Edwards will continue to govern in cooperation with significant Republican majorities in the Louisiana state legislature. The same electorate that narrowly favored him in the gubernatorial race also empowered in the state Senate (i.e., enough to override the governor’s veto) and nearly did the same in the House of Representatives.

The opposition of those conservative lawmakers — as well as a reform-friendly Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, elected last month — will effectively constrain Edwards in driving his second-term education agenda. A staunch ally of state teachers’ unions, Edwards has led several efforts to slow the growth of charter schools and make changes to the Louisiana teacher evaluation system; all died lonely deaths in Baton Rouge.

The weekend results burnished an already-strong off-year election season for Democrats, who captured Kentucky’s governorship and both houses of the Virginia legislature earlier this month in races that touched frequently on K-12 schooling.

Elsewhere, Republicans elected a new governor of Mississippi, though they put up the party’s weakest statewide margins in over a decade. And in one of the most closely watched local elections in the country, a slate of union-backed candidates flipped Denver’s school board, long a stronghold of education reform consensus.

In Kentucky, Democratic Attorney General after besting incumbent Gov. Matt Bevin by 0.4 percent in a test of voters’ partisan attachments. In spite of the state’s right-leaning political orientation — and President Trump’s personal appeal to local voters on Monday night — Bevin wasn’t able to overcome his own unpopularity. After contesting Beshear’s tiny margin of victory for over a week, Bevin at last conceded the race last Friday.

Beshear’s strongest allies in the race were educators, who to his campaign and canvassed energetically to get out the vote. Capitalizing on widespread ire toward the incumbent — Bevin had proposed to “” of teachers unions that twice led walkouts in recent years — Beshear promised a significant pay raise and to the state’s “war on public education.” Political observers noted that keeping the focus on local issues allowed the Democrat to overcome a huge partisan disadvantage.

At the local level, unions made their presence felt in the Denver school board race, in at least two of three contested seats on the seven-member board and leading in a third as this article was published. The results will give union-supported members a majority on the board, which has been dominated by education reformers more or less continually over the past 15 years.

That period of control coincided with the district’s pursuit of a “portfolio model” of education in which schools gained greater autonomy over operational decisions and charters proliferated broadly. While many families in the city’s traditionally underserved precincts appreciated new education options, a spate of school closures also rankled the community. The disaffection bred a movement to “flip the board”; on Tuesday night, candidates like 21-year-old Tay Anderson, a recent graduate of Denver Public Schools, did just that.

Democrats in Virginia also ended a long period in the wilderness, winning majorities in both houses of the General Assembly to take unified control over state government for the first time since 1993. By two seats in the State Senate and six more in the House of Delegates, the party — which also holds control of the governorship — will be able to work its will in the capital.

Although gun control, rather than education, was the main issue powering those victories, K-12 schools will still feel a major impact from Tuesday’s results. The state Board of Education has recently released new spending guidelines that could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in extra funding being directed to high-need school districts — all of which will require legislative approval that Democrats are now in a position to provide. The party is also rumored to be considering , which unions say unfairly restricts labor organizing.

It has been a tense election cycle throughout the Denver metro area, no races more intense than those for the Denver Public Schools Board of Education. Two district seats and one at-large seat were up for grabs. The cycle brought out your usual Denver education advocates, along the usual false fault lines in Denver education: traditional vs. charter, SFER vs. DCTA, Stand for Children, Flip the Board, union vs. district; sadly, neighbor vs. neighbor. Plenty of adults squabbling; little done for students, who continue to suffer the violence of educational mediocrity.

One adult dropped to compete for one of the seats. Yes, you read that correctly. Independent Expenditure Committees dropped about that much, leaving behind a familiar stench that has sadly become the norm with fact-stretching, name-erasing, outright racist and inflammatory mailers. The stench spilled over into neighboring Aurora’s race as well. This was the nastiest I have seen the races for volunteer seats get. Over in the Denver school board race at the last reporting period. How many school psychologists could that support?

This cycle was something. But what does it mean? Now that all of the votes have been counted and the composition of the board will be “flipped,” what is next? Does such a “flip” ensure that Denver will become a district where the violence of educational mediocrity ends? It remains to be seen, but I challenge the new board with this:

● The new board must push innovation. No matter how it is spun, good or bad, none of our existing results are worth slowing down or operating as if we have achieved the desired outcomes. Black children are still being failed across the district in every school model in its portfolio. Innovation needs to be infused in the district, through wise governance, so that doors of collaboration can be opened to address the holistic needs of children and communities. “We’ve never done it that way before” is a good thing when what you have been doing is not working for all children. This is not a time to slow down or to pretend as if we don’t need to move dramatically forward differently. Children’s lives hang in the balance.

