This is either a bold move or a foolish one, depending on which political side you’re on.

“By picking Karla Hernández as his running mate, Charlie Crist continues to demonstrate his respect for Florida’s educators as the professionals they are,” , president of the National Education Association, in a press statement.

Supporters of incumbent Gov. Ron DeSantis were quick to react. “If it were up to Charlie and Karla, kids would have been locked out of school for 18 months. And parents would be put on an FBI watchlist for raising concerns about indoctrination at school board meetings,” .

As a practical matter, . The office exists mostly to provide an immediate successor should something happen to the governor. Politically, the choice is usually made in order to balance the ticket geographically, or by race or gender.

Crist has an additional reason to name Hernandez-Mats: Money. DeSantis has amassed a huge campaign war chest, estimated at more than $132 million. Crist drained his reserves to win the Democratic primary and had at last report.

Crist’s largest donor so far is the , which contributed $500,000 to his campaign last month. Having a teachers union officer on the ticket should open the purse strings even further. Outside of direct contributions, Crist can also expect significant independent expenditures from affiliates of both NEA and AFT on his behalf.

Florida’s gubernatorial races are traditionally very close, but a Democrat hasn’t held the office since 1998. Crist is a former Florida governor, but he was a Republican at the time.

Whether the presence of Hernandez-Mats on the ticket will sway the result one way or the other is an open question, but her actions and statements as union president are already being debated.

She opposed reopening Miami’s public schools in fall 2020. “Lives are going to be lost,” . But a later revealed, “resumption of in-person education was not associated with a proportionate increase in COVID-19 among school-aged children.” The CDC concluded that its findings “add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that COVID-19 transmission does not appear to be demonstrably more frequent in schools than in noneducational settings.”

A second issue involves Wendell Nibbs, a middle school teacher who pleaded guilty to engaging in sexual activity with a child. Nibbs was a union building steward and active member of United Teachers of Dade.

Questioned by reporters, , and called his actions “horrific, evil and vile.”

We should take Hernandez-Mats at her word when it comes to Nibbs’s crimes, but the Dade union’s executives did benefit from his presence at meetings: Several union stewards told the Miami Herald that union officers used Nibbs to intimidate other stewards who would question the leadership.

“He was their attack dog,” . “Any time someone opposed the leadership, stood up and said something. He was one of the loudest voices who said, ‘Shut up, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ ”

Since being selected, Hernandez-Mats has highlighted her achievements as a union official. One of these requires additional context: that she claimed she had cleared United Teachers of Dade of all debt when she was the union’s secretary-treasurer.

It may come as a surprise to many current members that the union ever was in debt, but that story goes back decades, to the tenure of the late Pat Tornillo. Tornillo ran the union as his personal fiefdom and piggy bank for more than 40 years, until . He pleaded guilty to tax evasion and mail fraud in 2003.

Tornillo’s crimes left the Miami union’s finances in a shambles. The AFT established a trusteeship over the local and lent it millions of dollars to keep it operating. This is the debt to which Hernandez-Mats referred, and it is true that the Dade union came out of arrears during her term as secretary-treasurer. But it wasn’t really her doing.

The union’s budget for 2014-15 showed it owed AFT $2.4 million in loan repayments and more than $3.6 million to AFT and the Florida Education Association in back dues.

, the Miami union was able to make good on its repayments only by dumping property it owned. First, the union sold its headquarters building and rented space in it instead. . At AFT’s insistence, it sold an empty lot behind its headquarters.

All these real estate deals helped, but it didn’t vanquish the debt. Despite abnormally high dues (currently $978.40 a year), the union continued to make unrealistic membership projections, making it difficult to meet its repayment obligations. Although Miami-Dade Public Schools have about 17,000 teachers and another 18,000 support employees, fewer than 12,000 are union members.

Ultimately, AFT forgave the last $1,126,426 the Dade union owed.

Hernandez-Mats’s advancement from secretary-treasurer to president led to a hefty personal benefit. In 2016-17, her first full year as president, she earned $143,698. In 2020-21, she made $197,225 — a 37% increase over four years.

She’s clearly not joining Crist’s ticket for the money. Florida’s lieutenant governor makes about $125,000, and the governor a little over $130,000.

Crist is gambling that Hernandez-Mats’s record and the funds she can potentially bring will be a net positive in a race against a governor as polarizing as DeSantis. But teachers unions are polarizing as well. His lieutenant governor pick may have the opposite effect. Either way, it will be an interesting test case for future union candidates for higher office.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

In the midst of the pandemic, we also held an election, and a once dependable bloc of Republican voters — homeschool parents — became a little less loyal to Donald Trump. While this probably didn’t sway the outcome in any state, it builds on previous evidence of change in the homeschool movement.

I discovered this by analyzing data released early this month from the . The survey happens every four years, immediately before and after the general election. It is a representative survey of a cross-section of the American public that asks a variety of political and nonpolitical questions, including whether a respondent has school-aged children and what their site of instruction is — public school, private school or homeschool.

I compared what different types of homeschool parents said in 2016 and 2020.

In 2016, for example, homeschool parents by and large conformed to what many assume about this community with roots in the Republican Party and strong conservative beliefs. Nevertheless, homeschool families are not monolithic, and in 2016, 62 percent reported voting for Donald Trump, about the same as the 61 percent that recalled voting for Mitt Romney in 2012.

Fast forward four years, and things have changed.

Based on the just-released pre-election survey data on early and intended voting, 58 percent of homeschool parents supported Trump in 2020, a 4-point dip from the previous election. Illustrative of the change, a homeschool parent was significantly more likely than a public school parent to support Trump in 2016, but in 2020 that relationship flipped (holding other variables like party affiliation and ideology constant in a simple statistical model). Put another way, the model predicts that there was a 58 percent probability a homeschool parent voted for Trump in 2016; that fell 10 points, to a 48 percent chance, in 2020.

Several factors may be driving these changes, but it doesn’t appear that the population of homeschoolers is becoming less conservative. Approximately 4 in 10 homeschool parents identified as conservative in 2016 and 2020, and these conservative homeschool parents were just as likely to support Trump in each election.

Instead, it appears that it’s the moderates who changed their views of the former president most dramatically.

Indicative of this, in 2016, there was a 55 percent probability that a self-identified moderate homeschool parent voted for Trump. In 2020, that probability falls to 42 percent. In comparison, conservative homeschoolers remained supportive of him: an 88 percent probability in 2016 and a 90 percent probability in 2020.

These changes are notable, but not terribly surprising. It was clear during the campaign that homeschool families weren’t nearly as politically active as they had been in the past. Everyone from George W. Bush to Ted Cruz counted on homeschoolers to turn the presidential campaign into a civics assignment, but in 2020, Homeschoolers for Trump were hard to find.

With enthusiasm down among conservatives and support waning from moderates, in 2020 the homeschooling community resembled the country overall much more so than in the past. Once an outlier, the homeschool family of the future may tell us as much as district or charter school families do. These increasingly racially and ethnically diverse families may base their political choices on many things unrelated to their educational choices, and their loyalty will be up for grabs in future elections.

Heath Brown, Ph.D., is associate professor of public policy at the City University of New York Grad Center and John Jay College, and the author of “,” published by Columbia University Press.

President Joe Biden’s nomination of Miguel Cardona for education secretary has been largely well received. But his choice for the number two spot at the department is prompting some objections from education interest groups.

Charter school leaders and some members of the Black community have sounded alarms over the nomination of Cindy Marten, superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District, to be the department’s deputy secretary — a post that traditionally has not attracted controversy.

While Marten has an enthusiastic support base, advocates for charter schools said she has embraced the unions’ hard line against charter growth. “Cindy Marten is a curious pick for a deputy secretary of education nominee, given the Biden administration’s call for unity, racial equity and support for working families,” said Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Like Cardona, she has K-12 classroom experience and has been hailed as a leader in closing achievement gaps. But while Cardona has expressed a more neutral position on charter schools, Marten hails from a state where charters and traditional schools frequently clash. She played a role in reaching a truce in that fight and has argued for judging charter schools based on their financial impact on traditional public schools. With confirmation proceedings for agency officials already underway, her views could lead to questions from Congress.

Charter advocates say they are most troubled by her alignment with the California Teachers Association. In 2018, she held a press conference to highlight from In the Public Interest, a think tank, which estimated that the San Diego district loses nearly $66 million a year when students enroll in charters. is part of the Partnership for Working Families, a union-funded coalition of progressive organizations.

Jed Wallace, a former CEO of the California Charter Schools Association who now authors the blog, said it was surprising that a superintendent would tout a report that he called “a complete and utter hit job.”

He respects Marten as an educator. When interacting with her, he said, “It feels like she was in the classroom just yesterday.” San Diego, he added, was among the first districts in the state to include charter schools in a facilities bond issue, which contributed to a good relationship between charters and the district.

For Ian Pumpian, CEO of Health Sciences High School and Middle College, that relationship started 14 years ago when he showed up at Central Elementary School, where Marten was principal, to discuss how they could work together.

“She was genuinely intrigued to hear my thoughts on how charters could serve as R&D [research and development] for school districts and traditional schools,” he said. “To this day, Cindy and I discuss continuing to reinvent the types of collaborations that are possible between charters and traditional schools.”

But it was Marten’s participation on California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s charter school task force in 2019 that Wallace said gives him “a deeper sense of concern than optimism.”

She argued in favor of districts being the primary authorizers of charters, limiting the ability to appeal denials and giving districts the right to deny applications based on lost student funding — all positions espoused by California’s teachers unions.

“As someone who has had to balance a $1.3 billion budget every year, I can tell you this matters a lot,” she said on a about the debate. She added that allowing county boards of education to overrule local school boards that deny a charter application “hurts students.”

The Biden administration had “a beautiful opportunity to not pick a fight,” said Margaret Fortune, who leads a network of nine charter schools in California serving mostly Black students and worked on the task force with Marten. She added that the administration has undone “whatever good will they accomplished through the Cardona nomination.”

The district defended Marten’s record, noting that four of the 78 charter schools up for renewal over the past seven years were not approved, and this year, five of the six up for renewal have been renewed.

Mixed reviews

Charter advocates aren’t the only ones who object to Marten’s nomination. In a statement, the NAACP San Diego Branch called Marten an “ineffective leader when it comes to the academic advancement of African American children in San Diego public schools.”

In the state, however, Marten is largely viewed as an effective superintendent, one who has made strides in addressing both achievement and discipline issues among Black students compared to similar large urban districts.

The Learning Policy Institute, for example, featured San Diego Unified in 2019 as one of seven districts in which black, Latino and white students are earning higher-than-predicted English and math scores on state assessments, after considering socioeconomic status. Linda Darling-Hammond, who heads up the institute, led Biden’s transition team for education and is a friend and colleague of Marten’s.

On discipline, 2017 federal civil rights data showed that Black students accounted for over 20 percent of suspensions despite comprising only 8 percent of the district’s student population. But the suspension rate is the second lowest among large districts in the state, according to a from San Diego State University and the University of California, Los Angeles.

The San Diego school board amended Marten’s contract in 2019 and extended it through 2023, but one member voted no, citing persistent problems with safety and academics at a predominantly Black and Hispanic . The district also has 14 schools on the state’s .

Other members of the Black community spoke more positively about Marten’s nomination. Frank Jordan, a former NAACP leader in San Diego and at the state level said, “Just think, we’ll have someone from this area that knows the needs of a district.”

Marten’s district is not among those that have reopened schools since the onset of the pandemic — a goal for the Biden administration’s first 100 days. Marten is one of to argue that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to begin reopening schools by Feb. 15 is unrealistic and lacks the funding needed for COVID-19 testing.

During a press conference, Dr. Anthony Fauci also said the nation could be close to a return to normal by the 2021-22 school year, but that’s only if at least 70 percent of the population is vaccinated. “The concern I have, and something we’re working on, is getting [to] people who have vaccine hesitancy,” he said.

As part of Biden’s , he directed the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a hub for information on school reopenings and closures.

The information, according to the administration, will help schools understand how closures have affected students of color, low-income families, English learners, students with special needs and others who have experienced the worst effects of being away from the classroom. For those who have been doing such work since last March, the announcements were welcome news.

“We need a national effort, one that builds consistency in the data collected and the viable conclusions that can be drawn from it,” said Annette Campbell Anderson, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University who has been on school reopening. “Up until now, it has been a hodgepodge of responses of data collected, and most parents, especially those in urban centers, won’t feel confident in returning their children to in-person schools until there is some reliable longitudinal data to consider.”

