My must read of the day "The GOP and School Reform," by Frederick M. Hess and Max Eden, in National Review:
With the midterms just days away, Republicans are hoping to claim the U.S. Senate and maintain or expand their healthy lead in governorships. Of course, as has been said again and again since 2012, Republicans need to deserve victory. While education doesn’t provide election-season fodder the way the Islamic State, Ebola, and Obamacare do, it does offer a test of whether GOP candidates are willing and able to address kitchen-table issues. This is a test that the candidates have generally failed. An analysis of what GOP candidates for governor and U.S. senator have to say on their campaign websites shows they’ve little inclination to say anything at all about education, even on questions that play well with the public.
Education offers Republican leaders a chance to compete on Democratic turf and show their commitment to equal opportunity. It’s no surprise that two of the GOP’s most successful governors of the past generation, Mitch Daniels in Indiana and Jeb Bush in Florida, both made education a centerpiece of their efforts. Education was similarly central to George W. Bush’s presidential win in 2000. Today, though, Republican candidates are ducking on education. [...]
Rather than mount an unprincipled fight they’re likely to lose, Republicans would do well to talk about the issues that resonate with the American people and to offer principled solutions. Doing so could help make the case that Republicans are ready to tackle practical concerns like school quality and college costs. This would help them win over independent voters, govern effectively in the next two years, and strengthen their case for 2016.
The majority of 2012 was a blur. I compartmentalize everything by before the election or after, and one thing I very vividly remember (as a before the election moment) was reading Margaret Hoover’s book American Individualism. I sat on the curb outside of my office building after working countless late nights and read that book cover to cover. I actually read it twice, but the first day I began reading it I came to a section on education and was utterly convinced Republicans should make education reform a key part of their platform, and that by not doing it they were squandering an opportunity.
The argument Hoover made was that education reform, particularly charter schools, is a way Republicans can appeal to millennials.
Think about Teach for America, a nonprofit program where recent college graduates apply to teach for at least two years in schools in low-income communities. Individuals receive the same salary as other first-year teachers at their school, not an astronomical amount, but in spite of that, the Teach for America 2012 corps received over 48,000 applications for 5,800 spots. On average, only 15 percent of applicants are accepted into the program.
Millennials seem to care deeply about education reform, and if you look at polls, they’re not the only ones. By Hoover’s account, this is where Democrats have an issue. Young people are typically Democratic voters, but Democrats are too dependent on funding from teachers unions and groups that oppose things like charter schools to actually offer meaningful education reform. So why wouldn’t Republicans try to pick up those young people by making education reform a bigger platform issue?
When I’ve discussed this with conservatives, some contend that education is a state issue and say it should not be a national issue. Perhaps that’s a fair point, but surely there is a way to at least make supporting local governments and working with them to reform education part of a national campaign narrative. Ignoring it is a mistake, because education reform is an issue where Republicans could make inroads with independents and young people—and as Hess and Eden suggest, they might be able to beat Democrats "on Democratic turf and show their commitment to equal opportunity."