National School Choice Week starts tomorrow
Kicking off 'National School Choice Week,' Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, joins 'Fox & Friends Weekend' to discuss the National Education Association's anti-school campaign.
Former President Trump Proposing that federal education dollars “follow the student” in his potential second term, while promoting his “universal school choice policy” and insisting he supports it “until the end.”
The former president became the school choice champion Last week, he presented his strongest argument yet in favor of the movement at the federal level.
“We want federal education dollars to go to students instead of promoting a bloated, bloated bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.,” Trump said at an event in Milwaukee.
Trump is pushing to dismantle the Department of Education
“If you want a better education for your child, Kamala Harris is in your way,” Trump said. “Orange and the radical left Democratic Party want to keep black and Hispanic children in family government. I think that’s really the reason.”
The former president said he believes school choice is “the civil rights issue of our time.”
Former President Trump (Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)
“A child’s destiny should be determined by their love for education, their parents, many factors. But it cannot be determined by a zip code,” Trump said. “And no parent should be forced to send their children to a failing government school.”
Trump's public school choice allows parents to send their children to public, private or religious schools.
Trump's position is reflected in the Republican Party's 2024 platform. According to school choice advocates, it recognizes the role of federal and state governments in expanding tax credit scholarship programs and education savings accounts, which currently serve more than one million primary and secondary school students across the country.
The Trump campaign said school choice “leads to higher graduation rates, greater parental satisfaction and involvement, lower costs, greater competition between schools, and higher reading and math test scores.”
Right now, 11 states have public school choice, and 32 states and Washington, D.C. have at least one private school choice program — but 18 states have none.
“Before President Trump took office, no state had a universal school choice policy. Now, nearly a dozen do, and that's largely due to the voice and visibility he's given to raising the issue to the national consciousness during Covid — but even before that,” said Kellyanne Conway, a former senior adviser to Trump. , on Fox News Digital.
“The number of American school-aged children and the demand for traditional public school alternatives has increased,” Conway said. “There is a growing resistance among Kamala Harris and Democrats to putting these kinds of options — these kinds of options and choices — in the hands of parents.”
On the other side of the aisle, Democrats are expanding their opposition to school choice, and teachers unions rejoiced when Vice President Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, describing the ticket as a great victory for public educators.
Walz is a former teachers union member who says he opposes the school choice “agenda.”
Minnesota Walz-appointed board requires teachers to 'affirm' their students' gender identities
Teachers unions have pushed hard to extend school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, with many districts closed for more than a year.
Former Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos said Walz was “a 5-alarm fire for parents and students.”
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos attends an event at the White House on August 12, 2020. (Nicolas Kam/AFP via Getty Images)
As for the Democratic Party platform, Democrats support all children “regardless of their zip code” to have access to “a quality public education through high school and affordable college for all Americans.”
Democrats want to direct federal dollars to public schools in an effort to “expand access to higher education and job training.”
Harris' campaign did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment, but her website describes her plan to “ensure parents can afford high-quality child care and preschool for their children.”
Harris plans to “focus on working to end the irrational burden of student loan debt and fighting to make higher education more affordable so that college can be a ticket to the middle class.”
Harris said he would “work to expand programs that create better career paths for non-college graduates.”
But Conway explained that parents are focused on taking a greater role in their children's education – now more than ever.
“There is a continuation of the revival of parental rights that began during COVID and spread through 2021 and the election of Glenn Youngkin versus Terry McAuliffe in 2021 and continues unabated in many states across this country,” Conway said, noting that the Covid pandemic -19, which closes schools at the request of teachers unions, there are “more people running for school board and there are more parents engaged in school choice and curriculum.”
“It takes a charismatic, compelling leader to stand up to this,” Conway said, referring to Trump.
Kellyanne Conway, former counselor to the president and White House counselor (Samuel Coram/Getty Images)
In December 2020, Trump signed an executive order to increase educational opportunities for American children and families impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The order provides flexibility to provide children with emergency K-12 scholarships to access in-person learning opportunities – an effort to provide in-person learning options following extended school closures.
The Trump administration has invested nearly $1.5 billion in developing public charter schools and, under its tax reform law, has made it possible for parents to withdraw up to $10,000 a year tax-free from public education savings plans. private or covered. Cost of attending religious elementary and secondary schools.
“President Trump said this is the civil rights issue of our time, and that is true, but also, when you look at options like charter schools and scholarship recipients and even homeschooling students — and that It's still a growing segment – but parents are on their own. “They know their kids best,” Conway said. “If Trump is re-elected, it will be a big deal.”
As for the word “choice,” Conway said the left “wants to own the word,” but only when it refers to abortion.
“The Democratic Party really only wants to talk to women from the waist down, while these parents of school-aged children want people to talk to them from the waist down – their eyes, ears, brains and hearts – and that includes giving- give them choices,” she said. “We should not reject the idea that women have the right to choose left based on the word 'choice' and abortion. It should be, women have the right to choose where their children go to school and what is taught there.”
But Democrats believe school choice is anti-public schools — something that pushed Conway back — and argue it will defund teachers and schools.
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“It’s just about competition,” he said. “You can customize your coffee in 14,000 different ways at Starbucks. You can have Amazon deliver anything to your home this afternoon.
He added: “It's like shopping at a Soviet Safeway for your child's education, and it doesn't make sense and it doesn't fit in with the rest of our lives.”
The Harris-Walz campaign did not respond to Fox News' request for comment.
