That was the title of something Rob Saldin and I wrote more than a decade ago for The New York Daily News.
I tried to get AI to create an image for the filibuster, but nothing was better than this.
If you hated our point then maybe you’ll hate it now. Or maybe not…since political fortunes have changed. And that’s our core point. If you want a more normal politics then we need a more normal respect for institutions rather than political total war. We discuss that for Welcome Stack today:
Rufus Miles, the legendary federal administrator, coined the aphorism that “where you stand depends on where you sit.” Miles’s Law certainly seems to apply to the Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes to move most legislation in the United States Senate and has been a target of progressives frustrated by its high bar for compromise.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, recently acknowledged the hypocrisy out loud after Republicans won back Senate control: “Am I championing getting rid of the filibuster now when the [GOP] has the trifecta? No. But had we had the trifecta, I would have been.”
Not long ago – earlier this year – Jayapal and many progressives were advocating scrapping the filibuster as a way to advance their priorities. It’s like a political marshmallow test of immediate versus delayed gratification. Luckily for Democrats, they didn’t succeed. With 53 Republican senators in 2025, plus a tie-breaking vice president, the filibuster is the only leverage Democrats have left in government.
Jayapal isn’t the only one struggling to recognize that actions have downstream consequences…
Join Lindsay Fryer, the founder of Lodestone DC, and me today at 2pm for a special pop-up LinkedIn Live to discuss the implications of the nomination of Linda McMahon to lead the Department of Education. Linda’s a Senate confirmed former SBA administrator, wrestling magnate, state board of education member, political candidate, and current Trump transition co-chair. To the extent that you can use the words “predict” and “Trump” in the same sentence, what should we expect and what does this signal?
Lindsay’s an astute and plugged in observer of the Republican education scene so a great person to help explain what’s happening and how it matters.
ICYMI on Tuesday Lindsay joined Lakisha Young, Sonja Santelises, Kevin Huffman, Anna Edwards, and me to talk about the broader impact of the election on education. You can listen or watch that conversation here.
Everyone has a plan until they are punched in the face, or apparently not it turns out…
I have additional content coming that goes beyond election aftermath. But that’s where we are right now, and readership numbers indicate that it’s what you people want. Posting will become less frequent soon, as I also have a day job.
From the community level, we have Lakisha Young of Oakland REACH, Sonja Santelises from Baltimore City Public Schools, Kevin Huffman, former Tennessee Commissioner of Education, Lindsay Fryer, a former Senate and House aide, and Anna Edwards, co-founder of Whiteboard Advisors and an insider’s insider.
We’ll discuss national, state, and local implications and take your questions. Join us via this link.
Back in February, I wrote this. It seemed like good advice then and still seems relevant now as recriminations season gets underway.
This coalition of the shrilling would all be sort of amusing in its way if the stakes were not so high in November with the real prospect that Donald Trump could return to The White House. The thing for Dems is this is fixable and fixable without compromising the party’s core values. People want merit, choices, and opportunity in public schools. Those are, or were, Democratic values. The idea that Black lives matter as an inclusive organizing principle, don’t compromise. The political agenda of Black Lives Matter? Well, have you read it? Freedom to live your life as you want and be free from discrimination is a core commitment that should not be compromised. Playing whatever sport you want regardless of fairness or safety, teaching kindergarten students that doctors make mistakes when it comes to the sex and gender of babies, luxury beliefs about family structure—are those postmodern fads really the hills to die on? In 2024?
Are they really in any way helpful to public schools?
The old Virginia system had been scathinglycriticized by civil rights organizations for its opacity, including for omitting a summative rating under the federal system. A Virginia Republican administration now pushing greater accountability gives the public school establishment here freedom to be openly hostile to such changes in a way the Maryland public school establishment cannot with Democratic Governor Wes Moore’s administration potentially pushing similar policy changes.
Most of the rhetoric here is primarily focused on schools, the adults, etc… hardly anyone is even hiding behind the veil that this is kids first. Yet this accountability system matters a lot to low-income, Black, and Hispanic young people in Virginia.
We will discuss this more at some point. For now, I keep hearing how the issue of transgender athletes didn’t matter in the election. From the same people who said it didn’t matter while $123 million in ads and the kind of ad flights the Trump campaign kept buying were hammering Harris and told you it did (even before we got any kind of actual analysis on voting behavior). Campaigns don’t spend that kind of money on a hunch, the ads were obviously tested.
To the extent that Jenn Psaki and John Oliver signal where the orders of the day are going on the left, the pivot on this issue seems to be toward arguing it’s just a marginal issue. It’s a tacit acknowledgment that with 70% opposition, people are not buying it on the merits.
