Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate gave voters the deepest dive yet into education policy in the 2020 campaign season. The conversation revealed a lot about which candidates knew what they were talking about, and which ones just wanted to throw red meat to the Democratic base.

Almost every candidate had a union-pleasing soundbite about raising teacher pay, and that’s fine. But the issue that inspired actual disagreement among the candidates was public charter schools. The Obama administration was largely tolerant of these independently run but government-funded schools, to the chagrin of his teachers union allies. But with the party racing to the intolerant left as fast as it can, will the next Democratic administration be so open-minded?