Good morning, CharterFolk.
Let’s start with David Brook’s piece last week at the Times.
He didn’t mince words about how lost Dems are on education matters.
I’m somewhat interested in the ways Trump’s opponents will resist his power grabs. But I’m more interested in what reforms Democrats can offer to change the underlying conditions that produced Trumpism. So far, I’m not seeing many.
School reform was an attempt to disrupt the caste system, to widen opportunity for the less privileged. Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama angered core Democratic constituencies like teachers unions in order to expand opportunity down the income scale. But now Democrats have basically given up. Joe Biden didn’t devote much energy to education reform. Kamala Harris ran for president without anything like a robust education reform agenda.
Research by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Michael Petrilli has demonstrated that red states are now much more active than blue states in adopting new education reform ideas. As a result, red states are leaping out ahead when it comes to student performance. The biggest education story of the last few years has been the so-called Southern surge, the significant rise in test scores in states such as Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee.
In sector after sector, Democrats are in danger of becoming the party of the status quo.
This morning we see a report from the Times about how Democrat registrations are falling off a cliff.
Again, no word-mincing:
The Democratic Party is hemorrhaging voters long before they even go to the polls.
Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections — and often by a lot.
That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from.
For those of you wanting a link to Fordham’s research about the difference in red state and blue state education policy, I encourage you to check it out here.
It’s a good complement to the “Crack Up” phenomenon we’ve been writing about here at CharterFolk since our earliest days.
As Brooks points out, there isn’t much evidence yet of Dems doing something new. The bluer the context, the firmer the opposition to what works.
In San Francisco the district and other status quo interests are attempting to stifle a new charter school that parents are proposing there.
The Post, to its credit, continues highlighting how charter schools are beacons of light in blue city/state New York.
The ESC Matrix data we posted here three weeks ago shows just how much stunningly better NY charter schools are performing than district schools.
If there is any place in the country where we should be doubling down on charter school growth, it is New York. And yet, Dem standard bearers only intensify their opposition.
Meanwhile, where was Secretary McMahon yesterday?
At Dove Charter Schools …
… which ESC showed in a recent data release to be among the highest performing public schools in Oklahoma City.
One side of the political spectrum actively opposes what works. The other actively celebrates it and helps it to grow.
Is there any wonder why one side is seeing its political prospects further dim?
None of this is meant to be some blanket endorsement of everything McMahon’s team is attempting to advance. While at Dove, she appeared to signal general support for the sunsetting of testing requirements in Oklahoma. The very performance data that helped her identify what school to visit in Oklahoma she is signaling she may be willing to get rid of.
It aligns with a far bigger trend of erasing our ability to understand what is happening in our schools. The Journal’s latest piece about the number of education researchers leaving the field altogether is sobering.
It’s going to take some super powers to navigate all this, CharterFolk.
Fortunately, as ever, our schools themselves point the way.
Creating opportunities that kids and parents want.
It has always been, and always will be, the charter school movement’s magic wand.