● The new board must prioritize children. Lost in the shuffle of the education politics of the past 25 years in Denver have been children. We’ve heard the adult gripes, pontifications and political rhetoric. We have seen the negotiation sessions and the strikes. Yet, with all of the adult drama, the results for children remain dismal. Proficiency levels, while better, still are not proof that the district wants to serve all children well. Graduation rates, while better, still leave a great number of children in the pit of college remediation because we are not preparing them to succeed. This conversation should have stopped being about adults long ago. The question that must be answered with every new policy that drives practices and positions, people and provisions, is: How will this benefit all children?

● The new board must partner with Superintendent Susana Cordova: The worst thing that can happen for children is for this to become a battle of adult egos. The board has every right, and the elected responsibility, to set the vision, goals and policy boundaries for the district. It needs to do that well, and then it needs to fully trust and support the superintendent, who is hired to execute with her team on a daily basis to achieve goals and to realize that vision. This cannot become a tug-of-war where board members blur the lines of responsibility and fight the superintendent over day-to-day operations. If the superintendent is failing to lead the district toward goal achievement, and therefore vision, the board simply needs to exercise governance, review goals, reset expectations and — if that doesn’t work — replace. We do not need our communities further disenfranchised by individuals seeking to use our boardroom as a platform to push their agenda.

● The new board must practice GREAT governance. Advocacy and governance are two very different things. Both necessary, but different. We need board members who understand that and practice great governance for the good of our children. Good governance is being present, paying attention to the details, asking critical questions, not settling for weak answers, having open debates, being informed when you vote and much more. I get that it is a volunteer position, but great governance can’t be accomplished by lazy people. This is one of the most — if not the most — important volunteer posts in our city. Nearly 93,000 students, their families, employees of Denver Public Schools, taxpayers, partners and supporters are counting on these elected volunteers to provide great governance to aid the district in achieving great results for all children.

Now what, Denver? We wake up tomorrow and do better for our children, together!

Pastor Vernon Jones Jr. is a former school leader in Denver Public Schools. He serves as the director of operations and strategy for , a nonprofit working to mobilize the faith community to ensure high-quality schools for all children in every community. He and his wife have five children, two in college and three currently in Denver Public Schools.

Elsewhere, Republicans elected a new governor of Mississippi, though they put up the party’s weakest statewide margins in over a decade. And in one of the most closely watched local elections in the country, a slate of union-backed candidates flipped Denver’s school board, long a stronghold of education reform consensus.

In Kentucky, Democratic Attorney General after besting incumbent Gov. Matt Bevin by 0.4 percent in a test of voters’ partisan attachments. In spite of the state’s right-leaning political orientation — and President Trump’s personal appeal to local voters on Monday night — Bevin wasn’t able to overcome his own unpopularity. As of Wednesday afternoon, he was still contesting the election, citing Beshear’s tiny margin of victory.

Beshear’s strongest allies in the race were educators, who to his campaign and canvassed energetically to get out the vote. Capitalizing on widespread ire toward the incumbent — Bevin had proposed to “” of teachers unions that twice led walkouts in recent years — Beshear promised a significant pay raise and to the state’s “war on public education.” Political observers noted that keeping the focus on local issues allowed the Democrat to overcome a huge partisan disadvantage.

At the local level, unions made their presence felt in the Denver school board race, in at least two of three contested seats on the seven-member board and leading in a third as this article was published. The results will give union-supported members a majority on the board, which has been dominated by education reformers more or less continually over the past 15 years.

That period of control coincided with the district’s pursuit of a “portfolio model” of education in which schools gained greater autonomy over operational decisions and charters proliferated broadly. While many families in the city’s traditionally underserved precincts appreciated new education options, a spate of school closures also rankled the community. The disaffection bred a movement to “flip the board”; on Tuesday night, candidates like 21-year-old Tay Anderson, a recent graduate of Denver Public Schools, did just that.

Democrats in Virginia also ended a long period in the wilderness, winning majorities in both houses of the General Assembly to take unified control over state government for the first time since 1993. By two seats in the State Senate and six more in the House of Delegates, the party — which also holds control of the governorship — will be able to work its will in the capital.

