When a judge in India dies of a heart attack, his passing barely makes the news. But when his niece approaches a journalist two years later, she shares a much more mysterious story. Host Ravi Gupta examines the conflicting evidence in the judge’s death and the overarching threat to India’s democracy.

Listen to the series premiere of Killing Justice on May 27 on Spotify or Apple.

The post Introducing “Killing Justice” appeared first on The Branch.

I’ve been getting many questions about my favorite resources on the Israel/Hamas war. The simplest answer is to go to Instagram and carefully read your friends’ paragraph-long statements and memes. 

Just kidding. Please don’t do that. Instead, consider the resources below.

Books

I noted on Lost Debate that books on this subject are notoriously untrustworthy. But here are my favorites:

• Enemies and Neighbors by the late Ian Black is perhaps my most-recommended comprehensive read on this subject. Black was a journalist for The Guardian, which generally takes a pro-Palestine bend. I do think he leans ever so slightly in that direction as he interprets key events, but the book is so comprehensive that most pro-Israel folks will find it a helpful resource.  
• Bibi by Anshel Pfeffer provides the best overview of the man who’s dominated Israel’s politics since I was in middle school. Pfeffer is a Haaretz journalist who’s been on the Bibi beat for a long time. 
• A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin. It’s a deep dive into how the British Empire and other Western powers played their cards during and after WWI. Fromkin lays out how a mix of bad intel, sneaky politics, and flip-flopping decisions led to a shaky setup in the Middle East, forever changing the region after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. 
• Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 by Benny Morris is perhaps the most hotly debated book on this list. Morris is one of the so-called “New Historians” who took advantage of documents declassified in the 1970s to challenge conventional narratives about the origins of Israel. The strength and weakness of this book is its level of detail. I wouldn’t start here, but I appreciate how Morris provides reams of primary source documentation, allowing you to make up your own mind. 
• Hamas: The Islamic Resistance Movement by Beverly Milton Edwards and Stephen Farrell is a comprehensive take on Hamas up until 2010. 
• Hamas Contained by Tareq Baconi is also helpful. As I noted in my Hamas episode, this book is up front about its opinions, which are more sympathetic to Hamas than I am. But I generally take the view that we can and should read books by people we disagree with – and this one unquestionably helped me develop a fuller picture of Hamas. 
• Salt Houses by Hala Alyan (who, in full disclosure, is sort of a relative of mine; her aunt married my uncle) unfolds a multigenerational story that captures life in Palestinian exile. She’s a great writer with a huge heart – and her account captures something the more didactic histories can’t. 

Podcasts

• The BBC Global News podcast is my go-to morning listen for up to date information. 
• Pod Save the World has done a few thorough episodes that capture the view of former Obama national security figures. 
• Thomas Friedman did a fascinating interview for the New York Times opinion podcast a month ago. I usually roll my eyes at Friedman, but this interview is great. 
• The folks at Triggernometry hosted a fascinating discussion between Sam Harris and Eric Weinstein. I don’t agree with everything said, but it was an enlightening listen. 
• Of course, if you haven’t listened yet, here are some Lost Debate episodes I’ve done on the subject:
  • Episode 1: History through 1996
  • Episode 2: 1997 to Present
  • Episode 3: Who is Hamas?
  • Episode 4: The current conflict (where I present my opinion)

Videos

• Frontline’s Netanyahu at War is by far the best contemporary docuseries I’ve seen on the subject. It’s one thing to read about events, but seeing the footage and hearing the rationales of key players will have an affect on you. 
• Frontline’s Shattered Dreams (from 2002) is also an excellent recap of the Oslo years. 
• Ian Bremmer took to Big Think to offer an hour-long explainer that’s pretty solid. 
• JFK Forum Debate. If you want a throwback, Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz debated the conflict back in 2005. 

That’s all for now.

The post Israel-Palestine: What to read, watch, and listen to appeared first on The Branch.

