At a recent event, I made what I thought was an obvious and uncontroversial statement: Red and blue states continue to go in different directions on education reform, with red ones embracing it and blue ones running away from it. A Democrat friend protested that I was being unfair, so I decided to look at the evidence.
To be clear, I’m not happy that the GOP has emerged as the party of education reform—or, more specifically, the only party of education reform. Things were much better in the days when both teams fought for that mantle, which was the case across much of the land (and in Washington) from the late 1980s through the mid-2010s. Take any issue you want (international trade, gay marriage, whatever) and any advocate will tell you that the dream scenario is for both parties to agree with your position.
