Last month, the New York Times’s David Brooks wrote a piece titled "America Should be in the Middle of a School Revolution," in which he lamented "a complete absence of leadership" on education policy. But Brooks clearly did not do his homework. At least in red states, legislative action on education has been astonishing in both speed and scope.

Brooks wishes that we could "get beyond the stale debate over charters [and] vouchers." Well, we are. The main school choice debate is no longer over those structurally limited programs that serve a limited number of students but rather over universal programs that place full purchasing power in the hands of parents. Unlike a voucher, which can only be applied toward an accredited private school, education savings accounts place state funding into a flexible spending account that could be put toward private school tuition, tutoring, homeschool expenses, or a "learning pod" or "micro-school."

In the spring of 2021, West Virginia passed the nation’s most expansive ESA program. In the fall of 2022, Arizona passed the nation’s first universal ESA program. Thanks to the leadership of Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, Iowa passed a universal ESA program during this year’s school choice week, and Utah passed a universal ESA program shortly thereafter. Arkansas is poised to pass a universal ESA program within the next few days. Florida is widely expected to pass H.B. 1, which would convert its existing private school choice programs into an ESA. Oklahoma is on track to passing a universal school choice program.

And even in Texas, which has long played the football to the school choice movement’s Lucy, there seems to be a very good chance of a universal ESA program passing. Gov. Greg Abbott has put his weight into the effort, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick declared last week, "We should not leave here this year until we pass school choice. I don’t care how many special sessions it takes. … We don’t have any plans for the summer."

The school choice movement is poised to make more progress in the first half of 2023 than it made in the preceding 23 years. This is precisely because, contra Brooks, various Republican governors have decided to take the lead and expend serious political capital behind universal school choice. But Republican governors are not neglecting traditional public schools. In Florida, DeSantis has championed significant teacher pay raises. In Utah and Arkansas, part of the package deal to pass school choice included historic investments in teacher salaries. The old lines of Republican thrift vs. Democratic spendthrift have been muddled if not reversed as teachers unions have actually fought against these raises.

Beyond that, there is a quieter but potentially more consequential revolution afoot: a reading revolution.

Decades of reform efforts failed to move the needle on reading significantly, perhaps because the efforts were never directed squarely at how students are taught to read. Despite an overwhelming amount of empirical evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of phonics-based instruction, "balanced literacy," which promotes guessing (or "three-cueing"), became widely popular. Thanks in part to the excellent journalistic work of Emily Hanford’s Sold a Story podcast series, red states are taking aim at three-cueing and throwing more resources behind phonics. Louisiana outright outlawed three-cueing and devoted a substantial share of COVID relief funds to literacy coaches that could retrain teachers. Arkansas’s sweeping LEARNS Act similarly devotes a significant amount of money to retraining teachers how to teach reading. And in Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine is seeking to outlaw three-cueing and asking the legislature for $129 million for new textbooks and additional teacher coaching.

In this, DeWine is being opposed by the teachers unions. When it comes to Democrats and blue states, Brooks is not wrong to point out a lack of leadership or policy innovation. Due to both union political and woke ideological capture, the only ideas emanating from the Left right now are increased spending and more "equity" ideology. But he’s entirely wrong to allege that "the Republican Party can’t utter a complete sentence on the subject of school reform that doesn’t contain the initials C.R.T."

The main public critical race theory controversy took place in 2021. Since then, conservatives have pivoted toward broader solutions. Between completely changing the paradigm of school finance to allow a thousand flowers to bloom and homing in like a laser on proper reading instruction, it’s hard to imagine a greater revolution in a shorter time.

This article originally appeared in the AEIdeas blog and is reprinted with kind permission from the American Enterprise Institute.