The form to apply for federal financial student aid now must roll out by Oct. 1 annually under a bill signed into law by President Joe Biden on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. (Photo by Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The form to apply for federal financial student aid must roll out by Oct. 1 annually after President Joe Biden signed a bill into law Wednesday that ensures an earlier processing cycle.

Though the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, typically launches in October each year, the U.S. Department of Education legally had until Jan. 1 to make the form available.

The new law came as the department has taken heat over its botched rollout of the 2024-25 form, when users faced a series of glitches and errors. The form did not officially launch until January.

Adding fuel to the fire, the agency announced earlier this year that it would take a staggered approach to the 2025-26 form so it could address problems that might pop up before opening applications to everyone — again making the form available later than usual.

After testing stages that began Oct. 1, the department fully debuted the 2025-26 form in late November — 10 days ahead of its Dec. 1 official launch.

A spokesperson for the department said it is “committed to enforcing all laws duly passed by Congress” when asked about Biden signing the FAFSA bill into law.

Meanwhile, the department said Thursday it had received over 1.5 million 2025-26 FAFSA submissions and has delivered more than 7 million student records to states and schools.

U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said that even with these developments, the department’s work “is not done.”

“We will continue to fix bugs and improve the user experience to make it easier for students and families to get the financial aid they need,” Kvaal said on a call with reporters Thursday regarding updates on the 2025-26 form.

FAFSA deadline bill breezed through Congress

The bill was met with sweeping bipartisan support and swiftly passed both the House and Senate in November. Indiana GOP Rep. Erin Houchin, a member of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, introduced the legislation in July.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, put forth the Senate version of the bill. The Louisiana Republican is in line to chair the panel next year.

Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House education panel, celebrated the bill becoming law on Wednesday.

“As college costs continue to rise, federal financial aid, including Pell Grants, is essential to making higher education more affordable and accessible,” the Virginia Democrat said in a statement.

Scott said that by standardizing the deadline, the measure “gives students and families more time to complete their applications and secure the financial support they need to attend college without unnecessary delays.”

The 2024-25 application got a makeover after Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act in late 2020 but was met with several issues that prompted processing delays and gaps in submissions.

The department’s staff worked to fix these errors and close the gap in submissions from the previous processing cycle, and officials said they reflected on how to make improvements for the 2025-26 form and beyond. 

Lincoln Hills, a detention facility the state had ordered closed by 2021. (Photo courtesy of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections)

When Randy Forsterling went to the Lincoln Hills juvenile prison at 16, he learned skills he still uses today, he told the Examiner. 

“I’m a machine operator,” Forsterling said. “I die cast, I make transmission casings and engine blocks for one of the largest corporations in the world. A lot of the metallurgy that I learned when I was in the foundry in Lincoln Hills, I use it now — 25 years later.” 

While Forsterling doesn’t believe Lincoln Hills still has a foundry, a Wisconsin initiative is aiming to better prepare incarcerated youth with disabilities for the workforce. 

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction released a statement about a collaboration with the Departments of Corrections and Workforce Development that is “the first of its kind in Wisconsin.” 

“By providing these young individuals with the guidance, education and opportunities they need, we empower them to break the cycle and contribute positively to society,” State Superintendent Jill Underly said in the statement. “Supporting these kids is not only a step toward healing, it is an investment in their future and will save future taxpayer expenses.” 

The U.S. Department of Education awarded the DPI a 5-year, $10 million grant. The program aims to help youth with disabilities transition from correctional facilities into their communities, according to a DPI statement released in September. Funds will also be used for work rehabilitation training and for dyslexia screening for all youth during intake at state correctional facilities.

The project provides three different levels of support, with some youth falling into more than one level. 

The program intends to support all justice-involved youth with disabilities and the adults who care about them, according to an abstract on the federal Rehabilitation Services Administration’s website. They will receive support through social media campaigns and an app-based reentry toolkit. This is the broadest level of support, for 8,000 participants, the abstract says. 

The second level will support a “targeted group” of students made up of Wisconsin youth under 18 in state correctional facilities. This level involves dyslexia screening and “related intervention services” and is for 1,500 participants. 

The smallest group will receive the highest level of care, or intensive supports, the abstract says. These are students “most marginalized at the intersection of disability and justice and, often, race.” They will receive care under a model that is “trauma-informed, community-based” and facilitated by mentors. This level is for 250 participants, who will begin receiving care while incarcerated. 

