Public Health on the Ballot: Education
A look at where the presidential candidates stand on issues surrounding education, past and present.
Read Time: 2 minutes
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Quality education enables informed health decisions and access to employment, health insurance, and health care. To benefit fully, students need a safe learning environment and opportunities to pursue higher education. Federal student loans burden students, particularly Black women and low-income households. Discrimination complaints in schools are at a record high, impacting students’ physical safety and mental health. Efforts to ban critical race theory and talks of sexuality and gender in school curricula exacerbate these issues.
The following graphic compares the prominent educational policies of the Trump-Pence and Biden-Harris administrations, as well as the plans for the Trump-Vance and Harris-Walz administrations if elected in November.
Past Administrations
Biden-Harris (2021-2025)
- Equity: Signed executive orders to advance educational equity for Black students, historically Black colleges, Hispanic-serving institutions, and LGBTQ+ students and educators.
- Authority and Curriculum: Allocated $179 million in grants to the Department of Education to support literacy and academic progress.
- Student Loan Debt: Approved $167 billion in student loan debt relief for 4.75 million borrowers.
Trump-Pence (2017-2021)
- Equity: Withdrew an Obama-era policy that promoted equitable school discipline for students of color.
- Authority and Curriculum: Signed an executive order that decreased the Department of Education’s authority on public education, including curriculum, library resources, and administration.
- Student Loan Debt: Provided relief for borrowers who proved they were defrauded by private, for-profit colleges
Future Administrations
Harris-Walz
- Equity: Harris advocates for STEM education among girls and minority students, shown in her proposed bill as senator.
- Authority and Curriculum: Harris spoke out against book bans that are “against either an LGBTQ+ author or have subject matter that is about LGBTQ+ subjects and people.”
- Student Loan Debt: Harris hopes to relieve student loan debt for teachers. “We see a future where no teacher has to struggle with the burden of student loan debt.”
- Walz advocates for student financial support. As governor of Minnesota, he signed a bill granting free college tuition to students from lower income families.
Trump-Vance
- Equity: Trump plans to roll back the Title IX expansion that protects transgender students in federally-funded schools.
- Authority and Curriculum: Trump plans to end the Department of Education and send education “back to the states.”
- Trump hopes to cut funding for schools pushing “critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”
- Student Loan Debt: Vance called student loan forgiveness a “massive windfall” that “Republicans must fight with every ounce of [their] energy and power.”
