Dive Brief:
- President Donald Trump issued an executive order late Wednesday setting out school choice as a major priority for the U.S. Department of Education as well as other federal agencies involved in K-12 education.
- In a separate executive order issued the same day, Trump directed multiple agencies to cease “federal funding or support for illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”
- These two new executive orders come as Trump has unleashed a wave of K-12 related policy moves — from immigration enforcement to removing DEI initiatives — just a little over a week into his second term.
Dive Insight:
The school choice executive order calls for the Education Department to prepare guidance for states within 60 days on how they can tap into federal funding formulas to bolster K-12 education choice programs. He also directed the department to develop plans for using its discretionary grant programs "to expand education freedom for America's families and teachers."
Trump also directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to issue guidance within 90 days on how states can use HHS block grants, including the Child Care and Development Block Grant, to expand school choice for families who want options including “private and faith-based options.”
Additionally, the order gives the U.S. Department of Defense 90 days to review options for military families who may want to use DoD dollars to “attend schools of their choice, including private, faith-based, or public charter schools” for the 2025-26 school year. The include includes a similar directive for the Interior Department regarding Bureau of Indian Education Schools.
Meanwhile, Trump's executive order on "ending radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling" calls for eliminating federal funding or support for what it labels "illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology."
It defined “discriminatory equity ideology” as an "ideology that treats individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals, and minimizes agency, merit, and capability in favor of immoral generalizations."
Students, in recent years and in many cases, have been, "compelled to adopt identities as either victims or oppressors solely based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics," the order said.
The directive will also reestablish the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission created in his first term “to promote patriotic education.”
The school choice executive order came the same day as disappointing results were released for the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The 2024 assessment showed students are trailing behind pre-pandemic levels in math and reading. Trump's executive order in fact cited the NAEP findings, saying “too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K-12 school.”
The order's immediate impact on the education landscape will likely be fairly limited, said Chester Finn Jr., a distinguished senior fellow and president emeritus at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. That’s “because the big programs that control most of the K-12 money at the Department of Ed are prescribed by statutes in ways that don’t work for school choice.”
“The portion of the Department of Ed’s dollars that could be directly affected by this is very small,” Finn said. It would take “major congressional overhaul” to make any significant spending changes from the department in favor of school choice, he said, given the agency’s largest funding programs like Title I and special education are controlled by statute.
Meanwhile, Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., chair of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and Tim Scott, R-S.C., reintroduced a bill on Wednesday that would create a charitable donation incentive — up to $10 billion in annual tax credits — for individuals and businesses funding scholarships that help students cover their public and private K-12 education expenses.
Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Neb filed a companion bill, the Educational Choice for Children Act., in the House with 26 Republican co-sponsors.
Some school choice advocates, including the America First Policy Institute, are celebrating the momentum.
The Educational Choice for Children Act “is a significant step towards fulfilling President Trump's promise to provide school choice to every family in America. Expanding scholarship access for K-12 students via this bill ensures every child has the opportunity to thrive, regardless of their family's income or ZIP code,” said Erika Donalds, chair of AFPI’s Center for Education Opportunity.
On the flip side, some education organizations and teacher unions have expressed concern about the federal push for school choice policies.
The Education Law Center said in a statement that “President Trump added to his spate of unacceptable executive orders one that forces harmful, unaccountable private school voucher programs on a nation that does not want or benefit from them.”
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a statement that this effort is “likely [an] illegal scheme to diminish choice and deny classrooms resources to pay for tax cuts for billionaires.” AFT is the nation's second largest teachers union.
“We already know that vouchers go mostly to wealthy families whose kids are already in private school. This order hijacks federal money used to level the playing field for poor and disadvantaged kids and hands it directly to unaccountable private operators — a tax cut for the rich,” Weingarten said. “It diminishes community schools and the services they provide. It dilutes crucial literacy and arts education grants.”
