Country-club Democrats are willing to make a lot of sacrifices. As David Freedlander reminds us, rich progressives have long been eager to pay for benefits for other people, such as cheaper college or higher minimum wages. When it comes to school, however, affluent progressives have always had a much harder time denying their own kids the vast privileges that come with rich-kids’ educations.

Goslin at work.

Progressive coalitions have always been held together loosely, and today’s Democratic Party is no exception. As Freedlander points out, most of the energy of the “Democratic Socialist” wing comes from the more educated, more affluent, whiter wing of the party. As Freedlander puts it,

Energized liberals, largely college-educated or beyond, have been voting in a new breed of activist Democrat—and voting out more established candidates with strong support among the party’s largely minority, immigrant, Hispanic, African-American and non-college-educated base.

When it comes to educational privilege, however, we see the coalition breaking down. Freedlander mentions

Upscale parents in Democratic neighborhoods whose liberalism vanishes when it comes to bringing in students from poorer neighborhoods (as on Manhattan’s Upper West Side) or pooling PTA funds between richer and poorer schools (as in Santa Monica, California).

It was ever thus. As I argued in The Other School Reformers, for example, progressive reforms in places such as Pasadena, California lost steam when conservatives “proved” that progressive pedagogy meant worse schooling.

In the early 1950s, in Pasadena at least, progressive superintendent Willard Goslin enjoyed enormous popularity among the affluent residents. He maintained a lot of that support even when conservative activists began to accuse him of introducing progressive reforms, including racial desegregation. When conservative activists accused Goslin of sneaking socialism into the schools, progressive Pasadenans still supported Goslin.

His support collapsed, however—even among politically progressive affluent white Pasadenans—when those affluent supporters were told that Goslin’s school reforms threatened their children’s privileged educations. In Goslin’s case, it was the abolition of traditional report cards that sealed his professional fate. Progressive Pasadenans supported racial integration, in many cases. They even supported socialist ideas, to a limited extent. But they would never support schools that didn’t prove that kids were learning.

Progressives didn’t even mind a little delinquency, but they couldn’t stand lower test scores…

As David Freedlander writes, affluent progressives these days balk at any change that threatens their children’s educational privilege. We probably shouldn’t be surprised at the durability of this issue. When so many Americans view education as the key to achieving or maintaining economic status, it would be hard to imagine things any other way.

In other words, it’s easy to imagine a progressive parent happily paying a little more in taxes to support progressive causes, but it’s hard to imagine many people—progressive or otherwise—sacrificing the best interests of their children, no matter how good the cause.