Ten Education and Work Issues at Stake in the 2024 Election

In November, Americans will choose the next president and decide which political party controls the two houses of Congress. As with all national elections, much attention will be paid to a handful of high-profile, often controversial issues, some related to differences in approaches to governance, others to the personal qualities of the candidates. But the election will also have consequences far beyond the headlines, particularly for students and workers. While the recent presidential debate featured not a single mention of K–12 schools or early learning and only a glancing reference to higher education, the election will help determine what students are taught, where they go to school, how they pay for college, and whether they can get a good job.

Unusually, the two major party candidates represent an incumbent vice president and a former president, which means that both have established track records in shaping federal policy. The Senate and House of Representatives are closely divided along party lines, and each has switched majority control over the last four years, providing further recent evidence of party platforms and preferences. Outside groups with a history of agenda-setting influence also offer clues about what different configurations of White House and congressional control are likely to mean for students, teachers, and workers.

Based on the evidence, this is what’s at stake in the 2024 election for early learning, K–12 federal education and oversight, private school choice, K–12 curriculum and teaching, education technology, apprenticeship, student loans, college affordability, for-profit college regulation, and good jobs for workers.

The Biden-Harris administration began with proposals for an ambitious domestic policy agenda that would have included major new investments in providing more parents of young children with access to affordable, high-quality early childhood education. That legislation failed in the Senate in 2021, in part from belief among a small number of conservative Democrats that the larger package of expanded domestic spending it was part of was unaffordable and might exacerbate inflation.

Former President Trump has said little about care and education for young children during his campaign. But Project 2025, a coalition of 45 right-leaning organizations led by the conservative Heritage Foundation, has published a blueprint for a future Republican administration that speaks directly to early childhood policy issues. The blueprint opposes the Biden-Harris administration approach of providing more federal funding to increase access to early learning. It claims, without evidence, that “children who spend significant time in day care experience higher rates of anxiety, depression, and neglect as well as poor educational and developmental outcomes.” Instead of universal access to early learning opportunities, the blueprint proposes that “funding should go to parents either to offset the cost of staying home with a child or to pay for familial, in-home child care.”

Additionally, Trump’s recently-announced running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, has said, “‘Universal day care’ is class war against normal people.” By contrast, in announcing a new federal regulation lowering the cost of child care for low-income families, Vice President Kamala Harris said, “President Biden and I believe that every family in our nation should be able to access affordable child care.”

Project 2025 also proposes the elimination of Head Start, an $11 billion program that currently provides education, care, and other services to over 800,000 children and pregnant women. Head Start also supports young children with delays and disabilities and their families, offering them access to screening and referral for early intervention, special education, and related services.

A more moderate approach can be found in Republican Senator Tim Scott’s proposed Child Care Development Block Grant Reauthorization Act of 2022 (CCDBG). This legislation includes some positive changes to federal early learning policy, such as raising the eligibility ceiling for families seeking child care subsidies and making care free for families earning below 75 percent of the state median income. It does not, however, include more funding to pay for these initiatives, leaving their implementation unclear.

The CCDBG funding issue points to larger differences in fiscal policy among Democrats and Republicans. Arguably the most consequential domestic policy legislation passed during the Trump administration was the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The law was designed to cut federal tax revenues by $1.9 trillion, reducing available funds for federal programs, including programs for education and workers. The law primarily benefited households in the top 5 percent of personal income, who are least in need of government subsidies to offset expensive child care costs.

Many of the tax cuts enacted in 2017 are set to expire during the next presidential term. Republicans want all those cuts to be extended; Democrats want many of them to expire. The outcome of the 2024 election will determine what financial resources will be available to help more families afford the high-quality early learning that infants and young children need. Public education, college, and job training programs will be similarly affected.

Learn more about our latest work on early and elementary education.

The Biden-Harris administration’s K–12 education agenda has been defined mostly by its efforts to alleviate the impact of the pandemic on student learning. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, passed in March 2021, sent $122 billion to K–12 school districts, temporarily doubling the amount of federal funding for public education. Much of the funding was directed to help schools address the academic losses and missed learning opportunities that accumulated during COVID-19 disruptions. While not especially bold or cohesive, the administration’s pro-public-school agenda aims to leverage federal funding to advance academic achievement, support educators, and improve pathways from K–12 to college and careers.

A potential second Trump administration could dramatically reshape the landscape of federal education funding. Project 2025 describes the U.S. Department of Education as a “convenient one-stop shop for the woke education cartel” and calls for the department’s elimination. This would shift education programs into other federal agencies and substantially cut or altogether eliminate major categorical funding programs. The two largest pots of federal funding—$18 billion for Title I serving students in low-income communities and $15 billion for special education—would be relocated to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Title I would be phased out within 10 years, while the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act would become a block grant to school districts or be transferred into savings accounts to pay for private education. These proposed changes would significantly weaken the federal government’s ability to ensure states provide fair funding for high-need and historically marginalized students and would sharply reduce accountability and transparency for student achievement, since current testing and reporting requirements are tied to Title I funding.

