Shellacked. What Are The Education Takeaways From The Election?
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
More to come on the election and its impact—but for now, a few thoughts.
First, for Democrats, this was avoidable, and it's consequently inexcusable. At some level, it's the obvious things: the incumbent administration is unpopular, and people are frustrated. Women care about issues besides abortion.
Sure. Except, the other candidate was Donald Trump, and the two key issues—the economy and immigration—were hardly difficult to discern. The cultural baggage was clear, too, for anyone paying attention. Minimizing how terrifying inflation was for lower-income Americans and those on fixed incomes was a huge mistake in the early going of the Biden administration, for instance, along with border policy and politics. You can have a compassionate, effective, and pro-immigration border policy that also makes clear you don't favor non-Americans over Americans. Not having a good answer to what you'd do differently going forward or in hindsight is malpractice.
We can argue about whether Vice President Harris was thrust into it too late, but there is no doubt it was winnable upstream, and people arguing it was inevitable are doing that out of self-interest. Ruy Teixeira, in particular, named this based on the data for several years. He was drummed out for his troubles. We've talked about it around here insofar as the education issues and general insularity are concerned. Instead, a vibes-based campaign that didn't explicitly shed some baggage on the economy and social issues was not a great strategy.
With all of this, it's but the groups...
In any event, this was as much about a rejection of the Democrats as any embrace of Trump or MAGA. Yet four and six years is a long time; that's the effect.
I did not make election predictions because I wasn't confident about what was going to happen. Trump was clearly in a strong position; my take had been that tied polls were, in practice, bad news, and Harris was probably running at least a few points behind. The Republicans were arguing data; the Democrats were vibes and hope in terms of which way it would go. But, just given the uniqueness of the circumstances, x factors, and questions about turnout, I was not fully convinced, and my spreadsheet of factors left me with analysis paralysis given how complicated the election was.
Some points related to education:
As we highlighted in this deck, education mattered in terms of voting behavior. A lot. It's increasingly class, not race. Democrats are becoming the party of MSNBC and faculty lounges with all the associated social mores. So, Democrats absolutely dominated the Latinx vote; meanwhile, Trump increased his vote share by 25% among Hispanics. Democrats probably won "people of color," but lost ground among Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, as well as other demographic groups. If Teixeira doesn't persuade you, then read Orwell.
Democrats thought the election was about MSNBC; it was about ESPN.
The gender gap is getting attention. For schools, pay attention to the married gap as well. If the Republicans are winning married women while the Democrats win single women, that has some implications for education politics.
Public schools played a supporting role here. The Democrats decided to pivot hard left during the last decade, but especially post-2020, and that showed up in schools. It was turbocharged by latent frustration about pandemic school closures and policies. A lot of Americans have kids in public schools. They want normal. They're not for book banning, they also don't want their elementary school kids reading sexualized material. If the Democrats can't parse out the genuinely censorious or racist (eg banning books about the struggle for civil rights) from parents who don't want their kids seeing pictures of blowjobs at school they are playing with fire and will continue to struggle.
Democrats are dying on the wrong education hills. What's remarkable is that non-discrimination and anti-hate toward transgender people are north of +30 positions among the electorate. That's really good news and a sign of progress and growing tolerance though it's not yet the case everywhere. Yet the fight on transgender issues became whether transgender girls should unilaterally be able to play girls' sports. We kept hearing how this was a sideshow issue even as national and international data showed this was not the case. We kept hearing there was no difference even as people saw with their own eyes that's not the case in some sports. People felt they were being gaslit. They were. Then there is the idea that schools should get in front of parents on transitions —made fashionable because of activists. I can't tell you how awful the polling is on that, but whatever you think, it's worse. What's more, experts dismiss it as good for trans kids. And common sense tells you it's bad for gay and trans kids to have this frame of secrecy on them. Does this move votes? Maybe. But it definitely puts a frame on Democrats that is not helpful more generally, and everyone concerned about sports or secrecy here is not a bigot. Pick better and more defensible targets.
