By DAVID BOYLE
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order enabling military families to choose the best education fit for their children. This executive order will free up federal funding so parents can improve their kids’ education.
Here is part of the executive order:
“Every child deserves the best education available, regardless of their zip code. However, for generations, our government-assigned education system has failed millions of parents, students and teachers. This executive order begins to rectify that wrong by opening up opportunities for students to attend the school that best fits their needs.”
It will require the efforts of the Department of Defense, the Department of Education, the Department of Health & Human Services, and the Department of Interior.
The Department of Defense will be tasked with formulating a plan for parents to use its funds so parents can choose the best school for their kids.
The Department of Education will be tasked with putting school choice programs at the top of its list for some grant programs.
The Department of Health and Social Services will be tasked with providing guidance on how states can use the block grants to support school choice.
And the Department of the Interior is to issue a plan so that American Indian and Alaskan Native children can also have school choice.
What would this mean for Alaskan military children?
Alaska received $131,636,007 in federal funding for fiscal year 2025. Some of this funding was from the federal impact aid. This aid assists local school districts that have lost property tax revenue due to the presence of federal property that pays no local taxes. It also assists school districts that have added costs due to the increased number of students, especially military children. This is Title VII funding.
This impact aid could surely be directed to military parents to choose the best education for their children.
The Department of Defense has helped many military children get better opportunities for education success. Because of very poor public schools in some states, it has established its own Department of Defense schools. There are 21 Department of Defense schools in several states, mostly in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.
These schools began because military members were refusing assignments to these areas due to the mediocre public schools.
This comes at a great time because the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results just came out. It showed that nationally only 31% of our 4th grade students read proficiently. And only 30% of our nation’s 8th graders read proficiently.
Alaska is failing its students even more. The NAEP data show that only 22% of Alaska’s 4th graders are proficient in reading.
The system is broken. It’s failing our kids and our nation.
President Trump’s executive order allowing the children of military members to use federal funds is a step in the right direction.
David Boyle is the education writer at Must Read Alaska.
With trump continuing to create a constitutional crisis, with all the unconstitutional executive orders, at some point, he may have to be removed…legally of course. Lol.
What specifically is unconstitutional about this EO?