The Trump administration says it wants to empower parents with more educational options for their children. But it only supports choices in the private market.Kevin Carey
| Opinion contributorShow Caption
If you’re a parent, you may remember the struggle to find good, affordable child care and slots in preschool: waiting lists, eye-watering prices and a gnawing uncertainty about whether you found someplace safe and sound. Finally getting to kindergarten was a relief.Slowly, and now quickly, public education is fragmenting into something that looks scarily like our dysfunctional child care system. The stress you felt for the first four years could last for 18.At their best, public schools are a pillar of democracy. They anchor local communities and build common ties among people from different backgrounds. When we learn together as children, we can work together as colleagues and citizens.Voters have repeatedly made it clear they prefer public educationMost children today remain in traditional public schools, locally governed and free to attend. But in just the past three years, the number of students using some kind of voucher or government-subsidized education savings account to attend private school has doubled, to 1.2 million. As states implement new ESAs sponsored by President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that number is sure to grow.Billions of public dollars are being diverted into private hands even as public schools struggle to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Test scores have declined, and social norms about school attendance have crumbled. Chronic absenteeism is down from a peak in 2022, but the percentage of students missing at least 10% of the school year is still twice what it was before COVID-19 in some states.Public schools have also been battered by technological disruption, from smartphones sapping students’ attention to artificial intelligence apps making it far too easy to cheat. Hundreds of economically struggling districts have reduced the number of days in the school week from five to four.The Trump administration has vowed to shut down the U.S. Department of Education and proposed steep cuts in federal funding for public schools. Recently, the department announced new layoffs that would almost wipe out the special education office.What all of those programs have in common is the goal of equal opportunity – no matter who you are or where you come from, you deserve a great public education. By giving everyone a fair chance to learn, we make sure the nation’s talents are fully utilized.The administration says it wants to empower parents with more educational options for their children. But it only supports choices in the private market – Trump’s budget actually cuts funding for public school options like magnet schools.It all leads toward the public school system falling into pieces. Parents will be forced to buy what the private market has to offer, at prices that rise when owners decide. Vouchers and ESAs might be enough to cover the cost, or might not. Unprofitable schools will close down. If no brick-and-mortar schools are available, students could be forced into online charter schools, where Stanford researchers describe student performance as "exceptionally bleak.”We have to invest in public education to fulfill its promiseSuch a future of education would be profoundly un-American. Free public schools were a radical idea in the 19th century, when pioneers included them in every state constitution. Schools were a promise to the waves of immigrants who powered American industrial dominance and a means of assimilating people from every corner of the globe. No matter who you were or where you came from, everyone’s children learned in the same place.There’s a reason that many of the great civil rights struggles of the 20th century were fought over full and equal access to public education. In a time of deep partisan division, when everyone seems to live in their own closed-off bubble of knowledge and truth, public schools are among the last places where people from different backgrounds come together.The public seems to agree, as recent voucher initiatives have lost at the polls in red and blue states.Instead of giving up on our schools and leaving students to the mercy of the market, this is the time to make good on the parts of public education’s promise that remain unfulfilled. For example, public school districts have very different levels of funding depending on where they're located, making social and economic inequalities worse. By redrawing school district boundaries, states can make funding more equitable and improve economic and racial integration, without changing where anyone goes to school.Instead of cutting financial support for special education, we should modernize a too-bureaucratic system with new technologies and support families that could otherwise bankrupt themselves helping their children with special needs. Many public school teachers are stressed out, underpaid and working in buildings that have been allowed to crumble. They need better training and salaries that are competitive with other skilled professions.Most high school students aren’t going to enroll right away in a four-year college and earn a bachelor’s degree. They need other pathways to a good career, like registered apprenticeships, which allow students to earn a salary and a credential without taking out ruinous student loans.All of this is hard work. But the first lesson you learn as a parent is that the most important things are hard. Right now, we’re on a path to letting our public education system disintegrate. It’s not too late to remake it better than ever before.Kevin Carey directs the education policy program at New America, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, DC.
