Students congregate in a schooll hallway in this undated photo. Getty Images photo.
Public education in the U.S. is in dire danger. A staggering two-thirds of our students, disproportionately poor and of color, are not proficient in reading. The public is turned off because of years of empty promises and painfully little progress.
In the face of this crisis, here’s what Kamala Harris and Donald Trump had to say about it in their far-reaching, ferocious debate last month: Not a word.
Why their school absenteeism, despite the stark policy differences between them?
For one thing, while the public agrees that public schools are failing badly, we disagree angrily over what do about it.
Trump’s education agenda is extremely reactionary and anti-democratic even for him. He wants to abolish the U.S. Department of Education and end public schools altogether under the guise of privatization. He wants to decimate federal funding including terminating Title I, the largest program targeted for low-income students, and Head Start as well. Further, he wants to escalate the education culture wars over book censorship, religion, and sexual orientation.
We know these plans because he says so, and they’re in the Republican playbook, Project 2025. And how can we forget his secretary of education in his first term: the uniquely inept Betsy DeVos?
Biden and Harris, needless to say, are a vast improvement. But, sad to say, that’s mainly because the bar is so low. Biden has shown little interest in school reform. As one education writer summarized, the Biden administration has shown “little drive to comprehensively lift academic achievement or transform how education is delivered.”
Education: Where do Harris and Trump stand?
Harris’s school platform is pretty much the same. There’s a lot about increasing federal funding, including a first-time program to raise teacher salaries. But otherwise, her overall policy proposals would not move us significantly closer to what our country desperately needs: a national civil right that guarantees adequate educational opportunity for all children across all states.
Her proposed funding increases don’t add up to adequate funding in all states. Per pupil expenditures across the states vary shamefully. Many states spend much as $20,000 per pupil while many others spend less than $10,000 (in Maryland, it’s around $16,000).
Also, Harris doesn’t address the failure of almost all states to enact accountability measures to make sure the money is well spent. In recent years, Democrats have joined Republicans in watering down such measures at the national and state levels.
Even liberal political commentators have lamented the Dems’ surrender of their longstanding political advantage on education by resisting not just accountability but charter schools, which are widely supported by Democrats and Republicans.
The reasons for Democrats’ education inaction begin with deep political divisions. As noted, there is public agreement that reform is desperately needed but Democrats feud not just with Republicans but with themselves over how to get it done. For example, some Democrats do and some don’t support strict accountability and charter schools. Opponents are led by politically powerful teacher unions. While enthusiastically for more money, the unions have generally resisted more accountability and charters, at state as well as federal levels.
Another fundamental reason why Democrats are so weak on school reform is fear of being labeled as heretics for challenging the longstanding political gospel that education should be a local issue. For conservatives in particular, that’s an article of faith.
Yet, the degree of local control nationwide, including Maryland, is undeniably irrational. How does it make sense for 50 states and 13,000 school districts to go their separate and unequal ways on funding? Or to get away with dumbing down their own accountability measures in order to cover up students’ academic failures?
Moreover, it is delusional to think states on their own will remedy gross inequality in educational opportunity. Remember Brown v. Board of Education, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment compensation and so on. All resulted from the failure of the states to safeguard fundamental civil rights and economic security.
What should Harris and Democrats do to break from the past?
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
First, end the gross disparities in funding among the states and guarantee adequate funding nationwide. Second, set accountability standards that enable a comparison of student performance among the states and measure how well they follow evidence-based best practices and spend efficiently. Third, support charters schools, which have bipartisan backing.
This agenda would be a game-changer for schoolkids. Plus smart politically. It would help the Democratic party regain voters’ confidence in their leadership on education policy.
That’s what Harris and Democrats no doubt want to do and should do. But what, given political realities, can they hope to pull off?
More than you think. Not so long ago, presidents Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama, boldly spearheaded bipartisan agreements to increase funding and accountability. Public opinion generally favors such national initiatives.
Let’s hope our next Educator in Chief will rise to the challenge. Otherwise, history will condemn our generation’s failure to end the injustice of unequal educational opportunity, just as we now look back in shame at the racial discrimination before Brown v. Board of Education.