The U.S. has "already passed peak public school" (excluding public charters), writes Matt Welch on Reason. Enrollment in district-run schools peaked in 2012, has declined by 5 percent since then.
Charter enrollment more than doubled since 2010-11, from 1.8 million to 3.7 million in 2021-22. Homeschooling numbers have doubled from an estimated 2.8 percent of the school-aged population pre-pandemic to around 5.8 percent now.
Parents in Republican-led states have a new array of choice options, such as education savings accounts.
And birth rates are down.
Public schools face "the cruelty of math," writes Welch. Districts can't afford to run half-empty school buildings. The students aren't coming back. "Public schools had just one job, and they screwed it up. Just wait until all taxpayers — not just the defecting families —begin to notice."
Democrats have embraced a "unions-first, students-last" platform that rejects school choice, write Betsy DeVos, former Education secretary, and Jeff Yass in City Journal.
Kamala Harris picked ex-teacher Tim Walz over choice-friendly Josh Shapiro, a clear sign that "Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, is calling the shots," they write. "This should serve as a red flag for parents — particularly the large numbers of historically loyal Democrats in low-income and minority communities who want to save their kids from failing schools."
In a recent EdChoice survey, "77 percent of Democrats supported education savings accounts — a slightly higher share than Republicans," DeVos and Yass write. Democratic support for school choice has risen from 59 percent to 66 percent in the past four years, according to another survey.
"Democratic leaders will apologize for not using your preferred pronouns, but they’re not sorry for requiring your children to attend a government school system that fails to teach what a pronoun is in the first place," they write.
On NPR, Cory Turner summarizes where Harris and Trump stand on education issues.
I think the public school education system in the US is going to follow the Hemmingway Rule and fail, "Gradually, then suddenly." We are in the gradual phase now, but the pace seems to be increasing. The interesting question is when it will hit the inflection point and shift over to "suddenly". Then, everyone can write stories about how the failure is so "unexpected".
Once more, with feeling: "Carthago delenda est" To modernize Cato: The public school system must be destroyed (Ratio scholae publicae delenda est).
It's past the point where it can be "evolved" or "transformed" into something sane. It has to be abandoned and rebuilt from the ground up.
Vice President Harris is wrong on virtually every education issue (I'm neutral on these candidates' early childhood support), and the Biden-Harris Democrats' education policy does not deserve reelection; instead, a 2025 liberal green educational manifesto should support closing the federal education department's school regulations and transgressive books, thereby returning primary & secondary education to the States, where our Constitution implies it belongs (and wise states will further devolve these issues to local educational agencies like One World Schools Activity).