THE SILVER LINING:  There was indeed a silver lining in last week's dismal election returns.  And it was a very important one, teaching us that Americans can work politically at the local level to get the kind of change they want.  In this case, those who won were on our side.  From the Washington Examiner: 

As disappointing as the Republicans' midterm performance was, this year's election had many silver linings beyond the Democrats' likely loss of the House of Representatives. Among the most important winners on Tuesday was the issue of school choice, a nonpartisan issue that is really about educational quality.

The victories were big, and they were also widely distributed. Tommy Schultz boasted last week that his organization, the American Federation for Children, had targeted and defeated around 40 incumbent state legislators who opposed school choice. It was a good investment of the group's $9 million.

In South Carolina, school choice advocate Ellen Weaver was successfully elected as the superintendent of education on an education freedom platform. And the school choice wave wasn't limited to the state's rural voters, either. In Charleston, candidates backed by the pro-school choice organization Moms for Liberty secured a majority on the local school board.

The group's endorsed candidates also won several Florida school board races, and their victories across the country are being tallied up. Meanwhile, all six of Gov. Ron DeSantis's endorsees won their school board runoff races as well.

That's just the beginning of the successes that education freedom candidates enjoyed on election night, including successful reelections for every governor supporting school choice. And these victories were preceded by one of the most exciting outcomes — the welcome failure by leftists to repeal Arizona's school choice law through a ballot referendum.

For decades, liberals have claimed that they can solve the education problem with more funding and fewer students in the classroom. And for decades, they have kept getting more funding and smaller classrooms, and these have not solved anything. Student proficiency has failed to rise despite trillions of dollars being invested over the years throughout the 50 states. As a consequence, on the whole, public schools in the United States are abysmal compared to their international peers.

To make matters worse, reading and math proficiency rates crashed during the pandemic thanks to malingering teachers unions, which resisted a return to classroom instruction long after it was clear that COVID-19 was neither a threat to children nor easily spread by them. In refusing to show up at work, they tried to hide behind politically correct rhetoric. As the Chicago Teachers' Union put it, "the push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny."

Lesson: These are not people who can be worked with.

COMMENT:  Please read the whole thing.  This is one of the most important stories to come out of the election, but I haven't seen a word of it on any "news" network.  My own sense is that school choice will be a major issue, perhaps the major issue in American politics in the coming decade.  After all, it affects every parent and child in America.  We will be ready.

November 12-13, 2022