Liberals vs. conservatives and school reform

Wisconsinites who watch any television know that an election is on the way. While it seems unlikely that education will be a dominant issue in the next election, it will certainly be one of them. A current article in City Journal makes the case that Bush is Yes, the Education President, in part by discounting the role Democrats played in passing the No Child Left Behind Act.

There are dangers, I think, in allowing educational reforms to become too closely associated with one party or one ideological grouping. An obvious one is what happens if Bush is not reelected. Will the policies that show potential (annual testing, making sure programs are effective, expanding charter schools and other alternatives) be reversed if they are viewed as conservative and Republican initiatives? (Click here for one Democratic voice that supports most of the NCLB initiatives.)

A second is that it allows opponents of reform to change the subject; instead of talking about the merits of the reform, they concentrate on the politics of those supporting the reform. I saw this last winter when a group of inner-city Milwaukee legislators appeared before a group of their constituents who supported the school choice program. The legislators justified their votes against expanding the program by pointing to the politics of the bills' Republican sponsors. The proposals were not to benefit the black community, they argued, but part of a right-wing agenda.

This strategy of guilt by association is especially effective because urban education is at the intersection of two cultures: urban politics and education, both of which are far more liberal than American society as a whole.