There are a few problems with that. First, I don’t think the marginal frame helps; it probably hurts. People hear that it’s only a few athletes and wonder what the big deal is then, given the overwhelming opposition. Second, fundamentally this issue is a collision of rights, and even if it were marginal, when rights are concerned, we pause to think about how to balance them rather than wish them away. Police shootings are thankfully rare, but we still focus on them for obvious reasons. Finally, that argument will get falsified. It’s not as common as you might think from the Republican talking points, but it’s also not nearly as rare and marginal as Democrats claim. Martina Navratilova* has been vocal on that; here she is in an interview Democrats would have been wise to pay more attention to.
The big mistake here is a category error both sides make. This becomes more of an issue as you get into competitive, elite, and zero-sum sports where not everyone can play or hit the podium. The bright lines are not nearly as bright as you might have heard in most sports at younger ages. Lots of girls play boys sports in the early years for the competition. But as sports get more highly competitive, small differences matter a lot, big ones even more. At that level, it’s not random ‘some people are good at sports, and some aren’t’ as is casually tossed around—it’s systemic. That’s why this is about safety, fairness, and inclusion and those have to be balanced.
What’s striking is that the Biden draft guidance on this – now moot with the change in government – opened the door for some restrictions where fairness or safety was involved. It was being criticized by some transgender advocates because of that. Might have been a useful talking point? If you are going to forgo the 70% positions (respect, dignity, non-discrimination, that is federal law, and anti-harassment) in favor of the 30% one you’d better have a plan not an echo chamber.
*And when your response is that Martina Navratilova is a transphobe, you’ve completely lost the story.
I would not. Your mileage may vary. And that’s good for all of us.
First, we’ve got a great group of people gathering Tuesday afternoon to discuss the impact of the election on education. Lakisha Young of Oakland Reach, who is always a great guest; Kevin Huffman, former Tennessee education commissioner, TFA leader, and Washington Post columnist; and Lindsay Fryer, a former House and Senate Hill hand and plugged-in strategist. You can join the discussion at 4 PM ET Tuesday on LinkedIn.
Regarding the incoming administration:
We’ll know pretty soon who the Education Secretary nominee is, and the evolving list, at least as it’s been leaked to me secondhand, indicates it could go a few different ways—from competent hands to theater. At least it’s not Matt Gaetz, that makes school visits less concerning.
The standard for evaluating the pick, and all these picks, is not, “Is this the person I would have picked?” Rather, it’s, “Is this a good pick in the context of this administration?”
So, “Who’s going in?” That’s the question people are asking at meetings, over drinks and dinner, and on the conference circuit.
It’s often followed by, “Should I do it?” or “Would you do it?”
I would not. I’m not a Republican, though it’s unclear if Trump is either, so I guess that’s not a reason. But I’ve certainly criticized Trump too much without recanting, don’t agree on many things, etc..etc… so they wouldn’t want me anyway. I also believe that mangling the peaceful transfer of power is disqualifying. I’m not averse to working in a cross- or bipartisan way, and I don’t think Trump is wrong in every case; I just think he’s the wrong medicine. When faced with a choice between socially coercive toxic progressivism and MAGA, my answer is no thanks. Others may handicap it differently.
That’s why you should consider government service. Other citizens may view it differently. It’s our government. As importantly, our community needs to support people who view it differently if we intend to be a broad national movement for school improvement, not a faction.
Here’s why:
For starters, the election is over, and it has to settle things for at least some period. While it wasn’t a landslide, it was certainly decisive. The era of the permanent campaign, lawfare, and all its elements is adversely affecting the quality of life for Americans. We face real challenges as a country, and specifically in education, and we need the best possible people in government to address them regardless of who is in charge. This doesn’t mean acquiescing to things you don’t agree with, but it does mean coming to the table.
The argument, “I want Trump to fail because I don’t like him,” doesn’t align with rhetoric like, “I care about improving education in this country” or “I put kids first.” If you disagree with Trump, then persuade and pivot to governmental politics from electoral politics. Don’t hope or root for the worst just to make a point. One makes you an advocate; the other makes you an asshole.
Department of Education
If President Trump is serious about restructuring the Department of Education, he’ll need competent and seasoned hands to do it in a way that is not disruptive and is hopefully productive. From student loans to critical funding for underprivileged children to civil rights, the Department impacts many aspects of American life. We all have a stake in this, even if we disagree with the direction. And everyone knows there’s room for improvement across government.
Even if it’s chaos—always the chalk bet with this crew—you still want good people managing the chaos.
