With both Halloween and Election Day looming, it’s the ideal time to consider the new, sugar-frosted politics of education. Fifteen or 20 years ago, for better and worse, education policy was dominated by an eat-your-vegetables ethos that celebrated rigor, results, and efficiency.

For Democrats, during the Bush-Obama years, the mark of seriousness was a willingness to challenge the unions, critique teacher tenure, endorse charter schools, and hold schools accountable for student outcomes. For Republicans, it was about accountability, reining in undisciplined spending, school choice, and addressing the problems with collective bargaining.

Politically speaking, this litany was a mixed bag. It fired up the policy diehards at places like the Harvard Kennedy School or the Chamber of Commerce, but it proved to have limited allure for your typical parent or voter. While accountability appealed in the abstract, its allure curdled pretty quickly once voters saw it in practice.

The costs were visible and concrete; the promised benefits were not. Critics warned of over-testing, cuts to cherished programs, and threats to the jobs of beloved teachers, and they pointed to enough instances that their concerns were credible. Meanwhile, would-be reformers offered up the hypothetical, amorphous rewards of efficient spending and accountable schools. Political analysts since Machiavelli have explained what happens when that’s the shape of the fight. Spoiler: the reformers get their butts kicked.

The politics were similar to those of Social Security or Medicare, where elected officials who worry about the long-term and want to tackle shortfalls get skewered for their trouble. Everyone likes benefits from these programs, but no one likes the idea of paying more into them, getting less from them, or waiting longer to be eligible for them. That’s why Trump is doing his best to get to Harris’s left on entitlements, with proposals like adding IVF coverage to Medicare or exempting Social Security benefits from taxation.

If voters are dead-set against eating their vegetables, public officials will eventually give voters what they want—or be replaced by those who do. Well, welcome to education policy circa 2024. In our populist, meme-fueled era, there’s not much appetite for complicated policy debates or talk of shared sacrifice. What we see instead is a lot of tribalism and frustration with the cost of living. And that’s created an education politics notable for culture wars and goodie bags.

That’s why so many GOP governors sound like Donald Trump when it comes to women’s sports and CRT/DEI but like Kamala Harris when it comes to teacher pay and early childhood. To see this more clearly, it can be useful to set aside the main course of culture-infused policy fights and sort the side dishes into a handy little In-and-Out chart.

For Democrats

What’s In:

• • Teacher pay
  • Student loan forgiveness & college affordability
  • Career and technical education (CTE)
  • Early childhood spending

What’s Out:

• • Accountability
  • Charter schools

For Republicans

 What’s In:

• • School choice
  • College affordability
  • Teacher pay
  • CTE
  • Early childhood spending
  • Science-based literacy

What’s Out:

• • Accountability
  • Pruning teacher contracts
  • Efficiency

The eat-your-vegetables stuff is out. What’s in? The sugar-frosted stuff: teacher pay, forgiving loans, reducing the cost of college, CTE, and money for early childhood are pretty much all upsides for elected officials (except when bills eventually come due).

Now, there are two big items on the GOP “in” list where things get more complicated. One is the “science of reading.” Fueled both by practical frustrations and conservative antipathy to “whole language” progressivism, this may be the closest thing you’ll find in 2024 to Bush-Obama wonkery—even if it’s been partly fueled by culture-clash ire. (The politics of reading are fascinating, so let’s set this aside for another time.)

Then there’s school choice. Politically, the great thing about school choice is that it gives families the freedom to decide what kind of education is best for their children. This has immediate, visible benefits for families. But the political challenge is that any adverse consequences are immediate, too, allowing critics to point to lost enrollment and budgetary impacts. Moreover, some worry that choice will upend familiar, comfortable arrangements, especially in suburban and rural communities. These complicating factors are why the appeal of choice tends to vary with state context, program design, and sales pitch.

So, what’s this all mean over the next year or two?

First, education budgets will be caught in a tug-of-war between the pull of fiscal reality and the push of pandering pols. On the one hand, emergency pandemic aid is running out, the federal government is running staggering deficits, and economic growth is projected to slow. On the other hand, politicians want to spend money on inoffensive things, which could bode well for early childhood, CTE, and teacher pay.

Second, there’s no obvious appetite for budget cuts. Given the attention to Trump’s vague promise to abolish the Department of Education and the budget-cutting proposals in Project 2025, you might imagine that we’re on the cusp of some overdue belt-tightening in education. I wouldn’t bet on it. Officials don’t see a constituency for cuts, they haven’t made the case for them, and neither Democrats nor Republicans are eager to make tough decision on spending.

Third, the good folks seeking to resuscitate accountability or tackle grade inflation are fighting an uphill battle. In fact, many of the same foundations and advocacy groups that once championed rigor have given themselves over to genteel, soft-focus paeans to tutoring, counseling, innovation, and equitable practices. It may be a while before the political landscape again becomes hospitable to talk of accountability and rigor.

Ultimately, I find myself both semi-nostalgic for eat-your-vegetables leadership and musing that too many of those would-be reformers lacked the requisite political acumen. When trying to do hard things on behalf of voters who are only mildly invested, it’s all too easy to alienate the public and set the table for the kind of sugar-frosted politics that are being served up today.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”