A New Path for Education Reform: DFER’s Vision for Abundance

A Democratic Framework for An Abundance Education Agenda

We’re excited to share a new paper from DFER CEO Jorge Elorza, offering a bold vision for education reform. In A Democratic Framework for An Abundance Education Agenda, Elorza explores how a mindset of Abundance can guide Democrats in rethinking education policy to deliver real, lasting results for all students.

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In the wake of last year’s election, Democrats are facing a moment of reckoning. A dominant narrative has emerged that we have lost focus, failed to deliver, and that our brand is broken. If we are looking in the mirror with honest eyes and want to reconnect with the working class, we must acknowledge that our party is in need of a serious overhaul. I am in the camp of folks who believe that neither changing our messaging nor tweaking our policy positions will suffice. We have strayed from the values that made us the party of the working class and we are now in need of not only new ideas, but a new framework to guide us in a better direction. I believe that Abundance can be that guide.

For the past year, I have enthusiastically followed the rise of the Abundance Movement. It inspires us to imagine a dramatically better world and it conveys a grounded optimism about our ability to create it. But what I like best is that Abundance is about outcomes, not ideology—Abundance is about Getting Big Things Done.

At the heart of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book is an insightful critique of modern day progressivism. They make a compelling case that progressives, while well-intentioned, have come to embrace an approach to governance filled with regulatory, bureaucratic, and procedural hurdles that makes it hard to get anything done. In addition, they argue that progressives have focused too much on redistributing existing resources and have underestimated the power of innovation, technology and market incentives to expand the pie. In essence, Liberals have gotten in their own way; by making it too difficult to govern, innovate and produce, they have undermined their ability to deliver on their own political and social goals.

Abundance offers a home for those of us who share broadly progressive aims, who not only want to enhance government’s capacity to deliver but also believe market-based solutions should be enlisted in the effort, who believe in the power of innovation and in technology’s ability to accelerate progress, and who, ultimately, want our policies to lead to real, material improvements in people’s lives.

The political moment we are living through is beyond sobering and the Republican Party’s lurch towards authoritarianism is genuinely terrifying. On the other side, I am dismayed by the disarray within the Democratic party and am deeply concerned about our ability to effectively push back against Donald Trump’s excesses. America needs a strong Democratic Party, and my hope is that a move towards an Abundance mindset—with its focus on effective governance, innovation, and increasing supply—will allow us to reinvigorate our brand, actually deliver on progressivism’s promise, and reconnect with working class voters who have drifted away.

To date, the Abundance community has offered plenty of important insights to help our party course-correct on a range of issues, including housing, transportation, and energy. Applying an Abundance lens to education policy, however, is virtually tabula rasa space. This paper is an attempt to start filling that void.

Working class voters disproportionately count on government to help them access great schools, and a strong education agenda has to be part of the Democratic policy mix that wins those voters back. Following Klein and Thompson’s example, I do not provide a long wishlist of policies that should be part of the Democratic education agenda. Instead, I heed their invitation to ask some important questions: Why do we not have an abundance of high-quality, highly-desirable schools? What does it take to create them?

It is my hope that this paper provides a helpful framework for using an Abundance lens to answer those key questions.

Education Politics

Before applying an Abundance mindset to education, it is important to understand the current political dynamics of education policy. Ten years ago, Democrats enjoyed a +26 point advantage over Republicans on voter trust on education and were widely regarded as the “Party of Education.” In a radical swing, polls now have us underwater (-3) on the issue, and it is very much possible for us to slide even further. It is clear that on education, Americans are not buying what we are selling. As the party seeks a broader reset, there now exists a political imperative for Democrats to fully re-think our approach to education.

It has been roughly a decade since a national Democratic leader prioritized education reform. Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama made education central to their agendas, but following the election of Donald Trump, Democrats distanced themselves from policies even remotely associated with his administration, including education reform. When President Biden took office, his focus on K-12 education was limited to inputs with little attention to outcomes. Biden invested historic sums into K-12 education but there was little accountability for the results it produced.

