Among the biggest wins of her tenure, she counts increases in charter funding and twice electing Democrat and school reformer Gov. Jared Polis as governor. After serving as chief of staff for the Denver Public Schools, she fully expected to finish her career at DFER.

“We worked hard to build power in the Democratic Party specifically around accountability, choice and the role of public charter schools,” she said. “Everything had always been grounded 100% in public education.”

But last year, she said she “saw the writing on the wall” when the organization’s leader embraced Education Savings Accounts and other forms of private school choice. She is among several who have since left the group over the issue.

In a , DFER CEO Jorge Elorza, former two-term mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, suggested that instead of “rejecting them offhand,” his party should explore how ESAs can advance Democratic values like uplifting needy families and protecting civil rights. Eighteen Republican-led states now have such programs, which parents can use for private school tuition or homeschooling. Most Democrats say vouchers and ESAs lack accountability and threaten funding for public schools.

To Alisha Searcy, who just last year, Elorza’s about-face felt like a betrayal. 

“DFER has done extraordinary work to get courageous Democrats elected to push bold policies that would truly improve public education,” said the former Georgia state legislator. She was hired last year to expand the organization’s reach into her state, Alabama and Tennessee, but resigned in May. “We need a strong Democratic voice, now more than ever. This move to embrace vouchers and ESAs is the exact opposite.” 

The issue has brought bubbling to the surface a debate that was previously restricted to Democratic backrooms. Elorza took the helm of DFER at a time when polls began to show that voters were losing confidence in Democrats as the party they most trusted on education. Parents, the surveys suggested, were more preoccupied with whether their kids were recovering from pandemic learning loss than how schools were teaching issues of race or gender in the classroom. The only intensified in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s election.

Founded in 2007, DFER always advocated for . Leaders worked with the Obama administration and reform-minded Democrats to support like magnet schools, dual enrollment and lifting state . Now, Republicans and their push for parental rights are dominating the education conversation, including a recent to enact a national tax credit for private school choice. Elorza is among those who say the party needs to be open to more options for families if it’s going to regain its edge with voters, especially parents. But he recognizes the risks.

“There are a lot of Democrats who are choice curious,” he told The 74. “They’ll say privately that they’re open to the idea of choice, including private school choice, but that the politics of it are just so darn challenging.”

In a , he pointed to Pennsylvania as the best opportunity for a swing state to pass an ESA program. Democratic came close to supporting such a bill in 2023.

Some observers say Shapiro and Elorza are outliers in the party. During the Obama years, DFER “nudged” the party toward school reform policies like and maintaining strong, said David Houston, an assistant education professor at George Mason University in Virginia. But now it’s “further from the center of Democratic politics.”

The recent departure of other DFER staff offers further evidence that Elorza’s position doesn’t reflect the Democratic mainstream.

Will Andras served as political director in Colorado for Education Reform Now, a think tank affiliated with DFER that Elorza also leads. Andras left last year, shortly after DFER joined the , a group of organizations that advocate for open enrollment and removing school attendance boundaries. 

The member organizations, funded largely by the conservative Koch network, also support vouchers and ESAs. In his resignation letter, Andras referenced the change in direction since Elorza came on board in 2023. 

“The last six months have shown that the organization I have devoted a substantial portion of my professional career to help build no longer aligns with my political or personal values,” he wrote.

Jessica Giles, who led the D.C. chapter, similar words when she walked away in May. It’s one of several chapters to close since Elorza became CEO. The Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts and DFER South chapters have also shut down. 

Elorza said he respects their stance.

“There are a lot of folks who put a great deal of stock into this public-private distinction, and I think it comes from a principled place,” he said. “But I truly believe that it is in the party’s political best interest to be open minded to any approach that moves the needle for kids and families.”

‘Political winds are shifting’ 

Backed by , the private school choice movement has been on a winning streak since 2022, when Arizona passed the first universal ESA.

“The political winds are shifting,” Corey DeAngelis, a self-described “school choice evangelist” and fellow at multiple think tanks, said at a conference in Atlanta in April. “If Democrats are smart, they’ll stop the Republicans from being able to pick up the football and win on this issue.”

He pointed to Louisiana, where six House Democrats — one-fifth of the party’s caucus — for the LA GATOR Scholarship, an ESA that starts this fall. One of them, Rep. Jason Hughes, passionately defended his vote on the House floor. 

“As I watch children in poverty, trapped in failing schools, who can hardly read, I’ll be damned if I will continue to defend the status quo,” he said. 

Rep. Marlene Terry, a Missouri Democrat, delivered an equally heartfelt speech in May after caucus leaders when she supported a $50 million increase to the state’s ESA program. 

“I will vote how I please, when I please and where I please,” she said. “No one can take away my voice. I will not be silent.”

While her own children attended public school, she said families in the St. Louis-area district she represents are frustrated that their schools have for 15 years. 

“That’s a long time for families to wait for improvement,” Terry told The 74. Riverview Gardens, a majority Black, high-poverty district, regained local control from the state in 2023, but leaders are still working to make continued gains in . “That’s why I support giving families a range of high-quality public options, including public charter schools, and — when absolutely necessary — scholarships to attend other schools if no viable public options exist.”

