The 'big, beautiful' fight over school choice ends with escape clause for blue states

Republicans quietly passed a first-of-its-kind national school choice program in President Trump's "big, beautiful bill," but celebration among advocates was tempered after the Senate added a provision giving blue states a way out.  

The Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) was on turbulent waters throughout the process, at one taken out of the bill due to the Senate Parliamentarian and leaving backers on the edge of their seats.

Its final form lifts the cap on how much the federal government can spend on the issue, but its opt-in feature means school choice programs might not make new advances in the Democratic-led states supporters have long targeted.

“School choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st Century. Every child, regardless of race or wealth or ethnicity, deserves access to an excellent education. This tax credit provision will unleash billions of dollars every single year for scholarships for kids to attend the K-12 school of their choice," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in a speech before the Senate voted to pass the legislation, which President Trump signed on Friday.

The basic premise of ECCA is a tax credit that will go to individuals or corporations who donate to nonprofits that offer educational scholarships to students looking for options outside of traditional public schools.  

The money from the program can go to certain qualified expenses such as tuition, fees, tutoring and supplies for students at public, private or religious schools. It can also cover transportation, room and board and computer equipment.  

“One thing we should certainly not be doing is creating a two-tier education system in America — private schools for the wealthy and well-connected, and severely underfunded public schools for low-income, disabled and working class kids,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at a press conference against the reconciliation bill back in June, K-12 Dive reported. “That is not what this country is supposed to be about.”

School choice advocates and Republicans in Senate and House leadership fought hard for the provision, as it would represent the first national school choice program in the country, but in the end some of the language came up short for advocates.  

"I will say the House version ended up being better than what passed, and there's still a lot to be done to see if it's improved on down the road,” said Robert Enlow, president and CEO of EdChoice. 

“I would phrase it this way — not to be a naysayer, which I'm not — I'm excited about it. So we at EdChoice are excited that more families have more options, except, I would say, Congress took a big swing at school choice and hit a single in this program,” Enlow added. 

The biggest loss for the school choice crowd was an opt-in option that was added in the Senate, which allows states to reject the tax credit. The provision says governors can decide whether to opt in to the program and designate which scholarship groups can participate in it.  

"The option is new, and ... they're going to have an additional hurdle to go through to ram vouchers into states like Michigan,” said Joshua Cowen, professor of education policy at Michigan State University.

“There's going to be enormous political pressure from these organizations to push governors, whether they're Democrats, whether they're Republicans, to opt into this. So ... it doesn't give them the automatic force that they wanted to, their next pivot is going to be to try to put a lot of dollars behind pushing governors to opt into this bill,” he added.  

That tees up fights in states with divided governments.

North Carolina Senate leader Phil Berger (R) has said he is going to work to ensure his state participates in the program, setting up a conflict with Democratic Gov. Josh Stein. 

“I will write legislation to enable North Carolina to take part in President Trump’s School Choice Plan, allowing taxpayers to write off contributions to organizations that fund private school scholarships,” Berger posted on X.  

There was also a cap added on how much a person can donate with the federal dollar for dollar tax credit, up to $1,700 a year, but the cap overall on how much the program can cost the federal government, which was at $5 billion in the beginning, was lifted entirely.

An analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found if 59 million qualified taxpayers choose to take advantage of this tax credit, it could cost the federal government $101 billion per year, although it is highly unlikely that many would take part.  

Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the plan will initially cost $3 billion to $4 billion a year and go up overtime.  

“There's potentially a lot more money that could get spent on this national DeVos voucher scheme moving forward, even if it doesn't automatically accomplish the goal of ramming it into blue states like initially sought out, they're going to have to take an additional step, but there's now more, much more money for them to potentially devote to this program,” Cowen said.  

Moving forward, both advocates and opponents of school choice will be looking to harden their positions, especially as some supportive of this measure are wary of hits made to protections for religious schools.  

John DeJak, director for the Secretariat of Catholic Education for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told the National Catholic Register he was concerned about language that was stripped out of the final version of the bill that guaranteed freedom of operation for religious schools that would accept money from this program.

“There are state level and federal level protections on religious liberty, and so those ideally can be helpful here. The rules and regulation process may affirm that even further as this program will go through Treasury rules, and then we'll really know exactly how it is implemented in the states. And so, we want to wait to see what the rules process looks like on that front,” said Brian Jodice, national press secretary for the American Federation for Children.  

Opponents will look to fight against states signing up for the program and emphasize concerns that this legislation will hurt public schools. 

"The significant disparities in private school access [in] states ... What does this mean for rural communities? What does it mean for kids with disabilities?” asked Blair Wriston, senior manager of government affairs at EdTrust.  

“We’re really disappointed that this provision was included, and we don’t think it's going to improve outcomes for the 90 percent of kids in public schools. That should be our focus,” Wriston added.