Michigan elections FAQ: Where Trump, Harris stand on education
- Learning loss from the COVID-19 pandemic and university costs are among the most pertinent education issues this election
- Donald Trump wants to dissolve the education department and supports conservative curriculum changes
- Harris supports student loan forgiveness, funding for K-12 educators and gun reforms to deter classroom violence
The issue: U.S. education centers have been facing a wave of new challenges in the past four years. K-12 students have been left with knowledge gaps as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Teacher shortages plague every state amid demands for higher wages, and an ongoing culture war has created roadblocks against teaching race, slavery and LGBTQ topics. In higher education, costs and messy financial aid cycles are increasingly discouraging prospective students.
Across the nation’s academic spaces, school shootings and threats of violence have become an increasingly prevalent disruption. In 2024, 52 school shootings had injured or killed 100 people as of mid-October. Concerned parents and legislators have called for change, but parties disagree on how to address the issue.
And the fate of the U.S. Department of Education is now in question. Donald Trump has plans to dissolve the department, which collects data to improve schools, enforces anti-discriminatory statutes, helps fund public schools and makes recommendations for education reform.
Related:
- In Michigan, voters sour on school bonds. Once an easy sell, half now fail
- Michigan universities lost first-year students. Decline was worse nationwide
- Trump wants to abolish the Department of Education. Is Michigan ready?
It also oversees grants and federal student loans, including the Biden-Harris administration’s attempts to relieve student loan debt for millions of Americans. Some of those debt-relief programs have been tied up in court amid ongoing legal challenges.
How it matters to Michigan: Michigan students have struggled to recover from learning losses during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to state and national test scores that show students here falling behind peers in other parts of the country.
Michigan schools have also battled national staff shortages. Low teacher salaries are mainly to blame for vacant positions, experts say. The average 2021-2022 school year starting income for teachers was $38,963 in Michigan — the lowest of every Great Lakes state.
Whitmer and the Michigan Department of Education have created programs providing free community college and scholarships of up to $5,500 annually to eligible students, somewhat blunting a national enrollment decline.
National politics have recently influenced passage rates for bond proposals in Michigan, experts say. Voters are defeating school bonds at higher rates statewide, but more so in Republican-leaning areas.
Where Harris, Democrats stand: While education has not been a key talking point in her campaign rallies, Vice President Kamala Harris has said in statements that she is “fully committed” to expanding student loan forgiveness opportunities.
Harris has emphasized the importance of providing funding for K-12 schools to increase staff salaries, recruit more teachers and establish universal preschool, although she hasn’t outlined specific policy proposals.
Democrats have also fought against state legislative efforts to limit or remove culture war topics from curriculums and libraries. Harris called proponents of Florida’s updated education standards, which claim “slaves developed skills” that could personally benefit them, “extremists.”
The Biden-Harris administration expanded LGBTQ student protections under Title IX, creating rules prohibiting K-12 schools from discriminating against students based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Harris supports some gun control reforms, which she has said could help deter violence in schools, and in a July speech to a teachers union in Houston bemoaned GOP efforts to restrict curriculums.
“We who believe in the freedom to live safe from gun violence will pass an assault weapons ban,” she said. “We who believe that every American should be free from bigotry and hate will fight to protect our teachers and our students from discrimination and make sure every student can learn America’s history.”
Where Trump, Republicans stand: Trump has consistently said he wants to shut down the U.S. Department of Education in order to empower states but has not specified whether he would continue federal funding through other channels or shift responsibilities to other departments.
The plan could disrupt about 11% of Michigan’s federal funding for public schools and remove district obligations to follow related rules, but few Republicans have shown legislative support for it in the past. When the party held a trifecta during the Trump administration, his proposal to combine the departments of education and labor never reached the House floor.
The former president’s goal is part of his larger campaign to stop what he and other Republicans have called student “indoctrination.” Trump and his allies have repeatedly encouraged schools to ban critical race theory, a term used by some conservatives to refer to classroom discussions of systemic racism.
Trump has said he wants to roll back the Biden-Harris administration’s Title IX transgender student protections and cut federal funding to schools teaching students about gender dysphoria. A key core on his campaign website is to “keep men out of women’s sports.”
“We will drain the government education swamp and stop the abuse of your taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America's youth with all sorts of things that you don't want to have our youth hearing,” Trump said at a Wisconsin rally.
“I'm dying to get back to do this: We will ultimately eliminate the Federal Department of Education and send education back to … the states.”
Read more:
- Washington Post: Harris vs. Trump on student loans, education — Where they stand
- TIME: What a Trump or Harris Win Could Mean for Student Loan Forgiveness
- CNN: Trump wants to shut down the Department of Education. Here’s what that could mean
- National Education Association: The Culture War’s Impact on Public Schools
- Detroit News: Education workforce report shows challenges facing Michigan’s K-12 schools
- Bridge: In Michigan, voters sour on school bonds. Once an easy sell, half now fail
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