Vice President Kamala Harris made a formidable choice in selecting Gov. Tim Walz as a running mate in her campaign to be the next president of the United States.
Political pundits have consistently spoken of the Minnesota governor’s ability to connect with everyday voters and explain democratic values and policy proposals in palatable ways.
It should not be surprising why he is so good at explaining things: He’s a former social studies teacher who is married to another former teacher.
Many of those political pundits are now speculating about what Walz would mean for increasing Harris’s electability among working—and middle-class—white voters. Meanwhile, education policy experts like myself are sitting on the edge of our seats to see the policy implications of a teacher as the vice president of the United States of America.
Beyond his ability to explain how the government should serve the American people, a civics teacher presiding over the U.S. Senate could be just what the doctor ordered.
We’ve seen Walz steward key education policies as governor of Minnesota. Last year, he signed into law a state universal school lunch program that has drawn praise nationwide. “The haves and have-nots in the school lunchroom is not a necessary thing,” Walz said at the law’s announcement. “Just feed our children.”
Policy actors in Washington have worked for decades to address food insecurity federally. Most recently, Walz’s fellow Minnesotan Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat, introduced legislation to make lunch free across the country, in partnership with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
The only success they’ve seen was during the pandemic, when Congress authorized sweeping waivers that allowed the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s school lunch program to offer free meals to students regardless of familiy income. (Those universal free meals measures expired in June 2022.)
As a former congressman, Walz already knows what it will take to shepherd this kind of policy proposal through both Chambers. If elected with Harris, he will likely aim for early wins with proposals he can sell to America to ensure they aren’t a one-term duo.
If they can navigate likely resistance from Republicans, a universal school lunch program may be a promising start for a Harris-Walz administration. But they would have plenty of additional opportunities to shape the future of America’s public schools, including by expanding early childhood education and investing in recruiting and retaining teachers of color—two important issues they have both supported in the past.
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 has not been re-authorized since 2015, when the Every Student Succeeds Act returned significant education policy authority back to the states. As a former social studies teacher, a Vice President Walz could use his political capital to shape the future of America’s schools in the next iteration of this important legislation.
His would-be boss, Vice President Kamala Harris, has also supported key pieces of education legislation policy that might cast light on their administration’s priorities.
In 2019, then Sen. Kamala Harris introduced both the Family Friendly School Act, a bill that sought to align the school day with the work day and expand funding for summer programs, and the 21st Century STEM for Girls and Underrepresented Minorities Act, which sought grants to support science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs for girls and other students underrepresented in STEM fields.
Further, in her career as a senator and vice president, she has proposed making investments to combat educator shortages, focused on reducing student loan debt, and criticized expansions of school vouchers that would divert public funding to private schools.
Admittedly, it is early, but Harris’s and Walz’s records should give education policy experts and educators hope that they would make deep investments in American public education.
A Harris-Walz administration could be an historic next phase in education policy—especially with a former social studies teacher as vice president of the United States.
