Democratic presidential hopeful U.S. Senator for California Kamala Harris at the second Democratic ... [+]
The exchange between Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Joe Biden over the issue of federally-mandated school busing four decades ago was the highlight of last week’s Democratic presidential primary debates in Miami, Fla.
While busing in the ’70s is now a hot topic on the campaign trail and among talking heads in the media, an examination of Harris’ and her primary competitors’ platforms shows that the Democratic Party has become almost uniformly hostile to expansion of school choice and is all but guaranteed to nominate someone to the top of the ticket in 2020 who opposes policies that expand school choice for children and parents.
“I support busing,” Kamala Harris told reporters on Sunday, reports NBC’s Vaughn Hillyard. “Listen, the schools of America are as segregated, if not more segregated today than when I was in elementary school, and we need to put every effort, including busing, into play to desegregate the schools.”
Senator Harris talks about desegregating schools through busing while opposing modern day policies that would expand school choice and she, like her primary competitors, rejects reforms that would allow minority children and their parents to enroll in the schools of their choosing, without being tethered by their zip code to substandard, failing, and possibly dangerous schools.
The general public and even the majority of Democratic voters can be forgiven for not being aware of this. Not a single question was asked about K-12 education policy at last week’s two-night Democratic debate, which is odd considering how critical public teachers union support is to the Democratic Party. Given the debates were held in Florida, a state that has been a leader on school choice since Jeb Bush's time as governor, it would’ve been a fitting location to ask about the topic.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, to his credit, used his Friday morning interview with Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) to bring up the topic, asking the presidential candidate whether he supports policies that expand school choice, even if he didn’t talk about it during the debate.
“The last thing we should be doing is taking away high-quality choice,” Senator Bennet told Scarborough, adding that the busing policy from the ‘70s that Senator Kamala Harris focused on at the first debate “didn’t really work.”
Yet “taking away high quality choice” in public education, as Senator Bennet says he would never do, is precisely what the platforms of Kamala Harris and other top Democratic candidates for president entail. It’s also what then-President Barack Obama sought to do when he proposed executive budgets that zeroed out Washington, D.C.’s opportunity scholarship program, a program that helps low-income, predominantly minority children escape failing, often dangerous public schools and provides them a good education that gives them a shot at having a future. A key reason that program survived Obama’s years in the White House was then-Speaker John Boehner’s leadership in ensuring the program remained funded.
It’s not just Senator Harris. Other Democrats running for president, including those who used to embrace school choice, all now oppose policies that expand school choice. These policies include education savings accounts, education scholarship tax credits, school vouchers, and reforms that lift caps on the number of charter schools or simply allow their existence in the first place, as West Virginia lawmakers recently voted to do.
While teacher strikes generate more headlines, recent years, and the past 12 months in particular, have seen blue states reject legislation that would expand school choice, while red, Republican-run states are enacting policies that empower parents and their children with more choice, either through education savings accounts, the authorization of more charter schools, or the expansion of tax credits scholarships to make them available to more children.
In the past month alone, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf (D) vetoed a bill passed by the GOP-controlled Pennsylvania legislature that would’ve increased the number of tax credit scholarships available to low-income students in the Keystone State. The reform rejected by Wolf is similar to the one enacted by Republican lawmakers in Florida eight years ago.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf s at the National Governor Association 2019 winter meeting.
Meanwhile in neighboring West Virginia, the Republican-controlled general assembly passed legislation in June that would permit the institution of three charter schools in West Virginia, one of six states where charter schools are completely prohibited.
In Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) enacted legislation this year that will make education savings accounts available to children who live in Davidson and Shelby counties, which are home to the cities of Nashville and Memphis. Governor Lee also signed a bill during his first session in office that will create a new charter school authorization commission that is expected to facilitate the opening of more charter schools in Tennessee. This push in the states to expand access to charter schools comes at a time when Democratic presidential candidates like Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are calling for the defunding or prohibition of charter schools.
“Charter critics are mostly wrong that charter schools are weakening traditional public schools and/or that they are making segregation worse,” writes Brookings Institute fellow Douglas Harris, who advised the Obama administration on education policy. As with many of her primary opponents, Warren’s turn against school choice is a recent development. Harris points out that Warren was a charter supporter until she turned against them in a 2016 referendum in her home state of Massachusetts.”
It would be very instructive for American voters to learn that all of the top tier 2020 Democratic contenders oppose reforms that expand school choice. A moderator at the next debate could educate the public about this by asking the candidates what they think about the aforementioned West Virginia charter school bill, the tax credit scholarship bill in Pennsylvania that Governor Wolf vetoed, the educations savings account program enacted by Governor Lee and Tennessee lawmakers, or any number of reforms pending in state capitals across the country that seek to expand school choice.
For Union Bosses, It’s About Closing Off Competition
If Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and other 2020 candidates think teacher pay is the dominant issue for teachers union bosses, then they missed the fact that teachers strikes have been happening in states like North Carolina, where teachers have received repeated pay raises in recent years.
This means that "if Harris thinks that those walkouts were strictly about teacher salary, she was not paying attention,” writes Peter Green about recent Los Angeles teacher protests. “She need look no further than her own state of California, where one result of the teacher strike was a call for a cap on charters”
Biden, Harris, Warren, and other Democrats may think their opposition to school choice is smart politics, but polling indicates otherwise.
“While pandering to unions seems like a no brainer for candidates in the Democratic primary, their strong alliance is in direct opposition to the preferences of much of the Democratic base,” writes Harmeet Dillion, a California-based civil rights and business litigation attorney who also works for the Republican National Lawyers Association.
“Urban and minority voters overwhelmingly support school choice, and charter school enrollment is on the rise. In many poor neighborhoods with failing schools, charter schools provide a lifeline for families,” adds Dillon. “They are free and open to all, regardless of where students live. A recent study by the Federation for Children found that 66% of voters in metro areas, 73% of Latinos and 67% of African Americans support school choice.”
For an indication of how much sway teachers unions hold in the Democratic Party, when Pete Buttigieg released policy proposals this week that are intended to help him improve his dismal polling numbers with minority voters, the South Bend mayor promised to reduce incarceration rates by 50%, legalize marijuana, and mandate a certain percentage of federal contracts go to minority-owned firms. It’s telling about where the modern Democratic Party is on eduction policy that the 37 year old mayor promises these things but doesn’t put forth reforms that would allow minority parents more say in where and how their children are educated.
Democratic presidential candidate and South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg (C) listens as ... [+]
Former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum’s loss in Florida's gubernatorial election last year, after he had been leading in most polls prior to election day, provides an example of how opposition to school choice could be hurting Democrats politically. There is evidence to suggest that Gillum’s opposition to school choice and Governor Ron DeSantis’ support for it helped DeSantis gain support from minority voters that helped put him in the governor’s mansion.
The upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case that will rule on the challenge to Montana’s tax credit scholarship program will give Harris, Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, and all candidates an opportunity to comment on education policy in the coming months and to clarify their positions opposing reforms that expand school choice. It didn’t happen at the first debate, but the coming debates and press gaggles will provide plenty of opportunities for moderators and reporters to broach the subject and enlighten the public.
