How education culture wars have shaped the midterms
Hi everyone,
I wanted to share my final piece before the midterm elections, a look at how education issues have been playing out. I published a story in The New Republic on the rise of “critical race theory” bills and how that was affecting teachers just before I started at Vox, and this new story marks my first real dive back in, taking stock of how CRT has largely faded politically in the last half-year, and how attacks on transgender rights have correspondingly escalated.
Education hasn’t dominated the national headlines or ads this cycle — that’s been inflation, abortion and crime — but it has been a major piece of how candidates have been campaigning up and down the ticket, especially playing up the idea of “parents’ rights”. And given that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis very well could be the 2024 GOP Republican frontrunner, I think it’s important to understand what’s been happening down in his state, where’s been leveraging education issues to build his power base.
In March DeSantis signed Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act — which bars teachers from providing lessons on sexual orientation or gender identity between kindergarten through third grade. The left refers to it as the "Don't Say Gay" law.
After Florida passed it, a number of other states introduced copy-cat bills. The specter of Democrats and public school teachers indoctrinating preschoolers on queer theory has become a huge flashpoint this midterm cycle, and I say more about that in the story.
The law was more popular with Americans than I expected. In March, Rasmussen found 62 percent of likely voters would support a law like Florida’s parental rights bill in their own state, including 45 percent who “strongly support” the measure.
In August and September USC researchers conducted a large national survey on teaching "controversial" issues in schools. They found most Americans opposed elementary school students learning about gender identity and sexual orientation. While far more Democrats supported teaching young children about LGBTQ+ issues than Republicans, still a majority of Democrats also believed these lessons should wait until children were older.
This past summer Ron DeSantis came out to endorse 30 conservative Florida school board candidates, those who agreed with him on masking and his law about teaching children LGBTQ+ ideas. The vast majority of DeSantis’s endorsees won their races. Partisan school board endorsements aren't new, but gubernatorial endorsements are very unusual.
In the backdrop of all this are shifting views about which party is more trusted to lead on education. Democrats have held a trust advantage for decades, but it's been slipping since the pandemic. DeSantis is trying to position GOP as the ones to trust, and his party is following his lead.
You can read more about this in the story.
Hope you all make time to vote, I’ll talk to you after the election.