What Top Education Issues Should The Presidential Candidates Address
While critical topics like inflation, immigration and the economy have been a consistent flashpoint ahead of November’s presidential election, one equally important issue has been left largely untouched by candidates seeking the highest office in the land — education.
The two presidential candidates, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, were not asked a single question during a recent debate on the plethora of issues facing America’s education system, including yawning gaps in student performance on standardized tests and LGBT ideology in the classroom. Pessimism over the current state of the U.S. education system has grown in recent years, with 42% of Americans saying they’re “very dissatisfied” in 2024, up from 30% in 2015, according to a Gallup poll.
Crippling student debt and the federal government’s role in addressing it, the current administration’s bid to overhaul Title IX, the Biden Department of Justice’s (DOJ) targeting of parents who protested at school board meetings and LGBT ideology in schools are all essential issues that the presidential candidates should address, education experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“We have a real crisis in public education and education in general in America,” Tina Descovich, co-founder of Moms For Liberty, told the DCNF.
School boards have emerged as key battlegrounds in the ongoing culture war, with parents raising concerns over transgender policies, masking, Critical Race Theory and other hot-button issues.
In 2021, amid the fervor over these issues, the National School Boards Association sent a letter to the Biden administration comparing concerned parents to domestic terrorists and called for the usage of various statues, including the PATRIOT ACT, to shield school boards from supposed threats of violence.
Five days after the letter was sent, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI to “use its authority” against parents who either threaten or act violently towards public officials in a memorandum. The attorney general’s letter cited a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”
“The teachers unions do not care to have parents involved, even though their leaders have admitted that some of the greatest indicators of student success is having parental involvement, and so it’s important to have parents in the driver’s seat, and we wish to hear presidential candidates speak about that,” Descovich said.