The Public Education Reform Imperative
Defeating the Forces Who Would Wreck Public Education
Civic Way continues its look at public education in America, highlighting several broad themes that affect every state’s public education system. This essay confronts the ugly politics that threaten the future of America’s public schools. The author, Bob Melville, is the founder of Civic Way, a nonprofit dedicated to good government, and a management consultant with over 45 years of experience improving public agencies.
The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
– Malcolm Forbes
Politics and the Pandemic
America is torn by two conflicting visions of public education. One sees education as a vital building block of a prosperous, democratic nation—the best way to produce citizens who think for themselves. The other sees education as a tool for promoting a single ideology or theology—the essential means for replacing curiosity (open minds) with certitude (closed minds).
The pandemic ended or shattered millions of lives. It also gave new life to the worst traits of our national politics. Public health decisions to close schools and enforce mask mandates, while necessary to protect children and teachers from a fatal virus, released the same toxins that have long contaminated our politics—such as social isolation, alienation, tribalism, outrage and vengeance.
As our politics festered, the infection spread to public education. And the bipartisan public education reform movement was an early victim. Many politicians retreated to their partisan trenches and found clever ways to politicize public education. It did not take long for the outrage sector to exploit the public education war for power and profit. Regrettably, our children and nation will ultimately pay the price.
The Real Enemy
Given what is at stake—the future of our nation’s public education system—we can ill afford any misunderstandings or misconceptions about the true intentions of the anti-public education crusaders.
Let’s be clear. We are in the midst of a ferocious political war about public education. This war is not about school choice, parental rights or cultural wedge issues. Nor is it about the best ways to value teachers or improve our public schools. It is about whether we should have public schools at all.
The traditional partisan differences are well known. Republicans lambast Democrats for spending too much on public schools or being beholden to teacher unions[i]. In turn, Democrats decry what they view as the GOP’s underfunding of public education and the failure to properly compensate good teachers.
However, this war is not about traditional partisan differences. It is an extremist crusade to exterminate public schools. Exploiting pandemic era anxieties. Using contrived cultural issues like wokeism and critical race theory to sow distrust. Vilifying and destabilizing public schools. Demanding book bans. And enacting half-baked ideas like universal (unlimited) vouchers to shift tax dollars from public to private schools.
Christian nationalists and other right-wing extremists aren’t the only forces standing in the way of bipartisan public education reform. Teacher unions have, for example, resisted some bipartisan accountability measures. But raising objections is not the same as abandoning bipartisan education reform altogether. Debating how to reform public education should not be confused with trying to dismantle it.
Behind the Curtain of the Anti-Public Education Crusade
What is the anti-public education crusade? At its core, despite the disarming school choice rhetoric behind which it hides, it is a campaign to divert public tax dollars from public schools to private and home schools. It is an unabashed quest to end—or at least weaken—public education.
The movement has taken different shapes, but its purest form has been realized in states with GOP-controlled state legislatures[ii]. Those states have enacted universal voucher programs with few eligibility restrictions and even less accountability. The basic goal of these programs (including educational saving accounts) is to reward a student’s family—with public funds—for transferring from a public to a private school[iii].
Who are the master minds behind this crusade? Since donations can be concealed, it is hard to determine. Still, two distinct groups appear most influential—privatization proponents and religious zealots. These groups don’t agree on everything, but they share a loathing of government, teacher unions and the very idea of public education.
The free market advocates want to privatize public schools[iv]. They include right-wing groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), State Policy Network, American Federation for Children (AFC) and Education Freedom Alliance. Their megadonors include the Bradley and Heritage foundations and billionaires like the DeVos, Koch, Mercer and Walton families.
The religious zealots, dominated by Christian fundamentalists and nationalists, are even more committed to the dismantling of public education. They believe that public schools are too secular. They fear open minds as godless minds. One of their donors, a California-based real estate magnate, best described their mission, “Our goal is to take down the education system as we know it.”
The religious network is widespread and well-funded. It includes entities such as the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), Hillsdale College, Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), Parentalrights.org, Prager University, National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), Ziklag and the 1776 Project. Leaders include evangelical homeschool champions. Donors include the Dunn, Green, Uihlein and Wilks families.
The Moms for Liberty Charade
One group, Moms for Liberty (M4L), offers a clear window into the anti-public education crusade. M4L shows the scale and threat of the right-wing campaign against public education. Parading as a grassroots organization, M4L is anything but. It is not only an extremist group (according to the Southern Poverty Law Center), but also an integral part of a massive national network of Christian nationalist groups.
