Project 2025’s architects’ vision for education spills into Idaho politics

The Heritage Foundation, the organization behind Project 2025, a presidential transition plan with sweeping recommendations for federal policy reforms under a Republican presidency the next four years, has lobbied Idaho lawmakers in recent months on private school choice.

Project 2025 is a 900-page blueprint tailored to a second term for former President Donald Trump. The Heritage Foundation has published similar documents since the 1980s, but the latest iteration is grabbing national headlines for proposals that would overhaul the federal government and its role in schooling, like eliminating the U.S. Department of Education.

Private school choice — policies that would free-up public funding for private education — is a major focus of the transition plan. And while much of Project 2025 zeroes in on federal education reforms, including a nationwide universal school choice program, the Heritage Foundation is also pushing choice programs at the state level, including in Idaho.

“Education is primarily a state and local affair,” said Matthew Ladner, Heritage Foundation senior adviser for education policy implementation. “School choice has made a lot of progress in the last few years through state capitals and is likely to make more in the years ahead.”

Idaho is one of a handful of Republican-dominated states that has yet to enact a private school choice program.

Kristen Christensen, state director of the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation, Heritage Action for America, has been contacting Idaho lawmakers in recent months to pitch private school choice policy proposals before next year’s legislative session.

Ladner met with lawmakers over Zoom and in-person in September and October, according to email records and an interview with Ladner.

Christensen sent an invitation to Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, to the September virtual call where she said they planned to “discuss potential education freedom in Idaho, including school choice, vouchers, tax credits, and other avenues,” email records show.

Scott forwarded the invitation to fellow legislators as well as some Republican candidates who won in their May primary contests, including Clint Hostetler, who defeated Twin Falls incumbent Chenele Dixon — Dixon had been an opponent of using taxpayer funds for private education, and a group supporting the proposals spent heavily in the primary to oppose her. Scott also forwarded the invitation to Sagle candidate Cornel Rasor — Rasor was later appointed by Gov. Brad Little to fill a vacancy in the seat left by outgoing Rep. Sage Dixon, and it was shortly announced that he would be joining the ultra conservative Freedom Caucus.

Several lawmakers later received a follow-up from Christensen thanking them for attending, including: Reps. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls; Ron Mendive, R-Coeur d’Alene; and Scott; as well as Sens. Tammy Nichols, R-Middleton; Carl Bjerke, R- Coeur d’Alene; and Kelly Anthon, R-Burley.

Ladner said in an interview that he also met in-person with lawmakers in early October in Boise to discuss the educational savings account, or ESA, program in Arizona and how something similar could work in Idaho.

WHAT IS PROJECT 2025? WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

During this presidential campaign, Trump has sought to distance himself from Project 2025 amid backlash to some of its ideas and comments made by one of its leaders. However, it was created by a number of his former advisers and others considered likely appointees if he’s reelected, NPR reported.

“(Project 2025) is moving from an abstraction to a concretized plan, and that is the thing that makes it worth paying attention to,” said Sam Martin, a Boise State University professor who studies the conservative movement. “Because once you make a blueprint, you have a way to implement policies that you want.”

The transition plan, which includes proposed actions for every department within the federal government, was created in an effort led by the Heritage Foundation with an advisory board of 100 organizations — including the Idaho-based Mountain States Policy Center, which describes itself as a “free-market think tank.”

Versions of a Heritage Foundation presidential transition plan, or “Mandate for Leadership,” have existed since the Reagan administration.

Foundation President Kevin Roberts wrote in the Project 2025 foreward that the first presidential playbook was written in 1981.

“By the end of that year, more than 60 percent of its recommendations had become policy,” Roberts wrote.

The salience of this new version of the playbook is that its intended recipient, former President Trump, has been particularly receptive to its ideas in the past, according to the afterword of the project, written by Heritage Foundation founder and past president Edwin Feulner.

“After that first edition, a new Mandate was produced every four years. But the 2016 edition was one of particular note,” Feulner wrote. “It earned significant attention from the Trump Administration, as Heritage had accumulated a backlog of conservative ideas that had been blocked by President Barack Obama and his team.

