BRIAN SANDOVAL, a Republican who became governor of Nevada last year, sent his three children to public schools but admits that Nevada's schools are bad. Making them better is one of his main goals, but he does not want to raise taxes for that purpose. Instead, he intends to eliminate teacher tenure and improve how teachers are rewarded. These and other ideas, he says, he got from Jeb Bush, a Republican (and brother of George W.) who was governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007.

In Santa Fe Susana Martinez, another first-term Republican governor, uses almost exactly the same words about school reform in New Mexico and similarly credits Jeb Bush. Her experience, admittedly, also shows how hard such ideas may be to implement. This month a last-minute filibuster shelved several of Ms Martinez's education reforms, including a new teacher-evaluation system. “Pork before kids,” she muttered, but vowed to fight on.

Nevada and New Mexico are among a growing number of states that are looking to Florida and Mr Bush's time in office for inspiration on school reform. Many of these, such as Indiana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arizona, have Republican governors, while others, such as Colorado, have Democratic governors but influential Republican education leaders. Many are also known for mediocre schools. That, indeed, was Florida's situation: its schools were among the nation's worst in 1999 and are now among the best.

These efforts thus represent an attempt to seize from Democrats one of their signature issues, public education. The states with the best schools, such as Massachusetts, still tend to be Democratic, with relatively high taxes and school spending. And some Democratic places, such as the District of Columbia and New York, have made aggressive attempts at reform. But voters increasingly see Democrats as beholden to teachers' unions and the status quo, says Eric Hanushek, an education expert at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. The Republican reformers, by contrast, promise reform without higher taxes, in part by confronting the unions.

This is why they look to Mr Bush. What he proved in Florida, claims Jaryn Emhof, his spokesman at the education foundation he now runs, is that “it's not about how much you're spending, but how you're spending, how you're teaching.” Although school spending did rise slightly under Mr Bush, Florida still spends very little per pupil compared with other states. With a Republican legislature, Mr Bush instead made Florida the only state to adopt an entire bundle of reforms simultaneously, in the teeth of the teachers' unions.

First Florida started grading its schools from A to F, based on the proficiency and progress of pupils in annual reading, writing, maths and science tests. The state gives extra money to schools that get an A or improve their grade, and children at schools that get two F grades in four years are allowed to transfer to better schools. Second, Florida stopped letting third-grade pupils who could barely read go on to fourth grade (a practice, common all over America, called “social promotion”).

Third, it created a merit-pay system in which teachers whose pupils pass certain exams get bonuses. Fourth, it gave parents much greater choice, with state vouchers, between public, charter, private and even online schools. Fifth, Florida set up new methods of certification to draw more talented people into the profession, even if those people have no college degree specifically in education.

Controversial at the time, these reforms now have bipartisan support in Florida, where black and Hispanic pupils in particular have made huge gains. This, too, is an implicit part of the political appeal for many Republicans, who are secretly aghast at the nativist tone of recent presidential-primary debates and know they must reach out to Latinos in coming elections. Mr Bush is married to a Latina, Mr Sandoval and Ms Martinez are Hispanic themselves, and all realise that Hispanic voters, while often conservative on social issues, care deeply about public schools.

Their approach, by placing reform squarely in the remit of state legislatures, also threads another political needle. Change cannot begin locally, many Republicans believe, because teachers' unions have packed so many boards of school districts. Nor should reform originate in the federal government, they believe. On the tea-party wing and among the current batch of presidential candidates, debate seems to be mainly about how fast to scrap the federal Department of Education altogether. Mr Bush, through his spokesman, treads carefully on this point, since a now-discredited federal school reform is part of the legacy of George Bush junior. Washington's role is to “set high expectations, then leave it up to the states,” says Ms Emhof.

Sandi Jacobs at the National Council on Teacher Quality, a think-tank in Washington, says that the list of states with good policies “skews slightly Republican” but also includes others, such as Rhode Island. Nonetheless, it is very Democratic states such as California, she thinks, where the outlook for reform is worst. By the presidential election in 2016, perhaps, education may actually be part of a Republican candidate's pitch.