Education a potential flashpoint in Vance-Walz vice presidential debate

Education hardly came up in last month’s Trump-Harris presidential debate, but it could be a central focus at Tuesday’s undercard event.  

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) is the first former educator in decades to make a major party ticket, and he has foregrounded that experience on the campaign trail.  

But Walz’s record on schools, both as a teacher and as a governor, has also been a leading point of attack for Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who won’t be pulling punches at the first and only 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,” said Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at 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 very personal relationship with education, teaching in China for a year before coming back to the U.S. to teach social studies in Minnesota. He was also a football coach at Alliance High School, where he met his wife, who is also a teacher.  

He has not shied away from bringing up that background on the campaign trail and has received the enthusiastic endorsements of major teachers’ unions. 

During the debate, “it’s important for him to tell his story,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic political strategist. 

“And then telling his story, the teacher aspect of who he is will come out and how he has fought for accessible and affordable education for everyone,” Seawright said.

But Walz’s record has also been an area where Republicans have gone on the attack, nicknaming him “Tampon Tim” after he signed a bill expanding access to menstrual products, including in boys’ bathrooms. 

“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,” said Ryan Dawkins, assistant professor in the political science department at Carleton College.  

“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 around “parents rights” as the central tenet of their education platform, and Vance has leaned into the issue, though he has drawn heat in the past for his aggressive rhetoric.

In 2021, he decried what he called an “antifamily” agenda promoted by Democrats and said the movement 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 also directly criticized Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, in 2022 saying she “doesn’t have a single child.” Weingarten is a mother 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 said.  

Observers are interested to see how Vance tries to go after Walz without alienating other educators in the process.  

“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 said.  

“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 looking for Vance to focus on Walz’s record as governor of Minnesota without getting bogged down in personal 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,” said Ryan Walker, the executive vice president for Heritage Action 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.