A dramatic expansion of "school choice" programs next year under President-elect Donald Trump would make it easier for hundreds of thousands of parents to get their kids out of poor public schools and into a school that betters their development.
Though Trump will likely not be able to abolish the U.S. Department of Education as he has promised, experts say he stands a good chance of winning a tax break for programs that help pay for private tuition. That approach would not steer federal dollars directly to private schools but would still amount to a significant development in a decades-long fight over education.
"The consequence would be the biggest school choice victory ever in Washington," said Frederick Hess, an education expert at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
Conservatives say the government should help parents pay for private school if they are unsatisfied with their public schools, while teachers' unions and many Democrats say school choice undermines the public system that educates 50 million U.S. children.
More than one million U.S. students now participate in school choice programs, double the level before the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered public schools, according to EdChoice, an advocacy group. Proponents say federal action could boost participation by hundreds of thousands. Trump said expanding school choice would be a top priority when he tapped former pro-wrestling magnate Linda McMahon to serve as his education secretary this week.
"Linda will fight tirelessly to expand 'Choice' to every State in America," Trump said in a statement on Tuesday.
McMahon served as Trump's small-business secretary during his first 2017-2021 White House term, and currently chairs the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank that advocates for steering public money to private schools. The group did not respond to several requests for comment.
When Trump's Republicans take control of both chambers of Congress next year, they are expected to advance legislation that would give tax credits to people or businesses who donate to private-school scholarship funds.
"I think there's an enormous amount of momentum on it. It's going to happen," said Nate Bailey, who served as a senior official at the Department of Education during Trump's first term.
A version that passed the House Ways and Means Committee in October would allow people or businesses to get a credit of up to 10% of their tax liability for such donations.
Families who earn up to three times the median income in their area would be able to apply for that money, which could be used for tuition, tutoring, books, or other expenses. That would cost the federal government roughly $5 billion in lost tax revenue per year, the committee said.
The scholarship funds, which would be independently run and not controlled by any government, would not be allowed to set aside money for specific students.
The National Education Association, which represents three million public-school teachers, said the program would subsidize schools that cost more than public schools and do not have to reveal what they teach, who they serve and how they handle their money. Like other school-choice programs, the tax break would effectively take funding from public schools, the group said.
"Regardless of the name, the impact is the same: Vouchers and voucher-inspired schemes erode public education, the foundation of our democracy," NEA lobbyist Marc Egan wrote the committee in September.
New Approach
The strategy marks a change from Trump's first term in office, when Education Secretary Betsy DeVos pushed to allocate federal money toward private-school tuition. Though she was unsuccessful, Republican-led states dramatically expanded voucher programs of their own in the years that followed.
But voucher programs have run into resistance among voters in rural areas where there are few private schools. Voters in Nebraska, Colorado, and Kentucky rejected voucher proposals in the Nov. 5 elections.
Republicans in Washington are less sure about school vouchers than tax breaks. More than 100 of them voted against a proposal in March that would have turned the $18 billion Title I school aid program into a voucher program.
Education Department funding tends to play a bigger role in Republican-leaning states. Federal money accounted for 15% of all public K-12 spending last year in states that voted for Trump, compared with 11% in states that backed his Democrat rival Kamala Harris, according to a Reuters analysis of U.S. Census figures.
Opting for a tax break, rather than a voucher program, would unite Republicans and minimize the red tape associated with direct spending programs, advocates say. It also could be folded into a sweeping tax-cut bill that Trump aims to pass next year, making its chances of success in Congress more likely.
The tax break would bolster existing state school-choice programs, but also would apply to families in Democrat-run states like New York that have not set up school choice programs of their own.
Republicans who back the bill said it was modeled on existing state-level scholarship programs that have awarded $1.8 billion to 365,000 students so far. Democrats said it could effectively amount to an indirect voucher if families were able to get a tax break by funneling tuition payments through scholarship programs.
Douglas Harris, an education and economics professor at Tulane University, said it could pave the way for more ambitious efforts.
"When you're tweaking something, as opposed to introducing a radical idea, it's easier to make these smaller moves and expand over time," Harris said.
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