There should be no doubt that Trump will greenlight the school choice reforms laid out in Project 2025. From his prior appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, to his current nominations of Linda McMahon and Penny Schwinn for Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Ed respectively, Trump has consistently staffed the ED with champions of school choice. Picking up where his first term left off, President Trump has proclaimed that "universal school choice," which is advocated in Project 2025, will be a cornerstone of his "Agenda 47" policy platform. Making good on his promise, Trump has signed Executive Order 14191 ("Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families"), which directs the Secretaries of Education and Labor to formulate "discretionary grant programs to expand education freedom" while directing the Secretary of HHS to formulate "block grants . . . to expand educational choice . . . , including private and faith-based options."
The universal school choice reforms of Agenda 47 and Project 2025 will crest on the wave of Republican-led school choice bills that were legislated throughout 2023, which was dubbed the "Year of Educational Choice" after twenty states added or expanded school choice subsidies. Three more states joined the trend during the following election year of 2024. Preparing for the federal legislative sessions of 2025, Republican Governors, such as Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, paved the way for the passage of universal school choice bills by ousting 2024 Congressional candidates, whether incumbents or challengers, who would not pledge to go along with school choice reforms.
Now, with a Trump victory and a Republican mandate, there is an open lane for the Project 2025 expansion of school choice privatization through the deregulation of charter school corporations; the authorization of ESAs for dispersing ESEA Title I funds; and the subsidization of "Scholarship Granting Organizations" (SGOs) with federal tax credits provided under the "Educational Choice for Children Act" (ECCA). Taking the open lane, Trump has already gotten the Project 2025 ball rolling by convening a National School Choice Week Roundtable where he hosted Republican governors, including Lee and Abbott's Lieutenant Governor Daniel Patrick, advising them on how they can capitalize on the school choice grants pending from his new EO 14191.
While the Project 2025 Playbook calls for "lessen[ing] the federal restrictions on charter schools," the Playbook places a more ambitious emphasis on instituting ESAs and tax credits that funnel government subsidies not only into charter school companies, but also private schools, including religious schools, and home schools as well. To be sure, while both the ESA and tax-credit proposals of Project 2025 would siphon public tax dollars into private corporations, each entails different implications for expanding either the corporatization of public education or the federal regulation of private, religious, and homeschools. In particular, ESAs could expand the regulatory reaches of the federal government while the tax credits proposed by Project 2025 are primed to streamline "Pay for Success" (PFS) impact investments that turn profits based on whether student health and career outcomes conform to benchmarks standardized by ESG and other social credit indexes.
Concerning the prospects of ESAs, Project 2025 calls for a portion of each student's ESEA Title I funding to be allocated for "education savings accounts . . . that parents can use to pay for personal tutors, education therapists, books and curricular materials, private school tuition, transportation and more." Based on these stipulations, such ESA stipends could be used to subsidize not only "private school[s]," but also Big Tech corporations through the purchase of ed-tech products which are integral to the ubiquitous data-mining and omnipresent AI that are imperative in driving the social credit economy of the 4IR. For examples:
- ESA funds for "curricular materials" could be used to buy Skinnerian adaptive-learning courseware, such as Clever and Knewton, which have been financed by Peter Thiel, along with Dreambox and Brightspace LeaP, all of which data-mine students' cognitive-behavioral psychometrics.
- ESA dollars for "education therapies" could be used to pay for assistive biofeedback wearables, such as HeartMath EKG monitors for managing test anxiety and BrainCo EEG headbands for managing ADHD, both of which data-mine students' socio-emotional biometrics.
- ESA money for "personal tutors" could be spent on GPT AI tutors, which data-mine students' cognitive-behavioral and socio-emotional algorithms.
At the same time, ESA stipends for "private school tuition" could come with strings attached to federal regulations that subordinate private and home schools to government control. Consider the Alabama State "Creating Hope and Opportunity for Our Students' Education (CHOOSE) Act," which issues $7,000 ESAs for attending "an accredited private school, including church, parochial, or religious school" along with $2,000 ESAs for costs associated with attending "homeschool." The CHOOSE Act stipulates that payouts from these ESAs are subject to the following provisions:
- "[P]articipating school[s]" that receive ESA dollars must "[a]gree to comply with all applicable health and safety laws or codes" and "require all participating students receiving program funds to take a standardized assessment." Furthermore, "participating school[s]" must "[p]rovide the department [of Revenue] with school-level test results for participating students." Failure to comply "shall constitute grounds for the department, in its discretion, to suspend or disqualify the . . . participating school from receiving program funds."
- "[P]arent[s]," including "homeschool" parents, who receive ESA funds must "[a]gree to comply with rules adopted by the department for the administration of the program" and "[s]ubmit to the department any information required by the department for implementation of the program." Failure to comply "shall constitute grounds for the department, in its discretion, to revoke, recover, suspend, or deny the [ESA] credit otherwise made available pursuant to this act."
To be sure, similar restrictions could be imposed through federal ESAs as Project 2025 indicates that the Alabama CHOOSE Act is one of the ten state ESA laws on which its proposal for federal ESAs is based. As a result, such Title I ESAs would federalize private schooling as much as corporatize public education, simultaneously expanding the reaches of Big Government and maximizing the profits of Big Business.
