The GOP platform calls for ‘universal school choice.’ What would that mean for students?

COLUMBUS, Ohio — National Republicans are poised to support “universal school choice” as part of the policy platform they adopt at next week’s convention in Milwaukee, a goal supporters see as the culmination of decades advocating for parents’ autonomy to pick their children’s schools. James Singer, a spokesperson for President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, said eliminating the department — which oversees Head Start, administers college financial aid programs, conducts education research and enforces civil rights laws — “isn’t just bad policy, it would rip vital support away from our most vulnerable children, leaving them less likely to graduate from high school or attend college.” Chad Aldis, vice president for Ohio policy at the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said declaring universal school choice as a policy goal and carrying it out are two very different things. Kim Anderson, executive director of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, said Republicans’ plan would “throw chaos into the lives of American families” without addressing what parents tell her members are their two highest priorities: the availability of mental health services and school safety. Other policy priorities include: stripping federal funds from any school that engages in “inappropriate political indoctrination,” guaranteeing that students can pray and read the Bible in school, “hardening” schools’ disciplinary standards as a way of curbing violence, eliminating teacher tenure and adopting merit pay, and rejecting efforts to nationalize civics education.