Author: BelieveAgain
The 2024 election is finally upon us, and more than 150 million people will be voting for a slew of federal, state, and local officials. If you’ve been paying attention this fall, you’ve heard a lot of emphatic claims about what’s at stake. While we await the election results—a process that could take days or weeks for some races—let’s try to address some frequently asked questions about what the results in the presidential election might mean for the next four years.#1: If Donald Trump wins, is the Department of Education likely to be abolished?Nope. Trump can’t abolish the department via…
Programs that offer families public funds to spend on private education expenses are becoming bigger, more common, and more complex.Debates about these programs are dominated by claims from supporters and opponents, many of which leave little room for nuance. Academic research can help separate hype from reality—but figuring out what the research actually says can be a challenge even for the researchers themselves, not to mention advocates, critics, policymakers, and journalists who cite studies in their work.More than half of states now have at least one private school choice program, according to Education Week’s private school choice tracker. Many have…
The White House has exceeded its goal of recruiting 250,000 mentors and tutors to support students’ academic recovery in K-12 schools, according to a new report. But it remains to be seen how much impact those services will have on student learning, as schools continue to grapple with stagnant academic achievement and chronic absenteeism and as federal funding that supported such initiatives winds down. In 2022, the Biden administration launched the National Partnership for Student Success, an initiative meant to help overcome learning gaps. The effort centered around recruiting people to serve as mentors, tutors, student success coaches, counselors, and…
The topic of education has been largely absent from the presidential race, and debate over charter schools—once a marquee issue in the national discourse about education—especially so. But the upcoming elections still stand to impact the publicly funded, privately run schools that have found favor with previous administrations from both parties.From big constitutional questions around the push for religious charter schools to more practical, local concerns such as procuring facilities and hiring teachers, the charter school sector faces a number of challenges that could be affected by the 2024 elections.It may seem like charter schools have largely receded from the…
As far as education policies go in the 2024 presidential election, calls from Republicans to abolish the U.S. Department of Education have generated significant debate during a campaign season when politicians’ attention is largely focused elsewhere.On the campaign trail and in his platform, former President Donald Trump has called for the federal agency’s elimination, arguing recently that it’s an “abuse of your taxpayer dollars” that allows schools to “indoctrinate America’s youth.”The Republican Party’s official platform calls for shuttering the 45-year-old agency.And Project 2025, the conservative policy document spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation and written by a number of former Trump…
[Read our story on who could serve as education secretary under Donald Trump.]Vice President Kamala Harris already selected a former teacher—Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz—as her running mate. Should she win the White House next month, she’ll have the chance to make another high-profile education hire: her secretary of education.Who will that person be? Democratic-aligned education advocates and experts stress that they want someone with deep management experience to helm the U.S. Department of Education. But, given the unusual nature of this year’s presidential race, they aren’t ready to stake a claim on a particular contender. During some election cycles, there’s…
Private school choice is the education issue that has garnered the bulk of national attention, campaign spending, and heated rhetoric this election season. But it’s far from the only education issue voters will ponder as they fill out their ballots.Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump haven’t addressed K-12 schools much in their dueling campaigns for the presidency. But at the state level, major changes for schools could be on the way once voters have their say.Education Week has already highlighted several key themes among education-related ballot issues this year, including private school choice. In Colorado and Kentucky,…
[Read our story on who could serve as education secretary under Kamala Harris.]If former President Donald Trump wins the White House, educators will again ask a question they pondered eight years ago: Who could a president who wants to scrap the U.S. Department of Education pick to lead it? Despite the lack of talk about K-12 policy from either candidate this election cycle, the broad policy strokes of a potential second Trump administration seem fairly apparent.Trump’s secretary will likely support slimming down if not dismantling the Education Department; expanding school choice; slashing K-12 spending; and attacking school districts’ diversity, equity,…
A federal appeals court on Oct. 30 weighed whether to reinstate elements of the Biden administration’s new Title IX regulation that don’t address gender identity—part of a larger battle over the rule that could be affected by the results of the presidential election. Under a series of preliminary rulings by federal appeals courts, the broad new Title IX rule, which among other things protects LGBTQ+ students from discrimination based on sex, is blocked in 26 states and at some schools in others. The U.S. Supreme Court in August denied the Biden administration’s request to unblock provisions that are not related…
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…