Coming Attractions Next week Bellwether school finance guru Jenn Schiess and I will talk education spending on an Ed Tech Collective webinar. On May 21st I’ll moderate a discussion about evidence for Eedi Labs, with a great set of guests. In a Bellwether – 74 webinar this week, Sonja Santelises and I talked about her … Continue reading "Negative Polarization Is The Enemy Of Education Reform"
Coming Attractions
Next week Bellwether school finance guru Jenn Schiess and I will talk education spending on an Ed Tech Collective webinar. On May 21st I’ll moderate a discussion about evidence for Eedi Labs, with a great set of guests.
In a Bellwether – 74 webinar this week, Sonja Santelises and I talked about her tenure leading Baltimore Schools. Look for that from The 74 next week. Paul Manna’s policy class at William & Mary joined us in real time.
I recently sat down with Mildred Otero and Taylor Stewart to talk education and leadership for their LEE podcast.
Is the Science of Reading Debate Over?
I remember in the 2000s one of education’s wise men assuredly told me not to worry about the reading issue — it was over. “Ease up and let the whole language people carry their dead off the field,” he said. “It’s done.” I was skeptical given the history, and sure enough Reading First fell apart and across the country we continued to teach millions of kids not to read well, their teachers not to teach reading well, all with deleterious consequences.
It seems like we’re having another one of those moments. Again, I’m skeptical. Here’s Robert Pondiscio arguing that SOR has won the policy argument if not, yet, the implementation. This new – and important – Fordham report supports that idea.
But I’m not even sure we have a policy victory yet. First, as in the past, the battle isn’t over — it’s just an insurgency now. We’re still in the shock and awe phase. Give it time. These are deep ideological commitments some people have, regardless of the evidence. They still have beachheads in ed schools and elsewhere, and you have not heard the last of them.
Second, here’s an old story in education. You get an idea with some key elements that make it effective. The idea is implemented well and shows promise. Then everyone wants to do it and it gets implemented with less and less fidelity to those core elements as they get shaved off for reasons of politics, cost, and so forth. Then someone comes along and evaluates it and says, “Hey, there is no real difference between places doing this and places that are not.” Idea discredited. Everyone moves on to the next thing. Another good not good example, tutoring…
Today, lots of states are doing “science of reading” but they may not be doing Science of Reading. It’s more than phonics. It can’t be challenge by choice for schools or teachers. It requires a comprehensive set of supports and a commitment to knowledge-rich curriculum and teaching. What Mississippi did and what California now says it’s doing in the name of Science of Reading are not the same thing. And, as we discuss more below, even if you very much want California Governor Gavin Newsom to be the America’s next president, you have to be willing to say so if you’re serious about teaching, learning, and policy.
Understanding that, and communicating it clearly, is essential to ensuring SOR isn’t one more idea that ends up a false negative because of how we do things.
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Negative Polarization Is Hamstringing Education Reform
OK kids, gather round. Did you know there was once a time when Republicans were for national education standards? It wasn’t that long ago! It was a good time. Nirvana and Pearl Jam were popping on the charts. Freedom broke out across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The craziest thing a U.S. President did was puke on his Japanese hosts. Good times.
In fact, for a long time education reform was, if not always bipartisan, certainly cross-partisan. The “secret Congress” wasn’t a secret. It was Congress. And it often did things on education. Meanwhile, key Republicans championed education spending. The Nixon(!) Administration piloted a Sandy Jencks equity-infused school choice program. Senator Robert Kennedy (D-NY) was a staunch proponent of testing and accountability. His brother, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) worked hand in glove with President George W. Bush on accountability and despite public disagreements on funding the two never broke on the policy itself. Bill Clinton as governor worked with President George H.W. Bush on standards and led on the issue himself later as president.
Now, as Bipartisan Policy Center CEO Margaret Spellings tirelessly points out, all the major federal education statutes are far past their expiration dates. Everyone is freaked out about the dismantling of IES but too few were concerned that the law authorizing the agency hasn’t been reauthorized in two decades.
