Free Republic

Teachers' union boss Randi Weingarten said during a recent podcast appearance that she is fearful President Donald Trump's plans to terminate the Department of Education will mean more funding for school choice vouchers, which she decried as a "tax credit" for wealthy families already sending their kids to private school. Weingarten's comments came during a podcast interview with Molly Jong-Fast, who spoke with her about the implications of Trump's spending reforms, particularly his plan to terminate the Department of Education. Weingarten stated that cutting the department's roughly $100 billion in funding will primarily benefit tax cuts for the wealthy or...

Texas Democrat Gene Wu said in a video posted to X on Monday that parents send their kids to private school "so they don’t have to have their kids with your kids," even though a previous social media post from him indicated he also chose private school for his children. "How do we tell people we’re going to take your money and give it to rich people, so they can send their kids to private school, so they don’t have to have their kids with your kids," Wu told a crowd on Monday during a demonstration against a proposed school...

The White House will host a Friday roundtable on school choice with top Republican governors amid sweeping victories on the issue across the country, The Daily Wire has learned. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who spearheaded a major victory for school choice in her state after taking office, will moderate the National School Choice Week Roundtable at noon on Friday, according to a White House official. Also at the table will be Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee, where the legislature just passed a universal school choice bill, and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick of Texas, where school choice legislation is also...

President Trump on Wednesday issued an executive order that prioritizes and frees up federal funding for school choice programs, directing the Secretaries of Education and Labor to "review their respective discretionary grant programs and each submit a plan" within 90 days on how to expand school choice. The executive order also directs the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, to submit a plan to Mr. Trump for how military families can use Defense Department funds to send their kids to the school of their choosing. More broadly, it directs the Department of Education to prioritize school choice programs through its discretionary...

A report showed that nearly 70% of enforcement actions executed by the Biden administration’s Education Department targeted faith-based and career schools. A report showed that nearly 70% of enforcement actions executed by the Biden administration’s Education Department targeted faith-based and career schools… “As our report details, the Biden-Harris Department of Education has been engaged in a long-running scheme to punish Christian colleges that are ideologically opposed to the left’s agenda. The unfair targeting of these institutions has been egregious, and it needs to stop immediately.” The APP notes that two of the nation’s most prominent Christian universities, Grand Canyon University...

The growth of classical education schools is astonishing. The numbers keep rising; there is no sign that the movement is beginning to plateau. Schools open, networks are created, charters are authorized, and kids fill the seats. One would think that as more spaces are available the (supposedly) small number of parents who favor the classical way would be satisfied and demand would diminish. How many Americans want their children to study Latin, read the Old and New Testaments, and appreciate the High Art of the Renaissance? Couldn’t be too many, say intellectuals and educators on the left. Those enlightened practitioners...

North Carolina sheriffs must comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer requests with the passage of House Bill 10 over Governor Roy Cooper’s veto Wednesday. The bill will also funnel more than $2 billion to the state’s Opportunity Scholarship school voucher program over the next decade — expanding the program to allow students of all income levels to receive taxpayer funding for tuition at private schools in the state. The state House of Representatives voted to override Cooper’s veto by a 72-44 margin Tuesday, with three Democrats joining all Republicans present in favor. On Wednesday, the state Senate followed suit,...

When families receive an ESA, which is typically around half of what the state spends per public education student, the state saves money.Democrat lawmakers employ fear tactics claiming school choice will bankrupt their states. It’s a massive lie, and they know it. As a recent Wall Street Journal report notes, school choice programs provide enormous savings for a state’s budget — savings to the tune of millions of dollars each year.Martin F. Lueken reports in the Journal that “a recent EdChoice analysis of 48 school-choice programs across 26 states through 2022 estimates that school-choice programs generated cumulative net fiscal benefits...

Gloria Romero, former Democratic majority leader in the California state Senate, has announced that she is switching to the Republican party and will be voting for former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Speaking on Fox News, Romero said that the Democratic Party "has moved so far to the left, it's been the party that marched towards war, towards censorship, towards authoritarianism." Romero served in office from 1998 to 2010, initially as a member of the California State Assembly for the 49th district, then as a member of the California State Senate for the 24th district, and between...

Election Day results show several losses for Tennessee incumbent lawmakers, surprising many political veterans.

