Advocates praised President Donald Trump for being the first president to touch on school choice during his address to Congress on Capitol Hill Tuesday. He's actually the fifth in a row. (JIM LO SCALZO/POOL IMAGE VIA AP)
President Donald Trump called on Congress to pass an education bill that funds school choice in his joint address Tuesday night, prompting advocates, including Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, to praise the president for being the first to tout school choice in a major presidential speech.
"This is the first time we've had a president call for and then really follow through and make good on the promise to actually enact something that will give millions of parents choices," DeVos said in an interview she gave to the New York Post.
She conceded in the interview that he had not yet acted on a specific proposal, noting plans are in the works, and she repeated the assertion the Trump is the first president to do so.
"He's the first president to have called for and articulated it," she said.
But the statement, its vague verbiage notwithstanding, is not entirely true. Indeed, at some point in major addresses to Congress, the last four presidents underscored the value of school choice.
Former President Barack Obama similarly called for expanding school choice when he took to the podium to address Congress for the first time in 2009 and touted the promise of expanding charter schools.
"We'll invest in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps, and we will expand our commitment to charter schools," he said.
Expanding charter schools and replicating those with a proven track record of success was a major policy platform of the Obama administration, which increased federal funding for the sector and pressed states to rethink charter school caps.
In President George W. Bush's 2007 State of the Union address, he said, "We can lift student achievement even higher by giving local leaders flexibility to turn around failing schools and by giving families with children stuck in failing schools the right to choose some place better."
President Bill Clinton, in his 1994 State of the Union, pitched to Congress a plan to "empower individual school districts to experiment with ideas like chartering their schools to be run by private corporations or having more public school choice, to do whatever they wish to do as long as we measure every school by one high standard: Are our children learning what they need to know to compete and win in the global economy?"
In a similar State of the Union pitch to Congress, President George H.W. Bush touted a plan that would "give parents more choice, give teachers more flexibility and help communities create new American schools."
Notably, Trump's school choice ideas go beyond charter schools and could include school vouchers or some kind of tax credit scholarship program – though his administration has yet to outline how it will direct $20 billion in federal funds to increase school choice.
"Families should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school that is right for them," he said during Tuesday night's address.
