Apparently the public schools will be the whipping boy for the 2024 Presidential election.

The national assault on public schools is mystifying, given that school policies are local and highly variable. Performances on national tests vary dramatically from one state to the next, and books that have been banned in one school district are part of the explicit curriculum in others.  Yet the murmuring from potential Republican candidates is unmistakeable.

Ron DeSantis started it with his “Don’t Say Gay” legislation to prevent LGBTQ topics from surfacing in the school curriculum, an early assault on local autonomy from the State of Florida.  Eric Schmitt rallied a small percentage of right wing parents to create a “Parents Bill of Rights” to oppose curricula unpopular with an agitating minority. The same Attorney General Schmitt doubled down by suing the schools that had a mandatory mask policy at the height of the CoVid pandemic in early 2022.

More recently, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared, “If you ask, “Who’s the most likely to take this republic down?” It would be the teacher’s unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids, and the fact that they don’t know math and reading or writing.”  The all-but-declared Presidential candidate believes the President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, is the most dangerous person in the U.S.

There is no such thing as a typical public school, and Randi Weingarten represents only a minority of K-12 teachers (1.7 million out of 3.8 million).  Public education is a shape-shifting entity as you travel from North to South, and West to Midwest. So how do you campaign against a moving target?

The sweeping generalities that politicians will use in a nation-wide campaign will undoubtedly be inaccurate and deceptive. For example, a 2022 poll by IPSOs/ NPR found that 76% of respondents agree that “my child’s school does a good job keeping me informed about the curriculum, including potentially controversial topics.” Could it be that Republicans are planning to win an election based on the opinions of the other 24%?  Or will they just assume they can entrap the rest of us in half-truths?

The opportunist candidate will be willing to exaggerate and stir up anger if it brings the aroused parental minority, with their independent sympathizing friends, to the polls.  That campaign strategy plays on local grievances to draw a national turnout, a questionable strategy.

But why pick on the public schools?

1. Schools cannot afford the fund-raisers and lobbyists to mount an opposition.  Even Randi Weingarten gets little respect as a union president, because her members are diverse in income and politics.  Unions don’t have the clout they used to have.
2. Schools have not performed well during the pandemic, according to the most reliable measure, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Math and Reading scores for middle and high school have declined significantly. That is the fact, but of course schools suffered from the absence of face-to-face, not necessarily incompetent, teaching.
3. School libraries are under assault for making explicit young adult literature available to teenagers. Any fiction that normalizes LGBTQ behavior can arouse straight parents, and some graphic literature can be more graphic than some families can tolerate.
4. Every candidate considers him- or herself an expert on education merely because they have been students. With such limited experience the candidate feels capable of judging why schools in some localities are failing.
5. Evidence has become optional in national political campaigns. As a result of #4 campaigns against public education will be highly emotional, bringing out the loudest and most aggrieved parents and/ or teachers.  That makes good soundbites.

So we can expect a campaign making heated accusations of mindless teaching and anti-American curricula, but lacking the respectable research or professional experts who use data to identify real problems.  In other words–a shout-fest.  Pathetic model of critical thinking for a school population that sorely needs good models. If  you want fourth and eighth graders to think critically, you could start by modeling it on high profile election campaigns.

This campaign could very well sow division, where teacher-parent relationships have previously been good, according to the IPSOs/NPR poll cited above, which documents 76% of parents trusting their children’s teachers.  By fanning some parent and educator discontent, the national campaign could weaken the credibility of effective teachers.  We know that somewhere in America there are children who can’t divide, teachers who indoctrinate, and librarians who don’t create age-appropriate reading lists. If the election-machine finds them, they will become celebrities of the worst kind– evidence that our entire educational system is failing.

A wiser candidate would locate successful innovations in the schools and, if elected, promise to replicate and fund them.  That would be constructive. But more likely the campaign will thrive on the popular wisdom that progressive education and immoral, unpatriotic curricula are the problem, and it will be resolved by firing personnel and throwing out the offending materials.  This would be the “You’re fired!” approach to school reform.

The voices of articulate and thoughtful voters must be heard to prove that critical, cool-headed thinking has not been lost to posterity. If the anti-education lobby seizes the day, we are in for dark ages in public education. It is a problem that replicates itself, because we learn how to vote intelligently in schools, while future schools could become incubators of fill-in-the-blank  and true/false reasoning. Thus we create the dazed voters that re-elect flawed leaders.

Perhaps a savvy opponent or a well-informed educator will rise up against the fact-free campaign I am describing. Perhaps parents will not be swayed by the fury of the school board meeting provocateurs. Perhaps articulate teens will testify on behalf of their schools. And perhaps the youngest voters, Generation Z, will flock to the polls to prevent a mindless assault on schools. That could stem the tide of negativity.

As absurd as a national campaign against local education may sound, it is dangerous, just the same. We cannot let ill-informed, power-brokers dictate local policies. Public education needs reform by professionals, including teachers themselves, but giving it over to political hacks is not a solution.  We should speak up for local autonomy and participate in our local schools.

The school we save may be our own.