With Tim Walz, a teacher, now in the race, we must address our nation’s most urgent issue: education

The Harris-Walz campaign’s boisterous North Philadelphia rally on Tuesday at Temple University was animated not just by personalities, but also by the urgent issues we face in the upcoming election.

Some voters are energized over reproductive rights. Others are concerned about security at the border. Still others focus solely on economic concerns.

For me, however, no issue we face is bigger than education. Without it, we can’t fully comprehend how history informs the present. Nor can we understand how today’s choices shape the future. That’s why education has always been at the center of America’s ideological battles. It’s why I wasn’t surprised that on Tuesday, as Kamala Harris was choosing former teacher Tim Walz as her running mate, a federal court was giving us a glimpse of what the GOP envisions for America’s schools.

Beginning in 2023, Darryl George, a Black student at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, Texas, was repeatedly suspended for wearing long locs — a hairstyle that his family said was a tradition among its men. The district claimed George’s locs, which he wears to school tied on top of his head, violated the district’s dress code since his hair would fall below his shirt collar, eyebrows, or earlobes if let down.

In a lawsuit, George and his family claimed that the school district was not only violating his first amendment right to free speech and his 14th Amendment right to due process. The lawsuit also alleged that the hair policy was being enforced mainly on Black students.

On Tuesday, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit’s claims of racial discrimination, leaving in place a gender discrimination claim because the district’s rules for males are different than those for females.

Perhaps, if this were another time, I’d view this as an isolated fight over an archaic rule. But George was punished while the state was implementing a new law called the CROWN Act, which prohibits penalizing people based on hair texture or protective hairstyles such as braids, Afros, twists, locs, or Bantu knots.

In my opinion, this was never about a dress code. Instead, it appeared to me that a white-dominated power structure was delivering a pointed message to the Black community: No matter what the law says, we can control Black bodies, Black expression, even Black hairstyles, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Can you imagine such an approach taking hold across the educational landscape? You don’t have to. The Republican Party has done it for you.

The GOP’s education platform closely resembles Project 2025 — the conservative Heritage Foundation’s public policy wish list for a second Trump term.

Like Project 2025, the Republican platform seeks to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Such a move would prevent federal oversight of school districts, and could allow conservative states to implement a Eurocentric education model under the guise of “state’s rights,” the phrase that served as the rallying cry for slavery and Jim Crow.

The Republican platform also seeks to ban what it calls critical race theory — a catchall phrase that is typically used by conservatives to define Black history. In truth, critical race theory is not taught in K-12 schools. It is a legal theory that’s taught in colleges and law schools, and it examines how laws can exacerbate racism.

The Republican platform seeks to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education.

But the Republican policy plans in the event of a Trump win don’t stop there. It also seeks to eliminate tenure for teachers, divert public funding to private schools through vouchers, and offers to restore parental rights — as if someone has taken them away. In case you’re wondering, no one has done so.

That’s why, when I look at Kamala Harris’ selection of Tim Walz as her running mate, I’m not drawn to his folksy demeanor, or his clever application of the “weird” label to the Trump-Vance team. In my view, Walz fits the moment because he is a former teacher. Of all those at the top of either ticket, Walz alone has the experience to understand the power of education.

As we face an organized effort to take us backward, I only hope he’s willing to fight for it.