President Trump has demonstrated his administration’s priorities for education via a series of executive orders over the past weeks. With the stroke of his pen, he has laid out a vision for the U.S. Department of Education that prioritizes funding for state school choice programs.
Proposes penalties for schools that “indoctrinate” students, puts an end to transgender student athletes competing in women’s sports and, most recently, eliminates Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs in universities.
This should sound familiar to Floridians. Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have taken similar steps to reshape public education.
Florida laid the groundwork for Trump’s education policies four years ago, with legislation aimed at restricting how history and sexuality could be discussed, eliminating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, limiting children’s access to specific books, prohibiting transgender women from participating in sports with athletes assigned female at birth, and massively expanding school choice vouchers.
According to a statement sent to the Miami Herald, the Florida Department of Education is proud to set an example for the nation on education issues, creating policies that support charter and private schools while ridding public schools of “liberal indoctrination.”
“Florida has led the charge on these issues, enacting groundbreaking legislation such as the Parental Rights in Education Act, the STOP WOKE Act, and House Bill 1069 (2023),” read the statement.
The legislation aims to prohibit schools and businesses from teaching concepts related to sexuality, race, gender, racism, and privilege, which President Trump’s executive orders also oppose.
The department says it is excited to collaborate with the United States Department of Education and the Trump administration to “further this important work and protect our students from indoctrination.”
Critics say state cannot be trusted with federal funds
Critics of President Trump’s executive orders argue that borrowing from Florida’s education playbook is unwise. According to The Nation’s Report Card, published by the National Centre for Education Statistics, Florida’s war on “woke” has not appeared to improve academic outcomes in recent years.
Since 2022, Florida students’ reading scores have dropped significantly, and eighth-grade math scores are the lowest in more than two decades.
In an op-ed, Florida Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz Jr. blamed the state’s poor results on the Biden administration’s methodology.
He argued that the assessment should also include students who attend private and charter schools, which are becoming more common in the state and are funded by taxpayers through scholarships or “vouchers.”
The Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, blames the low test scores on state education policies.
According to Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, many of the Oval Office’s proposals have been tested in Florida, and “the results are not promising.”
He believes that this does not bode well for the future of public education in the rest of the country, especially if the Department of Education, which uses federal grants to influence state-controlled school systems, allows states to distribute federal funds as they see fit.
According to the Florida Department of Education, federal funds accounted for 17.28 percent of school district funding in the fiscal year 2022-2023. According to the Education Data Initiative, Florida ranks 32nd in the nation in terms of federal funding per student for K-12 education.
Although federal funding does not account for the majority of Florida’s education budget, much of it is directed towards low-performing schools and students with disabilities, as well as financial aid for higher education.
Trump’s executive order calls for federal funds to be distributed to states for school choice programs, but critics fear that the limited federal funds will be divided among traditional public, charter, and private schools.
Karla Hernandez-Mats, president of the Miami-Dade Teachers Union, claims that school districts are already overburdened with campaigning for local referendums that use property taxes to fund schools, and she is concerned that if federal funds are distributed to the state for administration, they will never reach local schools.
“What worries us is that our state has never supported education the way it should,” she said. “We cannot feel at ease that our state, which has not done well by our community, will use these funds properly,” said the politician.
Throwing money into school choice
Trump’s executive order, Expanding Educational Freedom And Opportunity For Families, demonstrates the president’s commitment to the idea that public funds should follow the child rather than being directed to traditional public schools.
Last year, Florida’s school voucher program expanded significantly after income restrictions were lifted, making them available to all children.
Step Up for Students, the agency that provides the vast majority of Florida’s school vouchers, distributed at least 489,585 in 2024-2025.
According to Step Up for Students, approximately 70% of these students were already enrolled in private schools, implying that state tax dollars are now subsidising private schools.
Florida is not the only state in the country with strong school choice or “voucher” programs. EdChoice, a group that supports and tracks school choice vouchers, reports that at least 16 states have voucher programs.
Ralph Arza, the director of the Florida Charter School Alliance and a former legislator, was involved in Florida’s early “pro-school choice” movement. He believes that the expanded school choice voucher program demonstrates that there is more equity now than ever.
According to Arza, the executive order will allow dollars to go directly to children and teachers while reducing wasteful bureaucracy.
Critics argue that diverting funds to private and charter schools is problematic because they are not governed by an elected school board and lack the same public accountability mechanisms.
But Arza claims that this gives the parents control.
“Mom and Dad are the ultimate accountability, and that is who we are empowering to make that decision,” Arza told me.
Democratic Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, a former educator and Miami-Dade school board member, opposes the executive order and the trend of diverting public funds to private and charter schools.
“Charters and private schools cherry-pick, while public schools must educate everyone—even with less funding. This decision is incorrect, unfair, and an insane ploy to destroy public education and leave it in disarray. “I implore everyone to continue supporting our wonderful public schools,” she said in a statement.
Title 1 funds in danger
One of the criticisms levelled at the United States Department of Education is the amount of bureaucracy that states must go through in order to receive federal funds.
Title I funding is intended to supplement state and local funding for underachieving children in high-poverty areas. It employs stringent monitoring protocols to ensure that money is spent wisely.
Robert Enlow, director of EdChoice, the nation’s largest pro-school choice lobbying group, believes the executive order will improve the flow of federal funds to where they are needed.
He proposed that federal funds for Title I — federal grants to schools serving low-income students — be sent to the state as block grants and deposited directly into Educational Savings Accounts, which parents can use to send their children to private or charter schools.
He also stated that the money could be used to establish more innovation funds to build more schools, whether private or charter. Numerous private schools in Florida are in high demand.
However, critics are concerned that transferring Title I funds to states may not be in the best interests of those students, and local leaders have expressed disappointment with the Trump administration’s intentions.
According to Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second largest teachers union, the order “hijacks federal money used to level the playing field for poor and disadvantaged kids and hands it directly to unaccountable private operators.”
Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, questions whether President Trump is empowering states to make their own decisions. “They are really not giving states control, they are trying to control what states are doing,” he told me.
