As presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump don’t have a lot in common when it comes to their views on education.
Trump has said America’s public schools “have been taken over by the radical Left maniacs,” and that he wants to close the U.S. Department of Education.
Harris has vowed to keep the department open.
Democrats are for free, universal preschool for all 4-year-olds.
Republicans are for universal school choice, where parents have the power — and the public dollars — to enroll their children in any school they want, whether it’s public or private.
The list goes on.
Ahead of the candidates’ only scheduled debate, in Philadelphia on Tuesday, we’ve put together a handy primer of their education views.
1. On closing the U.S. Department of Education
Trump, in an interview on X, told Elon Musk that, if elected, “I want to close up the Department of Education, move education back to the states.”
Harris didn’t talk much about education in her DNC speech, but she did parry Trump’s plan: “We are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our public schools.”
A quick explanatory comma about that funding: Most public school funding comes from states and local communities. But the department does administer two large funding streams, now more than $30 billion, that Congress codified into law decades ago to help schools educate 1.) children with disabilities and 2.) kids living in low-income communities.
It’s not clear if Trump’s desire to close the department would also mean disrupting this funding.
Project 2025, a blueprint for the next Republican presidency that included input from Trump loyalists, recommends closing the department, turning both funding streams into no-strings-attached grants and phasing out the low-income support dollars within 10 years.
But the Trump campaign has disavowed Project 2025. NPR asked the campaign to clarify its position on funding for children with disabilities and kids living in low-income communities, and press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded: “President Trump will ensure a great education for every child by returning our education system to the states where it belongs.”
The Education Department debate isn’t just financial. It’s also symbolic.
Trump and some Republicans believe, fundamentally, that education should only be a local and state concern, as there’s no mention of a federal role in education in the U.S. Constitution. To them the department is the poster child for government overreach, which is why Republicans have been calling for the department’s dissolution ever since it was created in 1979.
Where Republicans see local control of education as an inherently good thing, allowing schools to better reflect the values of their communities, Harris and many Democrats also see inequity in some districts’ inability (and sometimes unwillingness) to serve marginalized students.
Congress created those funding streams to help level the playing field and to give the department the ability to hold districts accountable when they fall short on civil rights. Harris has previously backed increasing funding for low-income students and children with disabilities.
Disagreements aside, can the department be shut down?
Not by the president, no. It was created by Congress, and only Congress can close it. Some House Republicans have tried, but there’s simply not enough support, not just among Democrats but Republicans, too. Public surveys show even a majority of Republicans believe the U.S. government should be spending more, not less, on education.
Keep in mind, eight years ago then-presidential candidate Donald Trump suggested he might try to close the Education Department. He then got his chance as president — with Republican control of Congress — but never forced the issue.
2. On sex-based discrimination in schools, aka Title IX
In April, the Biden-Harris administration expanded protections against sex discrimination in schools to include sexual orientation and gender identity. Meaning, among other things, it believes students should be allowed to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity.
This is not a change in federal law. That requires Congress. It’s a change in interpretation of the law, known as Title IX, courtesy of new regulations from the U.S. Department of Education.
Trump and many Republicans see this expanded interpretation of Title IX as Democrats imposing liberalism on schools. In a recent call with reporters, representatives of the Trump campaign and the RNC repeatedly derided what they called Harris’ “radical gender ideology.”
If this sounds all-too-familiar, that’s because this is an old fight. In 2016, the Obama administration issued guidance to schools, telling them that students should be allowed to use the bathroom facilities that correspond with their gender identity.
In early 2017, the nascent Trump administration quickly moved in the opposite direction, abandoning that interpretation of the law.
Protesting these latest Biden administration provisions, roughly half of all states have sued the department, and the courts have blocked the Education Department from enforcing the regulations in those states. Trump has said, if re-elected, he would roll back the rule, just as he did the old Obama-era guidance.
3. On school choice
We’re using “choice” here broadly because many of Trump’s education proposals shoot from the same root: That parents should have total or near-total control over their child’s education.
First, he’s calling for universal school choice. This would, in theory, take public dollars normally spent on a child’s public education and give them directly to parents to spend at whatever school they want, whether it’s public, private or homeschooling at the kitchen table.
He has also called for a Parental Bill of Rights and for school principals to be hired — and fired — by parents. “If any principal is not getting the job done, the parents should be able to vote to fire them and select someone who will. This will be the ultimate form of local control,” Trump said in July.
Trump also wants to make it easier to fire “bad” teachers, by ending tenure protections, and to reward strong teachers with merit pay. “If we have pink-haired Communists teaching our kids, we have a major problem. When I am president, we will put PARENTS back in charge and give them the final say,” he said.
It’s difficult to imagine how a second Trump administration could implement these ideas around school choice or principal and teacher retention, though, as the U.S. government has limited power to influence state and school district policy.
