Donald Trump is signing executive orders (EO) faster than Joe Biden pardons his family members, and on Wednesday evening, he set his sights on education. While the president's goals are lofty, they could be huge for American children.
The "Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families" EO is all about working to ensure every child in this country has access to school choice, something several states are already focused on. It gives the secretary of Education 60 days to "issue guidance regarding how States can use Federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives." The president claims that all parents should have a say in how their children are raised, including how they're educated.
The EO states:
Parents want and deserve the best education for their children. But too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K-12 school. According to this year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math. Moreover, geographically based school assignments exacerbate the cost of housing in districts with preferred schools, straining the finances of millions of American families sacrificing for their children’s futures.
When our public education system fails such a large segment of society, it hinders our national competitiveness and devastates families and communities. For this reason, more than a dozen States have enacted universal K-12 scholarship programs, allowing families — rather than the government — to choose the best educational setting for their children. These States have highlighted the most promising avenue for education reform: educational choice for families and competition for residentially assigned, government-run public schools. The growing body of rigorous research demonstrates that well-designed education-freedom programs improve student achievement and cause nearby public schools to improve their performance.
In addition to giving parents and children educational freedom, the president's goals are to expand opportunities for working and low-income families, military families, and families with children who are eligible for the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools.
Related: Trump's Latest Executive Orders Prove That He's 100% Behind Our Military
Trump also signed another EO aimed at protecting the nation's children: "Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling." Essentially, it says that schools must teach topics like math and reading and not radical ideas like gender ideology or critical race theory. This one states:
Parents trust America’s schools to provide their children with a rigorous education and to instill a patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation and the values for which we stand.
In recent years, however, parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight. Such an environment operates as an echo chamber, in which students are forced to accept these ideologies without question or critical examination. In many cases, innocent children are compelled to adopt identities as either victims or oppressors solely based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics. In other instances, young men and women are made to question whether they were born in the wrong body and whether to view their parents and their reality as enemies to be blamed. These practices not only erode critical thinking but also sow division, confusion, and distrust, which undermine the very foundations of personal identity and family unity.
Imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children not only violates longstanding anti-discrimination civil rights law in many cases, but usurps basic parental authority. For example, steering students toward surgical and chemical mutilation without parental consent or involvement or allowing males access to private spaces designated for females may contravene Federal laws that protect parental rights, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), and sex-based equality and opportunity, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX). Similarly, demanding acquiescence to “White Privilege” or “unconscious bias,” actually promotes racial discrimination and undermines national unity.
Like I said, this is huge for the American education system. I'm sure there will be plenty of blowback, but hopefully common sense will prevail in the end and every child in this country will have access to the quality education of their family's choosing.
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