Funding Education Opportunity: The Trump administration’s role in supporting school choice

The Trump administration is shaking up the federal role in K-12 education. President Donald Trump issued an executive order on “expanding educational freedom.” In response to this order, the U.S. Department of Education is issuing a series of new guidances to chief state school officers, encouraging them to maximize students’ school choice options as permitted by law. To date, the Education Department has released two letters to states about expanding school choice options for students assigned to persistently dangerous schools and in school districts that receive Title I funds.

Guaranteeing open enrollment for students assigned to persistently dangerous schools

Federal guidance encouraged states to let students assigned to traditional public schools that have been designated as persistently dangerous transfer to safer schools. Under section 8532 of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), states must let students assigned to unsafe schools, or who are victims of a violent crime, transfer to other public schools. 

However, persistently dangerous public schools have long been underidentified because states set their own definitions of unsafe schools, which are often overly narrow. For example, an Ohio “high school of 1,000 students could have four homicides and 19 weapons possessions without being deemed persistently dangerous,” Reason magazine’s Emma Camp reported. 

Narrow definitions of unsafe, like Ohio’s, mean that many states have avoided designating public schools as unsafe even when common sense says otherwise. Unfortunately, this isn’t a recent practice. 

In 2003, California had the most K-12 students nationwide, yet the state reported no unsafe schools. Students and their families balked at this patent falsehood. “I don’t think there is safety here [Jefferson High School near downtown Los Angeles]. There are always fights,” junior Lorena Guerrero told the Los Angeles Times that year. 

Similarly, a 2019 analysis published by The74 showed that only six states–Oregon, North Dakota, Texas, Georgia, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland– identified any of their schools as unsafe. It noted that California has never identified any of its schools as unsafe.

Most recently, just five states identified 25 persistently dangerous schools during the 2023-24 school year. These low figures, however, don’t reflect reality as “public school districts reported through the Civil Rights Data Collection nearly 1.2 million violent offenses that school year,” District Administration reported. 

The Department of Education recommended that states review their definitions of persistently dangerous schools to ensure that students are afforded transfer options to safer ones, consulting state data, input from families, and the local community. 

State policymakers can expand the definition of persistently dangerous schools as they wish. They don’t have to limit themselves to homicides, gun infractions, or bullying. They could expand the definition to include failing schools and other situations that significantly hamper students’ learning environments.

Once a good definition is established, policymakers should also ensure that students assigned to persistently dangerous schools have real transfer opportunities. For instance, receiving districts could be required to accommodate these transfers regardless of their available space. 

Maximizing Title I flexibility

Earlier guidance released by the Education Department highlighted flexibility afforded to states under Title I, Part A of ESEA. During the 2021-22 school year, Title I provided $17.9 billion to states, earmarked for school districts with low-income students. However, states can reserve up to three percent of these funds to pay for Direct Student Services (Section 1003A), which can “allow parents to exercise meaningful choice in their child’s education.” 

Two permitted uses under Section 1003A could allow students to use open enrollment, which lets them attend public schools other than their residentially assigned ones, giving them access to academic courses not available in their assigned school, such as Advanced Placement (AP). This would ensure that supplemental dollars follow eligible students across district boundaries. Currently, federal dollars don’t follow transfer; reforming this, however, could create key fiscal incentives for districts to accommodate transfers. 

Similarly, students assigned to schools needing comprehensive support and improvement (CSI) could use these funds to pay for transportation costs to attend public schools not identified as CSI. Currently, 16 states have robust open enrollment laws, but most do not guarantee these students free transportation options. Only Florida and Wisconsin provide small transportation stipends to students using open enrollment. 

According to the federal guidance, Ohio is the only state to use Direct Student Services under Title I. While state education agencies can’t force school districts to use funds to pay for specific services, they could award the funds under 1103.A to districts whose priorities and goals align with the state agencies.

What this means for states 

The Trump administration cannot force states to adopt these recommendations because K-12 education, rightly, remains a state-level issue. Consequently, it’s up to state policymakers to implement the department’s guidance. One challenge in doing so, especially regarding funding, is state-level red tape. Most states layer additional regulations on top of federal ones to minimize non-compliance. Consequently, state regulations related to federal education funds are often stricter than those imposed by Congress. 

This practice unnecessarily restricts how federal funds are used at the state level. To ensure that federal funds provide students with the flexibility intended by Congress, state policymakers should identify and eliminate cumbersome regulations that stifle legal uses of federal funds. States shouldn’t let red tape stand in the way of students’ learning opportunities.

From the states

In other important education and school choice developments, as mentioned briefly above, policymakers recently codified significant public and private school choice laws in several states.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 2 into law, establishing the state’s first private school choice law. The program provides $10,000 scholarships to 100,000 students to pay for private school tuition and other approved education expenses. Participants with disabilities would receive an additional $1,500. Home-schooled students are also eligible to receive scholarships of $2,000. 

