Rigor and results are broccoli: Ed reform has gone soft, sweet

Sugar-frosted education policy has replaced eat-your-vegetables reform, writes Rick Hess in Education Next. Holding schools accountable for results is out for Republicans and Democrats.

"For Democrats, during the Bush-Obama years, the mark of seriousness was a willingness to challenge the unions, critique teacher tenure, endorse charter schools, and hold schools accountable for student outcomes," he writes. "For Republicans, it was about accountability, reining in undisciplined spending, school choice, and addressing the problems with collective bargaining."

Now, everyone wants to do what's easy, albeit expensive: Raise teacher pay, forgive college loans, fund early childhood education and expand career tech education, Hess writes. Reducing college costs is popular. (But nobody knows how.)

Republicans are more likely to push the "science of reading," he writes. (This should not be political, but it's seen as conservative.)

That leaves school choice, which is expanding rapidly in GOP-led states.

This week, Donald Trump endorsed school choice, and pledged "to sign an executive order banning critical race theory and transgender insanity" in schools, and pass a law to "keep men out of women's sports."

Education Week recaps his K-12 policies in his first term.

Harris isn't talking about choice, but the Democratic platform is anti-choice, notes Hannah Gross on NJ Spotlight. Since she's strongly supported by both teachers' unions, it's likely she'll support the status quo.

There's no political appetite for talking about making schools more efficient, Hess writes. But a number of big-city districts that spent pandemic money unwisely are facing "fiscal cliffs." They kept schools closed the longest, lost the most students and don't have the political will to close half-empty and three-quarters-empty schools. Will the state of Illinois bail out Chicago Public Schools? I don't think so.