Key parts of the Higher Education Act were effectively reauthorized in 2025 as part of President Trump’s tax bill. Including some provisions long championed by Democrats. But that happened as part of a party-line reconciliation vote. So now political pressure is starting to build to oppose some of those measures rather than improve and build on them.
Why?
Negative polarization.
Now, if one party champions something, however obvious, much of the other party opposes it because of how politics are practiced today in a closely divided electorate where most politicians, in both parties, are more worried about primaries than general elections. It’s why in Virginia when Glenn Youngkin (R) ran what was essentially the Education Trust playbook on school accountability, Democrats who otherwise couldn’t stop talking about their “equity” commitments fought it hammer and tongs. And for his part Youngkin’s team eschewed that branding for their own political reasons.
OK you say, that’s just politics now. But here’s the problem: Education reform only thrives in a bipartisan or robustly cross-partisan environment. Education reform is not a naturally or inherently red-blue issue. It’s why both Bushes, Clinton, and Obama were all able to use it politically to their advantage. Many differences are forced by political constraints . Most of the action is in the center — where most Americans are, if less by temperament than because they hold a mix of views that don’t align cleanly one way or the other. And when it’s not centrist then reform is a story of odd bedfellows: Black Democrats working with Republicans in Wisconsin to create the nation’s first school voucher program, or Civil Rights groups working with the Bush Administration on school accountability.
That’s because education politics are fundamentally the politics of consumer versus producer. Education politics have more in common with airline regulation or pharmaceuticals than standard fare Republican vs. Democratic issues. To the extent they are red vs. blue, it’s because Democrats are more aligned with the producer interests — teachers unions in particular but vested interests more generally — and Republicans have often, though not always, taken up the mantle of the consumers: parents.
To get things done you either have to muster overwhelming political force or find ways to get enough cross-partisan interest to make the political math work. Overwhelming force is hard in a country as politically divided as this one is right now.
Over the past twenty years education reformers have been their own worst enemies here as the prevailing ideology went from disruption of a structurally inequitable system to what’s best called Dinner Partyology – the desire to be socially included or at least not say anything that might upset some patron or jeopardize some future goodie. There was always some of that, sure. I can remember one lefty econ type stubbornly committed to the idea that we can’t really expect much from high poverty students or their schools attacking me just for associating with Checker Finn professionally (nothing about the specifics of anything Checker was up to or arguing, of course.) Yet now it’s not just some idiots on parade, it’s industrialized and weapons-grade. Everything is red – blue even when it makes no sense at all.
As George W. Bush’s political fortunes changed, too many reformers backed away from the core elements of No Child Left Behind even as subsequent research shows positive benefits from that policy for the very kids furthest from opportunity that equity-oriented reformers claim to care so much about. By the mid-00s you’d ask a question about NCLB and get an answer about the Iraq War — from people telling you all the while how kids-first and kid-focused they are. Republican reformers did much the same with Obama. You’d ask a question about education and get an answer about health care. Today, behind the scenes you hear this all the time with regard to Republican discomfort with Trump. And Trump, well, he obviously takes all this to highly-enriched levels given how he leads and does politics. (But as we’ve discussed this dysfunction works for him politically and is one reason his political misfortunes are not translating cleanly into approval of Democrats).
(Meanwhile almost everyone ran away from high performing charter schools at the height of the social justice craze for well, I guess, reasons.)
Look, sure, politicians are going to do their thing. That’s their job. It’s the nature of it. But underneath that the role for the rest of us is to try to shape it as best one can, not simply deepen the grooves.
Back in the day, that’s why education meetings were a collection of odd bedfellows. It was weird. And that’s why things got done. Today, ironically given all the talk about diversity, rooms are a lot more ideologically homogenous, and here we are. Largely stalled. It’s not a coincidence that the people who are winning today — for instance, Jim Blew, who has steadfastly worked on expanding school choice with whomever would work with him — are the ones who rejected this construct. The ones who walk away, the Paharans might have once said.
There is a lesson in all this for ed advocates, policy types, and funders if they choose to heed it. Do you want to feel righteous and signal that to the world? Or do you want to engage in the messy work of getting something done for people you purport to care about and who deserve far better?
What They’re Sayin’
Steven Wilson in The Atlantic in April.
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