Universal school choice was one of the many campaign promises that helped propel President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance to victory last year. The status quo in the American public education system, in which children’s schools are defined solely by their zip code, is broken.
With unified control of Washington for the first time in nearly a decade, Republicans are preparing to deliver on their promise to American families by incorporating the Educational Choice for Children Act, which we co-sponsored in the Senate, into Trump’s reconciliation bill. Passing the ECCA will help make school choice a reality for many more children across the country.
The ECCA is modeled on laws in the states we represent, Indiana and Missouri, as well as several others that have empowered scores of parents to access the best education for their children.
The legislation would triple the number of students who currently benefit from private school choice programs across the country. The law would provide up to $10 billion in tax credits to induce greater charitable donations to not-for-profit scholarship-granting organizations. These organizations would then use these private donations to award scholarships for tuition and other education services. As parental demand increases, so would the initial number of allowable tax credits to generate additional donations.
More importantly, the ECCA would not direct education policy from Washington, nor would it involve the Department of Education. Instead, it would use private dollars to put parents in control of their children’s education. The GOP’s commitment in last year’s campaign is underscored by that belief that “families should be empowered to choose the best education for their children.” The ECCA would make that a reality, delivering “universal school choice in every state in America.”
This month, Texas became the latest state to pass universal school choice with education savings accounts for nearly every family. Still, close to 40% of the nation’s children in public schools live in one of the 16 states with no access to school choice. Nearly all these states are governed exclusively by Democrats who are sadly determined to block every effort to empower families. Millions more children live in one of the 34 states with school choice, but more than half of them restrict eligibility and funding to levels that exclude most families.
Thankfully, through the ECCA, we have a powerful solution to expand universal choice to children in all 50 states. While school choice opportunities have expanded rapidly among half the states in the last five years, starting during the COVID pandemic, this vital educational opportunity remains elusive to more than half the children in America.
The ECCA remains one of the few legislative ways we can deliver universal choice to families across all 50 states. Philosophically, we support school choice to evolve our K-12 education system from a 19th century model of universal common schools to universal choice where working- and middle-class parents become customers who can “shop” for their children’s education. The overwhelming share of our fellow citizens believe parents should decide the best education for their children as opposed to local school boards, teachers unions, and the federal government.
This should especially be the case for K-12 education, where the public school model no longer works for millions of children, in spite of the constant growth in federal spending on public education. The reality is that higher rates of spending have coincided with a continued decline in students’ academic outcomes on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the “nation’s report card.” The American Enterprise Institute described the results of the latest report as a “five-alarm fire.” These results should be a sobering reminder that more money does not translate to higher test scores. On top of the subpar learning outcomes, there’s the issue of moral values; many families feel trapped by public schools that either fail to reinforce what they teach at home or are openly hostile to it.
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By contrast, school choice empowers parents and increases competition among schools, public and private (including religious), to generate the best education outcomes. As EdChoice has documented, nearly nine in 10 empirical studies on choice show positive results, including academic outcomes for students not only in private schools, but in public schools faced with new competition.
It is time to make school choice the option of every family in America, regardless of their zip code or which party governs their state. We can begin that process by including the Educational Choice for Children Act in the budget reconciliation legislation so that children can attend schools where their parents are confident their academic needs are met and their family’s values are respected.
Jim Banks is the junior U.S. senator from Indiana and serves on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions subcommittee on Education and the American Family. Eric Schmitt is the junior U.S. senator from Missouri and serves on the Judiciary subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights.