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This interdisciplinary study examines the issue of education in presidential election campaigns from 1968 through 2012. Historians of education have argued that the public's embrace of The National Commission on Excellence in Education report A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (ANAR), in 1983 forced education onto the national agenda because political elites had to respond to voters' concerns about educational quality. Yet, historians of education have largely overlooked presidential election campaigns in their analysis of how education became a prominent political issue. In contrast, political scientists have focused a great deal on presidential election campaigns in seeking to understand the interaction between political elites and voters but have given little attention to the issue of education. This study integrates these two lines of inquiry to provide a better understanding of how education became a top-tier political issue and to better reveal the interactions between political elites and voters in that process.
This study makes use of source materials that have received little scholarly examination. Internal campaign strategy documents reveal how political elites understood public opinion about education and how they sought to make use of that understanding to win elections. These underutilized sources reveal that historians have overemphasized the role of ANAR in the rise of education on the national political agenda.
Long before education appeared in public opinion data as a top voter concern, strategists from both major political parties already wanted to push education onto the national political agenda. Yet, candidates were largely constrained from using education during the 1970s because they wanted to avoid engaging the controversial issue of de facto school desegregation. White voters were inconsistent on the issue: they claimed to support desegregation but took actions indicating they actually opposed desegregation. This made it difficult to craft an effective education message. When forced to discuss school desegregation, candidates of both parties employed a "quality education for all students" frame that deracialized the school desegregation debate and made education a safe issue to prime by the end of the decade.
Beginning in the 1980s, Republicans used education for two electoral ends. First, they sought to use the recent transformation of the National Education Association (NEA) into a labor union and its endorsement of Democratic candidates to convince voters that the Democratic Party was beholden to radical special interest groups. Republican candidates also increased their priming of education in an attempt to close the gender gap arguing that women voters had a particular concern for the issue of education.
Between 1990 and 2012, both parties wanted to use education to appeal to white voters. Republican candidates had long been committed to using education to soften their image. Now they began framing education as a civil rights issue in order to reassure white voters of their racial sensitivity. Meanwhile, Democratic candidates began framing education as an economic issue to reassure middle class white voters anxious about their children's future in the emerging global economy.
A primary element in these electoral strategies was the idea that education was a "special" political issue. The "special" status rested on political elites' perceptions of voters' strong personal commitment to education and their nonpartisan attitudes toward specific policy positions. The lack of partisan correlation presented challenges for both parties but also unique opportunities to address campaign concerns related to a candidate's image, targeted voting blocs, and possible attacks on their opponents. The rise of the issue of education on the national agenda was often less about voters' concerns with educational quality and more about campaign strategy.