On Independence Day, President Trump signed into law the biggest expansion of universal private school choice in American history. In its reporting, the New York Times inexplicably characterized a last-minute amendment limiting Education Savings Accounts only to states that opt-in as a “win for Democrats and teachers’ unions,” because blue states would presumably choose not to participate.
Although American Federation of Teachers president and recently resigned DNC member Randi Weingarten may view the denial of school choice to blue state parents as a “win,” I doubt working class voters would agree.
In fact, that “win” represents a political landmine for Democrats.
I am skeptical about the wisdom of Trump’s Education Savings Accounts plan, but I must admit that I am only typing this sentence because of a scholarship I received to attend a private school many years ago.
When I was 16, my alcoholic father committed suicide. I vividly remember going to school the first day after my dad’s funeral feeling overwhelmed, numb and embarrassed. And I remember how my teachers made me feel safe and seen in a way that altered the trajectory of my life.
My younger brother wasn’t so lucky. He went to a different school when our dad died and joined a gang after dropping out.
I have seen firsthand the impact of education dancing on the razor’s edge of a child’s life. That’s why I do what I do.
So I respect leaders like Democrats for Education Reform chief Jorge Elorza, who are driving the voucher debate. But I have a healthy skepticism about the public policy implications of scaling a wild-west national Education Savings Account plan with few regulatory guardrails to ensure educational quality — not to mention separation of church and state red flags or my belief in the promise of public education.
Policy concerns aside, voters now face a stark color-coded national split-screen. In red states, you get free money for the school of your choice. In blue states, you get what you get and you don’t get upset.
Listening to teachers union leaders like Weingarten and her allies, you’d think charter schools were created in an underground right-wing laboratory as part of a secret plot to “privatize” public education. In fact charter schools were originally proposed in 1988 by her own American Federation of Teachers predecessor Al Shanker.
I worked in the White House for President Bill Clinton, who proudly ran on charter schools when only one existed in America. President Barack Obama later scaled high-quality charters as part of his bold Race to the Top agenda.
Charters are public schools, which means they are free and secular, cannot have admission requirements, and have strict regulatory controls on educational quality. That doesn’t sound like a Republican plot to destroy public education to me.
I am a longtime public school parent. My daughters have attended our great neighborhood Los Angeles Unified School District school, as well as multiple high-quality public charters. But we literally had to win a lottery to get into their charter schools. That’s because California caps charter growth, since many charters are not unionized, as a Democratic Party favor to teachers unions.
Amongst progressive issues outside education that Weingarten and I agree upon is that Trump is a threat to democracy. That’s exactly why the time is now for a Democratic moonshot to translate “high-quality public schools” from a soundbite into a civil right.
In debating this abundance moonshot, the onus is on Democrats like me who are skeptical about Education Savings Accounts to articulate a compelling alternative that can win back working class voters.
Weingarten, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have rightly championed universal preschool, free community college and student loan relief. But the entire K-12 experience of a child is conveniently missing from that agenda.
In addition to scaling high-quality public school choice, our moonshot must span preschool to post-secondary, pivot from “equity” to “quality,” and put parents — not party interests — at the center. This begins with eliminating school attendance boundaries that trap children in failing schools; expanding high-quality career and technical education; universal tutoring for the COVID generation; endorsement of science of reading; and finishing the job of Brown v. Board of Education by codifying high-quality public schools as a civil right for all children in America.
The good news for my party is that Democrats have a strong bench of national leaders with a record of challenging party orthodoxy. That was a feature — not a bug — of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s success as the only two-term Democratic presidents since Franklin Roosevelt.
The bad news is that while Democrats have dithered for a decade under Biden, Harris and Weingarten, Republicans have been formulating a bold vision for American education with obvious appeal for the same working class voters Democrats need to win back.
The ball is decidedly now in our court. Democratic leaders must volley with a viable vision that speaks to the urgent needs of working-class parents — not just to do the right thing for kids, but also to win back power.
For the sake of American democracy, Democrats must not concede education Independence Day to Trump.
Ben Austin is a Democratic Party insider, former staffer for Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign and founding director of Education Civil Rights Now.
