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- Trump signed an executive order aimed at expanding school voucher programs.
- He escalated a state-level fight by proposing redirecting federal funds from public schools to private schools.
- Supporters say vouchers give parents more choice in their kids’ education, while skeptics say they sabotage public education.
The push to provide public money to parents to send their children to schools outside their district has been raging at the state level for years. President Donald Trump is taking it up a notch.
Trump’s recent executive order aimed at expanding school voucher programs has long been a priority for Republican lawmakers. Trump’s call to potentially redirect federal funds for that use would mark “a huge ideological shift” in the conversation, said Derek Black, a professor of law with a focus on education at the University of South Carolina.
“The federal government, since before we even had the United States Constitution, has put its weight behind trying to expand our public education system,” Black said.
The order called for federal agencies to determine whether they could redirect funding for states that receive federal block grants meant for public education, like the Child Care and Development Block Grant, to use instead for sending children to private and religious schools. Over 20 states are already using their taxpayer funds for voucher programs.
Advocates of vouchers lauded Trump’s executive order for investing in more educational options and strengthening parents’ role. Policy experts told BI that Trump’s plan would likely face resistance from both Democratic and some Republican-led states that have previously rejected school voucher proposals.
Savannah Newhouse, an Education Department spokesperson, told BI that the administration believes in “investing in meaningful activities that help public schools deliver high-quality education.”
Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick for education secretary, also said during her Thursday confirmation hearing that “public schools are the bedrock of our education” and that universal vouchers will help public schools become more competitive. The administration has not yet introduced any proposals aimed at boosting public school education. Trump signed an executive order intended to ensure curricula in public classrooms align with his political ideologies.
Black said that diverting funding to private schools, by definition, “may very well hurt the public school system.”
The growth of the school-choice movement
Christopher Lubienski, an education policy professor at Indiana University, told BI that the idea that involving parents in their kids’ educations would improve achievement dates back to the early 1990s. Now, he said, the focus is on providing more choices for students beyond public school. The main criticism is that it could hurt students whose only option is public school.
“There’s the concern that families that don’t have other options or can’t get into a private school are going to be the ones left in public schools,” Lubienski said.
Most US students go to public schools, many of which are supported by hefty local tax revenues in wealthy school districts. Lubienski said that families in rural areas with fewer school options rely more heavily on the federal block grants Trump is targeting, and that they would suffer the most from funding diversions.
He added that while voucher programs began with income thresholds, they have since morphed into universal programs in some states, benefiting some more affluent families who would’ve sent their kids to private school anyway.
Supporters of Trump’s executive order said it’s a step in the right direction for the US education system. Robert Enlow, president and CEO of EdChoice — a nonprofit that advocates for voucher programs — told BI that Trump’s executive order is intended to “give parents more power and to help states do their job better, rather than to get in the way of states.”
Enlow added that he thinks Trump’s executive order will make it easier for students to directly access federal funds through the block grants.
“Why must it go through the federal government and then go through the state government, then go through local government, where everyone gets cuts? Why can’t it be given directly to families? And I think that’s what I really like about what he’s doing,” Enlow said.
Keri Rodrigues, cofounder and president of the National Parents Union, which advocates for policies that increase access to high-quality education, said that she’s concerned about the potential outcome of redirecting public funds toward private schools.
“We’re going to just push all this money down to the states and depend that they’re going to make the right choices and do the right things without leadership, without standards, without guidance and direction and best practice,” Rodrigues told BI. “It’s absurd.”
The political limitations of Trump’s plan
Lubieski said that Trump can only do so much without congressional approval.
“It remains to be seen whether or not the White House goes through Congress, or they try to do this more through executive action,” Lubienski said, referring to allocating more federal funding toward school vouchers. “So it’s a political strategy that I don’t think it’s yet clear which one they’re going to choose.”
It’s not only blue states that might be resistant to Trump’s proposals. Voters in Kentucky and Nebraska — two states that Trump won — rejected ballot measures that would have redirected funds from public schools to voucher programs.
Black said that if the Trump administration tries to allocate funds without congressional approval, there will likely be litigation. More broadly, he said the implications of prioritizing private and religious schools over public schools raise a red flag.
“The entire premise of the public school system, going back to Jefferson, going back to John Adams, was it was the common ground upon which democracy would develop,” Black said.
“Even if you still have public schools, if people have one political stripe, or one religion, if they all leave, that ends up leaving the people of the other political stripes left alone in the public school,” he added. “And that’s problematic.”
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