For conservatives, public schools are a red flag—bloated, bureaucratic, tax-consuming institutions. Their first priority is to privatize public education, just as they would privatize Social Security. They push private school vouchers—seeking public funds for tuition to private and religious schools—even though numerous studies prove that private schools are not inherently better than well-run public schools, and several funded as a result of Bush administration and conservative congressional initiatives have done significantly worse.

Conservatives starve investment in public schools, arguing that too much is being spent already. Although they profess to believe in the free market, they reject the need to give teachers salaries competitive with what they would earn in the private market and instead push for breaking teachers’ unions.

The Bush administration exemplifies the consequences of conservative education policy. The No Child Left Behind Act mandated testing to identify failing schools, but Bush broke his promise to provide enough resources to remedy the problems of those schools. Despite the fact that tuition at four-year public colleges has risen an average of 37 percent since he came into office, Bush broke his promise to raise the level of Pell grants, the primary federal scholarship program, and instead cut $12 billion from the student loan program. Instead, Bush and the Republican Congress offered government supports to a college loan industry that has led to huge profits for lenders but unprecedented levels of debt for students.