Trump order could boost school-choice opportunities

Education

Ray Carter | January 30, 2025

Trump order could boost school-choice opportunities

Ray Carter

With a newly signed executive order, President Donald Trump is seeking to use federal funds to boost school choice opportunities across the country, including in Oklahoma.

In the order, Trump noted, “Parents want and deserve the best education for their children. But too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K-12 school.”

He noted that this year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests showed that 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math.

Oklahoma’s results on the NAEP test were significantly below the national average, despite a massive increase in funding for state public schools.

Against that backdrop, Trump’s order noted it is important to boost children’s access to as many educational opportunities as possible, pointing to school-choice programs that have been enacted in several states, including Oklahoma.

“When our public education system fails such a large segment of society, it hinders our national competitiveness and devastates families and communities,” Trump’s order stated. “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. These States have highlighted the most promising avenue for education reform: educational choice for families and competition for residentially assigned, government-run public schools. The growing body of rigorous research demonstrates that well-designed education-freedom programs improve student achievement and cause nearby public schools to improve their performance.”

“It is the policy of my Administration to support parents in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children.” —President Donald Trump

The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program provides families with refundable tax credits of $5,000 to $7,500 per child. The largest credits go to families with the least income. During its first year of operation, the program benefited more than 27,000 children. A recent report showed there were far more beneficiaries from low-income families than from the program’s highest-income bracket.

To further boost opportunities, Trump’s executive order declared it is now the policy of his administration “to support parents in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children,” and ordered the U.S. Secretary of Education to issue guidance regarding how states can use federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives.

“The Secretary of Education shall include education freedom as a priority in discretionary grant programs, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law,” Trump’s order stated.

Biden Administration Used Federal Education Grants to Promote Its Agenda 

Though federal Title I grants and similar programs are awarded based on population-based criteria, discretionary grants are often awarded based on criteria set by the U.S. Department of Education. Trump is not the first president to use those discretionary funds to advance favored causes.

In 2021, the Biden administration announced it would award education discretionary grants based in part on criteria that included “equity,” creating a “diverse educator workforce,” advancing “systemic change,” and similar then-trendy buzzwords associated with far-left causes.

At that time, liberal activists, including teacher-union officials, argued that having a teaching workforce consisting substantially of white women was fueling systemic racism in schools.

The Biden administration rules indicated that education grants would go to programs that provide “racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically inclusive pedagogical practice in educator preparation programs and professional development programs so that educators are better prepared to address bias in their classrooms.”

“Parents want and deserve the best education for their children. But too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K-12 school.” —President Donald Trump

The rules proposed by the Biden administration in 2021 tacitly indicated students were better off in settings where teachers and students were effectively racially segregated, saying that higher levels of student achievement had “been noted when students of color and educators of color share the classroom.”

The Biden administration rules also indicated that education grants would go to entities that addressed “climate change,” “school diversity,” “justice policy,” and “voting access and registration,” among other things.

The initial draft of the Biden administration’s rules declared that “LGBTQ+ students experienced “higher rates of discipline compared to their peers,” and stated that addressing that issue could be a focus of grant awards.

Trump’s School-Choice Order Also Benefits Military Families, American Indian Children 

In addition to using federal education grants to boost school-choice opportunities, Trump’s order also focused on using other federal agency funds to benefit specific families.

Trump’s order required the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services to issue guidance “regarding whether and how States receiving block grants for families and children from the Department, including the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), can use them to expand educational choice and support families who choose educational alternatives to governmental entities, including private and faith-based options.”

The U.S. Secretary of Defense was similarly ordered to “review any available mechanisms under which military-connected families may use funds from the Department of Defense to attend schools of their choice, including private, faith-based, or public charter schools, and submit a plan to the President describing such mechanisms and the steps that would be necessary to implement them beginning in the 2025-26 school year.”

And a similar order was issued to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to “review any available mechanisms under which families of students eligible to attend” Bureau of Indian Education schools “may use their Federal funding for educational options of their choice.”

Trump’s action drew praise from those who have long advocated for increasing educational opportunities to families from all income levels. One advocate argued that members of Congress should follow Trump’s lead by approving legislation that would provide federal tax credits to those who support private-school scholarship funds for working-class families.

“President Trump has a chance to be the School Choice President and with today’s executive order, he shows he intends to take it,” said Tommy Schultz, CEO of the American Federation for Children. “Now Congress has the chance to pass the Educational Choice for Children Act so that the President can sign his campaign promise into law. For a generation, our nation’s education system has been held hostage by bureaucrats and schooling unions who care only about preserving their own power, not the needs of American students. The time is now for school choice in every state, and this order is a key step in that direction. We share President Trump’s goal of passing a nationwide tax credit scholarship and returning control of education funding to the states and families. We are eager to work together to ensure that all families, especially lower-income families, in every state, can enjoy the blessing of education freedom.”

Ray Carter Director, Center for Independent Journalism

Ray Carter

Director, Center for Independent Journalism

Ray Carter is the director of OCPA’s Center for Independent Journalism. He has two decades of experience in journalism and communications. He previously served as senior Capitol reporter for The Journal Record, media director for the Oklahoma House of Representatives, and chief editorial writer at The Oklahoman. As a reporter for The Journal Record, Carter received 12 Carl Rogan Awards in four years—including awards for investigative reporting, general news reporting, feature writing, spot news reporting, business reporting, and sports reporting. While at The Oklahoman, he was the recipient of several awards, including first place in the editorial writing category of the Associated Press/Oklahoma News Executives Carl Rogan Memorial News Excellence Competition for an editorial on the history of racism in the Oklahoma legislature.

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