M4L was founded in 2021 to “return patriotism and Christianity to our schools.” In only two years, it established 245 chapters with over 115,000 members in 45 states, but this growth did not occur organically. One of its founders, recently ensnared in a sex scandal, is married to the chair of the Florida Republican Party. From Day One, it had easy access to right-wing media outlets like Breitbart and Fox. It was promoted by national figures like Governor DeSantis and financed by the Heritage and George Jenkins foundations.
With the aid of its national sponsors, M4L quickly amassed a network of local chapters. It deployed poll-tested fear tactics to attack public schools and teachers. Hiding behind innocuous slogans like “parental rights,” it agitated for banning books, diversity classes and LGBTQ+ rights. Its members (often with Proud Boys) disrupted local school board meetings. Much like the Tea Party, it looked grassroots but was decidedly top-down.
The Anti-Public Education Crusade’s Plan
The megadonors and institutions spearheading the anti-public education campaign have an impressive plan for dismantling the nation’s public education system. It has three major fronts: inciting parental fears, seizing local school boards, and upending state laws and policies. More on each below.
The parental rights campaign, which began as a protest against public health mandates, morphed into virulent attacks on books, courses, kids and teachers. Its leaders have been far more focused on vilifying public schools than offering substantive policy ideas about improving parental engagement. Many right-wing protesters (sometimes escorted by Proud Boys) flooded public school board meetings to disrupt proceedings. The threats that accompanied these protests encouraged many school board member resignations.
The school board campaign has been very impactful. In 2022, M4L boasted that 55 percent of their 500 endorsed candidates won school board races. While right-wing candidates were less successful in 2023[v], it would be premature to label this a trend[vi]. The fact remains that many school boards taken over by right-wing majorities have forced out superintendents, intimidated teachers and promoted censorship. School board elections are likely to be fiercely contested in the years ahead.
The most consequential strategy has been to enact invasive, prescriptive laws and rules in red states[vii] (i.e., states with overwhelming Republican majorities). In many cases, these states have enacted ALEC model education bills with little debate. Among other things, these bills limit the discussion of racial and gender matters, empower parents to sue school boards, and subject school personnel to prosecution and de-licensure.
Where right-wing Republicans control state education agencies, they have eviscerated educational policies. Prohibiting the teaching of inconvenient facts (e.g., Tulsa Race Massacre or climate change[viii]). Ending Advanced Placement courses. Imposing right-wing propaganda on local schools[ix] and downgrading accreditation for disobedient districts. And, for states with bipartisan education agencies, emasculate those agencies (e.g., Ohio).
The Daunting Road to Bipartisanship
Combatants often lose perspective in the fog of war. Battle lines naturally crystallize around binary questions like winning and losing. Unfortunately, as the anti-public education crusaders narrowed their focus on winning, they have clearly lost sight of what’s best for our children and nation.
The problem is not that we have differences on how to reform public education. Rather, it is that the anti-public education ideologues aren’t interested in reform. They demonstrate their indifference to reform in many ways. When they vilify public schools and educators. When they enact cookie cutter bills behind closed doors—without debate. When they are too close-minded to consider other views.
It is not that questions about school choice, teacher unions and parental control should be ignored. It is that they deserve thoughtful public debate. If we want a more flexible, robust public education system, how much should we invest? If we value teachers, how should they be compensated and engaged? If we believe parents should have a greater voice, how can we attain that goal in a way that improves educational outcomes?
The bipartisan coalition for public education reform can be rebuilt. Many Republicans support their public schools. In Texas, for instance, 21 rural Republican legislators have repeatedly (and courageously) resisted Governor Abbott’s efforts to install a universal voucher program. Across the nation, local school tax levies continue to enjoy broad voter support. And pro-public education voters of all political stripes are beginning to reject extremist school board candidates.
However, it won’t be easy. Dark money groups continue to spend lavishly on pro-voucher politicians[x]. For example, they have primaried GOP incumbents who have opposed unlimited vouchers[xi]. In Texas, after the state house recently adjourned without enacting a school voucher bill, the Governor immediately threatened to primary the rural Republicans who rejected his proposal. The dark money will come.
Americans who cherish our public education system face a harsh reality. Until the extremist war on public education ends, it will be virtually impossible to mount a successful bipartisan public education reform effort. There is simply no alternative but to defeat the forces who want to end public education. Only then can we renew the bipartisan reform effort and put our children—and America’s future—first.
In this essay, we address the politicization of America’s public education system. In the next few essays, we will tackle some of the major issues that will determine the future of public education—like governance, funding, civic education, school choice and accountability—and outline some potential bipartisan reform strategies.