Ep. 419: State of Choice – January 2025

Ed Tarnowski: Welcome back to the State of Choice podcast. I’m your host, Ed Tarnowski, also known as Ed with Ed Choice. Joining me today is a very special guest, and I can speak for everyone at Ed Choice in saying that she is a friend to us and certainly inspiring for what she has done out in West Virginia.

Joining me today also is my colleague Nathan Sanders. And now I’ll introduce our guest. Patricia Rucker is a state senator serving West Virginia’s 16th district and the national chair of the American Legislative Exchange Council.

She is a former teacher currently homeschooling her five children with her husband of 25 years. Patricia is a first-generation American citizen born in Caracas, Venezuela, coming to the U.S., Montgomery County, Maryland in 1981. She attended Magruder High School, serving as their mascot, and received her bachelor’s degree in history and a minor in Latin American studies from Trinity College.

She has been a Harpers Ferry resident since 2001, and her hobbies include gardening, beekeeping, and raising chickens and ducks on her small hobby farm. Patricia, welcome to the podcast, and thank you for being on today.

Patricia Rucker: Thank you, and thanks for throwing that in about the mascot.

Ed: Of course, I know. I actually, I have to ask you what that experience was like.

Patricia: So Magruder Colonels, so it’s colonel, and so we have a uniform and a like pretend rifle, you know, as part of the costume. And I tried out, and I got that role because, of course, I love going to the games, and I love cheering our team.

Ed: So very nice. I love it. I love it.

School spirit is so important. So you’re a first-generation American from Venezuela. I’d love to hear, could you tell our guests a little bit more about that experience and how it impacted and inspired your passion for advancing liberty and school choice?

Patricia: Well, thank you. Obviously, none of us have any control over where we’re born, but I’m so very blessed. I was born in Caracas, Venezuela to two amazing parents and a very loving and big family. Both my parents were the first in their families to ever go to college and graduate from college. So as you can imagine, they valued education. They valued what it could mean, and they were able to get good jobs and support and help their other family members who maybe didn’t have it as well.

But Venezuela, it’s a very free country, was really wealthy because of the oil. The government really didn’t tax its citizens, very few regulations, a lot of freedom. And education in Venezuela was considered the best in all of South America.

It was very classical, reading, writing, arithmetic, and those were their emphasis. But little known fact, I actually had speech pathology issues, even in Venezuela. So when my father got a job in Washington, D.C., and we had to come to America, I was six years old, and I wasn’t even speaking Spanish very well. So I had to go into the public school system here in Montgomery County, Maryland, not having a good grasp of my own language. They had to continue giving me speech pathology. And in addition to that, English as a second language. And I somehow had to catch up with the rest of my schoolmates. And I did. I had an excellent support and help in the public school system.

And by fifth grade, I had graduated from both ESOL and speech therapy, ran for president of the student government, and got a lead role in the sixth grade play. So clearly a success story. And I had a wonderful public school education, which is one of the reasons I wanted to be a teacher.

And that was my goal from the time I was 11 years old. And education, I believe, personally, is the most important thing we can possibly do to ensure success for the future. You must have an educated population.

Ed: Absolutely. And I would love to hear more about your experience as a teacher as well.

Patricia: Well, sure. I only got to teach for a short period of time in Montgomery County after I graduated college, because once I had my own child, I really wanted to stay home and raise my children. But I will tell you that in those four years I was gone, you know, so I graduated from Magruder, went off to college, took me four and a half years to graduate because I did transfer schools. And I came back to work in Montgomery County as a teacher. Things had already started changing a little bit. And I was actually quite kind of shocked to go into the classroom.

And the school system wasn’t trusting me to do what I thought was best and instead was very much, no, you must do what we tell you and you must do it this way. You must follow this guide. Don’t deviate. And I felt, wow, like you guys should be respecting me and trusting me. I’ve gone to school. I was a student. I know how to do this. But it wasn’t that way. And that was my first negative, I guess, as a teacher, that I was not being trusted in the classroom. And I love the students. I never had any negative experiences that I can tell you where I was like, you know, anything bad really was all kind of the administration and the rules. But I enjoyed it.