Democrats, on the other hand, made clear in their 2024 platform that they’re against any effort that could weaken the nation’s public schools. “We oppose the use of private-school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships, and other schemes that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from public education. Public tax dollars should never be used to discriminate.”
That’s likely a reference to the fact that, in some state voucher programs, a private school is allowed to reject children with disabilities if it doesn’t believe it has the staff or resources to meet their needs. Federal law requires that schools that receive federal funding provide kids with disabilities a free and appropriate public education.
In a letter to Harris, some two-dozen grassroots education groups urged her not to choose Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to be her running mate, because of his previous support for private-school vouchers. She ultimately chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former public school teacher and coach.
Harris has been an outspoken supporter of public education and has been courting educators’ support. In a speech to the American Federation of Teachers, she told the crowd, “We need you so desperately right now,” and called it “the most noble of work, teaching other people’s children.”
As part of her presidential bid in 2019, Harris proposed a $300 billion plan to raise teacher pay. Though she has not revived the plan, she did tell the AFT, “God knows we don’t pay you enough.”
4. On early childhood education and support
Harris and Democrats have talked as much, if not more, about early childhood education and childcare than they have about K-12 policies. Harris has proposed expanding the Child Tax Credit after a brief, pandemic-era expansion dramatically cut child poverty, and she pitched an even larger boost of up to $6,000 for newborns.
The Democrats’ 2024 platform also includes support for free, universal preschool for 4-year-olds, something the Biden-Harris administration had previously championed but was forced to abandon in negotiations with Congress.
Finally, there’s Head Start, the federally-funded program that provides child care and early learning for children from low-income families. The Biden-Harris administration has been a staunch supporter of Head Start, which serves children from birth to age 5. In her DNC speech, Harris promised not to let Trump “end programs like Head Start that provide preschool and child care.”
Harris was likely referring, again, to Project 2025, which alleges Head Start is “fraught with scandal and abuse” and recommends eliminating it entirely. Congressional funding for Head Start rose during the Trump administration, in spite of the White House calling for modest cuts.
NPR asked the Trump campaign to clarify its position on Head Start funding. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded: “By returning our education system back to the states, our early childhood education system will thrive because parents will have more say in their child’s education and good teachers will be rewarded.”
5. On banning books and “divisive concepts”
Between July and December 2023, PEN America recorded more than 4,300 instances of school book bans, a big uptick from the previous year.
Of the books that were targeted in the 2021-’22 and ‘22-’23 school years, the nonprofit found that 37% grappled with race and racism and included characters of color, and 36% included LGBTQ+ characters and themes.
Trump has been an unabashed champion of efforts to limit how schools approach issues of race and gender. In 2020, he created the 1776 Commission, which lamented that “many students are now taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but rather villains.”
Since then, some states have passed laws curtailing what teachers can and cannot say in the classroom when it comes to matters of race and gender. And in July, as part of his Plan To Save American Education, Trump pledged to “cut federal funding for any school or program pushing Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content,” though it’s not clear how or if he could do that.
Kamala Harris used her speech before the American Federation of Teachers to blast Trump.
“While you teach students about our nation’s past,” she told the crowd of teachers, “these extremists attack the freedom to learn and acknowledge our nation’s true and full history, including book bans. Book bans in this year of our Lord 2024.”
6. On college affordability
The Biden-Harris administration went all-in on federal student loan forgiveness. Some of its plans worked, but the administration has so far failed to convince the courts that its most ambitious efforts at loan forgiveness are legal.
That may explain why, on the campaign trail, Harris isn’t talking much about future loan forgiveness, or making new promises. Instead, she’s largely backward-looking.
“Our administration has forgiven student loan debt for nearly 5 million Americans,” Harris told the American Federation of Teachers gathering, emphasizing that many of those Americans are teachers who received Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).
As a senator and vice president, Harris has also supported efforts to make community college free, a commitment echoed in the 2024 Democratic party platform.
As for Trump, as president he previously tried to eliminate PSLF, and he and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have both spoken out against broad loan forgiveness.
In 2023, after the Supreme Court blocked Biden’s first big effort, Trump celebrated: “President Biden is not allowed to wipe out hundreds and hundreds of billions, probably trillions, of dollars in student loan debt, which would have been very unfair to the millions and millions of people who have paid their debt through hard work and diligence.”
The 2024 Republican party platform pledges, “to reduce the cost of Higher Education, Republicans will support the creation of additional, drastically more affordable alternatives to a traditional four-year College degree.”
Last year, Trump unveiled plans for an online college alternative he’s calling The American Academy: “We will take the billions and billions of dollars that we will collect by taxing, fining, and suing excessively large private university endowments, and we will then use that money to endow a new institution… Its mission will be to make a truly world-class education available to every American, free of charge, and do it without adding a single dime to the federal debt.”
Considering more than 70 million American students are enrolled in school, from K-12 to college, let’s hope the candidates get a chance to debate their ideas and their differences on Tuesday.
Copyright 2024 NPR
