CV NEWS FEED // President Donald Trump issued an executive order Wednesday “expanding educational freedom and opportunity for families” and pledging that his administration will fully support legislative efforts to achieve school choice.
“It is the policy of my Administration to support parents in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children,” Trump’s order states. It directs the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, and other agencies of the federal government to prioritize and facilitate school choice.
The order also endorses school choice legislation already passed by elected lawmakers in a number of states, holding those measures up as a model for future national efforts.
“Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Education shall issue guidance regarding how States can use Federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives,” the order directs.
“The Secretary of Education shall include education freedom as a priority in discretionary grant programs, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law,” the order adds, directing the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Education to “each submit a plan to the President” within 90 days that “makes recommendations regarding using relevant discretionary grant programs to expand education freedom for America’s families and teachers.”
The order goes on to direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to produce new guidance on the possibility of working and low-income families being allowed to use educational block grants “to expand educational choice and support families who choose educational alternatives to governmental entities, including private and faith-based options.”
Trump also directed the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Interior to explore similar options for military families and families with children eligible to attend Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools.
Trump’s executive action supporting school choice comes after several years of steadily increasing public support for education freedom. Starting in 2020, many families found themselves at odds with education officials and teachers unions in debates over a series of unpopular and restrictive measures imposed in the name of stopping the spread of COVID-19.
Parents throughout the country also discovered certain controversial elements in their children’s curricula during the time when schools were shut down and mothers and fathers had more opportunity to watch online at-home learning sessions assigned by public education institutions.
In addition, some parents who attended public school board meetings to express their concerns were met with hostility and suspicion, especially by officials connected with the Biden administration’s public education apparatus.
As CatholicVote reported in October 2021, Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland deployed Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and Department of Justice (DOJ) officers “to ‘identify’ and ‘prosecute’ ‘threats’ connected with protests against public school officials.”
“The move seems to be the Biden administration’s response to a recent letter from National School Boards Association which called for the Patriot Act to be enforced against those parents whom they apparently classified as terrorists,” CatholicVote’s report noted.
In a national scandal, it was later revealed that Garland had directly collaborated with teachers union officials to produce his public announcement threatening DOJ and FBI actions against parents who expressed their concerns at school board meetings.
Many elected officials decried the Biden DOJ’s actions as being designed to have a chilling effect on parents pursuing their right to direct their children’s education.
In a preamble stating its purpose, Trump’s executive order this week states that parents “want and deserve” the “best education” for their kids, citing data showing that “many children do not thrive” in “government-run” schools. Seventy percent of K-12 students in the U.S. were found to be “below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math,” according to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the order points out.
“Moreover, geographically based school assignments exacerbate the cost of housing in districts with preferred schools,” the order goes on, “straining the finances of millions of American families sacrificing for their children’s futures.”
“When our public education system fails such a large segment of society, it hinders our national competitiveness and devastates families and communities,” the order states. “For this reason, more than a dozen States have enacted universal K-12 scholarship programs, allowing families — rather than the government — to choose the best educational setting for their children.”
The order called the school choice legislation put in place those states “the most promising avenue for education reform: educational choice for families and competition for residentially assigned, government-run public schools.”