President Trump signed an executive order last Wednesday that puts wind in the sails of the school choice movement.
The executive order directs the Department of Education to prioritize discretionary federal grants for school choice and to issue guidance on allocating funding for elementary and secondary school scholarships.
The order also directs Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to examine how military families could use federal funding to select the school that best meets their child’s needs. The interior secretary is also directed to submit a plan to Mr. Trump on how families with children in Bureau of Indian Education schools could use federal funding to attend the school of their choice.
The timing could not be better: the National Assessment of Educational Progress – commonly known as the “nation’s report card” – scores were also released last Wednesday. Reading scores dropped by 5 points for both 4th and 8th-grade students from 2019 to 2024. Math scores declined 3 points for 4th graders and 8 points for 8th graders over the same period.
These disappointing results come as the public school system has largely drained the $190 billion it received in federal emergency funding beginning in 2020.
Last week was also National School Choice Week.
School choice competition is the rising tide we need to lift all boats. Public schools generally improve when families have the power to vote with their feet.
Florida’s public schools, for example, drastically improved as the state expanded school choice over the past couple of decades. Florida has since jumped to the top of the national rankings after adjusting for differences in student demographics across states while spending 27% less than the national average per student. Florida now has over 500,000 students benefiting from school choice scholarships.
Families are celebrating education opportunities this year like never before. The teachers’ unions overplayed their hand by fighting to keep schools closed during the COVID era. Remote learning allowed families to witness ideological indoctrination in classrooms at scale for the first time in history.
There’s been more advancement in school choice in the past four years than in the preceding four decades. Twelve states have passed universal school choice policies since 2021, and 7 more states – Idaho, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming – could go all-in on school choice this year.
In fact, school choice advocates expect that a majority of K-12 students in the U.S. will reside in states with universal school choice by the end of 2025.
President Trump’s new executive order supercharges the school choice revolution.
However, the Department of Education’s amount of discretionary federal funding is limited. Congress needs to take action for more meaningful change.
The good news is that there’s a proposal in Congress to expand school choice nationally. The Educational Choice for Children Act is a bill that would create a federal tax credit scholarship program. It would create a federal tax benefit for contributing to K-12 scholarship-granting organizations, and the program would be neither run nor regulated by the federal Department of Education.
The bill passed the House Ways and Means Committee on a party-line vote last September. That vote was the first time a nationwide school choice bill passed out of a Congressional committee. The bill was just reintroduced by Republican lawmakers for the 119th Congress last week.
House Speaker Mike Johnson supports the legislation, and President Trump said he would sign it.
President Trump is leading the way to empower all American families with education freedom. Now, it’s up to Congress to do the same.
Corey DeAngelis is a senior fellow at American Culture Project and the executive director at Educational Freedom Institute. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
Reprinted with Permission from DC Journal – By Corey DeAngelis
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
The left is supposed to be all about choice, choice to end the life of the unborn in the womb, choice to mutilate children in the name of gender confusion, choice to identify as a cat or dog or bird, choice to identify as another race, etc., but when it comes to education they want only one choice for all the common folk, public indoctrination centers, known as schools. These centers of indoctrination are the factories that turn out future mindless, subservient individuals who are most likely to be the voter base of the democrat party. School choice is an absolute necessity to save children from the lifetime grasp of the leftists.
Before the Department of Education was established, school choice wasn’t much of an issue. The school you went to based on where you lived was probably pretty good. I know mine were. There have always been problematic schools but not nearly as many as there are now. I believe the DoE and teachers unions must share the bulk of the blame.
the problem with public schools is the teacher unions, they indoctrinate the lefts policies.
If our kids are to be saved from total brain rot ,they need to be freed from indoctrinating centers. Let the union have an apoplectic cow.
Boy, I wish I had a subsidized choice when I was sending my (step) children through school in the early 90’s. It was bad back then!! 35 years later it is finally happening.
