Trump could scrap Education Dept., up school choice and boost education for all

On the campaign trail this month, former President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to “close the federal Department of Education” and expand school choice — a wildly popular concept that cuts across party lines, new polling shows.Good news: If he wins the White House again, he can do both.The federal Department of Education is an unconstitutional waste of time and money.Its very existence arguably violates the Tenth Amendment: The word “education” appears nowhere in the Constitution. The federal government has spent well over a trillion dollars on K-12 education since the department’s inception, while failing to improve student performance.It was created in 1980, at the tail end of President Jimmy Carter’s single term in office, as a payoff to the nation’s largest teachers’ union after it endorsed his unsuccessful re-election bid.Trump wants no part of it.

“I’m going to take the Department of Education, close it in Washington,” he said at a September rally in Pennsylvania.“Let the states run their own education.” He makes a good point.

The federal government could send the department’s budget back to the states so they can have more education funding to spend as they see fit.That would allow for more local control — and less wasteful spending on useless bureaucrats in Washington. But if Trump dismantled the federal education bureaucracy, could he also fulfill his separate commitment to unleash school choice?Yes — and here’s how.The Educational Choice for Children Act is a bill to set up a nationwide school-choice plan that would be neither run nor regulated by the federal Education Department.During a Fox News interview on Friday, Trump said he would sign it.As a federal tax-credit scholarship initiative, ECCA would allow taxpayers to keep more of their own money if they donate to K-12 scholarship programs in their states.The idea is popular: A poll released this week found that 69% of American voters “support a federal ...