President Donald Trump in December hosted an event for advocates of taxpayer funding of private education.
The Council for American Private Education (CAPE), a group that supports vouchers, tax credits and other forms of public aid to private schools, reported that Vice President Mike Pence as well as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos were at the event, along with members of Congress and state legislators.
CAPE reported that Trump, Pence, DeVos and the others heard from parents who support vouchers, and that Trump “gave a full-throated endorsement of legislation in Congress that would create a federal tax credit to support state scholarship programs, saying, ‘We believe that every parent should have educational freedom for their children. … People want school choice.’”
In fact, voters in numerous states and the District of Columbia have repeatedly rejected voucher schemes at the ballot box. (See “The People Have Spoken,” January 2019 Church & State.) Most recently, voters in Arizona rejected a plan to expand private school vouchers in the state, with 65 percent voting against the scheme in November 2018.
Trump has proposed a $5 billion nationwide voucher plan, but it has not moved in Congress.
