How Democrats lost their edge on education

The party that wants to spend on schools needs to care whether kids are learning

I’m interested in K-12 education policy because I am the parent of a public school student. But it played very little overt role in the 2024 presidential campaign and has been largely absent from national politics over the past ten years.

But education, while not the most important issue for most people, is in fact rated by the electorate as more important than points of progressive emphasis like climate change, childcare, and abortion rights. It’s also seen as more important than national security issues like the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Neither party has a clear incentive¹ to talk about the issue that much, since trust in the two parties is almost perfectly balanced.

But that balanced trust is noteworthy.

Historically, Democrats asserted strong issue ownership on education. People think of Democrats as the party that likes to spend money on education, as the party that is optimistic about the potential role of education in transforming people’s lives, and as the party that values teaching and learning. There’s also a fuzzy-but-powerful gendered understanding of the parties: Voters tend to prefer the male-coded GOP when it comes to issues that involve the use of violence (crime, border security, terrorism) while looking to the female-coded Democrats when it comes to issues that involve care and children. Education was traditionally one of Democrats’ strongest issues but that advantage collapsed during Covid.

School closures are an obvious culprit, given that timing. But I think the whole story is broader than that.