This Is the School Choice Moment. Will the GOP Screw It Up?

REPUBLICANS ARE IN DANGER OF SQUANDERING A PROMISING OPPORTUNITY FOR EDUCATION REFORM ON CULTURE WAR SQUABBLES.

- ROBBY SOAVE

IN MARCH, SEN. Rick Scott (R–Fla.) surprised many in Washington, D.C., by releasing an 11-point plan for what the GOP would do if the party retakes power in 2022, bucking Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s preferred strategy of bashing the Democratic agenda without offering much in the way of specific alternative policies. Scott’s very first priority was education. “Our kids will say the pledge of allegiance, salute the Flag, learn that America is a great country, and choose the school that best fits them,” states action item one.

Much of the plan is standard red meat. But it’s telling that school choice has risen to the very top of the GOP agenda, even as the surrounding action items—highly specific demands for control over curriculum and classroom culture—betray a Republican approach that is at best selectively committed to the principle of maximizing parental choices.

Regardless, Republicans clearly recall the exact moment— halfway through the gubernatorial debate on September 28, 2021—when Terry McAuliffe uttered the sentence that effectively ended his political career and ushered education to the top of the GOP agenda. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” the Virginia Democrat said.

A little over a month later, Republican Glenn Youngkin triumphed, preventing McAuliffe from being elected to a non-consecutive second term and setting off a frenzied effort among Democrats to understand how they could have possibly lost in Virginia—a state that President Joe Biden had won by 10 points just one year earlier.