Former California state senator Gloria Romero has defected to the Republican Party, telling reporters, “In this Capitol behind me, I served as both Senate Democratic Caucus chair and the Senate majority leader. But today I say goodbye. Adios! I’ve had enough.” The move follows Romero’s memo to her party in 2021.

“I’ll just be blunt,” Romero wrote. “I’ll call it the abject stupidity of the Party elites who have embraced the vilest expressions of woke-ism and an abdication to the promise of education as the key to the American Dream that still matters to so many, particularly Latinos and African Americans, and the commitment to ensuring the public safety for all.” Despite the rhetoric, Romero’s recent defection is more about education than politics.

In 2022, Romero joined Ric Grenell of Fix California to endorse the Education Savings Accounts Act of 2022. “As a proud Democrat who has dedicated my life to fighting against an entrenched education bureaucracy so that all California children can have all the opportunities afforded to our ruling class,” Romero proclaimed, “I proudly join with Ric and Fix California to give parents control over their children’s destiny.” The measure failed to qualify for the ballot, not the state’s first setback for school choice.

The 1993 Proposition 174 required the state to provide a voucher for every school-age child equal to at least 50 percent of government per-pupil funding for K-12 schools. The vouchers could be redeemed at independent schools and the measure limited regulation of schools accepting vouchers. California’s teacher unions charged that the measure would lead to “witch schools,” Ku Klux Klan schools and such, and take away funding from government schools.

Republican governor Pete Wilson opposed the measure, which failed to pass by a 70-30 margin. Students remained the captives of a bloated education establishment, and the problem was not limited to California.

Not Just California’s Schools

Schools in Washington D.C. are among the most dysfunctional and dangerous in the nation. Politicians such as Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama sent their children to elite private schools such as Sidwell Friends, but for inner city parents the only alternative is the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, run by Congress. Federal education bureaucrats and teacher unions oppose the program but Obama’s incoming education secretary Arne Duncan did them one better.

The Harvard sociology grad rescinded scholarships already awarded to 216 families for the upcoming school year. Like the southern segregationists of old, Duncan stood in the schoolhouse door blocking both escape from dysfunctional government schools and entry to the independent schools the parents wanted.

As the Washington Post lamented, “nine out of 10 students who were shut out of the scholarship program this year are assigned to attend failing public schools.” The vast majority of the students are black, so if their parents thought Duncan’s actions were racist it would be hard to blame them.

The federal Department of Education Duncan headed dates only to 1978 and was Jimmy Carter’s payoff to teacher unions for endorsing his run for president. The top-heavy department did nothing to improve the quality of education, an outcome confirmed by the 1983 A Nation at Risk report.

The failure marked by that report continues, now abetted by the woke junk thinking that Gloria Romero decries. The brave reformer may boast new allies, but she won’t get any help from the federal education department, which Democrats love, and which Republican presidents Reagan, Bush, and Donald Trump failed to eliminate.

Government Monopoly on Schools

In government monopoly education, taxpayer dollars must trickle down through multiple layers of bureaucratic sediment before they reach the classroom. The system remains a collective farm of mediocrity and failure. There are no academic or legal arguments against school choice, only political arguments and the powerful teacher unions and politicians who wield them.

There is little hope for reform until parents gain the freedom to choose the schools their children attend, government or independent, as a matter of basic civil rights.