By Thomas Ultican 7/31/2024
Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, has a good record with public education. Her opponent, who appointed Betsy DeVos Secretary of Education, disagrees and says she is a “radical liberal,” responsible for Mr. Biden’s most left-leaning policies. It is unlikely he has any actual knowledge of what she might have been responsible for. To this fascist leaning fellow, the entire Democratic Party and a slice of the GOP look like “radical liberals.” With the two major candidates for president, there is a clear difference in education policy: Harris is pro-public education, Trump wants to end it.
Ruby Bridges’ Shadow and Kamala Harris
Her Record
In a 2020 run for President, Harris stated at a Houston rally, “You can judge a society by the way it treats its children, and one of the greatest expressions of love that a society can give to its children is educating those children with resources they need.” At that time, she identified the “pay gap” between teachers and other college graduates, as undermining the required resources. She wrote in the Washington Post:
“As president, I will make the largest federal investment in teacher pay in U.S. history. We will fully close the teacher pay gap during my first term, and provide the average teacher a $13,500 raise.”
Her plan would have included $315 billion in federal funding over 10 years to subsidize pay for K-12 educators and reward state and local governments for raising teacher’s salaries. This was to be paid for by adjusting estate taxes.
She has yet to mention teachers’ pay in 2024 but, obviously, it is something to which she has given a lot of thought and believes needs attention.
In 2019, as California’s U.S. senator, considering a presidential run, she supported the teachers strike in Los Angeles. Harris wrote, “Los Angeles teachers work day in and day out to inspire and educate the next generation of leaders.” Besides wage increases, teachers were demanding smaller class sizes and more support staff. The union victory in the strike was a defeat for pro-charter school billionaire Eli Broad and the California charter school movement.
Cecily Myart-Cruz, current president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles, remembered Harris’s support “was such a boost.”
In July 2020, the President of the United States and his Secretary of Education demanded schools open with in-person classes five days a week. Parents were worried about the safety of their children and teachers were frightened.
President Trump tweeted,
“In Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and many other countries, SCHOOLS ARE OPEN WITH NO PROBLEMS. The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November Election, but is important for the children & families. May cut off funding if not open!”
Michelle Goldberg of NY Times wrote, “… with their crude attempts at coercion, they’ve politicized school reopening just as Trump politicized mask-wearing and hydroxychloroquine.” It was the beginning of a rightwing offensive toward public schools, eventually leading to open bigotry, attacks on school board meetings and book banning.
Harris and Orange County Congresswoman, Katie Porter, responded to Trump with a letter agreeing that in-person schooling was crucial for children’s well-being and for parents’ ability to work. They also wrote that lives could be at risk if schools reopened without stringent safety measures such as social distancing, regular randomized virus testing and virus contact tracing.
These were never seriously addressed by Trump.
In some liberal-leaning states, including California, millions of students went 18 months without in-school classes. However outcomes have not matched expectations. In New York, which opened schools in fall 2020, their 2022 reading and math scores fell while in Los Angeles, math and reading scores improved. Commissioner, Peggy Carr, of the National Center for Education statistics reported, “There’s nothing in this data that tells us there is a measurable difference in the performance between states and districts based solely on how long schools were closed.”
Last week, when Harris addressed the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention in Houston, Michael Whatley, chairman of the Republican National Committee, accused her of “already ignoring parents and getting cozy with the same teachers union bosses who she allowed to dictate school reopening guidance and keep kids out of the classrooms.”
Republicans believe that by not enthusiastically embracing Trump’s open school edict and siding with teachers unions made her vulnerable to political attack. However, his “divide-and-conquer” incompetent management of the COVID crisis and demand to open schools without preparations makes him more exposed to current criticism.
At last Tuesday’s AFT convention, Harris shared education issues to be focused on between now and Election Day: student loan forgiveness, protecting schools from gun violence and resisting Republican attempts to restrict curriculums.
In 2023, she flew to Florida to take on Gov. Ron DeSantis’ attacks on what he dismissed as “woke indoctrination” in schools. Harris was particularly incensed by the state’s middle school standards, arguing that enslaved people “developed skills that could, in some instances, be applied for their personal benefit.”
As attorney-general in the state of California, she went after for-profit colleges, accusing them of false advertising and intentionally misrepresenting to students the benefits provided. She won a $1 billion judgment against the California-based Corinthians Colleges Inc. stating, “For years, Corinthian profited off the backs of poor people – now they have to pay.”
Harris was not blowing political smoke when kicking off her campaign saying in her long career as a prosecutor, she has taken on all kinds of predators:
“Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”
EducationWeek says Harris is unlikely to stray far from Biden’s education agenda. She will continue working to overcome court challenges against forgiving student loan debt and expanding protections for LGBTQ+ students and school staff through a rewrite of rules for Title IX, the nation’s landmark sex discrimination law.
It also states, “On the Republican side, the party has proposed a platform that calls for eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, defunding schools that teach ‘critical race theory’ or ‘gender ideology,’ and universal private school choice.”
This is disingenuous. No k-12 schools teach “critical race theory” and never have nor do they teach “gender ideology.” These are false claims designed to scare and divide people in order to garner votes. “Universal private school choice” is a scheme to end universal taxpayer funded public education.
Conclusions
Kamala Harris is a strong supporter of public education and embraces our nation’s outstanding teaching force which she wants to enhance. She will be dealing with people who believe public education is too expensive and charter schools are helpful but her track record says she will protect this important foundation for American democracy and national achievement.
The soon-to-be Madam President has good instincts and I look forward to her pro-public education administration!
tultican 
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