For decades, conservatives have all but ignored education policy. At the national level, we say that it’s a state issue. At the state level, we say it’s a local issue. At the local level, we cede the terrain entirely to teachers unions. This was always a missed opportunity, but only recently has our operational ignorance become a threat to America’s future.

When the field of education policy was largely an intramural struggle between liberal teachers unions and liberal-minded education reformers, conservatives could afford to side with the latter on issues such as accountability while promoting school choice. But in recent years, both the unions and liberal reformers have allowed policy differences to take a backseat to a new mission: the ideological transformation of the next generation.