Some education-oriented Republicans who entered the first Trump administration certainly paid a social and professional tax. Conservatives, and others deviating from political orthodoxy, in our sector do in general. This isn’t healthy; we should encourage good people to step forward and support them after their service. We should encourage divergent viewpoints to find the best solutions. When you hear blackball talk, speak up—even if it’s not the choice you would make. Recognize where you are on the map; it might be in the minority. I know I am.
Look, if someone says, “I want to join the administration because it’s the best way to be cruel to immigrants,” or something in a similar vein that person should not be in our community. Yet I don’t hear education people saying that. Instead, there are people who want to expand school choice, reduce the federal footprint, or work on one of the dozens of issues the Department oversees. It’s okay to agree to disagree with them and still be grateful for their service.
Yes, it’s okay to agree to disagree on many things. The expansion of topics on which we cannot disagree and the expansion of definitions of what we’re disagreeing about has not been healthy for our sector, its politics, or the country. Everyone has lines, that’s good, but everything doesn’t have to be a line.
The best way to address Trump, in my view, is not to treat him like an exotic —though he may be—but rather to expect and hold him and his appointees accountable for normal government operations and improvements.
Bottom line: The scale of President Donald Trump’s election victory has changed the calculus about working in the administration for many people who would be good public servants. It has created a permission structure that would not exist if we were arguing over 1,000 votes in a swing state. Even if, like me, you’re not pleased with the election result, that’s probably a good thing. The election is over. A wider pool of talent benefits all of us because we’re all in this together.
I remember one (well funded, natch) education non-profit leader telling me at a dinner a few years ago how crazy, and disrespectful, it was for me to say that Black people might vote for Donald Trump in numbers. OK.
Here’s a chart of shifts in national vote patterns in last week’s election. From a political standpoint the Democrats are probably approaching ceiling on those blue bars. So persuading some of these other demographics rather than trying to squeeze more out there is going to matter a lot to how Democrats climb out of the hole they’re in. Education matters to that.
Now juxtapose all that, and this chart, with how you hear these issues discussed in the elite precincts of the education sector. Or just juxtapose it with who is in those elite “spaces” or “centered” as people like to say.
This helps explain the disconnect between what’s on offer in elite ed reform and what people want, and the consequent breakdown of an effective education reform politics.
More to come on the election and its impact—but for now, a few thoughts.
First, for Democrats, this was avoidable, and it’s consequently inexcusable. At some level, it’s the obvious things: the incumbent administration is unpopular, and people are frustrated. Women care about issues besides abortion.
Sure. Except, the other candidate was Donald Trump, and the two key issues—the economy and immigration—were hardly difficult to discern. The cultural baggage was clear, too, for anyone paying attention. Minimizing how terrifying inflation was for lower-income Americans and those on fixed incomes was a huge mistake in the early going of the Biden administration, for instance, along with border policy and politics. You can have a compassionate, effective, and pro-immigration border policy that also makes clear you don’t favor non-Americans over Americans. Not having a good answer to what you’d do differently going forward or in hindsight is malpractice.
We can argue about whether Vice President Harris was thrust into it too late, but there is no doubt it was winnable upstream, and people arguing it was inevitable are doing that out of self-interest. Ruy Teixeira, in particular, named this based on the data for several years. He was drummed out for his troubles. We’ve talked about it around here insofar as the education issues and general insularity are concerned. Instead, a vibes-based campaign that didn’t explicitly shed some baggage on the economy and social issues was not a great strategy.
In any event, this was as much about a rejection of the Democrats as any embrace of Trump or MAGA. Yet four and six years is a long time; that’s the effect.
2024 results excluding several western states, you get the idea.
I did not make election predictions because I wasn’t confident about what was going to happen. Trump was clearly in a strong position; my take had been that tied polls were, in practice, bad news, and Harris was probably running at least a few points behind. The Republicans were arguing data; the Democrats were vibes and hope in terms of which way it would go. But, just given the uniqueness of the circumstances, x factors, and questions about turnout, I was not fully convinced, and my spreadsheet of factors left me with analysis paralysis given how complicated the election was.
Some points related to education:
As we highlighted in this deck, education mattered in terms of voting behavior. A lot. It’s increasingly class, not race. Democrats are becoming the party of MSNBC and faculty lounges with all the associated social mores. So, Democrats absolutely dominated the Latinx vote; meanwhile, Trump increased his vote share by 25% among Hispanics. Democrats probably won “people of color,” but lost ground among Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, as well as other demographic groups. If Teixeira doesn’t persuade you, then read Orwell.
This map from the New York Times is something a lot of people in the ed sector didn’t believe could happen.
Democrats thought the election was about MSNBC; it was about ESPN.