Back in 2018, I was reflecting on a recurring dream I’d been having for years. Every night, I’d be back in either high school or college. This, as I’ve come to understand, is a common dream. In my version, I was over-prepared. I’d have my color-coded notes splayed out in front of me, engaged in a thoughtful discussion with my teachers and classmates. It was almost like an idealistic West Wing-esque version of school. Though the dream itself was positive, I’d wake up with a deep sense of unease because I missed the classroom experience. 

I loved school. In college, I was often the first to arrive at class and would stay after to lob questions at professors. I attended every office hour I could and took advantage of every tutoring program the school offered. If I could have stayed in college forever, I would have. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I’d enroll in medical school or a neuroscience Ph.D. program. 

Reflecting on my dream, I realized I’d been neglecting my love of learning. I needed to reconnect with the thrilling feeling of systematically mastering a skill or domain. I decided to choose one skill a year to obsess over and master. I wanted to select skills that I had little or no experience in — and for the past five years, I’ve gone from complete novice to intermediate or advanced in five different areas. 

• Year 1: Power Lifting
• Year 2: Screenwriting 
• Year 3: Surfing 
• Year 4: Tennis 
• Year 5: Novel writing 

Below, I briefly describe how I approached each skill or hobby and how you can choose your own. 

Powerlifting

I’d always lifted weights but largely focused on beach muscles. I had no experience with technical lifts like deadlifts, squats, or cleans. I spent the year taking lessons from lifting experts and even attended a camp for Olympic lifters and CrossFitters. I picked powerlifting as my first skill because I was worried that as I approached 40, I’d suffer from sarcopenia — age-related muscle loss. I wanted to learn to lift heavy in a safe way. 

By the end of the year, I was proficient in every major lift. Eventually, I went on to win the deadlifting event at a powerlifting competition. I took the lessons I learned that year and built a fitness community for my friends that is now in its fourth year. Through that program, I write and track workout programs for over forty people each week — including the founder of the powerlifting camp I attended in 2018. 

Screenwriting

For my second year, I wanted to pick a completely foreign (and scary) skill. I chose screenwriting because I’d never before written anything fictional but always wanted to. I figured screenwriting was a more reasonable and achievable step than writing a novel. 

I started the year by reading as many scripts as I could get my hands on. Then I’d watch the movie with my annotated script in hand — watching to see how the words on the page translated to the screen. 

When I was finally ready to write, I traveled to Hawaii with a director friend, and we both committed to writing a screenplay by the end of the two-week trip. I finished mine and spent two months emailing the script to one person daily. I had no Hollywood connections, so I was shooting in the dark. Luckily, on the 63rd day, I emailed my friend MC, whose sister at the time worked at Imagine Entertainment, one of the most successful production companies in the world. MC emailed her sister the script, and her sister kicked the script up to the company’s top brass. Imagine wound up passing on the script (they had a planned show set in Staten Island that they felt was too similar – though it wound up being completely different), but I was able to parlay that interest into representation from Creative Artists Agency, the biggest and most powerful agency in Hollywood. They’ve represented me to this day, and I’ve written over a dozen scripts and been hired to adapt a novel into a movie. 

Surfing 

Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to surf. But I was cursed to grow up on an island with unsurfable waves and in a family that didn’t have the money to travel to tropical locations. But I never gave up the dream of learning the sport. 

During the heart of the 2020 election season, I vowed that after election day, I would go somewhere and finally learn to surf. A friend recommended to me a place called Surf Simply, the world’s premier surf school (listen here for my interview with the school’s founder), but warned me that they had a many-year waitlist. By a stroke of luck, the day I decided to visit their website was the day they reopened registrations after the lockdown. I was in the air to Costa Rica as the election was called for Biden. I spent the next two weeks getting my ass kicked in double overhead waves — struggling with vicious tendinitis that prevented me from staying in the water any longer than half an hour. Yet I knew I loved it. 

