The Claim

Directed states to maximize parental options for choosing the best, safest schools for their children.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

The administration issued a directive to states requiring or encouraging them to expand the range of school options available to parents — including, presumably, charter schools, private school vouchers, education savings accounts, magnet schools, and open enrollment policies. The language “best, safest” implies this is about child welfare rather than ideology.

What is being implied but not asserted?

The framing implies that parents currently lack options, that the federal government has the authority to “direct” states on education policy, that school choice programs uniformly produce better and safer outcomes for children, and that this directive produced meaningful changes in state behavior. The word “directed” implies compulsory action — that states were told what to do and did it.

What is conspicuously absent?

Whether the “direction” actually changed anything. Education is constitutionally a state responsibility, and the federal government provides only 8-14% of K-12 education funding. An executive order cannot compel states to adopt school choice programs. Also absent: the fact that the school choice movement was already advancing rapidly at the state level before this EO — 18 states had enacted universal or near-universal choice programs by early 2025, driven entirely by state legislatures, not federal directives. The research evidence on whether voucher programs actually improve student outcomes is also missing — and that evidence is increasingly negative.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

Executive Order 14191, “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families,” was signed on January 29, 2025. ¹ The order directs the Secretary of Education to issue guidance within 60 days on how states can use federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives. It directs the Secretaries of Labor and Education to submit plans within 90 days identifying discretionary grant programs that could “expand education freedom.” It directs the HHS Secretary to issue guidance on using Child Care and Development Block Grants for “educational choice” including “private and faith-based options.” It directs the Secretary of Defense to review mechanisms for military families to access “schools of their choice” using DoD funds. It directs the Secretary of the Interior to review funding mechanisms for Bureau of Indian Education-eligible students to attend alternative schools.

A second executive order, EO 14242, “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities,” was signed on March 20, 2025. ² Despite its parent-empowering title, this order focused almost entirely on directing the closure of the Department of Education and imposing ideological conditions on federal funding recipients (ending DEI programs and “gender ideology”). It contained no specific school choice mechanisms, no parental options provisions, and no directives to states about maximizing educational alternatives.

The federal government cannot “direct” states to adopt school choice policies. ³ Education is a power reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment. The federal government provides approximately 8-14% of K-12 education funding, primarily through Title I (for low-income schools, approximately $18.4 billion annually) and IDEA (for special education, approximately $15.4 billion annually). Federal executive orders can guide how federal formula funds are used, and can set priorities for discretionary grants, but they cannot compel states to create voucher programs, education savings accounts, or any other school choice mechanism. EO 14191 acknowledges this implicitly by directing the issuance of “guidance” — not mandates.

School choice was already expanding rapidly at the state level without federal direction. ⁴ By January 2025, 18 states had enacted universal or near-universal school choice programs: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana, Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming. According to EdChoice, 21 states had ESA programs, 15 states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico had voucher programs, and 18 states had tax-credit scholarship programs, enrolling approximately 1,055,853 students combined. The acceleration in state-level adoption began in 2022 — three years before this executive order — driven by state legislative action, not federal directives. Texas, Tennessee, and Idaho enacted universal programs in 2025, through state legislation, not in response to EO 14191.

The rigorous research evidence on school vouchers shows mixed-to-negative effects on student achievement. ⁵ The gold-standard study of Louisiana’s voucher program — using random assignment — found that students who received vouchers experienced dramatic math declines: a student at the 50th percentile dropped to the 34th percentile after one year, with younger students falling to the 26th percentile. Reading scores dropped from the 50th to approximately the 46th percentile. Indiana’s voucher program showed math declines from the 50th to the 44th percentile. Earlier studies of Milwaukee, New York City, and D.C. programs showed mixed results — some small positive effects for Black students in reading, but no consistent achievement gains. As Brookings researchers noted, “negative effects are rare in education research,” making the Louisiana and Indiana findings particularly striking.

Approximately 4.7 million students attended private schools as of fall 2021, representing about 9% of total K-12 enrollment. ⁶ This figure has remained relatively stable, increasing only 5% between 2011 and 2021. Despite the expansion of school choice programs across states, the vast majority of American students — over 90% — continue to attend public schools.

