A little more than a month before November’s election, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump campaigned in Milwaukee, a politically blue, mid-sized city that in many ways was the cradle of the modern school choice movement in America. Trump declared that the right of parents to choose where to educate their children, regardless of zip code, “the civil rights issue of our age.” It’s a fair assertion given the dismal state of public education — particularly in Wisconsin’s most-populous city, where, according to the latest national report card, just 9 percent of fourth-graders are considered proficient in reading.
The choice in the election, Trump said, was clear.
“Democrats want to keep minority students in government-run schools,” he said during a speech before advocates of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, championed by then-Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson and launched in 1990 as a national innovator in school voucher programs.
For all their talk about “choice,” Democrats sure do hate giving families options outside of the prison-like box that public education has become in places like Milwaukee. The public education industrial complex has fought tooth and nail to kill school choice, particularly on the funding front. They loathe the idea of public education dollars following students to schools and services best suited to meet their needs — to alternate public schools, charter schools, private schools, homeschooling or other options.
Despite record taxpayer funds pumped into Wisconsin’s public schools over the past several years, the Badger State’s leftist governor and most of his fellow Democrats have sought to smother a popular and growing parental choice program that has moved beyond Milwaukee to all corners of the state. God forbid taxpayer dollars be diverted to religious or charter schools not beholden to state educrats and powerful teachers unions, who, coincidentally have written a lot of checks to Gov. Tony Evers’ election campaigns.
Throughout the presidential campaign, Trump, a passionate backer of school choice, vowed to “save American education.” Less than two weeks into his second term, the 47th president is making good on his promises.
‘Parents, Not the Government’
On Thursday, as an exclamation point to National School Choice Week, Trump signed an executive order “expanding educational freedom and opportunity for families.” The order, first and foremost, sets a new tone on school choice that had been silenced over the past four years during the reign of union supplicant President Joe Biden. The directive recognizes that “parents, not the government, play a fundamental role in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children.”
To that end, the president’s order:
› Directs the Secretary of Education to prioritize school choice programs in the Department’s discretionary grant programs.
› Requires the Department of Health and Human Services to issue guidance on how states receiving block grants for children and families can use those funds to support educational alternatives, including private and faith-based options.
› Directs the Secretary of Defense to submit a plan to the President for how military families can use Department of Defense funds to send their children to the school of their choice.
› Directs the Secretary of the Interior to submit a plan to the President for how families with students attending Bureau of Indian Education schools can use federal funds to send their children to the school of their choice.
“Every child deserves the best education available, regardless of their zip code. However, for generations, our government-assigned education system has failed millions of parents, students, and teachers,” Trump wrote. “This Executive Order begins to rectify that wrong by opening up opportunities for students to attend the school that best fits their needs.”
‘Students are Struggling’
The executive order notes the woeful results from the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly referred to as The Nation’s Report Card, released this week. The annual assessment finds 70 percent of eighth-graders in 2024 reading below the proficient level, 72 percent testing below proficient in math. By comparison, the percentage of eighth-graders reading below the basic level was the largest in the history of the assessment, and the percentage of fourth-graders scoring below basic was the largest in 20 years.
“Overall, student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic performance,” National Center for Education Statistics Commissioner Peggy G. Carr said in a press release. “Where there are signs of recovery, they are mostly in math and largely driven by higher-performing students. Lower-performing students are struggling, especially in reading.”
In Wisconsin, students statewide tested slightly above the national average, but with just 31 percent of fourth-graders testing at or above proficient in reading, that distinction affords little consolation. Milwaukee Public Schools continued to post alarming scores on the report card, with just 12 percent of students performing at or above the math assessment’s proficient level.
Jill Underly, Wisconsin’s leftist state superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction, once again demanded more taxpayer money to fix badly broken public schools. Following the release of the troubling reading and math assessments, she called for acting with “greater urgency” after four years of failure.