While gun control, rather than education, was the main issue powering those victories, K-12 schools will still feel a major impact from Tuesday’s results. The state Board of Education has recently released new spending guidelines that could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in extra funding being directed to high-need school districts — all of which will require legislative approval that Democrats are now in a position to provide. The party is also rumored to be considering , which unions say unfairly restricts labor organizing.

The night’s results set the stage for the final race in what has been an unusually competitive off-year election cycle: the Louisiana governor’s race, which pits Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards against Republican businessman Eddie Rispone on Nov. 16. The two men differ substantially on education issues such as charters and private school vouchers, and given the state’s deep-red hue, the incumbent is likely in for a tight race.

Under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t raise many eyebrows: While President Trump’s relative popularity in each state will influence their outcomes, they have no true national implications. And the South has gradually become one of the least competitive battlegrounds in the country as Republicans have swept statewide offices and entrenched deep-red majorities in legislatures.

Yet this year, polls are tight across the board. In Mississippi, Louisiana and Kentucky, Democrats have a healthy shot at winning or holding governors’ offices. In Virginia, they could finally break through and take control of the General Assembly, giving the party unified control over state government for the first time in 26 years. In all four states, the key to a blue breakthrough could be education, which often gets sidelined in national elections by hot-button topics like abortion or immigration.

In an interview with ����Ӱ��, Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy CEO Brad Coker noted that all three Democratic gubernatorial candidates had temporized on culture war narratives by “lining up right up with their Republican opponents … and taking the social issues off the table. Their strategy has been, ‘Let’s focus on schools, which cuts across party lines.’”

“In each of these states, you have competitive Democratic candidates,” he continued. “And in the South, which has been very, very red recently, that in and of itself is noteworthy. Part of that equation, at least for the last year, has been to focus as much as possible on local issues, with education usually topping the list.”

Whether the gambit will succeed will become clear in a little over three weeks.

Mississippi: Can the Democrats’ ideal candidate win?

Mississippi is among the most comfortable places in the country for Republicans to get elected. Though the party has only held unified control over state government since 2012 — a vestige of the old-school Southern Democratic hold over the area — residents haven’t favored a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter, and virtually all prominent politicians in the state ride with the GOP.

Well, Democrats have nominated to the rule: four-term Attorney General Jim Hood, who is running against Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves this year. The puts Hood just three points behind Reeves, who had to spend millions to vanquish primary opponent Bill Waller, the longtime chief justice of the state supreme court. Waller has since , which would have gone a long way toward binding up the party’s wounds heading into November.

The general election has been no less truculent, with part of the energy stemming from big disagreements on education policy. Despite running in one of the reddest states in the country, Hood has made — including a $3,000 teacher pay raise and universal pre-K for Mississippi children — one of the hallmarks of his campaign. In fact, both for a pay bump, a testament to the state’s salaries for teachers and classroom aides.

In making a bid for their support, though, Reeves committed a noteworthy faux pas, filming at a private school funded by one of his own campaign donors. He also earlier this year by working to send more money to a state program subsidizing private school tuition for special needs students. The wave of teachers’ strikes over the past two years has mostly bypassed the Deep South, but angry educators to Hood.

Still, Coker says the state’s overwhelmingly Republican tilt likely puts it out of reach, even to a known quantity like Hood. While it still carries a big stick in the Northeast and Midwest, organized labor likely won’t deliver a surprise victory in conservative bastions like Mississippi.

“Just because these teachers unions get behind something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to flip the table,” he said. “I always hear about, ‘The teachers came out for this or that,’ and that may mean a lot in many, many states. In the South, it just doesn’t have the same clout that it has in a state like Minnesota or New York or New Jersey.”

Kentucky: RedForEd redux?

The central question in what has become a nasty re-election fight for Republican Gov. Matt Bevin is this: Can partisan loyalties overcome personality deficits?

Bevin has been the least popular governor in the country for much of his time in office ( in that dubious honor only recently, by Rhode Island’s Gina Raimondo). That’s largely a product of his rather pugilistic approach to politics. A conservative businessman from Louisville, Bevin first made a name for himself as a gate-crasher by embarking on a doomed primary challenge against Sen. Mitch McConnell in 2014. The next year, he rode his Tea Party cachet (and substantial fortune) to the GOP’s gubernatorial nomination, earning frequent comparisons to running for office at the time. Since then, he’s continued to throw elbows at will: He infamously warned of in the event of a Clinton victory in 2016, and he insulted even his Republican opponents after surviving in May.