Strong Inferences

EO 14191 primarily provided political cover and rhetorical framing for a movement that was already well underway. ⁷ The executive order’s substantive provisions — issuing guidance on using federal formula funds for choice initiatives, prioritizing choice in discretionary grants — represent modest administrative actions, not the sweeping “direction” the claim implies. States that wanted to expand school choice were already doing so; states that opposed it (16 states lacked any private school choice program as of January 2026) were unlikely to be moved by federal “guidance” on formula fund usage. The order’s most significant provision — directing the Secretary of Education to issue guidance within 60 days — is an instruction to a federal official, not a directive to states.

The “best, safest” language masks the actual equity concerns with school choice programs. ⁸ Universal voucher and ESA programs have consistently shown that a significant portion of participants were already attending private schools — meaning public money subsidizes choices already being made by families who could afford them. EdChoice data shows approximately 1.06 million students in choice programs nationwide, compared to roughly 50 million in public schools. Private schools that accept vouchers are not required to serve students with disabilities under the same protections as public schools (IDEA does not apply to private schools), are not required to administer state assessments in most states, and can discriminate in admissions based on religion, behavior, or academic performance. The claim of “best, safest” schools elides the question of best and safest for whom.

What the Evidence Shows

The administration did sign an executive order — EO 14191 — that encouraged states to expand school choice using federal formula funds and directed federal officials to identify discretionary programs that could advance “education freedom.” A second EO (14242) is often cited in this context but focused on closing the Department of Education rather than expanding parental options. The factual core of the claim — that the administration issued a directive related to school choice — is true.

But the claim’s framing is misleading in three important ways. First, the word “directed” implies authority the federal government does not possess. Education is a state responsibility. The federal government provides a small fraction of K-12 funding and cannot compel states to create school choice programs. What the executive order actually did was issue guidance to federal officials on how to steer federal formula funds and grants toward choice-friendly purposes — a meaningful but modest administrative step.

Second, the claim implies this directive caused or accelerated the school choice movement, when the evidence shows the opposite causal story. School choice was already expanding at a historic rate before this executive order. Eighteen states had enacted universal or near-universal programs by early 2025, driven by state legislatures acting on their own initiative. The federal government was arriving at a parade already in progress.

Third, the “best, safest” language implies that school choice programs produce better outcomes for children. The rigorous research evidence does not support this. The highest-quality studies — random-assignment evaluations of Louisiana’s voucher program — found significant negative effects on math achievement. Indiana’s program showed similar declines. The claim that school choice leads to “best” schools is not supported by the experimental evidence; at best, the evidence is mixed, and at worst, it shows that voucher recipients perform substantially worse than their public school peers.

The Bottom Line

The steel-man version of this claim: the administration signed an executive order (EO 14191) that established school choice as federal policy and directed federal agencies to prioritize it in guidance and grant-making. That is a real policy action, and for families who value the ability to choose among educational options, it represents genuine attention to their preferences.

But the claim overstates what happened and obscures what the evidence shows. The federal government “directed” nothing to states — it issued guidance to its own agencies about how to steer a small share of education funding. The school choice movement was already accelerating under its own momentum at the state level. And the claim’s promise of “best, safest schools” runs headlong into a body of rigorous research showing that the largest, best-studied voucher programs produced significant declines in student achievement. Directing states toward school choice is a policy position; claiming it leads to “best, safest” outcomes is marketing that the evidence does not support.

Footnotes

1. Executive Order 14191, “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families,” Federal Register Vol. 90, Doc. 2025-02233, February 3, 2025. ↩

2. Executive Order 14242, “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities,” Federal Register Vol. 90, Doc. 2025-05213, March 25, 2025. ↩

3. Brookings Institution, “FAQs: The US Department of Education and the Trump Administration,” March 2025; USAFacts, “What percentage of public school funding in the US comes from the federal government?” ↩

4. Ballotpedia, “School Choice,” January 2026; EdChoice, “School Choice in America: Fast Facts,” 2025-2026. ↩

5. Brookings Institution, “On Negative Effects of Vouchers,” 2017; Louisiana and Indiana voucher program evaluations using random assignment and fixed-effects methodologies. ↩

6. NCES, “Fast Facts: Private School Enrollment,” fall 2021 data. ↩

7. Synthesis of ¹, ³, ⁴. ↩

8. EdChoice enrollment data; IDEA applicability analysis; state assessment requirements for private voucher schools. ↩