education for our modern economy

Dave Beckwith will fight for parental rights, expand vocational training and apprenticeships, and make sure Washington serves students and families, not the other way around.

For too long, Washington has treated education as a one-size-fits-all system, funneling students toward a four-year college degree as the only acceptable measure of success, while the trades, the skilled workforce, and the technical careers that actually power our economy go begging for talent. The result is a generation burdened with student debt, a workforce with critical skills gaps, and millions of Americans who were never given a real choice about their own futures. Dave Beckwith intends to change that.

Dave believes every family should have the right to direct their child's education, whether that is a public school, a charter school, a private school, a vocational program, or a homeschool curriculum. As a homeschool dad of three, he does not just support school choice as a policy position. He has lived it. Parents know their children better than any federal agency does. Dave believes school should do what it was always meant to do: give every child a strong foundation in reading, writing, and math, and prepare them for the road ahead. Instilling values and beliefs in children is the sacred responsibility of parents and families alone. That is not Washington's job, and it never should have been.

Equally important is restoring the dignity and opportunity of the skilled trades. Dave will champion federal investment in vocational training and apprenticeship programs that connect students directly to high-paying careers in construction, manufacturing, technology, and the defense industry. A young person who graduates from an apprenticeship program debt-free and earning a competitive wage is not a lesser success story than one who graduates from a four-year university, and it is time Washington started acting like it.