He has often aimed his broadsides at Kentucky’s teachers. When legions of school employees last spring as part of a wave of #RedForEd protests for higher salaries and education funding increases, he “guaranteed” that some children had been sexually assaulted while left unsupervised during the demonstrations. Similarly, in April on teachers who had launched a wave of unsanctioned “sick-outs” to close schools again.

Whatever Bevin’s rhetorical excesses, it’s his substantive record that has overwhelmingly driven teacher dissatisfaction over the past few years. He made Kentucky , striking a serious blow against unions even before last year’s controversial Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME. This summer, he in an unsuccessful effort to create a state-level voucher program to subsidize private school tuition. The Kentucky Labor Cabinet district superintendents’ emails and capitol visitors’ logs to identify teachers who participated in the sick-outs, those who repeated the tactic.

His opponent, Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear, has energetically courted the support of alienated teachers and their allies by proposing a $2,000 pay raise and for cutting education spending. The son of popular former governor Steve Beshear, whom Bevin succeeded, the attorney general has even outraged over Bevin’s hard-charging brand of politics. The most recent polling between the two men.

Still, Coker noted that Kentucky remains deep red and partial to President Trump. The governor’s 2015 victory over Attorney General Jack Conway, a Democrat who led in most polls heading into Election Day, came as a surprise to many.

“When Bevin won the first time, he was actually behind in every poll by eight or nine points,” he said. “Conway was ahead in every poll, and in this race, it’s actually tied. Bevin is damaged goods … but Trump’s approval is in the high 50s, particularly in the rural counties where Democrats need to flip votes from last time. Just as an observer of Kentucky, there have been a lot of problems with some of the polling underestimating Republicans in previous races.”

Louisiana: Can a popular incumbent hold on?

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards is in some ways the inverse of Matt Bevin: a well-liked Democratic office holder who has defied political gravity for years by tacking to the center. His survival, like Bevin’s, is a test of whether constituents will vote against their typical partisan preferences.

The early signs suggest he’s in for a fight. Edwards had hoped to win 50 percent of the state’s “jungle primary” in October, which would have given him a second term automatically; instead, he garnered just 46 percent, with his two closest Republican rivals splitting 52 percent between them. The incumbent will face businessman Eddie Rispone in a second round of voting on Nov. 16, the outcome of which is now seen as a toss-up.

Political experts painted the disappointment as . Edwards triumphed over expectations to win his first term four years ago — not because of polling miscues, as Bevin had, but because Democrats have gradually been purged from statewide offices in recent years as local voters have become less willing to split their tickets. Edwards’s 2015 victory was largely credited to his Blue Dog profile — he campaigned as a foe of surging budget deficits and has disappointed liberals by signing restrictions on abortion — and . If Republican turnout in the runoff mirrors Louisianans’ enthusiastic support for President Trump, the thinking goes, Edwards can start packing his bags now.

If he can refocus the spotlight on his record locally, including on schools, his prospects might be considerably stronger. Edwards has fought against a heavy current of reform during his time in office, unsuccessfully attempting to curb the growth of charter schools and private school vouchers. But his administration has earned plaudits more recently by , and he has worked with Republicans in the state legislature for public schools more broadly.

Eva Kemp, director of the Louisiana chapter of the advocacy group Democrats for Education Reform, says the organization will throw all of its support behind Edwards’s re-election bid. Whatever their early differences with the governor on issues of school choice, she said, his broader agenda — fighting for for the state pre-K program in his latest budget, as well as for some criminal charges to 17 — shows that “he’s not just looking out for K-12; he’s looking out for all low-income families and children.”

“When Eddie Rispone talks about ending Medicaid expansion, when he talks about reversing the criminal justice reform, or when he talks about whether or not immigrants are welcome in Louisiana, those clearly impact public education when you think about young children growing up in this state,” she said.

Virginia: Can Team Blue finally sweep? 

Unlike in the other three states, Virginia’s governorship isn’t up for grabs. Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, elected in 2017, will remain in office no matter what — surprising though that might be to those who called for his ouster following the revelation that his medical school yearbook contained images depicting blackface.

But the remainder of his term will be defined by the outcome of Tuesday’s legislative elections. Republicans, who once held commanding majorities in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly, to just a one-vote majority in the state Senate and a three-vote lead in the House of Delegates. And while the Democrats’ push to flip control has mostly centered on their stalled attempts to pass gun control laws, the stakes for K-12 schools are high as well.

