BY Noah LaBelle, Max Lind, and Adam Sanders
Oct. 07, 2024
Young people are registering to vote in never-before-seen numbers. And as many graduate high school and enter college, decreasing student loan debt and funding public education rank high as issues for the upcoming elections.
Education in the United States is for the most part a state and local issue; federal government money only accounts for about 8.3 percent of public K-12 school funding. But advocacy groups like the National Education Association (NEA) argue that education is on federal and state ballots this year, as politicians spar over whether taxes should fund school lunches and how best to tackle the youth mental health crisis.
In Pennsylvania, the PA State Education Association (PSEA), the state teachers’ union, has endorsed Democrats down the ballot for federal and state offices. According to Chris Lilienthal, a PSEA spokesman, these candidates fielded better stances on public school funding, school safety, and the role of school vouchers, and the rights of organized labor.
The president of the U.S. can influence educational policy by issuing executive orders, promoting legislation and, notably, appointing the Secretary of Education, who presides over an annual budget of roughly $68 billion. The Department of Education is not involved in determining curricula or education standards or establishing schools but is responsible for establishing policies on federal financial aid, collecting data on U.S. schools, and protecting students from discriminatory practices.
Vice President Kamala Harris has worked on education policy since her days as district attorney in San Francisco almost two decades ago. In an effort to boost school attendance rates, Harris sent annual letters to parents threatening to prosecute if their children were chronically absent without good reason, rooted in a belief that “a child going without an education is tantamount to a crime.” Though Harris’ initiative was controversial, attendance in San Francisco schools increased by over 30 percent. California now views low absenteeism rates as one of the main measures of school district success.
Harris has taken a softer stance on truancy since her DA days, yet public education remains a key priority. As a presidential nominee, Harris has called for universal pre-K and a “reduced emphasis on standardized testing.” The 2024 Democratic Party Platform states that “Democrats will provide free, universal preschool for four-year olds, saving the families of 5 million children $13,000 a year.”
As a senator, Harris supported the Equality Act, which would have expanded the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Equality Act would apply to public schools and private schools that receive federal funding. Republican opposition ultimately tanked the bill.
As the attorney general of California, Harris sued Corinthian Colleges, a chain of for-profit colleges, for “false and deceptive advertising” and promoting “programs that they did not offer.” As vice president, she helped oversee the Biden Administration’s plan to give $5.8 billion in debt relief to 560,000 former students who had attended one of the Corinthian colleges. Harris supports Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, but has not announced specific policies of her own.
As President, Donald Trump appointed Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, a controversial figure who advocated for cutting funding to the Department of Education. DeVos pushed for school choice, school vouchers and charter schools. She pushed aggressively to reopen schools during the Covid pandemic. (Devos resigned on January 7, 2021, 12 days before her term would have ended, to protest Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection.)
The 2024 Republican Party platform, passed just days before Republicans officially nominated Trump in July, promises to “ensure safe learning environments free from political meddling” and “restore parental rights,” giving parents a greater say in what is taught to their children at public schools. The party also advocated for the end of “teacher tenure,” a practice that, like tenure at universities, makes it harder to fire teachers after they have taught in the same district for a certain number of years.
Other educational priorities in the party platform include “immediate suspension of violent students,” “hardening [of] schools to help keep violence away from our places of learning,” and “championing the First Amendment right to pray and read the Bible in school.” Trump has said that he will reinstate the 1776 Commission, an advisory panel he established during his term to promote “patriotic education.” The former president has also promised to cut federal funding for any school that pushes any “inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on our children,” including what he described as “transgender insanity.”
Project 2025, a political initiative of the right wing Heritage Foundation and associated with the Trump campaign, includes dismantling the Department of Education, promoting school choice, and ending federal spending programs meant to relieve child poverty. Trump has denied supporting Project 2025, but independent analyses have linked the former president and his staff to the initiative and its proposals.
U.S. senators have important roles to play in funding districts and schools — and attaching strings to those funds.
Four-term U.S. Senator Bob Casey Jr. is already the longest-serving Democratic U.S. senator in PA history. Before Pennsylvanians first sent Casey to Washington, D.C. in 2006, he spent eight years in Harrisburg as PA’s auditor general and state treasurer.
