By Chuck Donovan
The Washington Stand
In previous reports, we looked at the content of the most current state of GOP platforms on the key social issues of life and marriage. In the former case, we found a strong consensus in favor of protections for the unborn. With respect to marriage, some vagueness in the national platform and messaging suggests that grassroots Republicans are pro-natural marriage but that the future of this stance is open for debate. On a third question we examine here, there is no doubt at all: on the topic of education choice, the Republican Party, top to bottom, is powerfully committed to school reforms that strengthen the role of parents and support a broad range of education options for their children.
This consensus begins with the national platform of 2024, a spare document overall that, on this subject at least, is robust and specific. For this analysis, we broke down the categories studied into the following: general endorsement of school choice; specific mention of the funding option of tuition tax credits, education savings accounts, and vouchers; specific mention of charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling; opposition to gender education/ideology; opposition to CRT or DEI instruction in schools; and abolition of the U.S. Department of Education.
The 2024 GOP national platform covers nearly all of this territory, as well as some topics not included in this analysis regarding merit pay, civics education, and the teaching of documents from the Founding Fathers and Western Civilization. Many of the state platforms refer as well to prayer in schools, study of the Bible as a key text, recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, and so forth. For this analysis, we concentrated on the core question of school choice and financing alternatives. Most of the platforms also contain state-specific concerns regarding accountability and declining test scores in public schools, or concerns about the introduction of topics the platforms regard as extraneous or inhibitory to student achievement. Others address current questions of interest such as student debt and vocational education tracks.
The numbers are striking. As before, we analyzed 56 units of government — the 50 states, five U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia. Some states continue to rely on pre-2024 platforms. Nine states adopted no platform of their own but instead published, cited to, linked to the 2024 national platform, or informed us by phone contact that they have endorsed the 2024 platform as their own. We counted these states, as we did on the prior topics of life and marriage, as embracing the national positions on education choice. Overall, the abbreviated national platform contains 18 references to education, firmly endorses education choice, emphasizes returning education policy-making to the states, supports Education Savings Accounts and homeschooling, and opposes gender ideology in schools.
As before, a handful of states have adopted extensive platforms on education issues. Among them are Texas, Missouri, Illinois, Alaska, Arkansas, Hawaii, Oklahoma, and Idaho. The political “condition” of a state — that is, whether the GOP carries many elections there — does not necessarily drive the specificity or scope of its platform. Illinois has a very extensive set of platform provisions on education, while Massachusetts does not, merely addressing one ballot question regarding the elimination of the state’s comprehensive assessment test. Falling scores in such tests are a common concern of the reforms the states propose.
For education choice generally, 44 jurisdictions (43 states and the District of Columbia) embrace school choice in broad terms. The language can vary from explicit declarations of support for diverse mechanisms of choice (e.g., California: “We believe that parents will make better choices than government in almost every case. Consequently, we support school choice programs, voucher and tax-credit scholarships, magnet schools, charter schools, homeschooling, educational savings accounts, the right of parents to choose to have their child taught in academic English, and to opt out of age inappropriate and sexually explicit curriculum”) to general affirmations of the principle of parental access to and control of the flow of education funds (e.g., Maine: “The best academic opportunities are made possible through school choice”).
Twenty-seven of the state platforms mention specific funding mechanisms for school choice, that is, education savings accounts, opportunity scholarships, tuition tax credits, vouchers or, as California does, some combination of mechanisms. Generally, the platforms refer to a wide range of school options as being eligible for support using tax dollars. Thirty-nine state platforms reference the full range of education options, including charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling. One platform, West Virginia’s, explicitly supports allowing homeschoolers to participate in extracurricular activities in public schools.
Twenty-eight platforms forcefully eschew the promotion of gender ideology in schools while 23 mention critical race theory (CRT) or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies as inappropriate in school settings. Language is often included opposing racial division and discrimination. The 2024 National Platform proclaims, “Republicans will restore Parental Rights in Education, and enforce our Civil Rights Laws to stop schools from discriminating on the basis of Race. We trust Parents!” Oklahoma’s platform states, for example, “We oppose teaching multiculturalism that promotes cultural segregation. We are created in God’s image. There is one race: the human race.”
Finally, national interference in funding and control of education is scorned in most of the platforms. The word “local” is used 66 times across the education clauses in the platforms. The word “political” is almost always used as an aspersion, with Minnesota writing a typical plank in this regard: “Oppose government-mandated political and ideological indoctrination in our schools.” Eighteen states call directly for the elimination of the Department of Education. Perhaps needless to say, there are no calls for retention of expansion of this agency or the federal role. The National Platform tersely asserts: “The United States spends more money per pupil on Education than any other Country in the World, and yet we are at the bottom of every educational list in terms of results. We are going to close the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. and send it back to the States, where it belongs, and let the States run our educational system as it should be run.”
It is safe to say that school choice and decentralization of education, allied with convictions about parental rights in the education, moral development, and medical decision-making of their children, are near unanimous elements of the 2024 GOP platforms. Incidents like the National Association of School Boards’ response to a father arrested in Loudoun County for protesting a sexual assault on his daughter sparked a sea change in Virginia and across the nation. Families recognize that groups like the National Education Association long ago abandoned their focus on teacher pay and working conditions and now lead political campaigns and endorse partisan policies on everything from climate change, sexual behavior, gender ideology, and even foreign policy.
In this environment, communities across the country are looking for ways to reinforce parents in their leadership roles in educating their children. Perhaps more than on any other issue, the 2024 GOP national platform offers comprehensive leadership that harmonizes national goals with the ideas of state party leadership. A renaissance of education alternatives, as well as the advent of technologies that allow wide dissemination of effective, family-friendly education materials, has the potential to allow America over time to renew its dedication to faith, family, and freedom.
Originally published at The Washington Stand!
