Republicans continue to beat themselves up about their need to do better among minorities. But unfortunately for the GOP, most of the outreach that’s been tried seems to rest primarily on pandering, whether on immigration to Hispanics or thinking that merely showing up at a hostile venue, as Rand Paul has done, will be enough to win the votes of people who believe Republicans are inveterately hostile to their interests. But there is an issue of paramount importance to minorities, especially the poor, that is just waiting for Republicans to seize in the next election: school choice. With Democrats effectively chained to the teachers’ unions because of their financial support for their campaigns, the cause of giving parents the ability to take their children out of failing public schools is the true civil-rights issue of the 21st century.
A discussion of school choice as a civil-rights issue is something you aren’t likely to hear much about in the mainstream media. Indeed, outside of Fox News, you probably haven’t heard much about the issue, even in the week designated as “School Choice Week” by advocates. They got something of a boost from House Speaker John Boehner, a longtime supporter of the cause, who hosted an event on Capitol Hill that got almost no national coverage. But while racial hucksters like Al Sharpton and his enablers in the Obama administration seek to exploit violent tragedies to promote division, they pay little or no attention to the priorities of struggling families whose most urgent need is to provide a decent education for their children.
Indeed, it is a scandal that one of the most ambitious experiments in school choice—a vouchers program in the nation’s capital that gave underprivileged kids chances to go to good private schools such as the one that the First Family’s kids attend—was sunk by President Obama and a Democrat-controlled Congress in his first term. Around the country, families line up to take part in lotteries for chances for a place in charter schools and other alternatives to their local public institutions and face odds that generally range from one out of 300 or worse.
But long after it became apparent that competition and increased parental involvement made other choices—whether charter schools or private alternatives—give kids more of a chance to succeed, the teachers’ unions continue to obstruct or sink efforts to promote school choice. Wherever their Democratic Party allies prevail—whether in the White House or in places like New York City where Mayor Bill de Blasio has made good on his campaign promises to the unions and has worked to diminish school choice—children remain trapped and the nation suffers.
Without a good education, minority and poor kids have a dim future. Demonstrations against law enforcement and demonizing the police are a poor substitute for real hope, but that is exactly the bargain that the president and the rest of his party have been offering some of their most loyal voters.
GOP candidates who want to really reach out to minorities to need start and end with education reform that isn’t held hostage to unions that care more about tenure and avoiding holding poor teachers accountable for their performance. Democrats are chained to those unions. That is an opening Republicans should exploit.
Rather than paying lip service to the goal of outreach, conservatives need to realize that this issue is their best, perhaps their only, opportunity to break through to minority voters. Instead of letting it be a throwaway line in speeches with no follow up, they need to start prioritizing school choice from now until November 2016.
