× Expand Governor Tom Wolf Governor Tom Wolf visiting Ben Chambers Elementary school during his "Schools That Teach Tour."

Pennsylvania is shaping up to be proving ground for fans of public education and progressive politics this year.

Pennsylvania education has had a rough decade. Governors Corbett (Republican) and Rendell (Democrat), by some interpretations, have effectively chopped a billion dollars from the education budget. We have the worst school funding gap in the U.S. Our charter school laws have been called “the worst in the nation,” and we have a mountain of lucrative but failing cyber charters. Education in the commonwealth could use some electoral relief.

The marquee battle will be the gubernatorial runoff between current Governor Tom Wolf and challenger state Senator Scott Wagner. Wolf was initially viewed with suspicion by some observers (including me) who wondered if his private business background and charter ties signal one more corporate Democrat supportive of privatizing public education. But Wolf has turned out to be the best friend public education has had in Harrisburg for years. Now, he is running on his record of restoring funding for public education, investing in pre-K, and attempting to fix Pennsylvania’s wonky school funding formula. He’s also vowed to veto Senate Bill 2, which would bring so-called super-vouchers to the state.

Scott Wagner, on the other hand, was a co-sponsor for that bill. He famously said in 2015 that Pennsylvania could lay off 10 percent of all teachers and that they would never be missed. He’s a fan of Wisconsin’s anti-union Republican Governor Scott Walker and would like to see teacher tenure, unions, and pensions go away. He quit his Pennsylvania senate seat to run for governor. He won that seat as a write-in with Tea Party backing, but my Tea Party friends tell me that his support there has since faded.

In addition to that spicy top battle, Pennsylvania elections will be energized by our newly de-gerrymandered map which gives Democrats a better shot than they’ve had for years. The question now is how best to take that shot.

An early surprise was Democrat Conor Lamb’s ousting of a Trump-district Trump Republican in March’s special election for a seat in the U.S. House. It was good news for Democrats, though not particularly for progressives, as Lamb ran as a sort of traditional Republican-in-everything-but-name campaign.

And the regular primary results held exciting news on several fronts.

Elizabeth Fiedler, candidate for House representative in the Philadelphia area won her primary race on a strong public education platform, promising to fight so that every child “can attend a fully-funded school in their neighborhood.” She’s also calling for a moratorium on charter and cyber-charter schools.

Democrats could actually win standing against corporate interests and for public education.

Summer Lee is running for state assembly in the Pittsburgh area proposing free pre-K for all, and criticizing charter schools as a form of privatization. Sara Innamorato, also running in the Pittsburgh area, campaigned on a platform that included condemnation of charters. In the primary, the two women trounced long-time incumbents Dom and Paul Costas, cousins and establishment politicians, winning well over 60 percent of the vote in a May primary election.

Perhaps progressives around the country could make gains by standing up for public education and against the continued privatization of one of our most valuable public institutions.

Democrats have spent too much time siding with wealthy corporations that want a piece of the education action, at a serious cost to the public that education is supposed to serve. In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo has been a champion of busting the teachers union and pushing charters. Rahm Emanuel’s term as Chicago mayor has been marked by public schools closings and charter school expansion. Jeb Bush worked the GOP side of reform hard, winning the praise of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for doing it, which makes sense since Obama Administration Education Secretary Arne Duncan was a huge fan of most reform measures, including charters and standardized testing.

Maybe Democrats could actually try a stand against corporate interests and for public education. As Pennsylvania shows, it’s a winning strategy.

Peter Greene has been a classroom secondary English teacher for over thirty-five years. He lives and works in a small town in Northwest Pennsylvania, blogs at Curmudgucation, and is Midwest Regional Progressive Education Fellow.