On the other end of Project 2025's school choice platform, there is a proposal to pass the "Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA)," which would award federal tax credits to corporations that donate to "Scholarship Granting Organizations" (SGOs) designated to dole out "scholarships" to students to cover the costs of "qualified elementary or secondary education expense[s]." According to the ECCA, such qualified expenses include "tutoring expenses" and "expenses at private or religious elementary and secondary education institutions."
Unlike the CHOOSE Act, the ECCA stipulates that "[n]othing in this Act, or any amendment made by this Act, shall be construed to permit, allow, encourage, or authorize any Federal, State, or local government entity, or officer or employee thereof, to mandate, direct, or control any aspect of any private or religious elementary or secondary education institution." However, the ECCA also stipulates that "[n]othing in this Act, or any amendment made by this Act, shall be construed to permit, allow, encourage, or authorize any Federal, State, or local government entity, or officer or employee thereof, to mandate, direct, or control any aspect of any scholarship granting organization." In other words, while the ECCA prevents private and religious schools from being federally regulated as a result of accepting government-subsidized SGO scholarships, it does not prevent SGO corporations from controlling the terms and conditions, including PFS social impact provisions, of the scholarships.
To be sure, "Pay for Success" impact contracts are provided for in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which reauthorizes and amends the ESEA. In accordance with ESSA, "Pay for Success" contracts can stipulate that an SGO put corporate money upfront for scholarships and then receive that money back from the government, along with a potential profit, depending on whether student outcomes meet or exceed projected "social impacts" that align with ESG and other social credit metrics. In fact, many SGOs facilitate their scholarships through social impact contracts.
Consider the Sagamore Institute, which is "an action-oriented think tank" that facilitates "social impact" investments through "sustainable initiatives," such as its "Scholarships for Education Choice program." Registered as a "Certified Participating SGO" under the Indiana State Department of Education's "School Scholarship Tax Credit Program," the Sagamore Institute grants "Education Choice" scholarships in "partner[ship] with large and small schools, traditional and classical schools, secular and faith-based schools, and schools that serve special needs populations." The Sagamore Institute has also pushed "Impact Investing" aimed at "'Supply Side' Welfare Reform" that redistributes "Private Capital for [the] Public Good" of remedying socioeconomic disparities across racial demographics.
Similarly, the Point Foundation, which is "the nation's largest scholarship-granting organization for LGBTQ students," doles out "impact" scholarships aimed at "mitigat[ing] generations of racism and an education system born from discriminatory policies by providing financial support, community resources, and professional development to LGBTQ students who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color [BIPOC]." Point Foundation scholarships, which are sponsored by World Economic Forum (WEF) partners, such as Amazon and Morgan Stanley, are bankrolled by donations stipulated for "advanc[ing] social justice, diversity, inclusion, and equality" along with "equity." In other words, the Point Foundation's impact scholarships are issued to advance social justice outcomes for LGBTQ-BIPOC stakeholders in accordance with the ESG social credit economy championed by the WEF.
If you think that such "DEI" impact scholarships have now been banned due to Trump's recent executive orders (EOs), think again. EO 14151 ("Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing") and EO 14173 ("Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity") only repeal DEI provisions stipulated in prior executive orders, including EO 11246, EO 11478, EO 12898, EO 13583, EO 13672, and EO 13985. Although EO 14190 ("Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling") expunges "Federal funding sources and streams, including grants or contracts, that directly or indirectly support or subsidize the instruction, advancement, or promotion of gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology," it does so only "to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law." Since none of Trump's executive orders repeal diversity, equity, inclusion, or PFS provisions codified in the ESSA law, none of his EOs prohibit ESSA PFS contracts that subsidize SGO impact scholarships which target DEI or ESG outcomes; nor do any of his EOs prohibit federal tax credits from subsidizing corporate donations to such SGOs.
To be sure, PFS impact investments are pushed not only by "left-wing" DEI organizations, but also by "right-wing" conservative think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) where Max Eden, who is a co-author of Project 2025's "Department of Education" chapter, has served as a Research Fellow, a Senior Fellow, and an Education Policy Program Manager. In fact, in a "Research Paper" drafted for a 2014 AEI Research Conference titled School Choice: Encouraging New and Better Schools, Eden advocates for "social impact bonds" financed by "private school choice venture capital firms."
Although the AEI does not endorse impact investments that target sociocultural DEI outcomes, the AEI does call for PFS investments that target socioeconomic outcomes, including workforce, health, and safety outcomes. In either equation, SGOs are primed to peddle PFS scholarships designed for advancing social impacts, whether sociocultural impacts or socioeconomic impacts, in order to socially engineer "human capital" markets in which students are commodified to streamline social credit supply chains for the 4IR stakeholder economy.
In sum, PFS scholarships fueled by ECCA tax credits will facilitate public-private education partnerships in which corporations steer the funding streams for both public and private schools while federal and state governments subsidize those companies' investments in social credit and human capital markets. At the same time, Title I ESAs will expand government control over private schools, including religious and home schools, while federally subsidizing corporate ed-tech products geared to digitally track and trace PFS impacts on students' social credit outcomes. Altogether, Project 2025's school choice reforms will expand Big Government control of private, religious, and home schools while expanding Big Business management of both public and private education through impact scholarships which advance ESG and other social credit outcomes streamlined by Big Tech corporations that helm the planned stakeholder economy of the 4IR.
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