I had planned to return to New York after the camp, but the Delta wave was raging, so I extended my stay in Costa Rica. In a second stroke of luck, Tommy Potterton, my coach at that camp, left to start his own surf school and took me on as his first customer. For the next six months, I paddled out every morning at 5am. Tommy would collect video footage of me and send me the footage by the afternoon with his audio coaching commentary over my footage. My goal for that first six months was to become a “Level 2” surfer, which meant I wanted to be comfortable paddling out on my own, angling a take-off (going sideways down a wave instead of towards the beach), and executing basic turns. I was able to achieve that goal and was well on my way to “Level 3.” By the end of the year, I’d surfed in far-off destinations, including an advanced wave generated by a train. I’m now in my third year of surfing and am solidly a 3, and last week executed my first truly expert move when I got barreled. 

Surfing can be a tool for longevity. I often see surfers in the water in their sixties and seventies. The balance, flexibility, and strength required for the sport perfectly matches the traits doctors recommend to avoid age-related physical decline. Most importantly, surfing is a great way to meet new friends late in life. When you paddle out, you leave your phone behind and spend hours in the water chatting with people you may never otherwise meet. Speaking of… 

Tennis

As I rounded the bend on my surfing year, I was in the water early one morning in my favorite surf spot and started chatting up a stranger. I told him I needed to pick a new skill for the following year. He asked what was on my shortlist, and I mentioned tennis. By yet another strange stroke of luck, it turns out he was not only a tennis coach but was a former professional tennis player and the coach of the Costa Rica Davis Cup team. He offered to teach me the sport, which is precisely what he did over the next few weeks. He put me through an intensive boot camp that involved hours a day of drills and scrimmages. When I returned to New York, I would send him videos from my matches with friends, and he’d send me feedback. I spent the year playing anyone I could and went upstate a few weekends to a tennis camp (notice the camp theme?). More than a year later, I can play with friends who’ve been playing since high school. I rarely beat them, but I’m able to keep matches competitive. 

I picked tennis partly because my favorite sport to play is basketball, a hobby I’ve largely abandoned because I kept getting injured. Tennis, like surfing, is something people do into their older years — and numerous studies point to the powerful longevity benefits of racquet sports. 

And like surfing, tennis was something I couldn’t access as a kid because I didn’t grow up in a neighborhood with courts or a family with the resources to expose me to it. 

Novel Writing

During my year of screenwriting, I started writing a novel but abandoned it in pursuit of more achievable goals. This year, I’ve decided to pick it back up and make completing the book my focus. I am going through a similar process that I took during the screenwriting year — reading and dissecting texts from authors I respect. I also take a weekly seminar conducted by one of my favorite authors. My goal is to finish the book by the end of the year. This has been the most difficult of the skills because I don’t just want to be intermediate; I want the book to be excellent. I often lose confidence and momentum when I inevitably and frequently fall short of my own expectations. I’m constantly reminding myself of this Ira Glass quote:

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be. It has potential. But your taste — your taste is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. 

A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting creative work went through years of this. Our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you’re just getting started or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal, and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline, so that every week, you will finish one project. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap and your work will be as good as your ambitions. It’s gonna take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

I’ve taken his advice and am submitting one chapter weekly to an editor. If I miss a deadline, she will donate money in my name to the Patrick Maholmes Foundation (I am a Bills fan). 

Lessons Learned: The Four C’s

Looking back, there are certain themes to what has made each year successful. I call them the “Four C’s.”

Camps: Camps are a fun way to accelerate learning. I attended a powerlifting camp, surf camp, and tennis camp. I am currently in a writing seminar, which includes a two-hour block when I write alongside peers. The experience of intensive, social learning that camps and classes provide is invaluable. Of course, the cost can be prohibitive, but you can often find low-cost alternatives, like meet-up groups and apps (e.g., here’s an app that sets people up to play tennis with each other, and here’s one to help you find writing partners). 

