I grew up in Iowa. I attended public schools in Iowa.
So it pains me to say this, but the Iowa caucuses are bad for education policy. As I lay out in a new column at The 74, the policies favored by an unrepresentative sample of Iowans have an outside influence on our national politics. That has distorting effects, and not in a good way:
When it comes to certain policy areas, such as farming and agriculture, it’s easy to see how an unrepresentative sample of Iowans would result in policies that were unrepresentative of the rest of the country. Our national farm policies are at least partly shaped by the fact that our presidential candidates must kowtow every four years to local interest groups like the Iowa Farm Bureau, where my father worked when I was a kid.
The same applies to presidential contenders crafting their education policies, meaning an unrepresentative sample of Iowans play a quiet but powerful role in shaping our national educational debate. But are the education policies favored by Iowans any good? Are they worth spreading across the country?
The short answer is no. On education, Iowa is falling behind the rest of the country.
In terms of education policy, Iowa is an outlier, and not in a good way. It’s time to give other states a chance to take the lead. Read my piece here.