Returning prayer to public schools and promoting “school choice” nationwide are two of 10 priorities to “rebuild” America’s education system announced by President-elect Donald Trump in a video Nov. 10.
Trump’s 10-point plan echoes the ideals of Project 2025 — which Trump disavowed during the election — and fulfills a conservative wish list that includes dismantling the U.S. Department of Education.
Ironically, Trump and his supporters have complained for years that the federal government is mandating unnecessary rules and regulations for public schools. Yet his 10-point plan would mandate other rules and regulations — although most will not be easily done and will face stiff legal challenges.
And how these new regulations would be promulgated without a Department of Education is not clear.
Prayer in schools
“Bringing back prayer to our schools” is fifth on Trump’s list. State-sanctioned prayers in public schools were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1962 in Engle v. Vitale. Before then, especially across the American South, many teachers and principals led morning prayers from a Christian tradition — without regard to the religious beliefs of students in the classrooms.
The First Amendment states that government may not favor one religious practice over another. The Supreme Court thus ruled that these school prayers “established” Christianity while excluding other religions — and even excluding some forms of Christianity.
However, ever since that Supreme Court ruling, conservative evangelicals have sought to reinstate state-sanctioned prayer in public schools, claiming its absence has led to moral rot among students and culture.
Mandating — or even allowing — state-sponsored prayer in public schools would require upending a Supreme Court precedent, something highly unusual until the high court two years ago reversed Roe v. Wade, fulfilling another objective of conservative evangelicals. So it is possible but would take a long and winding course of litigation that would end up again at the Supreme Court 62 years later.
School vouchers
Another gift Trump says he will give conservative evangelicals is universal school vouchers, although he didn’t use that language that is very unpopular in polling.
“We will give all parents the right to choose another school for their children if they want,” he said. “It’s called school choice.”
“We will give all parents the right to choose another school for their children if they want.”
“School choice” typically is code language for vouchers, which allow parents to divert public funds from public schools to help pay tuition at private schools — including religious schools.
Until the current batch of conservative justices gained a majority on the Supreme Court, most efforts to divert public funds to private religious schools were rebuffed in the courts. Today, 24 states now have some form of voucher program, but voters in three states last week rejected voucher measures.
In Texas — one of the two states with the largest numbers of public school students — multiple attempts to pass voucher bills have failed over a number of years. Even though Texas is a deeply Republican state, legislators from rural districts have shunned vouchers out of fear they would harm their communities where public schools are the center of life. However, Gov. Greg Abbott — empowered by two billionaire donors — has successfully blackballed Republican legislators who denied his demands and in the next session likely will have a subservient majority to enact his will.
How a national requirement for school vouchers — or any kind of “school choice” — would be enacted also is not clear. And any such effort — whether by executive order or Congressional act — would no doubt be tangled up in the courts for years.
In his brief video, Trump introduces what he calls “10 key ideas that will power our movement for great schools.”
Those are:
- “We will respect the right of parents to control the education of their children.”
- “We will empower parents and local school boards to hire and reward great principals and teachers, and also to fire the poor ones, the ones whose performance is unsatisfactory. They will be fired like on The Apprentice, ‘You’re fired!’”
- “We will ensure our classrooms are focused not on political indoctrination but on teaching the knowledge and skills needed to succeed: Reading, writing, math, science, arithmetic and other truly useful subjects.”
- “We will teach students to love their country, not to hate their country like they’re taught right now.”
- “We will support bringing back prayer to our schools.
- “We will achieve schools that are safe, secure and drug-free with immediate expulsion for any student who harms a teacher or another student.”
- “We will give all parents the right to choose another school for their children if they want. It’s called school choice.”
- “We will ensure students have access to project-based learning experiences inside the classroom to help train them for meaningful work outside the classroom.
- “We will strive to give all students access to internships and work experiences that can set them on a path to their first job. They’re going to be very, very successful. I want them to be more successful than Trump.”
- “We will ensure that all schools provide excellent jobs and career counseling so that high school and college students can get a head start on jobs and careers best suited to their God-given talents.”
‘Closing up’ Education Department
Having outlined the 10 things he intends to make sure happen in public schools nationwide, Trump declares he will, in fact, be “closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., and sending all education and education work and needs back to the states.”
He explains: “We want them to run the education of our children because they’ll do a much better job of it. You can’t do worse. We spend more money per pupil by three times than any other nation, and yet we’re absolutely at the bottom. We’re one of the worst. So you can’t do worse.”
“We’re absolutely at the bottom. We’re one of the worst. So you can’t do worse.”
Trump also asserts education leaders in Washington “hate our children.”
There is no evidence that staff members at the Department of Education “hate” children. This is typical Trumpian hyperbole intended to stir up his base and strike fear in conservative parents.
As to how the U.S. educational system ranks worldwide, Trump lies by saying the U.S. is “absolutely at the bottom.”
The annual Best Countries for Education report produced by US News and World Report ranks the United States first, surpassing the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, France, Switzerland and Japan.
The Program for International Student Assessment is an international gold-standard test that looks at reading, mathematics, science and financial literacy.
The most recent comparisons found:
- Compared to the 80 other education systems in PISA 2022, the U.S. average mathematics literacy score was lower than the average in 25 education systems, higher than the average in 43 education systems, and not significantly different from the average in 12 education systems.
- Compared to the 80 other education systems in PISA 2022, the U.S. average reading literacy score was higher than the average in 68 education systems, lower than the average in five education systems, and not significantly different from the average in seven education systems.
- Compared to the 80 other education systems in PISA 2022, the U.S. average science literacy score was higher than the average in 56 education systems, lower than the average in nine education systems, and not significantly different from the average in 15 education systems.
- Compared to the 19 other participating education systems in PISA 2022 financial literacy, the U.S. average financial literacy score was lower than the average in three education systems, higher than the average in 12 education systems, and not significantly different from the average in four education systems.
Whatever challenges the U.S. education system has, it is by no measure “absolutely at the bottom” as Trump alleges. Does anyone really think the U.S. educational system is worse than Iran or North Korea or Russia or Mali or Mexico — and the list goes on? Trump’s claim is easily proved false.
But it serves the desired narrative of his base to believe the U.S. education system is falling apart so public schools can be taken over, private religious schools can get their hands on taxpayer money, and sectarian prayer can be reinserted.
All these pieces fit together.
Related articles:
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Ryan Walters cites states’ rights in call to end U.S. Education Department
It’s time to stop the insanity that is killing public education | Opinion by Mark Wingfield