Don't Like Betsy DeVos? Blame the Democrats.

The Democrats had dipped a toe in "school reform." Before long, they were completely immersed. After George W. Bush made the "Texas miracle" of improved schools a launching pad for the presidency, many Democrats swallowed his bogus claim that testing students every year had produced amazing results. In 2001, Ted Kennedy, the Senate's liberal lion, teamed with Bush to pass No Child Left Behind. For the first time, the government was mandating not only "accountability" (code for punishing teachers and schools who fall short), but also "choice" (code for handing low-performing public schools over to charter operators).

When Barack Obama took office in 2009, educators hoped he would return the party to its public school roots. By then, even Bill Clinton was calling No Child Left Behind a "train wreck." Instead, Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan doubled down on testing, accountability, and choice. Their Race to the Top program was, in essence, No Child Left Behind II: It invited states to compete for $5 billion in funds by holding teachers accountable for test scores, adopting national standards, opening more charter schools, and closing low-scoring public schools.

The Obama years saw an epidemic of new charters, testing, school closings, and teacher firings. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed 50 public schools in one day. Democratic charter advocates--whose ranks include the outraged Booker and Bennet--have increasingly imported "school choice" into the party's rhetoric. Booker likes to equate "choice" with "freedom"--even though the entire idea of "choice" was created by white Southerners who were scrambling to defend segregated schools after Brown v. Board of Education.

It's fitting that Trump and DeVos rely on the same language to tout their vision of reform. They're essentially taking Obama's formula one step further: expanding "choice" to include vouchers, so parents can use public funding to pay for private and religious schools. Democrats are up in arms about the privatization scheme, as they should be: It's a disaster for public schools. But if they're serious about being the party that treats public education as a cornerstone of democracy, they need to do more than grandstand about the consequences they helped bring about. They need to follow the money--their own campaign money, that is.

As Democrats learned years ago, support for mandatory testing and charter schools opens fat wallets on Wall Street. Money guys love deregulation, testing and Big Data, and union-busting. In 2005, Obama served as the featured speaker at the inaugural gathering of Democrats for Education Reform, which bundles contributions to Democrats who back charter schools: Among its favorites have been those sharp DeVos critics George Miller, Michael Bennet, and Cory Booker. Conservative funders like the Walton Foundation also give generously to charter schools and liberal think tanks such as the Center for American Progress.

The money had its intended effect. When Andrew Cuomo decided to run for governor of New York, he learned that the way to raise cash was to go through the hedge funders at Democrats for Education Reform. They backed him lavishly, and Cuomo repaid them by becoming a hero of the charter movement. Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy, often celebrated for his unvarnished liberalism, is another champion of the charter industry; some of its biggest funders live in his state. California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill to ban for-profit charters in the state, and has resisted efforts to make charters more accountable. As mayor of Oakland, he opened two charter schools.

There are plenty of reasons that Democrats should steer clear of the charter industry. Charter corporations have been repeatedly charged with fraud, nepotism, self-dealing, and conflicts of interest. Many charters make money on complex real-estate deals. Worst of all are the "cybercharters": mega-corporations that offer virtual schools, with high attrition, low test scores, and abysmal graduation rates. The biggest cybercharter chain is K12 Inc., started by former junk-bond king Michael Milken and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

"Support for charters is paving the way for a dual school system--one that is allowed to choose the students it wants, and another that is required to accept all who enroll."

But it's more than a matter of sleeping with the enemy. School choice doesn't work, and "evidence-based" Democrats ought to acknowledge it. Charter schools are a failed experiment. Study after study has shown that they do not get better test scores than public schools unless they screen out English-language learners and students with profound disabilities. It's well-established that school choice increases segregation, rather than giving low-income students better opportunities. And kids using vouchers actually lose ground in private schools. Support for charters is paving the way for a dual school system--one that is allowed to choose the students it wants, and another that is required to accept all who enroll.

This is what Democrats should be yelling about. And if there's ever a moment for them to reclaim their mantle as the party of public education, it's now. The misguided push for "reform" is currently being led not by Obama and Duncan, but by Trump and DeVos, giving Democrats an opening to shift gears on education--though they'll lose some of that hedge-fund money. But if 2016 taught Democrats anything, it's how unwise it was to allow the demolition of organized labor--including teachers' unions, once a great source of money and grassroots energy. The party needs strong teachers' unions and it needs their enthusiasm.

The agenda isn't complicated. Fight privatization of all kinds. Insist on an evidence-based debate about charter schools and vouchers. Abandon the obsession with testing. Fight for equitable funding, with public money flowing to the neediest schools. Acknowledge the importance of well-educated, professional teachers in every classroom. Follow the example of Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, who vetoed a bill to expand charters in March. Or Montana Governor Steve Bullock, who insists that charters employ certified teachers, allow them to unionize, and fall under the control of local school districts. Democrats should take their cue from Bullock when he declares, "I continue to firmly believe that our public education system is the great equalizer."

There is already an education agenda that is good for children, good for educators, good for the nation, and good for the Democratic Party. It's called good public schools for everyone. All Democrats have to do is to rediscover it.