The gender gap is getting attention. For schools, pay attention to the married gap as well. If the Republicans are winning married women while the Democrats win single women, that has some implications for education politics.
Public schools played a supporting role here. The Democrats decided to pivot hard left during the last decade, but especially post-2020, and that showed up in schools. It was turbocharged by latent frustration about pandemic school closures and policies. A lot of Americans have kids in public schools. They want normal. They’re not for book banning, they also don’t want their elementary school kids reading sexualized material. If the Democrats can’t parse out the genuinely censorious or racist (eg banning books about the struggle for civil rights) from parents who don’t want their kids seeing pictures of blowjobs at school they are playing with fire and will continue to struggle.
Democrats are dying on the wrong education hills. What’s remarkable is that non-discrimination and anti-hate toward transgender people are north of +30 positions among the electorate. That’s really good news and a sign of progress and growing tolerance though it’s not yet the case everywhere. Yet the fight on transgender issues became whether transgender girls should unilaterally be able to play girls’ sports. We kept hearing how this was a sideshow issue even as national and international data showed this was not the case. We kept hearing there was no difference even as people saw with their own eyes that’s not the case in some sports. People felt they were being gaslit. They were. Then there is the idea that schools should get in front of parents on transitions —made fashionable because of activists. I can’t tell you how awful the polling is on that, but whatever you think, it’s worse. What’s more, experts dismiss it as good for trans kids. And common sense tells you it’s bad for gay and trans kids to have this frame of secrecy on them. Does this move votes? Maybe. But it definitely puts a frame on Democrats that is not helpful more generally, and everyone concerned about sports or secrecy here is not a bigot. Pick better and more defensible targets.
People like school choice. The Democrats have set themselves against school choice in a way that alienates parents and is definitely not helpful with Hispanics. Democrats don’t need to go full ESA, but they need more to say and do on choice. It’s likely that Trump’s second term will focus more there and perhaps be more effective than his first. Choice politics, insofar as race and ethnicity are concerned, have been confounded by the two-party binary; Trump slashed into that Tuesday with his coalition, and it could start to unstick. Yes, two school choice referendums went down on ballots Tuesday (CO and KY), but ballot measures on choice are notoriously flawed. Choice moves in legislatures, and both polling and revealed preferences tell us a lot.
Along the same lines, pay attention to the urban results. Numbers out of places like New York should alarm Democrats and matter to education policy. You saw some frustration show up in the Chicago school board races.
Please stop picking various grievances and fostering competition about which one is more valid or serious. Lots of people have problems individually, and different demographic groups face different problems on average. That includes men—particularly where education is concerned. But the rhetoric about toxic masculinity, men as a persistent problem, and so forth lands poorly—and understandably so if you know anything about the economy and economic dislocation, suicides, drug use, and abuse, etc. It drove men to Trump. Schools fall for this stuff too easily. When Richard Whitmire talked about a boys’ crisis, people mocked him. Instead, take that seriously while also focusing on other problems that exist.
Trump as the racially depolarizing candidate is hard for people to get their heads around, especially people in the elite part of education’s nonprofit world. Yet empirically, that’s the case, as the election underscored. Democrats have decided to anchor more on elite college and post-college voters; the obvious effect of that will be to drive non-white voters to the other party in a two-party system. This will matter to education politics—potentially a lot.
The Democrats have a strong bench for 2028, including a number of current or former governors with interesting records and moves on education, including Polis, Shapiro, Moore, and Raimondo. Politics is like the weather in that it always changes; never get too up or too down.
Personnel is policy. A lot of considerations for a Trump Secretary of Education, and he’ll have to decide between show horse and work horse. I’d keep an eye on Rep. Stefanik or perhaps outgoing Education and Workforce Chair Virginia Foxx. The education secretary pick will be one small signal about whether chaotic Trump or disciplined Trump is on offer, but because of Senate control, almost any pick will get through. In the Senate, Bill Cassidy becoming Chair of HELP could lead to some policy. He’s a grown-up, really good on some issues around reading, autism, and mental health.
People are discounting how the scale of Trump’s win will impact personnel. A lot of seasoned Republican hands were skeptical of working in the administration, but after a win like this, the taboo is off, and a political permission structure exists to join the administration. It would be different if we were fighting over a few thousand votes in a handful of states. We’re not. Trump won the popular vote. That matters.
Probably a win for workforce policy and some sort of child tax credit. Expect attention on apprenticeships, credentials, short-term training, non- college pathways and other issues where there is actually some bipartisan consensus. This deck has more.
A win for the private sector in education. I’d keep an eye on alternative ventures to train teachers, various higher education business interests pretty much across the board, and other for-profit players. They won’t get stiff-armed at 400 Maryland for at least the next few years. Measurement will remain under pressure for all the usual reasons and Trump has never show interest in it.