Young people have a higher risk of returning to incarceration in Wisconsin 

The Department of Public Instruction’s statement compared youth to older age groups for a three-year period after release, citing an August 2021 DOC report. The report found that for a 2016 cohort, 20-24 year-olds were reincarcerated about twice as often as people aged 45 or older. 

According to the DOC’s website, of 45 people aged 19 and younger released in 2020, 33 were reincarcerated in Wisconsin within three years after release due to a new sentence or a revocation. This data is based only on readmissions to DOC prisons, so it wouldn’t include reincarceration in another state. 

Forsterling said he committed crimes when he was 20 and went into adult prison at 21; he was released to extended supervision last year. He hopes the program will take the experiences of formerly incarcerated people and staff into account. 

Good job training is important for getting a good job, Forsterling said, which helps people avoid a desperate situation that may lead to a return to crime. 

“And that’s where mentors come in very handy,” he said. 

Forsterling said he received helpful mentoring at Lincoln Hills. He mentors and supports several friends who are still incarcerated. 

Cost to incarcerate per child rises as enrollment falls 

The cost of incarceration at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake has “ballooned” to nearly $463,000 per child per year, as enrollment has “plummeted,” Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service reported last week. Fewer youth means fixed infrastructure and staffing costs are spread across fewer individuals. 

A new Department of Corrections budget request would nearly double that amount, they reported. That would raise the cost to 58 times what taxpayers spend on the average K-12 public school student. 

Wisconsin’s Division of Juvenile Corrections had a population of 81 people as of a monthly report for September, including 40 at Lincoln Hills and 14 at Copper Lake. The campus was designed for more than 500 youth, the news organizations reported. 

The juvenile prisons, which have been troubled for many years and are slated for closure, received renewed scrutiny after youth counselor Corey Proulx died from injuries received in an assault in late June. Lawmakers on the 2023 Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety heard testimony about safety concerns at a hearing in August. 

The DOC is under a court-ordered consent decree mandating changes at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake after a 2018 lawsuit challenged practices such as the use of pepper spray and punitive solitary confinement. 

The DPI received the grant to assist minors with disabilities as part of the U.S. Department of Education’s Disability Innovation Fund program. The program seeks to ensure people with disabilities receive “in-demand, good-paying jobs.” Out of over 800 organizations, Wisconsin was one of 27 projects to receive the grant.

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The U.S. Education Department urged schools and districts on Tuesday to set policies governing smartphone use in schools. (Photo by SDI Productions via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Education Department called on every state, school and district on Tuesday to adopt policies on cellphone use in schools.

The department asks schools to have well-thought-out policies on the matter, but does not dictate exactly what those policies should be. An accompanying resource for schools notes the risk social media can pose to students’ mental health.

“In this digital age, every elementary, middle, and high school should have a clear, consistent, and research-informed policy to guide the use of phones and personal devices in school,” U.S Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a written statement.

“The evidence makes clear: there is no one-size-fits-all policy,” Cardona added, noting that “different school communities have different needs, and the nuances of this issue demand that local voices — parents, educators, and students — inform local decisions around the use of personal devices in school.”

The department acknowledged the role cellphones can play in keeping parents connected to their kids, especially in emergency situations, while also highlighting the increasing evidence on the harms social media can have on youth mental health, such as sleep deprivation and depression.

Increasing state policies

An increasing number of states and school districts have enacted policies either prohibiting or restricting students from using their cellphones in the classrooms.

Across the country, schools and districts continue to grapple with how to deal with kids’ cellphone use, and more than half of all states have sought to ban or restrict cellphone use in classrooms.

As of early November, at least eight states have passed statewide policies that either limit or prohibit cellphone use in the classrooms, according to KFF.

That includes California, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, South Carolina and Virginia. A Minnesota law forces schools to adopt a policy on cellphone use by March 2025.

A handful of other states’ education departments have issued policy recommendations or pilot programs, while lawmakers in several more have introduced statewide legislation regarding cellphone use.

The guidance from the U.S. Education Department coincides with the release of a resource for education officials and local communities on adopting cellphone use policies.

In the playbook, Cardona points to U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy’s public warning in 2023 on social media’s effects on youth mental health.

