| Year | Pres. | House | Senate | Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1900 | R | R | R | |||
| 1904 | R | R | R | |||
| 1908 | R | R | R | |||
| 1912 | R | D | R | |||
| 1916 | D | D | D | |||
| 1920 | D | R | R | Co-operative Federal assistance to the states is immediately required for the removal of illiteracy, for the increase of teachers’ salaries and instruction in citizenship for both native and foreign-born; increased appropriation for vocational training in home economics; re- establishment of joint Federal and state employment service with women’s departments under the direction of technically qualified women. | ||
| 1924 | R | R | R | The federal government should offer to the states such counsel, advice and aid as may be made available through the federal agencies for the general improvement of our schools in view of our national needs. | To meet these needs we approve the suggestion for the creation of a cabinet post of education and relief. | |
| 1928 | R | R | R | The federal government should offer to the states such counsel, advice, results of research and aid as may be made available through the federal agencies for the general improvement of our schools in view of our national needs. | ||
| 1932 | R | R | R | |||
| 1936 | D | D | D | |||
| 1940 | D | D | D | Our public works have modernized and greatly expanded the nation’s schools. We have increased Federal aid for vocational education and rehabilitation, and undertaken a comprehensive program of defense- industry training. We shall continue to bring to millions of children, youths and adults, the educational and economic opportunities otherwise beyond their reach. | ||
| 1944 | D | D | D | GI Bill signed into law | ||
| 1948 | D | R | R | |||
| 1952 | D | D | D | We urge the adoption by appropriate legislative action of the proposals advocated by the President’s Commission on Higher Education, including Federal scholarships. | The responsibility for sustaining this system of popular education has always rested upon the local communities and the States. We subscribe fully to this principle. | |
| 1956 | R | D | D | We are now faced with shortages of educational facilities that threaten national security, economic prosperity and human well-being. The resources of our States and localities are already strained to the limit. Federal aid and action should be provided, within the traditional framework of State and local control. | Republican action created the Department of Health, Education and Welfare as the first new Federal department in 40 years | |
| 1958 | R | D | D | National Defense Education Act |
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| 1960 | R | D | D | We believe that America can meet its educational obligations only with generous Federal financial support, within the traditional framework of local control. | Primary responsibility for education must remain with the local community and state. The federal government should assist selectively in strengthening education without interfering with full local control of schools. One objective of such federal assistance should be to help equalize educational opportunities. | |
| 1964 | D | D | D | New methods of financial aid must be explored, including the channeling of federally collected revenues to all levels of education, and, to the extent permitted by the Constitution, to all schools. | to continue the advancement of education on all levels, through such programs as selective aid to higher education, strengthened State and local tax resources, including tax credits for college education, while resisting the Democratic efforts which endanger local control of schools | |
| 1965 | D | D | D | The Elementary and Secondary Education Act passes. Helps low-income students. Higher Education Act signed. Increases federal aid to higher education and provides for scholarships and student aid. Project Head Start launched |
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| 1968 | D | D | D | We will assure equal opportunity to education and equal access to high-quality education. Our aim is to maintain state-local control over the nation’s educational system, with federal financial assistance and help in stimulating changes through demonstration and technical assistance. New concepts of education and training employing new communications technology must be developed to educate children and adults. | To treat the special problems of children from impoverished families, we advocate expanded, better programs for pre-school children. We will encourage state, local or private programs of teacher training. The development and increased use of better teaching methods and modern instruction techniques such as educational television and voluntary bilingual education will continue to have our support. | Bilingual Education Act |
| 1972 | R | D | D | The children who enter school next fall still will be in the labor force in the year 2030; we cannot even imagine what American society will be like then, let alone what specific jobs they may hold. . . Support guaranteed access for all students to loan funds with long-term repayment based on future earnings. Not only the poor, but families with moderate incomes must be provided relief from the cost of a college and professional education | We are committed to guaranteeing equality of educational opportunity and to completing the process of ending de jure school segregation. . . At the same time, we are irrevocably opposed to busing for racial balance. Such busing fails its stated objective—improved learning opportunities —while it achieves results no one wants—division within communities and hostility between classes and races. We regard it as unnecessary, counter-productive and wrong. | Title IX passed to prohbiit discrimination on the basis of sex |
| 1975 | R | D | D | Education for All Handicapped Children Act |
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| 1976 | R | D | D | We should strengthen federal support of existing programs that stress improvement of reading and math skills. . . The Party reaffirms its support of public school education. The Party also renews its commitment to the support of a constitutionally acceptable method of providing tax aid for the education of all pupils in non-segregated schools in order to insure parental freedom in choosing the best education for their children. Specifically, the Party will continue to advocate constitutionally permissible federal education legislation which provides for the equitable participation in federal programs of all low- and moderate-income pupils attending all the nation’s schools. . . The federal government should directly provide cost of education payments to all higher education institutions, including predominantly black colleges, to help cover per-student costs, which far exceed those covered by tuition and fees. | Our approach is to work to eradicate the root causes of segregated schools, such as housing discrimination and gerrymandered school districts. We must get on with the education of all our children. . . We propose consolidating federal categorical grant programs into block grants and turning the money over to the states to use in accordance with their own needs and priorities and with minimum bureaucratic controls. | |
