A few prominent Democrats are waking up to a truth parents have known for years: When it comes to education, their party is on a road that leads nowhere.
Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, sounded the alarm this month, warning that Democrats were “moving away” from schools and losing popularity among voters.
I don’t think Republicans haven’t noticed that.
In recent years, Duncan’s party has seen a lead of more than 20 points on the issue of education collapse.
Between 2020 and 2024, parents of school-age children shifted seven percentage points to the right.
For anyone interested in the K-12 educational field, it was clear that parents from every political stripe had reached a ceiling in terms of ideological control and non-academic focus over their children’s schools.
Anyone who failed to see it was simply ignoring the bright red warning signs.
Student enrollment declines, a national phenomenon, have been most severe in large, urban, blue-collar systems.
Parents with school-age children are moving out of blue states, families are fleeing big cities — and since the COVID-19 pandemic, homeschooling and private schools have been on the rise.
Teachers unions, which contribute more than 99% of their political donations to Democrats, make it even more difficult to defend the status quo.
Last month, for example, the Chicago Teachers Union pushed to cancel schools altogether on May 1 as part of a stark socialist Labor Day protest.
“No school, no work, no shopping” was the intended theme.
The public reaction was so violent that schools remained open — but the union, undeterred, turned the day into a “civic action” event, encouraging students to attend rallies, protests and rallies during school hours.
Many parents saw it for what it was: a prime example of a system more comfortable mobilizing students as political soldiers than actually educating them in classrooms.
Faced with unprecedented chronic absenteeism — at 41 percent in Chicago — teachers union leaders urged children to boycott schools.
In stark contrast, red states show exceptional progress in student outcomes in reading and math.
Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Alabama, once dismissed as educational outliers, now lead the pack, posting the strongest gains in the past five years — while blue states lag behind.
Democratic education activists Jorge Elorza and Ben Austin joined Duncan this month in calling for the party to be renamed.
They chided the Democratic Party, saying: “It acquiesced to officials, protected unions, and asked frustrated families to trust a system that repeatedly failed their children.”
Their column in The74, an education news site, called on blue state governors to sign up for the Education Freedom Tax Credit, a federal school choice program funded through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
This is a major shift: Democrats, including Duncan, Elorza and Austin, have staunchly opposed this type of educational freedom program for decades.
As did New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who tentatively agreed — one week after Duncan raised the public red flag — to allow New York students to enjoy tax-exempt benefits.
Now that their party is immersed in education, they have changed their stance.
Why? Because they know that support for more school choice is overwhelming among parents in both parties, with the glaring exception of white progressives.
They know they need to start advocating for the basic things that parents of all demographics want in their schools: academic rigor, order, and physical safety.
But in order for Democrats to restore confidence on the issue of education, they would be wise to stop accusing frustrated parents of being… they They are responsible for fueling the culture wars in American schools.
Race-based school assemblies, gender-inappropriate school library books, and lessons that teach second graders that they may have been born into the wrong body did not originate in campaign ads or partisan media.
These are real leftist tendencies that have taken root in institutions—our schools—that once enjoyed widespread approval.
Regular parents called “white supremacists” for saying schools should open during the coronavirus outbreak are not sparking a culture war.
Parents who object to boys competing with their daughters in athletics are not hateful.
Parents who express concerns when schools force their biracial children to participate in race-based affinity groups are not bigots.
If Democrats really want to fix their education problem, they must fully acknowledge the damage they and their allies have done to our schools — and promise to stand up to the breach until it stops.
If not, Republicans are expected to exploit their new advantage in the upcoming midterm elections.
Erika Sanzi is communications director at Education Defense.