Governor candidates on education
Published by itstooimportant.com in political - Iowa · Thursday 16 Jul 2026 · 5 minutes
All three candidates are recognizing that on the ratings basis Iowa schools have fallen from number one to number twenty-four. The candidates have expressed the following on their web site.
Nicholas Gluba:
When I was going to school here in Iowa, we were number one in the nation for education. Unfortunately, we have since fallen to number 26 nationwide. Many families I have spoken to moved to Iowa for their children to benefit from our top-ranked schools. Now, they are expressing concerns about our decline, which is likely impacting the state's ability to attract new arrivals. Through various discussions, we've discovered that insufficient funding isn’t the core issue. Instead, we believe it’s essential to gather the teachers of the state—specifically, the teachers, not the bureaucrats or administration staff—and bring them to the capital to ask what they need from us as a state to restore our education system to the top. This effort aligns with Gluba for Iowa's commitment to property rights advocacy and ensuring that our education system thrives, especially as we approach the Iowa elections.
Zach Lahn:
Revoke Teaching Licenses for Political Indoctrination
If a teacher is caught pushing a political agenda in the classroom, their teaching license will be revoked, period.
The Governor Must Be the #1 Advocate for Public School Kids
Focus on making public schools so good they are competing with private schools.
Innovation Zones
Create innovation zones to free up superintendents, principals, and teachers to innovate.
End Teaching to the Test
Eliminate or dramatically reduce standardized testing requirements and focus on mastery of skills.
University Priorities for Iowa StudentsIncrease quota for Iowa residents at University of Iowa and Iowa State University and task them with solving Iowa's cancer and farming crisis.
Rob Sand:
It’s time to restore the slogan on Iowa’s quarter: “foundation in education.” New investments and initiatives, like universal all day pre-K, are needed to give our students the edge they need to compete for good paying jobs. Iowa’s private school voucher program takes resources away from public schools, and has no accountability for how that money is being spent. We can pay for universal pre-K by no longer sending our taxpayer dollars to Iowa’s wealthiest families to pay for the private school tuition they were going to pay on their own anyway. As Governor, Rob will fight to bring more oversight over the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent each year on vouchers.
In the spirit of bi-partisanship this is an area where we can take things from all three candidates. Gluba is stating to bring the teachers and not the administrators or bureaucrats to the table. I would suggest to have a different set of meetings for the administrators and bureaucrats. It would be interesting to see what is needed and how the latter has been running things to put us in the deficit ranking. Once the needs are to be determined then solutions can be
Lahn is looking at what is being taught in the classroom. He states education not agenda. Look to be better than the private schools. Parents will send their students to public schools if they feel the public schools are better. Parents will send their kids to private schools for reasons of preference or quality. Lahn looks to eliminate the choice away from public schools being a quality issue.
Sand is suggesting new investment and initiatives. He specifically states universal pre-K. While many say this makes a difference, it could be said Iowa was number one in education prior to implementation preschool. Kindergarten was originally designated as the beginning of school. Voluntary preschool is chosen by parents through a number of different sources, Churches, Community Center and some in public schools.
Sand takes aim at the voucher program in Iowa. This is an easy target. There are times that students need to use private education to turn the student from a problem learner to a learner. Many will then return to the public schools.
Our thoughts:
Aside from always saying more money is needed for education, the deficiency needs to be defined. It could be determined that all those small rural schools that Iowa has closed saying small is detrimental, why did the rank fall? Technology must be used in the right way at the right time, not just a blanket solution. Voluntary reading tutors have proven to be more valuable for young students than computer learning. Cursive must be taught. There is becoming evidence that cursive helps certain learning skills.
Define the problem, gather information and lets fix the problem! Put these three thought processes together and we could get bipartisan results!