Coaches: Find mentors, and pay it forward in areas where you excel. I have been fortunate to find world-class coaches in each domain I’ve studied. This isn’t reasonable for most people, but you can find excellent coaching in almost every town in America — often for free or at a low cost. The CrossFit coach in your local box, the resident novelist teaching a class at the community college, the friend who’s mastered a sport you’ve been afraid to try. There’s also a wealth of online coaches to choose from. 

Community: The hard work becomes easy when you do it with people you love and respect. Seek out people who are at or around your skill level. Learn and practice together, share tips, and motivate one another to stay the course. I would have never finished my first screenplay if I hadn’t committed with a friend to do so. I would have never stuck with surfing if I didn’t find a welcoming community of intermediate surfers who paddled out at the same spot every morning. If you can’t find the community you’re looking for, build one yourself. That’s what I did when I built a fitness community for my friends. 

Commitment: When you start a new skill, stick with it for at least a year. Even if you feel totally demoralized, honor that commitment to yourself. You’ll find that most obstacles aren’t as intimidating as you originally believed — and that a few days or weeks of spinning your wheels will eventually give way to momentum. Under my framework, you can abandon each skill or hobby at the end of the first year, but thankfully I’ve kept up with all of mine thus far and made them a central part of my life. 

Your Oxygen Mask

This is a newsletter for people interested in education. Many of you are school leaders or leaders of organizations or companies. Much of your energy goes into thinking about how to better teach those around you, whether they be kids or employees. Ask yourself: are you spending enough time on your own learning? As the now-cliche metaphor goes, you must affix your oxygen mask before worrying about those around you. That means rekindling your love of learning, that rush of going from clueless to proficient. 

You may read this and think of all of the excuses. Your busy schedule, budget, children, and physical limitations. These are all important considerations that may limit what skill you choose and how much time you can devote to it. I, for example, have long wanted to learn to fly airplanes, but I don’t live near a place where it’s cost-effective to do so. But we can’t let these limitations stop us. I think of my mom, who always dreamed of becoming a history professor but had three kids to raise by herself on a nurse’s salary. She took night classes and eventually earned her bachelor’s and then master’s degree from the College of Staten Island, where she is now a professor of American history. 

The post One Skill a Year appeared first on The Branch.

This is an emergency. A group of kids about the size of the population of Austin is in the grip of life-destroying chemicals, yet our political leaders remain conspicuously mute on potential solutions. This is particularly frustrating because there’s a promising approach to helping kids recover from addiction to opioids and other substances: recovery high schools (RHSs). 

These schools are designed for students in recovery from substance use disorder or co-occurring disorders. RHSs recognize that each student must be on an active journey of recovery. The staff supports them every step of the way, with administrative personnel, teachers, substance misuse counselors, and mental health professionals all working together to create a nurturing environment. 

Recovery high schools work. A study in the National Library of Medicine found that, after a year, 55% of RHS students reported three months of abstinence from alcohol and drugs, compared to 26% of their counterparts in traditional schools, with urine analysis corroborating these numbers. RHS students boasted graduation rates 21% to 25% higher than their peers, and every dollar spent on these programs yields a societal return of $3 to $7. The study has limits primarily due to the small sample size, but other studies have shown similarly positive results. 

Despite these promising results, there are only 45 of these schools in the entire country. In a political climate unmarred by dysfunction and distraction, RHSs would be showered with deserved attention. Yet, beyond a smattering of articles and documentaries, these programs languish in obscurity and financial neglect.

This is precisely why we devoted a portion of last Tuesday’s Lost Debate episode to highlighting these schools. We spoke with two Massachusetts RHS principals: Ryan Morgan of Independence Academy in Brockton and Michelle Lipinski of Northshore Recovery High School in Beverly.

Our conversation covered a vast expanse of topics, but three central tenets of these institutions resonated with particular clarity:

1. The understanding of addiction as an illness, not a moral failing, means schools prioritize treatment over retribution.
2. A refusal to overpromise acknowledges that recovery is a lifelong process that transcends short-term objectives.
3. The voluntary nature of the programs places the onus of participation on the students rather than external forces.

