Why aren’t more politicians talking about America’s learning crisis?

While running for governor of California, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan was eager to talk about the challenges in the state’s public schools. He even compared California unfavorably to Louisiana and Mississippi, which have recently made gains on national exams. “With all of our progressivism, all of our resources, we are failing far too many of our kids,” Mahan said at one point. Few other candidates prioritized education during the campaign.  

But Mahan’s pitch didn’t seem to resonate much with California voters. He received less than 4% of the vote in last month’s primary.

Many factors go into election results, but the limited traction Mahan received is a neat encapsulation of a broader phenomenon. The unprecedented recent declines in American students’ test scores have barely registered politically. 

“Most voters don't really care very much,” says Vladimir Kogan, a political scientist at Ohio State University. Perhaps that’s why most politicians aren’t prioritizing the issue, at least during political campaigns.

A recent Gallup poll found that just 2% of Americans ranked education as the country’s most pressing challenge. While most people say they’re dissatisfied with the country’s public schools, a strong majority of parents are reasonably happy with their own child’s school.

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat, has sought to make education a bigger political issue by arguing that his own party has not done enough to improve schools. This pitch has drawn a great deal of attention from journalists, including me, but so far has not drawn much interest from regular voters. In a potential presidential primary, Emanuel is polling between 0%-2%.

In Colorado, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet campaigned to be an “education governor.” The former superintendent of Denver Public Schools, Bennet presided over notable gains in student outcomes there. Tellingly, though, the campaign did not focus on education, and Bennet was upset in the primary by Attorney General Phil Weiser.

In Iowa, Democratic candidate for governor Rob Sand has successfully put education at the center of the race by offering a sharp critique of taxpayer funding for private schools. In a recent interview with me, he was less specific on how he would improve public schooling. Despite being a Democrat in a red state, Sand has led in a number of early polls.

In general, most nationally prominent Democrats don’t appear eager to talk about the state of learning in U.S. schools. Yet voters don’t seem to mind. The party has held a clear edge on education in most polling for the last few years, including several recent surveys.

On the other hand, President Donald Trump has been happy to talk about perceived failings of the country’s public schools, including falling test scores. Still, the energizing focus of Trump’s campaign and now presidency has not been to raise achievement but to limit DEI and close the Education Department. (Officials suggest this will help improve schools, but haven’t spelled out how moving the same programs to different federal agencies would do so.)

Unlike policy wonks, Americans may not be all that focused on test scores. In one poll, parents ranked test scores as the least important measure among several for judging their children’s success in school. In school board elections, researchers have found that voters don’t seem to weigh tests heavily when deciding whether to reelect incumbents. 

In 2024, Massachusetts held a referendum on whether to allow students to graduate high school without passing a standardized test. Critics across the political spectrum argued this would exacerbate the achievement issues facing the state, yet voters still backed the measure overwhelmingly.

Americans’ seeming nonchalance has come despite the substantial media attention to the country’s achievement woes. Some news stories even offer a clear nudge to voters and politicians that they should care more. “What happened to learning as a national priority?” pointedly asked a New York Times essay last year. 

There has also been no shortage of policy advocates, nonprofit executives, and educational researchers clamoring to make this a bigger issue.  

Here at Chalkbeat we’ve published dozens of pieces on the state of learning. I’ve been writing about the potential and the reality of learning loss since March 2020. There’s a reason for this focus: Test scores aren’t perfect measures, but they tell us something meaningful about how well American students are learning basic skills. 

To be clear, politicians have not been entirely indifferent to the learning challenges. Some governors and legislators have made a number of moves designed to bolster achievement. In particular, they’ve banned cellphones in school and promoted the science of reading, often on a bipartisan basis. 

But it’s certainly true that the quality of American education is no longer the center of national political debates in the way it once was. The 1983 report, “A Nation at Risk,” turned school performance into a national issue for the next few decades. In 2000, voters ranked education as the number one issue in some polls. Nearly one third of all presidential ads that cycle were about education, according to a recent study.

By contrast, a quarter century later, “federal education politics is now increasingly detached from the widely recognized challenge that helped sustain bipartisan action: improving student outcomes,” wrote political scientists in the study. They find that both parties’ platforms have in recent years steered away from a focus on standards and accountability, which were once staples.

What’s changed? Political polarization may have given politicians less of an incentive to appeal to moderate voters, which a commitment to education reform once served to do. Media fragmentation and distrust might have limited the influence of alarming news stories describing learning declines. Grade inflation could have reduced parents’ demand for reform. Perhaps other pressing issues have simply overtaken education.

There may also be a chicken and the egg issue. If more politicians were talking about learning, maybe more voters would care. Or perhaps those who have talked about it have failed to offer solutions that most voters find compelling.

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