A bridge to the future
By Derrell Bradford and Luke Ragland
November 14, 2023
Sometimes it is worth restating the obvious: Political tribalism and rising illiberalism pose an increasingly serious threat to the American experiment. And as they color the political machinations in Washington and in state capitols, we are less well-off as a people. Polling consistently shows that the American people want the nation’s leaders to come together across political divisions to find solutions that work for their friends, families, and children.
It’s in this spirit that we both joined the Building Bridges Initiative in the spring of 2022. With the fog of the pandemic lifting and a deep dread about what had happened to the nation’s children during widespread and, in many places, overlong school closures, it seemed a good and crucial time to break bread with colleagues from across the political and policy spectrum. While we have worked together with many of the Initiative members for over a decade, if not longer, the distance created by too many video calls and social echo chambers was palpable. During the pandemic, we found that the ties that helped stabilize nearly twenty years of sustained education policy change cannot be easily nurtured over Zoom, and the roots of the best ideas must be watered in person, beneath the warm winds of relationships and the bright light of civil disagreement. If for no other reason than to renew this ritual of open debate where the participants are allowed to leave as whole people, instead of the canceled and distraught shells that typify our modern policy and discourse, the initiative was worth doing, and we are thankful to have participated.
A Generation at Risk, the call to action that has come to represent the culmination of the Initiative’s work, has elicited significant support from many leaders across the political spectrum who have dedicated much of their lives to improving the education policy environment for the nation’s children. We were glad to co-author and endorse it, though it doesn’t represent everything we (or anyone) believes about education reform. That’s the nature of consensus documents; they signal where there’s agreement, while leaving some differences aside to be debated on another day. Still, that highlights the key, laudable premise of the Building Bridges Initiative: smart, well-intentioned friends can openly disagree and still succeed in finding common ground.
In the weeks since the release of A Generation at Risk, we have heard from some compatriots who strongly favor school choice as a new “consensus position” asking why we signed onto the document even though it does not endorse private school choice specifically, a policy we both strongly support. We’ve worked to explain that we believe we need larger, more diverse coalitions than we currently have to advance and grow choice policy, and that everyone in the initiative made sacrifices during the process. In the end, politics is about addition, and if there is one thing we are confident about it is that we can’t win all by ourselves. If we are going to win the fight to put students first, we need to form coalitions and find common ground where we can.
But let us be clear: The two of us do indeed support all forms of school choice, including tax-credit scholarship programs, school vouchers, and education savings accounts. Here’s why.
First and foremost, we cannot unsee what the pandemic has shown us, and we cannot unlearn the lessons it has taught about the American public education system. During the pandemic, we learned that the nation’s public schools are vulnerable to political capture in a way that we have historically described with hyperbole, but for which, now, there seems to be a great deal of evidence. Some argue we should not relitigate the past, but we believe an official reckoning has yet to actually occur. Indeed, “the disruption” is still with us. The politics of pandemic school closures have morphed into the uncertainty of widespread teacher strikes that now interrupt student learning. Billions of dollars of federal aid have been sent to states to ameliorate learning loss, but the latest data show things are getting worse for students, not better.
These are not the result of a fragile American education system, but of one that is so resilient it survived the pandemic enriched. Indeed, it’s the product of a system that’s emboldened and self-interested instead of humbled, contrite, and open to improvement in the pandemic’s wake.
Precisely because of this evidence—this proof of the system’s incentives—we will continue to argue for more power to be transferred to parents, very specifically in the form of money for their children’s education. And the shift to true parental empowerment should go beyond “school choice” to transcend all boundaries, engaging providers including tutors, guides, coaches, or even parents themselves. This isn’t merely an economics exercise. We believe that a market mechanism, in this case money directed by families to solve a variety of educational challenges, provides both powerful insurance for families, and is the essential element to properly change the poorly aligned incentives of the American education system. Incentives millions of families thought they avoided before 2020 by getting the right mortgage in the right school zone.
Indeed, we are pleased to see so many states taking this exact approach and believe it is important to consider it a part of the fabric of the nation’s education system as we move forward.
Finally, we have been active during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama policy consensus and supported its broadly harmonious progress while also chaffing against some of its policy limitations. For instance, we are both strong supporters of charter schools, but we disagreed with the premise that charters are the only vehicle for expanding parental choice. Charter schools nevertheless became “the consensus” position, and that unity closed down broader debate about what policies should be considered by a wide array of stakeholders, policymakers, and American families of all stripes.
Thomas Sowell has noted that “there are no solutions, there are only trade-offs.” This applied to the consensus around charter schools, and it applies equally here to the Building Bridges Initiative overall. We both signed onto the final Building Bridges statement because we believe it is essential to find points of agreement where we can move the ball forward. However, we recognize that a broad consensus can also sometimes serve as a vehicle to constrain debate. Instead of this, we hope that this consensus serves as a launchpad for the diverse efforts necessary to fledge the education system of the future. For us, however, this project is a foundation for what is possible, and not a ceiling for what is allowed. This may be the most important thought we can offer.
The educational system of the future needs advocates here in the present, and a divided nation needs those of good conscience and spirit to show that civil cooperation is still possible and remains necessary. We are thankful to our coauthors, and to those who have signed on to the call to action since its release. America’s children need advocates for change, and the more of us there are, the better.
Derrell Bradford is the President of 50CAN: The 50-State Campaign for Achievement Now.
Luke Ragland is SVP for Grants at the Daniels Fund.
The Building Bridges Initiative 