by Larry Sand
Education was a non-issue during the recent debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Despite its sensitive nature, moderators didn’t bring it up, and some parents are furious.
Michele ExnerSenior Advisor at Parents defending educationcommented that even though students’ literacy has “reached a critical point,” those who were already struggling before the COVID-19 pandemic are now failing. Yet the moderators failed to ask a single question about education. “They completely ignored one of the main issues that parents are concerned about.”
Interestingly, Trump, who is known for going off script, never mentioned it. Although he did manage to insist that the residents of Springfield, Ohio, are eating cats and dogsthe subject of education never crossed his lips. (Fortunately, at least he did not claim, falsely, as he did in Moms for Liberty, that schools decide (if your child is to undergo gender reassignment surgery.)
Debate aside, Harris’ views on education are no secret. In brief, she is a big-government, anti-school-choice, anti-teacher-union advocate. She supports Biden’s Title IX rule, which requires schools to treat students who are suffering or believe they are suffering from Gender dysphoria as if they were the opposite sex. The amendment also stipulates that male students who identify as female must have access to female-specific facilities, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, and must also be able to participate in female sports and organizations.
Harris also wants to expand child tax credits, boost Title I funding, and lift (basically nonexistent) book bans, claiming, “We want to ban Assault Weapon. They want to ban books.”
She also wants to spend taxpayer money on electric school buses, opposes any measure that weakens public schools (which means she opposes parental freedom), and ensures the Department of Education is kept afloat. She nonsensically claims that the DOE “funds our public schools.”
To make her views clear, Harris gave a speech to the American Federation of Teachers on the last day of the union’s annual convention in July. She thanked the AFT president Randi Weingarten for her “long-lasting friendship” and boasted about how she “led [the Biden-Harris Administration’s effort] “to eliminate barriers to organizing (workers) in the public and private sectors.”
Also on the teachers’ union front, the president of the National Education Association Becky Pringle explains: “Kamala Harris showed us what’s at stake in this election, detailing how she will lower costs for middle-class families, defend our freedoms, and support our communities.”
Pringle slammed Trump, arguing that he “has shown voters, once again, why he is unfit for office. Trump is a convicted felon who puts his own interests above the good of the country. He hired Betsy DeVos to loot and privatize public schools, and if given a second chance, he will follow the Project 2025 playbook to cut taxes for billionaires, eliminate Head Start, and completely dismantle the Department of Education.”
The NEA president concluded her speech by saying, “The choice in this election could not be clearer, which is why NEA members are doing everything possible to ensure that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz — educator, football coach, and former NEA member — are elected in November.”
Trump’s views, on the other hand, are not as clear-cut as Harris’s. In addition to Pringle’s claim that he linked Project 2025, a 920-page plan for the next Republican presidency created by the Heritage Foundation, to Trump, Weingarten also claims that the document “institutionalize Trumpism.“But in reality, Trump he denied any connection in July with Project 2025, calling some of its ideas “ridiculous and pathetic.”
However, the educational part of Project 25 bears a striking resemblance to the Republican Party part. official platform 2024whose goals include implementing universal parental choice, returning education authority to the states, combating gender indoctrination in the classroom, closing down the DOE, eliminating Title I, etc.
Instead, Trump supports “Agenda 47”, which would eliminate the DOE and cut federal funds for any school promoting Critical Race Theory, transgender madness, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content to our children. Like Project 25, it would introduce universal choice.
Rick Hess, senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, writes that the education policies of a second Trump administration are uncertain. In “What impact will Trump 2.0 have on education?” and the subtitle “I don’t know. You don’t know either,” maintains that it is an open question “whether a second Trump administration would actually commit to significant budget cuts or bureaucracy reduction when it comes to education.”
When asked about childcare, Trump recently offered gibberishwhich rivals anything that the master of the word salad, chef Kamala Harris, has ever uttered. “Because I have to stay in child care. I want to stay in child care. But those numbers are tiny compared to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth that’s also driven by what I was just talking about — what I was just talking to you about. We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars. And while they say child care is expensive, it’s not very expensive, relatively speaking, compared to the kind of numbers that we’re going to be taking in. We’re going to make this an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people.”
As Hess notes, Trump’s proposed tariffs will lend a hand finance large expansion federal programs.
In addition, Hess explains that last year Trump he crashed a federally funded American Academy, “which would break new ground on Washington’s role in providing higher education. Trump has apparently promised aggressive action on key cultural issues—from defunding anti-Semitic colleges to breaking up the higher education accreditation cartel—and such moves, while clearly right-wing, signal the need for a strong federal presence.”
In a similar vein, National Review Andrew McCarthy noticed“Because he is an opportunist with some conservative leanings rather than a conservative looking for a cause, Trump often can’t decide whether to mock Harris’ cynical policy changes or try to move left. Even in Trump’s first term, when he had a seasoned team of true believers in compact government, there were few cuts and plenty of deficit spending. Recall that it was Trump who backed the first major tranche of unconditional pandemic aid for schools, initiated a hugely high-priced pause in student loan payments, and spent his first term observing the boost in expenses in programs he promised to cut.”
In brief, when it comes to education, the federal government certainly has an influence, but many of the more vital decisions affecting the nation’s children are made at the state and local level. So whenever, however, and wherever you vote, please keep your state legislators and local school board members at the forefront of your mind.
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Larry Sand, a retired teacher for 28 years, is the president of the nonprofit California Teacher Empowerment Network – a nonpartisan, apolitical group dedicated to providing teachers and the public with correct and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views expressed here are his own.
