As a Los Angeles Unified School District parent during the pandemic, I had a front row seat as my fellow Democrats and their teachers union allies lit the match that turned a global health crisis into an education inferno.
I watched my daughters isolate at home every day during the school closures, logging onto the occasional Zoom, often without video while lying horizontal in bed, in what we loosely referred to as “school.” As weeks bled into months, as one lost school year bled into another, I watched my daughters’ anxiety spike and their spirits dim.
When I began organizing with other LAUSD parents to reopen all schools for all kids, I watched the president of the teachers union—which controlled our schools along with the Democratic Party—gaslight parents, as if ripped from a lesson plan on George Orwell, that there is “no such thing as learning loss.”
This shocking claim went unchallenged by our Democratic mayor, our Democratic governor, and our Democratic president—all of whom uncoincidentally ran with strong teachers union backing. It is a tragic understatement to say that assertion has not aged well.
The most recent NAEP national report card included the first reading and math results for 12th graders since before the pandemic, and it showed across-the-board declines for American children—with reading scores dipping to their lowest levels in American history.
Dan Goldhaber of the American Institutes for Research tied much of the abysmal data directly to pandemic-related school closures. Tom Kane of the Harvard Graduate School of Education called the results a “five-alarm fire.”
Marc Porter Magee, CEO of 50CAN, articulated in the New York Times that Democrats have long treated America’s education crisis as a vexing policy problem, when it’s actually the result of cold political calculus: “There’s a road map out there from states like Louisiana and Tennessee, focused on high-dosage tutoring, high-quality curriculum, and clear information for parents on where their kids stand. What’s missing now is the political will to bring it to every state.”
Porter Magee is arguing that Democrats must choose between placating powerful special interests or putting the interests of children and parents first. They can’t have it both ways.
Democratic dithering on education created a vacuum which President Trump and other Republicans were keen to fill. Trump’s educational choice tax credit offers Republicans a clear—if flawed—answer to this crisis: free money for parents to send their children to the school of their choice.
President Biden and VP Harris fled from the bold education legacies of President Obama and President Clinton (whose White House I worked in as a young staffer) by opposing public charter schools, supporting pandemic school closures, and caving to teachers union demands. In doing so, they repositioned Democrats as flat-footed defenders of the status quo while erasing the party’s historic advantage on education.
Unfortunately for Democrats, it turns out that voters are wildly dissatisfied with the status quo.
According to a poll commissioned by Education Civil Rights Now last month, 65 percent of Americans rightly do not believe that American school children have recovered from the Covid school closures, and a supermajority of 71 percent believe our schools are doing a poor job preparing students for an AI-dominated future.
In terms of a new North Star for American public education, 86 percent of voters and a nearly unanimous 97 percent of Democrats support establishing high-quality public schools as an actionable civil right for all American children. The reason we don’t see a stampede of national Democrats racing to embrace this position is that teachers union leaders are among the 1 percent of Democrats who oppose quality education as a civil right.
Here’s a lesson plan for my party: Presidents Clinton and Obama won in part because they had the courage to challenge party orthodoxy on behalf of the American people. Harris—along with every other nominee since Walter Mondale who lost in the general election—ran effectively as an avatar of party orthodoxy and outsourced education policymaking to teachers unions.
Voters get it. All the gaslighting in the world isn’t going to change the fact that public school parents—including parents in swing states who will elect the next president—are fed up with the state of American education.
National Democrats now face a defining choice. They can double down on teachers union rhetoric that there is no such thing as learning loss: “Nothing to see here folks!” Or they can recapture the mantle as the party of public education by embracing parents as partners, supporting public school choice, and translating “high quality public schools” from a soundbite into a civil right for all American children.
Democrats can’t rely on education arsonists to put out this five-alarm fire. If they want to win, they must chart a future-focused vision of high-quality public schools for all children unconstrained by special interest politics. This isn’t a nerdy policy debate. It’s a political imperative—to win back parents, reclaim the White House, and save American democracy.
Op Ed Written by Ben Austin