Posted on Wednesday, November 13, 2024
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by Outside Contributor
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As the results of the election came into focus Tuesday night, Chuck Todd made a keen observation on NBC: Republicans’ biggest gains among Hispanic voters came in Florida and Texas, states that “have been very aggressive about expanding school choice.”
That’s not a coincidence. Conservatives have long understood that school choice is a winning issue, especially in minority communities that have been poorly served by traditional public schools. But over the last decade, ed reform’s dominant progressive wing held the whip hand, shattering whatever modest bipartisan comity had previously existed on a host of policy issues from charter schools to testing and accountability. Democrats rekindled their long romance with teachers’ unions, while Republicans turned their focus to a private school choice.
The education reform movement was functionally dismantled, falling prey to what I’ve described elsewhere as a “stifling orthodoxy in mainstream education reform thought regarding issues of race, class, and gender.” Conservatives and their policy preferences were unwelcome and pushed to the sidelines, leading many on the right to retreat not just from ed reform efforts, but from traditional public schools entirely in favor of private school choice, homeschooling, and other alternatives. And it’s been working. Republicans’ “red state strategy” has been a yielded important victories, particularly passing universal Education Savings Account (ESA) programs in about a dozen states in the past few years.
The election and Trump’s surprising (to non-conservatives) strength with urban, Black, and Hispanic voters creates a permission structure for conservatives to engage in big-city education reform and reassert themselves in the work to improve outcomes for low-income children of color whose parents are drifting to the right. It’s more than just good politics to push on the door that Donald Trump has jarred opened: While school choice offers a critical escape hatch for dissatisfied families, it’s unlikely to replace entirely the essential role of traditional public education in our society anytime soon.
Trump “has an opportunity to restore the bipartisan support charters had enjoyed before Trump Derangement Syndrome took hold and one party’s candidates started snogging with people sworn to kill school choice,” observed Bob Bellafiore, a long-time ed reform advocate who was New York State’s first charter authorizer. “This is what expanding your constituency does.”
Bellafiore’s right, but it’s a two-way street. Trump and his education secretary, Betsy DeVos were, at least in their rhetoric, stalwart supporters of charters and school choice. But the left-leaning sector’s political priors made working with the Administration virtually out of the question for ed reform’s progressives, revealing them to be what Derrell Bradford, the President of 50CAN, pointedly calls “ed reformers second,” e.g. political partisans first. In a second Trump Administration, they too have an opportunity to remember their job is improving outcomes for kids regardless of which party is in power.
To be clear, it will take some persuading to get conservatives to re-engage in urban education reform. The right has good reason to be wary of the direction public education has taken in recent years. Public schools have too often become vehicles for progressive indoctrination, pushing agendas that many parents find objectionable. But simply abandoning public schools would be a grave mistake. The majority of American children—future entrepreneurs, engineers, doctors, soldiers, and citizens—will continue to be educated in traditional public schools for the foreseeable future. Surrendering these institutions to the left would be an act of educational and cultural self-destruction.
It’s also an opportunity for thoughtful conservatives to re-evaluate past missteps and even make amends. That means engaging with public school teachers, a group that has borne the brunt of conservative ire in recent years. As I argued recently in National Affairs, while it’s true that teachers’ unions have often been obstacles to meaningful reform, there’s more common ground between conservatives and teachers than most people realize on a host of issues including teacher training and pay, school safety, student discipline, even curriculum.
The political picture is not entirely uncomplicated. School choice referenda in Kentucky and Nebraska went down to defeat. And Massachusetts voters soundly rejected keeping Massachusetts’ MCAS test as a graduation requirement—a stunning rejection in one of the nation’s highest-performing states. But the election results, particularly in Florida and Texas, suggest that voters are receptive to a center-right vision for education reform. Conservatives are being handed an opportunity to lead on this issue, crafting a reform agenda that embraces both choice and accountability while respecting the vital role of public education and the people who work in it. It’s also an opportunity for the left to take conservative education ideas seriously. Or lose more elections.
Robert Pondiscio is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and an affiliate of AEI’s James Q. Wilson Program in K–12 Education Studies, where he focuses on K–12 education, curriculum, teaching, school choice, and charter schooling.
Reprinted with permission from AEI – By Robert Pondiscio
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
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