The teachers unions have a problem. Since the Janus decision the teachers unions have played a bad hand exceptionally well. A Trump Department of Labor, as well as a climate where some of the political issues they’ve used to organize are losing saliency, is going to be a problem for them, however. Expect some stridency as an organizing and political strategy. It’s long term counterproductive, short term effective, leadership understandably tends to think in the short term.
The MCAS referendum is a bummer. Especially because of how the MCAS policy worked in practice. It’s really a signal on the vibes on accountability right now. In Maryland, Governor Wes Moore, an up-and-coming Democrat, and in Virginia, Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, are both trying to increase school accountability in their states. Worth watching, and I don’t think public school advocates realize you can have choice, you can have accountability, or you can have a blend of both. But going with neither is unsustainable if you want public schools to retain broad public support and enrollment.
In Florida, a majority was okay with partisan school board elections, but it didn’t hit the 60% threshold for enactment.
Community voices? Well, that’s an important thing.
First, you’ve probably heard or received a text or two; there is an election next week. Education doesn’t feature prominently but matters a lot to voting behavior. Also, surprisingly, the candidates actually agree on a few eduthings, despite each claiming the other will destroy the country. This new deck from Bellwether provides a brief look at all that and more in terms of possible implications. You can read it while nervously refreshing your election forecasting/results site of choice listening to Bad Bunny.
“The demographics and the complicated nature of this election is probably the most I’ve ever seen.” — Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) to Puck
She’s clearly right. We won’t know for a few months exactly how this plays out. Exit polls have their utility, and we’ll be able to glean some trends on election night, but the best data takes months to merge. It’s clear that party alignments are changing, and that matters to education work given the role policy and politics play in the sector, as well as how hyper-political it is. It matters to how we think about “community voice.”
Something you hear around the education sector at various events and conversations—a lot—is that various groups aren’t monoliths. True. But that’s usually said as a predicate to ascribing some viewpoint to them or crudely lumping them together as “people of color,” casually erasing the diversity that exists within broad categories. This same problem of broad assumptions shows up a lot in the fashionable talk about “community voice” in education circles. You run into many people who offhandedly assume there is such a thing as a consensus community voice, or who basically posit that if you listen just the right way, you can discern an authentic community voice that is full of wisdom and will guide you to the proper decisions or choices. And, delightfully for them, those decisions and choices always seem to line up with what these people think about various questions. In other words, they almost always seem to confirm their priors. How nice.
Actually, that’s why this is mostly political nonsense. And why education leaders need to do a much better job of actually listening to communities and appreciating the limits of doing so. Community voices are a thing; community voice exists but is much rarer.
Good luck discerning community voice here. Image: Sarah L. Voisin / The Washington Post
For starters, communities are diverse, and ecological fallacies are real. Knowing recent public opinion research and broad contours is useful, but it doesn’t tell you anything about the person right in front of you. For instance, in rough terms more than two-thirds of Black and Hispanic voters say they support school choice. That’s good to know. It also means there is a one in three chance that the person standing in front of you doesn’t. And there is only one way to find out: listening. (When it comes to Black voters in particular, there is a lot of evidence their political preferences and choices are constrained by the two-party system.)
This is why in education, statements like “the community wants school choice,” or “the community doesn’t want school choice,” or “the community wants stricter school discipline” or “the community wants more progressive school discipline” should be greeted with skepticism. Within the community, you’re likely to find diverse views on all those questions – and others. People have a variety of views; they often don’t fall cleanly along partisan or ideological alignments, as this election is showing. It’s messier than we allow.
In Montgomery County, Maryland, a lot of people were shocked when Muslim parents showed up to protest, along with others considered politically conservative, booksthat were being used in classrooms. This should only have been surprising if you have a really reductionist understanding of these issues and “communities.”
Among the various reasons I support expanding school choice is that majorities of Black and Hispanic parents want it, so I’m comfortable having it on offer. But that’s not the only reason. For me, values and empiricism matter too. And we should (and can) respect and account for the varied preferences in policy to some extent. Durable, effective policy schemes must take into account the diversity of viewpoints—for instance, balancing neighborhood school preferences with robust choice options. Instead, too often, we try to erase it. School discipline is a compelling example here, where we toggle from one fashionable approach to the next, ignoring the spectrum of views that exist among parents.
And again, despite the bromides, people tend to like community voice when they perceive that it aligns with their values—less so otherwise. For instance, on the issue of child brides, I don’t hear a lot of people in education circles calling for us to respect community voice. I don’t. These are mostly young girls. No thanks. Flying the Confederate flag? Sure, some communities are into that as an expression of voice. Count me out. In some communities, there is a fair amount of voice around trying to put gay people back in the closet. Are we to listen to that? Hard pass.
