Latest news with #DemocratsforEducationReform
Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Democrats disagree (again). This time, it's about school vouchers.
States will have the ability to opt in or out, presenting Democratic governors with a difficult decision, and one that competing advocacy groups are trying to influence. Democrats for Education Reform, a group closely affiliated with veterans of the Obama administration, has become a leading voice urging the party to cross what has long been a red line, and embrace some forms of private school choice — including the Trump program. The group has prominent allies, including Arne Duncan, who served as secretary of education under President Obama. Duncan is working for the group as a consultant. But the group's new stance in favor of vouchers is provocative within the party — so much so that two former leaders of the organization have quit and are creating a rival group that will oppose vouchers, while supporting other forms of school choice. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Trump's private school choice program is funded by a federal tax credit, and will offer families of most income levels scholarships that can be used for private school tuition, tutoring or other education expenses. Advertisement The group's chief executive, Jorge Elorza, a former mayor of Providence, has argued vouchers are popular with many of the working-class Black and Latino voters who tilted toward Trump in the 2024 presidential election, and whom Democrats are desperate to win back. Advertisement This past weekend, Elorza traveled to a Democratic Governors Association meeting in Madison, Wisc., to make his case. He has been pointing to a provision in Trump's budget bill that will potentially allow the voucher dollars to be spent on not only private school tuition, but also tutoring or exam fees for students enrolled in traditional public schools. He called opting into the program 'a no-brainer.' 'This is literally free money,' he said, 'that is broadly supported by the majority of voters who have steadily drifted away from the party. It just makes sense.' It could be difficult to convince Democratic governors. Many are closely allied to teachers unions, which have resisted vouchers for decades. The unions argue vouchers leech students and dollars from public education. 'Vouchers are a vehicle to abandon public education,' said Randi Weingarten, the influential president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation's second-largest teachers' union. In line with the unions, many Democratic politicians have focused their arguments on protecting public school funding. They are also intent on fighting Trump's efforts to dismantle the Department of Education and end racial equity efforts. In a sign of just how fractured Democrats are, a third camp is emerging, situated somewhere between the reform group and the unions. Two former staff members of the group are starting a political action committee and a think tank that will reject vouchers while continuing to push for the expansion of the public charter school sector — schools that are publicly funded, but independently run, and are typically not unionized. The groups will also support other ways for parents to exercise choice, such as making it easier for students to attend public schools outside of their residential zones, and they will push for all schools to be held accountable for student learning outcomes. The political action committee, the Center for Strong Public Schools Action Fund, will support candidates who align with those stances, especially in the South. Advertisement Alisha Thomas Searcy, one of the founders, previously served as the rerform group's regional president for the South, and is a former Georgia Democratic state legislator and charter school executive. Her partner in the new venture, Garry Jones, previously served as the group's political director in Texas. Searcy and Jones split with the group after experiencing legislative battles over private school choice in Georgia and Texas, which are among 18 Republican-leaning states that now offer education savings accounts. These accounts are a type of flexible private school voucher that allows parents to spend taxpayer dollars on private education, for-profit virtual learning, tutoring and homeschooling. Searcy declined to name the funders of the new political action group and think tank. She said they will offer 'a bold, clear vision as Democrats, to show that we are the party that protects public education from those privatization and other attacks, and demands that it work for every student.' Democrats who do support private school choice — including those in the coalition — are looking expectantly toward some of the younger moderate governors in the party, several of whom are being discussed as potential presidential candidates in 2028. Maryland Governor Wes Moore is one of them. In a statement, a spokesperson said the governor was still evaluating the new federal voucher program. A spokesperson for Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who has supported school choice in the past, said his administration was also reviewing the program, and pointed out that it does not go into effect until 2027. Advertisement This article originally appeared in .