Slashing federal funding for education would also weaken the nation’s federal education research arm, the National Center for Education Statistics, drastically limiting the ability to test, innovate, and improve approaches to teaching and learning, including new and emerging education technologies.

Project 2025 calls for moving the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), now a division of the U.S. Department of Education, to the U.S. Department of Justice. This would diminish OCR’s ability to work directly with school districts to resolve complaints and likely end its role in investigating certain types of complaints, including those related to school discipline and Title IX gender discrimination. Proposed deep cuts to OCR would end longstanding civil rights protections for millions of vulnerable children, including immigrant children, English learners, LGBTQ youth, and students with disabilities.

Debates over private school choice reflect broader tensions in education policy between individual autonomy and the collective benefits of a strong public education system. A second Trump administration would likely advocate for a broad range of school choice initiatives, including overturning Biden-era restrictions on federal funding for new charter schools. However, the most transformative change would be a proposed push for federal tax credit scholarship programs and vouchers to fund private and religious schooling.

Such measures would almost certainly mean increased public subsidies for private education. While proponents argue this approach supports parents’ rights and educational choice, this move could fundamentally alter American education by redirecting substantial public resources towards non-public and sectarian institutions. Most critically, a shift of this magnitude could undermine the foundation of the public school system, which has long been seen as one of the nation’s strongest means of achieving social cohesion and economic growth.

According to Education Week, 18 states have enacted policies limiting what concepts can be taught in schools. A 2022 teacher survey by RAND found that restrictions on if and how teachers can discuss topics like racism, sexism, and historical inequality are negatively affecting working conditions and that teachers worry about the consequences for student learning. In a similar survey, Pew found four-in-10 teachers said the current debates about classroom topics have had a negative impact on their job. Librarians describe similar problems, with a 2023 School Library Journal survey showing a significant drop in job satisfaction compared to 10 years ago, partly due to increased requests to ban or remove books. Biden-Harris administration officials have openly stated their opposition to this restrictive approach to curriculum and content.

Under the banner of protecting parents’ rights, the Trump campaign has proposed further restrictions on what teachers can teach, a reduction in the number of school administrators, and the establishment of “a credentialing body that would certify teachers who embrace patriotic values.” Both the Trump campaign website and Project 2025 include incendiary and unsubstantiated claims about an “onslaught of illegal aliens” (despite undocumented children having a constitutional right to attend public schools) and “the toxic normalization of transgenderism” in schools.

This approach of escalating rhetoric, restricting content, and reducing autonomy for educators is likely to exacerbate teacher shortages, weaken access to open educational resources, curb efforts to improve media literacy, and limit the exercise of intellectual freedom in public schools.

Learn more about our latest work on PreK–12 education.

Advancing technological innovation in education is one area where the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations have found common ground, albeit with important differences in their approaches. Both administrations have recognized the importance of maintaining global competitiveness in artificial intelligence (AI) and improving broadband accessibility in rural areas. However, the Biden-Harris administration has taken a more comprehensive approach by addressing potential issues such as AI bias, surveillance concerns, broadband access to low-income students and their families, and civil liberties within educational settings.

Initiatives like the White House’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, the Executive Order on AI, and the National Education Technology Plan emphasize the importance of equitable access to technology for all schools and student populations. These policies also aim to address algorithmic bias in AI, uphold digital citizenship, enhance online safety, and safeguard student data privacy. A Trump administration would likely rescind the Executive Order on AI and other related policies, removing safeguards against unintended bias, discrimination, and other potential harms from AI and emerging technologies in education.

Learn more about our latest research on teaching, learning, and tech.

Not all education and work issues are divided by extreme partisanship. For more than a decade, Republicans and Democrats have agreed on the value of promoting apprenticeship. Both parties support expanding apprenticeship programs into new industries, but they disagree in their approaches and underlying motivations.

Workers require affordable, accessible training that leads to a good job. Employers need well-trained workers and often want a say in how and where that training occurs. Apprenticeship, at its best, offers a mutually beneficial way to get those needs met, while distributing the risks and costs associated with doing so between workers and their employers. Where the parties differ is in their sense of how power should be balanced in the system, and who gets to strike it.

