Students, parents, and teachers who rally for school selection in Texas, where legislators introduced a training bill of education earlier this year (photo by Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Corbis via Getty Images)
Corbis through Getty Images
President Donald Trump has long defended the school’s choice, calling for “the issue of political rights of our time”. President Trump and Congress Republicans recently expanded parental choice in education as part of a large Bill law, which includes a provision that creates the first federal school selection program of the nation in the form of a tax -owned tax and private -grade grant program.
The school selection is now serving as a key diversification in the race to fill a vacancy at home created by the retirement of Congress Mark Green in July. Early vote began this week for Primary 7 October, in which Republicans and Democrats will choose candidates for the December 2nd Special Elections to determine who serves the rest of the two -year term of Green, representing the seventh area of the seventh area. As candidates run to represent this democratic area, which extends from Kentucky to the Alabama border and includes in the center of Nashville, a rider to express their support to President Trump and his daily arrangement, the school selection has emerged as a point of view.
One of the leading candidates headed to the GOP Primary of October 7 is the representative Lee Reeves (R-Franklin), a member of the Statehouse who voted earlier this year to make the Tennessee Account Savings program available to all children throughout the territory. Between the Reeves and the two other GOP representatives who are struggling to fill the headquarters of Congress Green, the spokesman Jody Barrett (R-Dickson) and the representative Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood), Barrett is the only one to vote for the extension of the Tennesse ESA Program Bill Lee Lee Lee (R-Tenn) signed in April. However, this has not stopped Barrett from presenting himself to voters as a supporter of school choice.
Mr Barrett was a vocal opponent of Trumpe’s ESA program, arguing that he was “designed to channel money from taxpayers through inflated bureaucrats”. Mr Barrett also said that the ESA State Program approved by President Trump “threatens to cry out on public schools that remain the cultural heartbeat of our farm communities”.
Congress candidate shouts support for school selection after voting against him in Statehouse
Now that he is a candidate for Congress, Barrett tells voters that he is supporting the school’s choice, because, although opposed to his state’s ESA program, he supports the new federal school program established as part of the Big Beautiful Bill Act. In open letter Sent to Governor Lee in July, Rep. Barrett wrote that “President Trump’s new federal program is completely different” from Tennessee’s ESA program. Barrett continued to claim that the new federal education tax program “is the true school choice”, while the ESA program in Tennessee supported by President Trump is not.
Barrett’s letter to Lee claimed that the new federal program “gives Tennessee children a real shot in better education”, but did not explain why this is not the case with Tennessee’s ESA program, which is much more generous than the new federal school choices program. Some of the leading supporters of school selection in Tennessee do not buy Barrett’s argument.
“President Trump urged Jody Barrett to support the school’s choice in Tennessee, but chose to oppose it,” says Shaka Mitchell, a senior American Federation (AFC) associate. “The sudden shift of the issue is transparent and self -serving. President Trump, Governor Lee and voters throughout Tennessee and Nation support the choice of school in all forms, which is more than Mr Barrett.
“If it wasn’t for Donald Trump, it is unlikely that Tennessee has an ESA program today, let alone the state -owned state program that we now offer to all volunteer government parents,” says Rep. Reeves. “The reason why the original ESA pilot program even had the votes to pass is because of the support expressed by President Trump for ESAS to return to his first term, along with the pressure applied by Tennessee legislators.”
Justin Owen, chairman and chief executive of Tennessee’s Beacon Center, a Think Tank -based Nashville, sees a contradiction between his recent rhetoric of Rep Barrett and his vote record.
“Let’s not rewrite history,” says Owen “Scholarships for freedom of education actually cut one of the largest state bureaucrats to restore power to families. Thousands of families want to participate.”
The opponent of Catholic School Selection Challenges of Senate leader who brought school choice to North Carolina
The special elections for the seventh area of Congress of Tennessee are not the only upcoming primary elections that support Republicans who support the agenda that develops President Trump’s school against those who oppose it. Take North Carolina, where Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger (R), one of the leaders of the attempt to bring a school choice to North Carolina in 2013 and make it universal in 2023, is now facing a primary opponent opposed to universal school choice.
Sam Page, a sheriff that challenges Senator Berger in the March 2026 elections, did not call for a full North Carolina opportunities scholarship program, but wants to change the eligibility to meet fewer children.
Sam Campaign He proposes “Commonsense Guardrails” to ensure that the training coupon program “works for all families, not just the rich or lucky few”. The North Carolina Opportunity Scholarship program has already been tested, with the value of the coupon falling as the household income is increasing. The page has not yet set the level of household income above which it believes that children should no longer be eligible for even reduced coupon.
“Unfortunately, Sam Page is opposed to the reforms of the historical school selection we have implemented,” Senator Berger writes in a statement posted In X in July. “He had a side with Governor Stein and the bureaucrats of education in school selection.
More than 42,000 children are now using North Carolina’s Opportunities Scholarship Program. It was a page to take his way to school selection, children across the state will be stripped of their educational coupon. Under the leadership of the Senator Berger, many states followed the lead of North Carolina not only for the selection of the school but also for the reform of tax and regulatory arrangements. However, North Carolina will move from the leader of politics reform to a school selection divergence according to Sam Page’s proposal to limit eligibility for educational coupons. In the event of the implementation of the page proposal, North Carolina will participate in Illinois as a state state in escalation and not in the extension of school selection
The rapid expansion of state programs that provide parents private school choice is one of the most subsequent political trends of the last decade and half. While many conservatives are watching relatively closely the developments related to the choice episode of New York Times‘podcast, The dailyThe thought of “why so many parents leave the public school” shows how this trend is still a revelation for many.
“For the past five years, we have doubled the number of students using some form of private coupons and now more than one million American children are using public dollars for some form of private education,” said Dana Goldstein, an educational journalist for The The New York Times. “This begins to have a great impact on the public school system.”
While Goldstein focused on public school registration trends that coincided with the expansion of school selection, it did not touch existing research suggesting that public schools tend to improve after the creation of a program of state school choices. Mitchell of AFC traveled from Tennessee to Washington last week, speaking to Capitol Hill’s legislators about this and other benefits of school choice. During the hearing of the Committee of the Supervisory Committee and America’s government reform for the Sub -Committee on Economic Development, Energy Policy and Regulatory Affairs, Mitchell said. testimony that explains “How school choice is not only a matter of educational policy, but also a question of economic development, citizens’ health and long -term national competitiveness.”
Most states are now offering some form of school selection program-usually in the form of a training or coupon saving account-that helps parents to withstand private school tuition and other education-related costs. While some school selection programs limit income -based eligibility, North Carolina and Tennessee are among the 18 citizens now offering a school selection program with universal eligibility. Just as the 2026 elections will affect the prospects for further expansion of school selection, where candidates stand in the school selection are ready to influence the intermediate elections. GOP Primary for the seventh area of Tennessee Congress will preview this dynamics on October 7th.