With the 100-day clock now ticking, educators are hopeful about the organized federal response to the pandemic. The National Education Association called the executive order “an important first step to ensure the protections and significant resources are in place to support the safe and just return to in-person instruction in school buildings and on campuses.” The orders signed Thursday also cover issues such as reimbursements for masks and other supplies and creating a handbook to help guide reopening strategies — tasks many states and districts have been managing themselves. Experts, however, see room to build on what they’ve done before.

The school reopening order directs the education department to create a “best practices clearinghouse” so schools can share what they’ve learned in their efforts to safely reopen.

It requires the future assistant secretary for civil rights to produce a report “as soon as practicable” on the unequal impact of the pandemic on students.

And it directs the Federal Communications Commission to “increase connectivity options for students lacking reliable home broadband.” To support that goal, Biden on Thursday named FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel acting chair of the FCC. The ranking Democrat on the commission, Rosenworcel has been an outspoken advocate for extending an internet discount program for schools to cover at-home service for students.

Another order on governors’ use of the National Guard directs the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fully reimburse schools for what they spend on masks and other protective equipment. FEMA will work with the education department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to give schools access to funds for sanitation products and improving ventilation systems.

In September, district leaders got conflicting messages when FEMA said it would schools and other nonemergency sites for cloth face masks while on the same day, the Department of Health and Human Services said it was disbursing millions of masks to schools.

Multiple education groups expressed support for Biden’s actions. AASA, the School Superintendents Association, said the plan responds to concerns district leaders expressed to Biden’s transition team, but also leaves them in charge of decisions at the local level.

While districts such as have asked for schools to serve as vaccination centers, the Biden plan doesn’t call for schools to be included on its list along with stadiums, conference centers and retail stores.

Some experts provided additional feedback on how the federal government can be helpful, particularly around data collection.

Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington, said it would be useful for states to report whether their schools are open or closed. The center’s tracker on district closures and reopenings has been a widely-used source for experts looking for patterns as well as successful models.

She said it would also be helpful to know the number of COVID-19 cases among adults and students, the health and safety measures districts are implementing and the assessments and strategies districts are using to help students recover from learning loss.

“The administration should not start from scratch. We and others have a start on this,” Lake said. “It will be important to build on that. We can’t waste time.”

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington is expected to take retired Sen. Lamar Alexander’s spot as chair of the education committee, while Republican Richard Burr of North Carolina is in line to be ranking member.

Murray said in an email to ����Ӱ�� recently that she will continue to prioritize reauthorization of the Higher Education Act “to make college more affordable, accessible, accountable, and safer while addressing the systemic racism that has plagued our higher education system.”

She said she was also planning to focus on addressing “all the way systemic racism continues to harm students of color.”

Murray is also a strong early-childhood advocate and could push for additional spending on child care in any future relief package. The bill that passed in December provided $40 billion less than she proposed.

One of the first things on the education committee’s agenda will be advancing Biden’s choice for education secretary. Nomination hearings for Cardona aren’t expected to begin until later this month at the earliest. But as soon as Biden is sworn in on the 20th, Cardona could begin serving as acting secretary, noted Julia Martin, legislative director at Brustein and Manasevit, a Washington-based education law firm.

The victory for Democrats in both Georgia races gives the Senate a 50-50 split, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris ready to step in as a tie-breaking vote.

With Democrats controlling both the executive and legislative branches of government, some speculate Biden will be able to push for costlier and more controversial aspects of his policy agenda. But with the filibuster — the rule requiring 60 votes for legislative packages — expected to stay in place, he’ll still have to appeal to GOP moderates to pass major legislation.

Democrats could help him get major tax and spending measures through Congress — bills related to additional pandemic relief, for example — using the budget reconciliation process. Under that , bills are not allowed to add to the federal deficit or change spending on social security.

Biden is also expected to pause President Donald �հ��ܳ���’s recent executive orders, particularly the most recent order that directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to use Community Service Block Grant funds to issue “emergency learning scholarships” to disadvantaged families. Payments to microschools, pods, and therapy services for students with special needs would also be eligible.

�հ��ܳ���’s 1776 Commission, intended to “teach our children about the miracle of American history” and blunt the impact of the 1619 Project focusing on the impact of slavery, would also likely be on that list.

In August, Trump also issued a series of executive orders, including one that deferred payroll tax obligations. that action could hurt schools and lead to teacher layoffs.

I’ve already seen the impact that even just the image of a woman in charge has had in my home state of Rhode Island. My daughter, and girls like her across the state, have turned on the TV, scrolled the news online or even opened the newspaper — and repeatedly seen a historic new normal.

Three women are leading the state through a once-in-a-century pandemic: Rhode Island’s governor, the director of the state’s Department of Health and the Department of Education commissioner.

It took Rhode Island 239 years to finally elect a woman as its top executive, and Gov. Gina Raimondo has, in turn, named the first Latina woman to run the K-12 Education Department and the first Black woman to run our Health Department.

These images of leadership are starkly different from those I saw when I was growing up. For generations, we’d been told leadership is a strictly male trait. That message was embedded everywhere from textbooks to TV shows to the portrait walls of government buildings. In many places, it still is. Women who do break into the ranks of public office are frequently advised to conform to stereotypically masculine norms to be strong — or emulate behaviors from the previous generation. Talk tough. Don’t show your feelings. Don’t let them see your feminine side. Wear a suit. Throughout my career, these “insights” have usually — but not always — come from a man.

But today, the face of leadership in Rhode Island is more diverse, and women are doing it their own way. We are Black, Latina and white moms, representing the diversity of the state and leading like ourselves. And together,

How have we done it? By thinking of our children and being moms first. The governor, Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott at the Health Department and I are all mothers who fight fiercely for our families, and we haven’t shied away from that during this crisis. When we make decisions, we ask ourselves, “Would this be good enough for my own child?” If the answer is no, we find a different decision.

We are demonstrating that our country needs women in charge now more than ever.

In these very challenging times, all of us are forced to dig deep. But you will never meet a stronger advocate than a mother fighting for her child.

Yet, throughout my career, I’ve faced questions about whether I have the time to be a mom and an executive — examples of the not-so subtle sexism that often keeps women from top education jobs. In fact, according to a , an organization I am part of, women make up the vast majority of the workforce in schools but fill but fewer than one-third of the very top education jobs. Only 11 percent are held by women of color, like me. But it turns out that a woman of color — a mom — is exactly the right person for this post.

I care deeply, and I connect differently with families as a woman. As a Latina mom, I know education can be the difference between life and death during this pandemic — and I let that show. During one of my early meetings with parents from our capital city, Providence, I listened to stories from parents that moved me to tears. My initial reaction was anger: I’m a fighter, I’ve never cried in public. 

Little did I know it would not be the last time I’d so deeply show the way I felt about the pain of the community. These moments showed I deeply understood the experiences of these students and told their parents that I would fight for their kids the way I fight for my own. I was one of these students, and I came from a similar community. I got it the way only a person who has lived it gets it. I know education changed my life, and I will fight for it for all students because there is no other option. Empathy and understanding are not signs of weakness, they are requirements for a successful plan for our schools — and our education system as a whole.

For decades, women have been told that to be executives, they have to be more like men. But if there’s a leadership lesson from the COVID crisis, it might be that women leaders have a few things to teach the boys.

Angélica Infante-Green is Rhode Island’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education and a member of Chiefs for Change.

As the United States welcomes a new administration into the White House — with a first lady who is herself an educator — and the government has the opportunity to reauthorize important legislation like the , we also have an opportunity to reset the national education agenda. There is no better place to start than science education.

Giving students the opportunity to learn science in elementary school, as with mathematics, provides a solid foundation for later learning. Middle and high school students are expected to learn complex scientific ideas, and in order to do that, they need exposure to high-quality science instruction in their elementary classrooms. Students learn to think critically about the world around them, noticing details and patterns, gathering data and forming sound explanations based on evidence.

Even before COVID, the trend line for average minutes of science instruction in elementary school per week was going in the wrong direction. According to the , teachers in grades K-3 reported spending an average of 18 minutes per week on science, a 22 percent decrease since 2000. Grade 4-6 teachers reported spending an average of 27 minutes per week, a 13 percent decrease. Now, in the COVID remote learning era, there are fewer instructional minutes overall, and in many districts, science has completely fallen out of elementary curriculum. Alarm bells should be ringing.

Prioritizing elementary science education takes creativity, teamwork and long-term commitment — all of which can be challenging in normal times, let alone amid the new realities of a pandemic. But disruptions can also present opportunities to try something new. Groups like NextGenScience are already sharing successful strategies to adapt K-12 science lessons for distance learning, and that some approaches might enable more learning opportunities for students than pre-COVID methods.

In our work with hundreds of schools and districts across the United States, we have seen what can happen when educators committed to science standards work together to provide meaningful learning experiences for their youngest students. The following three examples from real schools and districts show how change is possible when prioritizing elementary science education.

Implementing slowly and steadily, with plenty of educator input

One small district in Rhode Island with three elementary schools adopted a new science program and took a phased approach. Teachers were required to present one unit during the first year, with a full implementation in year two. But throughout the second year, teachers struggled to fit everything in, because they were still presenting full English and math programs. At the start of the third year, teachers collaborated with school and district leaders to problem-solve. Looking closely at the science curriculum, they identified where students were already engaged in science-related activities that involved reading, writing, listening and speaking. Then they adjusted their instruction in other subjects that covered the same things, making more room for science.

Change did not happen overnight, but teachers created more consistent time for science instruction because they saw how much their students were learning with their new science curriculum. District administrators supported flexible thinking about learning goals, and together, they made changes over time that integrated science solidly into the district’s elementary school curriculum.

Looking closely at scheduling and how to ensure equity

One small Midwestern city with 14 elementary schools considered increasing science instruction districtwide. During their research about how best to teach more science, district leaders put together a team that examined schedules across all elementary schools. The team noticed a serious equity problem: Science instruction frequently occurred at the same time that students were pulled out of class for various reasons. For science to be a priority, it needed to happen when all students were present. In response, the district eliminated pullout services and special classes during science time.

For this city, it took a cross-departmental team with a new perspective working together at the district level to notice and correct a pattern of inequity and ensure science time was protected.

Thinking creatively about staffing: Every teacher can be a science teacher

A large urban district on the East Coast had a long history of using science specialists, instead of multi-subject classroom teachers, to teach elementary science. During the pandemic, as classes began meeting remotely, all the science specialists became multi-subject teachers to help reduce class sizes.

District leaders are now rethinking their model, evaluating whether “every teacher a science teacher” is a better way to move forward, because it enables teachers to take better advantage of the common learning objectives and teaching approaches that exist across science, English Language Arts and math — something not possible in elementary grades when subjects are taught by specific teachers.

Our nation is facing one of the greatest public health crises in its history, and the world is confronting a climate crisis that generations to come will inherit. Students must be equipped to tackle these realities with a high-quality science education from the earliest grades. Let us leverage this extraordinary moment to catapult science to the core of the curriculum. It matters for our health, well-being and even our collective survival.

Jacqueline Barber is associate director of the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Matt Reed is vice president of science at Amplify where he oversees development, testing and support for the company’s highly rated science curriculum. 

The outcome depends on Georgia voters, who are casting ballots in a pivotal runoff election. One Senate race pits Republican Kelly Loeffler, whom the state’s governor appointed last year to finish retired Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term, against Democrat Raphael Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church.

In the other, incumbent Republican David Perdue is seeking a second term and facing Democrat Jon Ossoff, a media executive.

The results could determine how much support Biden will have for the costliest and most progressive parts of his education agenda, such as tripling funding for high-poverty schools, forgiving student loans, and pursuing another pandemic relief package. While the president-elect is expected to use executive powers to bring back some Obama-era policies, experts said with the runoff and the slimmest of Democratic majorities in the House, Biden will need to appeal to GOP moderates in both chambers to move major legislation.

Republicans, who currently have 50 seats, need to win just one of the two races to retain their majority. If the chamber is split 50-50, Democrats will gain control with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker.

A political trifecta in Washington — when one party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress — is and usually doesn’t last long, according to Michael Barone, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. Since 1969, Democrats have held the White House, the House, and the Senate for a total of only eight years.

“It’s not as monumental inside the Senate. It’s monumental for the larger political dynamic,” said Bethany Little, principal at EducationCounsel, an education consulting firm. When Democrats control the White House, the House, and then take the Senate, “that’s when the game has changed.”