“Soon after President Donald Trump was sworn in, his Administration began to implement major parts of the 2016 Mandate. After his first year in office, the Administration had implemented 64 percent of its policy recommendations.”

Feulner said that Trump implemented more of the recommendations in the first year than Reagan did, and that “President Trump liked being compared to a former President he deeply admired, and he touted the comparison frequently.”

The strategy for 2025 includes a plan to combat what the foundation calls “the Great Awokening,” with proposals such as “deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights … out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”

Some of the policies proposed for the federal government are also being pitched in state legislatures around the country, especially surrounding education.

HERITAGE FOUNDATION’S STATE-LEVEL ADVOCACY IN EDUCATION

When it comes to education, the idea of “school choice,” or allowing taxpayer funds to go toward private education, is a major focus for the Heritage Foundation as a whole and in Project 2025.

Roberts wrote in the foreward, “In our schools, the question of parental authority over their children’s education is a simple one: Schools serve parents, not the other way around. That is, of course, the best argument for universal school choice — a goal all conservatives and conservative Presidents must pursue.”

He wrote that “cities, counties, school boards, union bosses, principles, and teachers who disagree should immediately be cut off from federal funds.”

The school choice proposals should “promote educational opportunities outside the woke-dominated system of public schools and universities,” the foundation president wrote.

Ladner works with local legislators to get these types of programs passed at the state level, such as during his meetings with Idaho lawmakers.

“It’s mostly a state and local affair,” Ladner said. “We’ve made a lot of progress through state capitols and we’re likely to make more in the years to come.”

Ladner said his focus at the Heritage Foundation is primarily on supporting a system known as a universal education savings account, or ESA. Before joining the foundation in 2023, he had served on a team that implemented an ESA program in Arizona.

In 2023, a group of Idaho senators proposed an ESA that would have provided nearly $6,000 per student that could go toward educational expenses including private school tuition. The two Heritage Action for America lobbyists in Idaho lobbied in favor of this bill, reports to the Idaho Secretary of State’s office show.

The Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy released a report that predicted the program’s total cost to the state could rise from $44 million in its first year to $363.8 million if enrollment trended similarly to programs in Arizona and another one in Florida. The Senate decisively rejected the proposal.

Arizona’s program began with limitations on who could enroll and was primarily for students with disabilities, Ladner said. It later was opened up to all families who wanted to participate, and this year Arizona is likely to spend around $700 million on it, Ladner said. A report released in April by the Common Sense Institute of Arizona estimated the program will cost more than $750 million.

Email records indicate that Nichols, one of the legislators who proposed the ESA, attended the virtual call with Ladner. She did not respond to questions about the event, but wrote in an emailed response to other questions, “I strongly support school choice and believe it’s essential for empowering parents to choose the best educational option for their children. I am considering either bringing forward a school choice proposal next session or supporting another well drafted proposal that gives families more freedom and control over their children’s education.”

Email records also indicate Ehardt attended the virtual call, but in an interview the lawmaker did not remember if she did. Ehardt said she did attend the in-person meeting with Ladner in October. She didn’t recall many of the details of the meeting, but said she’s generally supportive of the school choice proposals that have come forward, although she would prefer a more targeted option at first with the potential to be expanded to a universal option.

The follow-up email from the Heritage Action lobbyist included resources for the lawmakers as they “consider possible legislation,” which included a link to a Heritage report written by Ladner about a school choice tax credit program in Oklahoma and model legislation from the Institute for Justice for creating an ESA.

Ladner said the Heritage Foundation has not created its own model legislation on this topic.

PROJECT 2025 AND EDUCATION

The 44-page chapter for the Department of Education recommends eliminating the department altogether and redistributing many of its functions to other agencies and to the states. It also places ESAs front and center, highlighting Arizona’s program.

The chapter, written by Lindsey M. Burke, the director of Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, includes a proposal to end the federal Title I program that provides funding to schools serving primarily low-income families.

