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President Donald Trump made good on his promise to prioritize school choice in America this week by signing two executive orders aimed at giving parents the tools they need to provide the best education possible for their children.
On Wednesday, Trump signed the first of two orders, titled, “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families,” which takes a direct approach to fixing the failing public education system.
“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,” the order read.
The president’s directive noted that over a dozen states in the Union have already enacted K-12 scholarship programs that allow parents to choose the educational setting for their kids, also allowing competition between schools and educational options outside government-run campuses.
“When our public education system fails such a large segment of society, it hinders our national competitiveness and devastates families and communities,” the EO stated.
Over the next 60 days, the Secretary of Education will be required to issue guidance on how states may use federal funding to support K-12 educational choice options. The order will also kick start the following processes from agency leaders:
- Require the Secretaries of Labor and Education to review grant programs and submit a plan to the president to identify and make recommendations for using “discretionary grant programs to expand education freedom for America’s families and teachers,”
- Require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to provide guidance on how states receiving grants from the HHS could use such funds to support the goals of school choice, “including private and faith-based options,”
- Require the Secretary of Defense to review options for military families to utilize funds from the DOD to fund their school choice options,
- Further, the Secretary of the Interior must review whether children eligible to attend schools overseen by the Bureau of Indian Education may qualify to use federal funding to enjoy school choice,
- Each secretary must submit their findings to the president over the next 90 days. According to the order, the goal is to implement school choice by the 2025-26 school year.
President Trump’s executive order is significant and follows up on a 2023 campaign promise he made to overhaul America’s education system. “We will give all parents the right to choose another school for their children,” he stated two years ago.
The president’s executive order on school choice also intersected with a parallel order he issued on Wednesday regarding the elimination of ending radical indoctrination in K-12 public schooling.
The order explained, “In recent years, however, parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight. Such an environment operates as an echo chamber, in which students are forced to accept these ideologies without question or critical examination.”
The order slammed the adoption of left-wing, anti-American, and “false ideologies” imprinted on America’s children, including the promotion of gender ideology. “These practices not only erode critical thinking but also sow division, confusion, and distrust, which undermine the very foundations of personal identity and family unity,” the order explained.
Primarily, this order will end the teaching of Critical Race Theory and Marxist equity-based education. It will also order the promotion of “Patriotic Education,” which will reestablish the 1776 Commission of Trump’s first term to promote pro-American educational standards and values.
