The Shifting Democratic Party Education Platform

“What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in your hand
Ah, what then?”

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

These days, pundits are meandering through a 2016 version of Coleridge’s dreamy lines: What if Hillary Clinton runs for president? And what if she wins the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination? And what if she carries that nomination to a seat in the Oval Office? And what if, when it’s all said and done, she moves the Democratic party away from controversy engendered by the Obama Administration’s approach to a particular issue? Ah, what then?

In general, this is mostly the sort of stuff and nonsense grist for slow cable news cycles. When it comes to immigration policy, climate change, gun control, and most issues, Clinton and Obama (and the rest of the Democrats’ likely 2016 presidential field) agree far more than they disagree. But when it comes to education, things are quite a bit different. As I put it in a column at The New Republic today,

There’s a very real possibility that the Democratic Party is about to undergo a powerful shift on education policy. As others have noted, it’s an area where Democrats are meaningfully divided into competing camps. It’s also an area where the Obama Administration’s efforts have sparked both wide-ranging policy changes and widespread criticism. Obama has advanced significant new policies, and many of those policies are experimental, controversial, or both. And there’s evidence that a Clinton Administration would mean a substantial departure from those reforms.  

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