The reasons for our diminished standing in voters’ minds are not hard to see. Many Americans believe Democrats kept schools closed too long during the pandemic, that we have focused too much on ideological battles, and have focused too little on classroom success. Meanwhile, too many Democratically-run cities and states are home to failing schools, sluggish Covid recovery, widening achievement gaps, and students who are unprepared for the future.

Republicans have capitalized on our inaction, in particular by championing school choice and making education a centerpiece of their national and state-level platforms. They see the same polling data we do—education has become a winning issue for them, and they are pressing their advantage. Separately, Democrats have opposed Republicans’ agenda, but we haven’t offered a compelling alternative. Sadly, Democrats find themselves today with no clear national education vision.

Democrats must acknowledge, on the one hand, the political ground we have lost on education and, on the other hand, the immense potential of delivering education systems that live up to our aims. Reversing course will not be easy and it will force us to reconsider old positions, question long-standing alliances, and make educational outcomes a political priority once again.

Education Policy

Aside from the political aspect of this work, it is important to also appreciate the depth of the education crisis. As a nation, we spend nearly $1 trillion annually on education, and education is one of the top two line items in most state budgets. But, year after year, students’ academic results remain shockingly low while our international peers outpace us.

Nationally, only about 30% of fourth graders can read at grade level, and the recent NAEP scores showed that, despite the amounts we spend, the gap between the top and bottom 25% of students continues to widen. In some cities, entire schools have no students performing at grade level, such as in Baltimore where 23 entire schools have reported zero students doing math at grade level. Zero! Unfortunately, Baltimore is not an outlier. Districts throughout the country, from Baltimore to Chicago to Los Angeles and beyond, suffer from deep dysfunction and poor results. The education crisis reaches every corner of the United States.

Yet, despite these glaring failures, year after year, there is little to no accountability for performance. Instead, in a Kafka-esque turn, failing schools often receive more funding, and when those investments fail to deliver results, it is used as the basis for providing even more funding. We remain stubbornly committed to funding more of the same things when instead we should be asking ourselves some critical questions. For example, why do California and New York spend more per student on education, yet perform worse than Texas and Florida?

Over the past ten years, Democrats have sadly come to accept and tolerate this failure. We have abandoned the spirit of innovation that gave birth to new school models and changed lives at scale in New Orleans, Camden, Washington, D.C., and many other places. We abandoned the urgency of reform that led to strong accountability measures that narrowed achievement gaps. It’s as if we gave up trying to fix America’s schools. This is not the spirit of endless ingenuity, innovation and progress, and it is not what will bring working class Americans back to our party.

As a party, we have touted educational inputs, such as how much we spend on education, but have been mostly silent on outcomes. We must shift our focus from convincing folks that we “care,” to convincing folks that we will “deliver.” For Democrats to reclaim the mantle of the Party of Education, Americans must believe that our education agenda is laser-focused on outcomes and on creating a diverse supply of great schools for them to choose from!

A System-Level Challenge

The problems in education are deeply systemic. Public education in the U.S. has been structured for stability, not continuous improvement. Schools operate under rigid bureaucracies, with workforce rules and regulations that limit flexibility, and with funding models that reward compliance over excellence and innovation. Our education system is neither designed to rapidly and continually improve nor to produce an abundant supply of great schools. Quite the opposite.

The result, predictably, has been stagnation.

To meaningfully move the needle, we need to move beyond piecemeal interventions and address the core structural deficiencies that prevent schools from adapting rapidly and improving. Too much standardization, regulation and bureaucracy limits variety and experimentation. There is virtually no accountability for results, as the same programs get funded year after year regardless of performance. And, where there is some form of public accountability, it often has the perverse effect of creating a culture of compliance that stifles innovation. Last, because most parents have few real alternatives, schools face little competitive pressure to improve. Without systemic change, new programs—even when effective!—fail to make a meaningful impact on outcomes for kids.

