Education

There is a big divide between Harris’s and Trump’s views on public education.

A vote for Trump is essentially a vote to step away from the U.S.’s century-plus commitment to free, open, largely locally controlled and organized public schools. His proposals, advisors, and track record as President reflect a desire to privatize public education, cut back on federal funding for schools, and support extremely conservative restrictions on how teachers teach (by reviving his “1776 Commission,” which promotes teaching, among other things, that slavery was a necessary reality). He wants Christianity and Bible-teaching to be inserted into kids’ everyday experience at their community school.

Harris by contrast is all about strengthening the nation’s public education system so that today’s schoolchildren are able to thrive and lead in a complex, rapidly changing world. She believes teachers and schools should teach students the realities of our country’s full history – meaning, for example, respect for the Founding Fathers but a clear understanding of the role slavery and racism have had over the two-plus centuries since then. She has rejected efforts to restrict curriculum, ban books, or limit a teacher’s ability to teach.

A vote for Harris would protect public schools from attack by religious conservatives seeking to force Christian ideology on all young Americans.

Harris

Vice President Harris has two step-children with her husband, Doug Emhoff. She was a public-school student as a child, and has championed many of the policies of the Biden Administration aimed at supporting teachers, students, and schools, including student loan debt relief, expanding Pre-K programs, increased funding for low income schools, and modernizing education so that it actively incorporates new, deeper understanding we now have about how differently people learn.

On early childhood education, Harris has proposed expanding the Child Tax Credit after the Biden-Harris pandemic-era expansion of that credit dramatically reduced child poverty. She advocates for an even larger boost of up to $6,000 in tax credits for newborns.

Trump

Former President Trump supports universal school choice, which would take public dollars normally spent on a child’s public education and give them directly to parents to spend at whatever school they want – public, private, or religious. He has pledged to close the Department of Education, which manages vital, large funding streams for schools. 

On early education, Trump’s Project 2025 alleges that Head Start, the nation’s main program serving children from birth to five years old, is “fraught with scandal and abuse” and recommends eliminating it entirely, despite much research showing its effectiveness in preparing young children for school.