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President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that aims to steer large amounts of federal money away from public schools and toward private-school vouchers and other “educational alternatives.”
The executive order cites disheartening national test scores released Wednesday as one justification, saying families need options outside the public system. Securing federal funding has been a longtime goal of supporters of vouchers and educational savings accounts, which families can tap to pay for private education.
Until now, with the exception of a voucher program in Washington, D.C., the use of taxpayer dollars for private education largely has expanded through state policy. A proposal to use federal tax credits to fund private school scholarships has not advanced in Congress — though new versions were recently introduced.
The executive order sidesteps Congress and directs the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to find ways to take existing money that goes to public schools, child care providers, and nonprofits and give it to families to use at private schools or for homeschooling expenses.
The order was one of several education-related actions Trump took Wednesday. Another executive order would defund schools that teach “discriminatory equity ideology” or “gender ideology.”
Like other executive orders, Trump’s school choice order is sure to face legal and political pushback. It’s not clear how much leeway the Trump administration has to redirect money without Congressional approval.
Within 60 days, the education secretary is to provide guidance “regarding how States can use Federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives,” the order says. Formula funds include programs such as Title I, which send billions of dollars each year to high-poverty schools based on population formulas.
Similarly, within 90 days, the HHS secretary must provide guidance on whether and how states can use Child Care and Development Block Grants to support families who want “educational alternatives to governmental entities.” These block grants go to states to help low-income families afford child care. In many cases, families already get vouchers that they can use at public preschools and at private providers, but states also use the money to improve the quality of child care.
Project 2025, a playbook for the second Trump administration written by the conservative Heritage Foundation, also calls for block grants to be converted into vouchers that go directly to families rather than being used to support programs that benefit a larger population.
The order also directs the Department of Education to prioritize school choice programs in its discretionary grants.
Unlike formula grants such as Title I, which are awarded based on states’ and districts’ student populations, discretionary grants generally are awarded by criteria set by the department. The Biden administration made pandemic recovery, equity, and systemic change priorities for awarding discretionary grants.
The Trump order also directs the Department of Defense and Department of the Interior to make vouchers available to military and Native American families whose children attend schools those agencies oversee.
Schools run by the Department of Defense have long outperformed national averages, and the 2024 results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, were no exception. Bureau of Indian Education schools have a troubled track record but have also suffered from poor management and underfunding.
The order claims that “a growing body of rigorous research” supports the idea that school choice improves academic outcomes. However, most recent research on voucher programs has found little improvement in test scores — and sometimes students did worse.
Less research exists on programs that make vouchers available to all or nearly all students because those initiatives are so new and because many programs don’t require voucher recipients to take the same standardized tests as public school students. Many families that use the vouchers already had children in private school.
Programs that give families taxpayer money to spend at private schools or homeschooling expenses have expanded dramatically in states in recent years. Republican leaders in states such as Texas and Tennessee that don’t yet have universal voucher programs have made enacting them a top priority.
In a statement, Robert Enlow, president and CEO of private school choice advocacy group EdChoice, said the proposal reflects ideas that both his organization and the Heritage Foundation have championed.
“This initiative reflects a commitment to funding students not systems and to ensuring the proper role of the federal government in education,” he said. “Empowering families to choose the right fit for their children is key to ensuring every child’s success.”
Norton Rainey, CEO of ACE Scholarships, which manages publicly funded education savings accounts and advocates for private school choice policies, said the executive order represents “a significant advancement” for private school choice.
But EdTrust, an organization that advocates for school improvement and equity in education, decried the proposal as well as the effort to use poor NAEP scores to reduce funding for public schools.
“Let’s call Trump’s proposed plan what it really is: ending public education by diverting taxpayer dollars to private schools,” the group said in a statement. “This plan will cut essential funding and destabilize the public schools that serve the vast majority of students.”
Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.
