By Matt Barnum
President-elect Donald Trump has made school choice a core tenet of his plan to remake education -- but it isn't clear his voters are on board.
Trump has indicated that he supports public funding of private schools and other options outside traditional school districts. "We will give all parents the right to choose another school for their children if they want," Trump said in a campaign video. "It's called school choice."
Yet school-choice ballot measures lost in three states in the November election, including in two that went strongly for Trump, Kentucky and Nebraska. The results suggest a divide between Republican lawmakers and voters, many of whom have said in opinion surveys that they are generally dissatisfied with what they view as a "woke" agenda in public education but still like their own children's local schools.
To school-choice supporters -- which include some parents, Republican politicians, and conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation -- subsidizing private or other options outside traditional school districts gives parents more say in their children's education. Teachers unions, Democrats and some public-school parents say that giving families money to go elsewhere drains needed resources from public schools.
Before this year, school-choice ballot measures have lost 14 of 16 times, according to an analysis by Christopher Lubienski, a professor of education policy at Indiana University.
"These are popular with politicians," said Lubienski, a critic of school vouchers. "But voters tend to push back pretty hard."
School-choice advocates say that ballot measures in a handful of states don't represent national voter sentiment -- especially in a year in which many Republicans, including Trump, campaigned on the issue and won.
"There is a lot of support across the country for school choice," said Anthony J. de Nicola, chair of Invest in Education, a group backing a federal school-choice law. "It's part of the mandate that Republicans were elected into office on."
Trump hasn't said how he would enact school choice, but advocates have coalesced around a bill known as the Educational Choice for Children Act. The measure would provide up to $10 billion annually in tax credits to support organizations that give scholarships for private schools or other educational expenses. A smaller version passed a House committee earlier this year. If enacted, it would be the federal government's first large-scale effort to subsidize the costs of K-12 private schooling.
In picking World Wrestling Entertainment co-founder and former Small Business Administration head Linda McMahon to be education secretary, Trump said she would "fight tirelessly to expand 'Choice' to every State in America." McMahon has a relatively thin education resume, but has long indicated support for school choice. A Trump spokeswoman didn't respond to a request for comment.
In Trump's first term, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos pushed for school-choice legislation, but made little headway in Congress amid skepticism from Democrats and some Republicans.
School-choice Republicans have been more successful at the state level. Several states, including Arizona, now provide money -- typically thousands of dollars per child -- to help families pay for private-school tuition or other education expenses outside of public schools.
In states with vouchers or similar programs, they have proven popular with families whose children already attended private school, but only a small share of students have left public school.
In Kentucky, Republican-backed school choice laws were struck down after courts ruled that the state constitution forbade redirecting public money to private or charter schools. So the Legislature put a measure on the ballot to change the state constitution. Known as Amendment 2, it was rejected by nearly two-thirds of voters on Nov. 5, even as a similar share voted for Trump.
"Amendment 2 is the voucher amendment. And vouchers take money away from public schools," said Kelsey Coots, the campaign manager for Protect Our Schools KY. The group raised $8.6 million, most of it from state and national teachers unions, to defeat the measure. Supporters of the proposal raised millions from wealthy donors, including Pennsylvania financier Jeff Yass.
Timmy Truett, a public school principal in Jackson County in rural Kentucky, said he was concerned that sending money to private schools would hurt local public schools such as his. Truett is also a Republican state representative who enthusiastically voted for Trump, even while writing newspaper articles and appearing on podcasts arguing against Amendment 2.
"This could mean less funding for our public schools," he said. "I don't think people in Eastern Kentucky liked that idea." Truett said he wants Trump to let local communities make decisions about education, rather than creating a federal school-choice program.
Jim Waters, president of the free-market, Kentucky-based Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, was taken aback by the breadth of the amendment defeat. He said that rural voters' have "emotional" connections to local public schools that are difficult to dislodge. He said he hopes a federal choice program is enacted. "That would be especially helpful for Kentucky, to bypass the establishment -- they wouldn't be able to stop this," he said.
In Nebraska, voters approved a union-backed measure to repeal a private-school scholarship program funded with a tax credit. The state also supported Trump by a wide margin.
The third state where the issue was on the November ballot was Colorado, which backed Vice President Kamala Harris for the White House. There, a slim majority of voters declined to codify a constitutional right to school choice.
Michael McShane, director of national research at the nonprofit EdChoice, said school choice did well on Election Day because voters backed many politicians who support it.
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott targeted fellow Republicans who have opposed vouchers. After the election, Abbott said he now has the votes in the Legislature to pass school choice next year.
Hillary Hickland -- a conservative activist and parent of four who said she switched her children to private schools over frustration with local public schools -- defeated an incumbent state representative in her Central Texas district who voted against Abbott's choice plan.
"Parents need to be in the driver's seat," she said.
Write to Matt Barnum at matt.barnum@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 29, 2024 05:30 ET (10:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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