What happened?

Not long ago, education was a Democratic strength.

From No Child Left Behind to Race to the Top, from “invest in teachers” to “invest in kids,” Democrats ran as the party that cared about schools, standards, and upward mobility. Education was moral high ground. It was how you proved you stood with working families.

Today? It’s barely mentioned unless someone else brings it up.

What happened?

Start with COVID. School closures were the inflection point. For decades, public education was largely invisible to parents. Then suddenly, classrooms were in living rooms. Parents became accidental auditors of the system.

They didn’t just see remote math worksheets. They saw the politics. They saw Zoom lessons framed around identity and activism. They saw endless device time. They saw how quickly “temporary” closures stretched into months, even in places where private schools and European systems had reopened.

And they noticed something else: the system didn’t seem in a hurry to return to normal.

Closures weren’t just about public health. They became a competence test. When Fairfax County schools remain closed for a week after a snowstorm ends, parents don’t hear “safety.” They hear, “We can’t execute.” During COVID, that same perception hardened. If government can’t reopen schools, what exactly is it for?

Learning loss followed. NAEP scores fell nationwide. Red states appear to have lost less ground than blue states. Mississippi and Louisiana posted gains in early literacy after implementing structured phonics reforms. Meanwhile, math scores plunged almost everywhere.

Democrats could have owned this moment. They could have said: we made emergency decisions under uncertainty, but now we are laser-focused on recovery — literacy, accountability, discipline, academic rigor.

Instead, the conversation drifted.

In some blue states, “equity” initiatives replaced standards debates. Graduation requirements were relaxed. Discipline policies were softened. “Meeting students where they are” became an ethos, even as evidence mounted that students were reading less and struggling more.

At the same time, classrooms became increasingly screen-based. Schools spent tens of billions on edtech. Nearly every child received a device. Independent research suggests that digital reading is often less effective than paper, that handwriting aids retention more than typing, and that excessive screen exposure fragments attention.

Parents trying to limit screen time at home discovered that school required four more hours of it.

If this was the plan for academic revival, it wasn’t obvious.

Then there’s the upstream question few politicians want to touch: teacher training. Accreditation bodies require schools of education to assess not just knowledge and classroom skills, but “dispositions.” In some cases, that category has expanded into commitments to particular social-justice frameworks. States have codified similar competencies into licensure standards.

The result is a pipeline that shapes classroom culture long before a teacher ever meets students. Even well-intentioned local reforms run into a structural reality: if the training and licensing system embeds certain ideological commitments, changing school board members won’t necessarily change classroom content.

That doesn’t mean every teacher is a radical activist. It does mean the debate is no longer just about one rogue lesson. It’s about governance.

Meanwhile, the labor market is sending its own signals. For the first time in decades, the unemployment gap between bachelor’s degree holders and trade workers has narrowed or briefly flipped. College graduates don’t look as insulated as they once did. Young men are betting on prediction markets and sports apps in what some describe as a “Hunger Games” economy.

When education stops reliably delivering competence and economic security, faith erodes.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: this isn’t just a Republican talking point. It’s a legitimacy crisis.

Democrats historically argued that government could deliver — that public institutions could improve lives if properly funded and managed. But education now represents the opposite narrative: high spending, uneven results, ideological fights, and declining trust.

Republicans, for their part, are riding a wave of school choice expansion. But vouchers alone don’t solve literacy instruction. And red states aren’t immune to decline either. Most states, regardless of party, are still below pre-pandemic levels.

So why aren’t Democrats leading on this?

Because education is no longer an easy applause line. It forces uncomfortable conversations about closures, unions, standards, discipline, screens, and ideology. It requires admitting that good intentions don’t always produce good outcomes. It demands friction, accountability, and political courage.

It’s easier to talk about democracy abstractly than to explain why a third of eighth graders can’t read proficiently.

But education remains the most visible proof of whether government works. When schools falter, everything else feels shakier.

Democrats once campaigned on education because it symbolized opportunity. Now many seem to hope the subject doesn’t come up.

That’s not a messaging problem. It’s a performance problem.

And until someone — in either party — treats education not as a culture-war battlefield but as a core competency mission, voters will keep asking the same question parents started asking during lockdowns:

What are we paying for?

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)