Some Democrats agree with Elorza that the party shouldn’t distance legislators like Terry. In a , Virginia Board of Education Member Andy Rotherham, who served in the Clinton White House and co-founded Bellwether, a think tank, said Democrats need to welcome “a much wider range of perspectives on these questions,” given school choice’s surge in popularity since the pandemic.

“This is America — we like choice,” he wrote. “Being on the wrong side of that culturally and politically is not a great place to be.”

‘Solidly entrenched’ 

Using an ESA can be particularly uncomfortable for a lifelong Democrat — especially In Arizona, where Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has called the program a “” and wants to on families using it. Kathy Visser, who administers a ESA Facebook group for parents and vendors, knows some who left the forum because they felt that it was “not a safe space for Democrats.” 

“I hate election time because it’s always a mess in the group,” she said. “People think we should be able to talk about ESAs without talking about politics, but when you’ve got one party so solidly entrenched against it, it’s really hard.” 

Some Democrats who use ESAs say they hold their noses when it comes to other aspects of the Republican agenda. 

Christina Foster, whose daughter has used an ESA in the past, said she gets “heart palpitations” when she has to decide on a candidate. She’s board chair for Arizona’s , which runs microschools serving students using ESAs, and wants to protect the program. But in the 2024 election, she voted for Democrats. 

“Some of those Republicans were not supportive of minority rights, immigration rights, women’s rights. Those are very important to me,” she said. “I said ‘OK, unfortunately, I’m going to have to vote against the ESA.”

For those within the traditional K-12 system, the choice to use an ESA can be tricky. As a kindergarten teacher in Arizona’s Peoria district, Melanie Ford is familiar with about how the program undermines funding for traditional schools and is susceptible to waste and fraud. 

But she overlooked those arguments when public school no longer seemed like a safe place for her transgender son Ash. He avoided using the bathroom all day because students said he didn’t belong in the boys’ or the girls’ restroom.

For the 2023-24 school year, Ash used an ESA to attend the , a microschool for middle schoolers in Phoenix that incorporates into the curriculum. Ford told her colleagues that despite her support of public schools, she had to think first about her son. Ash has since returned to a public high school, where he plays on a drumline in the marching band and has straight A’s, his mother said. But using the ESA allowed him to transition in a more supportive setting.

“He didn’t have to deal with the comments from peers that slowly rip a person apart from the inside out,” she said. “He could grow into himself without judgement from others and this was so important for his mental health.”

While some Democrats, as Elorza suggested, may think an ESA is the best option for their children, that interest hasn’t risen to the national level. No Congressional Democrats, for example, have endorsed the federal Educational Choice for Children Act, the tax credit scholarship program tucked into the Republicans’ reconciliation bill.

In some states, vouchers remain unpopular, said Joshua Cowen, an education professor at Michigan State University and a strong opponent of directing public funds to private schools. 

He points to Kentucky, where a private school choice measure last November. Coloradans also defeated a school choice-related , and voters in Nebraska .

While the Democratic party may embrace vouchers in the future, that day is a long way off, said Ravi Gupta, a former Obama staffer who runs a nonprofit media company. On an intellectual level, he’s intrigued by ESAs. Democrats, he said, would never say Medicaid should only be used at a public hospital or Section 8 vouchers only in a housing project, so why doesn’t the same principle apply to education? 

“Twenty years from now, do I think that could be the reality?” he asked. “I think it’s very likely, but it will take some time.”

Disclosure: The Charles Koch Foundation funds Stand Together Trust, which provides funding to The 74. Andy Rotherham sits on The 74’s board of directors. 

DFER promotes education reform-minded Democratic leaders who push for innovation and accountability in schools with an eye toward improving equity, teacher preparedness, public school choice, data transparency and accountability. They support those who wish to make higher education affordable for all. The organization, founded in 2008 at a time of greater consensus around education reform, seeks these goals in a fractured 2023 political landscape where schools have become fodder for the culture wars.

Elorza, 46, a Harvard-educated lawyer, served two terms as Providence mayor, from 2015 to 2023. Former Gov. Gina M. Raimondo, now U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and Elorza called for an outside review of Providence Public Schools after its 2018 test scores showed . The results released by  Johns Hopkins University were damning, paving the way for a state takeover. 

Elorza made in 2019 by bringing his 15-month-old-son to work with him in City Hall. He said in December he to his city’s troubled .

The law school professor sat down with The 74 last week, just before his new job was announced, to talk about growing up in an immigrant community, building consensus in education around what works for students and who he can rely upon in Congress.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The 74: Tell me about your parents.

Jorge Elorza: They came from Guatemala in the mid-1970s, fleeing the civil war. They came here to Providence because there were a lot of factory jobs in the textile and jewelry industry. They were undocumented for the first 12 years of my life. (They became citizens in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan’s .) My father dropped out of school in the 7th grade and my mother in the 5th grade. That’s a big part of my story. Even though I was born and raised here, I identify so strongly with immigrants because that’s the household that I was raised in and that’s the community where I grew up.

