Democrats Win, Students Lose

T he policy implications of Tuesday’s historic electoral shift are many and far-reaching, and much ink will be spilled discussing tariffs, the Iran war, and immigration. But one thing is certain: Education reform was significantly set back.

Since the Covid pandemic, education policy has been a conservative game. Reformers in red states and officials in the Trump administration have made demonstrable improvements in American schools. The midterms’ blue wave threatens to reverse these wins, or, at the very least, will grind this momentum to a halt.

At the Department of Education, the administration almost halved the bureaucracy and trimmed wasteful spending, potentially saving taxpayers billions, while maintaining basic good-governance-type outcomes. For example, the department launched the FAFSA in record time, outperforming the notoriously delayed and error-ridden rollout under Biden, despite Trump’s staffing cuts.

Through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Trump administration also passed the Education Freedom Tax Credit, a program through which individuals can donate $1,700 to a scholarship-granting organization (SGO) and receive that money back from the government in the form of a dollar-for-dollar income tax credit. The SGOs can then use these funds to provide scholarships to students for various educational purposes. The program could unlock upward of $10 billion in new funding for public, private, home, and charter schools. It was a landmark win for education reformers and, more important, students across the country.

The Trump administration’s higher education initiatives have been equally ambitious. They bludgeoned antisemitism and DEI and have ushered in a long-needed reckoning with the lack of intellectual diversity on campuses. The OBBBA forced fiscal responsibility in federal student loan lending, with a “do no harm” provision that requires programs to demonstrate a sound return on investment for their graduates. And they’ve overhauled accreditation to promote innovation and improve quality assurance.

For the next two years, the Trump administration will be stuck on the defensive instead of further advancing these reforms. With both chambers of Congress in Democrats’ hands, the administration’s agenda will face a hostile legislature that will block further initiatives, threaten existing ones, and impose potentially crippling oversight. With strong majorities in both houses, Democrats could ride this wave into 2028, at which point we could see an even greater blow to the education reform movement.

The state-level reforms enacted during Trump’s administration are arguably even more consequential. The so-called Southern surge — a suite of policies focused on the science of reading, high standards, testing and accountability, and curricular improvements — has caused states such as Mississippi and Louisiana, traditionally at the bottom of national rankings, to lead in growth and post-pandemic recovery. Likewise, universal school choice policies have gone gangbusters since 2021, passing in 17 states.

These reforms have borne fruit. While still behind pre-pandemic levels, for the first time in decades, young students in the United States showed slight improvements on the Nation’s Report Card, especially among those at the bottom of the achievement distribution. The recovery is notably delicate: Scores among 13-year-olds continue to decline, especially in math. We have a long way to go, but just as these reforms are beginning to show promise and results, Democrats are likely to completely overhaul them.

These reforms are fragile. Without bipartisan backing or coalitional support among parents and teachers, they are not guaranteed to survive a wave election of the sort we saw this week. Democrats can easily undo changes made through executive action. Blue legislatures can repeal school choice policies or place significant regulations on them. And a decade of conservative advocacy rebuffing bipartisan efforts and relying on culture war messaging gives Democrats little reason to play nice.

With major flips in governors’ mansions such as in Texas and Ohio, many such improvements will reverse. Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s Democratic successor, Gina Hinojosa, promised in her victory speech to repeal his reforms. Ohio’s governor-elect, Amy Acton, has signaled a desire to repeal or at least significantly curtail school choice policies in Ohio.

Less obvious but still painful losses have occurred in blue and purple states such as Wisconsin. The governor’s mansion stayed blue, and Democrats flipped the legislature. Thus, lawmakers will be unable to replicate the previous victories of red states elsewhere. Policies seeking to improve math instruction and classroom discipline failed to pass in the Badger State this year, and with Democrats in power, there’s no chance they’ll make it through. States like Michigan and Pennsylvania will have Democrat trifectas, and New Hampshire, a state with expansive school choice policies, will now have a deep-blue government checking the Republican governor.

Last year, Fordham Institute President Mike Petrilli tracked a handful of once-bipartisan reform initiatives across red and blue states, such as charter school support and phonics-based reading initiatives. He concluded that Republicans have embraced such policies, and Democrats have abandoned them. With Republicans out of power, it’s now a question of whether centrist Democrats will once again champion reform policies within their party or if the Democratic Socialists of America wing will advance a more ideological agenda.

The stakes are not simply abstract. Students who have in the past few years received better reading instruction and more robust school choice options will bear the consequences of Republicans’ electoral losses.