While President-elect Joe Biden won Georgia, the show no clear front runner in either Senate race. According to FiveThirtyEight, Loeffler trails Warnock 48 percent to 50 percent, while Ossoff leads Perdue 49 percent to 48 percent. Perdue is spending the rest of the campaign in quarantine after being exposed to someone with COVID-19, but President Donald Trump is planning a Monday night rally for both Republicans, while Biden is expected to travel to Atlanta for the Democrats. Democrats have seized upon early pandemic by Loeffler and Perdue as evidence of wrongdoing. The GOP senators, however, maintain they’ve done nothing wrong. Leoffler and Perdue describe their opponents as radical leftists.

The importance of the race is evidenced by the energy and resources and are pouring into the state. Some analysts predict spending on could reach a staggering $500 million in an already record-setting year for on Congressional races.

The role of centrists 

With control of Congress undecided until after the runoff, confirmation hearings for education secretary-designate Miguel Cardona and other cabinet nominees could be , especially if a winner in each race isn’t immediately clear.But with Biden opting not to choose a union leader for education secretary — several outlets reported he was considering — he’ll likely have an easier time winning approval from the Senate for that position, even if Republicans retain control.

Cabinet member confirmations require 51 votes. But with a 60-vote rule in place to end debates over major legislation, Biden will need more votes for some proposals, such as another COVID-19 relief package.

That’s why even if the Democrats gain control, they’ll be looking for support from moderate Republicans such as Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — all members of the education committee. Republicans, on the other hand, will continue to appeal to Democrats they view as more bipartisan, such as Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

“Senators who are willing to vote with the other side will certainly find themselves getting a lot of attention and likely very favorable treatment of any issues that disproportionately affect their states,” said Steven White, an assistant professor of political science at Syracuse University in New York.

The last time there was a 50-50 split in the Senate was 20 years ago whenCongress passed one of the most far-reaching education laws in American history — No Child Left Behind. President George W. Bush signed the law about a year after he defeated Democrat Al Gore — another election debated in the courts. But the even split in the Senate didn’t lead to partisan gridlock. NCLB was just one piece of major legislation to come from a Congress united by the war in the Middle East following Sept. 11.

“People think of 50-50 as polarizing, but it actually wasn’t,” said Little, with EducationCounsel, who worked as chief education counsel to the Senate education committee at the time. “It was very affirming to centrist, moderate, bipartisan work.”

Then-Senate leader Trent Lott and Democratic leader Tom Daschle negotiated a power-sharing compromise in which committees were also split 50-50, but with Republicans serving as chairs. They even wrote about it in 2016, hoping their efforts at bipartisanship would inspire current members.

But such camaraderie might be impossible now. between Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and current Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have worsened since McConnell expedited conservative Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and after months of bitter fights over relief legislation.

If there are few senators working to find middle ground, that could “change the calculus,” Little said. But moderates already demonstrated by pushing for agreement on the most recent relief bill after numerous other efforts failed. “It wouldn’t have happened if centrists hadn’t restarted negotiations,” she added.

Future of school choice

Loeffler, also a member of the education committee, is not among those centrists. Loyal to Trump, she has pushed for increased funding for private school choice.

In September, she sponsored a that would give low-income families and those who have children with special needs access to federal funds for private school or home school expenses.

But Julia Martin, legislative director at Brustein and Manasevit, a Washington-based education law firm, said once President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos are no longer in Washington to champion school choice, Loeffler might have a harder time attracting an audience for the issue.

“Without the secretary in an active role there, you do wonder how she is going to press that point,” Martin said.

The future of school choice in the courts is another issue that rests on the Senate’s makeup.

“A Democrat-controlled Senate would appoint more progressive judges who would be less inclined to rule in favor of school choice proponents and those advocating for religious institutions,” said Leslie Finger, an assistant professor of political science at the University of North Texas. “With Republican control of the chamber, judicial appointments are sure to be held up.”

In addition to confirming Barrett, the McConnell-led Senate has scrambled to fill federal court vacancies with Trump nominees. There are currently 53 in the federal court system, with 30 nominees pending.

Perdue sits on the armed services, banking, budget and foreign relations committees. When he ran for office in 2014, he advocated for the Department of Education. Last year, he co-sponsored that would have allowed education pods — small groups of students learning together while schools operate remotely — to receive federal funding, without states and localities interfering. The bill also would have allowed “home educators” to get the same tax deduction for expenses as teachers. Loeffler was a co-sponsor on the bill, which died in the finance committee.

Perdue was the lone sponsor of the — or Safely Creating Healthy Opening Options Locally — Act that would create a $55 billion grant program to cover COVID-19 testing and expenses related to reopening schools, including cleaning, masks and other supplies. The bill was referred to the education committee, but never went any further.

Charter school advocates are also closely watching the outcome of the runoff. Ron Rice, senior director of government relations at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said even if Warnock or Ossoff campaigned on the idea of charters hurting traditional schools, they would need to “govern like moderates” because of strong support among voters for charter schools.

During a recent post-election webinar, he counted former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who defeated incumbent Cory Gardner in November, among other Democrats in Congress who have supported charter schools, including Cory Booker of New Jersey, Diane Feinstein of California and Dick Durbin of Illinois.

Biden is expected to be tougher on charters than some school choice experts would like and has said he doesn’t want any federal funding flowing to for-profit operators. But Rice said the president-elect will likely govern as a moderate on the issue.

“I don’t think there’s a hit squad on charters in the incoming administration,” he said.

President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team announced late Tuesday that Connecticut Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona is the education secretary nominee. Biden will introduce Cardona in Wilmington, Delaware at 11:15 a.m. Dec. 23.

If you were told to build an education secretary for President-Elect Joe Biden in a laboratory, you’d probably come up with something like Miguel Cardona, the Connecticut education commissioner who Biden plans to nominate to run the U.S. Department of Education.

Cardona was a teacher (and principal) before becoming a state ed commissioner. So he checks that box.

He’s a K-12 pick, but not a party-splitting one.

Cardona’s personal story is inspiring — a first-generation college-goer who grew up in public housing and changed his course after high school to pursue a university degree. So, like the president-elect, someone who appreciates that life doesn’t always go like you plan. He’s not a .

He’s competent and established but won’t overshadow incoming First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, who cuts a higher-ed profile of her own.

Cardona brings experience on big-picture issues like English learners, equity and achievement gaps. He co-chaired a state task force focused on these last two, which are especially acute problems in Connecticut. He cares about the students furthest from opportunity and equity, who are the most frequently overlooked. But he doesn’t fit cleanly into the reform or anti-reform camp.

As commissioner, he’s taken steps around desegregation of schools, something on the Biden agenda. And he’s a Goldilocks on charter schools — not too hot or cold. He didn’t champion opening new ones, but renewed existing ones while he was commissioner. Charter leaders have nice things to say about him even as he states that his focus is district-run schools.

On COVID-19 and schools, Cardona is a reopener. But the teachers unions are ok with him, so he can work with both sides of that debate to fulfill the president-elect’s commitment to having a majority of schools open for live instruction in the spring. His appointment also allows Biden to sidestep .

Finally, it was an open secret that Biden and his team preferred a Hispanic nominee for the role.

I have no idea if Cardona is a gearhead car guy like Joe Biden, but if not, that would be one of the few missing pieces in a biography tailor-made for this moment.

If there is a knock on Cardona, it’s that he’s the rare cabinet nominee who doesn’t have a relationship with the president-elect. But that’s just where education lives in the Washington pecking order. Even there, you can find upside: He’s a merit hire in a highly political process. There is some grumbling that the job again went to a man, given the talent pool and how few women have served in the role overall, and particularly for Democrats relative to the demographics of the education sector.

If there is a risk, it’s that it’s a big jump from being an assistant superintendent in a small district, which Cardona was less than a year and half ago, to U.S. secretary of education. But that’s a manageable challenge for someone willing to put in the work.

Republicans were never going to get their preference here. The best they could have hoped for was someone like former National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen García, who was relatively aligned on issues of local control and flexibility. On school choice and funding, Republicans were not going to get their wish list with any Biden pick. But it’s hard to see why Senate Republicans would mobilize against this nomination — especially when they have higher-profile targets.

In November, during a discussion of charter schools, I made the point that while charters, and the reform world, were girding for a fight, they should also . For now, given the context of education politics, Cardona is what yes looks like. The selection could have gone in many directions far less favorable to those who seek dramatic change to our schools. Cardona seeks dramatic change, too — just with a different theory of action than some reformers. That’s a productive tension and an opportunity for progress.

Essentially, Cardona is a Biden offer of a detente in the education wars, and especially in the intra-Democratic education battles — at least, until some hard questions of policy emerge. It’s a deft pick. Particularly at a time when political fights should be secondary to an unfolding disaster for millions of American students.

Andrew J. Rotherham is a co-founder and partner at Bellwether Education, a national nonprofit organization working to support educational innovation and improve educational outcomes for low-income students, and serves on ����Ӱ��’s board of directors. In addition, among other professional work, he is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report, writes the blog Eduwonk.com, teaches at The University of Virginia and is a senior advisor at Whiteboard Advisors.

All seven seats on the board were up for election this year. In addition to the contest in which adjunct community college professor J.C. Romero, a gay former teacher, bested Ellison, in the Dec. 5 runoff election. In Districts 2 and 7, incumbents Ethan Ashley and Nolan Marshall Jr. were reelected. An open seat in District 5 went to Katie Baudouin, and newcomer Carlos Zervigon won District 6.

In the runup to the general election, attention focused on some candidates’ desire to weaken the superintendent’s authority over closing failing schools in the nearly all-charter district. The final results of the election suggest such a change is unlikely.

Several prominent education groups did not endorse in the District 4 contest, though less than two weeks before the runoff, an . The Black Alliance for Civic Empowerment Action Fund, which received donations from a political action committee associated with Democrats for Education Reform and from Walmart heir Jim Walton, paid for signs and mailers promoting Ellison.

It’s not clear that either donor knew the organization was planning to spend in support of Ellison, who is African-American. Romero is the son of Nicaraguan immigrants.

Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to ����Ӱ��.��

During the outgoing administration, there had been a steady drumbeat to undermine provisions, guidance, regulations and internal structures that ensure students’ civil rights. But there are the new administration can take within its first 100 days to right the ship and build a U.S. Department of Education that protects students, strengthens the community of educators and connects with directly impacted stakeholders across the country.

The Biden-Harris administration must take a step beyond campaign statements about advancing to articulate and incorporate policies that address gaps in educational opportunity. The in annual investments between schools that are predominantly white and schools predominantly serving Black, Indigenous, Latino and other children of color must be an area for concerted action. Further, the lack of educators who of the majority population in public schools and racial disparities in call for targeted policies to bridge those gaps.

In the first 100 days of the administration, the on Educational Excellence should be immediately reestablished, fully staffed and connected directly to the Domestic Policy Council for coordination. The initiatives were established to engage in outreach with Black, Indigenous, Latino and other people of color to strengthen educational and economic outcomes. They work strategically with commissions to advise the president on policy and actions that will make federal programs more accessible to these communities. These offices can serve as a core strategic center for developing policies with community members across the country at the local and state levels, while offering a national view of how to make school quality equitable across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

For too long, education policymaking has been done to community instead of with community. Community members directly impacted by federal policy know what they need most to contribute to and recognize improved academic and economic success. Continuing to keep community on the outside while D.C. insiders make decisions for them would be tragic, especially in the face of disparities in access to continuation of learning in communities of color during the . Adopting strategies for participatory government can help to design schools, systems of education and meaningful accountability practices that are embraced and supported by the broader community. of the people who serve our children every day can only point policymakers in a direction they could not imagine on their own.

The Biden camp made clear its support for community schools while on the campaign trail, but the administration can go farther by directing the new secretary of education to issue regulations that advantage grantees who propose a community-informed approach to their work. This would both make clear to local and state entities that priority is being placed on community control of their schools and build capacity for working with community at the front end of the policymaking process.

A President Joe Biden should make clear these commitments to quality education during his first address to the nation. This should be followed by directives to reinstate protections for in Title IX, ensuring the Office for Civil Rights is fully staffed and directed to resume investigations of complaints; reinstate and strengthen guidance for closing disparities in , encouraging restorative solutions for building school climate; and build and support a world-class cohort of educators who are paid as professionals, having working conditions that make high-quality teaching possible and of the student population.

America has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to revamp its public schools so they provide a . Beyond its rhetoric about supporting students, their families and the educators who teach them every day, the Biden administration can begin leading this country by planting a flag in the ground that says equity in education is a must-have, and not simply a nice-to-have. Our country cannot afford to take an incremental approach to improving schools and disrupting the racism that has undermined equitable access to a great education. Involving community members is the only way to build what we need instead of rebuilding what we had.

Khalilah Harris, Ed.D., J.D., is the managing director of K12 education policy at the Center for American Progress and a nonresident senior fellow with the Maryland Center on Economic Policy.

Dear President-Elect Biden:

Congratulations on your victory in the recent election. Your task is daunting; so much needs to be set right. I am writing to you about what I believe needs to be done in education to heal the damage done to so many children who missed school due to COVID-19 closures.

I am aware that there are many basic things that must be done to improve schools, which have to continue to make their facilities safe for students and cope with the physical and emotional trauma that so many have experienced. Schools will be opening into a recession, so just providing ordinary services will be a challenge. Funding to enable schools to fulfill their core functions is essential, but it is not sufficient.

Returning schools to the way they were when they closed last spring will not heal the damage students have sustained to their educational progress. This damage will be greatest to disadvantaged students in high-poverty schools, most of whom were unable to take advantage of the remote learning most schools provided. Some of these students were struggling even before schools closed, but when they reopen, millions of students will be far behind.

Our research center at Johns Hopkins University studies the evidence on programs of all kinds for students who are at risk, especially in reading and mathematics. What we and many other researchers have found is that the most effective strategy for struggling students, especially in elementary schools, is one-to-one or one-to-small group tutoring. Structured tutoring programs can make a large difference in a short time, exactly what is needed to help students quickly catch up with grade level expectations.

My colleagues and I have proposed a massive effort designed to provide proven tutoring services to the millions of students who desperately need it. Our proposal, based on a similar idea by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), would ultimately provide funding to enable as many as 300,000 tutors to be recruited, trained in proven tutoring models and coached to ensure their effectiveness. These tutors would be required to have a college degree, but not necessarily a teaching certificate. Research has found that such tutors, using proven models with excellent professional development, can improve the achievement of students struggling in reading or mathematics as much as can teachers serving as tutors.

The plan we are proposing is a bit like the Marshall Plan after World War II, which provided substantial funding to Western European nations devastated by the war. The idea was to put these countries on their feet quickly and effectively so that, within a brief period of years, they could support themselves. In a similar fashion, a Tutoring Marshall Plan would provide intensive funding to enable Title I schools nationwide to substantially advance the achievement of their students who suffered mightily from COVID-19 closures and related trauma. Effective tutoring is likely to enable these children to advance to the point where they can profit from ordinary grade-level instruction. We fear that without this assistance, millions of children will never catch up and will show the negative effects of the closures throughout their time in school and beyond.

The Tutoring Marshall Plan will also provide employment to 300,000 college graduates, who will otherwise have difficulty entering the job market in a time of recession. These people are eager to contribute to society and to establish professional careers, but will need a first step on that ladder. Ideally, the best of the tutors will experience the joys of teaching and might be offered accelerated certification, opening a new source of teacher candidates who will have had an opportunity to build and demonstrate their skills in school settings. Like the Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration programs in the Great Depression, these tutors will not only be helped to survive the financial crisis, but will perform essential services to the nation while building skills and confidence.

The Tutoring Marshall Plan needs to start as soon as possible. The need is obvious, both to provide essential jobs to college graduates and to provide proven assistance to struggling students.

Our proposal, in brief, is to ask Congress to fund the following activities:

Spring 2021

• Fund existing tutoring programs to build capacity to scale up their programs to serve thousands of struggling students. This would include installing proven tutoring programs in about 2,000 schools nationwide.
• Fund rigorous evaluations of programs that show promise but have not been evaluated in rigorous, randomized experiments.
• Fund the development of new programs, especially in areas in which there are few proven models, such as programs for struggling students in secondary schools.

Fall 2021 to Spring 2022

• Provide restricted funds to Title I schools throughout the United States to enable them to hire up to 150,000 tutors to implement proven programs, across all grade levels, 1-9, and in reading and mathematics. This many tutors, mostly using small-group methods, should be able to provide services to about 6 million students each year. Schools should be asked to agree to select from among proven, effective programs. Schools would implement their chosen programs using tutors who have college degrees and experience with tutoring, teaching or mentoring children (such as AmeriCorps graduates who were tutors, camp counselors or Sunday school teachers).
• As new programs are completed and piloted, third-party evaluators should be funded to evaluate them in randomized experiments, adding to capacity to serve students in grades 1-9. Those that produce positive outcomes would then be added to the list of programs available for tutor funding, and their organizations would need to be funded to facilitate preparation for scale-up.
• Teacher-training institutions and school districts should be funded to work together to design accelerated certification programs for outstanding tutors.

Fall 2022 to Spring 2023

• Title I schools should be funded to enable them to hire a total of 300,000 tutors. Again, schools will select among proven tutoring programs, which will train, coach and evaluate tutors across the U.S. We expect these tutors to be able to work with about 12 million struggling students each year.
• Development, evaluation and scale-up of proven programs should continue to enrich the number and quality of proven programs adapted to the needs of all kinds of Title I schools.

The Tutoring Marshall Plan would provide direct benefits to millions of struggling students harmed by COVID-19 school closures, in all parts of the U.S. It would provide meaningful work with a future to college graduates who might otherwise be unemployed. At the same time, it could establish a model of dramatic educational improvement based on rigorous research, contributing to knowledge and use of effective practice. If all goes well, the Tutoring Marshall Plan could demonstrate the power of scaling up proven programs and using research and development to improve the lives of children.

Robert Slavin is director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University and chairman of the Success for All Foundation. 

It’s especially glaring this year. Black women elected Joe Biden. Black women are why Democrats have a Cabinet to fill, and Black women are why we have the opportunity to get Betsy DeVos far, far away from the Education Department. Name another demographic group that voted for Biden at 91 percent. We showed up, and now we’re counting on the administration to show up for us.

Biden told the Black community, “You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.” It’ll be a strange way to show it if he chooses a secretary who will stand between our kids and the educational options we so desperately need.

I lead , a group of thousands of parents in Oakland, California, who are standing up to interrupt an intergenerational cycle of school failure. We’ve sought opportunities in public schools of all kinds, district and charter — and there’s strong speculation that Biden would choose a secretary who would be actively hostile to charter schools. So far, there’s little sign that his transition team wants to hear from families like ours at all, despite plenty of rhetoric.

What would we tell him? That we want him to seriously consider a first-ever Black woman as the next education secretary. That we demand MORE access to a quality education for our kids, not less. That we want someone who has skin in the game — someone who is actively working to make our schools better for our kids, not just talking among the adults.

I am not naive about how this process works. And I know President-Elect Biden and his team may have already made a decision about this Cabinet position. And I don’t like what I’m seeing.

We’re watching the way folks are coming for promising women of color being discussed for this role, like Baltimore City School Chief Sonja Santelises. She’s a visionary advocate for the kind of opportunities our children deserve, with an exceptional . She is in the past 23 years to be offered another contract, and has been praised by teachers, families, and city leaders alike for her transparent approach. She would also be the first Black woman to serve in the role of education secretary. I’ve sat across the table from this woman and know she has our backs.

White opponents, closely aligned with teachers’ unions, rose up on Twitter to tear her down as too interested in education reform. We’re wondering what the real problem is.

I spend my days fighting for public education, and my kids go to district and charter schools. They go where I can give them a fighting chance at college and a career. They go to the best place I can get them into to give them a shot.

I’m sick and tired of white progressive “allies” who post Black Lives Matter signs in their windows and then work to curb our access to better options for our kids.

I’m sick and tired of watching them take advantage of the plenty of choices they have for their own kids — moving to the suburbs, enrolling in private schools — while taking away our only shot at choice.

To the Biden Administration, show me the rumors aren’t true. Please choose someone who sees us and understands that education is a life-or-death issue for our children.

That’s what you did during the Obama Administration with the selection of John King — a Black man who thought big, and knew how to work within the system to advance quality for ALL kids. Please show us you will put kids first again.

But if you nominate somebody who wants to give money with no expectation of outcomes from kids, somebody who wants to reduce the ability of our families to go to the schools that they choose because their lives depend on it, I am going to be there. The families of The Oakland REACH are going to be there. Black women are going to be there, holding the secretary accountable for her actions every step of the way.

Listen to us, trust us, and choose a Black woman to lead.

At The Oakland REACH, we have a cheer, “Who’s got your back? I got your back.”

We had your back, President-Elect Biden. Please have ours.

On December 10, numerous disability rights groups co-signed and circulated a letter they had sent to the Biden transition team, expressing concerns about her track record on issues involving students with disabilities. Read the full letter.

Comments that Lily Eskelsen Garcia made five years ago in an address to a progressive advocacy organization have resurfaced this week as speculation continues over whether the former National Education Association chief will be President-elect Joe Biden’s likely pick for education secretary.

In a list of students with diverse needs, such as the “hearing impaired” and “physically challenged” “the chronically tarded and the medically annoying.”

Eskelsen Garcia apologized, saying the first was a slip of the tongue — she had meant to say “tardy” — and the second was a reference to students who try to annoy their teachers when they have a bad day.

But the didn’t take it that way, and now, opponents of a union leader being named education secretary are putting a spotlight on her words.

“And you all were worried about @BetsyDeVosED?” Center for Education Reform CEO Jeanne Allen Monday. “Did you ever hear her say anything mean about a child?”

“She has a history of being incredibly caustic and negative about a lot of things,” Allen said. “I think she’s got a history of saying pejorative things.”

Allen added that those who raised the issue are advocates for children with special needs. “These are not people who are particularly on one side or another,” politically, she said.

The question is whether Eskelsen Garcia’s comments — whether intentional, misunderstood or something else — could derail her chances at the nomination.

It’s “hard to imagine that would be a deal-breaker for someone with her long public profile and bona fides,” said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.“But sensitivities are such that almost anything is possible.”

Eskelsen Garcia, Utah’s Teacher of the Year in 1989, served as NEA president from 2014 until earlier this year. In 2017, she led an effort to craft the union’s on charter schools, saying it supports only those that are authorized and held accountable by school districts, not those that are managed by private organizations.

But Finger doubted that someone with a more moderate stance toward charter schools and school choice would be getting the same treatment.

“I think that the education reform community doesn’t want somebody so closely aligned to the teachers unions and has an incentive to discredit her,” Finger said. “Prominent education reformers seem to have been broadcasting these comments.”

����Ӱ�� reached out to the NEA for comment but did not receive a response.

Hess added there’s a growing “real sense she could be the pick,” and that Eskelsen Garcia “checks a lot of boxes for Biden and has a strong public presence.”

If that is the case, and the Senate confirms her — which could hinge on the results of the Georgia runoff election next month — advocates for students with disabilities will be looking for how she’ll approach issues related to special-needs children.

“The leader of the agency responsible for implementing the [Individuals with Disabilities Education Act] and enforcing protections through the Office for Civil Rights needs to be a leader in establishing that students of all abilities are valued and respected,” said Lauren Morando Rhim, executive director and co-founder of the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools.

The sentiments Eskelsen Garcia “has shared in the past reflect a sense of ‘otherness’ which is hugely problematic to everything we are trying to accomplish for students with disabilities,” Morando Rhim added. “We would love to hear more about her plans to elevate students with disabilities and make that message of value and respect clear if she is selected for the role.”

Observers say Biden’s planned moves would signal a shift back to priorities the Obama administration promoted when it left office in 2017.

The new administration will likely rely heavily on the influence of First Lady Jill Biden, a community college instructor whose focused on improving completion rates at two-year colleges. He also plans to tap labor economist Cecilia Rouse​ to chair the ​. Rouse, 56, specializes in, among other topics, higher education finance.

Biden, who has said she will continue teaching at Northern Virginia Community College, is an advocate of making community college free. During the Obama administration, she served as co-chair of College Promise, a national nonprofit that promotes this policy. Last month, she affiliated with the group that the new administration “will stand by you in those efforts because we know just how crucial this work is.”

The president-elect has also proposed eliminating up to $10,000 in debt for all students who borrow to attend college, and for debt relief for students who serve post-graduation working in schools, government agencies, community service organizations or other nonprofits. recently, Biden said his loan forgiveness plan “should be done immediately.”

That approach would stand in stark contrast to the current administration’s college affordability ideas. In what is likely her last major speech, outgoing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos last week calls to cancel or forgive college debt — as well as those to make community college free — a “truly insidious notion of government gift giving.”

Robert Kelchen, an associate professor of higher education at Seton Hall University, noted that Obama pushed for tuition-free community college. “I expect it to be back in the spotlight,” he said. Jill Biden “had a prominent voice in the Obama administration [and] focused a lot of effort on community colleges.”

But Kelchen warned that getting a divided Congress to go for the proposal will be difficult. “If the Democrats take the Senate, it’s a possibility, but it requires the entire Democratic caucus staying together, getting Republicans to vote for it,” he said.

A scheduled Jan. 5 runoff for two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia will determine which party controls the chamber.

An ‘all-hands-on-deck’ approach

Biden’s focus on tuition-free community college and debt relief is also likely to get a boost from his nomination of Rouse​ to head the ​. The dean of Princeton’s Woodrow School of Public and International Affairs, she previously served on Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, with community colleges and postsecondary education part of her portfolio.

If confirmed by the Senate, Rouse would be the first Black chair of the council and the fourth woman to lead it. She college completion should be a key focus of federal, state, and local policy: “If educational attainment is to improve in the U.S. we need an ‘all-hands-on-deck’ approach,” she wrote in 2015. “That is, we need to see improvement from state and federal governments, the educational institutions, and from the students themselves.”

Rouse has noted that research shows simplifying the federal financial aid process can translate into both higher college enrollment and persistence. Community colleges enroll nearly half of undergraduates and are located within commuting distance of most Americans, she said, so “it makes a lot of sense” to make them the focus of White House higher education efforts.

Eric Waldo, who served as executive director of Michelle Obama’s Reach Higher Initiative, and who now serves as chief access and equity officer at the Common Application, recalled that Rouse was among a group of policy experts pushing to expand college access during her time in the White House. She brings “an incredible history as an equity advocate” in education, he said. “Having someone with her body of experience and her commitment and understanding that space is a big deal.”

Thomas Kane, an economist and professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said Rouse’s selection “is great news for all of us in education.”

Kane, who also served briefly on the council during the first Clinton administration, said Rouse is a non-ideological “friend of evidence” who is “quite fair-minded.”

Another economist, Judith Scott-Clayton of Columbia University’s Teachers College, noted Rouse’s expertise in higher education policy, the role of community colleges, and student loans. “She was studying these things and building the research base well before these were considered hot topics.”

Moves possible without Congress

While a narrowly divided Congress could severely limit a new two years of tuition-free community college or training to eligible students, several observers say Biden could basically accomplish the same goal by using regulatory authority to give students greater access to aid.

Whether Democrats gain control of the Senate or not in 2021, Kelchen, the Seton Hall scholar, said the Biden administration “has to choose which battles they want to pick. Do they want to focus on increasing the Pell Grant? Do they want to focus on tuition-free community college, or do they want to focus on student debt forgiveness?”

Focusing on debt forgiveness or deferment, he said, could actually give the administration a way to sidestep Congress via executive action.

Waldo, the former Reach Higher Initiative director, agreed. “The reality is that we’re unsure still of what Congress is going to look like. But I do think people understand that Americans need help right now. And you have to hope that folks are going to come together to support higher ed, to support students, to support workers in need who need to re-credential, retrain and enter the knowledge economy safely — and to contribute meaningfully to society.”

Astrid Tuminez, president of Utah Valley University, said the focus should be on keeping higher education “affordable, accessible and flexible,” especially for low-income and working students. More than one in three of Tuminez’s students are first-generation college students, she said, and 81 percent work while attending class.

“It would be great to see a renaissance of higher education, but not not the education that we have always preferred, which is for the few select people,” Tuminez said, noting that elite institutions educate about six percent of students. “How do we unlock the potential of the other 94 percent?”

With the Covid-related recession still in full swing — nearly 5 million workers who had jobs before the pandemic are still — community colleges could play a pivotal role.

Having Rouse at the head of the council, Scott-Clayton said, “means that her expertise on critical areas of higher education policy can be infused into the administration’s broader economic agenda, rather than being seen as a stand-alone issue. That’s what gets me most excited. I think it reflects the importance of the education agenda, including the community college policy agenda, to our nation’s overall economic health and recovery.”

Updated

There is no official word, but the signs are pointing to Lily Eskelsen García, former president of the National Education Association, as a strong contender as President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for U.S. secretary of education.

“The former president of the nation’s largest teachers union is working to lock up support from Republican senators and Hispanic leaders in her bid to be picked as education secretary, according to officials familiar with the talks,” .

Putting a longtime teachers union officer in the secretary’s chair would be certain to meet with resistance from Senate Republicans, but Biden’s choice needs to swing no more than two GOP votes to be confirmed. This explains why Eskelsen García has reached out to Sen. Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, a former education secretary himself and the recipient of NEA’s Friend of Education award in 2016.

With Biden pledging to put a teacher in the position, Eskelsen García left another clue: She just changed her Twitter handle from @Lily_NEA to @LilytheTeacher.

She is a natural as a public figure. , “Eskelsen has it all — intelligence, looks, charisma, passion and wit, and she can sing, play the guitar and write, too, all of which she brings to bear on her mission for education.”

Better yet, she embodies the all-American rags-to-riches story. She worked her way up from a Colorado Springs school cafeteria “salad girl” (“I could not be trusted with hot food,” she says) to become president of the nation’s largest labor union and now, perhaps, beyond. It’s an irresistible story.

But Eskelsen García’s ladder to success had many rungs, and one in particular was an unusual combination of circumstances, timing, political calculation and good fortune.

Some years after her short stint as salad girl, Eskelsen García got her degree in elementary education and began teaching middle school in Utah’s Granite School District. She didn’t become formally active in her union, the Granite Education Association, until 1985, when she volunteered to serve on the bargaining committee.

In 1989, she was named Utah Teacher of the Year. That same year, teachers were at odds with the Republican governor and legislature over tax cuts. Teachers in the Davis School District staged a that caught on elsewhere, including in Granite. The Utah Education Association then organized a one-day walkout across the state.

It was in this environment that Eskelsen García had her coming-out as a union activist. The state union saw the advantage of having the state teacher of the year as its public face. She addressed a large rally with equal amounts of music and snark for lawmakers, and a star was born. She was soon making multiple media appearances on the state union’s behalf.

Less than two months later, she filed to run for vice president against the incumbent, Beth Beck. This was a highly ambitious move for Eskelsen García, who had never held elected union office at any level.

By February 1990, there was strong rank-and-file pressure within the union to hold a statewide strike for higher wages. Then-President Jim Campbell was influential at the statehouse, but he didn’t seem to have the stomach for drastic action.

“There has been so much focus on striking that even I am tired of it, so I know legislators are sick to death of it,” in a story published Feb. 14, 1990. “You can only get someone in a corner and keep them there so long. The governor and legislators have been working with us, but they are not going to keep living with this threat.”

Campbell didn’t reflect the sentiments of his members. Two days later, they overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike. Campbell presented a compromise deal he had reached with the governor to the union’s board of directors the next day, but it was rejected.

For two weeks, it was touch-and-go on whether a new deal could be reached or a statewide strike would be launched. Just before the legislature adjourned, lawmakers passed a package of bills that increased the average teacher salary by 4.3 percent. The union board accepted the deal, and a strike was averted.

But the writing was on the wall for Campbell. In April 1990, he due to health and family considerations. A week later, he suffered a heart attack and had to be hospitalized. Beck, as vice president, assumed office for the remaining three months of Campbell’s term. But there was a problem.

The deadline had passed for filing as a candidate for union office, and Campbell had been set to run unopposed. There was no provision in the bylaws for what to do next. The union decided to hold an immediate all-member write-in election beginning May 1 and ending May 22.

Any bio you can read today about Eskelsen García includes the fact she won the presidency as a write-in candidate. None of them mentions that all candidates in the presidential election were write-ins. Beck announced her candidacy April 12, Eskelsen García two days later, but technically any member with three years or more as a member was eligible.

One might think it would be a cakewalk to victory for such a popular teacher and activist. But it’s an unspoken rule among NEA and its affiliates that one must first serve as vice president before becoming president. Campbell was vice president to Betty Condie, and she was vice president to her predecessor. In the natural order of things, Beck should simply step up.

Eskelsen García was trying to go from nothing to the presidency of the state union in less than a year. This was unprecedented, anywhere. But if she was ideally suited to make union history, she also got some serendipitous help.

On May 9, 1990, in the midst of the election, the union released a statement revealing it had hired an accounting firm to audit the accounts controlled by Campbell.

“There are problems with the immediate past president’s account,” . “The audit is now in progress. Any differences between UEA and the immediate past president will be submitted to arbitration.”

Whether this unusual public announcement had any effect on the election outcome will never be known, but days after the results were tabulated, the union announced it had resolved its issues with Campbell. It didn’t sound like it ended amicably.

The union “brought forth proof of double vouchering, inappropriate use of the UEA credit card and removal of UEA property for personal use.” Campbell, it said, agreed to pay restitution and that settled the matter.

Campbell had a different take. “UEA owed me much more than I owed UEA,” . He said he planned to reconcile his union accounts but was delayed by his hospitalization. The union issued its press statement before he had a chance to complete the paperwork.

By then, the election was over. Eskelsen García won the presidency over three other announced candidates, including Beck. She had also outpolled Beck for vice president. There are no surviving records on the internet of the victory margin or the turnout.

Eskelsen García’s election didn’t exactly signal a new era for Utah teachers. In 1991, the state provided only about half the national average pay raise for teachers. Members will “feel very let down,” .

However, her star was on the rise. She took a leave of absence from teaching while serving as the state union’s president until 1996, when she was elected to the NEA Executive Committee. She returned to teaching part time until 2002, although she interrupted it with a failed campaign for Congress in 1998. But that’s another tale for another day. She has been a full-time union officer for the last 18 years.

Having stunned Utah and the union world with its neophyte president, the state union quickly returned to traditional form. The board of directors appointed Phyllis Sorensen as Eskelsen García’s vice president in July 1990, and Sorensen succeeded Eskelsen García as president in 1996. Sorensen was succeeded by her vice president in 2002, who was succeeded by her vice president in 2006.

The union has held no further all-write-in elections. To my knowledge, no state union president since has been voted in by write-in ballots, nor has any been elected without first holding a lower elected union office.

Eskelsen García’s skills and personality have brought her to the brink of attaining the highest education policy office in the land, but she also benefited from a confluence of events in 1989-90 that accelerated her rise through the ranks.

That mixed message continued down ballot despite the sense that 2020 would be a decisive year.

In statehouses, little appreciably changed, so Republicans will have a stronger hand than expected for this redistricting cycle, which is no small thing. Democrats unexpectedly lost seats in the House of Representatives, and progressive priorities like affirmative action and tax reform failed — in California, in 2020. But Arizona voters narrowly approved a tax on high earners earmarked for schools, and Colorado passed a sin tax for the same purpose. Colorado voters also approved a straight-up state income tax reduction, Illinois voters rejected a progressive state tax plan and Arkansans kept higher tax rates for transportation.

President Donald Trump carried Florida, a state Republicans dominate statewide, and voters approved a phased-in increase of the minimum wage to $15. This follows a similar blend of progressive initiatives and Republican officeholders winning in the Sunshine State in 2018.

There are plenty of facts for plenty of theories about what a restless and divided American electorate wants. So, what, now, for schools?

It’s hard to know, though there is a very 1990s feel to things. Education seems an issue that out-of-power Republicans, if the GOP can escape the specter of Trump, will highlight as it redefines itself for 2024. After the 2020 election, it’s a stretch to say the Republicans are a true working-class party, yet it’s not hard to see the glimmers of that future — and an education component to it, especially a parent choice focus. Meanwhile, Democrats are under intense pressure from institutional interests that feel they’ve been shut out of policymaking for too long.

Democrats mostly represent supplier interests in education (schools and universities), so there is fertile ground for the party that steps up to aggressively and consistently represent the consumers (parents and kids). This seems especially potent in the wake of COVID-19. In a Bellwether Education poll of 1,234 representative American adults in October, 42 percent overall, and 47 percent of women, said the pandemic had made them feel more favorable toward school choice (just 6 percent said it had made them less supportive).

The past four decades have seen an increase in education spending that most domestic policy domains would envy; but for a variety of reasons, teachers and schools don’t always benefit from those resources. That leads to an appetite for education investment, also made more acute by the coronavirus crisis. That’s probably the one education issue Democrats of all stripes agree on.

Still, deep divides about structural issues still lurk — in particular, how much choice parents should have about where their kids attend school, how schools should be held accountable for their performance and what reforms should accompany those resources. There is a lazy framing to intra-Democratic fights that defaults to left versus center. But in education, the alignments are less linear — and, thankfully, more interesting. For instance, in November, a coalition of interest groups from the civil rights and education worlds pleading against blanket waivers allowing states to skip assessments again in spring 2021.

The letter, and persistent demands for transparency and accountability from groups across the left and center-left spectrum, illustrate how the Democratic divide in education is not so much accountability versus resources as it is accountability-plus-funding versus just funding.

That’s the crux of the K-12 environment President-elect Joe Biden is walking into. Democratic education reformers have generally supported investments in schools and public services that are related to schools (and that reform historically inequitable state school finance schemes). The debate turns on what sort of accountability should accompany those resources, and too often the answer is none or provisions so vague as to be meaningless. It’s why you didn’t hear too much pushback against , but everyone is up in arms about charter schools and testing.

Democrats don’t have to become an anything-goes school-choice party — and they shouldn’t, as there is good reason for skepticism about some choice ideas. However, it’s not politically tenable to be an across-the-board anti-school choice party in 21st century America and hold a diverse political coalition together. And make no mistake, that’s the practical effect of policies that, for example, allow only school districts to approve charter schools.

The awkward problem for Democrats is that majorities of Black and Hispanic Americans support school choice options and are more likely than white progressives to do so. The good news for Democrats is that there are relatively few single-issue education voters in federal races; the bad news is that Republicans don’t have to make deep inroads with Black and Hispanic voters to throw up electoral roadblocks. Twenty percent Black support, rather than the approximately 12 percent Trump received in 2020, would put Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin back in the Republican column.

Besides, it’s an ironic political liability that at a time when the country, and in particular Democrats, are discussing structural inequality and racism in American life, ideas about giving poor parents choices or holding schools accountable for addressing racial disparities remain so controversial. Especially when a political formula of investing more in schools while reforming the system enjoys broad support from voters. Among Democrats, why should schooling be the one place giving the poor money and power is somehow a bad idea?

Long term, asking that question and resolving the tension at the heart of the Democratic coalition matters a lot more — both for the political fortunes of Democrats and, more importantly, for Americans scrambling to give their kids a fighting chance in an unforgiving economy — than who, specifically, the next secretary of education is. The secretary pick is about who has leverage now; the real question facing Democrats is about the party’s future.

Andrew J. Rotherham is a co-founder and partner at Bellwether Education, a national nonprofit organization working to support educational innovation and improve educational outcomes for low-income students, and serves on ����Ӱ��’s board of directors. In addition, among other professional work, he is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report, writes the blog Eduwonk.com, teaches at The University of Virginia and is a senior advisor at Whiteboard Advisors.

Soon after the election, the National Education Association released its “” in which it recommended initiatives in 27 areas for the incoming federal government to champion. Among these was “tax fairness.”

The union wants to “repeal or amend certain tax breaks in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) for the wealthy and corporations, and replace them with a progressive tax system based on individual and corporate ability to pay in order to yield sufficient revenues to address national needs.” Additionally, NEA opposes “tax loopholes or giveaways that reduce revenues and shelter corporations and high-income individuals from paying taxes.”

Then, the day before Thanksgiving, NEA filed its annual financial disclosure report with the U.S. Department of Labor. It revealed that the union took in $375 million in dues during the 2019-20 school year, all of it tax-free. That was $6 million more than in the previous year.

That’s not all. NEA sold more than $209 million of its stocks and securities during the year, an increase of more than 3,200 percent from 2018-19. For an individual or a business, such a large selloff would trigger a large capital gains tax bill. But NEA is exempt from capital gains taxes.

But when an organization accumulates that much cash, it doesn’t stuff it into mattresses. NEA reinvested its profits into stocks and other securities to the tune of $278.5 million.

NEA is also specifically . A little back-of-the-envelope math using D.C.’s property tax rates and the $102.8 million value of NEA’s headquarters building comes to about a $1.8 million tax exemption.

NEA doesn’t operate entirely tax-free. It still must pay income tax on “unrelated business income.” That is, revenue from businesses placing ads in NEA publications, book sales and the like. All told, the union paid $7.2 million in direct taxes of all types on more than $603 million in gross revenue in 2019-20. That’s an effective tax rate of 1.2 percent.

NEA’s policy playbook declares the union’s opposition to “arbitrary maximum limits on any state or local government’s ability to spend or tax, particularly since such limits have a negative impact on the full funding of schools.” How is NEA’s privileged tax position benefiting D.C.’s public schools?

To be sure, there are legions of tax-exempt organizations with a wide variety of missions, and they span the entire political spectrum. But you won’t find too many as wealthy as the National Education Association spending those tax-free revenues on campaigns to insist that others pay their “fair share.”

For a beleaguered federal workforce under constant attack from the White House since President Donald Trump took office, his refusal to concede and to cooperate with the Biden-Harris transition is a grand insult added to four years of injuries. Morale is falling at numerous federal agencies, and new data show the Department of Education has the most demoralized workforce of all.

Since 2002, a representative of federal employees has asked about workforce issues that are key barometers of an agency’s relative health and morale. These data allow us observe patterns within and across agencies, and draw conclusions about how satisfied federal employees are about their working conditions. The findings are deeply and particularly worrisome for the DOE.

In the most recent survey, a larger percentage of DOE officials said they are ready to leave than at any other agency in the federal government. Nearly half (42 percent) indicated that they intend to soon retire or depart for some other job — the highest rate in 15 years. And though other agencies are expecting high turnover, none approaches the DOE.

This really should not come as a surprise. Using indicators from the same data source, a list of best places to work among mid-sized agencies from the Partnership for Public Service the DOE last. A closer look at the data shows why. When asked about their job satisfaction or the sense of accomplishment they get from their work, DOE employees again ranked at or near the very bottom. These are both phenomena that have trended precipitously downward since the beginning of the Trump administration.

Employees likely have soured on Secretary Betsy DeVos. Since joining the cabinet, she the agency’s workforce by over 500 positions, a 13 percent decrease in just her first two years, according to Inside Higher Ed. And this budget-tightening hasn’t been associated with improved performance at the agency. According to reporting by ����Ӱ�� just last month, DeVos’ DOE has been sued more than 455 times, 100 more than the previous administration.

This is a major problem for the incoming Biden administration. Employee morale is not easily recouped without a conscientious focus on the past, as much as new leadership might be eager to move forward in new directions. This requires leadership that is innately familiar with the workforce, upholds professional norms (regardless of policy direction) and secures internal and external stakeholder support in establishing a vision for the organization.

Speculation is already running high on who will be nominated in the next couple of weeks. Regardless of who is confirmed by the Senate as the next secretary and who fills other important senior positions, they all will face an agency with a dispirited workforce and a high likelihood of a mass exodus. Rebuilding the trust and confidence of the agency’s employees of the new leadership team after the inauguration. Retaining those who are on the verge of leaving should be the second priority. Failing to do this will stymie any policy goals for the next four years and hobble the agency’s ability to better cope with the terrible effects of the pandemic on students, teachers and schools.

William Resh is C.C. Crawford professor in management and performance and associate professor, University of Southern California. Heath Brown is associate professor of public policy at the City University of New York, John Jay College and the Grad Center.

“You are going to have a military family back in the White House,” she told families of veterans and active duty service members in a November virtual address. At the recent Military Child Education Coalition’s summit, she announced her intention to relaunch , an initiative she co-led with Michelle Obama during her previous time in Washington.

That effort focused on the challenges confronting the roughly 2 million children of U.S. military and veteran families. About 1.2 million have a parent on active duty and the majority are in regular districts, not Department of Defense schools. They transfer, on average, six to nine times during their K-12 years and frequently adjust to inconsistent state academic standards and graduation requirements.

“They face long separations from parents, multiple moves, and increased stress and anxiety,” Biden, the grandmother of two military children, told the coalition. President-elect Joe Biden’s son, Beau, who died of cancer in 2015, served in the Army National Guard during the war in Iraq. Jill Biden has frequently cited the example of a teacher who supported her granddaughter Natalie during her father’s deployment by hanging a photo of his unit in the classroom. “It made her feel special,” she told the coalition. “It showed her how special his service was.”

In 2016, Jill Biden spoke to members of the , urging them to include military children in their work. And she hosted a conference on , a project devoted to integrating knowledge about military-connected children into teacher preparation programs.

“She’s going to have a lot more power now,” said Ron A. Astor, a professor at the University of California Los Angeles who participated in those events and led research projects involving school districts serving high numbers of military-connected students. “I think military families have been off the radar since she’s left.”

Announcements of incoming White House senior staff members reinforce the notion that the future first lady plans to focus on military children and families. , who previously worked as director for higher education and military families at the Biden Foundation, will serve as Jill Biden’s policy director.

‘It is an identity’

President �հ��ܳ���’s relationship with the military community has been mixed. He has frequently clashed with top Pentagon officials, but said he has the support of service members. Last year, funds intended for the construction of schools on military bases to help build a border wall. And his past about service members drew fire from veterans and elected officials in the weeks before the election.

Joining Forces took root during the Obama administration amid growing awareness of the strain the extended war in the Middle East put on military children. linked deployment of a parent to higher rates of depression, anxiety, and aggression.

, which Astor led at the University of Southern California, found more substance use and weapon carrying among military students than among their nonmilitary peers, and that children with a parent on active duty were more likely to be bullied than their peers.

The USC project, with funding from the Department of Defense Education Activity, trained future school social workers for positions in eight San Diego-area districts. Schools also added Veterans Day ceremonies and other events to recognize the military community.

The Chula Vista Elementary School District, where more than 10 percent of students have family members in the military, has eight “military and family life counselors” who help students through transitions and provide training for teachers on aspects of military life.

New survey data shows the rates of substance use, depression and bullying have declined in those districts, Astor said. He attributed the improvements to new personnel who understand the stressors military students face.

“The reductions are dramatic,” he said of the data, which has yet to be released. He added that positive results, such as students feeling connected to peers and adults at school, are increasing.

Students who attend on-base schools and then change to district schools can experience culture shock, explained , who grew up as an Army “brat,” moving six times by sixth grade. She switched to a regular district in middle school and thinks it’s important for educators to recognize experiences like hers.

“I think Army brats, military brats are resilient,” Dasher said, adding that being a “culturally responsive teacher” includes being sensitive to what it’s like to grow up as a military child. “It is an identity.”

Now married to an officer in the Georgia Army National Guard, and with a daughter in kindergarten, the family is only together three weekends a month. They live in Atlanta, but Maj. Russell Dasher works in Savannah. Unlike families with an active duty service member, those with a parent in the National Guard aren’t always transferred when there’s a new assignment.

Teachers who understand the differences between branches can help students feel more accepted in the classroom, added Dasher, an Army veteran and former English teacher who now works in educational technology. “A Navy brat’s experiences during this war on terror have been demonstrably different than an Army brat or a Marine brat,” who might have had a parent deployed multiple times since 2001, she said.

Researchers, and advocates pushed for better data collection to ensure that schools know whether they have military children in their classrooms. The federal Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 requires states to report achievement and other data for students who have a parent on active duty.

According to the most recent from the Data Quality Campaign, 32 states now meet that requirement, up from 19 last year.

Talking to ‘every American’ 

Becky Porter, president of the Military Child Education Coalition, said she’s optimistic that Jill Biden’s role as first lady will spark a renewed focus on the academic and social-emotional challenges facing military children.

“Her position … will provide her a platform to talk to every American,” she said.

The organization’s new show students are often frustrated by having to retake assessments and courses every time they move and that educators don’t have a strong understanding of the military lifestyle.

Another , conducted by the Institute for Veterans and Military Families, shows that resources related to K-12 schools were among the top needs of active duty service members during the pandemic.

On top of the Every Student Succeeds Act, there is a growing voluntary effort at the state level to identify that cater to students with a parent on active duty, in the National Guard, or reserves.

Rachel Bell, the wife of an Army veteran in San Antonio, said such a designation could be especially helpful in her area so “parents who are on their way here can make educated decisions about what’s best for their family.”

While it calls itself “Military City, USA,” the San Antonio metropolitan area has 17 school districts, and families that have been transferred might not know how to “navigate the local dynamics,” she said. One issue important to military families, for example, is whether schools allow for a student whose deployed parent is home on leave.

In addition to voicing support for military children, some advocates are hoping the new administration will support funding increases for Impact Aid. The program makes up for the loss of property taxes for public schools on military installations and other federally owned land. The Trump administration’s fiscal 2021 budget recommends a decrease, saying that after roughly 40 years of the payments, schools should have adjusted to the lack of tax revenue. Both the House and Senate funding bills include an increase.

“The vast majority of military-connected students attend our nation’s public schools,” said Hilary Goldmann, executive director of the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, which represents more than 1,200 districts. “Impact Aid is a critical funding source for the school districts that educate them.”

Disclosure: Linda Jacobson co-wrote a collection of books with Ron A. Astor on schools that serve military children.

The possibility for women to hold a high office has been here, of course, for over 100 years, since the first woman ran for office and women began to gain the right to vote. But Harris’s commitment to collaborating with and advancing women leaders will alter the landscape.