So, if you think we should obviously trump community voice on issues like these, that might offend you, then you’re not for it as any kind of principle. You’re simply for getting your way in politics when you can. Which is fine—normal actually—just don’t dress it all up as a fancy first principle.
Besides, it’s good to have a values system grounded in something besides what a lot of people say they want, which is the trap that “community voice” proponents blithely walk into. There is nothing inherently wrong with outlier views.
The point should be obvious: values matter too—to all of us, in different ways. That’s okay. And those values are going to come from various places for various people: empiricism, tradition, religion, progressivism, or liberal values.
So why does this idea of community voice rather than voices persist? What does it mean for education leaders?
When people argue for community voice as a way to decide things, they’re usually doing one of a few things. One is a simple power play. No one wants to be against “the community,” so it shuts a lot of people up, especially those with their fingers always in the air trying to discern how they should move—and especially in the last few years. Sometimes, though, it’s not even a deliberate act. Bubbles are real, and if your life experiences have been narrowly proscribed—for instance, elite schools followed by elite employment—then you may not have a lot of exposure to the messy heterodoxy of the American public. This is why working on campaigns, knocking on doors, and just listening to people is always a good learning experience.
Sometimes it is just the fashion. You see a lot of ideas, “defund the police” is probably the best recent example, that are so fashionable they blur the lines between what most people want and the perception of “community” preferences. The support for “defund” was really low, even at its peak. It doesn’t mean it’s the wrong position per se; that’s why we debate, and fringe ideas often become mainstream over time. But when people implied you were not with the “community” if you were not for it, that was empirically incorrect. The strong majority position among Black Americans was consistently better quality policing, not less. As it happens, white liberals were most in support of less. These are easy mistakes to make, professional politicians made this one and then recalibrated when they realized the political error. See, for instance, Harris, Kamala.
Stepping back, we design democratic institutions to help shape a process to distill different voices into something other than chaos, tyranny, or mob rule. Madison actually wrote an essay or two about this that are worth checking out. Elections—at least until the more recent introduction of the permanent campaign—settle things for a time so we can have governing. Not because everyone agrees, but because everyone agrees to disagree until the next opportunity to change things up. How to balance majority and minority desires and rights, turn factionalism toward productive ends, and allow things to be settled, at least temporarily, is the bread and butter of the American project. Community voice, as it’s generally considered in our sector, is not.
Nowhere here am I saying you shouldn’t listen. The opposite. Education leaders, I’d suggest, need to do a much better job of listening. The dominant views coming out of education nonprofits and ed schools align well with elite thought, not so much with any clear signal from communities. Again, maybe those views are the right ones—maybe not—everyone’s mileage will vary. But they don’t enjoy deep majority support and that’s not a matter of opinion. You have to listen a lot to discern the various viewpoints, understand them, appreciate nuance, and avoid confirmation bias. More listening than is generally the case now in media or advocacy. Too many visits to communities are Potemkin exercises or with self-selected representatives. Listening to three people saying the same thing to you might give you a great story, but is not the same as getting three perspectives on contested issues. And knowing that issues are contested in the first place matters a lot, and you have to get out of the bubble to even know that. That’s certainly more labor in the modern media environment with curated and tailored news.
Still, for us in education, anything less obscures the hard questions about how to design a pluralistic education system in a pluralistic country. That’s not a problem solved by just listening the “right way” or to the “proper” voices. Nor by simply abdicating any need to make some hard choices through some radical choice plan where everyone just does whatever they want. It’s a problem solved through the best information we can generate, democratic engagement, dialogue, and messy compromise in a diverse and complicated country. That’s a lot harder than defaulting to happy narratives.
In practical terms for reformers, this means building a cross-partisan politics that respects the variety of choices people want to make about their kids and does so in a way that allows for durable and sustainable education options and a durable and sustainable system. That’s not about any one best system or one specific approach. It’s about pluralism. Pluralism is hard in general, especially when tensions run high as they do right now.
Sometimes around here we talk about activist capture. It shows up in education a lot. We talk about what Julia Galef calls “scout mindset,” basically accurate analysis of the landscape, accurate forecasting, whatever you want to call it. Basically engaging with the world as it is, not as you might wish it to be.
