President Donald Trump instructed federal officials to find money for K-12 school choice.
The Jan. 29 executive order aligns with a 2024 campaign promise to work with states and Congress "to provide for universal school choice for every American family."
PolitiFact is tracking 75 of Trump's campaign promises on the MAGA-Meter. Over the next four years, we will periodically evaluate the new administration's progress on Trump's 2024 campaign promises, just as we did with Barack Obama, Trump during his first term and Joe Biden.
Trump's executive order directs the Education Department secretary to issue guidance regarding how states can use federal dollars to "support K-12 educational choice initiatives." (Trump nominated former Small Business Administration Administrator Linda McMahon to fill the secretary role.) He provided a 60-day deadline.
Within 90 days, federal officials must submit a plan to recommend how to use grants for school choice, including for low-income students, military families and Native American children.
In 2016, Trump promised that he would add $20 billion in federal money to school choice, but it didn't happen.
"School choice" is a broad term that can include public school magnet programs, programs that direct public money to charter schools and private school scholarships. (Magnet programs that emphasize specific study areas or teaching methods to serve students from different backgrounds.)
"School choice" supporters say these programs give parents more free or low-cost options for their children, especially if those children are zoned for poorly performing schools. Critics say the money should be directed instead toward improving local public schools and that some programs provide less transparency than government-run school districts.
It is unlikely that we'll see a large-scale federal choice program that would provide government funding to all or nearly all families to pay for private school or other education services, said Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, a think tank.
"Doing that at the federal level would be extraordinarily expensive and controversial," Valant said.
It would be controversial with Democrats and also with many rural Republicans who have resisted state-level private school choice programs because there aren't many private schools in their areas, Valant said.
"Other conservatives might like the idea of private school choice programs — even in their own communities — but dislike the idea that the federal government would impose that decision on communities nationwide," Valant said. "There are real political obstacles to creating that type of program at the federal level."
The majority of education policy is set at the state and local level, and the federal government provides about 10% of public education money, said Derrell Bradford, president of 50Can, an education advocacy organization that supports school choice.
"So it would be difficult for the President and the US Department of Education to 'order' school choice nationally," Bradford said, though the president could use the bully pulpit to influence state policies.
The Education Department's charter school programs, which Congress funds, could be expanded and made more flexible to offer more choice.
Republican senators in January introduced the Educational Choice for Children Act, which provides a charitable donation incentive for people and businesses to fund scholarship awards for students to cover expenses related to K-12 public and private education. A similar bill in 2023 did not advance to a vote.
We will monitor the Trump administration's progress on "universal" school choice. For now, we rate this promise In the Works.