RHSs are typically small, facilitating crucial one-on-one interactions between students and adults. This intimacy is paramount, as a poorly executed program could inadvertently exacerbate the issue by clustering students with shared addictions.

As one might expect, these programs come with a heftier price tag than their conventional counterparts, and dedicated funding remains elusive. Lipinski proposes congressional action to establish a robust funding stream to expand these schools and to consider revising the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act to accommodate recovery school funding through traditional special education mechanisms. This seems to be a straightforward, sensible course of action—a chance for politicians in the nation’s capital to demonstrate that the opioid crisis is not simply a pretext for finger-pointing but an opportunity for unity and meaningful action. 

Listen to the full episode here. 

The post More of These, Please appeared first on The Branch.

The political evolution of Section 8 reveals a peculiar partisan cycle. Here’s Jeremy Johnson, writing in Social Science History: 

Vouchers were originally proposed as a Republican alternative to Democratic public housing construction and slowly emerged as a viable component of housing policy in the United States. In the mid-1990s, a shift occurred in which Democrats embraced vouchers and Republicans retreated from their innovation.

Government-sponsored public housing construction, an ambitious program forged during the New Deal, aimed to provide decent housing for low-income Americans. The plan faced conservative and Republican opposition necessitating compromises that diminished the scale of the program, yet expansion of the supply of low-income housing through publicly financed construction dominated policy for decades. Republicans, who argued against the prospect of socialized housing, eventually proposed rental vouchers (originally called housing allowances) as a policy alternative. The competitive electoral environment of the latter half of the twentieth century ensured rental vouchers would continue as a lynchpin for partisanship.

At first most Democrats derided rental vouchers; they appeared as half-measures compared to expanding the supply of affordable housing. Over time, however, Democrats came to acquiesce in the implementation of the Republican policy and by the mid-1990s they were promoting it. For their part, the Republicans eventually won the voucher program they had long championed. However, as Democrats embraced vouchers, many Republicans reversed course and opposed what was once their own reform.

Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Democrat who opposes Section 8. Though few Republicans want to outright rescind the program, you can find plenty of them who are skeptical of it. That begs the question: could we eventually see a similar realignment on school vouchers and Education Savings Accounts? 

It’s hard to imagine such a world, but it’s important to remember the time horizons. Section 8 took about 20 years to see the parties trade positions on the issue. 

It’s easier for me to see Democrats eventually embracing vouchers and ESAs than Republicans abandoning them. That’s because I believe most, if not all, Republican states will embrace universal eligibility (like Arkansas and Arizona have). That means the program will be more analogous to Medicare (a more popular program with the GOP) than Medicaid (one less so). If every family in America, regardless of income, received a Section 8 voucher, then it would be politically difficult for either party to oppose that program after enacted (it’s why Social Security and Medicare are called the “third rail”). 

For Democrats, I could see a few reasons they’d eventually get behind school vouchers and ESAs. The first is that they generally support vouchers in other contexts. If a Democratic candidate for office campaigned on ending Section 8 or Medicaid and replacing either with only government-run options, they’d be booed out of the room. You could imagine, years from now, after the acrimony over implementation has faded, that Democrats view school vouchers and ESAs as an entitlement to be protected at all costs. Ironically, Democrats will be even more likely to support these programs if Republicans turn on them (which is more likely if they are confined to low-income families), as they’ve done (somewhat) on Section 8. Such is the nature of our partisan society. 

Of course, the difference between ESA/vouchers and Section 8/Medicaid is the presence of teachers unions. Though organized labor was involved in public housing construction and the running of public hospitals, they were nowhere near as robust back when those laws were passed than the teachers unions are now. If they were, families would likely still be trapped in Robert Moses-esque poverty factories and overwhelmed government hospitals. I doubt unions would ever get behind school vouchers and ESAs, but if their overall ranks of members diminish after many families leave the traditional system, they may lose the power to dictate the terms of Democratic policy. 

