Trump’s education pick Linda McMahon has a national school-choice mandate
Election night marked a seismic shift in the politics of K-12 education in America, as victories of pro-school-choice candidates in states like Texas, coupled with President-elect Trump’s school-choice mandate, unveiled the beginning of the end of the teachers’ unions’ 40-year dominance in American politics.
Decades of conventional wisdom and billions of union political dollars have made supporting school choice a risk for candidates.
But voters broke that dam in 2024, and Trump and state-level leaders are riding the wave.
Trump campaigned unequivocally on school choice, calling it “one of the most important things we’re going to be doing” in a Fox News interview and saying he would “absolutely” sign legislation establishing a federal tax credit scholarship for K-12.
When Trump nominated Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education Tuesday, he drove the point home. “Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every state in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families,” he stressed in his announcement.
McMahon has been a stalwart supporter of school-choice legislation.
She chairs the board of the America First Policy Institute, which has partnered with our team at the American Federation for Children to pass such laws across the country — making her the right pick to enact Trump’s K-12 agenda.
Perhaps surprisingly, blue states like New York will be the biggest beneficiaries of the new administration’s federal school-choice push.
These high-population states have for decades squashed any attempt to pass state-funded scholarship efforts — but soon, millions of their families will be benefitting from tax-incentivized scholarships.
Mechanically, the federal legislation will work like this: Individuals who donate to local scholarship groups will receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for doing so — a much healthier reward than a simple tax deduction.
New York parents wishing to put their child into a private school, or even to homeschool, can apply to benefit from the scholarship distributions.
The program will allow millions more parents to fully control their child’s education destiny — to the detriment of the teachers’ unions.
And it will encourage educational competition, spurring public schools themselves to improve.
Despite their well-funded attempts to punish legislators for standing with families, the teachers’ unions failed to improve their whip counts in state legislatures this year.
Electorally, there’s no better case study of the turnaround than Texas.
Last year, 21 Texas state House Republicans spurned their constituents’ wishes and blocked Gov. Greg Abbott’s school-choice legislation.
In response, Abbott and school-choice advocates mounted primary challenges this year and defeated nine of the 14 anti-school-choice Republicans running for re-election.
The national incumbent defeat-rate in each of the last two election cycles is about 4%, yet Texas voters rejected 64% of the Republican school-choice opponents.
In the general election, bolstered by historic turnout and a huge surge in Hispanic support, Republican school-choice candidates won big — even in three districts that President Biden won decisively in the 2020 election.
Importantly, both Democrats and Republicans made school choice a key issue in those races — and every pro-school choice incumbent in the general election prevailed.
The Texas House finally has a school-choice majority.
The significance of this moment should not be understated: Once Texas passes universal-eligibility school choice, fully 50% of American families will be eligible to enroll in a school-choice program across 34 states.
If the federal legislation now stalled in Congress is signed by President Trump in 2025, families in all 50 states will have educational freedom.
This sends a clear message to politicians who fear the powerful influence of the teachers’ unions: Families have spoken, and they’ve chosen a future where educational opportunities are not limited by ZIP codes or income levels.
Politicians can join the voters to their political benefit, or fight them to their likely electoral doom.
Message received, for example, in North Carolina, where state lawmakers this week overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto to fully fund the school-choice waitlist.
School-choice champions like Trump and McMahon, and the new Texas legislature that backs Abbott’s education agenda, could not have a clearer mandate to enact bold reforms than they now do.
The American education system changed forever in 2024, and will do so further in 2025.
Tommy Schultz is the CEO of the American Federation for Children and AFC Victory Fund, the nation’s largest school choice advocacy and elections organizations.