Ron Johnson Says Free-Market Principles Could Fix Education

Moms for Liberty Town Hall. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

Ron Johnson thinks schools are too big and that free market competition can solve the problems of education in the United States.

“That’s what a free market competition does, it lowers price, improves quality and customer service,” Johnson said Tuesday during a panel hosted by the group Moms for Liberty. “Gee, isn’t that what we’d like to have in healthcare and education, which is why school choice should be universal.”

Johnson was one of several elected officials that joined the Moms for Liberty Town Hall at the Bradley Symphony Center. Moms for Liberty is a far-right political organization that has become a growing force in Republican politics, taking on local education systems over LGBTQ material in curricula and critical race theory.

Donald Trump has praised the organization and even spoke at its national convention in 2023, and the party’s 2024 platform includes policy commitments to “restore parental rights” and to stop “Leftwing propaganda” and “gender indoctrination.”

Members of the organization see themselves in a battle between good and evil over parental control of children’s education, as Tina Descovich one of the group’s co-founders, said at the town hall Tuesday.

“The enemy wants to come between us and our children,” Descovich said.

Johnson took part in one of two panels hosted during the town hall. Johnson said he thinks the educational bureaucracy in the U.S. has gotten too big. He added that schools have gotten too big, and even speculated that they may be partially to blame for the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

“We’ll see more about the shooter, the initial interviews was that this was a loner, in probably a large school, being bullied all the time,” Johnson said. “And I’m hoping if there’s one result from Mom’s for Liberty… is that we start moving away from these massive, large schools and we start moving more toward the old one-room school house.”

Johnson said homeschooling was growing in popularity because parents saw “these bureaucracies are getting completely out of control and unaccountable” when students began attending school virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The senator from Wisconsin wasn’t the only member of the panel to call for returning education policy entirely back to state and local governments.

One of the bigger applause lines came from Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman when she said, “The fundamental problem that we have in the United States was the creation of the federal department of education.”

Hageman is a Trump-endorsed congressional candidate who defeated former Rep. Liz Cheney for Wyoming’s at-large congressional district.

This idea is popular among Republicans and was included in Project 2025, a large policy plan for a second Trump presidential term created by The Heritage Foundation. It’s also a part of the 2024 Republican Party Platform — one shaped by the views of Trump — approved by at the convention Monday.

Other ideas championed by Moms for Liberty that have found their way into the 2024 platform includes language about “parental rights” and “gender indoctrination.”

In just three years, Moms for Liberty has become a major player in conservative politics, backing candidates running for school boards and state houses across the country. The group’s push for “parental rights” to control their children’s education is now an idea enshrined in the party’s 2024 platform.

Another idea found in the platform, and trotted out during the panel, was shared by Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, who said deportation was key to improving education in the United States. The 2024 Republican platform blames “open border policies” for increasing the cost of education, healthcare and housing.

“The deportation aspects of this are gonna be really important,” Donalds said, “because, in a lot of our inner city schools you already have young kids that are a year, or two years behind, and now they’re having to compete for resources with young kids who are in the country illegally because of what Joe Biden has done.”