Trump's move could see thousands of American children in private schools

President-elect Donald Trump is poised to enact a dramatic expansion of "school choice" programmemes next year that would make it easier for hundreds of thousands of parents to send their children to private school.

Though Trump will likely not be able to abolish the US Department of Education as he has promised, experts say he stands a good chance of winning a tax break for programmes that help pay for private tuition. That approach would not steer federal dollars directly to private schools but would still amount to a significant development in a decades-long fight over education.

"The consequence would be the biggest school choice victory ever in Washington," said Frederick Hess, an education expert at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

Conservatives say the government should help parents pay for private school if they are unsatisfied with their public schools, while teachers' unions and many Democrats say school choice undermines the public system that educates 50 million US children.

More than one million US students now participate in school choice programmes, double the level before the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered public schools, according to EdChoice, an advocacy group.  Proponents say federal action could boost participation by hundreds of thousands.

Trump said expanding school choice would be a top priority when he tapped former pro-wrestling magnate Linda McMahon to serve as his education secretary this week.

"Linda will fight tirelessly to expand 'Choice' to every State in America," Trump said in a statement on Tuesday.

McMahon served as Trump's small-business secretary during his first 2017-2021 White House term, and currently chairs the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank that advocates for steering public money to private schools. The group did not respond to several requests for comment.

When Trump's Republicans take control of both chambers of Congress next year, they are expected to advance legislation that would give tax credits to people or businesses who donate to private-school scholarship funds.

"I think there's an enormous amount of momentum on it. It's going to happen," said Nate Bailey, who served as a senior official at the Department of Education during Trump's first term.

A version that passed the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee in October would allow people or businesses to get a credit of up to 10% of their tax liability for such donations.

Families who earn up to three times the median income in their area would be able to apply for that money, which could be used for tuition, tutoring, books or other expenses. That would cost the federal government roughly $5 billion in lost tax revenue per year, the committee said.

The scholarship funds, which would be independently run and not controlled by any government, would not be allowed to set aside money for specific students.

The National Education Association, which represents three million public-school teachers, said the programme would subsidize schools that cost more than public schools and do not have to reveal what they teach, who they serve and how they handle their money. Like other school-choice programmes, the tax break would effectively take funding from public schools, the group said.

"Regardless of the name, the impact is the same: Vouchers and voucher-inspired schemes erode public education, the foundation of our democracy," NEA lobbyist Marc Egan wrote the committee in September.

The strategy marks a change from Trump's first term in office, when Education Secretary Betsy DeVos pushed to allocate federal money toward private-school tuition. Though she was unsuccessful, Republican-led states dramatically expanded voucher programmes of their own in the years that followed.
But voucher programmes have run into resistance among voters in rural areas where there are few private schools. Voters in Nebraska, Colorado and Kentucky rejected voucher proposals in the Nov. 5 elections.

Republicans in Washington are less sure about school vouchers than tax breaks. More than 100 of them voted against a proposal in March that would have turned the $18 billion Title I school aid programme into a voucher programme.

Education Department funding tends to play a bigger role in Republican-leaning states. Federal money accounted for 15% of all public K-12 spending last year in states that voted for Trump, compared with 11% in states that backed his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, according to a Reuters analysis of US Census figures.

Opting for a tax break, rather than a voucher programme, would unite Republicans and minimise the red tape associated with direct spending programmes, advocates say.

It also could be folded into a sweeping tax-cut bill that Trump aims to pass next year, making its chances of success in Congress more likely.

The tax break would bolster existing state school-choice programmes, but also would apply to families in Democratic-run states like New York that have not set up school choice programmes of their own.

Reuters