How Democrats Should Approach Education: Three Essential Elements

We, as a party, must change our approach to education, and I believe that a spirit of Abundance can guide the way. How do we unlock previously unimagined possibilities and expand the supply of great schools? By designing education systems that, instead of stagnating, are internally dynamic and continuously evolve to produce better results. We can set this dynamic in motion by tapping into America’s spirit and capacity for ingenuity (innovation), by reorienting our focus from inputs to outcomes (accountability), and by enlisting market-driven pressures to align incentives in the right direction (choice).

Democrats should build our education agenda on three core pillars: innovation, accountability, and choice.

• We must push for innovation, so that we can figure out what works.

• We must push for accountability, so that we only invest in what works.

• We must push for choice, so that families can decide for themselves what works.

At a “systems” level, these three elements, dynamically and endlessly interacting with each other, have the potential to create radically different kinds of education systems: ones that offer more variety, have self-correcting mechanisms, and continually evolve to produce better results.

Pillar #1: Innovation

Our education system is outdated, designed for a world that no longer exists. Despite advancements in technology and our understanding of learning, schools today look much as they did a century ago. To determine what schools of the future should look like, we must regain a spirit of educational innovation and create a startup-style ecosystem that helps education entrepreneurs develop and scale a greater supply of new and different approaches to education.

• Encourage and provide funding to increase the supply of new school models, including charter schools, learning pods, microschools, hybrid education, and unbundled learning.

• Help to develop and rapidly deploy the most promising practices, in traditional schools and outside, to accelerate their pace of replication.

• Remove barriers to innovation by reducing unnecessary regulations, reforming restrictive teacher contracts, and breaking the culture of compliance that has taken hold in education bureaucracies.

• Energetically support educators to explore and expand access to AI and technology-driven learning that personalizes instruction and enhances student engagement.

• Reform teacher-training programs to treat teaching as a high-skill, practice-based profession and reform compensation systems to treat teachers like professionals and not like assembly line workers.

Abundance Message: We should utilize a startup-style approach (do-learn-iterate) to exercise our innovation “muscle,” support the creation of new models (including microschools), and help the most promising models scale and replicate. We must believe that American ingenuity and educational innovation will help reveal previously unimagined breakthroughs. Education must evolve from a “century of sameness” to “systems that adapt.”

Pillar #2: Accountability

Accountability is complex and it means a lot of different things. At a systems level, accountability doesn’t necessarily mean testing regimes or micromanagement—it means focusing on continuous improvement and student-centered results. Politically, it is about having a sense of urgency, it is about shifting our focus from inputs to outcomes, and it is about refusing to write a blank check for things that are not working.

As we move schools along the continuum of Poor-Fair-Good-Great, there are different approaches required at each stage. Lower-performing schools might require more oversight while better-performing schools might require more flexibility. The one constant, however, should be that our support for schools be coupled with a push for continuous improvement.

• For the lowest performing schools, tie funding to performance—invest in what works, and stop funding what doesn’t. Period!

  • Insist on students mastering the basics yet, beyond that, allow for different ways to measure “performance.”

• Thoughtfully reform traditional accountability systems, often in the form of regulations and contractual provisions, that prevent educators from innovating.

  • Allow school leaders the flexibility to employ genuinely different educational philosophies into their practices.

• Reform tenure systems to ensure high-quality teaching, making it easier to reward great educators and remove ineffective ones.

• Limit the practice of social promotion and ensure that students are truly prepared before advancing forward.

Abundance Message: Despite increased investments, the gap between the top 25% and bottom 25% of academic performers continues to widen. We must acknowledge that our approach is not working and regain a sense of moral urgency to try new things. Our North Star should be outcomes for kids, period. We will make all the necessary investments, but only if those investments are showing results.

Pillar #3: Choice

The United States is the outlier among democracies in prioritizing district schools above all other models. Democrats, in particular, must stop defending the status quo and should employ both government-based and market-driven strategies to address our education crisis. Empowering parents should be a central focus and we must constantly remind ourselves that parents don’t care about governance models—they care about results.

• Support public charter schools and enthusiastically help the highest-performing schools replicate and expand to meet demand.

• Explore innovative funding models such as education savings accounts (ESAs), vouchers, and tax credit programs. Instead of rejecting them offhand, how do we shape these tools to align with Democratic values?

