Colorado Republicans and Democrats have been facing off with each other as well as the public education establishment over school issues ranging from the teaching of history to the wearing of masks. That has been true in other states, too.

A new study concludes parents and voters in general, increasingly, have been realigning their views about education issues to match their partisan loyalties. It helps explain not only the acrimony over public ed in our state but also the drift away from policies like school choice and accountability measures in Democratic enclaves like Denver – despite onetime bipartisan accord on those issues.

It could even explain why the state’s senior Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, once a forceful advocate for education reform, has all but vanished from the education policy debate.

The upshot in our increasingly blue state could be to undercut support for standardized testing, charter schools and other reforms that have done so much to uplift Colorado’s neediest, most at-risk schoolchildren.

The study, led by David Houston, an assistant professor of education policy at George Mason University in Virginia, substantiates the growing partisan divide. Houston and his co-authors looked at the past 16 years of responses to an annual survey by the online education journal Education Next and tracked changes on key issues over time.

The evident rift between the two major political parties is gaping. The authors find: “About 65% of Democrats support face mask mandates in schools, with 15% opposed. Among Republicans, the breakdown is essentially the reverse: 19% in support and 63% opposed. And: “Fully 54% of Democrats think their local schools are placing too little emphasis on racial matters … Meanwhile, 51% of Republicans think there is currently too much emphasis on racial matters, compared to 9% of Democrats.”

Partisan positions are playing an ever greater role in long-standing education issues, as well.

“The partisan gap on views of teachers unions has seen a yearly increase of about 1.4 percentage points on average. In 2022, the difference between Democrats and Republicans in positive evaluations of teachers unions is nearly 40 percentage points,” the authors find. And, “…support for the general concept of school choice is highly divisive, with 60% of Republicans, but only 41% of Democrats, expressing a favorable position.”

What is driving the trend? Voters are more inclined to take their cues from their respective political parties. Education news service Chalkbeat, which took an in-depth look at the study this week, quotes Columbia University political scientist Jeffrey Henig:

“When people were making decisions based on their local community and their local experience, Republicans and Democrats didn’t differ sharply,” but, “when the debates get nationalized, either because they’re getting driven by national legislation or national interest groups are reaching into these communities, then you do get this sharp partisan divide.”

“Members of the public kind of learn issue positions via politicians and the media,” Michigan State University political scientist Sarah Reckhow told Chalkbeat. Reckhow said as a result most will “change their issue positions to align with their party rather than the reverse.”

Among Colorado’s dominant Democrats and particularly the officeholders they elect, that means defaulting to the national party’s lock-step support for teachers unions and their opposition to wide-ranging reforms. That, in a state where Democratic former Gov. Roy Romer signed into law the authorization of charter schools in the 1990s – and where Bennet himself ushered in much-needed reforms as Denver’s school superintendent from 2005 to 2009.

Will party talking points ultimately replace thoughtful education policy in Colorado? Let’s hope not.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board