The outcome of the presidential and congressional elections on Nov. 5 could have huge implications for K-12 policy and funding at the federal level — and for companies working in the education marketplace.
As presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump stand on opposite ends of the political spectrum on most of the important school issues that have emerged on the campaign trail.
Reg Leichty is a co-founder of Foresight Law + Policy, an education law firm in Washington D.C., where he provides strategic advice, legal counsel, and lobbying assistance to a broad range of clients, including education agencies and institutions, nonprofit organizations, and companies. Earlier in his career, he served as telecommunications, technology, and privacy counsel for former United States Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Nelson of Florida, and as a senior legislative aide to former Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska.
And both chambers in Congress are up for grabs. In the U.S. House, the GOP controls 220 seats to Democrats’ 212 seats (with three vacancies), while in the Senate, Democrats have a slim majority.
A number of big ticket federal items — from funding for key K-12 programs such as Title I and Title II to the future of the U.S. Department of Education — could be determined by who is elected in November.
“Every election matters a lot for the education system,” said Reg Leichty, who advises K-12 groups on federal budget and policy as a founding partner at Foresight Law + Policy. “This one is particularly consequential at the presidential level, given some of the very divisive rhetoric about the public education system.”
The specter of cuts to federal funding for education programs — multibillion-dollar programs that school districts rely heavily on for essential services — looms based on the outcome of the election.
Many education companies count on school systems being able to tap into those funding streams in order to pay for products and services in curriculum, assessment, PD, ed tech, social-emotional learning, and many other areas.
The consequences from the election also extend beyond budgetary issues to the possibility that the federal government could become more involved in divisive political-culture debates that have roiled many school districts.
Despite the prevailing divisions, Leichty said he is somewhat optimistic that lawmakers will put aside political differences and work together on education-related issues, at least in some areas.
EdWeek Market Brief spoke with Leichty about what education companies should expect from a Harris or Trump administration and shifting majorities in Congress, the prospect of bipartisanship on education topics, and how this November’s election will shape other areas of government important to the education industry.
This story is one in a series that will look at the impact of the November elections on the education sector.
How do Harris and Trump differ on spending on big federal programs that are important to schools and education companies?
It’s safe to say that a Trump administration would likely significantly disinvest in public education — and we have a sense of what a Trump education budget looks like. For example, the recently passed House Republican budget for the department of ed, where we saw a massive cut to Title I, complete elimination of ESEA Title II, and flat funding for Title IV.
On the other hand, a Harris administration is likely to continue to be strongly committed to providing support for Title I for low-income communities, and in some of the important digital learning programs like Title IV that ensure all students have access to the connectivity and connected devices and other supports they need to learn.
Would you expect a Trump administration to enact major changes to the U.S. Department of Education?
Former President Trump himself has sort of plainly said that his focus in education will be on dismantling the department of ed. We know he has expressed a desire to fundamentally alter the federal role in K-12 education. I would expect, as they did during the Trump administration four years ago, a heavy emphasis on promoting access to private education, a focus on charters and other kinds of choice mechanisms. We’ve seen what their priorities are through the last administration and more recently out on the campaign trail.
And how do you expect a Harris administration would approach the department of education?
We would likely see Vice President Harris champion many of the same types of policies that the Biden administration has focused on the last four years. We would see a continued commitment by a Harris team to affordable college access and completion.
We saw at the Democratic Convention a focus and desire to emphasize ensuring that students have the employability skills they need to be successful. That includes potentially a focus on strengthening workforce programs, including the federal apprenticeship programs that focus on skills acquisition. And I do think, as we’ve heard on the campaign trail, there would be a general commitment to public education, and the kids that are served by the public school system.
Do you think Trump would use his bully pulpit as president to stoke K-12 culture wars over race and gender that have played out in states and districts?
I do think that President Trump’s rhetoric has gone all in on placing education at the center of the culture wars. If he were elected, it’s likely that he’ll continue to focus on the themes that divide rather than bring people together as communities to improve public education. [In 2020, then-President Trump signed an executive order that sought to ban the use of “divisive concepts” in federal contracting. Various of that term were used in many states in efforts to restrict lessons on race and gender.]
There’s also the question of how do members on both sides of the aisle that want to move beyond a more divisive debate about public education ... come together to strengthen and better serve the kids in our communities that need the most help?
It’s probably going to remain an extremely divided Congress, post-election. How likely is it that bipartisan dealmaking could occur on school issues?
