As leftist educators and administrators across the country continue to lower standards and stultify education, the Trump-McMahon Department of Education (ED) is backing school choice as one solution to the educational crisis in the United States.
School choice allows families to take the taxpayer money that would ordinarily be applied to a student's local public school education and apply it instead to charter schools, private schools, or homeschooling. This can be particularly important for poorer students and students from bad school districts, helping them receive a better quality education than they could otherwise afford. Leftists hate this, of course, because it pulls kids out of the propaganda soup and deliberately substandard education of many public school districts.
ED issued a Jan. 26 press release to celebrate National School Choice Week. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon declared, “During National School Choice Week, we celebrate how school choice has changed the lives of millions of students by empowering parents and families to choose a school or program that best meets their child’s needs.”
McMahon then explained how the administration is helping expand school choice:
That's why the Trump Administration has worked to invest a record $500 million for charter school expansion, support the first-ever federal tax credit for education scholarships, and most importantly, return education to the states – so that decisions are made closest to the child. Happy National School Choice Week, and here’s to giving parents more power, educators more flexibility, and students more freedom to be successful in 2026!
I know multiple people who work in the school system, most of them in the public school system, and they all agree more or less that standards are lower, especially for discipline. An Arizona school therapist admitted to me that they cannot actually discipline the kids at all. A Texas high school English teacher is trying to lobby her administration to stop giving endless extensions and extra credit after not a single student submitted all assignments on time for the quarter. Children are essentially told they will pass no matter what they do, and therefore, they only do whatever they feel like doing.
Unfortunately, our public schools are so taken over by woke teachers' unions and activists that it has become incredibly difficult for any teacher who does have higher standards or who is not a fervent socialist ideologue to survive long in the public school system. That makes education even worse, because most of the teachers who make a career of it are ignorant ideologues. As of last year, U.S. students' math and reading scores had hit a historic low — again.
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Also, last year, lefty Education Week promoted some school districts’ decisions to get rid of class rankings and weighted GPAs, putting forth various unconvincing arguments that it is unfair and traumatizing to do otherwise. Some schools that implemented "no-fail" policies in recent years were mystified when class attendance went down, and students stopped turning in work. The idea that it is "unfair" to rank students based on their effort and results, or that students must always be shielded from the consequences of their actions, is incredibly pernicious. It also fails to prepare kids for the real world, which is partly why my generation (Gen Z) has such a hard time holding a job.
In September, the Chicago Teachers Union honored a cop killer. After Charlie Kirk's death, a whole slew of teachers and school employees celebrated the assassination. In July, the National Education Association union voted to fight Trump administration policies, but misspelled "fascist" as applied to the president. American Federation of Teachers union boss Randi Weingarten, who kept schools closed way too long during the COVID-19 lockdowns as she lobbied for more money, cried as she voted for Kamala Harris. The educational establishment is prioritizing "equity" and woke brainwashing over math and reading.
And that is precisely why school choice is so important.
