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Background on Education


Education topics in the 2024 election cycle:

 Political debate about education barely occurred in 2024 because the two parties focus on such separate issues. Take a look at the older topics (from 2020 and earlier) to see how education debates used to occur: one party's ideas were refuted by the other party, and sometimes a consensus was reached -- in 2024 each party ignores the other party's proposals entirely. Here's a primer on four topics in the 2024 presidential race and the very separate stances by the two sides.

Free College

The idea of forgiving college tuition was launched, and was shot down, during this presidential cycle. President Biden attempted several times to forgive student college debt, by Executive Order to avoid Congress -- but several times was overturned by the Supreme Court. Biden managed to sneak through forgiveness of student loans totalling $180 billion to 4.9 million students -- which President-Elect Trump called "vile" and Republicans in Congress claimed were illegal.

Most of the loan forgiveness that did sneak through was via the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which was implemented in 2007 by President George W. Bush. President Biden attempted to expand that program -- first via COVID-based actions, then expanding the Pell grant program, then separate plans -- those expansions are what Trump and the Republicans oppose. Vice President Harris expanded grants to HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), also via COVID relief.

From the Republican prespective, student loan forgiveness is a redistribution from the working class to the educated class -- which Vice President-Elect Vance called a "windfall for the rich". The PSLF program was acceptable to (some) Republicans because it included a quid-pro-quo: work in public service in exchange for student loan reduction. Mostly, Republicans don't talk about loan forgiveness at all -- except to say it's a terrible idea -- there is no counter-proposal for how to make college more affordable.

From the Democratic prespective, student loan forgiveness addresses the skyrocketing cost of college education. The Democrats' goal isn't redistribution, of course, but making college more accessible to more Americans. President Obama in 2016 called for free community college for all, but college funding programs didn't progress at all during Trump's first term. Instead, the outcome now is an unbreachable partisan split.

Alternatives to College

Republicans do have an alternative concept: instead of addressing the rising cost of college, many Republicans propose alternatives to college. Those concepts focus on vocational-technical education; apprenticeships instead of college; and denigrating the Democratic concept of funding college. Democrats don't oppose vo-tech -- then-Senator Obama voted in 2005 for increasing vo-tech funding as part of an education package that included increasing Pell Grants and loan forgiveness -- but Democrats seek vo-tech funding in comprehensive bipartisan package deals, whereas Republicans seek vo-tech funding solo.

K-12 Funding

On K-12 funding, the Democrats and Republicans disagree in a more traditional split than on college funding: Democrats push for more funding; Republicans push for more local control (including funding). The Democratic push recently is to increase pre-school funding, i.e. to add two fully-funded years before K-12, complementing Obama's idea to add two fully-funded years after K-12. The Republican push ranges from voucher programs to charter schools, or other forms of "parental choice".

President-elect Trump added to the 2024 presidential debate the idea of shutting down the Department of Education. Abolishing the DOE wouldn't have much effect on either college funding for K-12 funding -- but it sounds like it would, hence its political value. The amount of federal funding that goes into local school districts' budgets is estimated between 8% or a little more, and for colleges, about 14% of funding comes from federal sources. In other words, almost all school funding is from state and local sources, so DOE funding has only a small role. Trump's "abolishing the DOE" isn't a new idea -- Ronald Reagan proposed the same idea of abolishing the DOE in 1980.

Wokism

The most substantive breach in conversation about education policy is on "wokism." Republicans focus mostly on reducing schools' role in "woke" issues including gender/sexuality issues, and CRT (critical race theory). Democrats don't say anything at all about these topics, since they favor diversity on both LGBT and racial grounds -- few Democrats will ever use the term "woke", except to oppose Republican anti-woke actions. This is the primary example of the two parties talking about entirely different issues from each other.

Education topics in the 2020 election cycle:

School Choice

‘School Choice’ generally refers to a school district allowing parents to decide which school within the district to send their kids to. The political issue is whether to allow the choice to include private schools, parochial schools, and home schooling at taxpayer expense. Taxpayer funding of parochial schools potentially violates the Constitutional separation of church and state. Taxpayer funding of private schools is controversial because it subsidizes parents who are currently paying for private schools themselves, and are usually more wealthy than the average public school family.

Charter Schools

Vouchers