In October, the Virginia Board of Education , which delineate funding mandates for educational programs in the state. The new standards call for close to $1 billion of new education spending in the next biennial budget, including large sums for school districts that serve high concentrations of low-income students.

“The biggest issue is funding, funding, funding,” said Kimberly Bridges, a professor of education at Virginia Commonwealth University and a former policy analyst at the Virginia Department of Education. “The composition of the legislature will help determine whether any of those initiatives get funded.”

Though total school spending has increased in Virginia over the past decade, local districts have had to chip in more as aid from Richmond has dwindled.

“We still have many school districts that are operating at levels below the Great Recession, and we have local cities and counties trying to step up and cover more because the state appropriation hasn’t yet returned to the funding levels of ’08-’09,” Bridges added.

Although a huge cash infusion may sound ambitious enough, some on the Left have set even loftier goals for what they might accomplish under unified Democratic control. One item for Northam’s consideration could be a repeal of Virginia’s right-to-work law, which was one of the first in the nation to be passed in 1947. Though insiders predict that the move , Northam won his first term thanks partially to the organizing strength of state teachers unions.

Given the state’s prohibition on governors serving consecutive terms, as well as his own tainted political profile, Northam is likely serving his last two years in elected office. If he wants to leave a legacy, Democratic majorities could help get him there.

But no matter the general election winner, the results have made one thing clear: The cause of education reform is likely to continue advancing in Louisiana.

on the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE, or “Bessie” to locals), candidates favoring charter schools and private school vouchers swept six; another pro-reform figure, Ronnie Morris, secured 49 percent of the primary vote for the seventh seat, and will be favored against his opponent in the runoff. 

The resounding wins should provide a measure of job security to long-serving, reform-oriented state Superintendent of Education John White, whose eight-year tenure was thought . Though Edwards, who was elected in 2015 with the support of the state’s teacher’s unions, has sought to oust White in the past, he will be constrained from taking that step if re-elected, as BESE has final say in the decision.

Pearson Cross, a professor of political science at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, predicted “a good deal of continuity” in the state’s educational leadership going forward regardless of whether a Democrat or a Republican holds the reins.

“It looks like the BESE board is again going to have a solid majority of reform members … who favor vouchers, who favor school choice,” Cross said. “If Eddie Rispone gets in there as governor, he will probably like John White and keep him there. If John Bel Edwards is re-elected, he probably won’t have the votes to get rid of John White. So they’ll be at a standstill.”

Blackboard jungle

This month’s primary’s elections spring from Louisiana’s peculiar ritual of the “jungle primary.”

The event is a nonpartisan primary election pitting Democrats, Republicans and independents against one another. If any candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, he is declared the general election winner, and no second round of voting is held. Edwards had hopes of becoming the fourth incumbent governor to win the jungle primary outright and avoid a runoff in November, but his showing — 46 percent — dashed them.

His opposition was almost entirely split between two Republicans: Rispone, and prolific conservative donor, and U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham. The two men accounted for 52 percent of all votes cast, an ominous sign for Edwards as he attempts to thread the needle toward a second term.

The Louisiana governor is among the rarest of creatures in the American political bestiary: a popular Southern Democrat. Throughout his four years in office, he has been the sole member of his party to hold a governorship in the Deep South; still more impressive, he remains fairly well-liked, in a recent survey from the polling group Morning Consult.

Many of his foes dismissed his original victory as a fluke, dubbing him an “accidental governor.” But Edwards has demonstrated canny political instincts by governing as a Blue Dog moderate, to shrink the state’s huge budget deficit and pass criminal justice reform that has been called “.” Against bracing headwinds, he even made Louisiana to expand Medicaid eligibility.

One notable area in which Edwards has been stymied, however, has been in his attempts to slow Louisiana’s expansion of school choice. Though he originally campaigned on removing Superintendent White, whose advocacy on behalf of Common Core and charter schools has made him a darling of the national education reform community, staunch opposition from BESE kept him from doing so. Still, White has been working for nearly four years, a reflection of the controversy. 

Edwards was elected with the energetic support of the state’s teacher’s unions, which chafed at the pro-reform policies of his predecessor, Bobby Jindal. But he often found himself boxed in by the powerful Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI), which lobbies hard in the capitol for school choice and accountability.

Over one-third of the bills put forward in Edwards’s first legislative package were K-12 related, including proposed restrictions on the state’s voucher program and a ban on new for-profit charter schools; they ran into in the state legislature, and most were withdrawn, what reform opponents had gained from electing their chosen candidate. His education agenda the following year — including a plan to shift teacher evaluations away from relying on value-added measurements — as well.

Even more than the failure to move legislation, Edwards’s inability to choose his own superintendent proved especially vexing in 2017, when White moved to submit Louisiana’s ESSA school improvement plan. Edwards initially , arguing that the proposal leaned too heavily on standardized testing and letter grades to determine school quality, but .

A June report from the RAND Corporation led by White, including an overhaul of the state’s early education system and the adoption of new, rigorous curricula in classrooms. And in spite of the defeats dealt to his education agenda over the years, a “champion for public education,” citing his efforts to raise teacher salaries by $1,000 and fully fund the state’s TOPS scholarship system, which subsidizes public university tuition for eligible Louisiana students.

Academic results from the past few years of contested policymaking have been mixed. Scores on the ACT college entrance exam through 2017, last year. The percentage of students passing AP tests between 2008 and 2018, though that rate still ranks last in the nation. the growing numbers of high schoolers earning professional credentials before graduation, among other achievements. 

Douglas Harris, an economics professor at Tulane University and the director of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, described White’s long tenure as “pretty remarkable,” noting that he had survived scarring fights with local conservatives only to find his position threatened by a Democratic governor.

“It’s hard to describe it as anything other than a success, especially in political terms,” he said. “He was fighting years ago with Jindal on Common Core, and he has had to be extremely strategic to stay in the position and not have Republicans calling for his ouster. He’s become a national leader among state superintendents, especially those of a more reform bent.”

Harris did note that, even with a strong BESE majority behind him, White had “been around long enough that you might expect some sort of change — he may be getting tired of swimming against the stream.”

Peter Cook, a local commentator who sits on the advisory board of the state’s chapter of the advocacy group Democrats for Education Reform, has harshly criticized Edwards’s “” on education. Still, while emphasizing that he does not speak for DFER, Cook says he supports parts of the governor’s agenda and believes that there is room for greater cooperation in a second term.

“Outside of things like testing and charter schools, there’s a lot of common ground [Edwards] has with reformers — increasing school funding, early childhood stuff, more funding to higher education,” he said. “Those are all areas where he would have a ton of support from us, so I think he’ll probably focus on that.”

What comes next

That’s assuming Edwards is able to edge Rispone in next month’s general election, which is by no means assured. Though the governor has worked hard to cultivate the support of Louisiana’s moderate and conservative voters, the state is still one of the reddest in the land.

In addition, turnout for the second round is likely to be depressed, a product of the election being held apart from typical cycles. That dynamic is compounded in lower-level races like those for BESE seats, which are far less publicized affairs.

“Participation is low … because it’s an off-year election,” he said. “We don’t get 50 percent of people out there, and of those people, a lot of them don’t vote in BESE races because they aren’t as plugged-in on education issues. For those folks who do, they know so little about BESE that name recognition plays a huge role, so incumbents have a big advantage.”

The importance of education to the governor’s race will likely be subsumed within the broader political stakes. No less a figure than on the eve of the primary, successfully stoking Republican turnout to deny Edwards a first-round knockout. But if questions of education aren’t likely to cut through the noise between now and November, a few schooling issues will undoubtedly be affected by the voters’ choice next month.

One is the state’s $40 million school voucher program, which serves about 7,000 students annually. Edwards expressed hostility to the system long before he came into office, particularly when then-Gov. Jindal in 2012. More recently, he after an investigation found that most voucher students are enrolled in underperforming private schools. The oversight process for private academies accepting the vouchers — consisting mostly of a 16-page application filled with yes-or-no questions, and no mandatory site visit — has come under particular fire. 

Rispone, who served as chairman  of the pro-voucher group Louisiana Federation for Children from 2011 to 2018, has to promote the program and support BESE candidates who favor it. That support has come under scrutiny in recent days, with Edwards labeling him as the “” of statewide vouchers and Rispone attempting to distance himself from the policy. Under Rispone’s leadership, in 2016 directed against Edwards’s attempts to pare back the program.

While Edwards seeks revisions to the program, he is unlikely to campaign on the issue in the coming weeks. Tulane’s Harris said that the governor would be more likely to focus on sunnier accomplishments, like the teacher pay raise. Although his union allies had than the $1,000 that was eventually granted, they worked with both BESE and the state legislature to help secure the win. 

“[Vouchers are] a very divisive issue, and teacher pay is not,” he said. “[Edwards] is a Democrat running in a fairly conservative state, so he’s very unlikely to use vouchers in a general election. I think he’s going to continue to tout the teacher pay raise and other increases in education spending.”

Another hot-button topic in the days to come will be the trend of affluent white communities “seceding” to form their own school districts. In the primary vote, residents of a previously unincorporated area of East Baton Rouge Parish narrowly voted to create a new municipality, St. George, that could become the state’s fifth-largest city. If its inhabitants succeed in , which will require approval from the state legislature, the existing district’s schools will become substantially poorer, and more black, on average.

The University of Louisiana’s Cross observed that while Rispone might be a more vigorous champion for school reform as governor, other players — from BESE members to state lawmakers — would make many of the key decisions on education no matter who wins next month. And their policy preferences are fairly clear.

“So much of education is outside the direct control of the governor. The current governor is married to a public school teacher, and he’s definitely on the side of traditional public schools in Louisiana. But his ability to change much of that without working with the legislature is fairly limited. He’s limited by the legislature, and he’s limited by BESE. The legislature is going to be an even more Republican, reform-minded, pro-voucher body, so I imagine they’re going to continue down that path.”

Over the past 15 years, the city has become a model for urban school reform. Parents are given wide latitude to choose where to enroll their children. Charter schools have spread swiftly, authorized by a school board largely friendly to the sector. And all schools, whether traditional or charter, are subject to an aggressive rating system that measures quality.

But persistent disquiet over Denver’s reform regime, and questions about whom it has served, have grown louder in recent months. Momentum from a successful teachers’ strike earlier this year has spread to a wider movement for change across the district, and next month’s local elections will prove a crucial test of the community’s attitudes.

Two reform-minded incumbents on the elected school board are term-limited, and another is not running for re-election. That means there will be three open seats on the seven-member body — enough to swing the membership away from its long-running consensus and potentially bring an end to one of the nation’s bolder experiments in charter expansion and test-driven accountability. The situation is reminiscent of the 2017 board cycle, when candidates opposed to further reforms were able to two board seats.

Collinus Newsome is the director of education at the Denver Foundation, one of the largest philanthropies in the state. Noting the changing winds around education in the greater Denver area — nearby Aurora is to its board, which oversees a district of roughly 40,000 students — she remarked that the outcome this election season “will be either very predictable or it’s going to be a mess.”

“If the election in Denver is a full-on [reconsideration] of the reform community, it’s going to significantly change the way the district moves forward,” she said.

What’s a portfolio?

By most accounts, Denver’s era of reform has been ongoing for about a decade and a half, beginning with the tenure of Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet. Prior to to the post by then-Mayor John Hickenlooper, the rookie superintendent had worked in finance and law, with no experience in education leadership. Both men rode their success in the city to high-level political careers: Hickenlooper, who was later elected governor, is now running for Senate after a failed presidential bid; Bennet is still pursuing the presidency while holding the state’s other Senate seat.

Under the administration of its rookie leader (and, when Bennet was tapped to become senator in 2009, his replacement, Tom Boasberg), Denver became one of America’s most prominent laboratories for educational change. The district rolled out ProComp, a merit-pay scheme that replaced the existing compensation schedule, and acted aggressively to close underperforming schools. And charter schools, authorized by the district itself, began a swift expansion.

In total, the district shifted to what is loosely termed the “portfolio model”; the idea is something of a buzzword, taking on different forms in the various cities where it is practiced. But it essentially describes a system through which families can choose among a bevy of options including both traditional and charter schools. District schools in portfolio districts are also typically granted some of the same autonomy over budgeting and personnel that charters have long enjoyed.

The changes didn’t go unnoticed. A few years after debuting an innovative common K-12 application system to help parents navigate between district, charter and magnet schools, Denver the top district in the country for school choice by the Brookings Institution. And promising results followed: High school graduation rates rose across the city, and by Stanford University’s well-respected Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that, in the wake of the reforms, students in the city made gains in math and English that outpaced the state average.

Something rotten in Denver

But local sentiment didn’t always match the glowing reviews. Controversial school closures from students, educators and families, some of whom found Bennet an imperious leader. Boasberg, his successor, resigned last year that he hadn’t done enough to curb substantial academic gaps between white and minority students.