The short period of time that I was teaching, I really, really loved it. And I especially loved, you know, just helping the kids grasp something that they had difficulty with. I think I always have enjoyed challenges. So that’s the part that really made my day.

Nathan Sanders: And I’ll say, Senator Rucker, you may remember this. The first and only time I’ve ever had Venezuelan food was with Senator Rucker. It was, I think we were in North Carolina for something. And it was great. It was delicious. So that’s my like, one of my earliest, yeah, it was one of my earliest memories with Senator Rucker.

Patricia: If you haven’t had Venezuelan food, I urge everyone to try it because it is really amazing.

Ed: Oh, I have to agree. Shifting to West Virginia now. It’s the state that you represent as the state senator. West Virginia was the first state to pass a school choice program that had a path to true universal choice. And we’re about to get there. The prior public is officially about to be dropped. Tell us a little bit about that experience. You led the effort there in West Virginia to pass the first true universal choice program. Could you tell our listeners a little bit about that experience and how you really proved the doubters wrong?

Patricia: So I’m happy to, but in all full transparency, and just to let legislators feel a little bit better about, you know, what it’s really like. My first attempt was a failure. So I first tried in 2019 with a limited ESA. And West Virginia was a state that had zero school choice when I was elected. And I mean zero, none. As someone who came from a state with school choice in Maryland, although it’s limited there, they do have charter schools, do have a lot of, you know, openness to new ideas and innovation.

Coming to West Virginia was kind of a huge shock to me that there just wasn’t any. But when I first attempted, I really wanted to just, hey, let’s at least do a limited program for victims of bullying and those students who really were struggling in the public school system and, you know, getting really bad grades. We’re talking about the lowest ones. And let’s see if this would help them. And of course, thanks to EdChoice, thanks to going to legislative conferences, I learned about what other states were doing. And I just wanted to at least get West Virginia to start on that.

Well, that little itty bitty bit of school choice I tried to do was met with resistance from the unions. And we had the Red for Ed movement, and they did a school strike. The teachers came down to the Capitol, and they defeated that first attempt. And what I learned from that experience, and I hope other legislators learn from this, is it did not matter that my little attempt was just a very, very small attempt and very, very limited. Only 1,500 students possible under that limited ESA could get this help. You’re still branded as an enemy to public education. You’re still branded as, you know, defunding public schools. You know, what you’re is a horrible thing. And every single negative term and name that they could call you, they throw at you.

And I realized, okay, why is it that we can’t do anything different? We’re in West Virginia at the very bottom of the outcomes. We usually compete with a few other states for 49th and 50th spot, you know. And yet you’re resistant to giving any chance for—these are mostly low-income people—to be able to try something different if their child is not succeeding. It’s school choice that existed in other states, and even when they had pretty broad programs, you only had a very small percentage of those eligible to do those limited programs ever apply for it. So you’re not doing something crazy.

Well, I basically vowed after that failed attempt that if I won re-election in 2020, I had to, you know, run for again. I was not going to go little, and no more small. I’m going to go full-blown. And sure enough, I did win. And I don’t know how much you want me to go into that, but it was a fun campaign with being the number one target of the teachers unions in West Virginia. And once I succeeded, I wrote out what was to be the very first universal ESA program.

And for those who don’t know, so an education savings account is essentially your state dollars get put into an account that is for your child in whatever education need they may have. So the parent can use those funds for their educational needs. Some parents use it for private schools. Some parents use it to do an individualized, customized education at home. Sometimes they do hybrid where they pay for tutors, but also have the child at home. You can use it for special needs services and all sorts of things.

So that’s what I wanted to do. And when we say universal, I did not want to put limits in place like I had attempted the first time, because I feel it’s discriminatory, to be honest. Whenever I heard about these other ESAs that other states had done that was only for this population, I always felt in my heart, well, what about the person who doesn’t qualify for that, but still needs to help? And so I always really had in my heart, if we are going to do this, let’s not discriminate. Anyone who needs the help, who needs something different than what public schools can offer, let’s give them the opportunity to use their state dollars for that. And for those who remain in the public education, which is the vast majority of families, they actually are strengthened.

