OK. I suppose we are going through this again.
It feels terrible for various reasons, but mainly because the country prioritized political vibes over policy ideas. As a researcher who dedicates his days to finding evidence-based ways to improve schools, I am somewhat at a loss.
Regardless of your opinion on the Harris-Walz ticket’s specific proposals, the Democrats addressed education issues that truly impact children’s development: affordable early care and learning, access to nutritious school meals, funding for English learners, and more.
President-elect Trump’s education platform consisted of vaguer elements – mostly centered around culture war vibes. For example, conservatives are keen on involving the government in biological screenings to determine if children have the “correct” genitalia for using a specific bathroom or participating in a particular sports team. Trump discusses schools allegedly imposing gender transition surgery on children. Additionally, the administration is likely to push for more public dollars to be voucherized to support families sending their children to private schools.
However, all of this lacks substance. It is challenging to see how bathroom policies will help children recover from the academic consequences of the pandemic, or prepare more children for kindergarten, or ensure that more third graders can read at grade level. While school voucher programs may provide public money to parents for private education, there is not much evidence that they benefit students or the public schools they leave behind.
Furthermore, some of the conservatives’ K-12 ideas contradict each other. The Republican platform calls for the federal defunding of schools that teach curricula conservatives disagree with, but then pledges – immediately after – to “veto efforts to nationalize Civics Education [sic].” So they promise not to nationalize how history is taught in schools, except when they disagree with how certain schools teach it.
There was a detailed conservative plan for federal K-12 education circulating during the campaign. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 proposes to “eliminate” and “redistribute the various congressionally approved federal education programs across the government.” However, Trump claimed to want nothing to do with it.
Perhaps he is being truthful – maybe he has realized that Project 2025 would significantly limit his ability to implement any affirmative education policy agenda. After all, it would be more challenging to reshape American schools in a Trumpian image without a federal Education Department.
Of course, this assumes that 1) Trump has devoted enough thought to K-12 education to work through that strategic calculation, and 2) conservatives actually have a concrete agenda for making schools more effective, something beyond statements like this from their platform: “Our Great Teachers, who are crucial to the future well-being of our Country, will be valued and protected by the Republican Party so that they can educate our students, which they are eager to do.”
Maybe there is a concrete, substantive plan for reforming Title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act hidden in those words, and I just do not have the right GOP decoder ring?
Conservatives need to come up with a plan. The country’s schools cannot endure another four years like the initial period of President Trump’s leadership, which left U.S. public schools struggling.
By 2018, the leadership at the Fordham Institute, the country’s most esteemed conservative education policy think tank, was calling for Secretary Betsy DeVos to resign in the hopes that the issues from her tumultuous first two years could be resolved by a replacement.
In a January 2021 piece titled “The Wreckage Betsy DeVos Leaves Behind,” the New York Times editorial board stated, “The Department of Education is in shambles at a time when the country needs it most.”
Forgive me if this seems overly dramatic. Perhaps it is my outdated instincts as a Very Serious Beltway Policy Researcher; I still view policymaking as an endeavor to actually address significant public issues.
I am a traditionalist in that sense. If you truly want to prove me wrong (once again) and demonstrate that experts like me are mistaken, you could surprise everyone by putting aside the culture wars and giving substantive education reform a chance.
Conor P. Williams is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a founding partner with The Children’s Equity Project, and a father of three children currently enrolled in public schools in Washington, DC. The opinions expressed here are solely his own.
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