I wouldn’t hold my breath. The Democratic candidates I’ve worked with would bend to the will of a public sector union even if it only had ten members. That means, regardless of whether unions see their ranks shrink, we can count on a showdown between two democratic constituencies: organized labor and communities of color. The latter are much more likely to benefit from school vouchers or ESAs if the laws are written, as some states have, to begin eligibility with the lowest-performing schools and lowest-income neighborhoods. That could be why initial polling on the issue (albeit from pro-voucher groups) seems to suggest Black families are particularly supportive of ESAs. I’d want to see more polling on the subject from neutral organizations. Still, I wouldn’t be shocked if families who feel they aren’t being served well by the current system embrace a policy that gives them more options and more control. After all, they’d simply be getting what affluent families take for granted.

The post Could Democrats support vouchers? appeared first on The Branch.

(This article is the first in a multi-part series on the presidential cycle’s campaign education policy and messaging.)

As 2024 approaches, all signs point to this being one of the most consequential education-focused elections in recent memory. Governor Ron DeSantis has made K-12 and higher education his top messaging and policy priority, while Donald Trump has raced to outflank him by releasing an education policy “platform” and recently attacked DeSantis’ K-12 record. The House GOP passed a “Parents Bill of Rights” bill modeled after states like Florida. Meanwhile, over a dozen conservative legislatures have recently proposed, and in some cases passed, sweeping legislation on Education Savings Accounts, representing the most significant expansion of private school choice in our nation’s history. Amidst all of this Republican activity, President Biden is doggedly pursuing student loan relief, while the Supreme Court stands poised to deliver a potential landmark ruling on affirmative action in the coming months. Add to the mix a series of durable and polarizing debates like those over Critical Race Theory and the rights of trans minors. 

This is a marked difference from recent presidential election years that saw scant attention to education issues. If you remember, the most significant K-12 exchange in the 2020 primary came when then-Senator Kamala Harris jabbed Joe Biden over bussing — a policy that hadn’t existed in any meaningful way for decades. 

The critical question will be how the candidates and parties weave these issues into a compelling narrative. The race to define the very question voters ask is the most critical battle of any campaign, and whoever frames the choice in the election usually wins. For example, you can convince people you are the most intelligent, prepared, and ethical person in the race — but if the electorate is looking for who will shake things up, you’ve wasted your time and resources. This dynamic has played out many times in our lifetime: 

• If the 2000 election was about who was the smartest, Gore would have won. Bush framed the election about who was more likable (remember the “who you’d rather have a beer with” conversation?). 
• If the 2008 Democratic primary was about who was the most experienced, Hillary Clinton would have won. Obama made experience a liability, tying Clinton and eventually McCain to the old Washington way of doing things. Trump did something very similar in 2020, albeit with a different flavor. 

The most common tug of war over the framing of the election is “change” versus “more of the same.” Generally, if you are an incumbent, you want to convince the electorate that everything is heading in the right direction and that you are here to preserve or incrementally improve the status quo. The most famous example of this framing was President Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign, which featured the now-famous Morning in America ad:

Notice that the ad doesn’t even feature any video of Reagan himself, mention his opponent, or outline any plans for the future. It just highlights how great things were going (for suburbanites). 

If you are a challenger, however, you want to convince the electorate that everything is going to hell — and that you are the only person/party who can turn things around. My favorite example of this is Al Gore’s 1992 “upside down” rally speech: 

I know, I know. Not the same Al Gore you remember, is he? If that version of him had run for President in 2000, that election would have turned out much differently. Anyway . . . 

Every now and then, an incumbent can pull off the seemingly impossible and run as a change agent or as the opposition. That is sort of what Biden and Democrats did in the midterms when they framed the election around the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and election denialism. Yet those opportunities are rare. Usually, the incumbents are the “more of the same” party. 