Murthy warns: “More research is needed to fully understand the impact of social media; however, the current body of evidence indicates that while social media may have benefits for some children and adolescents, there are ample indicators that social media can also have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.” 

The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education will be far easier said than done.

As Trump seeks to redefine U.S. education policy, the complex logistics, bipartisan congressional approval and redirection of federal programs required make dismantling the department a challenging — not impossible — feat.

It’s an effort that experts say is unlikely to gain traction in Congress and, if enacted, would create roadblocks for how Trump seeks to implement the rest of his wide-ranging education agenda.

“I struggle to wrap my mind around how you get such a bill through Congress that sort of defunds the agency or eliminates the agency,” Derek Black, an education law and policy expert and law professor at the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law, told States Newsroom.

“What you can see more easily is that maybe you give the agency less money, maybe you shrink its footprint, maybe we’ve got an (Office for Civil Rights) that still enforces all these laws, but instead of however many employees they have now, they have fewer employees,” Black, who directs the school’s Constitutional Law Center, added.

What does the department do?

Education is decentralized in the United States, and the federal Education Department has no say in the curriculum of public schools. Much of the funding and oversight of schools occurs at the state and local levels.

Still, the department has leverage through funding a variety of programs, such as for low-income school districts and special education, as well as administering federal student aid.

Axing the department would require those programs be unwound or assigned to other federal agencies to administer, according to Rachel Perera, a fellow in Governance Studies in the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Perera, who studies inequality in K-12 education, expressed concern over whether other departments would get additional resources and staffing to take on significantly more portfolios of work if current Education Department programs were transferred to them.

Sen. Mike Rounds introduced a bill last week that seeks to abolish the department and transfer existing programs to other federal agencies.

In a statement, the South Dakota Republican said “the federal Department of Education has never educated a single student, and it’s long past time to end this bureaucratic Department that causes more harm than good.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 proposed a detailed plan on how the department could be dismantled through the reorganization of existing programs to other agencies and the elimination of the programs the project deems “ineffective or duplicative.”

Though Trump has repeatedly disavowed the conservative blueprint, some former members of his administration helped write it.

The agenda also calls for restoring state and local control over education funding, and notes that “as Washington begins to downsize its intervention in education, existing funding should be sent to states as grants over which they have full control, enabling states to put federal funding toward any lawful education purpose under state law.”

Title I, one of the major funding programs the department administers, provides billions of dollars to school districts with high percentages of students who come from low-income families.

Black pointed to an entire “regulatory regime” that’s built around these funds.

“That regime can’t just disappear unless Title I money also disappears, which could happen, but if you think about Title I money — our rural states, our red states — depend on that money just as much, if not more, than the other states,” he said. “The idea that we would take that money away from those schools — I don’t think there’s any actual political appetite for that.”

‘Inherent logical inconsistencies’

Trump recently tapped Linda McMahon — a co-chair of his transition team, Small Business Administration head during his first term and former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO — as his nominee for Education secretary.

If confirmed, she will play a crucial role in carrying out his education plans, which include promoting universal school choice and parental rights, moving education “back to the states” and ending “wokeness” in education.

Trump is threatening to cut federal funding for schools that teach “critical race theory,” “gender ideology” or “other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children,” according to his plan.

On the flip side, he wants to boost funding for states and school districts that adhere to certain policy directives.

That list includes districts that: adopt a “Parental Bill of Rights that includes complete curriculum transparency, and a form of universal school choice;” get rid of “teacher tenure” for grades K-12 and adopt “merit pay;” have parents hold the direct elections of school principals; and drastically reduce the number of school administrators.

But basing funding decisions on district-level policy choices would require the kind of federal involvement in education that Trump is pushing against.

Perera described seeing “inherent logical inconsistencies” in Trump’s education plan.

While he is talking about dismantling the department and sending education “back to the states,” he’s “also talking about leveraging the powers of the department to punish school districts for ‘political indoctrination,’” she said.

“He can’t do that if you are unwinding the federal role in K-12 schools,” she said.

Then-U.S. Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon speaks at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday he will nominate McMahon to be his Education secretary. (Photo by Gage Skidmore | CC BY-SA 2.0)

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats largely reserved judgment Wednesday on President-elect Donald Trump’s pick of Linda McMahon as his nominee for Education secretary, even as they raised concerns about Trump’s plans to eliminate the department.

