K-12 education plays a prominent role in two conservative policy agendas that shed light on what could change for public education if former President Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election.
Project 2025, a 900-page policy document assembled by a number of former Trump administration officials and other allies of the former president and helmed by the conservative Heritage Foundation, lays out a conservative plan of action for virtually every corner of the federal government. The Republican National Committee’s 2024 policy platform, meanwhile, outlines a set of 20 “promises” for 2024, written in all caps, as well as the party’s official positions for this year’s elections, albeit in substantially less detail than Project 2025.
Trump has endorsed the GOP’s platform, which was released this week ahead of the start of the 2024 Republican National Convention on July 15. But he has distanced himself from Project 2025, saying that some of its proposals are “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”
When it comes to K-12 education, there are areas of clear alignment between the two documents.
Both propose eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, giving full oversight of schools to states. And they both endorse universal school choice, proposing an expansion of programs that allow families to access public dollars to pay for private school tuition and other education expenses outside of public schools.
The primary difference is that Project 2025 is much more extensive and outlines clear steps a conservative administration could take to achieve the goals it outlines.
Here’s a side-by-side look at what the two policy documents have to say on key education topics.
The U.S. Department of Education
“Federal education policy should be limited, and ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated,” Project 2025 says, adding that states should be in charge of K-12 policy decisions and that the role of the federal government with respect to education policymaking should be limited to “that of a statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states.”
The federal government should “return education to the states” by closing the U.S. Department of Education and letting “the States run our educational system as it should be run,” according to the platform.
Private school choice
The policy document supports universal school choice, though it doesn’t explicitly propose a program to attain that goal. The document says that “ultimately, every parent should have the option to direct his or her child’s share of education funding through an education savings account.” It proposes a handful of measures so federal education funds such as Title I and special education dollars can flow directly to families through education savings accounts. It also proposes allowing federal tax credits to encourage donations to organizations that provide K-12 education savings accounts.
Universal school choice should be a reality “in every state in America,” the platform says. It proposes expanding 529 accounts, which are traditionally used to help families save for college, so they’re available to families to cover homeschooling expenses.
Teacher pay
The document does not address teacher pay or teacher salaries.
The platform voices Republican support for eliminating teacher tenure and adopting merit pay, in which teachers’ salaries or bonuses are informed in part by student academic performance.
School funding
The initiative proposes converting key federal funding streams, namely Title I and IDEA, to “no-strings-attached” block grants that flow to states or districts, with the option of allowing the funding to flow directly to families to use for education expenses outside of public schools. In addition to turning these key funds into block grants, Project 2025 proposes that Title I, which supports schools with large populations of low-income students, be eliminated after 10 years.
The platform does not directly address school funding other than through expanding school choice.
Parents’ rights
The document says “parents’ rights as their children’s primary educators should be non-negotiable in American schools.” While Project 2025 doesn’t outline a specific policy initiative to achieve this, the agenda says “every parent should have the option to direct his or her child’s share of education funding through an education savings account.” The agenda advocates for the passage of a federal parents’ bill of rights to provide parents stronger standing in court “when the federal government enforces any policy against parents in a way that undermines their right and responsibility to raise, educate, and care for their children.”
The platform says Republicans will “restore Parental Rights in Education,” but does not go into specifics.
Curriculum
“The noxious tenets of ‘critical race theory’ and ‘gender ideology’ should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts writes in the Project 2025 foreword. The Education Department portion of the document doesn’t outline policy specifics with respect to curriculum.
The platform says Republicans “will ensure children are taught fundamentals like 69ý, History, Science, and Math, not Leftwing propaganda” and proposes defunding schools that “engage in inappropriate political indoctrination of our children.” It says that Republicans will “CUT FEDERAL FUNDING FOR ANY SCHOOL PUSHING CRITICAL RACE THEORY, RADICAL GENDER IDEOLOGY, AND OTHER INAPPROPRIATE RACIAL, SEXUAL, OR POLITICAL CONTENT ON OUR CHILDREN.” It also promotes teaching “Fair and Patriotic Civics Education.”
Religion in schools
The document does not directly address religion in schools. However, private school choice programs, which Project 2025 supports, have allowed public funds to flow to religious schools.
The GOP platform states that “Republicans will champion the First Amendment Right to Pray and Read the Bible in school.”
Student discipline
The document argues the federal government should not promote or require “restorative justice,” which addresses student misbehavior by focusing on repairing harm rather than removing children from the classroom through suspension and expulsion. It also states that the office for civil rights within the Education Department should stop investigating schools for “disparate impact” in discipline—the idea that school discipline policies that disproportionately affect students in one racial or ethnic group might violate federal civil rights law, even if those policies are neutral on their face and applied evenhandedly.
The platform proposes “overhauling standards on school discipline,” including by advocating for “immediate suspension of violent students” and supporting “hardening schools to help keep violence away.”
Title IX
The document was published before the Biden administration finalized its rewrite of Title IX regulations, but the new rules were in the works at the time and Project 2025 proposes immediately rescinding them. Through regulation, Project 2025 proposes defining “sex” under the federal landmark sex discrimination law to mean “only biological sex recognized at birth.”
The platform states that Republicans will “KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORTS,” which challenges the Biden administration’s proposed Title IX rewrite that would prohibit blanket bans on transgender youth playing on sports teams that align with their gender identity.
