Lost in the shuffle
Two education policy questions that weren’t asked during the presidential debate.
It was a simpler time back in the year 2000. During the first presidential debate between George W. Bush and Al Gore, they took 10 minutes to talk about education policy.
Bush said we needed mandatory testing to hold schools accountable. Gore said he wanted even more testing than Bush. Not only did Gore want to test students at the state level, but he also wanted to add an optional test at the national level, and he wanted to test teachers to make sure they were knowledgeable in their subject areas.
After the candidates went back and forth about who supported more testing, the real differences emerged. Bush said he supported charter schools and education savings accounts; he wanted to make sure students weren’t trapped in failing schools. Gore said the problem was the school funding crisis; he wanted state governments to shut down failing schools and appoint specialists to reopen them under new leadership.
In the end, Bush succeeded in passing mandatory statewide standardized tests. We are still implementing those tests today, even though neither party supports accountability through testing anymore.
We don’t have time for education policy in the year 2024. Not on the presidential debate stage. We’re stuck in remedial civics education, trying to decide whether “attempted insurrection” is a venial or mortal sin against the Constitution.
Even if we did have time, the debate wouldn’t be productive. The Republican ticket is obsessed with the culture war, and the Harris campaign doesn’t care to get specific on policy questions.
Despite the degradation of our public discourse, education policy still matters.
Here are two questions that weren’t asked during last week’s debate.
Should we abolish the Department of Education?
Trump thinks the United States is one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to education. He doesn’t want Marxists to brainwash our children. Therefore, he wants to “close up the Department of Education in Washington D.C. and send all education and education work and needs back to the states.”
Right-wingers have been all over the map on this issue. For example, Vivek Ramaswamy talks about abolishing the Department of Education, but he also wants to implement a mandatory national civics test, which would obviously not be possible if we allowed states to be autonomous on education.
If the Department of Education goes away, there are still federal education laws on the books that would need to be enforced by someone. Before 1979, education was lumped together in a federal department with the categories of health and welfare.
The Dispatch wrote a succinct explainer about the Department of Education, highlighting the following pieces of information:
The Department of Education is the smallest department in the federal government.
The Department’s main responsibilities are to handle financial aid, conduct and disseminate research, and prevent discrimination.
It would be a challenge, legally, to eliminate the Department of Education. Only one federal department has been eliminated in more than a half-century, and it was done by an act of Congress.
I don’t think a second Trump administration would abolish the Department of Education. The nationalists who surround him are going to want to use federal agencies to their advantage. This was spelled out explicitly in a recent story in the Wall Street Journal. The plan is to counter-attack against the left-leaning ideology in schools. The WSJ article quoted a think-tank senior fellow saying the quiet part out loud: “We oppose the deep state, but what if the deep state were our guys?”
The real pathway to bringing education back to the states is to reform the Republican Party so that it is led by limited-government conservatives. In other words, it is probably not going to happen.
How do we make college more affordable?
The Biden administration has tried to cancel a bunch of student debt, even when it was plainly obvious that their actions would be struck down by the courts. Although several of Biden’s efforts were struck down, his administration did deliver on debt relief for nearly five million borrowers.
Kamala Harris touts student debt relief in the newly added policy section of her website:
And she’ll continue working to end the unreasonable burden of student loan debt and fight to make higher education more affordable, so that college can be a ticket to the middle class. To date, Vice President Harris has helped deliver the largest investment in public education in American history, provide nearly $170 billion in student debt relief for almost five million borrowers, and deliver record investments in HBCUs, Tribal Colleges, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and other minority-serving institutions. She helped more students afford college by increasing the maximum Pell Grant award by $900 — the largest increase in more than a decade — and invested in community colleges.
Conservatives disagree with the idea of canceling student loans, mainly because it’s unfair to taxpayers, many of whom don’t have college degrees. The core problem, according to conservatives, is that students are receiving too much money to pay for college degrees that won’t lead to high-paying jobs in the first place.
The College Cost Reduction Act, introduced this year by the Republican chair of the House education committee, would do a couple things:
First, it would simplify the student loan application and repayment system so that the loans are more transparent and predictable.
Second, it would force colleges to share the risk of the loans by forcing them to pay some of the costs if their graduates don’t earn enough to repay the loans.
The second point sounds practical, but it has flaws from a conservative perspective, writes education researcher Neal McClusky:
But it is something of a distraction: It is the federal government’s failure to meaningfully assess potential borrowers’ abilities to handle degree programs that puts money in the hands of students unlikely to finish. Schools are just doing what the feds incentivize them to do—enroll students—and this places the blame on the institutions, not the politicians where it belongs.
The “Trump Republican Platform” says that it plans to a) create “additional, more affordable alternatives” to a four-year college degree, and b) fire left-wing accreditors, drive down tuition costs, and restore due process and civil rights on college campuses.
As far as I can tell, the Trump ticket has not endorsed the College Cost Reduction Act. I’ve heard a lot of angry rhetoric against the corrupt progressive education establishment, but I haven’t heard much of a concrete argument for how our education system can become more efficient.
Final thoughts
Zooming out and looking at the big picture, I think we need an education system that is more efficient and adaptable.
I’ve written previously about the dueling priorities of our K-12 education system. On the one hand, we’re trying to enforce college-prep standards for everyone through age 18. On the other hand, we want to create workforce training and credentialing options for students who aren’t going to college.
There are many pathways to happiness and financial stability in this country. Ideally, state governments would build the policy infrastructure to support these pathways.
We’ve taken steps in this direction in Arizona, but we still need policy reforms at the national level. One example: we should reform or get rid of the outdated mandate for a uniform state testing system. Sadly, our national government is trending toward dysfunction.
If our Constitutional order stays intact, maybe we will start having more rational and nuanced policy debates by the next presidential cycle.
If this year’s election is as close as it was in the year 2000, God help us.
Higher education in the U.S. is broken. Whether it be the high dollar sports programs or the specific majors (MFA in Oboe, for example) which pump out students where very few jobs actually exist. The model in European countries, Germany, for example, identifies students talents and skills early in their primary/secondary education, and nurture those interests and skills. Kids are then sent to professional training programs or different tiers of higher education. Young adults are happier and their industries are full of professional, well-trained, and educated people, from bakers, to fast food workers, hotel and restaurants, travel professionals, teachers, and business people. This system has its roots in old apprenticeship programs, some of which have made their way to the U.S., mostly in the trades.
Lastly, get sports out of higher education. With the advent of NIL it is becoming even more unsustainable.
Good points. You and I (and your father) are academics who look at data and to make rational policy decisions. Everyone looks both at data and has feelings. To me it appears data driven decision-making is over with about half of us responding to alternative facts and about half of us trying to find and respond to factual facts but that may no longer be what matters. It is the truly undecided minority, in just a small minority of swing states, who decide who wins. I anticipate a Blue Wave because Kamala's image of joyful freedom for all is a lot more attractive than the hate and retribution images DJT, JDV and his cult project. Believe it is down to "With whom would you share lunch".