Education in the US the past 65 years has gone down, down, down. Way down And 65 years ago it was nothing to write home about. The new math came in. Kids roaming through the classroom and everyone doing what he felt like was the beginning of the end of a good education for the children. The teachers were okay with no classroom structures. Parents were hippies themselves, and saw nothing wrong with more freedom in the classroom. And education has been left to the teachers and today they have added making Johnny into Jill without telling the parents. This is a money making scheme for the teachers. Because once Johnny starts taking gender altering hormones they will be a patient for life. And big Pharma is happy to provide that medication. It’s a form of sterilization to work on depopulation of the world to far into the future. Gates has been doing it for years in India and African countries. How? By making children infertile via so called polio vaccines but are in reality are sterilization shots. And the kicker is USAiD paid millions to Gates for these so called vaccines. And he was screaming loudly when Trump shut down USAID. Teachers the same, now that Trump wants to scrap the dept of education and give it back to the states. You think trans will be voted out in the dems states. Or will they assign more money for trans surgery? Without a vote of the people of course. Heaven forbid the people should have a say. The dem states are ruled with an iron fist. What we see is not true what we are seeing. What we hear is not what we are hearing. The governor will tell us what we see and hear. And he will via the state legislature set the curriculum what they think is good for the children. A great chance for the people to take back thise states. We have too, will we spare our kids from a life of hell. I think Trump doing away with the Dept of Education is a smart move. Throwing more money at it. Hasn’t worked in the past 65 years. Johnny and Jane still can’t read, can’t find Washington DC on a map or know who our president is. And forget about math. They made math racist. And are teaching them 2+2=5. Making zombies of the children and generations to come. They are teaching the children not to think. This is not from the last 4 years this has been going on for awhile. It’s time the parents advocate for their children and not the politicians and certainly not the teachers.
unions are for one reason to protect the lazy. shiftless, uncaring, crooked, time stealing ,uneducated ect. worker. in my days if you didnt do your job you got fired. as it should be. ever wonder why the afl-cio unions mascot is the two horses on their emblem??? it is the only animal that sleeps standing up .i never needed a union to protect me i did my job. i was there on time every day. unions have their own ways when the only they should be paying attention to is the PROPER education of our young. keep politics out of the education system. POWER TO THE PEOPLE first last and always. no wonder why our country is falling well behind the rest of the world. educate our children properly or hit the road. dont let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. F the teachers union. parents need more say in what is taught in our schools. teachers work for us NOT THE UNION !!! GO TRUMP
The school system has money which is used for pensions instead of educating the students.
As someone who went to public school, I can honestly say I received a third-rate education and that was 30 years ago. English and math teachers did not really take the time to make sure we got it except for a select few. School choice seems to be a good idea at least to me.
This EO is a good step in the right direction to liberate children from the gulags that public schools have become. But until it and ALL of the other EOs President Trump has executed since January 20th are made PERMANENT through legislation, they are only TEMPORARY band aids which a Dem President will gladly tear off. Relying on EOs to govern does not lead to stability but to back and forth chaos.
Long over due & needed
One president wanted this country to be overwhelmed with non English speaking students stressing and depriving the U.S. born citizen students while Donald Trump is looking out for the American born citizen or American immigrant who came to this country legally and for their benefit for their rights and privilege to educate their minds without unsatisfactory teaching methods and conditions. One president will go down in history as a great president and the other president will go down in infamy as one if not the worst president ever to take office in this country.
The leftoid teachers unions have fought freedom of school choice tooth and claw because they knew that the results would shame them. Its important to keep in mind that home schooling isnt what it was in the 90s: an overworked mom with sleep deprivation heroically teaching her kids in far podunck. Its much different today. You buy into a franchise of your choosing which includes group settings with likeminded folks. Classical Conversations is one such option.
So have we thought out this pro choice to the end. America has spent billions for elaborate school facilities. So now we are going to clean out what..”half”? of the students to another building for choice schooling. So we hire another whole cadre of teachers for those new choice buildings. And they fill these new choice schools with similar liberal teaching materials that are available for approval. Remember that which the govt subsidizes it must and will control. This is a death knell for Christian education especially controlling education content and hiring practices (homosexuals?). Why not just abolish the Dept of Education as is being discussed and return education to local school boards. That’s how we sent men to the moon.
Abolish NEA! Put states in charge of student education.
Go states rights!