That brings me back to the 2024 election and education policy. Republicans will be running as change agents. Like it or not, the story they tell the electorate is quite clear. It goes a little like this (my words):

It’s time for parents to regain control over their kids’ education. They desperately want to take it back from radical leftists who want to teach our kids to hate their country and hate each other, adopt radical ideas on race and gender, and to question the very idea of hard work and merit. That’s why we’re codifying a Parents Bill of Rights that for the first time gives parents the ability to see their children’s curriculum and lesson plans, to participate in any meaningful life conversations that school staff is having with kids, and to hold staff members who attempt to indoctrinate our kids accountable. And through our historic expansion of Education Savings Accounts, we’re allowing parents to use their tax dollars however they see fit to educate their children. Private schooling will no longer be the exclusive option for the rich. We want every family to have the opportunity to access the best schools — whether zoned, magnet, charter, or private. Speaking of which, we’re also taking aim at the bloated and unaccountable higher education establishment who’ve been running up costs, pushing extreme views, and discriminating against white and Asian applicants. That’s why we’re weakening tenure protections for professors — allowing us to hire and fire based on performance — and why we’re investing in the expansion of career and technical education, so we can once and for all break the higher ed monopoly and give you better choices for your children. 

This is a classic change message. There’s a clear and simple description of the problem, a compelling villain, and a series of solutions with the parent at the center. 

Notice I use the phrase “take back control” — which was the successful pro-Brexit slogan. I believe the GOP will use nearly identical language because the slogan can mean different things to different parts of their current coalition and persuadables alike. During the Brexit campaign, Take Back Control could be a racist dog whistle, but it could also be about economic and legal independence, a call for more sovereignty, or a primal scream against a rapidly changing world. Similarly, a “control” message around education could, of course, motivate voters over issues of race and gender in schools — but it could also appeal to lower-income parents fed up with their options, suburban parents with lingering frustrations over Covid closures, or any parent who simply feels the world getting scarier and their children slipping away. Republicans are banking on Democrats going the way of the “remain” crowd — attacking all opponents as racist and failing to see the complexity of their opposition. 

And like Brexit, the GOP doesn’t have to defend the actual implementation of many of their most ambitious policies. They can sell an idea. For example, most of the recent Education Savings Accounts bills include a multi-year ramp-up — where the most significant shocks to the system won’t be felt until well after the 2024 election. They can capitalize on hopes and dreams without owning the downsides. 

If it’s not obvious, I believe the GOP education message will be highly effective. 

What about the Democrats’ message? Here’s Biden’s education message from the most recent State of the Union address:

Restoring the dignity of work also means making education an affordable ticket to the middle class. When we made 12 years of public education universal in the last century, it made us the best-educated, best-prepared nation in the world. But the world has caught up. Jill, who teaches full-time, has an expression: “Any nation that out-educates us will out-compete us.” Folks, you all know 12 years is not enough to win the economic competition for the 21st Century. If you want America to have the best-educated workforce, let’s finish the job by providing access to pre-school for 3- and 4-year-olds. Studies show that children who go to pre-school are nearly 50% more likely to finish high school and go on to earn a 2- or 4-year degree, no matter their background. Let’s give public school teachers a raise. And we’re making progress by reducing student debt and increasing Pell Grants for working- and middle-class families. Let’s finish the job, connect students to career opportunities starting in high school and provide two years of community college, some of the best career training in America, in addition to being a pathway to a four-year degree. Let’s offer every American the path to a good career whether they go to college or not. And folks, in the midst of the COVID crisis when schools were closed, let’s also recognize how far we’ve come in the fight against the pandemic itself. . ..  

“Let’s finish the job” is classic more of the same messaging. You can find it in hundreds of speeches from mayors, governors, and presidents running for reelection over the years. 

What’s notable is how little in Biden’s speech is new. How often have you heard about 21st Century jobs, Pell Grants, more teacher pay, or expanded pre-K? Take out the references to Covid, and much of what Biden says here could have been in a speech from Clinton’s second term. That’s not to say it’s terrible policy, but it’s far from a fresh or compelling narrative (Democrats often confuse the two). Biden and Democrats need to link together these (and ideally more) policies and tell one compelling story. In a future post, I will propose a few options on this front along the lines of what I do for the Republicans above. 