In interviews Wednesday, Democrats in the U.S. Senate mostly did not raise the sorts of objections to McMahon — the co-chair of Trump’s transition team, Small Business Administration head during Trump’s first term and former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment — that they did for other Cabinet selections.

Sen. Tim Kaine, who sits on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, dubbed Trump’s pick “troubling in some sense.”

But the Virginia Democrat complimented an op-ed McMahon wrote for The Hill that expressed support for expanding Pell Grant eligibility to include short-term workforce education programs.

“That’s something that I’ve been long pushing, and so that’s something at a nomination hearing that I’m definitely going to talk to her about,” Kaine told States Newsroom.

Fellow HELP Committee Democrats Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico and Tina Smith of Minnesota were noncommittal about their votes on McMahon’s confirmation.

“I don’t know that much about her, but I’ll be interested to hear what she says,” Hickenlooper said.

Baldwin said she would provide the Senate’s advice and consent role on the nominee “when that time comes.”

Luján compared McMahon to Trump’s other Cabinet picks.

“It’s similar to his other picks as well, which are concerning many of my Republican colleagues, who are going to be in the majority.”

Smith said she “can’t really speak to that … other than to say that his job is to put forth the nominees that he wants to do this job.”

“And my job is to thoroughly vet them to make sure that they have the qualifications and that they’re fully prepared and ready to enforce the laws of the country,” she added.

Agenda sparks concern

If confirmed, McMahon would play a key role in the education agenda Trump has promoted, including eliminating the department entirely.

Trump’s pledge to get rid of the department is unlikely to find enough support in Congress.

Kaine said Trump “will not get the votes to do that — even among Republicans.”

And the process of abolishing the 45-year-old agency could create a series of logistical and legal complexities for the billions of dollars in funding the department provides, particularly for low-income K-12 schools, special education and federal student aid.

But the policy agenda has raised more concerns with Democrats than McMahon’s nomination.

Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said that with her not having a long history working in education, he will wait to pass judgment on McMahon’s nomination until she’s been fully vetted by the Senate. 

“However, I am staunchly opposed to President-elect Trump’s education agenda which seeks to abolish the Department of Education, eliminate funding for low-income and rural K-12 schools, scrap the expansion of school meals, and make it more difficult for student borrowers to repay their loans,” the Virginia Democrat said.

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education, said in a statement to States Newsroom that she wrestles “with how (McMahon) will lead the Department of Education when Donald Trump plans to eliminate it.”

“Schools across the country, including those in rural communities, rely on federal funding to help them meet the needs of their students, especially low-income students and students with disabilities,” the Oregon Democrat said.

Alex Floyd, the Democratic National Committee’s rapid response director, said Trump “wants to defund the Department of Education and send our tax dollars to his ultra-rich billionaire backers — like Linda McMahon,” in a Wednesday statement.

“McMahon was already a disaster at the Small Business Administration, so it’s no wonder Trump picked her to lead a department he is hellbent on destroying,” Floyd said.

Report: McMahon lied about education background

Lawmakers raised few objections about McMahon’s relatively slim experience in education policy, even after a Washington Post report Wednesday that McMahon claimed on a questionnaire for a seat on the state’s education board she had a bachelor’s in education that she did not have.

McMahon was on the Connecticut Board of Education for just over a year and a member of the Board of Trustees at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut.

She is also chair of the board of the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank. In his announcement, Trump said that while serving as chair of the board, McMahon has been a “fierce advocate for Parents’ Rights, working hard at both AFPI and America First Works (AFW) to achieve Universal School Choice in 12 States, giving children the opportunity to receive an excellent Education, regardless of zip code or income.”

GOP response

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans including the House education panel’s chairwoman, Virginia Foxx, praised Trump’s decision.

The North Carolina Republican said in a Wednesday press release McMahon is “a fighter who will work tirelessly in service of the students — not the so-called elite institutions, or the teachers unions or the federal bureaucracy.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy, ranking Republican of the Senate HELP committee, said in a statement that McMahon’s experience running the SBA “can obviously help in running another agency.” The Louisiana Republican said he looks forward to meeting with her.

North Carolina GOP Sen. Ted Budd, who also sits on the HELP panel, told States Newsroom that McMahon is “highly qualified, and I look forward to the process.” 

