Messer has allies in push to expand school choice
WASHINGTON — Three years after starting a congressional group to promote private school vouchers, Rep. Luke Messer, R-Shelbyville, has powerful allies in his quest to allow federal tax dollars to be spent on private schools.
President Donald Trump campaigned on directing $20 billion to private school students, an issue also important to Vice President Mike Pence.
Former congressional aide Rob Goad, who helped Messer create the Congressional School Choice Caucus launched in 2014, is Trump’s top education aide in the White House.
And Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick to head the U.S. Department of Education, is a school choice advocate who played an influential role in developing Indiana’s largest-in-the-nation private school voucher program.
“We have an unprecedented opportunity to bring school choice to Capitol Hill,” Messer said after leading a rally for the cause Tuesday.
Exactly how that will happen is still being worked out.
During the campaign, Trump proposed redirecting $20 billion in federal money from an unspecified other part of the federal budget toward school vouchers. If states kick in a combined $110 billion of their own money, that could provide $12,000 to every K-12 student living in poverty to attend private and charter schools, according to his campaign.
“We finally have a president who believes in school choice,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said at the rally.
Messer and Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who heads the Senate education committee, have authored legislation to give on average $2,100 to poor students for private school tuition, as well as allow states to spend federal education funds to expand school choice options.
Messer said there’s also a congressional proposal to expand school options through tax credits.
“It will take a little time for the debate to percolate,” Messer said. Nevertheless, he has an ambitious goal of getting legislation through Congress by the spring of 2018.
He’ll face strong opposition from teachers' unions, which argue that vouchers drain resources from public schools.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, has said Trump and DeVos want to “privatize, defund and destabilize public education.”
While Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress, they don’t have enough seats in the Senate to stop Democrats from filibustering legislation.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., has called DeVos a “a billionaire who used her fortune to push for giving taxpayer dollars to private schools at the expense of public schools.”
Messer took the stage Tuesday in a Capitol Hill auditorium filled with dozens of Washington, D.C., students. They sported yellow scarves and some held signs with messages such as “Parents Know Best” and “Let Me Learn!”
Messer called school choice “one of the most important civil rights of our time.”
Indiana Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Indianapolis, who heads the House panel overseeing K-12 education, said school choice is “the most important issue of our nation.”
Indiana's voucher program is the broadest program in the nation, with no cap on the number of voucher students. Data show more low- to middle-income students than ever use the program without having ever attended public schools — a chief criticism by opponents. According to the Indiana Department of Education, the voucher program’s popularity also is not necessarily because families are seeking alternatives to failing public schools.
IndyStar reporters Stephanie Wang and Chelsea Schneider contributed to this story.
Contact Maureen Groppe at mgroppe@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @mgroppe.
Hoosier political ties run deep for Trump's education secretary pick