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Democrats sense an opportunity to rally opposition to Trump education agenda
Democrats think Donald Trump's DEI-slashing, money-cutting education agenda is an unpopular stance the party can use to reconnect with voters they turned off during the pandemic. They just need to agree on a strategy. Democratic lawmakers, teacher union leaders and fired agency employees have rallied outside Education Department headquarters and filed lawsuits challenging Trump's moves to cull the agency's staff and billions of dollars in spending. The maneuvers feed a progressive base demanding to fight the president on every front. Their next steps are up for debate. Some in the party believe lengthy pandemic school closures, fights about gender and race, and lackluster national test scores helped create a political opening for Trump. Others are pressing for specific policies to address school choice and dwindling test scores, while casting the demolition of the Education Department as perilous for students. Where Democrats settle could pay electoral dividends or keep them in the political wilderness. 'There is a political void being left by the Republicans and Donald Trump. That is an opportunity. Go fill it,' said Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor who clashed with the city's teachers union. 'In the past, we've had a standing on this issue — and a politically better position on this issue — than Republicans. We've frittered it away on secondary issues.' Democrats for decades were viewed as the party more trusted on education, only to see Covid quickly undermine their position. Republican Glenn Youngkin won the 2021 Virginia governor's race with a conservative education message that challenged how race was being taught in schools and pushed for parents to have more say in the classroom. Two years later, polling showed Democrats either trailing or essentially tied with Republicans among voters in four battleground states when it came to which party would ensure public schools prepare students for life after graduation. 'What they need is a more robust Democratic agenda that's an alternative to Trump,' Charles Barone, a former congressional adviser and vice president at the Democrats for Education Reform, said of the party's federal lawmakers. 'We need somebody that's willing to speak truth to power, not hedge on the severity of the problems we're facing for the kids we care about, and to really offer a bold set of initiatives that meet the moment,' said Barone, who is now a senior director with the National Parents Union, a group that opposes Trump's education policy. Several Democrats say their party has the right vision for schools — it's just a matter of delivery. They are emphasizing how Trump's cuts to the agency put programs for low-income students at risk and could undercut efforts to protect students with disabilities, work that states often struggle with. And while Education Secretary Linda McMahon has promised core funds for vulnerable children and K-12 schools will be protected, DOGE's sudden and sometimes-haphazard efforts to streamline the government make it difficult to ease concerns. 'Don't make it about budgets and billionaires,' said Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.). 'Make it about the one position in the one school that affects this one family.' Hayes, who was a high school history teacher for more than 15 years before launching her bid for Congress, also said the message needs to come from multiple angles, including faith leaders and parents. 'I have expressed to my colleagues, this isn't just about teachers unions,' she said. 'This affects everybody in the community, and they need to be part of the conversation and own working towards a solution,' she said. Democrats are deploying multiple strategies they hope will get voters to listen, but some party stalwarts like Emanuel want Democrats to present a muscular alternative to Trump that emphasizes traditional learning and breaks with pandemic-era positions. 'We lost focus on the classroom, and we discussed almost all the other issues around education but the ones that matter most to parents: reading, writing and math,' he said. 'We got into the naming of the school, closing the front door during Covid for way too long, locker rooms, access to bathrooms, and we never dealt with the fundamentals of why parents send kids to schools.' Emanuel added: 'That is where the politics are: 'We made a mistake during Covid, and we're going to fix it.'' Trump has directed his education chief to take 'all necessary steps' to close the Education Department — and the agency has already slashed nearly half its staff, and canceled grants and contracts. While getting needed Democratic votes in Congress to fully shutter the department is unlikely, there's also a sense that federal lawmakers need to show the potential on-the-ground impact of the administration's policies by visiting local schools and classrooms to discuss funding for special education and low-income students. 'Eliminating the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C., does not mean anything in Grand Island, Nebraska, or Pueblo, Colorado, because communities have no idea what the U.S. Department of Education does,' said Mary Kusler, the senior director of advocacy for the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union. 'They have a huge opportunity to make this connective tissue around the role of the federal government, not as an amorphous thing off in Washington, D.C., in education but literally as something that impacts each and every day inside their community,' she said of federal lawmakers. Democrats on Capitol Hill are pressuring Trump's Education Department to explain how plans to fire half the agency's staff will affect low-income students and are looking to marshal bipartisan attention. Appropriators have circulated information with colleagues on the House floor about how possible cuts to funding for high-need schools would hit each congressional district. Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott, the top Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee, made an ill-fated bid to compel the agency to answer questions. Senators, led by top Democratic appropriator Patty Murray and education committee ranking member Bernie Sanders, have pushed McMahon to detail her plans for the agency in letters that outline the party's policy roadmap. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has launched her own campaign to push back against Trump's efforts to dismantle the department. House Democratic leaders have tapped their educator-turned-lawmaker members like Hayes and Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), who helped lead a gathering of lawmakers to the Education Department in February and again this month, to defend the agency. That reflects a growing consensus that the party should lean on personal anecdotes from students and families who benefit from federal programs to explain what the agency does. 'People in poll after poll tell you they don't want the Department of Education to close,' Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said. 'This isn't like a messaging problem for Democrats, this is a policy problem for Republicans — they are trying to do something really, really unpopular.' Recent polling shows 58 percent of Americans oppose eliminating the Education Department despite Trump's catchy promise that he'd improve things by sending federal education money 'back to the states.' But even if most Americans don't necessarily want to chuck it, opinions about the agency have been split. About 45 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of the agency last year, according to data from the Pew Research Center. That score was slightly worse than the Justice Department and only the IRS was viewed more negatively among widely-known federal agencies. Trump, McMahon and other Republicans have hitched the need for dramatic change by emphasizing how math and reading test scores have remained weak despite the billions of dollars administered by the agency since its establishment during the Carter administration. 'President Trump has made education reform a cornerstone of his agenda because of the Left's multi-decade failure to prioritize student outcomes,' department spokesperson Savannah Newhouse said in a statement. 'Instead, Democrats kept schools closed during Covid-19 which led to catastrophic learning loss, pushed radical ideology in the classroom, and have protested more about saving the careers of bureaucrats in Washington than about students' plummeting math and reading scores.' Another key problem in countering Trump may be just how passionately the GOP rank and file dislike the Education Department: 64 percent of Republicans Pew surveyed held an unfavorable view while 27 percent saw it in a positive light. 'They're overinterpreting the public's favorability toward our public education system,' Jim Blew, a top Education Department official during Trump's first administration, said of Democrats and their allies. 'People like the concept of public education, that is the commitment from the public to make sure children's educations are funded — they're not committed to what many on the right sometimes call 'government schools.'' Democrats could marshal public support by bashing billionaire Elon Musk's government-cutting blitz, said Blew, a co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute, a D.C.-based conservative think tank. But he thinks liberals risk losing their credibility by 'catastrophizing' spending cuts that have not yet materialized and underestimating the public's support for more state control over federal aid. Breaking through Trump's agenda won't be easy, Takano acknowledged. 'It is difficult because the base, the base Republicans, they take everything the president says very, very seriously, very literally,' he said. 'You say anything contrary, they're going to call you a liar.'
Politico
12-04-2025
- Politics
- Politico
Democrats sense an opportunity to rally opposition to Trump education agenda
Democrats think Donald Trump's DEI-slashing, money-cutting education agenda is an unpopular stance the party can use to reconnect with voters they turned off during the pandemic. They just need to agree on a strategy. Democratic lawmakers, teacher union leaders and fired agency employees have rallied outside Education Department headquarters and filed lawsuits challenging Trump's moves to cull the agency's staff and billions of dollars in spending. The maneuvers feed a progressive base demanding to fight the president on every front. Their next steps are up for debate. Some in the party believe lengthy pandemic school closures, fights about gender and race, and lackluster national test scores helped create a political opening for Trump. Others are pressing for specific policies to address school choice and dwindling test scores, while casting the demolition of the Education Department as perilous for students. Where Democrats settle could pay electoral dividends or keep them in the political wilderness. 'There is a political void being left by the Republicans and Donald Trump. That is an opportunity. Go fill it,' said Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor who clashed with the city's teachers union. 'In the past, we've had a standing on this issue — and a politically better position on this issue — than Republicans. We've frittered it away on secondary issues.' Democrats for decades were viewed as the party more trusted on education, only to see Covid quickly undermine their position. Republican Glenn Youngkin won the 2021 Virginia governor's race with a conservative education message that challenged how race was being taught in schools and pushed for parents to have more say in the classroom. Two years later, polling showed Democrats either trailing or essentially tied with Republicans among voters in four battleground states when it came to which party would ensure public schools prepare students for life after graduation. 'What they need is a more robust Democratic agenda that's an alternative to Trump,' Charles Barone, a former congressional adviser and vice president at the Democrats for Education Reform, said of the party's federal lawmakers. 'We need somebody that's willing to speak truth to power, not hedge on the severity of the problems we're facing for the kids we care about, and to really offer a bold set of initiatives that meet the moment,' said Barone, who is now a senior director with the National Parents Union, a group that opposes Trump's education policy. Several Democrats say their party has the right vision for schools — it's just a matter of delivery. They are emphasizing how Trump's cuts to the agency put programs for low-income students at risk and could undercut efforts to protect students with disabilities, work that states often struggle with. And while Education Secretary Linda McMahon has promised core funds for vulnerable children and K-12 schools will be protected, DOGE's sudden and sometimes-haphazard efforts to streamline the government make it difficult to ease concerns. 'Don't make it about budgets and billionaires,' said Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.). 