The Biden-Harris administration has pursued an apprenticeship expansion strategy that has tilted the scales slightly in favor of workers. The Department of Labor’s (DOL) efforts have been rooted in a belief that apprenticeship should promote greater economic opportunity and that the government has a major role to play in making sure it does. DOL has invested nearly a billion dollars in grant funding to develop apprenticeships in new occupations and industries like information technology, health care, and education. It has prioritized support for strategies to make apprenticeship more accessible for workers of color, women, workers with disabilities, and youth—populations that have not historically benefitted from apprenticeship and that face barriers in the labor market. In recent rulemaking efforts, DOL has strengthened worker protections and expanded the government’s role in determining apprenticeship standards, program approval, and quality assurance, which it argues are important for promoting greater consistency and quality in the system as a whole.

But the Biden-Harris administration’s equity-driven, worker-first stance on apprenticeship has drawn criticism from employers and industry associations that feel the system is getting more bureaucratic and more challenging for businesses to navigate. Without businesses willing to hire and train apprentices, they point out, apprenticeship cannot grow.

A second Trump administration is likely to reverse the balance of power between workers and employers in the apprenticeship system. The Industry Recognized Apprenticeship Program (IRAP) that President Trump introduced by executive order in 2017 was positioned as an employer-friendly alternative to the existing Registered Apprenticeship model. The IRAP concept sought to significantly reduce the government’s oversight functions in the apprenticeship system by empowering third parties to serve as system gatekeepers and arbiters of quality. The Trump administration celebrated IRAPs as a way to eliminate red tape, but critics worried they were essentially an end run around quality standards and the DOL’s equal employment opportunity requirements. Because IRAPs barely got off the ground before the Biden-Harris administration rescinded the executive order that created them, it’s hard to say how the model would have played out.

It’s safe to assume that a second Trump administration would revive the IRAP model or something similar and push it further. After the 2017 order, national trade unions managed to preserve the Registered Apprenticeship model by lobbying the administration to make IRAPs a parallel model, rather than a replacement. But there’s little in Trump’s track record to suggest a willingness to compromise with organized labor in the future, especially if it continues to rebuke his recent overtures. That could mean a more substantial overhaul of the current system, one that would almost certainly coincide with efforts to dismantle worker protections within and beyond the apprenticeship system. Apprenticeship would shift from being a strategy for promoting economic opportunity for workers to one designed to prioritize employers’ talent needs over all else. The scales would remain tilted—just in the other direction.

Learn about our latest work on education and economic mobility and youth apprenticeship.

The Biden-Harris administration has made broad-based student loan forgiveness a major priority. Though the Supreme Court ruled against its executive action to forgive $10,000 from almost every federal student loan and up to $20,000 for low-income students, the Department of Education has forgiven over $130 billion through easing and expanding existing programs. After the Supreme Court ruling, the Biden-Harris administration began introducing new regulations to give the Secretary of Education more authority to cancel debts based on several factors, including a broad definition of economic hardship. These regulations will almost certainly face legal challenges from Republican state attorneys general.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo reduced federal agency discretion to interpret ambiguous statutes, potentially complicating defense of new loan forgiveness programs by a Kamala Harris administration in court. If Trump wins the presidency, he is likely to repeal these programs or decline to defend them against lawsuits.

Prominent Republicans in Congress, and Project 2025, have called for substantially scaling back the cost and scope of federal loan forgiveness programs. A second Trump administration would likely end the regulatory pursuit of debt cancellation and, based on regulatory actions taken by the then Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, make it harder for borrowers to discharge their debts through existing programs. Project 2025 proposes privatizing the federal student loan program, which would likely involve paying billions of taxpayer dollars to private banks to subsidize federal loans. Other Republicans have argued for eliminating federal loans altogether, which would make student loans more expensive and less available to cash-poor students, an action that could lead to more extreme racial stratification in the higher education system and exacerbate the racial and gender wealth gap.

Learn more about our latest student loans work.

Last November, former President Trump announced that, if re-elected, he would propose taxing large private university endowments, along with suing and fining wealthy institutions, to fund “American Academy,” a new free higher education option that would grant credits for previous coursework students have completed elsewhere, potentially leading to credentials that could qualify them for federal government jobs. However, existing options, such as affordable public community colleges, already allow students to earn credits for prior coursework or for passing exams that prove their competency.

Students also have wide, affordable access to various credentials, including shorter-term credentials supported by the Pell Grant and student loan programs. Under the Biden-Harris administration, the average Pell Grant award has increased, and the administration called for doubling the value of Pell Grants to restore their declining purchasing power and help low-income students pay for tuition and living expenses. The administration also promoted an expansive plan to make community college tuition-free. Like its free child care plan, free community college fell victim to the 2021 contraction of the Build Back Better agenda and has not been reintroduced.

Learn more about our latest work on college affordability.

