Mitchell Robinson, a professor at Michigan State University, has advice for state Democratic parties about their message to voters. He suggests what they need to do to attract new voters and turn red legislatures blue. Two big ideas: expand internet access and promote public education, K-16.
He begins:
1. Better, more affordable access to broadband internet service
In a digital age, access to fast, secure internet service is not only a basic human need–akin to utilities like electricity, water, and gas/oil–but it’s a requirement for candidates building a digital campaign infrastructure. Not being able to reliably connect to persons in remote areas of your state, or to those who live in urban areas plagued by internet deserts, severely hampers the ability to convey a candidate’s or party’s message, policy beliefs, or positions on issues. It also leaves persons without reliable internet access to the mercies of our information sources like Fox News or the Detroit News–meaning that they are less informed than someone with no media access at all.
2. Improve support for public education, including community colleges and state universities
One of the single largest predictors of voting patterns is the level of education among a group of potential voters. In general, the more educated a person is, the more likely that person is to vote, and to vote for Democratic candidates. Areas and states with a lower percentage of college-educated voters tend to vote Republican, and more educated areas tend to vote for Democrats. It just stands to reason that increasing the number of college-educated voters would lead to a more Democratic populace.
At the same time, the concerted attacks on public institutions under Republicans have decimated public schools in both our largest cities and the most sparsely populated regions in the country. Aside from race and ethnicity, the demographics and socio-economic issues in cities and rural areas are surprisingly similar–including the damage that has been done by Republican and neoliberal ed reform policies to students, teachers, and schools in both urban and rural communities.
- Imagine a Democratic platform that features free community college tuition and affordable access to state colleges and universities, and a return to the kind of financial support from state legislatures that was common as recently as the late 1970s.
Open the link and read his other strong ideas to change the political dynamic.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How to make America great again:
Dump the hats.
And/or ban shredded cheese…
The ed reform “analysis” of schools responding to covid is all promotion of charter schools and criticism of public schools.
Apparently no public schools dealt with the pandemic well and all charter schools did.
I hope no one actually relies on this stuff. It’s marketing. I fear when you put ed reformers in government they DO rely on it, since they all move in and out of government and the ed reform lobbying groups.
The echo chamber in action and they ran education policy in DC for 20 years. No wonder public schools don’t get any support from government and there is no positive agenda for public schools in ed reform. The promoters and lobbyists become the lawmakers and policy people, and then back through the revolving door again.
Success Academy charter chain in NYC announced that it won’t reopen until at least March 2021.
These are wonderful ideas. But the Trumpsters have a plan for the time left in this administration.
From Politico: On Monday, Nov 9, 2020.
“White House chief of staff Mark Meadows gathered senior aides on a call. One of his goals: to plot the conservative policy moves they could push through in their final 10 weeks on immigration, trade, health care, China and school choice.
And a potential school-related executive order would seek to give Covid-19 relief money to parents in public school districts shut down by the coronavirus, allowing them to use the funds for private or parochial schools.”
Reversing that executive order will take some time and you can bet the Trumpsters remaining in office when Biden becomes the president will still be pushing for school choice as if a civil right.
Kinda related, Samantha Bee did a nice segment on Jamal Bowman last night. His ideas fit with Mitchell’s, hand in glove.
I agree with both points, but would reverse the order. If anything this election has taught us, more digital is dangerous if it is in the wrong hands. If we increase funding for public education it needs to go directly to the schools in the form of better pay for teachers, a reinvigorated IDEA, and robust financing of Title 1. There also needs to be more discussion about how we pull away from dependence on property taxes as a means to support schools. Public schools should be the foundation of our democracy and it is critical for the development of discriminating followers who can distinguish fact from fiction with expanded broadband. Now we need to convince citizens that this is an investment for the better.
The number one priority for me in what is needed in public education is a smaller student to teacher ratio. Now that requires quite a lot of other things beyond what Robinson would like to see but I’d like to think he’d agree.
You are correct about the internet and it’s consequences.