'Make it about the one position in the one school that affects this one family.' Hayes, who was a high school history teacher for more than 15 years before launching her bid for Congress, also said the message needs to come from multiple angles, including faith leaders and parents. 'I have expressed to my colleagues, this isn't just about teachers unions,' she said. 'This affects everybody in the community, and they need to be part of the conversation and own working towards a solution,' she said. Democrats are deploying multiple strategies they hope will get voters to listen, but some party stalwarts like Emanuel want Democrats to present a muscular alternative to Trump that emphasizes traditional learning and breaks with pandemic-era positions. 'We lost focus on the classroom, and we discussed almost all the other issues around education but the ones that matter most to parents: reading, writing and math,' he said. 'We got into the naming of the school, closing the front door during Covid for way too long, locker rooms, access to bathrooms, and we never dealt with the fundamentals of why parents send kids to schools.' Emanuel added: 'That is where the politics are: 'We made a mistake during Covid, and we're going to fix it.'' Trump has directed his education chief to take 'all necessary steps' to close the Education Department — and the agency has already slashed nearly half its staff, and canceled grants and contracts. While getting needed Democratic votes in Congress to fully shutter the department is unlikely, there's also a sense that federal lawmakers need to show the potential on-the-ground impact of the administration's policies by visiting local schools and classrooms to discuss funding for special education and low-income students. 'Eliminating the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C., does not mean anything in Grand Island, Nebraska, or Pueblo, Colorado, because communities have no idea what the U.S. Department of Education does,' said Mary Kusler, the senior director of advocacy for the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union. 'They have a huge opportunity to make this connective tissue around the role of the federal government, not as an amorphous thing off in Washington, D.C., in education but literally as something that impacts each and every day inside their community,' she said of federal lawmakers. Democrats on Capitol Hill are pressuring Trump's Education Department to explain how plans to fire half the agency's staff will affect low-income students and are looking to marshal bipartisan attention. Appropriators have circulated information with colleagues on the House floor about how possible cuts to funding for high-need schools would hit each congressional district. Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott , the top Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee, made an ill-fated bid to compel the agency to answer questions. Senators, led by top Democratic appropriator Patty Murray and education committee ranking member Bernie Sanders , have pushed McMahon to detail her plans for the agency in letters that outline the party's policy roadmap. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has launched her own campaign to push back against Trump's efforts to dismantle the department. House Democratic leaders have tapped their educator-turned-lawmaker members like Hayes and Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), who helped lead a gathering of lawmakers to the Education Department in February and again this month, to defend the agency. That reflects a growing consensus that the party should lean on personal anecdotes from students and families who benefit from federal programs to explain what the agency does. 'People in poll after poll tell you they don't want the Department of Education to close,' Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said. 'This isn't like a messaging problem for Democrats, this is a policy problem for Republicans — they are trying to do something really, really unpopular.' Recent polling shows 58 percent of Americans oppose eliminating the Education Department despite Trump's catchy promise that he'd improve things by sending federal education money 'back to the states.' But even if most Americans don't necessarily want to chuck it, opinions about the agency have been split. About 45 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of the agency last year, according to data from the Pew Research Center. That score was slightly worse than the Justice Department and only the IRS was viewed more negatively among widely-known federal agencies. Trump, McMahon and other Republicans have hitched the need for dramatic change by emphasizing how math and reading test scores have remained weak despite the billions of dollars administered by the agency since its establishment during the Carter administration. 'President Trump has made education reform a cornerstone of his agenda because of the Left's multi-decade failure to prioritize student outcomes,' department spokesperson Savannah Newhouse said in a statement. 'Instead, Democrats kept schools closed during Covid-19 which led to catastrophic learning loss, pushed radical ideology in the classroom, and have protested more about saving the careers of bureaucrats in Washington than about students' plummeting math and reading scores.' Another key problem in countering Trump may be just how passionately the GOP rank and file dislike the Education Department: 64 percent of Republicans Pew surveyed held an unfavorable view while 27 percent saw it in a positive light. 'They're overinterpreting the public's favorability toward our public education system,' Jim Blew, a top Education Department official during Trump's first administration, said of Democrats and their allies. 'People like the concept of public education, that is the commitment from the public to make sure children's educations are funded — they're not committed to what many on the right sometimes call 'government schools.'' Democrats could marshal public support by bashing billionaire Elon Musk's government-cutting blitz, said Blew, a co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute, a D.C.-based conservative think tank. But he thinks liberals risk losing their credibility by 'catastrophizing' spending cuts that have not yet materialized and underestimating the public's support for more state control over federal aid. Breaking through Trump's agenda won't be easy, Takano acknowledged. 'It is difficult because the base, the base Republicans, they take everything the president says very, very seriously, very literally,' he said. 'You say anything contrary, they're going to call you a liar.'
