Marco Rubio presidential campaign, 2016/Education

	; ; Former presidential candidate; Marco Rubio
	Political offices: ; Current U.S. Senator; (2011-Present); FL House of Representatives; (2000-2009)
	Rubio on the issues:
	Taxes • Banking policy • Government regulations • International trade • Budgets • Agricultural subsidies • Federal assistance programs • Foreign affairs • Federalism • Natural resources • Healthcare • Immigration • Education • Abortion • Gay rights • Civil liberties
	Republican candidate:
	Donald Trump
	Ballotpedia's presidential election coverage; 2028 • 2024 • 2020 • 2016

Marco Rubio suspended his presidential campaign on March 15, 2016.^[1]

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This page was current as of the 2016 election.

During a CNN town hall on February 17, 2016, Marco Rubio said that although he believed systemic racism existed, he was “not sure that there's a political solution” to it. He emphasized, instead, disparities in educational opportunities. He said, “One reason you see educational and academic underperformance, not just in the African-American community, but in the Hispanic community, is because a disproportionate number of our children are growing up in broken homes in dangerous neighborhoods, living in substandard housing and forced by the government to attend a failing school. They're going to struggle to succeed unless something breaks that cycle."^[2]

On January 21, 2016, Rubio criticized Jeb Bush for not joining the Republican fight against the Common Core. He told reporters, “On the issue of Common Core, while we were off and many conservatives around the country were fighting against the Obama agenda, Jeb was nowhere to be found. In fact, he spent most of his time traveling the country trying to push Common Core onto our local school districts and across the country. And in some instances even criticized the conservative movement on some of these things.”^[3]

The U.S. Senate approved the conference report for S. 1177 - Student Success Act on December 9, 2015. Rubio missed the vote on the bill, which overhauled the No Child Left Behind Act . President Obama signed the bill into law on December 10, 2015.^[4]^[5]

In an op-ed for the National Review on October 1, 2015, Rubio wrote that students at technical schools, online colleges, and other alternative institutions should have the same access to federal financial aid as traditional colleges.^[6]

Rubio wrote an op-ed in The Des Moines Register on September 13, 2015, to promote his higher education platform. He recommended reforming the accreditation system “to welcome low-cost, innovative higher education providers,” requiring schools to inform students how much they are expected to earn with a given degree prior to offering loans, increasing financial aid programs for working students, developing alternatives to student loans and correlating loan repayment with each graduate’s income.^[7]

In Carson City, Nevada, on September 1, 2015, Rubio stated that a federal Department of Education was unnecessary and often led to mandates tied to funding. He went on to support local control of education reform.^[8]

On August 10, 2015, Rubio criticized Hillary Clinton’s “New College Compact” as being part of an “outdated” system. “We should be giving people degrees on the basis of what they know, not how many hours they sat in a classroom. I'm not saying we don't continue with traditional higher education but we have to allow some competition to compete with traditional colleges [through] online coursework, competency based education,” Rubio explained.^[9]

According to his official website, "Rubio believes we should create a universal education tax deduction, perform a regular review of Department of Education programs, make block grants conditional on performance and accountability measures, improve parental access to school performance, improve school choice through a Federal corporate income tax credit, protect teachers from frivolous lawsuits, overcome the science, technology, engineering and mathematics crisis, create students with disabilities scholarships, promote voluntary Pre-K scholarship, provide opportunity scholarships for students in chronically failing schools, reinstate the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program and promote a national virtual learning platform."^[10]

In July 2013, Rubio stated his opposition to Common Core. He said, "Common Core started out as a well-intentioned effort to develop more rigorous curriculum standards. However, it is increasingly being used by the Obama Administration to turn the Department of Education into what is effectively a national school board. This effort to coerce states into adhering to national curriculum standards is not the best way to help our children attain the best education. Empowering parents, local communities and the individual states is the best approach,” according to the Tampa Bay Times.^[11]

In March 2013, Rubio co-sponsored a bill that proposed allowing "more than $14 billion in federal Title 1 dollars to follow students to the school of their choice, whether it be a public, charter or private institution," according to The Washington Times.^[12]

In February 2013, Rubio introduced the Educational Opportunities Act, which proposed creating "a federal corporate and individual tax credit to promote school choice by allowing contributions to go to Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs) that will distribute scholarships to a student to be used toward private school tuition or expenses related to attending a private school."^[13]

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