A push for school choice fell short in Trump's first term. He may now have a more willing Congress

WASHINGTON -- The election of Donald Trump returns an ally of school choice to the White House, this time with a Republican-controlled Senate — and potentially House — that could be more supportive of proposals that fizzled during his first term.

Although proposals to expand private schooling suffered high-profile defeats in several states, Trump’s victory has brought new optimism to advocates of supporting school choice at the federal level. One of their main priorities: tax credits for donations to organizations that provide private school scholarships.

Jim Blew, who served as an assistant secretary in the U.S. Education Department in the first Trump administration, said he's hopeful the new Congress will greenlight ideas like tax credits for scholarships.

“The new members are all very clearly supportive of school choice, and I think that’s going to change the dynamics,” said Blew, who co-founded the conservative Defense of Freedom Institute.

Private school choice comprises several ways of using taxpayer money to support education outside of traditional 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 soared 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.

Yet the concept has faced pushback — and not just from groups like teachers unions that have long advocated for keeping public money in public schools. Some conservatives in states with large rural communities have questioned the programs’ merits, citing the lack of private schools in sparsely populated areas. In those areas, public school districts are often the largest employer.

In Tuesday's election, voters in Kentucky rejected a measure to enable 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've established schoolchildren's “right to school choice” also was defeated.

Concerns about diverting money from public education appeared to gain traction in deep-red Kentucky and Nebraska. Ferial Pearson, the chair of an organization in Nebraska that advocates for public education, said it would continue working 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 and all debate. And this should end any 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 pitch for larger pay raises for public school teachers and other school personnel, along with his plan to establish universal pre-K across Kentucky.

To some observers, it was unsurprising that even states that voted for Trump took a stand against school choice.

“Especially in the wake of the pandemic, with all the school closures and learning loss and chronic absenteeism, parents want something different — but they also like their public schools,” said Liz Cohen, the policy director at FutureEd, a nonpartisan research center at Georgetown University. “People want something new, but it doesn’t mean they want to get rid of everything.”

Cohen, who has studied private school choice expansion across the country, emphasized decisions on a ballot measure “feel a lot more local and specific than who you’re voting for for president.”

During his campaign, Trump touted school choice as a form of greater parental rights, aimed at countering what conservative critics describe as leftist indoctrination in classrooms and promoting a free-market approach to education.

One of his platform pledges is to “serve as a champion for America's homeschool families” and “to protect the God-given right of every parent to be the steward of their children’s education.” He proposes allowing homeschooling families to use 529 college savings plans for spending on their children’s educational expenses, an option he advanced for private-school families during his first term.

In that term, Trump tapped Betsy DeVos — a fervent supporter of school choice — as his education secretary. That administration, however, struggled to get its school choice pitches off the ground. An effort to provide federal tax credits for scholarship donations flopped, as did proposals to slash federal public school programs by billions of dollars.

With a more favorable Congress, those initiatives could have a better shot. U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and the frontrunner to chair the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, has supported tax incentives for scholarship donations. And Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he will focus the next Congress on “maximizing school choice for parents and holding woke university administrators accountable.”

Some conservatives argue there would be benefits to leaving the issue to states.

“I … worry that we’re going to return to the political dynamics of Trump’s first term, which were very bad for the charter schools sector in blue states,” said Michael Petrilli, the president of the Fordham Institute, a right-leaning think tank. “Because Trump strongly supported school choice, including charter schools, he made those issues radioactive on the left, so reform-oriented Democrats were sidelined or silenced.”

In other races around the country, preliminary results show victories for school board candidates in Los Angeles and Chicago were concentrated among candidates who promoted traditional public education over alternatives such as charters.

In Texas, various pro-voucher legislators endorsed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott won their races. Abbott had sought to unseat GOP legislators who’d voted against a plan to subsidize private school tuition with public money. The newly elected candidates could give Abbott the votes needed to pass that voucher legislation.

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Associated Press writer Bruce Schreiner contributed to this report from Louisville, Ky. ___

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