Education Debates You’ll Likely Hear About in the Election, Explained

Even if education isn’t a marquee issue in this November’s presidential election, it’s likely to come up somehow—in a pithy debate quote, down-ballot as voters weigh gubernatorial and state legislative candidates, and locally as school boards wrestle with declining enrollment, the impact of new school choice programs, and sticky district budgets.

Catch up on some of the core education issues in this curated set of Education Week explainers, written to give you the grounding you need in a friendly Q & A format.

School choice

This is a catch-all term for the various types of public and private school choice programs, which have rapidly expanded. They can include charter schools, which are public schools that are privately managed by nonprofits, for-profit organizations, districts, or universities; vouchers, which allow families to use public dollars to attend private schools; tax-credit scholarships, in which a nonprofit doles out funding from businesses or individuals, who receive tax credits for their donations; and education savings accounts, in which families receives public, per-pupil funding from a state-managed body.

The politics of each of these differs. Charter schools enjoyed bipartisan support for roughly 20 years, with the Obama administration a firm backer of the schools, but that has waned as Republicans have increasingly favored private-school choice programs and Democrats have soured on charters.

Meanwhile, you’ll also want to check out our tracker on private-school choice programs. Twelve states currently have at least one “universal” private school choice program, meaning any family can take advantage of them; many states have other, tailored programs with more restrictive eligibility criteria.

ESSA

The Every Student Succeeds Act is the main federal K-12 education law. States and districts that receive Title I funds, which pay for extra services for low-income students, must agree to test their students annually in reading and math. They also have to take steps to improve the lowest-performing schools and schools where students with disabilities, English learners, and other student populations are struggling. Compared to the law’s predecessor, No Child Left Behind, ESSA has attracted a lot less policy attention, and neither Betsy DeVos, the education secretary under former President Trump, nor Miguel Cardona, the current education secretary, made enforcing it or rewriting it a priority. Still, the law is now due for a rewrite, and it remains for some conservatives a core example of federal overreach in education, even after ESSA brought about a smaller federal role in education than No Child Left Behind.

Title IX

In contrast to ESSA, Title IX, a law that prevents sex-based discrimination in schools, has been through multiple policy whiplashes in the last decade, largely centering on how it relates to transgender students. The most recent concern regulations from the Biden administration that explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. Federal courts have blocked these rules in 26 states—and some individual schools in other states.

The Biden administration rewrite replaced a revision by the Trump administration, and both came on top of controversial guidance issued during the final years of the Obama administration. Title IX processes for handling sexual harassment in school, particularly in higher education settings, also changed over these successive administrations.

Critical race theory

The term generally refers to a body of academic literature that posits that racism can be furthered through even race-blind law and policy, not just by individuals’ attitudes or prejudices. In late 2020, the term exploded in political discourse, with key figures claiming that schools were using it to indoctrinate students, leading 17 states to pass laws to forbid teaching these “divisive concepts” and other ideas. Although the specific focus on CRT has died down somewhat, it has been replaced by attacks on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs in schools—especially in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling forbidding race-based affirmative action programs. (Colleges can still consider how race has shaped individual applicants’ lives.)

Religion in public schools

This is a newer issue to emerge in the run-up to the election. It’s been in the news due to several events, including Oklahoma’s education chief mandating that all schools make the Bible available in school and teach about it, and a proposed English/language arts curriculum in Texas that includes Christian figures and themes. But religion has been the source of longstanding tension in schools. Generally speaking, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution allows students to pray in schools—and to an extent teachers, too—but schools cannot compel students to participate in a particular act of faith. That landscape could change, however, as more activists seek to push the boundaries of the existing interpretation of these laws—and potentially ask the U.S. Supreme Court, which has grown more accommodating to the role of religion in public life under its conservative majority in recent years, to reconsider them.

Teacher pay

Both Republican- and Democratic-led states have recently taken steps to increase teacher pay, and it’s long been a priority for the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. Low teacher pay was one of the factors that led to a wave of teacher strikes and labor unrest in 2018 as well. And for school districts, teacher pay is among the big pressure points likely to come up in school board elections and budgeting, as personnel costs tend to represent the largest expenses in district budgets.