The difference between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in November could not be clearer when it comes to education.
Trump believes parents are the primary decision-makers for their children and supports the money following the child to the school that best meets their needs and aligns with their family’s values.
In a May Truth Social post, President Trump said, “School Choice is the CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE of our time, and parents must have a voice in their child’s education! When I am your President again, I will protect Parental Rights, support Teachers, and expand Educational Freedom for all American Families!” At a June campaign rally in Philadelphia, President Trump said, “I will support universal school choice. It’s such a big thing.”
Red states are already unleashing education freedom.
When teachers unions fought to keep the public schools closed for so long starting in 2020, parents were able to see what was happening in the classroom through “remote learning” and they were not happy about schools focusing more on far-Left indoctrination than education.
We’ve seen more advancement on school choice in the past three years than in the preceding three decades. Twelve states have passed universal school choice — meaning all families are eligible — since 2021.
School choice is a rising tide that lifts all boats. Public schools up their game in response to competition because it gives them an incentive to cater to the needs of children and their families.
In Florida, for example, 10 out of 11 rigorous studies on the topic find school choice improves outcomes in public schools.
Florida’s results have improved substantially as they’ve expanded school choice, with the latest U.S. News and World Report ranking putting the Sunshine State at number one for education.
They are also now at the top of the pack for student achievement as measured by the Nation’s Report Card after adjusting for differences in student demographics across states.
Florida boasts these results despite spending 27% less per student than the national average.
Kamala Harris is in lockstep with the teachers unions and thinks your kids belong to the government.
A teacher at a Harris campaign rally in August said she originally wanted to get into teaching because she “saw education for what it really was: the greatest instrument of social justice in this country.” Call me crazy, but I thought education was supposed to be about education.
Harris further demonstrated her allegiance to the teachers unions by speaking at the American Federation of Teachers convention in July, just a few days after Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
At that event, Harris called their president, Randi Weingarten, “a force” and “an incredible friend and an adviser.”
That relationship should be disqualifying. No one did more to hold children’s education hostage by fighting to keep schools closed during the COVID era than Randi Weingarten and the teachers unions.
Weingarten’s union lobbied the CDC to keep schools closed, threatened strikes over reopening, and engaged in fearmongering every step of the way. In fact, the Chicago Teachers Union posted and later deleted a tweet in December 2020 ridiculously claiming that, “The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny.”
The problem is the Democratic Party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the teachers unions. More than 99% of the campaign contributions from Weingarten’s union went to Democrats in the 2022 election cycle, and it has been that way for decades.
The coziness explains why Kamala Harris skipped over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her pick for Vice President.
Shapiro seemed like the obvious choice as the governor of a swing state that she needs to win, but he has voiced support for school choice over the past few years.
Instead, she picked Minnesota’s far-Left Gov. Tim Walz, who opposes school choice and has downplayed the harms of school closures.
In a November 2022 interview, Walz said, “I don’t buy it” when questioned about school closures harming kids, and even said that children benefited from being locked out of the classroom. He said, “these kids learned resiliency, these kids learned compassion […] These kids learned problem solving.”
No, sir, they only learned that union-controlled politicians don’t care about them.
Harris and Walz apparently only have one solution, which is throwing more money at the problem. We’ve already tried that.
New York City’s public schools are a bottomless money pit. They spend more than $35,000 per student per year.
Are their public schools the best in the nation? Of course not.
NYC’s charter schools outperform their traditional public schools despite spending 20% less per student.
Meanwhile, Education spending has skyrocketed in Minnesota under Gov. Walz while the state’s math and reading proficiency has plummeted.
We spend nearly $20,000 per student per year in K-12 public schools in the United States, much more than just about any other country in the world, and that amount has increased by 164% since 1970. Have our outcomes gotten 164% better? Of course not.
It also degrades the United States’ standing on the world stage. Of 37 countries tested by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the US ranked a dismal 28th in math.
It’s the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.
The money doesn’t make its way to the classroom because the one-size-fits-all union-controlled government school system is a monopoly with no incentive to spend additional dollars wisely.
Average teacher salaries have only increased 3% in real terms since 1970. We are spending plenty of money but it’s wasted on administrative bloat.
In fact, school district administrative staff has increased 95% since 2000, whereas student enrollment has only increased by 5% since then.
The government school system has become more of a jobs program for adults than an education initiative for kids.
The only way out of this mess is to empower families with education freedom. Only then will the government school system have real incentives to cater to the needs of families as opposed to the other way around.
Corey DeAngelis is a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children and a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is the author of “The Parent Revolution: Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools” (Center Street, 2024).