When you take the ones who are not doing well, they can focus on the ones that they can serve well, the ones where it does work. Students like myself, which thrived in a public school. You certainly are helping with the teachers being able to concentrate on those that can most benefit.

Nathan: So if I may ask this question, and I think this is a good segue, so although the HOPE Scholarship, the program when you went back a second time is a universal program, as you just mentioned, every kid in the state of West Virginia is eligible for this program. Do you see potential for potentially expanding the program? And if so, what are some ways to navigate that?

Patricia: So you can always expand. You can always do more. So yes, I absolutely would love, like there were compromises we had to make to get it through.

Again, we were first, it was kind of a risk. I would love to take some of the, the limitations that we put are very few, but here are some of the limitations. So you have to have attended public school to get the HOPE, and I want to take that away. Like it’s already scheduled to be gone in 2026. But again, between now and then, there’s still parents who, if they want to take advantage of the HOPE, they are supposed to pull their children out of private or homeschooling into public school in order to qualify. And that, you know, like I said, doesn’t make sense.

The other thing that we did is, so the program that I set up, I wanted there to be no opportunity for fraud. I wanted to really, really ensure that there was no fraud. So every purchase needs to be approved. Well, that has been clunky, almost impossible to do. And it basically has created a bureaucracy to do that approval process and to check into everything the parent is doing. And although I think I put protections in place so that most things are approved, I’ve been shocked by some of the things that are not approved.

It’s like, why are we dictating that to the parent? Let the parent make that decision. So I would really like to change the emphasis of that and instead just, we’re going to trust the parents to do what they think is done well and treat it like we do all other social welfare programs like SNAP and Medicaid, where we may do random audits to make certain it’s being used the way it’s supposed to, but we are not going to be approving ahead of time every single purchase a parent makes. I mean, I guess you could say I wasn’t realistically thinking what that would look like. And now that we see what it looks like, it doesn’t make any sense.

Nathan: Yeah. And this conversation is so important. And it’s another perfect segue into the next topic I want to cover on a similar basis, the topic of true universality, because the topic and the conversation and the progress of universal school choice has come a long way since West Virginia became the first in 2021.

Some states have gone on in the spirit of West Virginia’s program to enact universal. There are four states now, but some other states have gone on to enact programs with universal eligibility, but may have fallen short in some other areas like usage, as we’re talking about, of allowable expenses that parents can use funds on. And then of course, that funding, that is such an important part.

Some states like Utah, for example, started out their program with universal eligibility, but have a funding cap to begin with of $40 billion, which was increased last year to $80 billion. So starting with 5,000 kids, increased to 10,000 kids, but still not true universal, because as soon as that funding cap is met, and as soon as enough students apply for those scholarships to meet that cap, then the rest of the kids are bumped to a waitlist. So I wonder if you have any advice to other states on why the details are important, on how true universal has worked in West Virginia, and what you’re hearing on the ground from parents and how this is really, why the details matter.

Patricia: Okay, well, that’s a lot. Keep me honest and remind me if I forget one, but I will tell you the details absolutely do matter. So, and a perfect example, if you do not put guarantees in place for the education service providers, so that accepting this money doesn’t tie them to regulations from the state, you will have very few education service providers who will want to take part of that program.

So that is a very important detail as an example. And making it easy for those vendors to become vendors, to be approved. Obviously, if you’re giving parents these funds to use, and then they can’t use those funds, it doesn’t really help anybody when it comes to those other limitations that you mentioned. So if you believe that that money belongs to the student, which is kind of what I was thinking when I passed this, it’s not our money. It’s not the public school’s money. It is the student’s money.

We as a state want every student to be successful, and we provide a certain amount of taxpayer funding to try to make certain that student is successful. Why would we put caps or limit to that? Because we care about every single student. When you put any kind of limitation or cap, you’re saying that some students aren’t as important as others. You’re defeating the entire point is that that money belongs to the student, and we want that student to thrive in whatever way will help that student thrive. So to me, those limitations and caps, you’re just keeping somebody out. And like, why would you ever do that? Now, I understand different legislators, different states have different levels of risk that they’re willing to take. They always will be happy to portray the worst case scenarios.

