Where Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, And Other 2020 Democratic Candidates Stand on Education

• As Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden is tied to the constellation of education policies that Obama encouraged. They include evaluating teachers in part through their students’ test scores, the expansion of charter schools, and common standards for what students should learn.
• In late May, Biden rolled out his education platform while speaking to the American Federation of Teachers, one of the nation’s largest teachers unions. The highlights of his plan: tripling Title I funding, implementing universal pre-kindergarten, and doubling the number of health professionals in schools. Read his full proposal here.
• Biden also said he doesn’t support any federal funding going to for-profit charter schools and wants to see charters do away with admissions tests. (Most can’t use them anyway.) His education platform doesn’t mention charters.
• This came up during his first debate appearance in June, when California Senator Kamala Harris asked Biden if he was wrong to oppose busing. “I did not oppose busing in America,” Biden said. “I opposed busing ordered by the Department of Education. That’s what I opposed.”
• Recently, he’s expressed interest in reinstating Obama-era desegregation guidelines that were repealed by the Trump administration in July 2018.
• At a town hall hosted by the National Education Association in July, Biden said the first thing he would do as president is to appoint a teacher as education secretary.
• His campaign was accused of plagiarism because Biden’s education platform lifted a sentence from the XQ Institute without attribution.
• Biden said he misspoke when he said, “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids,” while discussing access to Advanced Placement courses.
• In August, Biden said he supported two years of free community college and reduced tuition at public universities; in the past he said he supported four years of free college.

Cory Booker, New Jersey senator

• Booker has been a leader in the school choice movement, setting him apart from most other Democratic candidates. You can read our overview for details.
• Booker has promoted charter schools, test-based accountability for low-performing schools, and ratings for teachers linked to student performance.
• He also has supported private school vouchers, a policy few Democrats favor. He is currently a cosponsor of a bill to reauthorize the federally funded D.C voucher program.
• As mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Booker solicited and won a $100 million donation from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg that led to performance-based teacher pay, school closures, and more charters. Currently about one in three public school students in Newark attend a charter.
• At his presidential launch, Booker said he plans to run “the boldest pro-public school teacher campaign there is,” noting that his state’s teachers unions had previously endorsed him.
• Booker threw his support to public schools at a campaign event in Iowa in May. “I’m a guy who believes in public education and, in fact, I look at some of the charter laws that are written about this country and states like this and I find them really offensive,” he said.
• At the first round of Democratic debates, Booker said improving health care access would improve schools. “In communities like mine, low-income communities, this is an education issue because kids who do not have health care are not going to succeed in school,” he said.
• At an August forum, Booker criticized Michigan’s charter school law, saying it lacked accountability measures, and vowed to hire an education secretary who attended public school.
• Booker proposed a federally funded “baby bond” program that would put money in interest-bearing accounts for all children, with higher payments going to children from low-income families.
• In his environmental plan, Booker said he would remediate all schools with peeling or chipping lead-based paint.

Steve Bullock, governor of Montana

• As governor, one of Bullock’s signature agenda items has been getting state-funded preschool for Montana. Since 2015, he’s tried three times with no success to get a statewide program going
• He’s been able to freeze tuition at the state’s public colleges and universities and grow school breakfast programs. His administration also increased internet access at schools and nearly doubled the number of high school students in dual-enrollment programs.
• Bullock has expressed his opposition to charters that operate outside the direct control of school districts (as charter schools in most states do).

Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana

• Buttigieg joins the large crowd of Democratic candidates calling for higher teacher pay. His plan: steer federal funds to Title I schools.
• He also wants to make debt-free college a reality for some of the nation’s poorest students. “I just don’t believe it makes sense to ask working class families to subsidize even the children of billionaires. I think the children of the wealthiest Americans can pay at least a little bit of tuition,” he said during the first round of televised debates in June. (He has $130,000 in student loans of his own.)
• As for for-profit charters, he doesn’t think they should “be part of our vision for the future.” He also said, “I think the expansion of charter schools in general is something that we need to really draw back on until we’ve corrected what needs to be corrected in terms of underfunded public education.” On the same note, he said, voucher programs “come at the expense of quality public education.”
• In a policy plan focused on his ideas for black Americans, Buttigieg proposes “dramatically” increasing funding for Title I schools. He also says he’ll up the number of black teachers by requiring states to disclose the race of the educators they hire and new guidelines on the use of Title II funds to recruit these educators.
• An opponent of Florida’s guardian program, which gives districts the option to arm their staff, he said, “It’d be such an enormous, condemnation of our country if we were to become the only developed nation where this is necessary.”
• The mayor’s husband is a theater educator who until recently taught at a private Montessori school. Chasten Buttigieg tweeted disparagingly about a poll asking whether South Bend schools should switch to a four-day week, saying that what teachers actually want is a “living wage please.
• Buttigieg told a crowd in South Carolina that federal intervention would be necessary to tackle school segregation. He acknowledged it would be a difficult task because so much segregation occurs between school districts
• In an interview with Education Week, Buttigieg said he believed the federal government should play a bigger role in addressing resource inequities between schools and that he was working on a plan to curtail the growth of for-profit charter schools.
• In his mental health plan, Buttigieg said he’d require all schools to teach a “mental health first aid” class.

