Kandace Fernandez
Within less than two weeks of his second presidential term, President Donald Trump has issued more than 35 new executive orders. This past Wednesday, January 29, he signed the “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families” order.
The intentions are to increase parents’ ability to attain a quality K-12 education for their children by allocating government educational grants toward school choice programs. The order states that within 60 days, “the Secretary of Education shall issue guidance regarding how States can use Federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives.”
The order was signed just nine days after President Trump’s “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing” executive order. To many Americans, DEI programs provided hope that the United States’ future would be more inclusive, but other citizens shared the president’s sentiment that “these plans demonstrated immense public waste and shameful discrimination.”
The president’s order insinuates that DEI programs oppose “expending precious taxpayer resources only on making America great,” but wouldn’t more diverse, equitable, and inclusive government agencies also make America great?
Fortunately, the Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families (EFOF) order may provide some much-needed hope for more equity by way of education reform. After over 30 years of minimal to no educational improvement in public schools, increasing government spending was not proving beneficial for the nation’s most vulnerable students.
According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), students’ math skills have declined since the COVID-19 epidemic, but the educational gap between male and female students in math has widened.
Similarly, reading scores for all students have decreased by seven points since 2020, but reading levels for Black students have decreased more drastically than that of White students. The American educational system has been failing, but minority and urban public-school students have been the most adversely affected.
Parents who cannot afford private schools send their children to public schools. The best public schools are so sought after that they typically cause the nearby housing costs to increase.
Increased housing costs inadvertently construct a blockade for students from lower-income households to attend good schools.
If Trump’s EFOF executive order is carried out as intended, government funds could aid parents in sending their children to private or higher-performing schools that they are not ‘zoned’ to attend or could not, otherwise, afford.
Although there will be no chief diversity officers to oversee the process and ensure that our nation’s most at-risk students (including minorities, females, neuro-divergent, and disabled students) are being considered, this is still a glimmer of hope for Americans who dream of greater diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Assuming the order will not lead to increased private school tuition, this potentially empowers parents of all backgrounds to attain a better education for their children.
As all the state leaders await the Secretary of Education’s issuance of guidance within the next 60 days, education students should carefully consider how and where they would like to teach. With the enaction of these changes, some schools will promptly become recipients of additional government funding while others will have to struggle to remain operative.
Hopefully, our nation will seize the opportunity to place students in better learning environments and provide the upcoming generations with the knowledge to make America great.
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