(The Center Square) – Top of mind for American taxpayers is the efficacy of their children’s schooling.

At 25%, preparing students for college or the workforce was the number one issue for respondents to The Center Square’s Voters’ Voice poll, including 28% of Republicans and 22% of Democrats.

Analyst David Byler of Noble Predictive Insights says that he expects “bread and butter” issues like this to top the list. What’s surprising is that the number isn’t higher, he added.

That’s because concern around the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education pulled focus from everyday concerns, taking the top spot for 20% of voters including 15% of Republicans and 27% of Democrats.

“What people really want more than anything else from the education system is for it to function,” said Byler.

Concerns that it hasn’t been functioning efficiently have largely fueled the criticism of the Department of Education that Republican officials point to in gutting the agency.

On March 11, Education Secretary and professional wrestling mogul Linda McMahon announced the department would be letting go of about 50% of its employees.

“I appreciate the work of the dedicated public servants and their contributions to the Department. This is a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system,” said McMahon.

Proponents of the department’s work, however, say the system’s weak points need more, not less, support.

A group of 11 Democratic U.S. senators headed by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts responded to the reduction in force with a letter calling for Acting Inspector General of the Office of Education, René L. Rocque, to investigate the issue.

“Decimating the Department of Education’s abilities to administer financial aid, investigate civil rights violations, conduct research on educational outcomes, and oversee the use of federal education grants threatens to have disastrous consequences for American students, teachers, and families,” they wrote.

About 14% of respondents, including 12% of Republicans and 15% of Democrats, said that a top priority was “making sure federal dollars go directly to schools,” indicating concern around how the federal government is currently allocating its education funds.

While McMahon says the change “reflects the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers,” 44% of respondents said that the balance between federal, state, and parental power in education was getting worse.

Culture war issues like participation of trans athletes in school sports proved less important to voters, despite outsized media attention.

Byler said that when it comes to the question of gender in sports, Republicans are in step with public opinion, making it a politically attractive talking point, even if it doesn’t rank high among taxpayer priorities.

Issues of school choice and homeschooling, on the other hand, put up lower numbers, but those numbers include people with a lot of “skin in the game,” said Byler.

When it comes to families for whom public school options aren’t a good fit, the freedom to seek out or create affordable alternatives is paramount. That’s why Byler says “you get a very concentrated, very intense debate.”

For most on both ends of the political spectrum, a functioning education system should be able to handle the higher order concern of preparing a majority of students for their futures while maintaining the capacity to look out for the minority of students who may need special consideration to receive a fair education.

It’s a matter of “walking and chewing gum at the same time,” said Byler.

The poll was conducted April 15-18 by Noble Predictive Insights, surveyed 1,187 Democrats; 1,089 Republicans; and 251 non-leaning Independents. The poll has a +/- 2.0% margin of error. It is one of only six national tracking polls in the United States.

(The Center Square) – Through more than 140 executive orders, President Donald Trump in his first 100-plus days in office has used his signing pen like a battering ram to undo sometimes decades-old policies and practices that have shaped the federal government, including in public and higher education.

On day one, the administration banned diversity, equity and inclusion programs from federal agencies and institutions receiving federal funding, targeting schools like Harvard University that refuse to comply with his policies. But Trump also is attempting to move schools away from such practices by requiring them to hire for “viewpoint” or “intellectual” diversity – a move that has been met with varying degrees of skepticism and support. 

The administration included such terms in both its list of demands to Harvard and in an executive order on reforming accreditation in higher education.

Among the 10 demands outlined in a letter from the administration to Harvard in April, it directed the university to facilitate an audit of the “student body, faculty, staff and leadership” for “viewpoint diversity” and to submit that audit to the federal government.

“Each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse,” the letter reads.

The university is to hire or admit for viewpoint diversity until a “critical mass” is reached in each arena.

Within a handful of recent executive orders on education was one meant to hold accreditors accountable for “unlawful discrimination in accreditation-related activity under the guise of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ initiatives.”

“A group of higher education accreditors are the gatekeepers that decide which colleges and universities American students can spend the more than $100 billion in Federal student loans and Pell Grants dispersed each year,” the order reads. 

The order accuses accreditors of prioritizing “discriminatory ideology” in accreditation standards over strong graduation rates, return on investment and other important criteria. As an antidote, the order commissions the secretary of education with devising new accreditation standards, including one that requires institutions to “prioritize intellectual diversity among faculty in order to advance academic freedom, intellectual inquiry, and student learning.”

Heather Mac Donald, a scholar at The Manhattan Institute who’s written on a number of topics over the years, including higher education, is supportive of the goal but thinks the means are “problematic.” Mac Donald authored “The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture” in 2018.

“I agree with the substantive critique entirely. I think universities are the enemy of Western civilization,” Mac Donald told The Center Square. “They are perpetuating an ideology of hatred and of ignorance. They are betraying their fundamental obligation, which is the pursuit of truth, by embracing a one-sided, ignorant understanding of the West’s contributions and its relative position regarding other civilizations.”

In addition, Mac Donald believes universities have discriminated against certain racial groups for years. 

“The universities have been blatantly discriminating against whites, white males, Asians, Asian males. They’ve introduced grotesque double standards for admissions and hiring,” she said.

Despite her numerous and serious critiques of contemporary American universities, she thinks a mandate from the federal government for intellectual diversity represents bureaucratic overreach. The administration’s demands to Harvard were provided mostly on the basis that the university has violated discrimination laws through expressions of and responses to anti-semitism on campus, she said.

“We are a government of limited powers. It’s true that the government does oversee civil rights violations under Title VI, but it’s a stretch to say that what’s going on with the left-wing bias in academia constitutes a civil rights violation that the Trump administration has the authority to correct by withholding funds,” she said.

“As necessary as it is to make a course correction, I don’t think that we should be doing so in a way that will justify further left-wing incursions,” she added.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has also been critical of how the administration has gone after Harvard, saying it has flouted the lawful procedure for resolving such issues, despite also being critical of Harvard at times. But Tyler Coward, the foundation’s lead counsel on government affairs, isn’t as quick to oppose the administration’s mandate in the executive order on accreditation.

“We’re still thinking of what it looks like in practice for accreditors to have some sort of mandate for institutions to show ideological diversity. We at FIRE think that ideological diversity is a good thing. In its best form, it helps foster a true learning environment, a true marketplace of ideas that we expect our universities to be,” Coward told The Center Square.

While the executive order may appear heavy-handed, Coward said the government’s relationship with accrediting institutions has already occupied a kind of gray space for a long time. 

“The government is the one empowering these accreditors in the first place. The reason these accreditors exist is because the government licenses them to exist. So it’s this weird thing where the government is involved sort of but not really, and so what is the appropriate response from the government if things aren’t going well. These are age-old tensions,” Coward said.

Scott Yenor, a scholar with California-based think tank The Claremont Institute, thinks, like Mac Donald, that American universities have strayed far from their original purpose and need correcting. 

“This is a classical liberal solution with kind of non-classical liberal means,” Yenor told The Center Square. 

Yenor agrees that universities need to be a marketplace of ideas but believes most no longer are, and he thinks the administration’s attempt at requiring it might be a step in the right direction.

“I don’t know that there’s any other way of actually achieving intellectual diversity besides a demand that you achieve it,” Yenor said. “The government has been doing that when it comes to racial diversity, and always with the justification that increasing racial diversity will actually increase the intellectual diversity on campus.”

“What the Trump administration is doing is what has been done for a long time already, which is making explicit demands for ideological diversity but more direct than the indirect way it’s been done on racial stuff.”

(The Center Square) – Gov. Greg Abbott on Saturday signed Texas’ first school choice bill into law.

Abbott signed “the largest day one school choice program in the United States of America,” he said surrounded by children and state lawmakers.

“Today is the culmination of a movement that has swept across our state and across our country,” Abbott said. “A movement driven by parents … who wanted a better education option” for their children, describing examples. One was mother Hillary Hickland, “who was angry that a woke agenda was being forced on her daughter in a public school and that drove her to run for and win a seat in the Texas legislature,” he said. Abbott endorsed and campaigned for Hickland, who was in attendance at the signing.

“The movement was driven by activists and public policy advocates across the state fueled by a vision for an education system that levels the playing field for parents and expands opportunity for our great children,” Abbott continued. “A movement driven by families who shared my vision – that it is time that we put our children on a pathway to having the number one ranked education system in the United States of America knowing that school choice is part of the formula of achieving that mission.”

He also said he’s traveled across the state “talking about school choice for more than half a decade and … met with thousands of families who have longed for education freedom. These families, and thousands more, have been yearning to choose a school that best fits their child. Now they have that option.”

When Abbott ran for reelection in 2022, he “promised school choice for the families of Texas,” he said. “Today, we delivered on that promise.”

The bill creates the state’s first Education Savings Account program to provide taxpayer-funded subsidies for primarily low-income families of roughly $10,000 per student.

Both the Texas Senate and House budgets allocate $1 billion for the program to support roughly 100,000 students, prioritizing low-income and special needs students, The Center Square reported. The savings accounts can be used by parents to send their children to the school of their choice, including private schools.

For more than 20 years, Democrats and Texas House Republicans have opposed a taxpayer-funded subsidy to allow families to send their child to a private school of their choice, arguing funds would be taken away from public schools and that taxpayer money should not fund private school education.

While the Texas Senate has passed a bill creating an Education Savings Account for several legislative sessions in a row, the bill always died in the Republican-controlled House – until now.

The tide turned after Abbott campaigned for 16 House Republican candidates who challenged incumbents who opposed a bill he championed in the last legislative session. Another five Republicans who opposed the bill didn’t run for reelection last year. Abbott’s endorsed Republican challengers won their primaries and runoff elections, vowing to vote for the state’s first ESA program.

The tide also turned after the Texas House elected a new speaker, state Rep. Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, who vowed that the ESA bill would pass the House, which it did on April 17. Burrows also traveled with Abbott statewide promoting the bill, pledging multiple times on social media that it would pass, The Center Square reported.

Burrows thanked members of the Texas House for voting for the bill, saying, “they knew school choice was the moral thing to do. They knew it was the right thing to give children opportunities to go to the place that it’s in their best interest. They knew it was the principled thing to do, that competition makes all things better. That is what America was founded upon. I do believe the work is not done. We have to make sure this is not only the biggest school choice [program] in history but the best.”