President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday he would tap Linda McMahon as Education secretary in his second administration. In this photo, McMahon, at the time the head of the Small Business Administration, speaks during a rally with GOP lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol Nov. 28, 2017 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday night he plans to nominate Linda McMahon, the co-chair of his transition team, to lead the Education Department in his second administration.

“We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort,” Trump said in a statement, referring to his pledge during this campaign to abolish the Department of Education.

McMahon, a decades-long executive with World Wrestling Entertainment and the head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first presidency, has served on the Connecticut Board of Education. The statement said she has also served as a member of the Board of Trustees at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, for two stints totaling over 16 years.

She twice ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut and has been a major fundraiser for Republicans, including Trump.

McMahon led the SBA from 2017 to 2019 and took a position with a Trump political action committee ahead of his 2020 reelection bid. She later became chair of the board of the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank.

McMahon and her husband, Vince McMahon, the founder and longtime leader of WWE, grew the professional wrestling company into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. A recent lawsuit also alleges that WWE and Vince McMahon failed to stop the sexual abuse of underage “Ring Boys,” Axios recently reported. Linda McMahon is a co-defendant in the suit.

Trump’s Education secretary in his first term was Betsy DeVos, another wealthy donor. DeVos resigned from the administration on Jan. 7, 2021, the day after a pro-Trump mob attacked the U.S. Capitol.

In a statement, National Education Association President Becky Pringle said McMahon is unqualified for the post.

“During his first term, Donald Trump appointed Betsy DeVos to undermine and ultimately privatize public schools through vouchers,” Pringle said. “Now, he and Linda McMahon are back at it with their extreme Project 2025 proposal to eliminate the Department of Education, steal resources for our most vulnerable students, increase class sizes, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle class families, take away special education services for disabled students, and put student civil rights protections at risk. ”

A sign reminding people to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid — better known as FAFSA — appears on a bus near Union Station in Washington, D.C. (Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — A measure to ensure the federal student aid form opens up annually by Oct. 1 passed the U.S. House Friday with overwhelming bipartisan support.

The effort — which passed 381-1 — came after the U.S. Department of Education faced major backlash over the botched rollout of the 2024-25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren was the only lawmaker to vote against the bill. 

Though the form got a makeover after Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act in late 2020, users faced multiple glitches and technical errors throughout the form’s soft launch in December and past its full debut in January, prompting processing delays and gaps in submissions.

The department has worked to correct these glitches and close that gap while also fixing major issues that prevented parents without Social Security numbers from completing the form.

Adding another complication, the department said in August it would use a phased rollout of the 2025-26 form in an attempt to address any errors that might arise before it opens up to everyone — making the application fully available two months later than usual.

“Since Oct. 1, the Department has conducted three successful beta tests of the 2025–26 FAFSA form to ensure it is ready for all students and families on or before Dec. 1,” U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said in a statement shared Monday with States Newsroom, while noting that the department already began its fourth testing stage this past week.

“We have a fully functioning site and a form working end-to-end that has been successfully submitted by more than 10,000 students, with dozens of schools all over the country receiving the data for student aid packages,” he said.

The department is on track to launch the 2026-27 FAFSA on Oct. 1, 2025, with “a fully functioning system,” according to Kvaal. 

Codified deadline

Though the department legally has until Jan. 1 to roll out the form, it typically launches Oct. 1.

U.S. Rep. Erin Houchin, an Indiana Republican and member of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, in July introduced the bill to standardize that deadline.

“I’m especially frustrated considering the Department of Education has had three years to simplify the FAFSA as Congress has dictated,” Houchin said during floor debate Friday.

She also referenced recent findings from the Government Accountability Office, including that nearly three-quarters of all calls to the call center went unanswered in the first five months of the 2024-25 rollout.

“We want this program to work — we want to make sure that children and families that want to send their kids to college have the availability to do that and that the FAFSA is available and workable,” she added.

U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House education panel, echoed his support during the floor debate, saying the measure will “help ensure that even more students have the information they need in a timelier manner to access Pell Grants and other vital student aid.”

Scott initially opposed the effort when the committee took it up in July out of concerns that the implementation deadline could force the department to roll out an incomplete form on Oct. 1 of this year.

“However, because we’re now considering the bill after Oct. 1, the deadline will apply next year, 2025, and that gives the department ample time to make improvements and fix any lingering issues,” the Virginia Democrat said.