The Hill
17-02-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Democrats grapple for response on education as GOP charges ahead
The Democratic Party is having to take a hard look at its education strategy as Republicans move aggressively on the issue with satisfaction in public education at its lowest point in decades. Democrats, who dominated the education realm for years, are on their back foot as President Trump and the GOP look to enact sweeping reforms, including federal about-faces on gender policy, a big push for school choice and potentially eliminating the Education Department. Strategists say it is time Democrats get back ahead of the issue and get proactive with solutions and more aggressive messaging instead of assuming voters are on their side when it comes to schools. 'The Democrats have definitely lost their advantage on education,' said Jorge Elorza, CEO of Democrats for Education Reform. 'Democrats are no longer the party of education, and so, there is a political imperative for them to reprioritize education and to refocus on it now with Donald Trump in office.' 'I think that there is a lot for Democrats to certainly oppose that are parts of his agenda, but I think that opposing and resisting alone is just not sufficient. There is an opportunity for Democrats to own education once again, but it can't just be opposing whatever the other side proposes, we also have to provide a compelling alternative,' Elorza added. Trump has come into office swinging on the issue, from calls to close the Department of Education to multiple executive orders that could transform public education. The president took executive action to help states enact school choice policies, ban the teaching of critical race theory and gender issues in schools, promote 'patriotic' education, prohibit transgender children from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity and put more federal resources to combatting antisemitism on college campuses. 'Thanks to President Trump, our service members no longer have to choose between serving our country and their children's education. Military-connected children are too often assigned to the public schools closest to military bases, regardless of whether those district schools are right for them,' said Lindsey Burke, director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for Education Policy, after Trump signed a school choice executive order. These actions are new at the national level, but dozens of Republican-led states have also made moves to advance school choice and ban critical race theory from schools since the pandemic. Rodell Mollineau, a Democratic strategist, said 'the cold reality' is that 'the satisfaction decline started with COVID and just hasn't stopped, and there are many people across demographics that are that are concerned with outcomes.' 'The frustration of a lot of Americans are leading them to look for solutions, and perhaps the ones that they're grasping at that Republicans are offering aren't going to solve the problems, but it's the only thing that's out there,' he added. Years after schools were closed for COVID-19, test scores are still down and behavioral issues are up. The recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores showed fourth and eighth graders are still behind in reading and math, and the achievement gap is widening between high performing and low performing students. The situation has left a gaping hole in what to do as a recent Gallup survey showed dissatisfaction with public education is at 73 percent, the highest since Gallup has begun polling on the issue back in 2001. 'Education always is top of mind for voters, particularly in state and local and gubernatorial races, and it really has taken a back seat in federal races lately, which I think is a problem for Democrats,' said Martha McKenna, a Democratic strategist. 'I think we have an opportunity here with Linda McMahon taking over the Department of Education [and] Trump saying he wants to get rid of it altogether.' 'I think that Republicans will totally overreach and screw this up,' McKenna said, predicting that when the Trump administration starts slashing programs at the Department of Education and voters feel the effects, 'people will be angry.' She says Democrats need to be there when those policies start to crash and burn. 'It's important that we show that Democrats are fighting for schools, and it would be great if those legislators, those members of Congress and others, went back in their districts' to figure out 'what's most important for them and what needs to be protected during what could be a very chaotic four years of the Trump administration,' she added. The solutions Democrats need to offer are hotly debated, with some arguing it is important voters hear more than just that there needs to be more funding in public schools, a common line used by the party. During the pandemic, the federal government issued billions of dollars to K-12 schools in one of the largest funding efforts for the institutions in history, but students as still struggling. 'We just can't continue defending the indefensible. We just saw it with the NAEP results, and we've known it for a long time that so many of our schools are just not making the grade, and we need to be serious about holding schools that are failing kids accountable, and that has to be part of the equation. But unfortunately, over the past 10 years, Democrats have certainly moved away from supporting choice and accountability, but that needs to return,' Elorza said. Elorza argued with the rise of parents looking for options for their students' schooling, Democrats need to give a viable alternative to how Republicans are offering school choice, one where different public school options are available. 'What we believe is that there needs to be investments to a broad array of education options as so that there are alternatives to the traditional public school system that are available to families, such as public charter schools and we also need accountability,' he added.
