WASHINGTON (AP) — The election of Donald Trump brings a school choice ally back to the White House, this time with a Republican-controlled Senate — and possibly the House — that could provide greater support for proposals that failed during his first term.
Although proposals to expand private schooling suffered bulky defeats in several states, Trump’s victory has sparked modern optimism among advocates for supporting school choice at the federal level. One of her top priorities: tax credits for donations to organizations that provide private school scholarships.
Jim Blew, who served as an assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education in the first Trump administration, said he is confident the modern Congress will green lithe ideas like tax credits for scholarships.
“The new members all clearly support school choice, and I think that will change the dynamic,” said Blew, co-founder of the conservative Defense of Freedom Institute.
Choosing a private school includes several ways to employ tax dollars to support education outside of customary public schools, including vouchers, education savings accounts, and tax credit scholarships. The idea of giving this option to all families regardless of income — known as universal private school choice — has grown in popularity in recent years and is now enshrined in law in a dozen states. Nearly three dozen states have some form of private school choice.
Still, the concept faced resistance — and not just from groups like teachers unions, which have long advocated for keeping public money in public schools. Some conservatives in states with immense rural communities question the merits of the programs, citing the lack of private schools in sparsely populated areas. In these areas, public school districts are often the largest employers.
In Tuesday’s election, voters in Kentucky rejected a measure that would allow public funding for private school attendance, and Nebraska voted to partially repeal a law that uses taxpayer money to subsidize private education. A proposed constitutional amendment in Colorado that would have enshrined the “right of school choice” for school children was also defeated.
Concerns about diverting funds from public education appeared to be gaining traction in deep-red Kentucky and Nebraska. Ferial Pearson, the head of a Nebraska organization that advocates for public education, said she will continue to work to provide public schools “the support and resources they need to thrive.”
In Kentucky, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday that voters sent a clear message that taxpayer money should go to public schools.
“This should end any debate. And this should end all attempts to take money away from our public schools to send them to unaccountable private schools,” Beshear said at a news conference. He renewed his commitment to major pay raises for public school teachers and other school staff, as well as his plan to implement universal preschool across Kentucky.
Unsurprisingly to some observers, even states that voted for Trump took a stand against school choice.
“Especially in the wake of the pandemic, with all the school closures, learning loss and chronic absenteeism, parents want something different — but they also like their public schools,” said Liz Cohen, policy director at FutureEd, a nonpartisan research center at Georgetown University. “People want something new, but that doesn’t mean they want to get rid of everything.”
Cohen, who has studied the expansion of choice in private schools across the country, emphasized that decisions about a ballot measure “feel much more local and specific than who you choose as president.”
During his campaign, Trump touted school choice as a form of greater parental rights, aiming to counter what conservative critics call left-wing indoctrination in classrooms and promote a free-market approach to education.
One of his platform promises is to “serve as a champion for America’s homeschool families” and “protect the God-given right of every parent to be responsible for their children’s education.” He proposes giving homeschooling families the option to employ 529 college savings plans for their children’s education expenses, an option he proposed for private school families in his first semester.
This term, Trump named Betsy DeVos — an ardent supporter of school choice — as his education secretary. However, this administration has struggled to get its school choice proposals off the ground. An attempt to provide state tax credits for scholarship donations failed, as did proposals to cut billions of dollars from federal public school programs.
With a more positive Congress, these initiatives might have a better chance. U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana and the leading candidate to chair the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has supported tax incentives for scholarship donations. And Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said he would focus the next Congress on “maximizing school choice for parents and holding bright university administrators accountable.”
Some conservatives argue that there are benefits to leaving the matter to the states.
“I … worry that we’re going back to the political dynamics of Trump’s first term, which were very bad for the charter school sector in blue states,” said Michael Petrilli, the president of the Fordham Institute, a right-wing think tank. “Because Trump strongly supported school choice, including charter schools, he made these issues radioactive on the left, sidelining or silencing reform-minded Democrats.”
In other races across the country, preliminary results showed that school board candidate victories in Los Angeles and Chicago were centered on candidates who favored customary public education over alternatives such as charters.
In Texas, several pro-voucher lawmakers backed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott won their races. Abbott had tried to unseat Republican lawmakers who voted against a plan to subsidize private school tuition with public money. The newly elected candidates could give Abbott the votes needed to pass the voucher bill.
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Associated Press writer Bruce Schreiner contributed to this report from Louisville, Kentucky. ___
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