Returning Education To The States : JMI Has Plans

Just what Will That Look Like?

President Trump has repeatedly said he wants to “return education to the states.” His nominee for Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, has said she’s “all for the president’s mission.” What will that look like?

Project 2025, which Trump denies involvement with (but appears to be following quite closely anyway), calls for (among other things):

• Transfer Title I, Part A (which provides federal funding for lower-income students, schools and school districts) to the Department of Health and Human Services
• Administer Title I, Part A, as a no-strings-attached formula block grant.
• Restore revenue responsibility for Title I funding to the states over a 10-year period.

In other words, Title I funds, used to support our most vulnerable children, will be delivered to the states with no-strings-attached and defunded over 10 years.

How will funds meant for funding low income schools and students be distributed if there are truly no-strings-attached? Florida’s James Madison Institute has ideas for this and other education policies.

The James Madison Institute (JMI) has been a prominent right wing, free-market think tank in Tallahassee for nearly 40 years. An active proponent of Education “freedom,” aka Education Savings Accounts (ESAs)/vouchers, the JMI is a member of the State Policy Network and a member of the advisory board of Project 2025.

JMI’s 2025 Policy Priorities are concerning but not surprising. In Florida, whose 2025 legislative session begins in a little over a week, it is clear that JMI plans to advocate for the further disruption and privatization of public schools, aka “promote education freedom.”

K-12 State Level Policy:

• “Promote education freedom at the local level.” By this JMI means they want to infringe on locally elected school board’s constitutional responisbilities and dictate how school district property is used – “by ensuring that public school buildings no longer in use are made available first to education entrepreneurs (traditional private schools, micro and/or hybrid schools, a la carte course providers, learners’ markets, etc.) before being demolished or sold to others.” Requiring school boards to offer public buildings to private enterprises, before all others, sounds like a direct attack on local control – because it is.
• “Promote education freedom at the state level.” By this JMI means they want to
  • “Protect the wide flexibility” of Florida’s Personalized Education Program (PEP) scholarships – these are publicly funded vouchers available to homeschoolers who agree to withdraw from any local district oversite and submit test scores, from a test of their choosing, once a year. Currently, families can (and do) use these funds to purchase LEGOs, paddle boards, televisions (one per child), and theme park admission for several Florida parks such as Disney World, Sea World, or Universal. Last session, State Rep. Josie Tomkow, a Polk City Republican, proposed placing limits on how homeschool voucher money could be spent, concerned that families were using the funds on items not directly tied to education. The Legislature failed to approve Tomkow’s proposed restrictions. Apparently, JMI is ready to fight against any restrictions proposed during the upcoming session , as well.
  • Deregulating the already barely regulated marketplace of online providers, hybrid schools, and other emerging education enterprises, ready to profit off publicly funded ESAs. At a recent House PreK-12 Budget subcommittee meeting, multiple representatives asked representatives from Florida’s Scholarship Funding Organizations (SFOs) whether background checks were required for tutors or other providers who were approved to provide face-to-face services to students. Each time the response was the same, even though the service is approved by the SFO, “the parents are the ones who make the selection of who actually is tutoring their student” and the SFOs were reluctant to intrude on that choice with something like background checks. I suspect JMI would, also, be against basic backround checks for education provided with public funds to homeschollers.

Higher Ed State Level Policy:

• “Promote education freedom in higher ed.” Here they would like to tie performance funding for state universities to “successful participation” in the Board of Governor’s Intellectual Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Survey, an annual survey assessing how well each university cultivates respect for free expression and viewpoint diversity. Here is the 2024 Report. It is unclear what JMI means by “successful participation” – are they advocating for improved participation in the survey (fewer than 15% of staff or students responded in 2024) or are they suggesting tying funding to the actual results? I suspect the latter.

Federal Policy:

• “Promote education freedom at the national level”: this essentially means federal vouchers, in two different flavors:
  • Provide Enhanced Child Tax Credits for families that “take financial responsibility for the education of their children” – As I have said many times before, the goal is not simply to privatize public education but, rather, to privatize the responsibility for education. These tax credits would encourage that.
  • Converting the Federal Title I program into a block grant that Florida could use to fund weighted scholarships for students living in low-income neighborhoods.

Apparently, JMI envisions “no-strings-attached” to mean bypassing public schools entirely…

Our public schools are under assault.

Florida’s 2025 Legislative Session begins March 4th. JMI will be advocating against our public schools, will you be advocating for them?