• As mayor of San Antonio, Castro expanded pre-K access, saying that having more children in high-quality early childhood programs would benefit the city over the long term. The program, financed through a sales tax, served just 8% of local 4-year-olds in 2018. As president, Castro wants to create a grant-funded, universal “Pre-K for USA” program.
• His “People First Education” platform also includes things like a $150 billion plan to grow technology use in schools, increasing access to dual-enrollment programs, and ending tuition at all public colleges.
• At the NEA forum in July, Castro said that in formulating his education plan he had reached out to the NEA and would continue to do so.
• His presidential platform includes implementing of a federal tax credit that could boost teacher pay by $10,000 per year.
• His policing plan says his administration would ensure schools receiving federal funding couldn’t use police officers as “discipline agents.” “Too often times they are enforcing it in a biased way, especially against young black men,” he said at an NAACP presidential forum in July. The plan also says schools would be required to provide employees with unconscious bias training.
• He also wants to remedy lead exposure in government buildings, including at public schools. If children develop lead poisoning, he plans to provide them with support services such as tutoring and nutritional help through funds from the Individuals with Disabilities Act. We reported on a study citing that measures such as this can improve learning gains while decreasing suspensions, absences, and crime rates.
• At the NEA forum, Castro said he would promote school integration through efforts to integrate housing and “voluntary busing.” Castro also spoke about his own experience attending public schools. “I know from first-hand experience the impact of growing up in segregated school districts,” he said. “Today we’re still grappling with so many of the same issues that we were grappling with 30, 40, 50 years ago.”
• Castro’s wife was a math teacher in public elementary schools for many years and now works as an education consultant.
• In August, Castro said he supports working with parents who end up in court because of their children’s truancy — not fining them — and pointed to a San Antonio program as a model.
• “It is a myth that charter schools are better than public schools. They’re not,” Castro said at the September debate. “I’m not categorically against charter schools,” he went on to say. “I would require more transparency and accountability from them than is required right now.”

Bill de Blasio, New York City mayor

• As mayor, he made universal pre-K available to 4-year-olds and expanded “community schools,” which offer a range of social services. De Blasio also launched a $773 million school turnaround plan for New York schools that was perceived to be ineffective and will not continue.
• He’s faced pressure to address the high levels of racial segregation in the city’s schools, but has favored solutions that emerge from neighborhoods and individual schools.
• In 2018, de Blasio laid out a plan to overhaul New York’s test-in high school admissions process in an attempt to increase their number of black and Hispanic students.
• De Blasio spoke out against charter schools at the NEA forum in July. “No one should be the Democratic nominee unless they’re willing to stand up to Wall Street and the rich people behind the charter school movement once and for all,” he said. (He’s had difficulty blocking charter school growth in New York.)
• At the NEA forum, he also proposed a constitutional amendment establishing the right to an adequate education.
• Here’s Chalkbeat’s broader look at de Blasio’s education record.

John Delaney, former U.S. representative from Maryland

Kamala Harris, California senator

Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota senator

• Klobuchar has proposed a $1 trillion infrastructure plan that would, in part, be used to repair schools.
• She wants to see teacher pay increases, free community college, and reduced interest rates for student loans, and expanded Pell grants.
• Her proposed “progress partnerships” would provide matching federal funds to states that increase teacher pay, update high school curricula to prepare students for the workforce, and repair school infrastructure in a way that “ensures equity.”
• At a town hall hosted by the American Federation of Teachers in May, Klobuchar said she’s against private school vouchers and for holding charter schools to “high standards.” She also said, “I don’t think you see me focusing on charter schools when you look back on my career.”
• In her first 100 days in office, Klobuchar says she would re-issue guidance that urged school districts to address racial disparities in school discipline that current Education Secretary Betsy DeVos repealed. Klobuchar also plans to restore guidance documents related to students with disabilities, bring back jobs at the Department of Education cut by the Trump administration, and “prevent the expansion of private school vouchers.”

Wayne Messam, mayor of Miramar, Florida

Beto O’Rourke, former U.S. representative from El Paso, Texas

• His education platform centers around pushing public schools to become “community schools” with the help of $50 billion for federal education programs.  Ryan suggests that schools should provide students with health care, housing assistance, and before- and after-school programs. The plan doesn’t say which existing programs would receive this funding.
• The presidential hopeful also says he’d work with Congress to pass a $100 billion school infrastructure bill.
• In Congress, Ryan has pushed for more accountability for charter schools and salad bars in schools.
• One of his key pieces of his platform as a congressman: increasing access to social-emotional learning programs. In a video on his campaign’s website, he’s seen meditating with a classroom full of students.

Bernie Sanders, Vermont senator

Tom Steyer, philanthropist, former hedge fund manager

• The billionaire gave $32 million to support a measure that closed tax loopholes for out-of-state corporations in 2012. According to his campaign website, the change has generated $1.7 billion for California schools.
• Steyer and his wife’s foundation has donated millions to schools and education-focused organizations, including the Oakland Schools Education Foundation. In 2009, the foundation gave $100,000 to Teach for America.

Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts senator

Marianne Williamson, author and activist