Uniparty Republicans and teachers’ unions in Oklahoma recently concocted a new plan to sabotage the fight for educational freedom — silencing the state’s Department of Education. But their efforts failed. Make no mistake, their efforts weren’t about silencing me — they were about silencing parents in the fight for school choice in the Sooner State. I wish I were exaggerating, but I’m not. RINO Republicans in the Oklahoma legislature recently cut a deal with the union to silence my department. The language in the budget bill said the "Department of Education shall not be encumbered or expanded for the purpose...

Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan barely survived his re-election bid in state House District 21, eking out a less than 400-vote victory in the Republican primary runoff where both candidates earned more than 12,000 votes. But other Texas state House incumbents didn't fare as well. Between the Republican primaries in March and the primary runoffs in May, 15 incumbent Texas state House Republicans lost their re-election bids, including nine during the primaries and six in the runoffs. "The Texas legislature now has enough votes to pass School Choice," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, declared on the heels of the...

As Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has pushed school choice initiatives, leading to a spike in charter and private school enrollments, public schools are shutting down. Across the state, public school enrollment is declining. Duval County Public School District, the sixth-largest school district in Florida and 20th largest in the country, is now considering campus closures due to dramatic dips in their enrollment. Broward County Public Schools, Florida’s second largest school district, has evaluated plans to close up to 42 campuses over the next few years. Miami-Dade county has also experienced a substantial decline in enrollment rates. Of the roughly...

Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans have spent years aggressively turning the state into a haven for school choice. They have been wildly successful, with tens of thousands more children enrolling in private or charter schools or homeschooling. Now as those programs balloon, some of Florida’s largest school districts are facing staggering enrollment declines — and grappling with the possibility of campus closures — as dollars follow the increasing number of parents opting out of traditional public schools.

Texas is on the cusp of a major victory for school choice. School choice has become a centerpiece of Republican policy, empowering parents to choose the best school that suits their children's needs. Education tax dollars should follow the child, not the schools and programs lobbied on behalf of progressive institutions like left-wing teachers' unions. However, many so-called “Republicans” are beholden to these institutions and have continued to vote against school choice policies. Even in the alleged conservative bastion of Texas, 21 Republicans in Texas’s House of Representatives voted against school choice last year. But conservatives across the state aren’t...

Republican Governor Kay Ivey on Thursday signed the CHOOSE Act into law, making Alabama the latest state to make universal school choice law. "Alabama is only the 14th state in the nation to provide families with an education savings account option," Ivey said after signing the legislation. The education savings account is a school choice model that enables parents to use public funds to cover a variety of education expenses, including private school tuition, instructional materials, and homeschooling costs. School choice, or providing all families with alternatives to the public schools they’re zoned for, can be expanded through multiple avenues...

Teacher unions have strategically been pouring donations into Republican political campaigns, according to a report from the Daily Signal....... Teachers unions donated "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to certain Republican candidates’ state legislative primaries in states that tout school choice and parental rights bills, including Alabama, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy fellow Jason Bedrick told The Daily Signal that "the unions are terrified that parents are clamoring for more education choice, so they’re doing everything they can to stop it." He continued, "It’s obvious what’s going on here: In red states,...

BELTON, Texas (KWTX) - Bell County voters head to the polls on Tuesday as four republican and one democratic candidates are up for election in the Texas House District 55 primary election. The issue at the center of the race revolves around school choice, which Governor Greg Abbott has made a priority. School choice is a concept that uses public tax dollars to help pay for private education and other educational services through an Education Savings Account, similar to Health Savings Accounts...He was one of 21 republicans to vote school choice out of a House bill last year. Shines says...

One of the best things about National School Choice Week (celebrated this year from January 21–27) is watching people take advantage of the growing range of options that allow them to opt out of public schools, often while taking per-student funding with them to pay for preferred alternatives. From panicked supporters of government schools to relieved parents and joyful choice advocates, the shift in education is showing up across American society. Where Are the Public-School Students? "Fresh from the academic struggles that followed the pandemic, and with federal relief funds soon to run out, [public school district leaders] now confront...

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten recently said that school choice “undermines democracy.” In a video of her remarks, Weingarten slammed former White House Education Secretary Betsy Devos, City Journal journalist Christopher Rufo, and prominent school choice activist Corey DeAngelis. “[School choice proponents] have not one thing that they offer as a solution other than privatizing or voucherizing schools, which is about undermining democracy and undermining civil discourse and undermining pluralism, because 90 percent of our kids goes to public schools still. They just divided. Divided, divide, divide, divide,” Weingarten claimed. “What did Rufo say? Rufo, DeAngelis, Devos,...