You say immigrant families put a tremendous emphasis on education, yet you floundered in K-12 before eventually graduating from Harvard. Do the problems/obstacles you faced back then have relevance today? 

All (immigrant families) place their hopes and dreams on public schools. I’d love to say I was that model student that always listened to their parents and was just destined for success. But the reality is I didn’t have a sense of direction as a young person: I got rejected from every college and university I applied to. When I was 17 years old and graduated from high school, that was a big pivot point for me in my life. I had to decide whether I was going to work in the factory with my parents, aunts and uncles or get my act together. And so that’s when I applied to community college.

You say part of your struggle was that your parents, who worked opposing shifts to manage child care, were not able to help you with schoolwork in part because of the language barrier. 

My father never spoke too much English. They would come home after work, we would have homework and they could only help us to a certain point. 

You attribute part of your success to your ability to score a seat at a coveted magnet school. It was a guidance counselor who urged you to take the admissions exam. 

So, you had to sign up for the test and then they had sent several papers home, but if they were in English, my parents couldn’t read them. My guidance counselor had seen something in me, some potential, and literally came and picked me out of my chair, took me to his office and he made me sign to register. 

You’re plagued by the arbitrary nature of that success. 

What if I happened to be absent that day or if an emergency came up and my guidance counselor just didn’t have the chance to get me? My entire life would have been completely different. We want to live in a world where every kid succeeds as a matter of course. But the reality is that so many kids who do succeed, succeed by overcoming all of the odds and, frankly, by just being fortunate at key moments in their lives.

Will your own ethnic background play a role in your leadership?

I’m absolutely a product of my upbringing and my past. When I think about the importance of education, I think about my friend Juan, one of the most brilliant, smart, sharp kids I have ever met in my life. He had those critical moments in his life where it was a combination of bad decisions and being unlucky. Juan is still a very good friend. He has a great family. He works hard every day, but he’s a laborer. He should have been a doctor. 

I think about my friend Jose … who had grown up next door, who was a year older than me and who I always looked up to. I found out that he had been murdered. I think that many of those stories, unfortunately, are still being recreated today … kids with limitless potential, having that potential either cut short or never being allowed to fully blossom.

The nation has been politically fractured for years. Where do you see consensus in education? 

Speaking about my community here in Providence, the number of Black and Latino families that support charter schools, for example, and that support common sense education policies that research has shown works, is extraordinarily high. Part of the challenge we have is lifting up their voices to make sure that voice on the ground is what’s driving public perception within the Democratic Party.

For example, there’s a lot of support for high-impact tutoring programs, especially as we’re coming out of COVID: Dedicated 1-to-1 tutoring that can help us not only make up that lost learning time, but also make learning gains. Those are things that are strongly supported across the board.

We also very much support summer learning programs that go beyond remedial to actual enrichment classes. Many of our students fall behind: They lose about two months of learning during the summer when other families move forward. 

There’s also mental health investments that make a lot of sense and pathways that can connect our students to careers. 

And you note these programs don’t just have support in Providence, but far beyond. Who are your allies now?

What’s different today than say, 10 years ago, is that there’s this critical mass of progressive and reformers of color. There are organic, grassroots efforts out there: There’s so much energy around this work. Part of my job as a leader of this organization is to organize and harness that enthusiasm and energy that we see at the grassroots level and amplify their voices so they drive more and more of the national conversation in this space. 

Your organization works with the National Parents Union, The Education Trust, Unidos, KIPP, Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights, Educators for Excellence, Alliance for Excellent Education and others. But who are your friends in Congress? 

Sen. Cory Booker has been an early supporter and he’s been steadfast throughout. Sen. Chris Murphy from Connecticut has been an amazing champion of this work … and Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland (of Washington state). We’ve identified about 200 elected champions around this work throughout the country.

Democrats have lost ground in education as Republicans have succeeded in using race, gender, immigration-related and transphobic rhetoric to whip up their base. How do you manage that environment?

On the one hand, you have Republicans who are infatuated with their culture wars right now: Republicans want to ban books while Democrats want to teach kids to read them. What we want to do is speak to the real issues as problem solvers. 

I get extremely frustrated hearing the way that education is being exploited for political gain and this is part of the performative aspect of politics today. But as Democrats, we’re going to continue to focus on the substance of it, call out things that are not working and propose solutions that are proven to work. And ultimately that’s what people want.

Three members of the San Francisco school board were recalled in 2022 after focusing on issues like renaming schools rather than core academic concerns as their city suffered through the pandemic. Do Democrats and progressives miss the mark? 

I’ll tell you what I know. Families want high-quality education options for their kids and they want them now: They’re just not getting enough of them. We see families continuing to apply for the charter lotteries and oftentimes in excess of 10 applicants for every one seat that’s available. It’s really clear what families want most and what they care most about is great public schools for their kids. 

Our job is to make sure that our focus remains on that, that we continue, in our party and in this movement, to always be about substance. That doesn’t mean being blind to the issues happening in society … but in order to meet the moment and what our families are demanding, it always has to be about ensuring that there are great public school options for our kids.