People like school choice. The Democrats have set themselves against school choice in a way that alienates parents and is definitely not helpful with Hispanics. Democrats don't need to go full ESA, but they need more to say and do on choice. It's likely that Trump's second term will focus more there and perhaps be more effective than his first. Choice politics, insofar as race and ethnicity are concerned, have been confounded by the two-party binary; Trump slashed into that Tuesday with his coalition, and it could start to unstick. Yes, two school choice referendums went down on ballots Tuesday (CO and KY), but ballot measures on choice are notoriously flawed. Choice moves in legislatures, and both polling and revealed preferences tell us a lot.
Along the same lines, pay attention to the urban results. Numbers out of places like New York should alarm Democrats and matter to education policy. You saw some frustration show up in the Chicago school board races.
Please stop picking various grievances and fostering competition about which one is more valid or serious.Lots of people have problems individually, and different demographic groups face different problems on average. That includes men—particularly where education is concerned. But the rhetoric about toxic masculinity, men as a persistent problem, and so forth lands poorly—and understandably so if you know anything about the economy and economic dislocation, suicides, drug use, and abuse, etc. It drove men to Trump. Schools fall for this stuff too easily. When Richard Whitmire talked about a boys' crisis, people mocked him. Instead, take that seriously while also focusing on other problems that exist.
Trump as the racially depolarizing candidate is hard for people to get their heads around, especially people in the elite part of education's nonprofit world. Yet empirically, that's the case, as the election underscored. Democrats have decided to anchor more on elite college and post-college voters; the obvious effect of that will be to drive non-white voters to the other party in a two-party system. This will matter to education politics—potentially a lot.
The Democrats have a strong bench for 2028, including a number of current or former governors with interesting records and moves on education, including Polis, Shapiro, Moore, and Raimondo. Politics is like the weather in that it always changes; never get too up or too down.
Personnel is policy. A lot of considerations for a Trump Secretary of Education, and he'll have to decide between show horse and work horse. I'd keep an eye on Rep. Stefanik or perhaps outgoing Education and Workforce Chair Virginia Foxx. The education secretary pick will be one small signal about whether chaotic Trump or disciplined Trump is on offer, but because of Senate control, almost any pick will get through. In the Senate, Bill Cassidy becoming Chair of HELP could lead to some policy. He's a grown-up, really good on some issues around reading, autism, and mental health.
People are discounting how the scale of Trump's win will impact personnel. A lot of seasoned Republican hands were skeptical of working in the administration, but after a win like this, the taboo is off, and a political permission structure exists to join the administration. It would be different if we were fighting over a few thousand votes in a handful of states. We're not. Trump won the popular vote. That matters.
Probably a win for workforce policy and some sort of child tax credit. Expect attention on apprenticeships, credentials, short-term training, non- college pathways and other issues where there is actually some bipartisan consensus. This deck has more.
A win for the private sector in education. I'd keep an eye on alternative ventures to train teachers, various higher education business interests pretty much across the board, and other for-profit players. They won't get stiff-armed at 400 Maryland for at least the next few years. Measurement will remain under pressure for all the usual reasons and Trump has never show interest in it.
The teachers unions have a problem. Since the Janus decision the teachers unions have played a bad hand exceptionally well. A Trump Department of Labor, as well as a climate where some of the political issues they've used to organize are losing saliency, is going to be a problem for them, however. Expect some stridency as an organizing and political strategy. It's long term counterproductive, short term effective, leadership understandably tends to think in the short term.
The MCAS referendum is a bummer. Especially because of how the MCAS policy worked in practice. It's really a signal on the vibes on accountability right now. In Maryland, Governor Wes Moore, an up-and-coming Democrat, and in Virginia, Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, are both trying to increase school accountability in their states. Worth watching, and I don't think public school advocates realize you can have choice, you can have accountability, or you can have a blend of both. But going with neither is unsustainable if you want public schools to retain broad public support and enrollment.
In Florida, a majority was okay with partisan school board elections, but it didn't hit the 60% threshold for enactment.
*I'm on VA's Board of Education.