FOR a president, making education policy can be like running a school with thousands of unruly pupils. He can goad states and coax school districts, offering gold stars to those who shape up. But if a class is defiant he can do little. Just 12.7% of the $600bn spent on public education annually is spent by the federal government. The rest is split almost equally between states and the 13,500 school districts. Many presidents end up like forlorn head teachers. America spends more per child than any big rich country but its pupils perform below their peers on international tests.

Despite the constraints, George W. Bush and Barack Obama both used the regulatory power of the federal government to spur reform. Through the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, the Republican president launched a flurry of standardised tests, sanctioning schools whose pupils failed to progress. Through his “Race to the Top” initiative, announced in 2009, the Democratic one offered cash to states in exchange for reforms such as higher standards and evaluating teachers based on pupils’ results. Similar policies were implemented by 43 states in exchange for federal waivers from the testing mandates of NCLB. Mr Obama has also championed charter schools, the part-publicly funded and independently run schools hated by teachers’ unions.

But the era of regulation-driven school reform is now coming to an end, for two reasons. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), passed in December as a replacement for NCLB, hands back power to states over standards and tests, making it hard for a future president to seek to micromanage school reform. And in any case, neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton are inclined to imitate the past two presidents. Mr Trump is “totally against” and “may cut” the Department of Education. Declaring that “it is time to have school choice”, in September he pledged to give states $20bn to fund school vouchers for parents of poor children.

Mrs Clinton has also been keen to defer to states. This is partly because she knows ESSA shrinks her room for manoeuvre. But she has also made a political calculation. Unlike Mr Obama, she is backed by teachers’ unions. They oppose tying teacher evaluations to pupils’ results and want to keep the caps on charter schools in place in the 23 out of 43 states that permit them. Mrs Clinton has been studiously ambiguous on such limits, to the regret of reformist Democrats, who note that in most cities charter schools outperform ordinary public schools. Though she has sent Tim Kaine, her vice-presidential nominee, to mollify funders of charters, they are braced for a change of tone. Charters will still expand, but they will receive less federal support. “We reformers have had a big tailwind under Obama, which we’re unlikely to have under Clinton”, says Whitney Tilson, an investor and education philanthropist.

The Democratic candidate’s wish to neutralise the toxic politics of school reform has another, less cynical cause. She wants to focus on what comes before and after school, the “bookends” of pre-school and higher education. America “has fallen off the pace when it comes to early childhood education”, says Steve Barnett of the National Institute for Early Education Research, at Rutgers University. About half of all three- to four-year-olds are enrolled in pre-school, less than in many poor countries (see article) and one of the lowest shares in the OECD. And yet the country is third-highest in the club of mostly rich countries for the share of net income spent on child care. In 31 states a place at a child-care centre is more expensive than at a public university. America is the only country in the OECD without universally guaranteed maternity leave.

Both Mr Trump and Mrs Clinton have pledged to do something about all this. Asked last year about federal funding for pre-school, the Republican said, “well, I don’t like it”. But in September, prodded by his daughter, Ivanka, Mr Trump said he wanted to allow the costs of child care to be deducted from income taxes and to introduce six weeks of paid maternity leave.

Mrs Clinton can point to a longer commitment to early childhood development. As first lady of Arkansas in the 1980s she set up one of the country’s first schemes to help poor parents educate their toddlers at home. Today she says she will introduce 12 weeks of guaranteed paid family leave, and ensure that child care costs no more than 10% of a family’s income, in part by offering a tax credit. She also wants to use federal funds to provide pre-school for all parents who want it for their children.