As senator, Casey supported the Biden Administration’s attempts to cancel $10,000 in student loan debt for low- and middle-income Americans and voted against the U.S. Senate’s resolution to overturn the student loan relief plan in 2023. He previously sponsored a 2019 bill allowing eligible borrowers to refinance their student loans at lower rates.
A number of U.S. Senate education bills originated at Casey’s desk. Leaders of the National Education Association and the NAACP 2020 praised his proposal to fund African American history educational programs. Alongside PA’s junior U.S. Senator John Fetterman, Casey put forth legislation to expand free and reduced-price school meals “to fight for the 13 million children in our nation who lack consistent access to food.” Casey has also introduced bills that would make American higher education and K-12 schools more inclusive and accessible for students with disabilities.
Casey is against attempts to limit discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools. He wrote on X, “The idea that it’s ‘harmful’ to children to even discuss the existence of LGBTQ+ people isn’t just ridiculous — it’s dangerous.”
Casey has garnered the endorsement of the National Education Fund for Children and Education. Pennsylvania State Education Association President Aaron Chapin, in a recommendation of Casey, described the senator as “a tireless advocate for public education” who “knows Pennsylvania, understands the problems we have in our state, and knows how to solve them by getting things done in Washington, D.C.”
David McCormick, who retired as CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund in 2022, has pledged to restore an “honest, patriotic education in our schools.” As senator, he “would be completely opposed” to conversations about transgender identities in school settings. He spoke out against “woke ideology” in schools alongside DeVos at a May 2024 event hosted by Moms for Liberty, parental rights advocacy group whose PA members have been involved in book censorship in Bucks County schools.
After the White House announced it would cancel $1.2 billion of student loans for 153,000 borrowers, McCormick responded on X by saying the action was “unfair & unAmerican.” He has repeatedly stated that student loan forgiveness is a “scheme [that] forces the majority of Pennsylvanians without college degrees to pay someone else’s debt.”
McCormick would support a bill providing scholarships to help students in “failing schools to move to better schools,” funded by federal taxes on citizens and businesses. This stance has earned McCormick the affection of Jeffery Yass, Pennsylvania’s richest resident. Yass, a champion of charter and private schools and a billionaire who regularly finances candidates supporting school choice, has contributed over $1 million to McCormick’s campaign.
PA’s top law enforcement official often worked with other state AGs to support regulations — such as Title IX, which protects students from discrimination — and to keep PA schools safe. An AG can also bring attention to issues that affect students, as when former AG Josh Shapiro demanded the U.S. Dept. of Education stop rolling back protections for student borrowers.
After two terms as Pennsylvania’s Auditor General from 2013 to 2021, Eugene DePasquale is now running for attorney general. Voters in York County first sent DePasquale to Harrisburg as a state representative in 2007.
DePasquale first decided to run for auditor general after then-PA Governor Tom Corbett “proposed major cuts to public education,” a direction he thought was wrong for the state. Education was a priority for DePasquale as auditor general. In wake of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, FL, DePasquale expanded the scope of school safety audits and investigated “safety plans of every school district in the state.”
DePasquale has repeatedly slammed PA’s school choice policy, calling it “simply the worst … in the United States.” Along with Republican former Rep. Bernie O’Neill, he penned a 2022 op-ed calling for reform to protect school choice, while ensuring that taxpayer dollars are spent more effectively on education and that charter schools face more accountability.
During a February interview, DePasquale remarked that “We need to do much better on mental health in this state … at the school level, K through 12, the college level,” addressing the figure that suicides account for nearly two-thirds of gun-related deaths in PA. He said he will work as AG to ensure safety for transgender youth in PA schools, fight school library book-banning efforts from conservatives, and increase consumer protections for student loans.
The Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers and the Pennsylvania State Education Association have endorsed DePasquale.
Dave Sunday is the district attorney of York County, where he has focused on reducing gun violence and combating the opioid epidemic. While Sunday’s work as DA has not typically interfaced with education, in 2021, Sunday decided not to prosecute criminal citations to those violating the mask mandate in PA K-12 Schools issued by former Governor Tom Wolf. (In his announcement, Sunday wrote that this should not be interpreted as “detracting from the seriousness of Covid-19.”)
