Policy Solutions: Policy,not politics

What should we do about the culture wars?

Political scientists define a culture war as a sociopolitical conflict over the influence of society (Fiorina et al., 2011). Schools in American society have always been thought of as reflections (and disseminators) of cultural values (Zimmerman, 2022). Thus, it is unsurprising that education has become one of the primary domains where this ongoing conflict persists.

The question of how to handle the culture wars is an obvious focal point of the current presidential campaigns, not just because of how the topic has dominated local and national news coverage, but also because of how it traces back to the previous election. Let us remember how we got here.

The 2020 presidential election and everything that surrounded it — including the events of Jan. 6, 2021 — remain factors in today’s education politics, but relatively little attention was paid to education policy during that election. When he was president, Donald Trump made no major legislative splash on education reform (Thompson et al., 2020). To this day, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) signed by Barack Obama in 2015 still sets the primary federal guidelines despite being overdue for reauthorization.

Although ESSA remains the law of the land, Trump did push for some shifts related to our ongoing culture wars. Responding to a movement led by conservative activists, Trump used an executive order to create a symbolic commission on “patriotic education” during the final months of his term. It gave national attention and political legitimacy to the illegitimate idea that American education had become a training ground for “anti-American” and “woke” propaganda mired in “critical race theory.”

Although Joe Biden rescinded the order after taking office, the weeds of suspicion Trump planted have continued to grow. Now, almost four years later, we are on the verge of a Biden-Trump rematch, and the culture wars are even more deeply entrenched into American politics. This raises important policy questions. What education policy reforms could help pull those weeds of polarization?

We need comprehensive, coordinated local governance reform. There is far too much variation in public access to the meetings where the culture war is being fought. How frequently do school boards hold public meetings? At what time of day are the public sessions? How far in advance must people sign up to give public comment? Are boards providing any formal response to public comment? We need a national effort to make school districts and school boards more accessible to the typical public school parent, not just the loudest or the most well-organized.

Reforms could include protections for school boards when they are met with hostility, but they must be non-punitive toward community members. We want to prevent people from using public meetings for igniting uncivil discourse. But relying on forced removal from meetings and threats of jail time is counterproductive.

The Biden administration stepped in the K-12 culture war by promising to coordinate with local law enforcement to prosecute citizens harassing and directing violence toward school officials. The desire to protect local leaders is not a problem. The problem is that law enforcement is not reform. It is simply force without accompanying ideas.

Can we renew focus on racial equity and justice?

Twenty years ago, both liberals and conservatives accepted that racial and economic equity was a goal for school reform, although they supported different approaches to reach that goal (Schneider, 2011). Liberal activists argued for more federal investment in schools through larger anti-poverty initiatives and other holistic methods that would ultimately strengthen traditional public schools (Noguera, 2003; Anyon, 2014). Conservatives pushed for market-based approaches in which we achieve equity through a system of school choice buttressed by test-based accountability and financial incentives (Chubb & Moe, 1990; Howell & Peterson, 2006).

It was a polarizing debate, but there was at least some rough agreement that school reform should be about increasing access and opportunity for kids on the wrong side of racial and economic disparities. We lack that agreement now.

Can the upcoming election be the springboard to reviving that focus? It could if policy advocates on both sides of the ideological divide get behind clear reform ideas that set this as a priority. This could be an opportunity for advocates across the political spectrum to broaden their coalitions and ignite what Tyrone Howard (2024) calls a “hard reset” for fostering educational equity. Why can’t leaders from rural communities and midsized cities, for example, work together on holistic, anti-poverty approaches? The way to move past the culture wars is to make equity-based reform the center of education policy, not the center of political division.

What should we do about school spending?

The prospect of a renewed focus on equity steers us toward a discussion on how to better support schools. The urgency for the conversation around school spending is clear. School finance experts like Marguerite Roza (Roza & Silberstein, 2023) have been warning us of a fiscal cliff that districts are headed toward as COVID-19 federal relief funds dry up this year. This drop in funding will come just as we’ve reached the highest national average in per-pupil spending in modern U.S. history (United States Census Bureau, 2023). If there is a sliver of overlap in the Biden and Trump education agendas, it’s that both administrations signed off on significant increases in federal contributions to schools.

Where do we go from here? Should the winner of the 2024 contest be preparing Congress for some sort of additional investment in schools to soften the landing after the loss of COVID relief funds? Should there be an incentive program to nudge states to raise extra tax revenue to provide this support? When asking someone to jump off a cliff, you should provide them with a harness and parachute. How should policy makers go about creating a soft fiscal landing?

What is the next phase of COVID learning loss recovery?

The questions about financial stability flow right into questions about how the funding should primarily be used. These COVID relief funds have gone to support schools reeling from the effects of the pandemic. Remember that students lost an average of five months in math instruction and an average of four months in reading instruction (Bryant et al., 2023). The losses were much higher for students of low-income households and students of color. Some districts have been able to make up some of the learning loss by putting more time on the clock. They added more instructional time through longer academic school years or relying on supplemental practices like academically focused after-school programming (Fahle et al., 2023) and high-dosage tutoring (Kraft & Goldstein, 2020).

The good news is that we have ideas for how to continue making progress on addressing learning loss. The bad news is that the existing progress has been uneven. How do we generate more equitable improvement? Furthermore, how do we augment the recovery process as federal funds dry up? Without continued funds, the working conditions for teachers are likely to worsen, and we are already struggling to maintain adequate staffing.

The K-12 American school system is being handed a policy Rubik’s Cube. It will take thoughtful planning and maneuvering to align solutions that can resolve these different quandaries. So, if education is going to play a prominent role in the election, it is our responsibility to get people talking about policy, not the politics.