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, introduced a companion bill in July.

The bill was referred to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, where Cassidy serves as ranking member. After Republicans won a Senate majority in the Nov. 5 elections, Cassidy is in line to chair the panel next year. 

Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, speaks to attendees during a Sept. 25, 2024, campaign rally in Mint Hill, North Carolina. Trump’s victory in Tuesday’s election could set the stage for wide-ranging changes to education policy. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s return to the presidency could set the stage for sweeping changes in U.S. education policy.

Throughout his campaign, Trump has vowed to “save American education,” with a focus on parental rights and universal school choice — offering a sharp contrast to the Biden administration’s education record.

With Trump’s White House victory cemented, here’s a look at where he stands on education:

Getting rid of U.S. Education Department

Perhaps Trump’s most far-reaching plan for education includes his vow to close down the U.S. Department of Education.

The department — just 45 years old — is not in charge of setting school curriculum, as education is decentralized in the United States. The agency’s mission is to “promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.”

Trump has repeatedly called for moving education “back to the states,” though the responsibility of education already mainly falls on states and local governments, which allocate much of the funding for K-12 schools.

Funding boosts

Trump has proposed funding boosts for states and school districts that comply with his vision for education, including adopting a “Parental Bill of Rights that includes complete curriculum transparency, and a form of universal school choice,” according to his plan.

He also wants to give funding preferences to schools who get rid of “teacher tenure” for grades K-12 and adopt “merit pay.”

He could also ramp up funding for schools that have parents hold the direct elections of principals as well as for schools that significantly reduce the number of their administrators.

Trump’s plan also includes the creation of a credentialing body to certify teachers “who embrace patriotic values, and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children, but to educate them.”

He is also threatening to cut federal funding for schools that teach “critical race theory” or “gender ideology” and vowed to roll back updated Title IX regulations under the Biden administration on his first day back in office.

The updated regulations, which the Biden administration released earlier this year, extend federal protections for LGBTQ+ students.

The final rule rolls back changes to Title IX made under Trump’s previous administration and then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

A slew of GOP-led states have challenged the measure, leading to several legal battles and a policy patchwork throughout the country.

Student debt and higher education

Trump has criticized the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness efforts,  describing them as “not even legal,” and could let go of any mass student loan forgiveness efforts.

Trump could repeal the administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan, which is currently on hold while tied up in a legal challenge. The sweeping initiative seeks to provide lower monthly loan payments for borrowers and lessen the time it takes to pay off their debt.

Meanwhile, the 2024 GOP platform called for making colleges and universities “sane and affordable,” noting that Republicans will “fire Radical Left accreditors, drive down Tuition costs, restore Due Process protections, and pursue Civil Rights cases against Schools that discriminate.”

The platform also calls for reducing the cost of higher education through the creation of “additional, drastically more affordable alternatives to a traditional four-year College degree.”

Trump has also proposed the “American Academy,” a free, online university that he says would be endowed through the “billions and billions of dollars that we will collect by taxing, fining, and suing excessively large private university endowments.”

Project 2025

Apart from the GOP platform and Trump’s proposals, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 proposes a sweeping conservative agenda that, if implemented, could have major implications for the future of education.

Though Trump has disavowed the conservative think tank’s blueprint, some former members of his previous administration helped craft the agenda.

Some of the education policy proposals outlined in the extensive document include eliminating the U.S. Education Department and Head Start, ending time-based and occupation-based student loan forgiveness and restoring the Title IX regulations made under DeVos.

The proposal also states that “the federal government should confine its involvement in education policy to that of a statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states.”

Major teachers unions react to Trump win

“The voters have spoken. While we hoped and fought for a different outcome, we respect both their will and the peaceful transfer of power,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the country, said in a Wednesday statement.

“At this moment, the country is more divided than ever, and our democracy is in jeopardy. Last night, we saw fear and anger win,” Weingarten said.

Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the country’s largest labor union, said in a statement Wednesday that “this is not the outcome we campaigned for, nor the future we wanted for our students and families, but it is the road through history we now must travel.” 

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have widely divergent views on education. In this photo, students are shown in a classroom. (Klaus Vedfelt | Getty Images)

This is one in a series of States Newsroom reports on the major policy issues in the presidential race.