If you don’t want your research politicized, then don’t politicize your research. It should go without saying, this isn’t good for LGBT youth, it’s toxic for them. By doing this you’re not a a warrior of some kind, you’re a liability. I get it, if there were not people trying to outright ban a class of medical treatment that is sometimes necessary then it would be a better climate (some version of that is true on most contested issues by the way, it’s not permission to abandon your commitments). But this has the opposite effect on the climate and it’s about as anti-empirical as you can get. And again, I recommend this discussion on The Disagreement.
As you may have heard, there’s an election coming. It’s a pretty important one, and it will have significant education implications, given that the sector is largely a politically controlled public sector undertaking.
So far, the biggest way education is showing up is in voting behavior. No, dear reader, you did not miss the flurry of policy proposals from both campaigns. Education levels continue to be predictive of voting patterns, with Democrats solidifying their hold on Americans with college and especially advanced degrees. That’s a mixed blessing. While it provides a reliable counterweight to the GOP base—though not in equal numbers—it also brings a bunch of cultural baggage that your average voter wants no part of. This is part of the reason Vice President Harris is underperforming among Black and Hispanic voters.
I’m not going to hazard any predictions—the presidential race seems like a toss-up as far as I can tell. If you’re a Democrat and want to panic, consider that given the overall environment and the fact that the other candidate is Donald Trump, Harris should be leading by at least a few points across key states. If you’re a Republican and want to fret, keep in mind that she still has time to close the deal, is showing a willingness to do that, and, although elections tend to break against the incumbent party, this one is unique since both candidates are incumbents in different ways.
(My hunch is that most people making confident predictions know they have a 50% chance of being right and looking prescient, and a 75% chance everyone will forget if they’re wrong. But I was pretty good in 2016, 2020, 2021, but sucked in 2022 so take this all with a grain of salt I might be on a losing streak.)
I will make one long-term prediction: whichever way the election goes, expect more intra-coalition acrimony. In a 50-50 country, political traction tends to happen within coalitions rather than between them. So, in education, expect more friction on the right around school choice and on the left around DEI, for instance. I’d view articles like this less as a one-off or hit piece than the opening shots of a different conversation in education.
And there will obviously be fallout and acrimony in whatever party fails to win The White House.
Derrell Bradford, Dale Chu, and I are going to talk about the election and its education implications, including state issues, next Tuesday at 2:30 pm ET. You can join us on LinkedIn, and I hope you will. Maybe those guys will make predictions?
One of Bellwether’s most popular — or most frustrating, depending on your perspective — policies over our almost fifteen years is that we don’t take organizational positions or put out statements about things on behalf of everyone who works at the organization. The personal positions of the organization’s leaders don’t affect what people who work here can say, write about, or work on. Part of my job is editing and helping to strengthen arguments I don’t personally agree with on various issues. It’s not for everyone, but I believe it’s a good approach.
When the draft of the Dobbs decision was leaked in advance of the 2022 Supreme Court decision, I remember receiving an email from a prominent education advocacy/DEI organization with a bunch of employees saying they were all devastated. All? That struck me as odd. Unless your position on abortion is a litmus test for hiring, a diverse organization would likely have people on all sides of this complex issue. I know we do at Bellwether. (Why an education organization even has a position on abortion is a different issue, but these are the times we live in.)
Meanwhile, the data on abortion shows disagreement that transcends various demographic lines (and despite the best efforts of politicians to divide us, there’s a rough consensus that people aren’t okay with restrictions in the first trimester, are in the third, and disagree mightily on the second). About one in four Black Americans believe abortion should be illegal in most or all cases, as do about one in three Hispanic Americans. So you should expect some diversity on the issue in a diverse organization unless you’re actually screening for politics not diversity. Abortion is hardly the only issue where such differences arise. You see it on issues like immigration and on many education questions where polling may surprise you. It’s probably one reason Trump has steadily made meaningful gains among non-white voters since 2016. Life is more complicated than how it’s portrayed in most elite non-profit conference rooms.
People sometimes ask why Bellwether follows this approach, and the answer is straightforward: We work with various organizations across the sector. We don’t choose clients by segment but by whether the work is innovative and improvement-focused. We collaborate with charter schools, school districts, private schools, and people from a range of ideological viewpoints. We work in red, blue, and purple states with state leaders and public entities.
It’s challenging to work like this if you’re constantly taking positions on the issues of the day. Especially, because as anyone paying attention knows, these various essential positions often turn out to be surprisingly ephemeral. I’ve been in this field long enough to have seen reformers supporting and then opposing — and maybe supporting again — high standards, for example. What were once absolutely totemic beliefs are often quickly and quietly forgotten as fashions change. Note the Economist item below.