There are members on both sides of the aisle who are deeply committed to public education. They value the public schools in their communities. Many, if not most of them, are graduates of public schools, and they see the value of it.
Despite a lot of tough, decisive conversations to the contrary what we’ve seen is that people who support public education on both sides of the aisle have come together over the last eight years. There’ve been some bumps in the road, but we’ve seen strong continued support for ensuring that our public schools remain kind of anchor parts of our communities.
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If Republicans win control of both chambers, what do you think will happen with K-12 funding?
A Republican-controlled Congress is likely to champion flat, or less spending in public education. I think the evidence of that is found in the U.S. House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related agencies fiscal year 2025 bill that the committee approved a few weeks ago, which cuts about $14 billion from Title I. That would be unprecedented.
Could those deep cuts to Title I actually happen?
It’s important to remember that unless Republicans achieve a super-majority in the Senate, that is unless they have 60 votes, it will continue to be difficult for those types of extreme cuts to be adopted. And I think there are also many Republicans in the Senate that disagree with the direction that the House Republicans have taken on education spending.
All that is to say, while education spending would not likely be on a trajectory to increase in an all Republican Congress next year, it’s probably most likely to be flat funded, as we’ve seen in recent years just because of the difficulty of moving deep cuts through a system that will undoubtedly still have a substantial number of Senate Democrats and also Senate Republicans who are not friendly to the kinds of deep cuts proposed by the House Appropriations Committee this year.
What do you expect to be a top priority for the next House and Senate education committees?
The committees, honestly if they’re Republican or Democrat controlled, will continue to make progress on the substantive policy issues of this Congress, which have been about modernizing the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, exploring updates to the National Apprenticeship Act, and looking to find a path toward expanding Pell Grant access for shorter term, high quality programs.
That is to say members on both sides of the aisle are going to be looking for bipartisan victories in what is likely to be a very closely divided Congress. What we’ve found this year and last year is that there’s a lot of interest among Republicans and Democrats, and among the Senate and House, to try to update the federal workforce programs. They’ve made a lot of progress … towards that goal.
On what other areas do you see possibilities for compromise, and action?
Thinking from an ed-tech perspective, there’s some really exciting bipartisan provisions focused on building out much more robust data infrastructure designed to promote greater transparency for students and employers in the workforce system. There’s some exciting things happening, even in a difficult kind of political environment.
Are there other areas of K-12 that could become primary issues for the next Congress?
Right after the election there will likely also be some other issues that may come up as a result of their prominence in the campaign season. So there could be early conversations about proficiency challenges that kids have experienced post pandemic, and the steps that are being taken to get all students back on track.
There could be, in the Senate, a huge focus on literacy as a result of ranking member Cassidy’s [U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La.] interest and leadership in that space. I just really expect workforce to continue to be a central focus of whichever party is in power.
Federal stimulus money is expiring. To what degree do you expect the next Congress to examine the extent to which those were good investments?
We have already seen the House Education and Workforce Committee hold those types of oversight hearings, which is a central part of their role as a committee. That’s their job. It’s very possible that, for example, if there’s a Republican majority in the Senate that we might see some hearings about ESSER in the health committee [U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions] as well.
But I think we’ve had that conversation mostly already as a result of the Republican majority in the House. So yes, there could be some future hearings about ESSER, but I don’t expect it to be the dominant narrative of the next education committee’s work during the next Congress.
A Republican-controlled Congress is likely to champion flat, or less spending in public education.
Outside of the White House and Congress, what other ways could the federal election have an impact on ed tech or K-12?
There are also questions of who the next president will be that are connected to things like judicial appointments. For example, in the last few weeks the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is heavily populated by appointees of President Trump, has ruled that the revenue system for the Universal Service Fund, including E-Rate, is unconstitutional.
And we now have a real question about the future of one of the —if not the biggest — ed-tech program in the federal government, which is E-Rate. So this isn’t just about the bully pulpit, and it’s not just about the composition of the Congress and the future of legislation. It’s also about the appointees of the president and the work they’re doing, and the appointment of judges that might have a dramatically different view about the constitutional relationship of some of these programs.
On that note, the president appoints the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, which just confirmed a fifth member last year after a long partisan deadlock. How could this election affect the FCC?
If Trump wins, it will convert to a Republican majority and they might have different perspectives on things like E-Rate, Wi-Fi on buses, or E-Rate support for mobile hotspots. There are policy issues that a Trump FCC could exercise that might be different or even dramatically different in terms of how the E-Rate is used and what it’s used for and how it’s funded.
