Tim Walz and JD Vance confirm vice presidential debate in October
Vice presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz will participate in a debate scheduled for October 1, hosted by CBS News.
Perhaps nowhere is the contrast between the two presidential candidates greater than in their different approaches to the education of American children.
And that difference is perhaps most clearly embodied by their different running mates: one is a liberal former high school teacher and coach who struggled to have children and now has a son with special needs and a daughter with his long-time teacher wife. The other is a former venture capitalist who had a difficult childhood of his own, met his wife while they were both at Yale Law School, and now has three children.
President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have fundamentally different interpretations of the purpose and function of the American education system. Their visions largely coincide with their parties’ appreciation of active and passive politics.
Trump’s running mate JD Vance wants to largely end federal interference in education policy and strengthen the rights of states and parents, while Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, has long advocated for strengthening support for public education and teachers’ unions.
“If you look at the history and thinking of Vance and Walz, it’s clear that they’re talking about very different things,” says Thomas Howell, founder of a tutoring company that serves New York families. “Vance’s position has a lot to do with ideology and what’s taught in schools, and Walz’s position is about logistics and public education.”
Access to high-quality public schools
School choice was a focus of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, when he promised to fund the expansion of access to alternative school options to help children get out of public schools. Vance, his running mate, has reiterated Trump’s support for the school choice movement.
For Diana Reyes, a mother of two from Las Vegas, Nevada, this issue will be crucial to her vote in the upcoming presidential election. Years ago, after watching her daughter fall behind in public school, she took on thousands of dollars in credit card debt so she could enroll her in tutoring programs.
When her younger son, Daniel, began experiencing the same problems, Reyes sought a scholarship to enroll him in a private school. The vouchers ultimately helped him stay there, she says, and now he is on track to be the first in the family to graduate from college in December.
“I see what a difference it has made for my son,” she said, “and how it has changed his life.”
Opponents of school vouchers, including Harris and Walz, and teachers unions, argue that state funds should be used to fund and improve public schools. Their arguments are essentially based on the idea that every student should have access to a quality public education and that state and federal money should not fund alternatives at the expense of public schools.
Recent research provides limited evidence that education vouchers actually help traditionally disadvantaged children succeed. As governor of Minnesota, Walz also opposed a state Senate initiative for education savings accounts that would give parents public funds to pay for nonpublic schools.
Trump’s Agenda 47 on education Abolition of teacher tenure, universal school choice, patriotism
For North Carolina mother Renee Sekel, Walz’s record reflects “a dream of a candidate on public education.” Her three teenagers, one of whom is nonbinary, attend or have attended public school. She wants to vote for a candidate who is willing to invest in education that is available to all, including her own children.
“Promoting education vouchers is, by definition, designed to destroy public schools,” she said. “When you take kids out of public schools, the cost of running those public schools doesn’t necessarily go down, and the kids who are there lose access to valuable programs.”
Weapons in their classrooms
There were at least 144 gun incidents in elementary and high schools last school year, a 30% increase from the year before, according to an analysis by David Riedman, who maintains a database of school shootings, and the gun violence prevention organization Everytown for Gun Safety.
Rebekah Schuler, 18, was attending Oxford High School in Michigan three years ago when four students were killed and six others were injured. She heard the gunshots. As a young voter, Schuler said she would only vote for “gun-savvy” candidates who had the political will to pass laws protecting students from firearms.
“School safety is the most important issue on the ballot this year,” Schuler said. “Young voters are doing everything they can to ensure school safety.”
Both Walz and Vance are supporters of the Second Amendment, which gives Americans the right to bear arms. While Walz supported a complete ban on assault weapons, Vance said he opposed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a federal law that expanded background checks on firearm purchases.
Vance also called so-called red flag laws – which gun violence prevention advocates say help reduce the number of school shootings – “a spiral that does not solve the problem of gun violence.”
Culture wars in the classroom
In Minnesota, Walz signed a law this year that prohibits schools and libraries from banning books. Many of the bans were directed at books that dealt with racism, social justice or LGBTQ+ issues.
Walz’s support for LGBTQ+ rights dates back to the 1990s, when he helped found Mankato West High School’s first Gay-Straight Alliance. Walz, then a high school teacher, did his utmost to create a safe space for queer students, as they publicly said, at a time when classrooms were less inclusive compared to today.
Vance equated educating children about gender identity and sexual orientation with “grooming” in a 2022 interview with Fox News when he was running for Senate. Last year, he introduced a bill in Congress that would have banned gender-affirming care for minors nationwide (the bill did not advance in Congress).
He spoke out against a greater inclusion of more diverse viewpoints in the classroom and accused teachers of radicalising children by teaching them about LGBTQ+ identities and civil rights at too early an age.
Biden’s new Title IX rules Are about to come into force. But not in these states.
Moms for Liberty, a conservative parents group, vehemently supported the Trump-Vance candidate team.
“We are excited to see a vice presidential candidate who is a devoted husband and father,” the group’s co-founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice said in a statement to USA TODAY. “We look forward to the possibility of an administration that is committed to the children in our public education system and is willing to criticize public schools for focusing more on indoctrinating children than teaching them the basics of reading and math. … We always fight to ensure that candidates who support parental rights are in office at all levels of government, and we hope that as a father, JD Vance can embody those principles.”
Increased focus on universal access to school meals and menstrual products
As the coronavirus spread in 2020, the Trump administration provided free school meals to every American student and extended those waivers through the following school year. But when the federal policy born out of the pandemic ended in 2022, parents like Amber Lightfeather felt abandoned. Due to financial difficulties, Lightfeather, a research specialist and mother of five, and her family were homeless for about six weeks in 2022.
“My boys always said, ‘Mommy, I didn’t eat anything today,'” she said. “I said, ‘No, you eat. I’ll find a way to pay for it.'”
Lightfeather lives in Duluth, Minnesota, where Walz signed a law as governor last year guaranteeing free school meals across the state. That law has been life-changing for Lightfeather, freeing up other parts of the family budget to pay for things like clothing.
Last year, Walz also signed a law in Minnesota that provides free menstrual products to schoolgirls.
Vance has not explicitly commented on how he feels about offering free meals or period products to students, but the Republican party platform fundamentally opposes increasing government spending.
In response to an email from USA Today asking about Vance’s stance on free meals and menstrual products, Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, did not respond directly to the question but wrote, “Tampon Tim puts tampons in boys’ bathrooms, wants men to play women’s sports and supports gender reassignment surgery for minors.”
It is not the first time: Republican Party leaders are calling for religion in public schools.
The two candidates’ choice of vice president only shows how different their visions for U.S. schools are. This includes their views on strengthening – or weakening – the public school system, says Jonathan Collins, assistant professor of political science and education at Columbia University’s Teacher College.
“One candidate wants to expand public education, the other wants to shrink it,” Collins said. “One sees education as something like cultural progress and integration, while the other sees education as a source of cultural conflict.”
Contact Kayla Jimenez at [email protected]. Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.
