Training hardly got here up in final month’s Trump-Harris presidential debate, but it surely may very well be a central focus at Tuesday’s undercard occasion.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) is the primary former educator in many years to make a significant get together ticket, and he has foregrounded that have on the marketing campaign path.
However Walz’s document on colleges, each as a instructor and as a governor, has additionally been a number one level of assault for Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who will not be pulling punches on the first and solely vice presidential debate.
“It’s more likely to come up in the VP debate then it would be in even another presidential debate, with one of the reasons for that being that it’s so central — education is so central to Walz’s identity as a former teacher,” stated Jon Valant, director of the Brown Heart on Training Coverage on the Brookings Institute.
“And then the other part of it being that a lot of what we’ve heard from JD Vance is so related to parents, and parents of school-aged children, that I think there are kind of more invitations to focus on education in this debate than there are for the presidential debate,” Valant added. “I would be a little surprised if we don’t get any questions about either education or at least parenting.”
Walz has a really private relationship with schooling, educating in China for a 12 months earlier than coming again to the U.S. to show social research in Minnesota. He was additionally a soccer coach at Alliance Excessive Faculty, the place he met his spouse, who can also be a instructor.
He has not shied away from citing that background on the marketing campaign path and has acquired the enthusiastic endorsements of main academics’ unions.
In the course of the debate, “it is essential for him to inform his story,” stated Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic political strategist.
“After which telling his story, the instructor side of who he’s will come out and the way he has fought for accessible and inexpensive schooling for everybody,” Seawright stated.
However Walz’s document has additionally been an space the place Republicans have gone on the assault, nicknaming him “Tampon Tim” after he signed a invoice increasing entry to menstrual merchandise, together with in boys’ bogs.
“I suspect education policy won’t be a focal point of the debate beyond examples used as part of larger critiques of the candidates. For example, conservatives have criticized Walz’s education record while governor by attacking him for a law he passed requiring menstrual products in public schools. This attack is part of the GOP’s larger culture war against the left,” stated Ryan Dawkins, assistant professor within the political science division at Carleton School.
“Similarly, Walz might try to connect Vance to Project 2025 and its policy goal of dissolving the entire Department of Education,” Dawkins added.
Republicans have rallied round “parents rights” because the central tenet of their schooling platform, and Vance has leaned into the problem, although he has drawn warmth prior to now for his aggressive rhetoric.
In 2021, he decried what he referred to as an “antifamily” agenda promoted by Democrats and stated the motion was led by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
Vance has additionally instantly criticized Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Academics, in 2022 saying she “doesn’t have a single child.” Weingarten is a mom by marriage.
“If she wants to brainwash and destroy the mind of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone,” Vance stated.
Observers have an interest to see how Vance tries to go after Walz with out alienating different educators within the course of.
“I think the teacher side of this is very interesting … It’s so central to who Walz is. He was a teacher. He presents as a teacher in a lot of ways. And I’m curious to see how Vance handles that,” Valant stated.
“If Vance comes out and his rhetoric feels very anti-teacher, I think that could end up being part of the story coming out of the debate. Or if he’s going to focus on teachers’ unions. I’m just very curious.” he added.
Conservatives are in search of Vance to give attention to Walz’s document as governor of Minnesota with out getting slowed down in private broadsides.
“Minnesota is home to what scholars have said are the most radical state standards in the country. As governor, Walz signed into law standards that teach students they are part of ‘racialized hierarchies’ and to ‘be aware of [their] own bias, power, and privilege.’ The standards instruct students on intersectionality and ‘settler-colonialism,’ among other concepts and buzzwords rooted in toxic identity politics,” stated Ryan Walker, the chief vice chairman for Heritage Motion for America.
“Walz should be pressed on these radical standards and asked whether this is the vision of America that should be taught to children in public schools,” Walker added.