But the reality is, the vast majority of parents are having a good experience in the public schools. The vast majority of students are good and are fine. It’s always a certain percentage that is not. So it’s really about, are you going to legislate for the tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny chance that something can be too much more than you expected? Or are you going to legislate? What is the ideal? This is the taxpayers funding, they entrust you with it. And you are going to treat all taxpayers the same and not be discriminating one against the other. So anyways, that’s enough on that topic. I could tell you when it comes to the way that different states have gone in different directions. I mean, it’s actually really interesting. In the realm of ideas, some states have thought of things that I didn’t think of.

And I’m like, wow, that’s pretty cool. So everybody, you know, we can always improve upon things, we can always try something new and then change it like I’m going to hope to do with the HOPE scholarship myself. But it is really important that you not limit yourself to a point where it’s not useful for the families, because that’s the whole point. You want to help them, you want to help them find a way that’s going to help their unique circumstance, whatever that may be. And how is it working in West Virginia? It is working exactly as I hoped.

We have thousands of students on the HOPE scholarship pursuing the education that fits them best. I get stories from the parents, the families, I get stories from teachers. And one of the things that was kind of an argument against the HOPE when I tried to pass it, we’re a very small rural state, we had very few educational options, and very few private schools in the state. But providing this opportunity of the funding for these families, we are now seeing new educational opportunities, you know, that crazy idea of a free market. We now have new schools popping up. And we have micro schools, and learning pods, and folks who are catering to that hybrid educational experience, where they’re providing tutoring.

And it is amazing how many new businesses are being created in West Virginia, which was not the number one reason to do this, but definitely a big plus to the state. And we are attracting citizens from our neighboring states who don’t have school choice. I have gotten those letters to folks who are moving into the state of West Virginia, because we are doing this program. So it really is an amazing thing. And no public school has shut down because of the HOPE scholarship. We do have schools that are shutting down because they’re consolidating. But that’s because we have places where they’re losing population. Unfortunately, it’s the population loss that’s really the problem. But I’m hoping to reverse that. And we’re continuing to work on that in West Virginia.

Ed: I’m curious to know over the last couple of years since HOPE’s implementation, what’s been one of the most impactful anecdotal stories that you’ve heard where you were just like, ah, it was worth it to do this?

Patricia: So thank you for asking that, because I just got one of those what I call God moment affirmations recently. So I was running for reelection again this year, and going door to door and doing all the things I normally do. I always have tough elections.

Well, the very last day of my going door to door, which was the Monday before the election, the election is on Tuesday, I was door knocking up to the last day. I knocked on someone’s door at the very, very edge of my district, the furthest away from where I myself live. And I was kind of surprised when I came up to this voter’s door. It’s like, they already have a Rutgers sign. But yet I’ve never been here before. And I wonder who this is. So I knocked on the door knowing that, okay, they have a Rutgers sign, they must be supporting me. But I want to know who this is. When I knocked on the door, and the person came to the door, when she saw who I was, she started crying. And of course, I was not expecting that. And I’m kind of like, oh, boy, what’s going on? And she comes out of her door, and she just puts her arms around me and hugs me and is just crying.

And I’m kind of like, you know, hugging back, but kind of wondering, okay. When she was able to start talking, she tells me, I know you don’t know who I am. But you saved my granddaughter. And I will, me and our family will never, ever forget. And we pray for you. And we’re so grateful for you. And of course, I’m like, I did? How did I do that? And she tells me, well, my granddaughter was being bullied in the school that she was at, and she was miserable and just suffering. And she was suicidal. And we don’t have the funds to afford a private school. Well, someone told us about the HOPE scholarship that you had implemented. We had no idea what it was. We applied for it. We were granted it. And we were able to pull her out of that school. And she is now going to a private school. And she is thriving. She is so happy. She is excelling. She’s now involved in the school and in programming, and has a whole lot of friends. She’s going to graduate next year. And none of that would have been possible. And we don’t even know, like, we don’t think she would have even, you know, survived, because she really wanted to kill herself. And so we owe that to you. And we just can’t even tell you. And I’ve been wanting to write to you, but I just never have. And I’m so, so grateful that you came to my door, because I’m happy. I don’t have any other politician signs, only yours, because you actually have made a difference in our life. And our entire family is voting for you.