The Biden-Harris administration has created new regulations to protect students from unscrupulous colleges and college programs that are too expensive and offer little value in the labor market. Under these new regulations, programs run by for-profit colleges, or those that focus on job-oriented education, must demonstrate that their graduates earn more than they would have with just a high school diploma and can earn enough to reasonably repay their student loan debt. Other programs at public and nonprofit colleges will be required to report this information, and if they fail to meet the standards, may be required to inform prospective students.

The rule will establish a baseline level of quality to ensure that students and taxpayers are receiving a good enough return on their educational investment. The original version of this rule was written by the Obama administration and repealed by the Trump administration. A second Trump administration would likely repeal it again.

Additionally, the Biden-Harris administration is working to raise standards for higher education accreditation, which would very likely be rolled back by a second Trump administration. Trump has proposed accreditation standards that would require removing diversity, equity, and inclusion administrators and programs; mandating the defense of “American and Western civilization;” implementing college entrance and graduation exams for students; and offering accelerated and low-cost degrees via a new national online university. These new standards would likely cut off access for many students, especially those attending open-access colleges that do not require entrance exams. Furthermore, changes to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts would create less inclusive campuses for students of color and end many support programs that help students graduate.

Learn more about our latest work on higher education.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is an independent federal agency tasked with protecting private sector workers from unfair labor practices. Under the leadership of Biden-appointed General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, the Board has significantly stepped up its efforts to protect workers compared to previous administrations, both Republican and Democratic. Those efforts, in turn, are beginning to bear fruit as petitions for union recognition increase and union-busting employers face stiffer resistance.

Since taking the helm of the NLRB in June 2021, Abruzzo has directed NLRB lawyers to take a more aggressive approach in enforcing worker protections, including issuing stronger penalties for employers who engage in unfair labor practices or routinely misclassify their workers as independent contractors. She has also advocated for protecting workers’ right to free speech and imposing stricter limits on the use of arbitration agreements by employers.

Abruzzo has also begun to address two of the most effective strategies employers use to prevent workers from organizing: (1) captive audience meetings, in which employees are required to listen to presentations on why they should not unionize, and (2) employer-imposed delays on union recognition and first-contract bargaining. In 2022 she issued a memo to NLRB field offices to say that, moving forward, the Board will find captive audience meetings to be a violation of workers’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act. She also issued a memo calling for the revival of the “Joy Silk Doctrine,” under which the NLRB can recognize a union without an election or employer recognition if the union can present evidence of majority support among workers. In 2023, the Board issued a decision in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC that provides a framework for this new path to union recognition.

Over recent years there has been a significant uptick in union organizing, often in sectors such as retail and hospitality where union density is low. Since the Cemex decision, union representation petitions to the NLRB have noticeably increased. The strong economy has also emboldened unions to demand—and win—better contracts. In 2022, strikes by private-sector unions reached a 20-year high. Public opinion has also been moving in favor of the labor movement, with 71 percent of Americans approving of unions, the highest level since 1965.

Despite the clear interest from workers, support from the public, and a more aggressive NLRB, the path to unionization remains difficult in the United States. According to the Economic Policy Institute, in 2023 more than 60 million workers wanted to join a union but couldn’t do so. The enthusiasm for unions and organizing successes have yet to translate into a significant increase in union density. In part, that is because it takes time to travel from shop-floor organizing to union recognition to the first contract. Many workers appear to be in that process right now. It also can take years for a case to make its way through the NLRB, leaving workers little protection in real time. Private sector employers have been oiling their union-busting machines for decades, and four years is simply not enough time for the new NLRB decisions to translate into tangible progress in unionization rates.

A second Trump administration will almost certainly replace the current general counsel with a pro-business appointee who would reverse many of the decisions and memos issued by Abruzzo. If this happens, the NLRB will move from being a source of protection for new worker organizing to an obstacle.

Peter Robb, who previously held the position under Trump, was openly pro-management and hostile to unions. He helped the Reagan administration break the union representing air traffic controllers. During his tenure at the NLRB, the agency heard fewer cases than it had previously, and vacancies went unfilled, reducing capacity and creating a backlog of cases. Robb also issued decisions and guidance that restricted protections for organizers and shop stewards.

In the period since Robb’s firing, private sector employers, including Amazon, Starbucks, and Tesla, have stepped up their attacks on workers’ rights and on the NLRB. It is likely that a second Trump administration will include a general counsel hostile to labor who will work to reverse decisions and guidance issued by General Counsel Abruzzo. Given how vulnerable organizers and unions already are to employer resistance, a Trump-led NLRB will likely have a major chilling effect on organizing efforts, despite strong support from workers and the general public.

Learn more about our work on good jobs and the future of work.

Updated at 2:00 p.m. on July 26, 2024: This brief has been changed to reflect that Kamala Harris is the 2024 presidential Democratic nominee.