Harris and Trump have starkly different ideas about education policy

Democrats have formally nominated Kamala Harris as their candidate for president, and she and Republican Donald Trump will be clashing on all sorts of issues, including education policy.
The two have starkly different plans. Harris, who has been endorsed by the major teachers’ unions, has talked of spending more on public education. Trump, meanwhile, has repeated GOP talking points about punishing schools that espouse critical race theory and “radical gender ideology.”
The two camps also differ on private school funding, LGBTQ+ issues and student debt.
A lot of what each side is espousing would require firm control of Congress, which seems unlikely given the close split in the Senate. But they could tick off some items by executive order.
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Trump’s campaign website calls for rewarding states and school districts that abolish teacher tenure and adopt merit pay. He also wants to cut back on administrators and let parents elect principals.
Harris has called for $2.5 billion in new funding for teacher preparation programs at historically Black colleges and universities. The new Democratic Party platform, approved at their national convention Monday, also calls for a teacher pay raise.
Democrats are calling for universal pre-K. Georgia has been a leader in that area but hasn’t provided seats for every child. The party also wants Congress to approve more money for special education. Under federal law, school districts must provide services, but states and school districts pay for most of it.
Trump would cut funding for any school espousing critical race theory, “radical gender ideology,” and “inappropriate” racial, sexual or political content. Georgia already has laws that address these topics, the most prominent being one that prohibits espousing what state lawmakers labeled “divisive concepts.” They’ve been tested locally, leading to the firing of a teacher in Cobb County who has taken the district to court.
The Georgia budget for this school year supplements local taxpayers with just over $13.2 billion in state funding for education. The federal government contributes nearly $2.3 billion more.
A 900-page document called Project 2025 offers what some say is a detailed road map for Trump. Among the recommendations are two that critics say would allow federal funding to flow to private schools. The document, prepared by conservative think tanks and members of Trump’s first administration, would cut strings attached to federal dollars for special education and students in poverty. Schools currently must follow a thicket of rules when spending the dollars they receive through a law known as Title I and through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, though he recently embraced a core recommendation to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, which administers those grants. Harris blasted the idea of eliminating the department in her convention speech Thursday night.
Democrats have blasted Project 2025 during their convention and said it entails everything Trump would do in the next four years.
Trump says on his website he supports “universal school choice” for parents to send their children to the public, private, or religious school that best suits their needs, citing Ohio and West Virginia as examples of states “leading the American school choice revolution.” Those states have made available taxpayer-funded vouchers, or scholarships, that can follow a child regardless of income to any public or private school. Earlier this year, Georgia lawmakers passed a new voucher program that Gov. Brian Kemp then signed into law. It will give $6,500 a year to parents who pull their child out of a low-performing public school and then educate them at home or at a private school.
The Democratic Party platform opposes such private education subsidies, commonly referred to as vouchers.
Harris, a former state attorney general in California, has called for tougher enforcement of Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex. Trump’s platform says he wants to “keep men out of women’s sports,” a reference to the political division over transgender athletes.
Georgia’s divisive concepts legislation included a provision authorizing the Georgia High School Association to ban transgender athletes. And the association did so in 2022.
Trump’s website says he will veto “the sinister effort to weaponize civics education.” There’s no reference to any particular legislation though. The Democrats are calling for expansion of Pell grants and for college debt relief, which Republicans have vehemently opposed in court.
©2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.