San Francisco's public high schools recently tried to implement a massive change to their grading system— part of a “grading for equity” program under which students can pass with scores as low as 41 percent. Moreover, homework, attendance and classroom participation would no longer factor into students’ grades, which would instead depend mainly on a final exam — which, of course, they could retake multiple times if needed.

Understandably, parents were outraged, in particular because this absurd system has been adopted by other cities and has failed to improve performance. After receiving “significant backlash,” the plan was canceled.

What a shock.

Our public schools are in trouble, and even Democrats are noticing. Politico reports that Rahm Emanuel, former congressman, chief of staff to President Obama, Chicago mayor and ambassador to Japan, wants to run for president in 2028 on a platform of education reform.

Emanuel has reportedly been “road testing the outlines of a stump speech,” and it’s a good one. He recently said in an interview, “I am done with the discussion of locker rooms, I am done with the discussion of bathrooms and we better start having a conversation about the classroom.” Later, Emanuel told Bill Maher, “We literally are a superpower, we’re facing off against China with 1.4 billion people and two-thirds of our children can’t read eighth grade level.”

The feisty former mayor is stealing a powerful issue from the Republican playbook. It’s a gutsy move.

Attacking our education establishment, and especially calling out the teachers’ unions, has long been the third rail of Democratic politics. The National........

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