Another year, another election cycle.

Already Republican candidates and pundits are testing carefully calibrated messages about education. A recent National Affairs article by scholar Robert Pondiscio, for example, sounds the following themes: Yes to school choice, but also yes to more funding for public schools. Yes to curricular transparency, but please no “bans” on teacher-led discussions of “sensitive subjects” (critical race theory and gender ideology). “Compromise” is good, even on “the most ideologically tinged” issues. And, by the way, conservatives ought to “cease fomenting parental discontent with public schools” lest activist teachers respond with retaliatory indoctrination of students. Sure, public schools are failing, but parents must “recommit to strengthening,” not “abandon[ing],” public schools. Why? Because “[i]f conservatives cede public schools to the left, they will effectively abandon the vast majority of America’s future generations to the progressive cause.”

This concern for America’s future generations is laudable — but stunningly out of touch and decades late. A recent report by the Policy Exchange, a prominent UK think tank, on the sweeping harm of gender ideology in UK schools warns that policymakers are “Asleep at the Wheel,” an apt description that applies to far too many conservatives.