How will Trump’s order prioritizing school choice affect Pennsylvania?
Allies in Pennsylvania hailed the president’s call to prioritize the programs, though most school funding in the state comes from local sources.
![President Donald Trump was expected to sign an order as early as Wednesday prioritizing school choice.](https://www.inquirer.com/resizer/v2/S6LMN5ISOS37NT6T24TLJKAGDE.jpg?auth=844e80ca4573e9819d51fad4fafbf9750faff895d6dd3b95c8cde69db6c4cb19&width=760&height=507&smart=true)
Amid an ongoing flurry of executive actions, President Donald Trump signed an order Wednesday prioritizing school choice, a campaign-trail talking point aligned with conservative efforts to expand public funding for private education.
Trump’s order directed the federal Department of Education to issue guidance to states on how to use federal funding to support K-12 scholarship programs. The order also directed the department to prioritize school choice programs through discretionary grant programs, and directed the defense secretary to submit a plan for how military families could use federal funds for school choice.
Citing declining test scores, Trump called for increased competition for “government-run schools.”
“When our public education system fails such a large segment of society, it hinders our national competitiveness and devastates families and communities,” he said in the order.
In Pennsylvania, the vast majority of school funding comes from local property taxes and the state. Still, Trump’s order was cheered by conservative activists who have long been calling for school choice expansion — an issue that Republicans are likely to press again as Gov. Josh Shapiro gives his budget address next week.
Here’s what to know about school choice in Pennsylvania, and what Trump’s order could mean:
Pa. already has school choice programs
School choice has been a fraught issue in Pennsylvania, where Republican lawmakers have been pushing to enact a school voucher program that would pay families to send their children to private schools. While Shapiro, a Democrat, has voiced support for vouchers, Democrats who control the House have blocked the proposal, saying the state should be investing in its underfunded public schools rather than diverting money into a private system.
But the state already has school choice programs — including two that function similarly to vouchers, where families that meet certain income qualifications can get scholarships for private schools. Businesses that donate to the scholarship programs — the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) — receive tax credits from the state.
Pennsylvania spends more than $500 million a year on the tax credits, an amount lawmakers have consistently expanded. Critics say the programs lack accountability, with no information tracked by the state on household incomes or how students fare academically.
The Department of Community and Economic Development, which oversees the tax credit programs, did not immediately respond to a question Wednesday on how many students received scholarships last year. A report by the Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg think tank that backs school choice, said that in 2021-22, the programs awarded 77,000 scholarships; funding has more than doubled since then.
The state also has charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently managed and do not charge tuition to families. Most are concentrated in Pennsylvania’s urban areas; about one-third of children in Philadelphia, for instance, attend charters.
Children statewide also attend cyber charter schools, which saw enrollment surge during the pandemic. In the 2023-24 school year, 164,000 of Pennsylvania’s 1.7 million public school students — about 10% — attended charter schools; 60,000 of those students attended cyber charters.
Funding for charter schools — which are paid by school districts for each student they enroll — has been a perennial issue, with public education advocates arguing that charters are pulling money away from public schools. Cyber charters, which receive the same payment rates as brick-and-mortar schools, have been particularly contentious, especially as their enrollment has grown.
Proponents say executive order has ‘limited’ impact
Federal funding has traditionally accounted for a relatively small portion of school district budgets. In Pennsylvania, federal money accounted for 6.5% of school district budgets in 2022-23. (That share varies widely from district to district. Poorer districts rely more heavily on federal money; Philadelphia got more than 12% of its money from federal sources that year.)
To add new federal funding for school choice, Congress would need to pass legislation.
The Commonwealth Foundation, which has ties to voucher proponent Jeffrey Yass, praised Trump’s focus on the issue — but noted the order wouldn’t bring sweeping changes.
“We are pleased to see President Trump address what Josh Shapiro campaigned on but hasn’t delivered for Pennsylvania families: more school choice options,” Rachel Langan, the group’s senior education policy analyst, said in a statement Wednesday. She said that more money had not translated to better academic performance in Pennsylvania public schools, and that more educational options were needed.
Still, “an executive order is limited in its impact,” Langan said. She called on Congress to pass a GOP-sponsored bill to enact a federal private school scholarship program similar to those already existing in Pennsylvania, and urged Shapiro to back school vouchers in the state.
Donna Cooper, executive director of Children First, a pro-public-education group, said that school choice options were already robust in Pennsylvania and that “the overwhelming majority of parents choose public schools.”
If the government were to create a federally funded private school choice program, “that would be a massive income transfer program, from working families to … families of greater means,” Cooper said. She said subsidies would be too minimal for lower-income families to afford tuition at elite private schools. In some states that have enacted universal voucher programs — which Trump’s order described as “most promising avenue for education reform” — data show most students using the money were already enrolled in private schools, or homeschooled.
Cooper also noted research showing students in voucher programs do not benefit academically.
“We’re paying for private schools for people” who can already afford it, Cooper said. “It isn’t about making sure that kids who are struggling are going to … learn better.”