Betheny Gross, the associate director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, said that Denver’s transformation was typical of how the portfolio approach has played out in other cities, with more choice for families and authority flowing down from the district to school leaders. At times, however, it has also alienated parents who felt their neighborhood schools were under attack.

“One of the things that people have been concerned about is whether this portfolio has really generated the kinds of schools this community wants or needs — in particular some communities that have historically had comprehensive high schools with bands and football teams and all the hallmarks of the great American high school,” she said. “The reforms sort of shifted the focus to smaller schools, multiple schools within one building, and it seemed to some community members that they were shutting down historical institutions.”

The Denver Foundation’s Newsome went further, saying that while minority and low-income communities welcomed the introduction of greater choice, they were just as often angered by what they perceived as a revolution from above — one that sometimes smacked of racism.

“I hardly ever hear people complaining about choice,” she said. “You definitely have a better sense of what a high-quality school should look like. … But when it comes to [leaders] plugging into communities, it’s almost as if it’s been an afterthought. I wouldn’t say everything was bad, but there are definitely certain communities in the city that feel like things have been done to them.”

Tiffany Choi was a French teacher at Montbello High School in northeast Denver when the school board voted to shutter the school for poor academic performance in 2010, breaking it into five smaller programs run in the same building. In an interview with ����Ӱ��, she said the decision reflected a lack of community input in policy that affected thousands of families.

“There was really a lot of pride around that school,” she said. “[The closure] was fought hard by the students and teachers in that community, who said, ‘This is a central meeting point in our community for sports and for arts and music.’ And it was very heartbreaking to be in that school while it was closing.”

Gradually, the anguish engendered a backlash. The 2017 races for school board, in which candidates backed by teachers unions defeated two pro-reform members, were seen as “,” with dark money sponsoring mailers that tied incumbents to Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos. And this February, 2,600 teachers walked out of their classrooms — of a merit-pay system that many felt subjected their earnings to uncertainty.

The strike was settled within days when the district approved a pay raise. But in the months that followed, a movement spread with the aim of “” — voting out another two or more reform-oriented members to break their long-held majority.

Choi, who served as a strike captain in her high school, of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, the local union, in September after vowing to “fight against corporate reform policies” and end school closures. The 10-year incumbent she defeated was viewed by some as responsible for the spread of the ProComp system.

“We have two teacher-friendly members on the board, out of seven,” she said. “Now we have an opportunity to take back the schools that are rightfully ours, and if we get two or three positions on the board, we’ll be able to make some changes.”

The shape of the race

The question is whether opponents of the status quo can make good on their momentum.

In all three races, candidates exist who might attempt to chip away at the portfolio model. But this summer, a broad range of community groups pushing for change a unified slate of contenders after disagreeing on whether to back two union-backed men or a pair of minority women.

The best-funded of the insurgent candidates is , a 20-year-old recent Denver schools graduate who also ran in 2017. Though he campaigned on a district-wide charter school moratorium last cycle, he is now organizing primarily around racial equity.

That’s a live issue at the moment, as Denver’s civil rights activists loudly complain of what they describe as the district’s unwillingness to confront school segregation. A blue-ribbon commission last year on how to address the issue, but Newsome, who served as a co-author, says that it has spent months “sitting in someone’s office, and I’m not sure anyone’s even looked at it.”

It’s difficult to tell, however, whether outrage and impatience will translate to electoral wins. David Flaherty, a local Republican pollster, pointed to showing that most Coloradans were satisfied with the quality of their schools, while a significant minority said that more should be done to expand school choice. Although all the candidates for school board in Denver could be described as progressive, he suggested that a reform-friendly message could win the support of potential swing voters.

“If you’re a Democrat and want to pick up soft Republican or independent voters, talk about school reform in any manner,” he advised in an interview. “I’m not talking about full-blown vouchers or defunding public school districts. But any education reform is appealing to Republicans and some independents, who believe that changes can be made to public education in Colorado.”

And even if outsider candidates manage to flip the board, the changes made over the past 15 years will be challenging to undo, noted CRPE’s Gross. Even in cities like New York and Newark, where anti-reform challengers won power promising to turn back the clock, charter schools and principal autonomy haven’t disappeared, she said.

“Do they think that telling families, ‘No, those choices aren’t available to you anymore’ is the direction forward? It seems implausible to me that they’re going to suggest or even move on an effort to shut down the charters that exist — there’s a lot of students in them already, and many families are really happy with their schools. There would still be very strong elements of the principles of portfolio that seem pretty institutionalized at this point.”