Gridlock is back on Capitol Hill

OPINION:

Was it a blue wave? A blue ripple? That “big victory” for President Trump? Or “a new day in America” for Nancy Pelosi? Well, the pundits have spent the last two weeks putting everything in the win and loss columns and the only thing they seem to be able to agree on is that there were some wins and some losses.

One thing we don’t need is someone with a political science degree to tell us is that the Democrats control the House and Republicans control the Senate. Without some grand consensus suddenly overcoming the growing partisan divide, don’t count on a whole lot getting done. Gridlock is back on Capitol Hill.

It’s not all bad news though. In fact, it has always seemed dubious why we measure congressional productivity by the number of bills signed into law. Are fewer laws emanating out of Washington, D.C., really such a bad thing? If anything, a divided Congress puts the focus back where it belongs — in the states.

On important issues like education, the states are leading and that’s a good thing. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to government, the states are looking at the issues through 50 different lenses that better reflect the vastness of our country and its changing landscapes.

And, the midterms also brought changing landscapes to the statehouses.

Of the country’s 99 state legislative chambers (Nebraska is unicameral), 87 were contested with nearly 84 percent of legislative seats on the line. That means fresh faces, exciting new ideas and the potential for disappointing reversals on issues that Americans of all political persuasions care about.

On the education front, the midterms brought some heartburn to reformers who saw gains made by those critical of innovative and parent-empowering choices in several states.

In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker failed in his bid for a third term and incoming-Gov. Tony Evers, the state’s superintendent, has vowed to freeze enrollment and phase out the state’s four private school voucher programs unless the legislature agrees to changes that appear to be nothing more than poison pills.

The highly successful programs allow more than 35,000 students, including nearly 28,000 underprivileged kids in Milwaukee, to attend private schools. A University of Arkansas study found that students enrolled in the Milwaukee program saw a 79 percent reduction in overall felony convictions compared with their public-school peers.

California’s surprisingly robust charter school network has come under greater pressure in recent years from the state teacher’s union.

In September, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill banning for-profit charter schools. Now it looks like Tony Thurmond, the candidate heavily backed by the teacher’s union, will win the state superintendent’s race. After trailing former charter school operator Marshall Tuck by 86,000 votes, Mr. Thurmond now leads by almost as many votes.

Despite the likely damage to the positive competitive pressure charter schools have had on traditional public schools in the state, Mr. Thurmond expressed his support for a “pause” (or moratorium) on charter schools.

In Arizona, a causality of a teacher union movement that included walkouts and demands for higher pay was voters’ rejection of Proposition 305. The proposition would have upheld Senate Bill 1431, which expanded the state’s education savings-account program.

ESAs are like a health savings account for education where government puts the money it would have otherwise spent on a child’s schooling into a restricted-use bank account that gives parents flexibility to craft and individualize education.

There were also setbacks in New Mexico, Michigan and New York, too. But perhaps the biggest loss for educational reform in the midterm was the wasted opportunities.

Republicans are typically viewed as the standard-bearers of parent-centric education. But after claiming a lion’s share of the statehouses and governor’s mansions, only a handful of states implemented meaningful education reform.

As the focus returns to the government closest to the people in the states, bread and butter issues like taxes, jobs and education should also return to focus. Education reform can’t remain a backburner issue as it unfortunately did when Republicans had the keys to the castle.

This election brought changes, and some of them for the worse. That’s politics. But it also hopefully brings a return to the basics. And on issues that voters care about most, all eyes should be on our statehouses, because that is where the future is being debated.

• Scott Kaufman is the director of Education and Workforce Development Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).