Dive Brief:
- It seems less likely that K-12 education policy will play a significant role in the 2016 presidential campaign due to the fact that the recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act is set to scale back federal influence in education and has yet to be implemented.
- Out of the 15 candidates currently angling for a presidential nomination, none have firsthand experience with the creation and passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, Education Week reports.
- Of the candidates, Jeb Bush has the most "extensive" record on K-12 education, notable largely for his school choice advocacy in Florida and an emphasis on efforts to promote early literacy.
Dive Insight:
Out of the candidates, the only one to ruffle feathers among education experts thus far has been Hillary Clinton, who reportedly said she "wouldn't keep any school open that wasn't doing a better-than-average job" during a campaign stop in Iowa. Otherwise, education has rarely come up. Education Week points out that during all of the debates, only one question has been asked related to ed policy.
That's likely to continue. With ESSA newly passed, there's a lot that needs to shake out across the country before any results are clear. And with states stepping up to evaluate and create new policies rather than serving mandates established by Washington, there may be even fewer ed-related issues for today's aspiring candidates to pay lip service to.
In his State of the Union address earlier this week, President Barack Obama mentioned the word "education" just four times, promoting the study of STEM fields by U.S. students and the current national high school gradation rate, reported as 82%.
Obama said that in the coming years, the U.S. should continue to progress “by providing Pre-K for all, offering every student the hands-on computer science and math classes that make them job-ready on day one, and we should recruit and support more great teachers for our kids.”
Higher education, however, will likely continue coming up as the campaign progresses. Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders, for example, wants to make college tuition-free — a dramatic proposal that screams for explanation and an operational plan.