Remember, this is what the best and brightest speechwriters and policy minds in the Democratic Party could muster — during Biden’s most high-profile speech as president to date. At a time when his political opponents are talking about education issues daily. 

One could argue that the GOP education message isn’t fresh either. After all, Republicans have talked about private school choice and racial grievance for as long as I can remember. But the scope and coordination of their policy moves and the sophistication of the message are more expansive and effective than ever before. If you don’t believe me, read the recently passed education bill from Arkansas and then watch Governor Huckabee Sanders’ accompanying speech. As we’ve recently discussed on the Lost Debate, you can argue with her choices, but you can’t say it isn’t bold or new. In the coming years, we’ll see many more bills of this kind passing through other state houses, and you can be assured most 2024 GOP candidates (up and down the ballot) will propose legislation along similar lines, telling nearly identical stories. 

Democrats, being the party of more of the same, will likely defend the status quo (and perhaps add incremental improvements). If parents love their current school options, vouchers and Education Savings Accounts sound radical and dangerous. If they love their teachers and principals, they’ll balk at onerous “transparency” requirements or weakened tenure. But if they are frustrated by their current options or resentful of the indignity and inequality of the system, then they are likely to be much warmer to significant change. 

So what does the polling say? Are parents satisfied with their options? Recent polling from Murmuration found the following:

Only 7-in-100 registered voters rate the performance of the U.S. education system as excellent; about three times that many (22%) rate it as poor. Overall, we find that about one-third rate our schools as either excellent (7%) or good (27%), while 60% see them as only fair (38%) or poor (22%); 6% declined to offer an opinion.

While voters are more likely to rate the public school system in the neighborhood where they live better than the nation’s system, still only 12% rate their schools as excellent. In total 46% rate their local schools as excellent or good (34%), 29% as only fair, and 15% poor. Among parents, the ratings are slightly better as 54% rate them excellent (16%) or good (37%), and 42% only fair (31%) or poor (11%).

This gives either side confirmation of their theory. Democrats will point to the fact that parents are more likely to rate their own school as positive even if they aren’t satisfied with schools generally. Republicans, on the other hand, will point to the anemic enthusiasm for the system as a whole as an opportunity to sell a change message. 

The Murmuration poll also found that Democrats have a 10-point edge on education issues writ large and that teachers’ unions are viewed favorably by most voters, especially younger voters. However, other recent polls have found more trouble for Democrats. Here’s a summary from the conservative American Enterprise Institute from 2022:

In March 2022, when Rasmussen asked 1,000 likely voters, “[w]hich party do you trust more to deal with education issues, Democrats or Republicans?” 43% reported that they trusted Republicans, compared to just 36% who favored Democrats. Other polls confirm this finding: A June 2022 poll by Democrats for Education Reform found that 47% of voters in battleground districts trusted Republicans on education while 44% trusted Democrats. Another poll of voters in battleground states by the American Federation of Teachers revealed that 39% of voters trusted Republicans on the issue, giving them a one-point lead over Democrats.

I’m not sure what to believe in the polling other than that the electorate is movable. This may be bad news for Democrats because they’ve long taken their advantage on education issues for granted — and depend on an electorate that believes the current system works. 

If the polls are unreliable on these issues, they may be in a way that should give Democrats even more reason for concern. For example, Populace found that one of the largest collective illusions is on the issue of education, with 74% of people aged 30-44 saying privately that they believe parents should have a say over public school curriculum even though only 48% are willing to say so publicly. 

When you combine that reality with the differences in the party’s narratives, Democrats should feel some urgency to start telling a clear, compelling, and coordinated story about our kids’ future.  

In my next post, I will discuss the various options for Democrats on that front — weaving together policy and communications. I’ll also dig deeper into the polling to discern what voters really want. 

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