Trump calls for federal education dollars to “follow the student” to promote universal school choice

Former President Trump is proposing that federal education dollars “follow the student” in his possible second term as he pushes his “universal school choice” policy, insisting he “totally” supports it.

The former president defended school choice last week, making his strongest case yet for the movement at the federal level.

“We want federal education dollars to follow the student, instead of maintaining a bloated and radical bureaucracy in Washington, DC,” Trump said at an event in Milwaukee.

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“If you want a better education for your child, Kamala Harris stands in your way,” Trump said. “Kamala and the Radical Left Democratic Party want to trap black and Hispanic children in family government. I think that’s really the reason.”

The former president said he believes school choice “is the civil rights issue of our time.”

Former President Trump (Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

“A child’s destiny should be determined by his love for education, by his parents, by so many factors. But it can’t be determined by a zip code,” Trump said. “And no parent should be forced to send their child to a failing government-run school.”

Trump’s universal school choice would allow parents to send their children to public, private or religious schools.

Trump’s position is reflected in the Republican Party’s 2024 platform, which school choice advocates say recognizes a role for both federal and state governments in expanding tax credit programs and education savings accounts, which currently support more than a million K-12 students in the United States. serve the entire country.

The Trump campaign said school choice “leads to higher graduation rates, greater parent satisfaction and involvement, lower costs, greater competition among schools, and higher reading and math test scores.”

Currently, 11 states have universal school choice, and 32 states and Washington DC have at least one private school choice program – but 18 states have none.

“Before President Trump took office, zero states had universal school choice policies. Now nearly a dozen have, and that’s in large part due to the voice and visibility he provided in elevating the issue to the national consciousness during COVID — but even before that,” former Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway told me to Fox News Digital.

“There is an increase in the number and needs of America’s schoolchildren regarding alternatives to conventional public schools,” Conway said. “There is increasing resistance among Kamala Harris and Democrats to putting these kinds of alternatives — these kinds of options and choices — in the hands of parents.”

Across the aisle, Democrats are expanding their opposition to school choice, and teachers unions rejoiced when Vice President Kamala Harris tapped Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, hailing the ticket as a major victory for public educators.

Walz is a former member of the teachers union and has said he opposes the school choice agenda.

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Teachers unions have pushed hard to extend school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, with many districts closed for more than a year.

Former Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos said Walz was a “5-alarm firebrand for parents and students.”

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos attends an event at the White House on August 12, 2020. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

As for the Democratic Party platform, Democrats support ensuring that all children “regardless of zip code” have access to “high-quality public K-12 education and that college is affordable for every American.”

Democrats want to drive federal dollars to public schools in an effort to “expand opportunities for higher education and job training.”

Harris’ campaign did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment, but its website lays out its plan to “ensure parents can afford high-quality child care and preschool for their children.”

Harris also plans to focus on working to “end the unfair burden of student loan debt and fighting to make higher education more affordable so that college can be a ticket to the middle class.”

Harris said she would work to “scale up programs that create good career paths for non-college graduates.”

But Conway explained that parents are focused on playing a bigger role in their child’s education – now more than ever.

“There is a continuation of the parental rights renaissance that started during COVID and spilled over into 2021 and into the election of Glenn Youngkin over Terry McAuliffe in 2021 and continues unabated in so many states across this country,” Conway said, noting that since the COVID-19 During the September 19 pandemic, during which schools were closed at the request of the teachers unions, “there is a greater number of people running for school board, and more parents are involved in the choice of school and the nature of the curricula.”

“There is a need for a charismatic and compelling leader who can take this on,” Conway said, referring to Trump.

Kellyanne Conway, former adviser to the president and White House counselor (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

In December 2020, Trump signed an executive order to expand educational opportunities for American children and families affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. That order provided flexibility to provide children with emergency K-12 grants so they could access in-person learning options — an effort to provide an in-person learning option after extended school closures.

The Trump administration also invested nearly $1.5 billion in developing public charter schools and, under his tax reform law, allowed parents to withdraw up to $10,000 per year tax-free from 529 education savings plans to cover public, private or religious school costs for primary and secondary education.

“President Trump says this is the civil rights issue of our time, and that’s true, but also when you look at the vast numbers of charter schools and school choice grant recipients and even the alternatives, like homeschooled students — and that’s still true. a growing part – but parents want to take matters into their own hands. They know their children best,” Conway said. “If Trump is re-elected, this will be a biggie.”

As for the word “choice,” Conway said the left “wants to own that word,” but only as it relates to abortion.

“The Democratic Party really only wants to talk to women from the waist down, while these parents of school-aged children want people to talk to them from the waist down – their eyes, ears, brains and hearts – and that includes giving them choices,” said them. “We should not give up the word ‘choice’ and the idea that women have the right to choose left on the basis of abortion. It should be this way: women have the right to choose where their children go to school and what is taught there. “

But Democrats believe school choice is anti-public schools — something Conway pushes back on — and argue it would take away funding from teachers and schools themselves.

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“It’s purely about competition,” she says. “At Starbucks you can personalize your coffee in 14,000 different ways. You can have Amazon deliver everything to your home this afternoon. And yet you are stuck with one choice for school.”

She added, “It’s like shopping at a Soviet Safeway for your child’s education, and it doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t fit with the rest of the way we live.”

The Harris-Walz campaign did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment.