In the newest expression of his commitment to expanding school “choice,” President Trump is making his first official visit to a school Friday (March 3) — to a Catholic school in Florida.
Trump will stop at St. Andrew Catholic School in Orlando, where several hundred students attend with help from a tax credit scholarship program that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has praised in her declarations about the value of school choice.
Trump himself referred to the program in his address Tuesday night to Congress when he spoke glowingly about one of his guests, Denisha Merriweather, who attended a private school with help from the Florida Tax Credit Scholarships program for students from low-income families.
Trump has repeatedly expressed his interest in expanding school choice, which includes voucher and tax credit programs that use public dollars to fund tuition and other educational expenses at private and religious schools. Opponents say these programs violate the constitutional separation between church and state and harm traditional public education systems where the vast majority of America’s schoolchildren are enrolled. But they have grown substantially in the past decade, and DeVos has been a leader in the choice movement for decades.