This is one in a series of States Newsroom reports on the major political issues in the presidential race.
As former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris race to the finish line in November, one broad policy area has largely slipped from the spotlight: education.
Although Republican and Democratic presidential candidates have spent relatively more time campaigning on issues such as immigration, foreign policy and the economy, their views on K-12 and higher education differ significantly.
Trump’s education platform promises to “save American education” by focusing on parental rights, universal school choice and fighting for “patriotic education” in schools.
“By expanding access to school choice, empowering parents to have a say in their child’s education, and supporting good teachers, President Trump will improve the quality of education for all students,” Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump Newsroom campaign, said in a statement to the states.
Trump “believes that students should be taught reading, writing and math in the classroom, not sex, gender and race, as the Biden administration insists our public school system is,” Leavitt added.
Meanwhile, Harris’ campaign has largely focused on the education investments made by the Biden-Harris administration and capitalizing on those efforts if elected.
“Over the past four years, the administration has made unprecedented investments in education, including the largest single investment in K-12 education in history, which Vice President Harris approved with a tie-breaking vote,” Mia Ehrenberg, a campaign spokeswoman, told States Newsroom.
Ehrenberg said that while Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, “will build on these investments and continue the fight until every student has the support and resources they need to thrive, Republicans led by Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 program involves cutting billions from local K-12 schools and eliminating the Department of Education, which weakens American students and schools.”
Harris repeatedly knocked on the door of the Heritage Foundation Project 2025 — a broad conservative agenda that includes education policy proposals such as eliminating Head Start, ending time- and occupation-based student loan forgiveness, and prohibiting teachers from using students’ preferred pronouns other than their “biological sex” without the written consent of a parent or guardian.
Trump has vehemently disavowed Project 2025, even though some former members of his administration developed the project.
Closing the U.S. Department of Education
Trump has called for closure U.S. Department of Education and stated that he wants to “bring education back to the states.” The Department is not the main source of funding for primary and secondary schools, as state and local authorities allocate a significant portion of those dollars.
In contrast, Harris said in Democratic National Convention in August that “we won’t let him eliminate the Department of Education, which funds our public schools.”
A wage sufficient to maintain school staff; Parents’ Charter of Rights
Trump’s education plan calls for the creation of “a new certification body that will certify teachers who share patriotic values and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children, but to educate them.”
He also wants to introduce financial injections for schools that will “abolish teacher positions” in grades K-12 and adopt “merit pay”, establish direct parent election of school principals and “drastically reduce” the number of school principals.
In contrast, Democratic Party Platform 2024 calls for the recruitment of “more new teachers, teaching assistants and school-related staff and education support specialists, with some even starting training in secondary school.”
The platform also aims to assist “school support staff develop their careers on a living wage” and improve teachers’ working conditions.
Trump also wants to provide more funding to schools that adopt a “Parents’ Bill of Rights that includes full curriculum transparency and a form of universal school choice.”
It threatens to cut federal funding for schools that teach a primarily collegiate academic subject known as “critical race theory,” gender ideology or “other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content regarding our children.”
The Democratic platform opposes “the use of private school vouchers, tuition tax credits, alternative scholarships, and other programs that divert taxpayer-funded resources from public education,” adding that “public tax dollars should never be used to discriminate.”
Title IX
Earlier this year, the Biden-Harris administration issued a final rule on Title IX expanding federal protections for LGBTQ+ students.
The updated rules went into effect on August 1, but a slew of GOP-led states questioned the measure. The legal battles created a political patchwork and weakened the administration’s vision for the final regulations.
Updated regulations withdraw changes to Title IX made under the Trump administration and then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Trump promised complete the updated regulations on his first day back in office if re-elected.
Student debt and higher education
Harris has repeatedly touted the administration’s record on student loan forgiveness, including the law $170 billion on student debt forgiveness for nearly 5 million borrowers.
The administration’s latest student loan repayment initiative was halted in August after… US Supreme Court temporarily blocked Saving on valuable education plan, i.e. SAVE.
Although there is little mention of education at Harris extensive economic planthe proposal makes it clear that veep will “continue to work to end the unjustified burden of student loan debt and fight to make higher education more affordable so that college can be the ticket to the middle class.”
He also plans to lower four-year degree requirements for half a million federal jobs.
Trump – who called out the Biden-Harris administration student loan forgiveness efforts as “even illegal” – during his administration he sought to repeal the public service loan forgiveness program.
Its educational platform as well calls for giving “American Academy”, a free online university.
Trump said he would support the modern institution with “billions of dollars that we raise through taxes, fines and suing over-donations from private universities.”
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