Why Trump and Harris Have Barely Talked About Schools This Election

The 2024 presidential election is less than three weeks away, and one issue has been notably absent from debates, policy platforms, and stump speeches: K-12 education.

During the first and only debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, education was not the subject of any questions, and neither candidate mentioned the issue. The vice presidential debate between Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance did include questions about how the candidates would address school safety, but neither candidate—including Walz, a former teacher—shared policy plans for pressing day-to-day concerns like declining student achievement or teacher shortages.

To the extent that education has been the topic of conversation, Harris and Trump have kept their statements broad rather than present detailed policy proposals—let alone ambitious goals for the nation’s students.

Trump has said he would eliminate the U.S. Department of Education—an idea that has been floated since the Reagan administration but has never become a reality. He has also asserted without evidence that schools are facilitating students’ gender transitions without parents’ knowledge, called for universal private school choice, proposed allowing parents to elect their school principals, and said he would remove funding from schools that teach critical race theory, “radical gender ideology,” and “any other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content.”

But even at education-themed events, he’s barely touched on the topic.

Harris has called for raising teacher pay and pushing back on policies that ban books dealing with race, gender, and sexual orientation. But, for the most part, she has kept her comments on education to criticism of Trump’s policies.

During the Democratic National Convention in August, Harris said, “we are not going to let him abolish the Department of Education that funds our public schools.” And earlier this week on a podcast, Harris responded to a question about her stance on school choice and charter schools by saying, “I have supported public charters,” before shifting the focus to criticisms of Trump and his support for eliminating the Education Department.

“Frankly, I don’t think he wants to talk about education, which is why it has not become an issue on the debate stage, because he doesn’t have a plan,” Harris said on the Oct. 14 episode of the Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast.

Harris’s website features a small section on education with broad commitments to “strengthen public education as a pathway to the middle class,” continue President Joe Biden’s efforts to get student loan debt relief, and provide affordable preschool. But it lacks specifics on how she will achieve those goals.

While past candidates have made bold proclamations about education, it has never been the driving issue in presidential elections. Schools are largely governed at the state and local levels, and voters this election cycle say they’re focused on the economy, health care, Supreme Court appointments, crime, immigration, foreign policy, and abortion rights.

Even so, the lack of attention to education could suggest the candidates aren’t committed to helping K-12 schools and students thrive, said Bettina Love, an author and professor at the Teachers College, Columbia University.

“It sends a message that the federal government is not truly concerned about public education,” said Love, who is a regular Education Week contributor and lamented the lack of attention to education from the presidential candidates in a recent essay. “I think it also sends a message that they’re not interested in really solving the inequalities and the serious issues we have facing us.”

How past campaigns have approached education

It’s not unusual for presidential hopefuls to prioritize the economy, immigration, and other issues over education, but K-12 schools have played a notably smaller role in the past three elections.

In 2016, education failed to capture much attention from either Trump or Hillary Clinton’s campaigns.

At the time, Education Week wrote that Clinton had a “play-it-safe” strategy with education policy, saying she would push for more resources for child care, college access, and student supports. Trump, meanwhile, didn’t provide specifics other than to call for the elimination of the Education Department.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic loomed over the entire election between Trump and Joe Biden, and discussion of education focused primarily on the reopening of schools.

The last time Education Week described K-12 schools as a priority in a presidential election was in 2012 when then-President Barack Obama ran against Mitt Romney. During that race, Obama touted his administration’s Race to the Top initiative, which incentivized schools to raise academic standards, while Romney proposed a $25 billion federal private school choice program. Even earlier, in 2004, former President George W. Bush made education a primary talking point by touting his landmark education law, No Child Left Behind.

The amount of attention presidential candidates are paying to education reflects a broader shift in how schools are governed. Since the Every Student Succeeds Act reduced the federal government’s role in school accountability in 2015 and Obama left office in 2017, the federal government has stayed away from sweeping education laws that push for better outcomes.

Big federal initiatives like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top faced criticism in the years following their implementation for failing to spark the academic gains they promised and punishing schools for low student performance.

Presidents from both parties are often in lockstep “in the ways they believe that teacher and education performance can be achieved—that’s through testing, that’s through requiring teachers to take more tests, that’s high-stakes testing,” Love said. “Those really have not moved the needle in the last 40 years, and so I don’t think [candidates today] have a bold strategy. I don’t think they’re willing to try new things and be innovative.”

Presidential candidates may find it easier to be more general about education rather than try to come up with new, sparkly strategies to win over voters, said Rachel Perera, a researcher at the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.

“Especially after No Child Left Behind, I don’t think there’s much of an appetite to want to expand the role, especially in K-12, around federal education policy,” Perera said. “Education policy, as people perceive it, is more local and state.”

State and local races will mean more for education policy

Even if Harris and Trump made K-12 policy a major priority in their platforms, the presidential election wouldn’t be the race on the ballot with the most influence over K-12 schools.

The people with the most power over the day-to-day functioning of a school is the local school board, Perera said.

“School boards play very consequential roles. They have a lot of authority. They set the budget,” she said. “In a lot of places, they hire the superintendent, they’re setting local policy, they’re interpreting state policy and shaping how it’s implemented at the local level. If you care about public schools, you need to be paying attention to your local school boards.”

State races are also highly consequential for K-12 schools. State lawmakers and governors make many decisions about funding, teacher pay, and restrictions on curriculum and instruction.

Many governors also appoint state superintendents, who oversee the implementation of state laws and initiatives to improve student learning, and run state departments of education. This year, 11 states will elect governors and four states—Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, and Washington states—will elect state superintendents.

While education policy is largely determined at the state level, that doesn’t mean federal officials should ignore it, Love said.

“They are going to rely on the states, maybe the school districts, to figure it out, but that’s not really a solution,” Love said. “The history of this country is that if we’re going to have innovative, bold solutions that really address inequality, it has to come from the federal government.”