Treffer: Expansion of Education Freedom in Donald Trump's Second Term. Program on Education Policy and Governance Conference Papers Series. PEPG 25-04

By the time Donald J. Trump was running for president in 2024, he had landed on a clear vision for the federal government's role in education. In short, he had concluded that the federal government's power over education should be relinquished to states, local communities, and, most importantly, families. Early into his second term, Trump has acted more forcefully and quickly than most expected to restore power over education back to families, states, and local communities. Within his first few weeks in office, he launched three important initiatives to expand school choice and shrink the federal role in education: (1) The Dismantling of the U.S. Education Department (USED) Executive Order (EO); (2) The School Choice EO; and (3) an education freedom law--specifically, a federal tax credit for donations to K-12 scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs), embodied in the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA). If these efforts are successful, Donald Trump will establish himself as the greatest Education President--the one who did the most to transform our K-12 system and improve education outcomes. This is a claim that, no doubt, will offend fans of prior presidents and their strategies to leverage federal power to reform K-12 education. This much is true: were it not for those earlier experiments and their disappointing results, President Trump would not be positioned to take a wholly different approach--one that relies on families and local communities instead of a federal agency. [This paper was prepared by the Defense of Freedom Institute (DFI).]

ERIC