“We have the power to achieve lasting change, but it starts with a fundamental commitment to properly investing in our public schools, rather than continuing the cycle of underfunding them, as our legislature has chosen to do for far too long,” said Underly, who, backed by big-money teachers unions and other leftist donors, is seeking a second term this year.
“Underfunding” is a suspect descriptor. Wisconsin schools received billions of dollars in Covid relief following years of rising state revenue. It’s never enough. Milwaukee Public Schools spends more than $18,000 per pupil, even as the district’s enrolment has fallen off over the past 25 years, according to a review by the Badger Institute.
From its inception, Wisconsin’s pioneering parental choice program has been under attack. It has been the subject of never-ending lawsuits from liberals trying to kill it. The Obama Department of Justice, assisted by the leftist ACLU, hounded the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program for years in what one constitutional law expert described as an “unethical, improper, and disturbing” investigation. Evers has repeatedly attempted to freeze enrollment in the successful program. And school choice, proponents warn, is on the line in this spring’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race, promising to again be the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history to determining whether liberals or conservatives control the state’s final arbiter.
‘Students Not Systems’
Longtime Wisconsin parental choice advocate Jim Bender said that despite all the challenges, the national trend toward school choice is picking up steam. The abhorrent scores in the latest national assessments exposing the damage done by teachers union-led school closures during Covid will serve to create more momentum for choice moving forward.
“So, the optics of a change from the federal level is a step in right direction,” Bender, education consultant for the Badger Institute, told The Federalist this week. “But as somebody that has worked to initiate school choice programs and get them fully implemented, a federal package should be viewed with the right perspective knowing that the states are still the main drivers of education reform.”
Bender said the overall K-12 package is “more ceremonial than substantive,” because the federal government’s portion of funding is small in comparison to state and local sources. On its own, he said, that directive will have a “hard time moving the needle.”
“However, in creative states it may offer some additional support to existing programs,” the education consultant said, cautioning that opponents are sure to quickly pick legal fights if faith-based schools are involved.
The military and Bureau of Indian Education portions of the order could “provide tangible opportunities for families,” because the federal government has more control over those options. Only about half of students (53%) attending BIE schools graduate high school, according to the bureau.
What must be refreshing for supporters after four years of an adversarial executive branch is an administration that even bothers to celebrate National School Choice Week. According to a celebratory Department of Education press release this week, more than 14 million students nationwide are educated outside traditional public schools “and benefit from education options and freedom.”
Robert Enlow, president and CEO of EdChoice, called Trump’s order to prioritize and expand school choice programs a “crucial step toward empowering families and giving them greater control over their children’s education.”
“This initiative reflects a commitment to funding students not systems and to ensuring the proper role of the federal government in education,” Enlow said in a press release this week.
‘The Demand is Clear’
Americans definitely support the concept of freedom in education. A poll last month by the Yes. every kid. foundation, an organization that advocates for the expansion of school choice programs, found 68 percent of those surveyed — including 75% of K-12 parents – support access to any public school in their state, regardless of where they live. And 63 percent of all respondents (75% of K-12 parents) support education savings accounts (ESAs) to pay for private school tuition and other education-related expenses. Support has only increased after the lockdown horrors of the Covid years. A 2023 poll from RealClear Opinion Research found 71 percent of Americans support school choice.
Just look at the success in another Midwest state, Wisconsin’s neighbor. Led by Gov. Kim Reynolds and the Republican-led legislature, Iowa is now a robust ESA state.
“The demand is clear, and Iowa’s response has been nothing short of impressive, with over 30,000 students now participating in the program,” school choice proponents wrote in a September op-ed in the Des Moines Register. “The phased approach to eligibility in Iowa ensures that the transition to universal access is smooth and sustainable.
On Thursday, the Tennessee legislature passed the Education Freedom Act, a plan to create 20,000 scholarships — at about $7,000 each — to assist families who want to send their children to private schools.
As the Tennessee Star reported, Trump was one of the bill’s more vocal cheerleaders, applauding legislators for “working hard to pass School Choice this week, which I totally support.”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.