Sunday has supported high quality pre-K and early childhood education as a solution to reduce youth involvement in the juvenile justice system, saying that “how kids start in life plays a huge role in how they finish.” Otherwise, education has been largely absent from his Attorney General campaign. Representatives of the Sunday campaign did respond to requests for comment on Sunday’s specific stances on education., although almost half of Sunday’s expected PA ad buys, totaling around $6 million, have been financed by the Commonwealth Leaders Fund, a PAC primarily funded by school choice advocate and mega-donor Jeff Yass. Sunday has yet to meet Yass, but campaign spokesperson Ben Wren confirmed that Sunday “appreciates the support” of the PAC.
The auditor general serves as an elected taxpayer advocate in Pennsylvania, and makes recommendations to improve fiscal accountability. Some of these audits examine spending by public school districts.
Auditor General Tim DeFoor has been in his role since 2020. He has advocated for teaching financial literacy in public schools through the “Be Money Smart” initiative and worked with the General Assembly to pass a 2023 law mandating classes on financial education for high school students beginning in 2026.
DeFoor faced controversy in 2022 among educators and school officials for shuttering his office’s Bureau of School Audits amid budget cuts. Then-PSEA president Richard W. Askey criticized DeFoor’s decision in an open letter, writing that “this irresponsible action will effectively end any organized, state-level audits of the commonwealth’s public schools … with no plan for any other state government department or agency to assume this critical function.” DeFoor’s campaign website touts his first term as having “transformed and improved the way we do school audits including public, charter and cyber schools.”
He drew further ire from public school leaders when his office accused 12 districts across the state of engaging in a “shell game,” shifting money between accounts to raise property taxes without voter approval. District leaders argued DeFoor and his office misunderstood their budgeting process.
State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta has been in his role since 2018; he represents the 181st District, in North Philadelphia. Kenyatta has made reopening the Bureau of School Audits a priority in his campaign for auditor general. In a speech announcing his campaign last March, he railed against DeFoor’s decision to close the bureau, saying “it makes no sense that our auditor general is not auditing one of the biggest expenses that we appropriate every year out of this building.”
On a national stage, Kenyatta has allied himself with the Biden-Harris White House in its efforts to improve access to higher education and career training for Black Americans. President Biden named Kenyatta the chair of his Presidential Advisory Commission on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Black Americans in April 2023.
Kenyatta has secured a key endorsement among educators — that of the PA State Education Association, the state’s teachers’ union and largest union overall. In a Harrisburg press conference this past April, PSEA president Aaron Chapin announced his organization’s support of Kenyatta’s candidacy, saying “there is no better person to guard the interests of public education advocates and taxpayers than Malcolm Kenyatta.”
The treasurer leads Pennsylvania’s independent Treasury Department and is responsible for managing and investing the Commonwealth’s financial assets — including 529 savings plans for college and career.
PA Treasurer Stacy Garrity has been in place since 2020, and has emphasized her successful efforts to improve Pennsylvania’s 529 program, increasing participation in the program and earning a gold rating from Morningstar, a financial ratings firm.
Garrity has come out on social media in favor of school choice programs: “The solution to inequity in our public schools has always been and will always be school choice,” she wrote on Facebook in February 2023. She has also supported plans in the General Assembly for “lifeline scholarships” that would provide state vouchers to students who attend private or charter schools.
In 2021, Garrity, along with her Democratic predecessor Joe Torsella, pushed to remove the two top executives at Pennsylvania’s Public School Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS), a pension fund that had faced controversy and an FBI investigation for poor management and possible corruption. Garrity and Torsella also led a push to freeze private investments from PSERS in an effort to lower costs.
In other posts on X, Garrity has denounced “Communist China propaganda” on college campuses and called for an end to “wokeness” in the military and in public schools.
Erin McClelland, a substance abuse and mental health counselor and policy advisor in government, has come out against school choice and the state’s proposed “lifeline scholarships.” She has promised not to fund them while they are being challenged in court. McClelland further explains her position on school choice and school vouchers, saying, “We have a school funding problem and we need to solve that first before creating band-aids that actually further defund public schools.”
McClelland says she worries moving state money from public schools to private schools in cities could damage education in rural areas. “That’s going to be a huge issue for our public schools in the middle of the state,” McClelland said.
This, in addition to her commitment to public pensions, are reasons PSEA has cited as key to its endorsement.
Noah LaBelle, Max Lind and Adam Sanders are students in Eliza Griswold’s The Media in America: Witnessing History class at Princeton University.
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