The Right Should Own Education

I n just over three months, President Biden has proposed roughly $6 trillion in new spending, including well over half a trillion for schools, universal pre-K, and “free” community college; his Department of Education has moved to revamp federal civics funding to promote the “1619 Project” and Ibram X. Kendi; and the White House has issued base-pleasing executive directives on everything from gender to Title IX. In short, Biden and the Democrats hit the ground running, armed with a shelf of expensive bad ideas.

On the right, it’s a different story. Aside from the invaluable, successful campaign to expand school choice, conservatives have spent most of the past couple decades either saying “no” (to campus cancel culture and federal overreach) or championing putatively bipartisan proposals (such as No Child Left Behind). In a handful of cases, as with Obama’s Race to the Top, Republicans somehow wound up doing both. Along the way, it has been hard to discern a broader vision of what conservatives are offering in education. Given this, it’s no great surprise that Democrats have long led Republicans when the public is asked whom they trust on education.

Yet, education is an issue that the Right should own. After all, where the Left is hemmed in by its relationships with unions, education bureaucracies, and the academy, the right is unburdened by such entanglements. Where Biden’s proposals are all about subsidizing the status quo — making community college “free” or funneling dollars into slow-footed K–12 systems — the Right is free to reimagine institutions and arrangements. And, as the Left increasingly takes its cultural lead from its woke fringe, only the Right is positioned to defend shared American values such as hard work and personal responsibility that resonate broadly across the political spectrum.

Education is inevitably values-driven, but it’s not enough for conservatives to talk vaguely about lofty principles. We must offer solutions that put those to work. School choice is a terrific example of this in practice. But choice is only a start, especially in response to kitchen-table concerns about the cost of higher education, access to early-childhood education, the state of vocational education, and much else.

That’s why, last year, AEI Education launched an effort to reboot the conservative education agenda — with the notion of providing a suite of ideas targeted at local, state, and federal education leaders. Earlier this month we published Sketching a New Conservative Education Agenda, a volume that collects nearly two dozen of these proposals from an array of dynamic contributors. The collection is not intended as a panacea or an education-policy playbook but as an illustration of the kind of practical, solution-oriented thinking that the Right should embrace.

As conservatives push back on the Biden agenda, we should pursue alternative, more-promising proposals to tackle the real needs of students and families.

President Biden hasn’t tried to conceal his cozy relationship with teachers unions. The presidents of the NEA and AFT were feted in the White House on the administration’s first day by First Lady Jill Biden and, on the campaign trail, Biden told the NEA, “You [w]on’t just have a partner in the White House; you’ll have an NEA member in the White House.” But being in the pocket of the unions is not the same thing as being a champion for educators frustrated by bureaucracy or the inertia that suffuses so many school systems.

The Right should position itself as the real champion of educators. One way to do so is through a new vision of “charter teachers” developed by Bellwether Education’s Juliet Squire. The idea is to empower those teachers who are so inclined to operate like psychiatrists or private-practice attorneys, running a classroom independently of the larger school. This would give parents more say over who leads their child’s education and academic development, while giving teachers more control over their working conditions, class size, compensation, and routine.

Biden’s proposed $200 billion universal pre-K program threatens to turn early-childhood education into an extension of bureaucratic, inflexible K–12 systems. Unfortunately, absent a credible alternative, it’s easy for sensible criticism to sound like an attempt to dismiss the practical burdens on families. Cara Candal of ExcelinEd suggests creating education scholarship accounts for parents of three- and four-year-olds and allowing parents to use that money to choose among private and public early-childhood-education providers. A companion proposal would involve tax incentives for early-childhood programming that coincides with the traditional workday.

Other grandiose Democratic notions — the call for “free” community college and sweeping student-loan forgiveness — have dominated the higher-education agenda in recent months, despite the myriad problems with these dismal proposals. These ideas get traction because college affordability is a real concern for Americans. While AEI’s Beth Akers explains that the student-loan crisis is overhyped, there are indeed borrowers who need help — and simply critiquing the Democratic agenda can make it sound like conservatives don’t get that and don’t have any idea what to do about it. Instead of dismissing concerns about affordability, Akers argues for replacing the federal student-loan system with an income-share-agreement program. This approach would simplify the system for student borrowers, lower costs for taxpayers, and improve the Department of Education’s ability to effectively manage loan repayment.

Now, the work for conservatives does not end at answering Biden’s misbegotten schemes. There’s much more that we should be advocating in our own right. School safety is one of those things. The push for “restorative justice” in schools has tied teachers’ hands by undermining their authority in the classroom and putting educators and students in harm’s way. Record numbers of parents report fearing for their child’s safety at school. To address the problem, AEI’s Max Eden urges state legislatures to initiate annual audits of school safety and climate via anonymous, open-ended teacher surveys — letting teachers know who is actually willing to listen and enact sensible policy that keeps students and teachers safe.

Expanding the conservative school-choice menu is another promising path. The pandemic has led to many harried households but has also allowed millions of families to embrace the newfound freedom of tech-facilitated homeschooling. EdChoice’s Michael McShane argues that this kind of hybrid homeschooling is here to stay and that conservatives should do everything they can to make it more accessible, convenient, and affordable by tackling restrictive funding and regulation.

Conservatives also should act to address the rigidity demonstrated by so many large school districts during the pandemic. Rather than lament the inertia born of union control and runaway bureaucracies, Philanthropy Roundtable’s Howard Husock argues for breaking up the large urban districts that serve as strongholds of union might and which make it nearly impossible for parents to be heard. This approach would weaken Big Labor’s grip and lessen the unions’ relative market power — making it possible for other stakeholders with smaller constituencies to have a say.

All of the ideas enumerated here, and the rest of those in the volume, are consistent with limited government and empowering parents. None of them promises to be No Child Left Behind 2.0 or envision grand new bureaucracies. But they all start from the premise that nature abhors a vacuum and that it’s tough to beat something with nothing. If we don’t offer anything more than school choice, Biden’s motley wish list — whatever its flaws — will set the agenda. It’s one thing to lose the competition of ideas because we couldn’t sway the public; it’s quite another to lose because we never showed up to the fight.

Frederick M. Hess is the director of education-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Hannah Warren is program manager of AEI’s Conservative Education Reform Network.