And it was so beautiful and not what I was expecting. And for that to happen the day before the election, you know, I didn’t know if I was going to win. And it was like, thank you, Lord, thank you for this opportunity to help my constituents and make a difference in their lives, people I don’t even know. But, you know, that’s incredible.

Nathan: It makes it worth it.

Ed: It’s a reminder of why we do this work.

Patricia: I’m just grateful. I, again, I will tell you, I was one of those parents. I have five children. All five were different. Two had special needs. I always intended to put them in public school. Like I told you, I had a great public school experience. When my first one with special needs was put in Head Start to get help for her special needs. And the reaction of the public school to her needs was so inadequate, so terrible. I can’t, I’m not even going to go into it. But people can look up my story. I’ve talked about it before. It really was heartbreaking for me. It was not what I wanted. I wanted it to be successful. I wanted them to help me help my daughter. And I ended up homeschooling. I was forced into it, which means I couldn’t go back to teaching. But I could do it. My husband worked two jobs. We managed. We made it work. But I know families who aren’t as lucky as me. I know single moms who don’t have a husband who can support them. And I’ve heard many stories of folks whose children had very bad experiences and have no way out. And it just breaks my heart.

Ed: So, Nathan, did you have any other questions that you wanted to ask on the subject of West Virginia?

Nathan: So, the only thing I was going to kind of bring up, and you touched on this a little bit, was, so since sort of the hopeless past, a few years have gone by, how have you seen, one, I guess two-part question, how have you seen sort of public opinion evolve over time? I know you talked a lot about, a little bit about the teachers unions and about some of your constituents, but just overall from your experience, how do you see public opinion has evolved over the school choice issue? And then I guess a second part to that, with folks still trying to attack hope for all these things, school consolidations, as you’ve mentioned before, what have been some of the more effective ways that you’ve been able to push back on that and say, you know, this is what the data show. This is what’s true. And, you know, that’s how you move forward. I know that’s like a two-part loaded question, but.

Patricia: No, but it is important. And this is where I put in a great plug for EdChoice, of course, because without the data that EdChoice has provided, both before we passed hope and afterwards, it would be a very different argument, very different and difficult thing to be able to defend. But because of organizations like EdChoice, which does the data, does the surveys, really looks into what’s happening.

I can’t even tell you, like it was absolutely essential. When, first of all, I know public opinion was already high in West Virginia for school choice, especially after you educate them on what that option means. But afterwards, it has even gone higher. And of course, we now have a huge group of advocates who are benefiting, who are out there educating others and talking to others and showing up when it matters, when the attacks are coming. Last night was a perfect example. One of our local counties had an open school board meeting, and there were discussions about the threat of school choice to that county.

And I can tell you, I wasn’t there, wasn’t any of my district, but I was told a huge number of families who are using school choice programs in West Virginia showed up too. So, you know, there was a lot of discussion, but it stayed pretty good. Like I heard that it was very positive. And when it comes to the data, that’s so important. So the only way that I can hit back when they say things like, oh my goodness, schools are closing because of hope, is to actually, oh really, let’s look at the numbers. And you see that very few families in that particular area are selected hope.

But you know what’s happening in equal numbers in pretty much everywhere in the state of West Virginia? Parents are choosing to leave the public school system without applying for hope, without getting their money, which is their money. They’re just leaving. And why are they leaving? Well, obviously the public schools are struggling. I’ll just say it. And so they can’t really blame hope when you have equal number of parents leaving without even accessing those public dollars. They’re just leaving. And that’s what we’re trying to reverse.

And I do also tell you that at the same time that we have pursued school choice options for parents, we have been investing in the public school system. Obviously we want that to succeed. Since we started school choice, which technically five years ago when we allowed for a few charter schools, I can tell you we’ve put more than $700 million more into public education in those five years.

So no one can say we’re defunding public schools, but yet they continue to lose students. So clearly we need more work to do and we’re still working on that. And I’m still open obviously to any and all ways we can improve public education. But again, having that data, which thank you Ed Choice for all the work you do in helping us get that.