| 1979 | D | D | D | Dept. of Education created | ||
| 1980 | D | D | D | We favor a steady increase in federal support with an emphasis on reducing inter- and intra- state disparities in ability to support quality education. The federal government and the states should be encouraged to equalize or take over educational expenses, relieving the overburdened property taxpayer. . . Historically Black colleges and universities have played a pivotal role in educating minority students. The Democratic Party affirms its commitment to ensuring the financial viability and independence of these worthy institutions and supports expanded funding for Black institutions. | Next to religious training and the home, education is the most important means by which families hand down to each new generation their ideals and beliefs. . . Because federal assistance should help local school districts, not tie them up in red tape, we will strive to replace the crazy quilt of wasteful programs with a system of block grants that will restore decisionmaking to local officials responsible to voters and parents. . . the Republican Party supports deregulation by the federal government of public education, and encourages the elimination of the federal Department of Education. | |
| 1984 | R | D | R | There are four key goals that a Democratic program for educational excellence must address: strengthening local capacity to innovate and progress in public education and encourage parental involvement; renewing our efforts to ensure that all children, whatever their race, income, or sex have a fair and equal chance to learn; attracting the most talented young people into teaching and enabling them to remain and develop in their profession; and ensuring that all American families can send their children on to college or advanced training. . . The Democratic Party reaffirms the importance of historically Black colleges. Today the survival of many of these colleges is threatened. The programs that assist them, which have been severely weakened in recent years, must be greatly strengthened with funding targeted toward Black and Hispanic institutions. | We believe that education is a local function, a State responsibility, and a federal concern. The federal role in education should be limited. It includes helping parents and local authorities ensure high standards, protecting civil rights, and ensuring family rights. . . Through regulatory reform, we are holding down the costs of higher education and reestablishing academic freedom from government. This is especially important for small schools, religious institutions, and the historically black colleges, for which President Reagan’s Executive Order 12320 has meant new hope and vigor | |
| 1988 | R | D | D | We pledge to better balance our national priorities by significantly increasing federal funding for education. . . to expand support for bilingual education, historically Black and Hispanic institutions, the education of those with special needs, the arts and humanities, and an aggressive campaign to end illiteracy. | Parents have the primary right and responsibility for education. Private institutions, communities, States, and the federal government must support and stimulate that parental role. We support the right of parents to educate their children at home. . . Choice and competition in education foster quality and protect consumers’ rights. . . Accountability and evaluation of performance at all levels of education is the key to continuing reform in education. We must reward excellence in learning, in teaching, and in administration. | |
| 1992 | R | D | D | We support education reforms such as site- based decision-making and public school choice, with strong protections against discrimination. We support the goal of a 90 percent graduation rate, and programs to end dropouts. | The President has shown unprecedented leadership for the most important education goal of all: helping middle and low income families enjoy the same choice of schools—public, private, or religious—that families with more resources already have. The President’s proposed “GI Bill for Children” will provide $1,000 scholarships to middle and low income families, enabling their children to attend the school of their choice. | |
| 1996 | D | R | R | In the next four years, we must do even more to make sure America has the best public schools on earth. If we want to be the best, we should expect the best: We must hold students, teachers, and schools to the highest standards. . . We should expand public school choice, but we should not take American tax dollars from public schools and give them to private schools. We should promote public charter schools that are held to the highest standards of accountability and access. . . The only way to achieve that for every student is to give them all access to a computer, good software, trained teachers, and the Internet — and President Clinton and Vice President Gore have launched a partnership with high- tech companies, schools, state, and local governments to wire every classroom and library to the Information Superhighway by the year 2000. | Our formula is as simple as it is sweeping: the federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the work place. That is why we will abolish the Department of Education, end federal meddling in our schools, and promote family choice at all levels of learning. . . America’s families find themselves on a college treadmill: the more they work to pay tuition, the faster it seems to increase. Tuition has escalated far in excess of inflation, in defiance of market factors, and shows no sign of slowing down. Billions of dollars are wasted on regulations, paperwork, and “political correctness,” which impedes the ability of the faculty to teach. We call for a national reassessment of the economics of higher education, to stop the treadmill and restore fiscal accountability to higher education. | |
