President Donald Trump will take executive action as soon as Wednesday to kickstart school choice programs, the Washington Examiner has learned.
The president placed a concerted focus on education, specifically backing school choice proponents, on the 2024 campaign trail, including a pledge to shutter the Education Department. Critics claimed Trump could not achieve that goal without congressional approval.
FULL LIST OF EXECUTIVE ORDERS, ACTIONS, AND PROCLAMATIONS TRUMP HAS MADE AS PRESIDENT
The White House detailed the executive action in a memo, obtained Wednesday morning by the Washington Examiner, outlining five specific ways the administration is backing school choice options including:
— Directing the Defense Department to submit a report with options for military families to send their children to a school of their choosing
— Directing the Interior Department to submit a report detailing school choice options for families of the roughly 47,000 children enrolled in the Bureau of Indian Education
— Directing the Department of Health and Human Services to issue guidance on using block grants to support school choice options, “including private and faith-based educational options and nonprofits”
— Directing the Education Department to “prioritize school choice programs” in awarding discretionary grants
— Directing the Education Department to issue guidance to states on the use of “federal funding formulas” in allocating K-12 scholarship funds
“Every child deserves the best education available, regardless of their zip code,” White House officials wrote. “However, for generations, our government-assigned education system has failed millions of parents, students and teachers. This executive order begins to rectify that wrong by opening up opportunities for students to attend the school that best fits their needs.”
Wednesday’s orders, however, do not set a path for formally closing the Education Department.
On Tuesday night, Trump signed an additional executive order seeking to block “chemical surgical” gender-transition treatment for minors, an issue the president linked closely to his education platform while campaigning.
“Today, it was my great honor to sign an Executive Order banning the chemical castration and medical mutilation of innocent children in the United States of America,” Trump said of his Tuesday order in a Truth Social post. “Our Nation will no longer fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support so-called ‘gender affirming care,’ which has already ruined far too many precious lives. My Order directs Agencies to use every available means to cut off Federal financial participation in institutions which seek to provide these barbaric medical procedures, that should have never been allowed to take place!”
It remains unclear how the president’s Monday directive to pause all federally distributed grants will intersect with the education executive orders. Trump’s education orders specifically direct the Education Department to promote new school choice options through the use of discretionary grants, on top of a directive for the Department of Health and Human Services to distribute guidelines to states for using federal grants in support of private schools.
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On Wednesday, the National Assessment of Education Progress released its 2024 report, which showed reading levels for fourth and eighth graders continuing to spiral following the coronavirus pandemic. Roughly 40% of fourth graders do not meet age-appropriate reading levels, an all-time high, according to the report, and average reading scores for eighth graders slipped 2 points.
The NAEP report did show math scores holding or improving across the board, though Alabama was the only state where students’ math performances have improved compared to prepandemic levels.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
