Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/AP Images
Senator Bernie Sanders attends a news conference on May 19, 2015, with members of the National Nurses Association at the Senate swamp on legislation "to eliminate undergraduate tuition at public colleges and universities and to expand work-study programs.
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has excited his base with some bold ideas surrounding higher education. He's said college should be a right, that public universities should have free tuition, and that public universities should employ tenured or tenure-track faculty for at least 75 percent of instruction, as a way to reduce the growing dependence on cheap adjunct labor. But Sanders' stances on K-12 issues-arguably more contentious topics for politicians to engage with compared to higher ed and universal pre-K-have garnered far less attention.
Here's what we know so far:
1. He wants to roll back standardized testing, but still supports Common Core.
Sanders opposes the expansion of standardized testing we've seen through the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB); he argues that such tests narrow school curriculum and hurt student creativity and critical thinking. However, this past March he voted against an amendment that would have allowed states to opt-out of the Common Core standards without a federal penalty. The amendment also would have barred the federal government from "mandating, incentivizing, or coercing" states into adopting the standards.
2. He supports expanding the school day and year.
Sanders is a member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee and in 2011, he worked to raise support for expanding the school day and year. Citing research on "summer learning loss"-Sanders notes that low-income students stand to lose much of what they learn if they're denied extra-curricular enrichment opportunities. He also secured more funding for after-school and summer learning opportunities in Vermont.
3. He wants to see teachers paid more, and is a defender of pensions.
Sanders believes all educators, from early childhood workers up to college instructors should be paid more. He said, "Something is very wrong when, last year, the top 25 hedge fund managers earned more than the combined income of 425,000 public school teachers. We have to get our priorities right." And while he believes the public pension crisis "must be addressed" he is more interested in reigning in Wall Street to solve it than reducing retiree payments.
4. He opposes Big Money in politics, but has not taken a clear position on the role of Big Money in education.
Sanders has come out strongly against oil companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and other special interests that pour money into politics. Citing these groups as a threat to true democracy-he wants to overturn Citizens United and push for publicly funded elections.
However, whether he will bring the same critical rhetoric to the foundations, consultants, and hedge fund managers shaping education policy remains to be seen. As Anthony Cody, the co-founder of Network for Public Ed pointed out recently, Sanders has yet to speak very clearly on these issues, but his opposition to Big Money elsewhere leads one to think that it's at least a reasonable possibility.
5. He wants to strengthen who can be considered a "highly qualified" teacher.
The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education honored Sanders in 2012 for his "outstanding support" for educator preparation programs. In 2011 he introduced the Assuring Successful Students through Effective Teaching Act, which would aim to strengthen the definition of what a "highly qualified" teacher is considered to be, and work to reduce the number of unqualified teachers working in needy schools.
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6. He has an unclear position on charter schools, but opposes vouchers.
He voted for the Charter School Expansion Act of 1998, but has not engaged much in the polarized charter debate since. Vermont is one of the few states that do not permit charter schools, in part because the Vermont public education system already allows for "school choice" in other ways. However, Sanders is a strong supporter of teacher unions and collective bargaining, so if he does come to back charters, his support is unlikely to be paired with the type of anti-union rhetoric common in the charter advocacy world.
He also opposes private school vouchers, favoring an expanded federal investment in public schools instead.
So we have some insights, but questions remain. Ultimately if Bernie Sanders wants to win over progressive liberals and campaign as a left alternative to Hillary Clinton, he'll have to start speaking more explicitly about K-12 education in the coming months.
