Qasim Sharif discusses the implications for education after the GOP election, and now that the Republicans control the senate. The truth is, it will most likely mean positive change.

1. GOP Election and Implications for Education
While education played a very minor role in the 2014 midterm elections—less than one third
of Republican gubernatorial candidates, and just three Democratic gubernatorial candidates,
even bothered to mention the biggest educational issue of late, the Common Core standards,
in their campaign platforms—the results of the election could have a strong effect on the
educational terrain of the nation, according to an article recently completed by U.S. News.
Part of this is the responsibility of unions.
In
the 2014 midterm elections, unions spent over sixty million dollars going after politicians.
Money well spent? Several of their targets included Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker,
Republican Governors Rick Snyder in Michigan, Sam Brownback in Kansas and Rick Scott in
Florida; in addition to this, the unions sought to defeat Democratic gubernatorial candidate
Gina Raimondo in Rhode Island, based in the fact that Raimondo took on public sector unions
as state treasurer. The unions ended up losing a lot of money trying to attack these
candidates. As a result, instead of proving their “power” as a teacher’s union, the situation
played out to show the unions’ ongoing struggle to find their influence, power and standing.
The unions had one victory in the race for California superintendent of public instruction, but
the victory was a costly one; the two candidates for the race spent over thirty million dollars.
This figure equates to three times as much as was spent on the California governor’s race
itself. The election was between Marshall Tuck, a charter school operator with strong “reform”

2. ties and was endorsed by every major newspaper in the state and Tom Torlakson, the
incumbent, attracted enormous support from the teacher unions. Torlakson won, serving as
the only victory for the unions.
With the election of GOP officials it is likely that taxpayer’s money will be used more sparingly
and more efficiently. The majority of elected Republican officials will seek to remove some
Common Core statutes which have proved to be ineffective and, therefore, cut back on the
federal intervention and red tape in the K­12
system. In fact, Republicans now hold the
majority in the U.S. Senate, indicating that Lamar Alexander, former U.S. Secretary of
Education and governor of Tennessee, was in line to take the reins of the Senate Health,
Education, Labor, and Pensions committee, otherwise known as HELP. Alexander’s goals
are relatively clear for HELP; he’d like to reauthorize the troubled No Child Left Behind Act
and put an end to the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program, which, Alexander
believes to be an effort to serve as what he’s termed “a national school board.” There is
reason to believe he will succeed in this initiative as well, as the House passed a similar bill in
2013.