| 1999 | D | R | R | Columbine Massacre | ||
| 2000 | R | R | R | Al Gore and the Democratic Party know that investments without accountability are a waste of money and that accountability without investments are a waste of time. . . They propose blank check block grants without accountability. Their version of accountability relies on private school vouchers that would offer too few dollars to too few children to escape their failing schools. These vouchers would pass the buck on accountability while pulling bucks out of the schools that need them most. When it comes to education, Democrats want to invest more and aim higher, the Republicans invest too little and aim too low. . . he Democratic Party supports expansion of charter schools, magnet schools, site-based schools, year-round schools, and other nontraditional public school options. . . We propose a tax cut for tuition and fees for post- high school education and training that allows families to choose either a $10,000 a year tax deduction or a $2,800 tax credit. . . We must also give new training allowances that will extend unemployment insurance for those who need time to finish their training courses. Al Gore has called for new 401(j) accounts – like the 401(k)’s which so many Americans use – that would let employers help their employees save tax free and use those savings for the lifelong learning for the employee or their spouse, or their children’s college education. . . Our children and teachers deserve schools of safety and classrooms free of fear. We should have a zero-tolerance policy towards guns in schools. | In the final analysis, education remains a parental right and responsibility. We advocate choice in education, not as an abstract theory, but as the surest way for families, especially low-income families, to free their youngsters from failing or dangerous schools and put them onto the road to opportunity and success. . . At many institutions of higher learning, the ideal of academic freedom is threatened by intolerance. Students should not be compelled to support, through mandatory student fees, anyone’s political agenda. The Republican party stands in solidarity with the dedicated faculty who are penalized for their conservatism and also with the courageous students who run independent campus newspapers to confront the powerful with the power of truth. | |
| 2001 | R | R | D | No Child Left Behind Act. Mandates high-stakes student testing, holds schools accountable for student achievement, and penalizes underforming schools |
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| 2004 | R | R | R | John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democratic Party believe that a strong America begins at home with strong families, and that strong families need the best schools. We believe schools must teach fundamental skills like math and science, and fundamental values like citizenship and responsibility. We believe providing resources without reform is a waste of money, and reform without resources is a waste of time. And we believe politicians who expect students to learn responsibility should start by keeping their own promises. | On just his fourth day in office, President Bush presented the No Child Left Behind initiative to Congress. Less than a year later, he secured an overwhelming bipartisan majority to pass the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. It was the most significant overhaul of federal education policy since 1965. And it became a promise kept to parents, students, teachers, and every American. . . And we support state efforts to expand school choice, as well as the President’s call to provide funding for new and existing charter schools, including assistance for school facilities. | |
| 2008 | R | D | D | We must prepare all our students with the 21st Century skills they need to succeed by progressing to a new era of mutual responsibility in education. We must set high standards for our children, but we must also hold ourselves accountable–our schools, our teachers, our parents, business leaders, our community and our elected leaders. . . We recognize the special value and importance of our Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other minority serving institutions in meeting the needs of our increasingly diverse society and will work to ensure their viability and growth. . . We will make college affordable for all Americans by creating a new American Opportunity Tax Credit to ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans. In exchange for the credit, students will be expected to perform community service. | All children should have access to an excellent education that empowers them to secure their own freedom and contribute to the betterment of our society. We reaffirm the principles that have been the foundation of the nation’s educational progress toward that goal: accountability for student academic achievement; periodic testing on the fundamentals of learning, especially math and reading, history and geography; transparency, so parents and the general public know which schools best serve their students; and flexibility and freedom to innovate so schools and districts can best meet the needs of their students. . . We support choice in education for all families, especially those with children trapped in dangerous and failing schools, whether through charter schools, vouchers or tax credits for attending faith-based or other nonpublic schools, or the option of home schooling. | |
| 2012 | D | R | D | This is why we have helped states and territories develop comprehensive plans to raise standards and improve instruction in their early learning programs and invested in expanding and reforming Head Start. . . We invested more than $2.5 billion in savings from reforming our student loan system to strengthen our nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Alaska, Hawaiian Native Institutions, Asian American and Pacific Islander Institutions, and other Minority Serving Institutions. | Today’s education reform movement calls for accountability at every stage of schooling. It affirms higher expectations for all students and rejects the crippling bigotry of low expectations. It recognizes the wisdom of State and local control of our schools, and it wisely sees consumer rights in education—choice—as the most important driving force for renewing our schools. . . renewed focus on the Constitution and the writings of the Founding Fathers, and an accurate account of American history that celebrates the birth of this great nation . . . We support options for learning, including home schooling and local innovations like single-sex classes, full-day school hours, and year-round schools. School choice—whether through charter schools, open enrollment requests, college lab schools, virtual schools, career and technical education programs, vouchers, or tax credits—is important for all children, especially for families with children trapped in failing schools. . . Federal student aid is on an unsustainable path, and efforts should be taken to provide families with greater transparency and the information they need to make prudent choices about a student’s future: completion rates, repayment rates, future earnings, and other factors that may affect their decisions. | |
| 2015 | D | R | R | Elementary and Secondary Education Act replaces No Child Left Behind and allows more state control in judging school quality |
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| 2016 | D | R | R | Democrats are unified in their strong belief that every student should be able to go to college debt-free, and working families should not have to pay any tuition to go to public colleges and universities. . . We will also make community college free, while ensuring the strength of our Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority- Serving Institutions. . . We are also deeply committed to ensuring that we strike a better balance on testing so that it informs, but does not drive, instruction. To that end, we encourage states to develop a multiple measures approach to assessment, and we believe that standardized tests must be reliable and valid. . . Democrats are committed to providing parents with high- quality public school options and expanding these options for low-income youth. We support democratically governed, great neighborhood public schools and high-quality public charter schools, and we will help them disseminate best practices to other school leaders and educators. Democrats oppose for- profit charter schools focused on making a profit off of public resources. We believe that high-quality public charter schools should provide options for parents, but should not replace or destabilize traditional public schools. | We reject a one-size-fits-all approach to education and support a broad range of choices for parents and children at the state and local level. We likewise repeat our long- standing opposition to the imposition of national standards and assessments, encourage the parents and educators who are implementing alternatives to Common Core, and congratulate the states which have successfully repealed it. Their education reform movement calls for choice-based, parent-driven accountability at every stage of schooling. It affirms higher expectations for all students and rejects the crippling bigotry of low expectations. . . We strongly encourage instruction in American history and civics by using the original documents of our founding fathers. . . We support options for learning, including home-schooling, career and technical education, private or parochial schools, magnet schools, charter schools, online learning, and early-college high schools. | |
| 2020 | R | D | R | Democrats, we believe that education is a critical public good—not a commodity—and that it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that every child, everywhere, is able to receive a world-class education that enables them to lead meaningful lives, no matter their race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, disability status, language status, immigration or citizenship status, household income or ZIP code. . . To this end, we support K-12 instruction in civics and climate literacy. . . Charter schools were originally intended to be publicly funded schools with increased flexibility in program design and operations. Democrats believe that education is a public good and should not be saddled with a private profit motive, which is why we will ban for-profit private charter businesses from receiving federal funding. And we recognize the need for more stringent guardrails to ensure charter schools are good stewards of federal education funds. . . Democrats oppose private school vouchers and other policies that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from the public school system, including the program at issue in the recent Espinoza decision. . . The evidence from nearly two decades of education reforms that hinge on standardized test scores shows clearly that high-stakes testing has not led to enough improvement in outcomes for students or for schools, and can lead to discrimination against students, particularly students with disabilities, students of color, low-income students, and English language learners. . . We will support programs to help introduce high school | ||
| 2024 | D | R | D | The Administration supports a multitude of approaches that have been proven to help students learn: reducing chronic absenteeism by building social and emotional supports at schools, offering literacy programs, and setting high expectations for student attendance; providing intensive tutoring; extending the school day and school year; expanding community schools; and helping schools to lift student achievement, rather than punishing them based on state standardized tests. | To reduce the cost of Higher Education, Republicans will support the creation of additional, drastically more affordable alternatives to a traditional four-year College degree. . . Republicans will support schools that focus on Excellence and Parental Rights. We will support ending Teacher Tenure, adopting Merit pay, and allowing various publicly supported Educational models. . . Republicans believe families should be empowered to choose the best Education for their children. We support Universal School Choice in every State in America. We will expand 529 Education Savings Accounts and support Homeschooling Families equally. . . Republicans will ensure children are taught fundamentals like Reading, History, Science, and Math, not Leftwing propaganda. We will defund schools that engage in inappropriate political indoctrination of our children using Federal Taxpayer Dollars. . . Republicans will reinstate the 1776 Commission, promote Fair and Patriotic Civics Education, and veto efforts to nationalize Civics Education. We will support schools that teach America’s Founding Principles and Western Civilization. . . We are going to close the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. and send it back to the States, where it belongs, and let the States run our educational system as it should be run. |