A federal push to allow students and families to use taxpayer money for private education is underway, following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Wednesday.
The executive order directs a number of federal agencies to look into their ability to use funds they oversee to allow families to attend private schools—including religious schools—and charter schools. Under the order, agency heads have to report back in the coming months on the options they have for doing that and their plans for implementing those options for families starting next fall.
The order also directs the U.S. Department of Education to develop guidance for states in the next two months on how they can use their formula funds—such as the Title I funds they receive to help students from low-income households—to support school choice initiatives. And it instructs the agency to include school choice as a priority through its discretionary grant programs, which include a number of competitive grants.
While Trump has visions of enacting a more expansive private school choice policy, the executive order is narrower, given that it relies only on his executive authority and the federal government’s role in public education is traditionally limited.
The departments of Defense and Interior are two of the agencies that will have to develop plans for expanding choice under the order. Those agencies run some of the only school systems the federal government directly oversees—the Department of Defense Education Activity schools on military bases and the Bureau of Indian Education.
The order also directs the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to author guidance explaining how states can use federal child care subsidy funds to support private and religious options.
The nation’s two largest teachers’ unions decried the proposal, arguing that voters have rejected ballot measures seeking to expand school choice.
As justification, Trump’s order cited Wednesday’s release of the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which showed that students’ reading scores have plunged even further from already historic lows and that math scores are stalled. “When our public education system fails such a large segment of society, it hinders our national competitiveness and devastates families and communities,” the order read.
Conditions have seemed ripe for Trump to push for private school choice, and legislative action is still a distinct possibility, with more Republicans coalescing around the idea.
The order also follows plans laid out in Project 2025, a 900-page policy agenda authored by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, which recommended making children who attend the Department of Defense and Bureau of Indian Education school systems eligible for education savings accounts of public funds their families could use for private school.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump tried to distance himself from the proposals laid out in the agenda, but he has selected several of its contributors for positions inside his administration. Trump has already embraced some of the agenda, too; earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security overturned its longstanding sensitive locations policy, allowing immigration officials to make arrests on school property—following a Project 2025 recommendation.
As school choice picks up momentum at the federal level, more than a dozen states are considering proposals for investing public funds to establish or expand private school choice. This week alone, related bills in Mississippi, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Texas advanced through their respective legislatures.
Still, the national teachers’ unions called the measures unpopular, and suggested that Trump’s action went beyond his executive authority.
“This plan is a direct attack on all that parents and families hold dear; it’s a ham-fisted, recycled, and likely illegal scheme to diminish choice and deny classrooms resources to pay for tax cuts for billionaires,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a statement.
“Parents, educators, and voters know what students need—and vouchers are never the solution,” Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, said in a statement.
