The GOP platform calls for ‘universal school choice.’ What would that mean for students?

Columbus, Ohio — National Republicans are poised to endorse “universal school choice” as part of the policy platform they adopt at next week’s convention in Milwaukee, a goal that proponents see as the culmination of decades of advocating for parents’ autonomy to choose their children’s schools. To opponents, it’s a thinly veiled blueprint for gutting public education.

The term can mean different things to different people: from removing school boundaries, to open enrollment, to being able to create your child’s individual curriculum, to parental control over the content of primary and secondary education lessons.

But education experts from across the political spectrum interpret the wording of the GOP platform as advocating the type of approach seen in states like West Virginia And Ohiowho make available taxpayer-funded vouchers or grants, that a child, regardless of income, can attend any public or private school.

“We think this is kind of your money, your kids, your choice about where they want to go to school,” said Lisa B. Nelson, CEO of the American Legislative Exchange Council, which launched an Education Freedom Alliance in January to fight for just that. About a dozen states now have such programs, and there are proposals in another 16 states, the alliance said.

Nelson said this is the first time the GOP platform has gone beyond supporting school choice and called for a universal option. It remains unclear how that would happen, given that the platform also calls for closing the U.S. Department of Education, created in 1979, and returning education policy “to the United States, where it belongs.”

Republican Donald Trump’s presidential campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the platform.

“Republicans believe that families should have the opportunity to choose the best education for their children,” the platform reads.

James Singer, a spokesman for President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, said disbanding the department — which oversees Head Startadministers student financial aid programs, conducts education research, and enforces civil rights laws — “is not only bad policy, it would strip vital supports from our most vulnerable children, making them less likely to graduate from high school or go on to college.”

Chad Aldis, vice president for Ohio policy at the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said that declaring universal school choice as a policy goal and actually implementing it are two very different things.

“I think it’s the right approach to provide families with quality options, but the specifics of how much funding is available, whether there are income restrictions, those are the kinds of questions that need to be answered,” he said.

State programs have faced a host of legal and practical questions as voucher programs once available only to low-income students in academically struggling districts have evolved into all-encompassing offerings that apply to public, private, religious and charter schools. Opponents argue that the expanded programs take money away from public schools that serve the most students in the country and favor higher-income families who choose to attend expensive private or religious schools.

The Hope Scholarship Program in West Virginia survived a constitutional challenge in 2022, but the number of school districts filing lawsuits against EdChoice in Ohio has skyrocketed since the voucher program went public last summer.

This year’s Republican platform also calls for “treating homeschooling families equally,” which could take universality to an even higher level.

Kim Anderson, executive director of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, said the Republicans’ plan would create “chaos in the lives of American families” without addressing what parents tell her members are their top two priorities: mental health care availability and school safety.

“Public education has been a common good in this country since its founding, and abolishing public education endangers our democracy, our economy, and the fabric of a diverse, inclusive society,” she said.

Other policy priorities include defunding schools that engage in “inappropriate political indoctrination,” ensuring that students are allowed to pray and read the Bible in school, “hardening” school disciplinary standards as a way to curb violence, eliminating teacher tenure and instituting performance-based pay, and rejecting efforts to nationalize civic education.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, blasted the GOP’s entire education program, saying it creates “a mechanism for defunding and a mechanism for giving tax breaks to the wealthy.”

“My question to them is, what are they afraid of?” she said. “Why are they afraid of critical thinking? Why are they afraid of the freedom to learn and the freedom to teach? Why are they afraid of honest history? Why are they afraid of diversity?”

ALEC’s Nelson said proponents of choice believe that fierce competition makes all schools better.

And calls to expand school choice aren’t coming exclusively from Republicans. In Louisiana, six Democrats voted in April to pass a universal school choice bill.

“When I see children living in poverty, stuck in failing schools, barely able to read, I’d be damned if I continued to defend the status quo,” Democratic Rep. Jason Hughes, who represents New Orleans, said on the floor before casting his vote.

Democrats have also voted for expanded school choice in Nebraska and Pennsylvania. In Georgia, state Rep. Mesha Mainor left the party last year partly due to disagreements over school vouchers.

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