As former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris sprint to the November finish line, one sprawling policy area has largely fallen out of the spotlight — education.

Though the respective GOP and Democratic presidential candidates have spent comparatively more time campaigning on issues such as immigration, foreign policy and the economy, their ideas surrounding K-12 and higher education vastly differ.

Trump’s education platform vows to “save American education,” with a focus on parental rights, universal school choice and a fight for “patriotic education” in schools.

“By increasing access to school choice, empowering parents to have a voice in their child’s education, and supporting good teachers, President Trump will improve academic excellence for all students,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary, said in a statement to States Newsroom.

Trump “believes students should be taught reading, writing, and math in the classroom — not gender, sex and race like the Biden Administration is pushing on our public school system,” Leavitt added.

Meanwhile, the Harris campaign has largely focused on the education investments brought by the Biden-Harris administration and building on those efforts if she is elected.

“Over the past four years, the Administration has made unprecedented investments in education, including the single-largest investment in K-12 education in history, which Vice President Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to pass,” Mia Ehrenberg, a campaign spokesperson, told States Newsroom.

Ehrenberg said that while Harris and her running mate, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, “will build on those investments and continue fighting until every student has the support and the resources they need to thrive, Republicans led by Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda want to cut billions from local K-12 schools and eliminate the Department of Education, undermining America’s students and schools.”

Harris has repeatedly knocked the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — a sweeping conservative agenda that includes education policy proposals like eliminating Head Start, ending time-based and occupation-based student loan forgiveness and barring teachers from using a student’s preferred pronouns different from their “biological sex” without written permission from a parent or guardian.

Trump has fiercely disavowed Project 2025, although some former members of his administration crafted the blueprint.

Closing the U.S. Department of Education

Trump has called for shutting down the U.S. Department of Education and said he wants to “move education back to the states.” The department is not the main funding source for K-12 schools, as state and local governments allocate much of those dollars.

In contrast, Harris said at the Democratic National Convention in August that “we are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our public schools.”

Living wage for school staff; parental bill of rights

Trump’s education plan calls for creating a “new credentialing body to certify teachers who embrace patriotic values, and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children, but to educate them.”

He also wants to implement funding boosts for schools that “abolish teacher tenure” for grades K-12 and adopt “merit pay,” establish the direct election of school principals by parents and “drastically cut” the number of school administrators.

In contrast, the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform calls for recruiting “more new teachers, paraprofessionals and school related personnel, and education support professionals, with the option for some to even start training in high school.”

The platform also aims to help “school-support staff to advance in their own careers with a living wage” and improve working conditions for teachers.

Trump also wants to give funding boosts to schools that adopt a “Parental Bill of Rights that includes complete curriculum transparency, and a form of universal school choice.”

He’s threatening to cut federal funding for schools that teach the primarily collegiate academic subject known as “critical race theory,” gender ideology or “other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”

The Democrats’ platform opposes “the use of private-school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships, and other schemes that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from public education,” adding that “public tax dollars should never be used to discriminate.”

Title IX

Earlier this year, the Biden-Harris administration released a final rule for Title IX extending federal protections for LGBTQ+ students.

The updated regulations took effect Aug. 1, but a slew of GOP-led states challenged the measure. The legal battles have created a policy patchwork and weakened the administration’s vision for the final rule.

The updated regulations roll back Title IX changes made under the Trump administration and then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Trump vowed to terminate the updated regulations on his first day back in office if reelected.

Student debt and higher education 

Harris has repeatedly touted the administration’s record on student loan forgiveness, including nearly $170 billion in student debt relief for almost 5 million borrowers.

The administration’s most recent student loan repayment initiative came to a grinding halt in August after the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan.

Although little is mentioned about education in Harris’ extensive economic plan, the proposal makes clear that the veep will “continue working to end the unreasonable burden of student loan debt and fight to make higher education more affordable, so that college can be a ticket to the middle class.”

She also plans to cut four-year degree requirements for half a million federal jobs.

Trump — who dubbed the Biden-Harris administration’s student loan forgiveness efforts as “not even legal” — sought to repeal the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program during his administration.

His education platform also calls for endowing the “American Academy,” a free, online university.

Trump said he will endow the new institution through the “billions and billions of dollars that we will collect by taxing, fining, and suing excessively large private university endowments.”

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