Trump Pitches Using Federal Funds for School Choice, Champions Merit Pay
GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump said Thursday that, if elected, he’d be the “nation’s biggest cheerleader for school choice” and offer states the chance to use $20 billion in federal money to create vouchers allowing children in poverty to attend the public, charter, or private school of their choice.
And he said he’s a supporter of merit pay for teachers—a signature policy of both President Barack Obama and George W. Bush’s administrations—although he did not explain how he hopes to further the cause, other than rhetorically taking aim at tenure in this fact sheet.
“There is no policy more in need of urgent change than our government-run education monopoly,” the GOP presidential nominee said in a speech at a charter school in Cleveland. “The Democratic Party has trapped millions of African-American and Hispanic youth” in struggling schools.
“We want every inner city child in America to have the freedom to attend any school,” Trump said.
Trump said that the $20 billion in federal funds could be combined with more than $100 billion in state and local money to create vouchers of up to $12,000 annually for the nation’s poorest kids. He did not say where the $20 billion in funding would come from, but it’s possible he was referring to Title I money for disadvantaged students, funded at about $15.5 billion right now. His plan would depend on state and local cooperation—if states and districts decided not to add their own money to the federal financing, the scholarships would pretty paltry.
