gotchanewsdaily.com 
Donald Trump has fully embraced the school voucher agenda in his platform, of defunding public schools to divert public money to private institutions with less oversight — but in many red states, his voters aren’t on board, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Ballot measures to expand the “school choice” agenda “lost in three states in the November election, including in two that went strongly for Trump, Kentucky and Nebraska. The results suggest a divide between Republican lawmakers and voters, many of whom have said in opinion surveys that they are generally dissatisfied with what they view as a ‘woke’ agenda in public education but still like their own children’s local schools,” said the report.
This comes as Trump and his allies have grown more outspoken in their bid to abolish the Department of Education altogether — though with no explanation of what, if any, government entity would fill its current role of backing higher education loans and enforcing civil rights for students.
ALSO READ: Trump’s failure and the next pandemic
School voucher schemes, said Indiana University education policy professor Christopher Lubienski, “are popular with politicians. But voters tend to push back pretty hard.” One key reason is that a core constituency of Republicans, that being more rural areas, often don’t have the population or resources to support a network of private schools.
Timmy Truett, a pro-Trump Kentucky state legislator who also serves as a principal in a school in rural Jackson County, made this point clear: “This could mean less funding for our public schools. I don’t think people in Eastern Kentucky liked that idea.”
For years, even states under solid Republican control have faced this kind of pushback from rural lawmakers with these concerns. One of the biggest battlegrounds over the issue is Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott has tried in several sessions to force through a school voucher bill, only to be defeated by a coalition that includes the Democratic minority and a handful of rural Republicans from less-populated school districts. After Abbott sponsored a primary purge that saw many of those GOP voucher opponents defeated, the Texas GOP is all but certain to try again in the near future.
Trump has tapped World Wrestling Entertainment co-founder Linda McMahon to head up the Department of Education, despite a lawsuit alleging she failed to protect children within the organization from sexual abuse.
