At the end of last week, philanthropist and former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg took to the virtual pages of Bloomberg with an op-ed with a straightforward thesis: “We can’t fix America’s schools without data.” The piece is a full-throated defense of using assessment data to help improve our nation’s public schools, and of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the arm of the Education Department in charge of research and statistics. Like other agencies, IES has not been immune to layoffs and cuts.
Bloomberg argues that clear data on student and school performance is essential for real improvement, pointing to the “Mississippi Miracle” as the poster child for data-informed reforms leading to meaningful, positive change. Ignoring a bad test score, on the other hand, “ensures nothing will change.” But we are not in a position to allow nothing to change, as student achievement flatlined in the 2010s and declined precipitously after the pandemic. “The lack of political attention to this problem,” he writes, “is a disgrace”.
Earlier this year, we also asked “Where is the political will on education?”, prompted by an NWEA report that found the vast majority of students were attending districts that had not yet recovered to their pre-Covid achievement levels in math or reading. As we wrote then, education is rarely if ever among voters’ top priorities in deciding their vote for Congress. With some exceptions, neither party seems particularly interested in taking up the education mantle. Are people unaware of the scope of the problem, or so aware that they are unsure of where to start to fix it?
Or, does the scope of other problems dwarf education? The economy has long been a key concern for voters. It is perhaps the kitchen table issue. How worried will voters be about student achievement if inflation is the highest it’s been in 40 years or the cost of groceries or gas makes it harder to make ends meet? Even now, voters are still not feeling confident economically. From our most recent survey for Winning the Issues, 66% of voters still say inflation is getting worse rather than better (16%) or not changing (17%). Another 73% say the cost of living is rising faster than their wages rather than wages rising faster (6%) or both rising at about the same rate (17%).
In the 2024 Presidential election, two-thirds (68%) of the electorate said the economy was not so good or poor, compared to 31% saying it was excellent or good. In the 2000 Presidential election, when education was a major issue, the view was dramatically different. Some 85% of the electorate said the economy was excellent or good, compared to 14% who said it was not so good or poor.
This is not to say we need to wait for voters to feel more sure-footed about the economy before we can tackle education. Arguably, we can’t wait for that. But it is to say that, if we need to elevate the importance of education at a national level — which we believe we do to achieve the scale of change that is needed — then we need to understand all the challenges voters are facing and how education fits into the larger issue mix.
