The U.S. is moving to expand school choice. Could it impact Canada?
Trump has recently issued executive order expanding school choice
Having mused that he hopes his education secretary pick will "put herself out of a job," U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to shutter the U.S. Education Department. He's already moved to redirect federal funding toward expanding school choice in America's K-12 system. Here's a look at the issue and whether it could influence schools in Canada.
Can Trump really axe the Department of Education?
In the U.S., education is largely the responsibility of state governments, which guide local school districts in running schools. States primarily fund K-12 schools, set curriculum and graduation requirements, and regulate teachers.
Federally, the Department of Education supports states with policy recommendations, collects education data and funds programs typically linked to equity, like grants for K-12 schools to serve students with disabilities or those from lower-income families. The biggest slice of the department's funding actually goes to postsecondary, such as the Federal Student Aid program, grants to minority-serving colleges and education and training programs for adults.
For decades, some Republican politicians have sought to shutter or reduce the role of the department.
An act of Congress started it, "so it would take an act of Congress to get rid of it — and that's not likely," says Christopher Lubienski, education policy professor at Indiana University in Bloomington.
However, Trump can drastically defund programs — for instance cutting contracts for ongoing education research this week — and redirect discretionary spending to favour school choice, Lubienski said.
How does school choice relate to the K-12 system?
Free, local public schools are the U.S. default (making up about 83 per cent of elementary and high school enrolment), but other options include private schools (about 10 per cent), charter schools (about seven per cent) and homeschooling. This split varies by state. Proponents of school choice support government funding of these alternative options, while opponents decry further erosion of the public system.
Tuition-charging private schools can run the gamut from church-run religious institutions to elite boarding academies, Lubienski said. Charter schools are tuition-free, privately run and independent of local school districts, but are funded with public tax dollars. Homeschooling, he said, is typically a choice for families rejecting the public system for ideological, religious or pedagogical reasons.
When traditional schools closed in-person learning for stretches early in the pandemic, many alternative options stayed open, a move popular with parents, said Lubienski, who has researched school choice for several decades.
He foresees Trump may further incentivize states to implement voucher programs, which have become key to the idea of expanding alternatives to traditional public schools.
What are vouchers?
More than 20 states have some form of voucher programs, which generally take some funding earmarked for education and give it to families — to put toward private school tuition, for example, or cover costs from homeschooling. The programs commonly take the form of vouchers, educational savings accounts or tax credits.
The idea isn't new — economist Milton Friedman discussed the concept back in 1955, Lubienski noted — but there's been rising interest since the 1990s, especially in some conservative states, and a flurry of activity in recent years.
What's the concern about more voucher programs?
Supporters say voucher programs foster competition in education and give parents more freedom to choose where, what and how their kids learn. Some see them as a tool for equity, allowing students from lower-income families or with disabilities, for instance, to access options beyond their local public school (though vouchers may not always cover tuition entirely).
With surging interest and growth in vouchers available to anyone (where earlier programs had limits connected to, for example, household income or special education needs), others have noted that recent recipients of this funding are most often affluent students who had already been attending private schools.
Others have criticized a lack of transparency in these programs, their cost and even their use for rural regions.
"There's been a lot of pushback from some rural communities against vouchers because ... they don't necessarily have a private school in the area that could take a voucher," Lubienski said. In Texas, for example, "there've been a lot of conservative rural legislators who pushed back against the idea of vouchers because they're really tied to their community-run public schools."
Could this impact schools in Canada?
In Canada, where provinces and territories preside over education, 91 per cent of K-12 students are enrolled in public school. About eight per cent are in private or independent school, and the remainder are homeschooled as of 2022-2023, according to Statistics Canada.
Over the decades, decisions like Quebec's private school subsidies and Ontario's funding of Catholic schools have contributed to the current mix of education offerings across the country, says Ee-Seul Yoon, a researcher of school choice in Canada and associate education professor at the University of Manitoba.
Yet "what happens in the U.S. matters [and] has influence," as well, she said.
An influx of Americans coming to Canada in the '70s helped introduce the free schools movement here, she noted, while the U.S. charter schools that emerged in the '90s piqued enough interest that Alberta picked up the practice.
Like in the U.S., Canadian families began turning to public school alternatives (like homeschooling or learning pods) during COVID-19. That said, Yoon says there were already more parents seeking schools and programs "of choice" for their kids — like international baccalaureate, French immersion, arts- or STEM-driven offerings — to provide an edge for postsecondary.
While the term "school choice" is positive — "Who doesn't like choice?" Yoon pointed out — we're talking about the privatization of education and must be mindful that these choices aren't accessible to everyone, she said.
Given the direction in the U.S., Canadian education leaders might take this opportunity "to reflect on what's been going on here.... Who has [the current system] been working well for? Who have we left behind?"
