Neither candidate in the presidential race has devoted a lot of time yet to education.
In his 90-minute convention address to Republicans in July, former President Donald Trump only mentioned schools once, pledging to restore patriotism to them. In her 37-minute speech to the Democratic convention a month later, Vice President Kamala Harris promised to combat gun violence in schools and preserve the U.S. Department of Education and the Head Start early childhood program. Trump has talked about abolishing the department.
While you can scour the websites of both candidates for their views on schools, it would be more telling to look at their own lives. Because while education policy debates usually touch on the research, elected leaders often fall back on their personal experiences and those of neighbors, their families and their religious faith.
For example, in backing a ban on divisive concepts, white lawmakers in Georgia in 2022 shared personal anecdotes of their own kids or others being made to feel bad by classroom lessons on race. The resulting law led to the firing of a Cobb elementary school teacher last year for reading a book that challenged gender stereotypes. Last month, a misinterpretation of the law by state school Superintendent Richard Woods almost prevented Georgia high schools from offering an Advanced Placement class in African American Studies.
Their biographies suggests the 78-year-old Trump and 59-year-old Harris were shaped by very different education experiences.
Trump attended private schools that served wealthy white New York families. He enrolled at Fordham University, a Catholic campus in the Bronx, for two years starting in 1966, but transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with a business degree.
In his Agenda 47 platform, Trump endorses the use of tax dollars for private school tuition through universal school choice. He derides public education as “woke” indoctrination. In front of a like-minded audience at the 2023 Moms for Liberty convention in Philadelphia, Trump said, “Instead of teaching them to say their prayers, they teach them to recite their pronouns. For all the public schools that are engaged in this militant and country-destroying practice, I will instruct the Department of Justice to pursue them.”
His platform recommends more parent input and an end to teacher tenure to allow quicker terminations of “the poor ones,” punctuating the sentiment by adding the line, “Like on ‘The Apprentice,’ you’re fired.”
Trump wants to reinstate his 1776 Commission to ensure history classes focus on “the blessings of liberty” and also “create a credentialing body to certify teachers who embrace patriotic values and support the American Way of Life.”
Trump’s platform encourages arming willing teachers, project-based learning and the election of school principals.
As a child, Harris was among the first group of students of color in Berkeley, California, to travel to a public elementary school in a white neighborhood as part of a community-initiated and voluntary desegregation plan. Harris chose a historically Black college and university, graduating from Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1986. She then earned a law degree at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.
The daughter of economist and emeritus professor at Stanford University Donald Harris and the late biomedical scientist Shyamala Gopalan Harris, the vice president often praises educators and their professionalism.
“While you teach students about our nation’s past, these extremists attack the freedom to learn and acknowledge our nation’s true and full history, including book bans,” Harris said at a national convention of the American Federation of Teachers in July. “Book bans in this year of our Lord 2024. Just think about it. So we want to ban assault weapons and they want to ban books. Can you imagine?”
She assured the AFT convention that she valued teachers and what they did every day, “The most noble work of teaching other people’s children, and God knows we don’t pay you enough as it is.”
Harris took on Gov. Ron DeSantis over Florida’s new curriculum on African American history that said enslaved people “developed skills that could, in some instances, be applied for their personal benefit.” When DeSantis offered to debate the matter, Harris said, “There is no roundtable, lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact: There were no redeemable qualities to slavery,”
Her focus is not dismantling the nation’s public education system but bolstering it. The 2024 Democratic Party platform reiterates opposition to diverting public dollars to private schools, whether couched as vouchers, tax credits or opportunity scholarships. The master platform calls for charter school accountability, debt relief for college loan holders and universal pre-K.
Harris underscored her public education commitment with her choice of a running mate, Minnesota Gov. and former teacher Tim Walz.
Nearly 53 million children attend public schools in the United States, according to federal data. Trump presumes many parents want to exert more control over public schools or escape them altogether. Harris contends most parents believe in their local public schools and desire more resources and respect accorded to them.
We’ll find out on Nov. 5 which candidate had it right.
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