There was something at once refreshing and frustrating about GOP presidential candidates’ discussion about education during their Donald-Trump-less debate. As news reports have noted, Ron DeSantis, Doug Burgum, Vivek Ramaswamy and Mike Pence vowed to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education while Chris Christie and Tim Scott vowed to take on the teachers’ unions.

It was refreshing because these are sensible ideas, which harken back to traditional Republican talking points since the Reagan administration. The DOE isn’t a particularly old institution, having been formed by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. Education had traditionally been a local and state matter – and few can argue that educational outcomes have improved since federal bureaucrats began meddling in local public-school systems.

Likewise, teachers’ union have been a mostly deleterious force in public schools. They’ve been around for more than 150 years, although their power has grown in the last half century. Obviously, unions exist to provide benefits and higher salaries for workers. In public schools, however, unions such as the California Teachers’ Association have secured work rules including tenure and seniority that have reduced the ability of schools to better serve students.

It’s no surprise that unions lobbied to keep the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders in place rather than speed up the return of classroom teaching – even though poor students in particular suffered grievous educational setbacks during that period. It’s also not surprising that unions – and their allied politicians – have spent their war-chests lobbying to limit charter-school competitors.

We’re happy to see these important issues come back onto the national stage. It’s worth remembering that education policy didn’t get mentioned during Trump’s competing interview with former TV host Tucker Carlson, as Education Next reported. As the Republican Party has fixated on culture-war issues, solid nuts-and-bolts policy issues have taken a back seat.

So why are we also frustrated? Because we’ve been hearing these promises for 40 years and they’ve amounted to little more than campaign slogans. Republicans have largely given up on trying to promote fundamental reforms and have instead waged campaigns to have conservatives take over local school boards or mandate education policy at the state level.

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That has a positive side, as many right-leaning local officials have promoted school choice, but it also has led to imposition of divisive socially conservative policies. Our view remains the same as it was in the 1980s: Giving parents choice in where to send their kids will lead to innovation, competition and better outcomes. Instead of fighting over who controls public schools, parents should choose schools that best serve their kids’ needs.

It’s absurd for people in local districts to pay taxes to the federal government only for it to return that funding to the locals as grants – all of which have strings attached. Thanks to those union work rules, bureaucratic mandates and limits on performance-based pay, the system leaves lower-income children stuck in underperforming and even incompetent schools.

California’s statistics are alarming, with falling scores and growing absentee rates. Meanwhile, unions quash promising alternatives and politicians focus on ramping up spending for the status quo. Shuttering the DOE and taking on unions – as Christie did as New Jersey’s governor – should be a big part of the national discussion. But it needs to yield specific reforms that Republicans actually implement.