Here in OR our students are at the bottom of the nation-and in 2023 they decided since most high schoolers weren’t able to pass the tests before graduation, they’d just get rid of the tests altogether! I graduated from high school in 1977and the schools were bad. Now, they are worse. The old “pay teachers more” scheme CLEARLY has not worked. The Teachers Union has to go!! The best teachers have gotten burned out and retired, new ones don’t stay. Parents expect teachers to parent their children. Abolish the DOE (Linda can do it!!), defund the union and give the money to the states to educate their own students, with NO EXTRA federal money going to states. Power is back tot he parents, let’s see what they’ll do with it.
Public schools are not the answer, and any federal funding would be cut off if recipients didn’t comply with insane and destructive federal mandates when the Rats steal another election.
This could be the best thing that Trump has done.Here in California,taxpayers spend $24K per kid for very expensive day care.I doubt that more than 10% of time kids attend is spent in actual education.Arizona spends $7K per kid for vouchers,vs $24K for CA govt.I doubt that Trump can change California,with teacher’s unions being one of the largest owners of the state govt.
Around 1980 the Department of Education was established. Basically government control of education. School books started to be edited and programs like “Common Core” removed conservative truths, installing liberal ideology. The Left Wing Socialists (Communist) used this as a method to infiltrate and indoctrinate our children.
The entire Department of Education needs abolished (along with the Teachers Union). Control needs to go back to the states. Then maybe they will start teaching things like how the Bolsheviks took over free Russia turning it Communist. Then maybe, history will not repeat itself here in America. Maybe.
It’s way past time that every kid in the United States receives a quality education. Sadly the public school system has been failing for at least 30 years and there is just no excuse. Democrats have been (are) unwilling to support school choice because of the captive funding, support, and campaign help, provided by unions.
What kind of a lowlife politician commits intercity kids to a grossly substandard public school system education, so that they get a continual flow or campaign donations and unwavering support for whatever crazy policies they propose? Yes, I know they are called Democrats. What I don’t understand is why any parent, grand parent, aunt or uncle of a school age child would support or ever vote for such a politician? We all have a stake in this fight and a failing public school system is unacceptable!
The weak link in public education is teachers’ unions. Even without unions, if the pay rate for teachers is based on how many students they teach, placing the largest number of students in each class becomes too tempting. The system needs to be reoriented and compensation based upon student success.
Get rid of Randi Weingarten she is the worst thing that has happened to our education system along with the Education Department.
We have 2 big educational problems. One is the capture of the public school systems and schools of education by the left. Even so there are many excellent teachers and administrators out there and if you are lucky your kids will be in those classrooms. But even if you have the best school situation, if the family is a mess, the student probably won’t thrive. And the vultures of mind pollution are ready to pounce on innocent kids through their screen time.
We need to strengthen families (which means we need to return to God who invented families and gave guidelines for stability and thriving) while we reform the educational system. Otherwise we will just have better educated sinners.
Agree with DMK. We need legislation to enact and enshrine all these executive orders. Until then, these EOs are merely bandaids to be ripped off at a later date. Let Congress get off their backsides and do their jobs.
Trump stated today that 35 states are doing okay & that is the other 15 states that drag USA down to last place in world. And he blamed New York & California to name two bad states. My question is, how much education costs are going back to states & how many states will be able to fund this? Or is this way to drop Fed spending by pushing costs to the states.
AMAC Censored a previous reply and my reply to it. No profanity, No call for violence but still CENSORED. Why bother. When my AMAC. Membership expires, I won’t renew it. I received message waiting for review (CENSORSHIP). CHRIS
I would like to see explanation of Musk saying that US sent $50 million for condums to HAMAS & why and what Biden dept. approved that? Trump comment on this?
Saw today that Trump wants to abolish FEMA . And in press briefing he said that FEMA spent $59 Million on migrants in NYC, while nothing for North Carolina . I think he is wrong about NC help as I have seen stories & videos of FEMA on the NC ground. Does Trump plan to save money by never having Federal help for emergency disasters or what is his plan? I worry that Trump does not understand the importance of NATO either & might make a wrong decision in that arena.