  • e.g. putting the most needy families first, protecting civil rights, and having public accountability.

• Expand high-quality options within the public school system, through magnet schools, career academies, dual enrollment, inter- and intra-district choice, universal enrollment systems, and more.

• Provide parents with clear, transparent information to help them make informed choices, as savvy consumers, about their children’s education.

Abundance Message: There is no one-size-fits-all solution to education. To meet kids’ diverse needs, we should empower parents and provide them a broad array of genuinely different options to choose from. In doing so, we should be quality-focused and governance-neutral.

A Framework vs. A Policy Agenda

I wish to stress that these three pillars (Innovation, Accountability, and Choice) should not be thought of as a “policy agenda.” Rather, they create a framework, based on Abundance principles and systems-thinking, to redesign how education is organized and to ultimately produce better outcomes.

I am in contact with educators, advocates and policymakers, on an almost daily basis, who are doing the hard work of developing and implementing brilliant ideas that drive results for kids. There are, for instance, programs for innovative high-dosage tutoring; initiatives to rewrite state accountability systems; and bills to eliminate historic school district boundaries. These are among a countless number of smart policies that should make up part of a “policy agenda.”

However, what I believe has been missing for Democrats is the development of a broader education vision that not only delivers for students but also translates readily into a cohesive political message.

What I attempt to lay out in this paper, as such, is a guide for how our education policies should fit into a broader vision. I believe this framework is not only dynamic and powerful enough to govern on, but also clear and cohesive enough to campaign on.

Education Champions

One of the greatest barriers to meaningful education reform is that the political incentives do not typically align. No single person is politically accountable for education, and rarely does anyone get voted out of office for persistently failing schools. On the other hand, disrupting the status quo is almost certain to incur the wrath of powerful stakeholders—teachers’ unions, bureaucrats, community activists, and local political leaders—without any guarantee of political reward. Education reform is risky, and many elected officials avoid it altogether.

In the absence of a clear national agenda, if real change is to occur, executives—especially governors—are in the best position to lead. Governors oversee their state education systems, they bring an executive mindset, and they hold themselves accountable for results. Over the past decade, Gov. Jared Polis has been the lone Democratic governor who has consistently prioritized education reforms, but it is encouraging to see a new generation of Democratic governors (e.g., Shapiro, Moore, Meyer, Kotek, Stein) following his lead. Executives have the ability to set the agenda, drive policy, and single-handedly catalyze change.

We will have 38 gubernatorial elections in the next 18 months and I predict that education will play a more prominent role than it has in the recent past. We urge every candidate to develop a strong education agenda that embraces an Abundance approach; namely, one that is hyper-focused on delivering results. Whether our party reverses its slide on education depends, first and foremost, on the leadership of our Governors.

The Future: A Democratic Education Vision for 2028 and Beyond

This is a pivotal moment. America’s education system is facing massively disruptive forces, and its future will look different than its past. In fact, its future must look different than its past.

Republicans are aggressively prioritizing education reform, passing sweeping voucher laws, and positioning themselves as the party of education. However, their approach is not without risks. Things will invariably break, and as the party in power, they will have to own the consequences.

When that moment arrives, Democrats must be ready. We must develop a compelling alternative vision, on education and otherwise, and we must convince voters of our ability to deliver the things they want.

Democrats must reconnect with our own core values on education policy and we must deliver real results for the people we aim to help. We must believe that American ingenuity is capable of producing new breakthroughs. We must insist on educational excellence in every single setting. We must empower parents to make informed decisions about what is best for their own children. And, we must believe we can indeed create an abundant supply of “better” and “different” schools throughout our country.

Embracing a politics of Abundance will not be easy, particularly since we will need to overcome the intense advocacy of vested stakeholders. These anti-reformers will bring a scarcity mindset and focus on what they stand to lose. But we no longer have the luxury of deciding whether or not to adopt a new approach; it is now a political and policy imperative for us to do so!

America needs us to be strong, and our families need us to deliver. In this moment of reckoning, an Abundance mindset mixed with a dose of courageous political leadership, can help make this the moment of our renewal.