After Midterm Wave, Democrats Inherit a School Choice Dilemma

Democrats made political history this week, winning the support of voters who hadn’t chosen them in decades. Texans elected their first Democratic senator since 1988, while Kansas returned to the fold for the first time since the Herbert Hoover presidency .

The shift in education governance is somewhat more subtle, but crucial in its own way. Just a handful of Democratic governors currently lead states that feature significant offerings of private school choice. But after the blue wave that crested this week, that number will increase meaningfully. Governors-elect Rob Sand of Iowa and Gina Hinojosa of Texas will soon oversee two of the country’s largest systems of education savings accounts (ESAs), while Amy Acton in Ohio will preside over that state’s various voucher and scholarship initiatives.

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The shift imposes a strategic choice to a class of newcomers who, in some cases, are already on their way to becoming national figures: Should you attempt to reverse a policy that many of your party’s voters and activists fervently oppose — or reach some accommodation instead, potentially reframing choice as an asset in Democratic politics?

Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University offers an unusual perspective on that question as both a prominent critic of voucher-like policies and an unsuccessful Democratic congressional candidate this cycle. While urging members of his party to introduce more public safeguards on the programs, he stopped short of recommending that they push for repeal.

“I don’t think it’s incoherent to say, ‘I opposed vouchers when they were being established — but once they passed, you have tens of thousands of children receiving them, and we’re not going to throw them off.’” said Cowen, who put his advocacy for public education at the heart of his campaign. “But how do you make it work better for families?

Jorge Elorza, CEO of the choice-friendly advocacy group Democrats for Education Reform, said some of Tuesday’s biggest winners likely already understood the popularity of ESAs — publicly funded grants that can pay for a variety of educational costs including, but not limited to, private school tuition — among Democrats, Republicans, and independents.

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Polling can be an unreliable guide to public opinion on public policy issues, with specific question wording heavily influencing responses. But surveys have generally shown high levels of support for ESAs , even above charter schools or vouchers (which are paid directly to private schools by state agencies).

Helping to steer how those resources are used, and who is eligible to receive them, would generate more benefits in the long run than seeking to roll them back entirely, Elorza argued, adding that there was nothing “inherently conservative or Republican” about public funds that could help low-income students access tutoring or summer learning opportunities.

“If we’re part of the conversation and trying to shape these new funding tools to advance Democratic priorities, there’s a real opportunity there,” he said. “The devil is in the design.”

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A ‘moderating influence’

Some incoming Democrats will enjoy a freer hand than others. Authority over K–12 policy is dispersed in some states over a variety of administrative bodies — state boards of education, elected superintendents, or quasi-independent education agencies — and, in others, is concentrated more closely in the governor’s office.

“The amount of change in education will depend on what governors can do unilaterally, through their executive actions and appointments,” said Paul Manna, a political scientist at the College of William & Mary. “Versus other areas, where they need the legislature to pass laws to help them move their ideas forward.”

While sometimes voicing criticism of their design, Acton and Sand have both refrained from calling for an end to their states’ respective choice programs. (Nor has Keisha Lance Bottoms, who will preside over Georgia’s much smaller version .) Their reluctance could stem from the fact that all are blue leaders of red or purple states, and none command the legislative majorities necessary to eliminate them altogether.

Instead, Sand has floated proposals to establish regular auditing processes for ESA recipients to ward off fraud, while also promoting limits on income eligibility that would prevent the most affluent families from participating. Acton has been less specific, vowing only to bring more transparency and accountability to a “corrupt” voucher scheme. All have notably been more voluble on the subject of public schools, stumping for more state funding, higher teacher pay, and an expansion in pre-K options.

Andrew Rotherham, a Democratic education observer and consultant, said he would be watching out for “less wholesale repeal, and more the sorts of regulations that get adopted.” In Iowa, for example, schools using ESA funds are already required to administer the same state-mandated assessments to their students that are used in traditional public schools. Similar rules could be enacted elsewhere, perhaps in exchange for movement on priorities favored by Republican lawmakers.

The imperatives of incumbents are also fundamentally different from that of candidates, he continued, citing the example of Wisconsin’s Tony Evers. A Democrat and former state superintendent, the two-term governor has never been shy of lambasting the state’s long-established voucher system. Yet in 2023, he signed legislation that markedly increased its funding , pocketing a sizable funding boost to traditional public schools in the bargain.

“It’s one thing, when you’re challenging, to say, ‘I’m going to go in and change all this,’ and then another thing when you actually see the reality and the consequences that will flow from those decisions,” Rotherham said. “It tends to have a moderating influence.”

Texas’s Gina Hinojosa, the first Democrat to lead the nation’s second-largest state since Ann Richards in the early 1990s, could emerge as her party’s biggest midterm star and a possible candidate for higher office. She has been more forceful in her denunciations of the state’s ESA law, which only took effect in September.

“We will work tirelessly to repair the damage of the Texas voucher scam,” she said in her victory speech Tuesday night.

While she can’t unilaterally scrap the accounts, Hinojosa has suggested she would use a “pocket veto” to threaten new funding for them. Yet with nearly 100,000 families already taking part in the program, and hundreds of thousands more likely to follow, that step could be harder to take than it first appears.

Over the next four years, each state’s outlook will inevitably differ according to conditions on the ground, including families’ demand for choice, budget projections, and eventually, further elections. Michael Petrilli, president of the right-leaning Fordham Institute, wrote in an email that the push-and-pull of executive action and legislative dealing will likely take a while to resolve.

“I think we should expect to see a lot of sharp position-taking at the beginning of the process, but maybe some compromises by the end,” Petrilli said.