Practically, it allows us to avoid circuses like this. Not surprisingly, more and more institutions are realizing that silence isn’t violence; instead, it’s a way to stay focused on your actual mission. (Around the sector, people sometimes argue that the mission is everything or some vague commitment to social justice broadly speaking. That’s not a mission; it’s a slogan.) Our team is free to express their political views on their own time. We don’t police editorial content or restrict what employees say or do outside of work, even regarding education issues (this happens more than you might think).
This approach can be frustrating. Externally, people want to know why we don’t take positions on certain issues. Or they suggest that not doing so will get us “coded” as having a particular stance. This is obviously silly — judge people and organizations based on what they actually say, not on everything they don’t say. Internally, some staff wonder why we don’t at least take positions on what are probably universally agreed-upon issues around the organization. Understandably, people sometimes want their employer to take a stance on something they or their peers feel strongly about. But that road opens up endless debates, internal persuasion efforts, and the like. You can’t only lean into a principle when it’s easy; it matters most when it’s hard. Besides, everyone believes their particular issue is so important it must be the exception to the rule.
What we don’t do is claim we’re open to multiple viewpoints and then quietly police them — something that’s also unfortunately common. While I don’t agree with organizations that fire people for unpopular viewpoints, at least they’re transparent about it.
In any event, the narrowing of the scope of statements view seems to be winning the day. A Bellwether perhaps.
Lessons
Robert Pondiscio wrote an op-ed related to the Corey DeAngelis issue, pointing out that conservatives are more likely to be “canceled” than lefties. He’s not wrong, but it’s a case of whataboutism and hammer-nail thinking (if you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail).
First of all, Corey wasn’t truly canceled — he was back at it just days later (tweeting and advocating, to be clear). Second, to the extent that any canceling happened, it was from the political right. He lost his role at AFC, but it’s not unreasonable for a pro-kid choice organization to find his actions a bit too much. Especially given the context in which Corey operated and fueled. They didn’t fire him for a controversial viewpoint. The left didn’t like Corey to begin with, so I guess they couldn’t cancel him — though they surely would’ve happily done so if it were on offer.
Robert is certainly correct that left-wing radicals dominate education academia, where they outnumber right-wing radicals and where thought policing is disturbingly common. That’s because, in our long-running culture war, the right got state governments and institutions, while the left took academia and media — and we fight over the rest.
I’m not sure that DeAngelis doing porn sheds much light on any of that or on much of anything else beyond his personal story. Several of his allies have told me that if he hadn’t been such a toxic presence on social media, he probably would’ve had a much softer landing. That might be the lesson here.
Denver
It’s a poor reflection on the education sector that new studies showing important impacts are largely ignored if they don’t fit the prevailing narrative or political fashion. This tendency is how we ended up in the reading policy mess that leaders are now trying to untangle, but it’s a lesson few seem eager to learn.
A new study out of Denver is important for two reasons. First, the results of the portfolio approach show significant effects. Is it perfect? No, but the findings are significant. Yet we hear mostly crickets. Second, the results underscore how we tend to abandon reforms before they’ve had time to demonstrate their efficacy. Denver walked away from what seems like a crucial set of reforms.
What’s worse is that the district actually fought to keep the data from reaching researchers. It’s not uncommon in our sector — and that should also be a story! The local paper did gymnastics to undercut the findings. Public radio did better.
It’s not just the media. These implications should be central in education conversations, at conferences, and among leaders. You don’t make major decisions based on one study, but you do pay attention and discuss the findings. We don’t.
Also, someone might say thank you to Paul Hill.
Education is always the last to get the memo?
The Economist recently examined the ebbing of “woke” sentiments, using data not just vibes. It touches on the issue of activist capture, which has done considerable damage to the education sector. The kicker:
Ruy Teixeira of the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank, says, “I think people will one day look back on the 2015 to 2025 era as being a bit of a moment of madness.” But even though Mr. Teixeira believes the woke wave has set social progress back, he notes that, over the long run, America has been reducing discrimination and improving opportunities for minorities of all sorts. That trend, he believes, is lasting.
There are plenty of problems, but in practice the country is depolarizing racially you see that in political behavior, social mobility, and habits. Raj Chetty just released some work that you’d think would get more attention about race and class. Most social indicators are going in the right direction. Yet activists have a vested interest in arguing the opposite on a host of questions and too often the education world is an easy mark.
Terry Ryan is one of the best people to work with in our sector. Committed, patient, impactful, interesting backstory, wonderful human. His daughters are gems, too. Here’s one with her boyfriend and a lovely trout on the Owyhee River in Oregon.
*The one exception we have is issues affecting 501(c)(3) organizations as a class. It has never come up, but if, for example, changes to the tax code that could negatively affect an organization like Bellwether were proposed, we would weigh in insofar as it impacts our ability to do our work.
