“We’ve lost our advantage on education because I think that we’ve failed to fully acknowledge that choice resonates deeply with families and with voters,” said Jorge Elorza, the CEO of Democrats for Education Reform and its affiliate Education Reform Now think tank.

The political flak from both the left and right has put pressure on Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, who is campaigning for public schools and — as someone who hopes to stick around if Biden wins a second term — himself.

“If you erase the Department of Education or you fund private schools, what are you doing for the students that are in the local neighborhood school? I have yet to see a plan,” Cardona told POLITICO of conservative proposals while touring schools across the Midwest and Great Plains. “We have a plan.”

Yet despite the mileage the secretary is putting into classroom visits and urging party faithful to “get back on offense,” Cardona’s facing allies who are clamoring for a more sweeping reinvention of public education and a more forceful response to schoolhouse culture wars.

“Secretary Cardona is a wonderful, loving, sweet man. He’s an educator,” said Keri Rodrigues, the president of the National Parents Union and a member of the Massachusetts State Democratic Committee. “But what we are going through right now is a brutal political moment, and what our kids and American families need is someone with a very specific vision for how we reimagine our American public school system.”

Public schools are confronting significant post-Covid enrollment shifts to private and home schools. Policies that grant students access to school options beyond their traditional neighborhood campus are popular. That has left Cardona to protect the schoolhouse castle, navigate longstanding disagreements between labor unions and liberal education reform groups, and advance a distinctive Democratic vision of education that appeals to families and voters.

“We shouldn’t be…