Are Dana Goldstein and I watching the same state of education politics? She claims in the pages of the New York Times that, presently, “neither party, nor even a single major political figure,” wants to claim the mantle of education reformer. “What happened to learning as a national priority?” she asks.
To her mind, Republicans, and Trump in particular, have fixated on “ideological obedience” while Democrats defend a “status quo” that “satisfies no one.” A few advocates have broken that trend, but the large majority have advanced no agenda for learning, student achievement, or education reform.
Her contention is true if we accept two conditions: first, if you define “education reform” in her very specific, narrow terms and accept no alternative policies; and second, if you conveniently ignore a slate of policies that Republican-led states are advancing.
Regarding the former, Goldstein includes a brief history (obituary) for the bipartisan coalition of education reformers that first coalesced when George H.W. Bush convened forty-nine of the nation’s fifty governors to set national education goals. For the following three decades, this coalition advanced a standards-based, standardized-testing-heavy slate of reforms that peaked in the No Child Left Behind Era.
Neither their achievements nor cooperation were to last. Obama dismantled their policies with the Every Child Succeeds Act and political divides splintered the bipartisan consensus soon after the election of Donald Trump.
If by “education reform” we mean that very specific era of education politics, then few individuals are indeed education reformers anymore. But can one be a reformer with different policy goals?
Disagree all you want with the proposition that Republicans abolish the Department of Education. Proponents, I count myself among them, believe it will improve student outcomes. If someone’s struggling to breathe with three masks on, take off the masks. If schools are struggling under a bevy of regulations, misguided Dear Colleague Letters, and federal grants bankrolling terrible ideas, maybe cut regulations where possible, cutoff the spigot of funds, and trim or even dismantle the department that’s causing the mismanagement?
Goldstein also discounts “debates over critical race theory and DEI” that are “indifferent to the data showing that when it comes to academic learning and social development, too many children and teenagers are suffering.”
I’d argue that the tenets of CRT and DEI manifest in many counterproductive policies—equity grading, no-consequence discipline, choose-your-own-adventure style classroom structures, affinity groups, ideologically suspect curricula—that depress student achievement by lowering expectations. Ideas have consequences. Excise DEI-inspired practices and schools improve.
The same line of argument applies to school choice. Quibble with the research all you want, the hope is that choice in any form—open enrollment, vouchers, ESAs, charters—will result in better schools for both students attending an alternative and, through competitive pressure, the students who stay in district schools.
For each policy, I’m not here to convince Goldstein or anyone else that these are the correct and right policies, rather that they are earnestly intended to create better schools and improve the academic outcomes of students. They are “education reform” and focused on “learning” even if they don’t align with Goldstein’s preferred correctives. If I want to build a bookcase with nails and pine instead of screws and oak, that makes me no less of a woodworker.
Even if we accept her definition of “education reform,” her opening salvo only stands if you ignore a slate of Republican action at the state-level. As Mike Petrilli has detailed in these pages, the “conventional wisdom” that everyone has abandoned traditional education reform doesn’t apply to Republicans if “we look beyond Washington to the states.”
The obvious exemplar is Cade Brumley in Louisiana. Summarized well in The74, under Brumley’s guidance:
“State lawmakers have also undertaken a long consideration of K–12 policy, passing a sweeping reform of literacy instruction in 2021 and establishing a statewide system of education savings accounts (ESAs) last year. State social studies standards were overhauled as well, and Brumley’s Department of Education rolled out an initiative aiming to give teachers more autonomy over their day-to-day tasks.”
Perhaps not coincidentally, Louisiana jumped from 50th to 16th in the nation in reading scores.
Elsewhere, of the states that ban three cueing and fund training in the science of reading, almost all of them are Republican-leaning. A-F or 1-5 ratings for accountability systems? Red states. School choice and charter growth? Red states. Discipline reform? Red states.
Noticing a pattern?
Ever a pessimist, I’m actually hopeful for the prospects of, yes, Republican-led education reform at both the state and federal levels. Smack down misguided ideology and pull back regulations at the federal level; push for instructional and curricular reform at the state level. That’s not a bad agenda for improving learning!
