Giving Compass' Take:

• Amelia Harper explains the shift in education reform priorities that was evident in the 2018 midterm election cycle. 

• How can funders work to steer education reform debate to productive and impactful priorities? 

• Learn more about what the 2018 midterm election meant for education reformers.

Educational issues such as testing, standards, teacher evaluation and school reform efforts that have been focuses of education policy for the past few decades were generally not emphasized in the 2018 election cycle. Instead, they were supplanted by a focus on more popular educational issues such as career and technical education (CTE), STEM learning, early-childhood education, social-emotional learning and school funding, Education Week reports.

That evolution makes political sense, said Frederick Hess, education policy studies director at the American Enterprise Institute – a think tank that analyzed candidate positions in the recent election – because issues such as testing and teacher evaluation have lost family support in recent years, while less-defined but less-controversial issues are considered more important and are better understood by voters.

With the switch to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), education policy has also largely shifted from a federal to a state concern, which has made the topic more popular for gubernatorial elections than for those at the national level.

Read the full article about education prorities by Amelia Harper at Higher Education Dive.