Good day, CharterFolk.
I confess I’m getting my election debriefs out a little later than I was anticipating. It’s taken me a while to aggregate all the relevant data points and identify the most salient themes for those of us in CharterLand. My hope is analysis that isn’t duplicative, or utterly banal. Nowhere is it harder to hit that standard than at the top of the ticket. I’ll start there today and get the rest of my debrief out to you in my next post.
When “Not a Thing Comes to Mind” Becomes Your Vision
My aim here is not to try to explain why Harris lost. Pundits galore have opined on that subject.
Rather, my aim is to understand what it means that she lost, and Trump won, as far as it relates to charter schools.
Most experts cite no one thing as having determined the election but a myriad of factors that came together. Granted.
But I do think there was one moment that captured the overall posture of the Harris campaign that proved most damaging. It was the candidate’s response to a soft ball question on The View about what she would have done differently than Biden had done.
“There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she said.
It was a comment the Trump Campaign used against her again and again all the way through election day.
For those of us in CharterLand, we knew we weren’t even remotely in her thoughts during her time on The View set, but the comment resonated in ways that offered little reassurance nonetheless.
Was she saying that she wouldn’t have done anything different from Biden during the 2020 campaign when he professed himself to be “no friend of charter schools?”
Would she too have flinched in disgust at the mere mention of charter schools during an interview with the NEA president, affirming that she too thinks the same thing about charter schools that teacher union leaders do?
Would she too have unleashed the same attack on the CSP program that the Biden Administration did, provoking such a huge grassroots response from our base?
And would she too have caved in soon thereafter, maintaining a posture of silent detente toward charter schools as the Biden Administration did over its last two years in office?
Whatever the specific implications of her comments might have been, the comment spoke volumes in terms of broad generalities.
As was the case on a wide host of other policy areas, the Harris Administration was committed to becoming a continuation of the Biden Administration on education matters and on charter school matters.
And the Biden Administration was the first since the inception of our movement to be hostile to charter schools.
So, from a purely charter school perspective, we should be glad to see the Biden era go.
But we should lament that Harris didn’t seize upon what was a moment of unique opportunity for herself and for her party.
Instead she chose the path well travelled.
What set her on a trajectory toward “not a thing comes to mind” more than any other single decision was her choice of running mate.
I wrote about it at the time.
In that post I said that Harris had more freedom on education issues, and indeed on almost all issues, than any other recent party nominee because she hadn’t had to go through the primary process. That allowed her to avoid having to kowtow to the education status quo and other special interests such that she could really stake out new ground. And her choice of VP, I wrote, would be a fascinating bellwether for how much space she was going to open up between herself and Democratic Party orthodoxy.
Her answer, sadly, was none at all.
Instead of choosing Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a strong supporter of school choice, and the candidate that would have given her the greatest potential to differentiate herself from Biden, not to mention position her best to win the most important state in the critical Blue Wall, she chose Tim Walz.
Ultimately, orthodoxy was more important even than winning. So she chose a running mate who sent her entire candidacy down the path toward “not a thing comes to mind.”
Not just on education policy, but on just about everything.
I’m certainly not suggesting that a different choice would have resulted in a different outcome, but as I wrote in the first post after Harris made her safe pick …
… the man’s name resonates.
Walz.
The fact is that immense walls have been built around the policy positions that the Democratic Party can take on education policy.
And yes, for some within the party, maintaining those walls is more important than winning.
They are walls around positions that can be summarized as “not a thing comes to mind” as it relates to ideas about how to make public education in our country more equitable and excellent.
“Not a thing comes to mind” when school districts across this country are in a state of implosion.
“Not a thing comes to mind” when it is plainly evident that the education status quo is defended by some of the most wantonly reckless policy makers we find anywhere in modern life.
“Not a thing comes to mind” during a period when many parents were already plainly dissatisfied with public education …
… and that was before the status quo’s behavior during the pandemic convinced millions more parents that something is fundamentally askew in our nation’s public schools.
It leaves public education in our country on a precipice.
Maybe Tim Daly captured it best when he wrote last month that we’re living through …
… an education depression.
A time when decades of gains in learning have been erased, and a time when we’re not even talking about it, or even looking under the surface to see what is going on.
Last week’s election results are just another manifestation of that depression.
There was virtually no discussion of education happening during the campaign, and what little reporting there has been about education matters has been just so vacuous.
Like the articles that have been written about the three private school choice ballot measures that went down last week.
The lack of curiosity they demonstrate I find simply stunning.
Why, CharterFolk, would it be that over 63% of red-state Kentuckians and 57% of red-state Nebraskans voted against school choice, while less than 51% voted against it in blue-state Colorado?
Wouldn’t you think that someone would at least ask the question, pry just an inch or two below the surface?
Instead we have headlines that would lead people to conclude that there’s been a categorical rejection of school choice and there’s no nuance across the three state that need be even explored.
When in fact anyone who would bother to do even a modicum of due diligence would find profound differences in ballot language that was presented to voters across the three states.
Both the measure in Nebraska …
Section 1 of Legislative Bill 1402, enacted by the Nebraska Legislature in 2024, provides for $10 million annually to fund education scholarships to pay all or part of the cost to educate eligible students attending nongovernmental, privately operated elementary and secondary schools in Nebraska. Shall Section 1 of Legislative Bill 1402 be repealed?