I’m very uncomfortable being in lockstep agreement with you. (insert smiley face here) Smaller class sizes should be a civil right. In my short teaching career I never taught more than 4 classes and only one in seven years with more than 15 students, when I had 22. Only as a coach did I have more, about 25-30.
No need to be lockstep. I can come up with some good thoughts every now and again.
I do agree, Duane–and don’t disagree with Paul’s ideas about more equitable school funding, either. Property taxes are a proxy for rewarding socio-economic status, not providing resources in a way that benefits all children.
I agree about the smaller student to teacher ratio. One reason that the rise of Eva Moskowitz as a savior of education has disgusted me to no end is because she has lobbied against small class sizes and insists her schools supposedly stellar results prove that there is no need to spend money on that. And she covers up that her schools dump not just a few, but an incredibly high percentage of students, which the complicit media has agreed should not be mentioned since those education reporters at the NYT and Chalkbeat are absolutely certain that high attrition rates for charter schools that claim that large class sizes are fine is not relevant. I have always been grateful that Eliza Shapiro and the folks at Chalkbeat aren’t science reporters since the NYT and Chalkbeat would have been the loudest promoters of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID cure because those reporters believe that success is always measured by only looking at the people who thrive, and whether 25% or 50% of the people don’t thrive and disappear is something that is not relevant to them as they report on the new miracle treatment of hydroxychoroquine!
There are really good and important public policy discussions to have about small class sizes but they aren’t happening because of liars and the complicit media that legitimize those lies instead of closely examining them.
I think that some highly motivated students — like the 10,000 high school students in NYC’s specialized high schools — can still do okay with large class sizes, even if small class sizes would be preferable. But in K-12 schools that aren’t selecting only motivated students, especially the ones with extremely high percentages of at risk students, there should have been mandated small class sizes instead of mandated annual testing. I blame people like Eva Moskowitz and her anti-public school funders who did everything they could to push the false narrative that small class sizes was a huge waste of money.
I do think a change to small class sizes would involve some complicated choices — including how to double a teaching force and how to find enough space in a school building. Teachers unions would have to be more flexible, as well. But it is shocking to me that this nation has spent extraordinary amounts of money and resources in education reforms without doing the most obvious one first — reduce class size significantly! And that is because the education reform movement was always about benefiting the adults like Eva Moskowitz who have no moral or ethical compass but tell themselves their dishonesty and the harm they do to some children is all for the benefit of the few students they help. It is not — those students could be helped even if they were honest. Their priorities were never the kids – they were themselves.
The article highlights many of the areas where public education has been neglected in the past twenty years. I would like to see an administration that would be guided by evidence gathered from research. If an administration relied of evidence, it would understand that privatization is not worth the disruption, chaos and expense. There is little different between for-profit and non-profit charter schools. Both make lots of unaccountable money for private companies. Both undermine the public schools most students attend. Both increase segregation and selectively screen out the neediest, most expensive students. Both increase access to communities and students by lobbying politicians, and decisions are often based on politics rather than need. How else can we explain that a charter can open up across the street from a functioning public school?
I would like a President that understands the privatization of public education is a failure, and our young people and communities are paying the price for this error in judgment. Public education is a common good that serves a community, not a commodity in the marketplace.
To hell with making America great! (Yes, I sense that you are being facetious with that headline.
And that was not what I took from Robinson’s article. He’s right on target with what he says especially “Imagine a Democratic platform that eliminates standardized testing requirements for the nation’s school children, and invalid teacher evaluation systems for the nation’s school teachers.” (You all had to know I’d like that, eh!)
Making America great is just another quintessentially hubristic slogan in the long line of American Exceptionalism discourse that ignores the warts and blemishes and the fact that there are many other excellent places in the world to live.
I prefer to see a “Make America humble, kind, caring, just, more equitable, less war-prone again” attitude. . . along with a few other attributes I’m sure that most could agree upon.
But, “Lord, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way.” The theme song of American exceptionalism!
Good tune!