The first Republican presidential debate is fast approaching on Aug. 23, when candidates will hope to close the gap on former President Donald Trump and separate from the rest of the pack. In this series, Up For Debate, the Washington Examiner will look at a key issue or policy every day up until debate day and where key candidates stand. Today's story will examine education.

Once an afterthought for Republicans, education is set to play a major role in the 2024 presidential election as the parental rights movement that began in the wake of the 2020 school closures has pushed the issue to the forefront of Republican politics.

Unlike other issues such as the Ukraine war and abortion, the Republican primary field is largely unified in what education policies the candidates wish to enact. The field's holy grail is universal school choice, which would allow students to use taxpayer funds to pay for nonpublic education. A commitment to uphold parental rights has also emerged as a campaign trail talking point.

UP FOR DEBATE: WHERE TRUMP, DESANTIS, AND REST OF REPUBLICAN 2024 FIELD STAND ON KEY ISSUES

Ian Prior, the executive director of the political action committee Fight for Schools and author of Parents of the World Unite!: How to Save Our Schools from the Left’s Radical Agenda, told the Washington Examiner that the 2024 Republican primary needs to remember that parental rights has become one of the most important issues for conservatives, and a commitment to defend it is now a political litmus test for any Republican presidential candidate.

"Conservatives are generally loath to make education policy from a federal level because they correctly believe that it is a state and local issue," Prior said. "What we're talking about now is not setting education policy, per se, but it's protecting the constitutional rights of parents, students, and teachers."

Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, likewise noted that the political environment around education in 2024 is nothing like it was in prior cycles. Now, he says Republicans are faced with the reality that they must be prepared to wield government power at the federal level on an issue that is typically seen as a local one.

"It's just abundantly clear that education is off the rails and needs to be reined in," Schilling told the Washington Examiner. "The first litmus test is whether or not the candidate thinks that you can take actions from the federal level to rein in the education system. If they don't think that, then they're disqualified, and they will be unable to fix the education system."

"If a candidate is willing to pledge to defund ... programs that are sexualizing our kids and radicalizing them to be little foot soldiers for the progressive regime, if they're willing to do that and take action against that, then they're gonna have a winning platform," Schilling added. "And it's gonna be a popular platform that'll help them get the nomination."

So while the field is united in calling for school choice, there is a significant level of disagreement when it comes to using the federal government to enact a conservative education agenda.

Donald Trump

The leader of the Republican primary field by a country mile, the former president has outlined one of the most robust education policy platforms of the entire group of presidential hopefuls.

In a series of policy videos, Trump has vowed to "save education and give power back to parents," as well as take on higher education institutions that he says have been taken over by "the radical left and Marxist maniacs."

Trump says he will direct the Department of Education and the Department of Justice to launch civil rights investigations against school districts that engage in racial discrimination, while vowing to "remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education."

In addition to supporting universal school choice, a parents bill of rights, and cutting federal funding to any school that pushes critical race theory and gender ideology, Trump has called for several unique policies, including the direct election of school principals by parents and the creation of a new teacher credentialing agency that will "certify teachers who embrace patriotic values, and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children, but to educate them."

Ron DeSantis

DeSantis has made education a major part of his governorship and has enacted one of the most expansive conservative education policy agendas in the Sunshine State, and now has an eye toward a similar effort from the White House.

The governor is one of several candidates who have vowed to eliminate the Department of Education. In a recent interview with Martha MacCallum, DeSantis said that if Congress doesn't allow him to eliminate the department, he will use the agency to "push back against woke ideology."

“So for example, with the Department of Education, we reverse all the transgender sports stuff,” DeSantis said. “We reverse policies trying to inject the curriculum into our schools. That will all be gone. We will make sure we have an accreditation system for higher ed, which is now trying to foment more things like DEI and CRT. So we’ll be prepared to do both. Either way, it will be a win for conservatives.”

Tim Scott

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) has long made education reform a focus of his political career, and has repeatedly advocated universal school choice.

Now in his third Senate term, Scott has sponsored several bills that would establish universal school choice and has touted his own background as proof of the need for the policy.

"America’s children should be learning ABCs, not CRT," the senator's campaign website says. "The radical Left wants to indoctrinate our children, not educate them. We will fight to ensure that America’s kids are learning how to read and write, not about gender transition and sexual identity. We must demand excellence in our schools, which means giving every family a choice, every parent a voice, and every child a chance."

The South Carolina senator says he will "defend parental rights," "demand transparency in the classroom," and "expand opportunities for all children" by enacting school choice and "giving every family the power and resources they need to decide their child’s education and future."

Nikki Haley

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has called for universal school choice on the campaign trail, praising Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) for enacting a universal school choice plan in the state set to hold the first presidential nominating contest next year.

"We would not have problems in education if we put education back where it needs to be, in the hands of the parents,” Haley said earlier this year. “We have to have school choice all over this country. And we need to make sure that we never close schools ever again.”

Haley, who served as governor of South Carolina prior to her stint as U.N. ambassador in the Trump administration, touts her education record as governor on her campaign website. This includes signing a charter school expansion bill, eliminating Common Core curriculum standards, and establishing the Original Six Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing education opportunities in rural South Carolina.

Vivek Ramaswamy

A newcomer to Republican Party politics, Ramaswamy has made abolishing the Department of Education a primary talking point along the campaign trail.

The native Ohioan and son of Indian immigrants has outlined a plan to shift the vast majority of the Department of Education grant disbursement to the state level and incorporate its remaining functions into the Labor, State, and Treasury departments.

Doing this, he says, will create new school choice opportunities by eliminating the national bureaucracy governing the distribution of grants, thereby allowing more states to use funds for school choice programs. The end of the Department of Education, he says, will also save taxpayers $8 billion every year. Ramaswamy also has proposed using a quarter of the department's $83 billion budget to place three armed guards in every school.

Others

Other candidates, including former Vice President Mike Pence, have endorsed universal school choice and abolishing the Department of Education.

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At an event in May, Pence said the Department of Education should be shut down and the federal government's education funds should be turned over to states for school choice programs.

"The very simple answer would be to block-grant the budget of the federal Department of Education back to the states, close down the department at the federal level, and allow states to use those resources to expand educational choice for families," Pence said.