private, religious or otherwise. 

In New York State, just across the Hudson River, transportation and textbooks, textbooks like nursing aid, there are tons of public revenue streams that already go to private independent and religious schools. So I just always think this is really funny because the thing that you say you don't want to happen that's going to make the republic crumble, is already going on everywhere.

Ginny Gentles (31:47)

And the republic stands.

Derrell Bradford (31:48)

And the Republic stands, yes.

Ginny Gentles (31:52)

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