Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter
There was a time when challenging broken institutions was the Democratic Party’s calling card. Democrats didn’t just tolerate disruption, they drove it, demanding that schools, health care and government agencies answer to the people they were supposed to serve, not the other way around. That instinct produced some of the party’s greatest achievements.
Once the populist force — suspicious of institutions and champions of those too often overlooked and left behind — the party is now widely perceived, and increasingly operating, as the party of elites and institutional insiders. Meanwhile, Republicans, long the party of the establishment and elite-oriented, have absorbed the populist energy that once defined the left.
Nowhere is that reversal more glaring or more costly than in America’s K-12 schools. Since the end of the Obama years, Democrats have defended the system despite evidence of mounting failure. Reading and math scores fell sharply. Achievement gaps widened. Chronic absenteeism surged. And the Democratic Party’s answer has been to default to a system-protection mindset, rather than question whether that system is working. The party has deferred to administrators, shielded unions and told frustrated families to trust a system that has repeatedly failed their children.
Related‘We’re Adrift’: Arne Duncan on Democrats’ Education Agenda
Those families, particularly in working-class Black and Latino communities, don’t want a better defense of broken systems. They want something new. Here’s where to start.
Trust the People
For too long, Democrats have acted as though families must be protected from making bad schooling decisions for their children rather than trusted to make good ones. This paternalistic impulse has led to a reflexive opposition to school choice. Even as working-class Black and Latino families, the backbone of the Democratic coalition, have consistently said they want more options and a stronger voice in their children’s education, the party has remained tethered to teachers unions and district administrators — the adults who run the system — rather than the families the system is supposed to serve. Poll after poll shows working-class and minority parents favoring more school options. Rebuilding trust begins with trusting the judgment of the people. That means embracing school choice, not as a concession to the right, but as an expression of the Democratic Party’s original commitment to expanding opportunity for all.
Close the Culture Gap
Democrats have compounded this disconnect by fighting cultural battles that energize activists but alienate families. Across the country, Democratic-aligned school boards and administrators have pushed curriculum and programming — on race, gender identity and social-emotional frameworks — that moved well ahead of where most parents, including most Democratic-leaning parents, actually stood. In the words of polling analyst Ruy Teixeira, the gap between the cultural views of the party’s leaders and those of the median working-class voter is, “screamingly obvious.” The party’s response has largely been to deny it exists.
On transgender student policies in particular, Democrats allowed themselves to be defined by the maximalist positions of activist organizations rather than staking out a principled, humane middle ground. Pew Research data from early 2025 showed Americans have grown more supportive of restrictions in this area, not less. Democrats didn’t create the controversy, but they frequently failed to acknowledge legitimate public concern, which ceded the entire issue to Republican framing. As former Chicago mayor and potential 2028 presidential candidate Rahm Emanuel has written, “We’ve become so obsessed with bathroom access that we’ve ignored classroom excellence.” Democrats need to move away from politics that trades public consensus for activist approval and back toward liberal principles: the belief that dignity and opportunity belong to everyone, equally, without exception.
Focus on Results
There is a real crisis in American education — what education researcher Timothy Daly calls an “education depression” — yet the party has had remarkably little to say about it. Democrats have defined success by inputs — dollars spent, programs launched, constituencies satisfied — rather than outcomes for students. The question “did this work?” rarely gets asked. Democrats must change their definition of success, focusing not on what they fought for, but on what children actually learned.
Listen to Voters, Not Special Interests
When pressure from organized labor kept schools closed during COVID long after the costs to children had become clear, Democrats mostly stood with the unions. In a healthy political party, special interests know their place: They are welcome at the table, but they don’t set the menu. When families and special interests want different things, there should be no doubt about whose side Democrats are on.
Adopt an Abundance Mindset
The biggest constraint on education policy isn’t funding, it’s mindset. Democrats have spent too much energy warning about the risks of reform and too little energy driving it. Too often, education debates get framed as zero-sum: If charter schools grow, district schools suffer; raising the bar sets kids up to fail. That defensive crouch has made the Democrats the party of no.
RelatedFacing Four More Years of Trump, Democrats Wonder: How Did They Lose Parents?
Instead, Democrats must think expansively about what is possible. District, charter, private and hybrid schools are not competitors for a single prize. They are complementary contributors to a common goal: an educated public. More good options simply means more kids served. A scarcity mindset looks around and sees danger; an abundance mindset sees opportunity.
Build a Bigger Tent
America’s system of government is designed to force compromise across divisions, to require that lasting change be built on durable coalitions and broad agreement rather than narrow majorities. Both parties have resisted those structural pressures for a decade, each pursuing its priorities through executive action and party-line votes rather than durable legislative consensus. The result has been policies and executive actions that reverse with every election cycle and leave little lasting impact for the families who need it most. Reformers who moved the needle on education — on charter growth, accountability and family empowerment — did so by building unlikely alliances and finding common ground across party lines. That is still the path.
Families who feel abandoned by institutions they were told to trust are looking for a party that will stand up for them. Democrats were once that party — the populist force that challenged entrenched power on behalf of the overlooked and left behind. That changed not because the country stopped needing it, but because the party stopped doing it. The response to Republican grievance and authoritarian impulse cannot be caution or reflexive defense of the status quo. It must be the rediscovery of that North Star. The place to start is America’s schools.
Did you use this article in your work?
We’d love to hear how The 74’s reporting is helping educators, researchers, and policymakers. Tell us how