Good day, CharterFolk
This is one I’ve been waiting to come out.
Matt Barnum writes that, though the data would suggest we are living through an “education depression,” the public doesn’t seem to care that much.
Not enough, anyway, to place education anywhere but near the bottom of its list of policy priorities.
It’s an underlying dynamic I think many of us in ReformLand are keyed into.
The electorate simply doesn’t seem particularly stressed about the state of the nation’s schools.
Matt attributes much of that to oft-reported polling.
The public thinks public education generally is not very good, but they like their own schools.
I’ve never found that particularly convincing.
The cognitive dissonance required for parents to acknowledge deep problems in public education while assuming those problems somehow stop at the edge of their own school’s campus has always made me skeptical of those satisfaction numbers.
And whenever we engage the public on concrete choices rather than abstract sentiments, the data tends to come back fairly unequivocal.
Parents think schools are struggling.
They support more educational options.
They believe charter schools should be allowed to grow.
Yet none of that translates into political support strong enough to create the policy environment necessary for charter schools to do what parents say they want them to do.
Meanwhile, when you look beneath the surface, there are reasons to believe dissatisfaction runs much deeper than the surveys suggest.
An EdNext article out today reports that the leading reason parents are turning to homeschooling is dissatisfaction with their public school options.
Little wonder, then, that we increasingly see efforts to limit parents’ ability to homeschool.
More broadly, we have a status quo that often seems surprisingly comfortable drawing as little attention as possible to the actual condition of our schools.
I noticed this morning that Diane Ravitch happened to link to a couple of education stories on her blog. But scroll back through the past hundred posts and you’ll find education itself is often secondary. The dominant theme is national politics.
It reflects a broader political reality.
If voters care more about immigration, inflation, abortion, Trump, democracy, or any number of other issues than they do about public education, then there is little electoral incentive for Democratic leaders to reposition themselves on education.
Why invite a fight over schools when the political rewards lie elsewhere?
Of course, it would be far better if the public became deeply engaged over learning itself.
If declining achievement.
If chronic absenteeism.
If the fact that year after year we produce outcomes we all profess to find unacceptable.
Many of us have spent decades hoping that would happen.
Perhaps one day it will.
But if the politics of public education are about to change, my guess is they won’t change because the public suddenly becomes more interested in NAEP scores.
They will change because the consequences become impossible to ignore.
There are tradeoffs to treating education as a lower-order political concern.
An electorate that isn’t especially focused on education is also unlikely to make large financial sacrifices on its behalf.
News out of California this week highlighted how many parcel tax measures failed, including in some of the state’s most affluent communities.
Think about what that means.
These weren’t communities being asked to bail out distant school districts.
They were being asked to pay more for their own schools.
And many said no.
If affluent voters are unwilling to pay more to support the schools their own children attend, why should we assume they’ll willingly pay more to bail out districts they have no connection to?
It’s a question status quo interests are increasingly going to have to answer.
Because we’ve never experienced a moment quite like the one we’re entering.
Consider what is converging all at once.
The largest one-time infusion of federal education dollars in American history is disappearing.
Birth rates have been falling for years, producing enrollment declines unlike anything most district leaders have managed before.
Families today have more educational options than at any point in modern American history – charter schools, homeschooling, microschools, education savings accounts, virtual schools, and private schools.
And in many places, despite repeated warnings that the pandemic funding was temporary …
… districts and teacher unions converted extraordinary, temporary funding into permanent compensation commitments.
None of those developments, on their own, would necessarily overwhelm the system.
Together, they create a stress test unlike anything public education has faced in generations.
Status quo interests have effectively made an enormous wager.
That when structural deficits become impossible to ignore…
When school closures begin…
When layoffs become unavoidable…
…the public will ultimately decide the existing system is worth paying substantially more to preserve.
I’ve watched public education long enough to have learned some humility.
I’ve predicted fiscal reckoning before only to watch districts find another way to muddle through.
So I could certainly be wrong again.
But my instinct is that this moment is different.
Not because district finances have never been challenged before.
But because we’ve never before seen expiring one-time funding, sustained demographic decline, unprecedented educational choice, and permanent spending commitments collide all at once.
None of those trends is easily reversible.
The pandemic money isn’t coming back.
Birth rates aren’t suddenly rebounding.
Educational options aren’t disappearing.
Permanent spending commitments don’t simply unwind on their own.
All while the connective tissue between families and their neighborhood schools seems more frayed than at any point in my lifetime.
Amid the commotion that is likely coming, we may finally discover how deep the public’s commitment to public education really runs.
Not in another poll.
Not in another focus group.
Not in another report.
But in how people respond when the system itself comes under real stress.
In banking, they call it a stress test.
CharterFolk, public education’s is coming.