… and in Kentucky …
To give parents choices in educational opportunities for their children, are you in favor of enabling the General Assembly to provide financial support for the education costs of students in kindergarten through 12th grade who are outside the system of common (public) schools by amending the Constitution of Kentucky as stated below?
The General Assembly may provide financial support for the education of students outside the system of common schools.
… specifically cited giving money to parties that would use it outside the system.
While Colorado’s made no reference to funding and simply asked whether parents should be able to choose among a wide range of options, including private schools.
Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution establishing the right to school choice for children in kindergarten through 12th grade, and, in connection therewith, declaring that school choice includes neighborhood, charter, and private schools; home schooling; open enrollment options; and future innovations in education?
The NEA can crow all it wants.
The real news out of these school choice measures is that, when neutrally worded to focus on the heart of the school choice matter – the right of parents to choose schools that are right for their kids – almost 50% of Coloradoans, 50% of blue state Coloradoans, 50% of people in a state that already has one of the strongest charter school laws in the country, voted in support of giving parents even wider choice.
And had the proponents of the measure engaged the charter school community to ensure that the proposal offered some tangible benefit to our world too, maybe CharterFolk would have come on board, which would have greatly improved the chances of getting the measure over the top.
This, CharterFolk, is what the building of blue walls around public education is coming to: a circumstance where people who we would presume to be most in support of public education as it has always been are on the very cusp of embracing something completely new.
And the more Dems keep saying that “not a thing comes to mind” about how to improve public education, the more they not only ensure their own defeat at the ballot box, but the more they erode our country’s commitment to public education itself.
The New Straddle that Awaits
We will see now where our new and returning president will take his party and our whole country. With both chambers of Congress controlled by Republicans, it should be a period when we can advance proposals at a federal level that could propel our movement on to even greater impact for decades to come.
But then again, Trump’s first administration was the only one in history to propose wiping out the entire federal Charter School Program.
So I offer no predictions.
But I do offer two final thoughts, both of them building out of themes I have been writing about here at CharterFolk since our earliest days.
The first is about the great “straddle challenge” that confronts the national charter school movement.
To date, I have been talking about the straddle being the need to span the partisan chasm that is opening up within our country. For our movement, we have been that unique policy phenomenon that has enjoyed bi-partisan support over the last three decades, and if we have plans for unleashing even more positive impact in public education, we’re going to have to maintain that bi-partisan support in a world where it’s becoming increasingly difficult to do so.
That straddle challenge abides, no doubt.
But this year’s election results underscore that there’s another form of straddle challenge that is presenting itself to our movement, one at least as daunting as the first.
It involves the opening up of a different kind of chasm.
On one side, we see a wing of the Democratic Party, occasionally allied with Republican status quo supporters, who build walls around public education such that it might never change. Their entire posture can be summed up to be: “not a thing comes to mind.”
Meanwhile, on the other side are those who want to tear the whole damn thing down. They are people who are so frustrated by what they have experienced that they see no reason for hope that things can be improved, and they think something better might emerge from throwing eight thousand bucks per kid at parents and letting chips fall where they may.
In the middle stands the charter school movement which is peopled by Folk who believe that public education can be transformed through a redesign that would allow it to become the more excellent and equitable thing we so desperately need it to be.
And yes, it is possible to look at this new straddle challenge, much as it is possible to look at our bi-partisan straddle challenge, as a moment of unprecedented threat.
But it’s also possible to see a moment of immense opportunity as well.
Because the truth is that neither faction on their respective sides of the chasm has an answer.
Neither “not a thing comes to mind” or “throw eight thousand bucks at parents” is a vision for equity and excellence.
And the vast majority within each party, when they are able to clear their heads and focus on common sense, know this to be true.
And nothing, CharterFolk, nothing in the education policy landscape has what we have:
A grand design. A path forward. A way for countless great new schools to be made, and a way for countless existing schools to have new life breathed into them.
But it’s going to require that we step up in new ways.
Not just to find a way to survive amid all the turbulence that buffets public education today, but to climb atop it and lead it, with a policy agenda for change that reflects the North Star we aspire to.
The very opposite of “not a thing comes to mind.”
An explosion of new ideas, in fact.
A new vision for public education
A vision whose time has come.
The Post-Biden Era
Which brings me to my final point.
Since the earliest days of CharterFolk, I have been saying it:
Make the Biden era that time in our history when we look back and say that is when we finally built the advocacy strength we will need to succeed for the long term.
I laid down the goal: 25 states with state associations where charter schools are paying $25/student in dues to support advocacy by 2025.
We see now the end of the Biden era approach.
We have made immense progress toward this goal. The second part of my elections update will talk about the progress we have made in state after state building the advocacy organizations that we need. And we have a great new leader at our national organization who deeply understands how to do the work. It’s all incredibly encouraging.
But 25x25x25?
CharterFolk, we have so much further to go.
To navigate the straddles that await us, we are going to need at levels beyond anything we have seen before well-funded, incredibly sophisticated, representative, affiliated, C3/C4 membership advocacy organizations at city, state and national levels.
So, CharterFolk, if you ever have the equivalent of your moment on The View when someone asks you what you would want the charter school movement to do differently in the years ahead.
Let “an even greater shared quest for advocacy excellence” be among the first things that comes to mind.