The Republican Party is expanding its ownership over the issue of education, making key policy proposals such as expanding parental rights, implementing patriotic education, and removing race and gender ideologies core components of its 2024 platform.
The plan, which was approved by the platform committee on Monday, is expected to receive passage during next week’s Republican National Convention, which begins Jul. 15. The inclusion of education as a core issue on the platform capitalizes on inroads Republicans have made since the last platform was passed, making the historically Democratic issue a central one for Republicans.
While it is not a binding document for Republican candidates to follow, former President Donald Trump had a heavy hand in crafting the 10 primary areas of interest, one of which is K-12 education, which marks a significant difference from prior platforms that focused much less on the issue, Terry Schilling, president of American Principles Project, told the Washington Examiner.
“It’s amazing that fixing the education system is one 10% of President Trump’s entire agenda. That’s a big deal,” Schilling, who was in Milwaukee during the platform deliberations to advocate for pro-family and pro-life policies, said. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a president that’s put education as that much of a priority. Usually Republicans would just give, ‘Oh, I support school choice,’ and that was it. This is getting into cleaning up the schools, and how we’re going to enact merit pay instead of just giving the teachers unions whatever they want.”
In 2020, the Republican Party effectively readopted the 2016 platform, which approached education in more vague terms but did support school choice, tax credits, and a constitutional amendment to protect the rights of parents as the primary driver of their children’s educations. Schilling said this year’s platform is “obviously better” than 2016, in part because it is “more relevant and realistic” but also because it serves more as a policy agenda than a statement of principles, focusing on the actual authority of what the president can do, even with a potentially divided Congress.
The platform was brought up to date with some of the education issues that have become more prominent and contentious since the last time the party crafted a platform, such as critical race theory and gender ideology in schools. Republicans this year are promising to strip federal funding from schools that partake in “inappropriate political indoctrination of our children.”
Republicans are also doubling down on promoting a patriotic education, particularly in civics. The platform does not include an effort to nationalize a civic education but says it will “support” schools that teach American founding principles and the advancements of Western civilization. The party also plans to reinstate the 1776 Commission, which was an advisory committee established during the Trump administration to support patriotic education goals. At the time of its creation, critical race theory proponent Nikole Hannah-Jones’s controversial 1619 Project was proliferating through public schools.
The platform promises to “restore parental rights,” support students’ rights to pray and read the Bible in school, and back universal school choice, expanding 529 Education Savings Accounts to cover homeschooling. That moves come after several states have enacted parental bills of rights, which include provisions to require schools to make curriculums readily available for parental review, as well as require schools to inform parents if their child starts claiming a gender identity that does not align with his or her biological sex.
“To see the importance of parental rights and a parent’s role in their child’s educational journey highlighted within the first sentence of the K-12 priorities is a breath of fresh air,” Alleigh Marré, executive director of American Parents Coalition, told the Washington Examiner. “Most parents share a basic, uncomplicated vision for the American education system — prepare kids to think critically, foster learning and growth, keep them safe, and drop activist curriculum.”
In a related issue, placed under a plank designed to “stop the Radical Left Democrats’ Weaponization of Government and its Assault on American Liberty,” Republicans also plan to reverse the Biden administration’s controversial overhaul of Title IX regulations, which redefined sex to include claimed transgender identity. The platform advocates keeping men from competing against women in sports, blocking taxpayer dollars from funding sex change surgeries, and stopping schools from facilitating gender transitions of children.
“The platform rightly prioritizes key concerns we hear from parents every day about K-12 schools–namely, schools’ attempt to curb parental rights, lower the bar for students, and open women’s and girls’ spaces to biological males,” Parents Defending Education political director Alex Nester told the Washington Examiner. “Frustratingly, these issues were not partisan just five or ten years ago. Most Americans believe that parental rights are fundamental. Most Americans believe we need to push kids to excel in school. Most Americans believe that women and girls deserve their own athletic teams, restrooms, and locker rooms. It’s sad that we’ve gotten to the point where these issues are considered ‘partisan.'”
Ending teacher tenure and instituting “merit pay” for teachers is another reform supported by the GOP platform, which is likely to fly in the face of concessions teachers’ unions have secured from governments across the country for decades. Merit pay ensures that teacher salaries and bonuses are at least partly determined by student performance, and ending tenure would make it easier to fire underperforming teachers.
Violence in schools, which has spiked since children returned to classrooms after the coronavirus pandemic, is also a priority for Republicans, who want to allow violent students to be suspended more quickly as well as “hardening schools to help keep violence away from places of learning.” Many schools have recently focused on relaxing disciplinary action against violent students, preferring “restorative justice.”
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The final portion of the education section of the platform calls to dissolve the Department of Education, a longtime goal of Republicans, and “return education to the states.”
“At its core, it is a return to the fundamentals of what makes America great — strengthening America’s families and protecting the next generation of American citizens,” Schilling said of the platform.
