Beyond the Article - Does Trump's School Choice EO Serve Military Families?

Or the Heritage Foundation? (Expanded Article)

In January, the Trump administration issued an executive order requiring the Department of Defense to come up with a proposal that would determine the feasibility of creating a program letting military families take federal funding and spend it on the school of their choice, including helping pay for religious schools, while possibly reducing funding for Defense Department facilities that rank among the highest performing nationally.

Some military families who want to be able to access outside schools have been able to do so depending on local laws, but no national proposal has been put in place.

“We are now able to choose the school choice that we would prefer, as long as we provide transportation,” said Tiffany Kelley of her Air Force family’s move from OCONUS to Georgia in 2023. “Georgia does it right, in my opinion, you pick the school, they give you three choices.”

The Kelley family takes advantage of Georgia’s Quality Basic Education Act, which enables those living on a military base to enroll in a public school they are not zoned for, without an official address. “We have now utilized school choice for this last school year, and it has been the best decision that we could have made.”

But that is just one type of “school choice”.

School choice is a broad term that refers to policies allowing families to select alternatives to their assigned public school districts. School choice options include religious schools, charter schools, magnet schools and voucher programs, also titled Education Savings Accounts (ESAs). While all these models offer families more educational options, voucher programs and, to a lesser extent, charter schools shift public funds away from traditional public schools, raising concerns about their long-term impact on district-wide education equity.

Those programs can be a boon for families that want to pursue other educational opportunities for their kids.

Go Beyond the Article

Throughout the conversations I have had with military families and advocates about adding school choice for families, one thing became clear: a lack of clarity about the problem school choice is designed to solve.

The DoD’s Defense State Liason Office (DSLO) is doing the work. Why not fortify that effort?

The lack of stakeholder engagement feels like agenda peddling…not improving the policies that serve military families.

This reaction made me worry that I wasn’t being unbiased, until I read who supported this effort…the Heritage Foundation.

As I mentioned in my article, in April 2025, Republican Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.) introduced the Education Savings Accounts for Military Families Act that would establish military ESAs with protections for discrimination on the basis of religion but not race, gender or disability. The bill was endorsed by the Heritage Foundation, the organization that authored Project 2025.

That is all well and good, but the Heritage Foundation’s mission is not finding what school options are best for military families; it cares about what is best for its constituents and its funders. And what it promotes is very clear.

In 1985, the Heritage Foundation published “A New Agenda for Education,” which argued, “Today, [private schools] offer an alternative to a purely secular approach. Their vitality, however, is seriously undermined by a tax code that encourages reliance on the public system.” The Heritage Foundation supports these efforts because they will help those already using them, not military families who may benefit from them.

Like it or not the idea of who educates our children and how is a very political topic.

But what do military families think?

Become a paid subscriber to watch the Military Dinner Table Conversations, see the data and hear the stories shared by other military spouses that did not make it into the article…