As she delivered her acceptance speech that night in Delaware, Harris announced that while she is the first, she will not be the last. She has credited her mother with raising her to make sure the barriers she broke would create openings for others to pass through. As the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history, she seems poised to bring collaborators from diverse backgrounds to top-level conversations, and to focus on the interests and perspectives of women and girls who look like her.

https://twitter.com/MellodyHobson/status/1325124871601360896

We should not expect that, because of her gender and her cultural roots, Harris will include women and people from underrepresented groups in her circle — her job is to rely on the right people, whoever they may be. Yet she has made it clear that, as one of the hallmarks of her leadership, she is determined to reach a hand back and bring her sisters with her.

This means that the nation’s top leadership will be looking for a pipeline of brilliant, highly qualified women, especially Black and brown women. How do we supply that pipeline? The answer lies, in part, in excellent public education — an area where we know there is much work to do. The new administration has signaled early on that it will bring renewed focus to ensuring quality public education and safe, supportive schools for every student. This will be crucial for girls, young people of color, and LGBTQ+ students, who have not always found the supports they need in schools.

Beyond schools, however, building a more equitable society also means educating and encouraging girls to be involved actively in civics and the political process. There is a relationship between young people’s civic experience and their political engagement and future voting. When girls understand early the importance of voting and the political process—at local, state, and national levels — they build a lifelong commitment to being civically engaged. We must continue to talk about political and civic representation, and ensure that girls see political leadership as not only a possibility, but an achievable, vital, and meaningful one.

That kind of vision requires that young women have the opportunity to see themselves in positions of power, an opportunity often denied them by long-standing racial and social inequality. Representation matters. Until recently, young women have had fewer role models in politics. They remain less likely to be encouraged by parents, teachers, and mentors to run for office, and they are less likely to think about themselves as qualified to pursue a political career.

As a result, women remain underrepresented in public office. They are half the population, but just a quarter of members of Congress and women of color, who are almost 20 percent of the population, hold only 9 percent of Congressional seats. However, the tide is slowly turning. There are now more women in political leadership than ever before. At least 141 women will serve in Congress next year, breaking the record of 127 set in 2019, according to data from the . These women, like Harris herself, will give millions of girls a new sense of possibility.

The road to becoming “the first” is never simple or easy. It takes incredible focus, determination, and resilience. Too often, “resilience” translates as “fix it yourself because society won’t help.” Yet the ability to rise, rise up, and rise above is a powerful personal and cultural attribute, one passed down from grandmothers to granddaughters, and now one modeled by our vice president–elect. Resiliency does not gloss over the reality of systemic injustice. It allows us to resolutely and fiercely fight for justice.

The road ahead will be anything but easy for Harris, as she and President-elect Joe Biden inherit a global health crisis, an economic downturn, racial unrest, and a deepening political divide. Harris herself will also face pressures that women and girls, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds, know too well: to be twice as good, to be a credit to the demographic, to endure skepticism and scrutiny. But she will make it possible for more women to rise to the highest level. Harris is inspiring young girls to take the lead with confidence.

One real possibility is: very little. If McConnell decides to play obstructionist-in-chief, as he did when he to make Barack Obama a one-term president back in 2010, divided government may simply lead to further gridlock. We will still see another COVID-19 relief package, including money for schools — which McConnell himself — but it will be on the smaller side and may mark the beginning of the end of bipartisan comity.

But — call me naïve if you like — there’s another option: Biden, Pelosi and McConnell could find ways to work together for the common good. (Imagine that!) With over 100 years of legislative experience among them, they know how to pull the levers of government and get bills across the finish line. They’ve . And given that they are all nearing the end of their careers, perhaps they will decide to set aside the country’s destructive hyperpartisanship and make some deals for the American people.

President-Elect Biden could make an opening bid for this sort of partnership by nominating someone for secretary of education who can command widespread support. That obviously means not Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers or Lily Eskelsen Garcia of the National Education Association, both of whom would struggle to earn any Republican confirmation votes in the Senate. On the other hand, a highly respected university president, such as University of Maryland-Baltimore County’s Freeman Hrabowski, would sail through and could set a positive tone moving forward.

Then there’s the next COVID relief bill. Here, it’s the Republicans who should show some flexibility, giving the green light to more spending than they might typically support — especially for children and young Americans. Priorities include dollars to aid in reopening schools, high-dosage tutoring to address learning loss, broadband access for the millions of American families still living without it and targeted student loan forgiveness for unemployed young adults and those doing public service, including teachers in high-needs areas. Republicans should certainly fight to make sure all these funds reach private schools and charter schools, too; if that condition is met, they should be willing to open their (er, our) wallets.

No, I don’t expect rainbows and unicorns. The Founders separated powers across the branches of government with the expectation that they would serve as a check on one another, but that, too, could help the cause of education reform. Take the fraught issue of charter schools. Even though urban charters continue to rack up strong evidence of , Biden took an on the campaign trail, surely to please his teachers union supporters. It may fall to Senate Republicans, and a few moderate Democrats, to defend these Davids against the union Goliath, making sure charter startup funds aren’t eliminated in appropriations bills or that onerous provisions aren’t snuck into charter school grant competitions.

Indeed, vigorous Senate oversight of the Department of Education could check the Biden administration in a number of areas. On school discipline, for instance, it could encourage his appointees to find a between Obama-era policies and the Trump ones — working to lower suspension rates of kids of color without resorting to a de facto quota system. They might even look for common ground on Title IX, picking up some of Secretary Betsy DeVos’s moves to allow accused students to defend themselves while still ensuring protections for those who face sexual harassment, or worse.

As New York Times columnist , “the other side is not going away. We have to dispense with the fantasy that after the next miracle election our side will suddenly get everything it wants. We have to live with one another.” So it is too on education policy. Neither side is going to get everything it wants. But by working together, we can help move education forward, together.

Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Rather than casting a ballot himself, he urged his college-aged peers, who traditionally have a poor track record of showing up on Election Day, to make their voices heard.

“Being able to get other people to go out and vote is my form of voting,” said Cisneros, a computer science student at Benedictine University, a private Catholic school in Mesa, Arizona. As a fellow with the nonprofit immigrant-rights group Aliento, he joined a get-out-the-vote campaign that encouraged more than 25,000 young and Latino voters in the Phoenix area to participate in the election. “I was able to convince three other friends that weren’t really sure about wanting to vote to go vote.”

Efforts by Cisneros and other young people across the country may have been crucial to President-elect Joe Biden’s success. That’s especially true in several key states like Arizona and Georgia, where Biden outpolled President Donald Trump by more than 11,000 and 14,000 votes, respectively. A Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t won either state since the 1990s. In Georgia, young voters have another chance to reshape federal leadership when both of its U.S. Senate seats go to a runoff election in January.

An estimated 50 to 52 percent of eligible Americans 18 to 29 years old cast ballots in the 2020 presidential election, by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University. That’s a sizable surge in youth participation from just four years ago, where it was between 42 and 44 percent. This year, nearly two-thirds of young people cast ballots for Biden, according to CIRCLE.

Though voter turnout spiked this year among all age groups, young people also made up a slightly larger percentage of all voters than they did in 2016, making their support for Biden even more critical.

“Young voters, especially youth of color, powered Joe Biden’s victory,” according to CIRCLE, a leading authority in research on youth civic engagement. “In fact, in states like Georgia and Arizona, Black and Latino youth may have single-handedly made Biden competitive.”

In Georgia, Biden received an estimated 188,000 more votes from young voters than Trump, according to CIRCLE estimates. While Biden secured an estimated 57 percent of young voters in Georgia compared to 39 percent for Trump, the results varied starkly by race. About two-thirds of Georgia’s white youth voted for Trump — but a resounding 90 percent of young Black voters supported Biden.

In total, Georgia voters 18 to 29 years old made up 21 percent of all votes, 4 percentage points above the national average and a larger share than anywhere else in the country.

The youngest voters in Georgia were particularly crucial, CIRCLE found. While an estimated 54 percent of Georgia youth 25 to 29 years old voted for Biden, the president-elect’s support spiked to 60 percent among those 18 to 24 years old.

A blue wave in Georgia has been years in the making. Abby Kiesa, CIRCLE’s deputy director, attributed the rise to sustained youth outreach.

“What we’ve seen over the years with respect to youth engagement is not that young people don’t care,” she said, but are often confused by the process as first-time voters. But a get-out-the-vote effort spearheaded by Stacey Abrams through groups like the New Georgia Project “helped connect the election to their everyday experiences.”

After losing her 2018 gubernatorial bid where there were widespread allegations of voter suppression, Abrams went on to help register .

A united front

Among those new voters was Cameron Nolan, a 21-year-old senior at Morehouse College and president of the historically black institution’s student government association. Though results of the presidential race are now being recounted by hand in Georgia, Biden maintains a lead that election observers say will not be undone, one that may not have materialized had young voters — and Black youth in particular — stayed home on Election Day.

After Abrams lost the governor’s race, Nolan said young voters in his state formed “a united front,” leading to a civic participation surge that turned Georgia blue for the first time in decades.

“A lot of it comes from the fear of the unknown and understand that ‘Alright, we just experienced four years of this particular presidency, are you really comfortable enough with doing another four?’” he said. “For a lot of the young voters whose visions didn’t necessarily align with the president, it became a space where you could say ‘Alright, this is what we could possibly do if we band together.’”

Abrams’s narrow defeat helped Georgia’s Black community understand that they wield significant power, said Nolan, who’s majoring in economics and has accepted a job at Salesforce after graduation.

“It was like “OK, this is the power that we can have if we move as a collective,’ and I think the young Black voter community completely understands that now,” he said. “I just have a large appreciation for the way the youth were able to come up in this election.”

Nolan, who wasn’t old enough to vote in the 2016 election, said the top issues motivating his vote for Biden included climate change and the president-elect’s proposals on college affordability. He also lauded Biden’s proposed $70 billion federal investment in historically black colleges and universities like Morehouse, and blasted Trump on issues of race. After George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer this summer, Nolan used his skills as a filmmaker to share his perspectives on being a Black man in America.

“The Trump presidency led to a lot of overt racism — not to say that racism was incited by President Trump, not to say that he created it — but merely him being in office was representative of individuals being very comfortable with their own personal racist views,” he said. Especially in the Deep South, Trump flags and the Confederate Flag were closely aligned, he said. “These past four years have been kind of unsettling.”

Ahead of the presidential election, the Morehouse College Student Government Association launched nonpartisan get-out-the-vote efforts, which centered largely on social media campaigns because of the pandemic as students attended classes virtually. Efforts included a voter registration drive and providing students with sample ballots so they knew what to expect on Election Day.

But even with the presidential election in the rearview mirror, the student group’s work is far from over. The runoff election in January will decide both U.S. Senate seats — and the central issue of whether the GOP, which has dominated Georgia politics for longer than these voters have been alive, will maintain its control of the chamber. For Georgians who were too young to participate in the presidential election, the January runoff will also be their first chance to cast a ballot.

“A lot of our future efforts will definitely be centered around voter education because we can’t necessarily tell you who to vote for, but my ask is that you always make an informed vote,” Nolan said.

Biden and Latinos

To Cisneros, the presidential election’s outcome was critical to his livelihood and to those of other undocumented people. In Arizona, where Biden was Thursday, 68 percent of Latino youth voted for him.

Cisneros, a college sophomore, was born in Mexico but moved to Arizona with his mother on his 7th birthday to escape an abusive father and because of a medical condition. He arrived at a Phoenix trailer park in June 2008 — too late to be eligible for the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protected young people who had been in the U.S. since 2007.

Over the course of his term in office, Trump waged a yearslong effort to end the DACA program and cracked down on undocumented immigrants. As the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement , Cisneros lived in a state of paralysis and feared that his mother, a hotel housekeeper, could get swept up by ICE.

“There was a sense of panic,” he said. “Every single noise that I heard outside, I looked outside and tried to see if it was ICE or something. We didn’t even leave the house during that time. A lot of people in the community were feeling the same way I was feeling.”

Biden’s victory gives him a sense of optimism. Biden has promised to make immigration reform a top priority, but his success could be hindered if Republicans maintain control of the Senate. And despite Biden’s promise of creating a for an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, Cisneros isn’t holding his breath.

“The pathway to citizenship is something we’ve been promised since Obama and it still hasn’t happened,” he said. “Sure, you can keep your hopes up, but until it happens, you’re going to be very skeptical about what they’re saying.”

Reyna Montoya, Aliento’s founder and CEO, said her group focused on youth engagement because encouraging people to become first-time voters comes with lifelong implications — and in turn could improve the lives of immigrants who are affected by the outcome of elections but are unable to participate themselves.

“Every single decision, from the pandemic to immigration, it includes all of us,” said Montoya, a DACA recipient who immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico in 2003. “I think we have a unique opportunity to ensure that we’re listening to our young voices, the young people who are going to be leading in the future.”

But she also declined to give Biden a ringing endorsement. Deportations surged under Obama, and immigrant rights groups famously labeled him the “Deporter in Chief.” It was during the Obama administration, in 2012, when immigration officials detained her father for nine months before his release. He was just recently granted asylum, she said.

But because Obama approved the DACA program, Montoya said his legacy offers “a bittersweet taste.” In an effort to distance himself, Biden, who served as Obama’s vice president, the former president’s immigration record a “big mistake.”

That’s why it’s important to hold Biden accountable to his promises, Cisneros said. In fact, he accused Biden and the Democratic Party of taking Latino voters for granted. Biden’s with older Latino voters may have handed him defeats in Florida and Texas.

“The younger voter population showed up in Arizona and all across the country,” he said. “I think that if Biden doesn’t do something like a pathway to citizenship and extend DACA, the chances of being reelected are going to be lowered due to the Latinx community.”

Playing the long game

Even after Georgia’s January runoff, Kiesa of CIRCLE noted that efforts in the state could be instrumental in elections for years to come. That’s because the state’s sustained get-out-the-vote campaigns offer a roadmap moving forward for groups interested in increasing civic participation.

“We cannot wait until the last three months before an election and think that we’re going to dramatically change turnout,” she said. “We need both campaigns and people outside of the partisan environment to be thinking about that work.”

Among them, she said, are K-12 teachers. In , CIRCLE found a relationship between civics education in high school and young voter turnout. Young people who said they were taught in high school how to register to vote and were encouraged to show up on Election Day were more likely to follow through. They were also more knowledgeable about voting processes and were more invested in the 2020 election.

In total, nearly two-thirds of survey respondents said they were encouraged to vote in high school and half said they were taught how to register to vote — but the results also found stark racial disparities. While two-thirds of white respondents remembered being encouraged to vote in high school, just half of Black participants recalled similar experiences in high school.

“This is one of the reasons why we believe the education system can be so critical in reducing some of these inequities we see within our systems of election,” she said. “Teachers and K-12 leaders and election officials can all focus a great deal more on that 16- to 18-year-old range — and even earlier if possible — to really make sure that we have a more representative youth electorate.”

Lead Image: Volunteers with the immigrant-rights group Aliento, which launched a campaign to energize young and Latino voters in Arizona, encourage people to go to the polls on Election Day. (Photo courtesy Aliento)

On Nov. 24, Pete Harckham over Republican rival Rob Astorino, securing Democrats a veto-proof supermajority in the New York state Senate. His win followed on the heels of a handful of other closely contested races, including in upstate New York, in Rochester and on Long Island. While hopeful, party leaders considered a supermajority a long shot soon after the election, even as absentee ballots began to steadily erode GOP leads in key districts. A number of Democrats who claimed seats have expressed support for increases to public school funding amid the pandemic, including by taxing the state’s wealthiest residents, progressive measures opposed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.��

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES: See our full coverage of the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools following Election Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter.��

Election night seemed like a success for New York Republicans, with GOP candidates not only pulling ahead in enough contested state Senate races to stave off what some had hoped would be a Democratic supermajority, but also taking back seats in Albany’s upper chamber.

Voters, however, returned about 1.87 million absentee ballots statewide this year, according to the New York State Board of Elections, and those votes are beginning to turn the tide in certain districts, leaving some wondering if the state could have experienced its own “red mirage.” Absentee ballots, cast in far greater numbers this year because of the pandemic, have skewed heavily Democratic across the nation.

Going into the Nov. 3 vote, Democrats needed just two more seats in the 63-member Senate, barring defections, to secure a supermajority. While Republican and Democratic party leaders are still unclear on what 2020’s outcome will ultimately be for the state Senate overall, most agree that a supermajority remains a long shot.

“If we gain three [seats] upstate and lose three downstate, no, it doesn’t give you a supermajority,” Democratic state Chairman Jay Jacobs told ����Ӱ�� Friday. “If you save some [seats] on Long Island, it just might.”

According to , Democrats have won 28 seats and Republicans have won nine, leaving 26 races too close to call.

Had it been achieved, a Democratic supermajority would have cost Andrew Cuomo, the state’s moderate Democratic governor, his veto power. That, in turn, could have ushered in major changes for school funding, as lawmakers try to pay for the precautions necessary for sending kids back to school amid the pandemic. Several of the bills up for consideration would have delivered that money to schools by taxing the state’s wealthiest residents. That also appears unlikely now.

Cheryl Couser, the deputy director of public information at the New York State Board of Elections, said that while in the past, absentee ballots have comprised a very small percentage of the state’s overall vote, this year has been different.

About 2.4 million absentee ballots were distributed to voters statewide, she said, and the 1.87 million that were sent back — over four times the number received in 2016 — are now in the process of being reviewed and counted. Ballots submitted by military or overseas voters postmarked by Nov. 3 can still be received through Nov. 16 by county boards.

New Yorkers weren’t able to start counting absentee ballots until Nov. 6. Since then, Democrats have made gains in eight state Senate districts, and progressives hope that change signals an overall shift in their favor.

Democrat Rachel May of Syracuse saw that movement in her own district: late on the night of Nov. 5, she was in a near-even tie with Republican challenger Sam Rodgers, but she pulled ahead once the absentee votes started rolling in.

“I was expecting to pick up about 8,000 or 10,000 in the absentee votes,” she told ����Ӱ��. “I’m on track to pick up over 12,000. That bodes well for some of my colleagues who are right on the edge.”

May, whose 2018 win coincided with the Democrats winning a majority in the Senate after of GOP control, declared victory Thursday night.

“All of the races are shifting,” she said. “It’s changing as we speak.”

Jacobs was hopeful about potential Democratic wins but said the jury’s still out. “The outcome is dependent on whether or not the margins can be overcome by the heavily Democratic absentee voters,” he said. “We’ll just have to see.”

He’s not hopeful about Sen. Monica Martinez’s race in Suffolk County, where the progressive is down by a huge margin: 43 percent to Alexis Weik’s 57 percent. But he thinks other incumbent Democrats, including Sen. Jim Gaughran in Long Island’s 5th Senate District and Kevin Thomas in the neighboring 6th, could win with roughly 500-vote margins.

“Then there’s [Andrew] Gournardes in Brooklyn,” he said. “There are a lot of absentee ballots to be opened there, we may win that. And [Westchester incumbent] Peter Harkham’s in a similar position. A lot of Democratic absentee ballots are in, we just have to count them.”

New York State Republican Chairman Nick Langworthy disagrees. “We’re confident that we’ve stopped the supermajority, and we’ll make gains,” he said. “We’re just not sure how many.”

Without the supermajority, Democrats would be fighting an uphill battle to get tax-the-wealthy legislation passed.

“Some of [the bills] are, in theory, good ideas,” said Jacobs, a longtime Cuomo ally, “but the practicality of it— I think there are unintended consequences.” He cited the oft-mentioned possibility of wealthy New Yorkers fleeing the state. The bills under consideration would tax New Yorkers making at least $1 million a year.

“A stronger Republican conference will hopefully slow down some of the aggressive leftward policies we’ve seen in the last two years,” said Langworthy, whose candidates ran on law-and-order concerns and their opposition to the state’s recently adopted bail reform.

Last week, when it looked more like Republicans had carried the day, Cuomo , “It shouldn’t have been this close. I believe the Republicans beat the Democrats on the messaging. I think they branded Democrats as anti-law and order. And that hurt Democrats.”

Jacobs told this week that the agenda embraced by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other New York progressives “doomed” Democrats in more purple parts of the state.

Looking ahead, he and May were hopeful that the Democrat who won on the top of the ticket, president-elect Joe Biden, will offer some support in January.

“One way or another, we have to figure out how we’re going to fund schools and educate children in every community in New York,” Jacobs said.

2020’s KEY EDUCATION VOTES: See our full coverage of the 46 races that could reshape America’s schools following Election Day — and get the latest updates on state policies and students’ challenges during the pandemic by signing up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter.��

In the midst of this year’s nationwide poll worker shortage due to the coronavirus pandemic, I decided to answer the call to serve our democracy by stepping away from my job as special projects and community manager at ����Ӱ�� for a day and working as a poll worker, or election judge as they’re known in my local community in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Back in 2018, I co-founded , a nonpartisan voter mobilization and education initiative to empower Ethiopian and Eritrean Americans to get civically involved. My Ethiopian-American parents migrated to the United States when I was 2 years old and since then, have encouraged me to find meaningful ways to give back to our beloved communities. Through Habeshas Vote, I helped organize, educate and mobilize our communities to do more in this election cycle by phone-banking, canvassing, donating and safely serving in the places where they live and work.

That also meant I had to ‘walk the walk’ by doing the same.

I felt that if more people in our communities saw that younger and diverse individuals, who were actually reflective of them and their friends and families, were stepping up to be poll workers, then they might be more inclined to want to participate in the electoral process, too. It also turned out that my presence at the polls served another unintended purpose: translating for voters who speak Amharic—one of the major languages spoken in Ethiopia—who had a challenging time understanding the ballot. This allowed more voters to feel more empowered because they had more access to the information they needed to make a more informed decision, while also ensuring that they felt a part of our country’s democratic process overall.

Prior to this historic election cycle, I wasn’t fully aware of all of the contributions poll workers make to help ensure all of our elections are fair and free. Upon receiving my poll worker assignment one week before Election Day, I started to devise a plan of action for the actual day, including brushing up on my poll worker training materials, deciding which comfortable shoes to wear and figuring out how much coffee I would need to bring to help me endure the projected 16-hour shift. On Nov. 3, I arrived at my polling site in the gym at Northwestern High School at 5:45 am, to find that we still had plenty of tasks remaining to safely prepare our location for voting and decisions to make about who would be serving at each station prior to the polls opening at 7a.m.

Although we had a mandatory training session the evening before to review procedures and placement of stations and voting equipment, we were still trouble-shooting issues the next morning, one of them being the malfunctioning of our electronic poll books (it wouldn’t be on brand with 2020 if we didn’t encounter technological challenges). Once our polling site opened — 30 minutes late because of the polling book glitch — I spent the rest of my 16-hour shift distributing ballots to voters, assisting voters with the process as needed and helping close down our site once the polls closed at 8 p.m..

On top of spending months prepping for Election Day, other poll workers were also expected to do the painstaking work of counting each and every ballot and carefully checking signatures on mail-in ballots in what was a where 148 million (and counting) votes were cast and 62 percent of eligible voters participated.

Going into this year’s election season, there was a lot at stake, at all levels of government. Voters were confronted with the opportunity to select their elected local, state and national officials and vote on a series of statewide and local ballot measures. However, despite the significant momentum that was placed behind the “Get Out and Vote” movement by almost every organization or business voters have ever frequented, there were still a lot of uninformed voters who showed up on Election Day.

I spent much of my time last Tuesday distributing and explaining ballots to voters. One of the moments that struck me the most that day was a conversation I had with an older white gentleman who, after receiving and looking at everything on his ballot, immediately gave me a defeated stare and finally exclaimed, “You practically need a law degree to vote!” Voting can already be a frustrating and intimidating process to some, and not understanding what’s on the ballot leads some voters to avoid elections altogether.

I witnessed some of these same issues with my own family in the 2018 midterm elections when my mom simply voted based on the popular candidate’s name while leaving part of her ballot blank because she didn’t know anything about the other races or ballot measures.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can and we should invest in comprehensive voter education programs at all levels. At the K-12 level, educators should help students understand the history behind voting, the importance of voting in all elections and how voting ultimately impacts our personal and collective interests.

One resource that I turned to as I prepared myself and others to vote this year was , a nonpartisan “one-stop-shop” for election-related information. Launched by the League of Women Voters Education Fund, this comprehensive voter guide helps voters learn about what’s on their ballot and even gives each user an opportunity to print the information to use as a reference for when they vote. In some of the outreach I completed on behalf of Habeshas Vote, I directed voters to Vote 411 to help them learn more about candidates and ballot measures specific to their districts.

The political repercussions of being an uninformed voter are far too great and frankly, many Americans—like the former Congressman John Lewis—have risked their lives to ensure that people like me would have the right to vote and have my interests represented. As much as a healthy democracy needs active participation in its civic engagement process, it desperately needs an informed and prepared electorate.