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed Senate Bill 624 and House Bill 1945. Under the new laws, students can transfer to any public school across the state. It would also require the state Department of Education to collect and publish key open enrollment data. Moreover, school districts must post their open enrollment policies and procedures on their websites and inform rejected transfer applicants why they were denied in writing. Together, these laws will launch Arkansas’ open enrollment policies from 10th place to second best nationwide in Reason Foundation’s annual rankings. 

Senate Bill 2241 was signed into law by North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong, letting charter schools operate in the state. North Dakota is the 44th state to permit charter schools. 

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed Senate Bill 62, restoring the state’s private school scholarship. Last September, the State Supreme Court struck down the program as unconstitutional because it conflicted with its Blaine Amendment, which prohibits South Carolina from funding religious schools, leaving thousands of scholarship recipients in limbo. The new law, however, transfers state funds to a trustee who then funds the accounts, avoiding the court’s concerns. Moreover, scholarships are valued at $7,500 per student, a 25% increase. During its second year of operation, eligibility will expand to 85% of students. 10,000 scholarships will be awarded during the 2025-26 school year, increasing to 15,000 scholarships the following year. The number of scholarships can increase with demand after that.

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun signed a budget that eliminates income eligibility for the state’s voucher program. This means that every K-12 student is eligible for a $6,000 scholarship to pay for private school tuition. More than 70,000 students participated in the program during the 2023-24 school year. He also signed Senate Bill 1 into law, giving charter schools access to local property tax revenues as of 2028. The funding increases will be phased in over five years. Mind Trust estimated that charter schools would receive “an additional $3,750 per charter school student,” according to Chalkbeat Indiana.

The New Hampshire House approved an expansion of the state’s Education Freedom Accounts so that up to 10,000 students could receive scholarships. Students can use these accounts to pay for approved education expenses, such as private school tuition and tutoring. During the 2024-25 school year, 5,600 students were awarded scholarships.

What to Watch

In Utah, the attorney general’s office petitioned an appeal regarding the Utah Fits All Scholarship, which was ruled unconstitutional by a district court. According to the Salt Lake City ABC affiliate, the petition argues that the constitution doesn’t “limit the legislature’s authority to create educational programs; rather it sets the minimum, which the state has already met through the traditional public school system. Additionally, a 2020 ballot referendum, approved by voters, lets the legislature use income tax to “support children.”

The U.S. House’s Ways and Means Committee approved a budget proposal that would establish a $5 billion federal tax-credit scholarship program. If codified, students whose families’ income is 300% of their area’s median income in all 50 states would be eligible to receive a $5,000 scholarship. These can pay for approved education expenses, such as private school tuition and homeschooling materials.

The Latest from Reason Foundation

–Arkansas’ K-12 open enrollment slam dunk 

–Texas open enrollment bill would significantly increase school choice

–States can expand school choice to millions of public school students

–School choice could help defuse culture war fights

–Frequently asked questions about Montana school finance reform

Recommended reading 

Plenty of Room in District Schools
Ben Scafidi at Education Next

“At least five of these districts—Wichita, Auburn-Washburn USD, Shawnee Mission, Blue Valley, and Olathe—are self-reporting capacity at levels well below their building capacity—because they served many more students a mere five years ago. For example, the Auburn-Washington district experienced a decline of 468 students after fall 2019 yet reported no capacity to serve transfer students five years later. The Andover school district self-reported more open seats (344) than indicated by the change in enrollment method, indicating that the district had open seats back in fall 2019.”

What Would Religious Charter Schools Mean for Education Choice?
Nicole Stelle Garnett and Derrell Bradford at Education Next

“Charter schools ought to fight any suggestion that they are government schools. They are, by design, freed from government control so as to enable innovation. A decision that they are government actors would undermine that goal by placing them in a constitutional straitjacket. And that decision’s ramifications would also threaten the autonomy of government-funded private organizations that provide services other than education, including health care, foster care, community development, and poverty alleviation,” Garnett wrote

The New Frontier Of School Choice: Zoning
Michael McShane at Forbes

“Some cities, for example, require private schools to get a special exception in order to open but allow public schools to open by right (that is, without all of this lengthy process). If new schools cause issues with traffic, or risk ruining the architectural character of the neighborhood, or are hazardous in one way or another, one would think that would be equally true if the school was public or private. When only one sector needs to jump through all of the hoops, it suggests that those hoops are not serving the purpose they purport to.”

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Source: https://reason.org/education-newsletter/the-trump-administrations-role-in-supporting-school-choice/