At a press conference last week, President Trump announced a plan to provide $105 billion to schools to ready them for reopening, despite the health risks. But there was a catch to his proposal: Where public schools don't open, taxpayers' money would be made available to schools that do, explicitly including religious schools and home schools, in what amounts to a massive national voucher plan.
Trump’s announcement was carefully couched in language indicating that the funding would “follow the student” and be paid directly to parents, maximizing their educational “choice” as long as parents don't choose a public school offering remote learning. In what looked like a heavy-handed effort to force public schools to comply with his demand to open in traditional face-to-face formats, his announcement was a long-sought-after gift to Trump’s evangelical base.
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