“Students attending schools that receive Title I spending should also have access to micro-education savings accounts that allow families to choose how and where their children learn according to their needs,” Burke wrote.

There are around 750 Idaho schools eligible to receive Title I funds, Idaho Department of Education data shows.

Nichols said she favored both of these proposals.

“Regarding Title 1 funds, I support redirecting those resources toward education tax credits or education savings accounts, ensuring that parents (rather than the government) decide how best to use education dollars for their kids,” Nichols wrote.

“The U.S. Department of Education was founded in 1979, when the U.S. was ranked #1 in the world in education. After 40 years of government-run education, we have fallen to #24. I fail to see how the Department has made anything better and would support its dismantling, with control over education returned to state and local governments. Education is most effective when handled locally, with parents and communities at the center of decision-making. My vision for Idaho’s K-12 education system includes expanding school choice, maintaining strong academic standards and outcomes, and respecting parental rights, so every child has access to the education that best meets their needs.”

Ehardt didn’t offer an opinion on the Title I program idea, but said she did favor dismantling the federal Department of Education — for different reasons. She opposed recent federal efforts to amend Title IX to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

“What the Biden-Harris administration has done, following the Obama administration, with education and through the education department and Title IX, and re-writing Title IX from 37 words to 1,500 pages, and using that as a means as a straight punishment, I absolutely will be in favor of dismantling the education at the federal level,” Ehardt said. “When they’re going to weaponize it in that manner, then let’s get rid of it, because this is wrong.”

She also said that removing federal funds and the strings attached to them would free up teachers’ time and help improve public education.

EVOLUTION OF SCHOOL CHOICE CONVERSATION IN IDAHO

Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, has been advocating for some type of “school choice” program in the Idaho Legislature since she was elected in 2012. Horman was invited to the Heritage event but did not attend.

She said she’s noticed the conversation has been elevated and the money from outside groups has increased since the pandemic.

“The pandemic really pushed the narrative on school choice,” she said.

She and Sen. Lori Den Hartog, R-Meridian, this year proposed a tax credit that could go toward private education expenses, including tuition, Idaho Education News reported.

The legislation was modeled after a program in Oklahoma, which Ladner highlighted in his meetings with Idaho lawmakers. The bill died by one vote in committee. Horman said the duo plans to bring the proposal back, likely with changes that include prioritizing low-income students.

She said they’d considered ESAs in the past, but now prefer the tax credit.

“Less bureaucracy and more accountability,” Horman said of tax credits. “Tax fraud is tax fraud. That’s a very strong accountability metric.”

Republicans who have opposed these proposals have expressed concern about a lack of visibility and accountability for how the private institutions would use the money, what they’d be teaching and if they would accept the child with the credit. Democrats have all opposed these proposals for similar reasons.

A 2024 Boise State University public policy survey found that 49% of respondents favored allowing the funding spent per pupil to be taken out of the public school system and allowed to be used for private school. Horman argued that her proposal wouldn’t remove any funding for public schools, but said her experience roughly matches the survey results, with around half of the constituents she’s spoken to favoring her school choice proposals and half opposing.

“This is not an extremist issue,” Horman said. “It is centrist.”

However, there are people who think public education is a failed experiment and favor more privatization and “competition” with private schools.

Sen. Brian Lenney, R-Nampa, who was one of the sponsors of the 2023 ESA bill, told the Idaho Press at the time that increases to public education budgets have not improved outcomes.

“If you look at public education as horse betting, we’ve been betting on the same horse over and over and over and we’ve been making historic investments,” he said then. “If the return on investment isn’t there, at some point we have to put a new horse in the race.”

In addition to the pandemic, Horman also pointed to two Supreme Court decisions in 2020 and 2022 that paved the way for private religious schools to receive public voucher funds as spurring more momentum in the movement. The Idaho Constitution does not allow state funds to go toward private religious education, although there have been attempts to repeal the section.

Martin, the BSU professor, also pointed to the court opinions as elevating the conversation among members of the religious right.

Within the group of people who support greater school choice, there is a subset of those who believe either more Christian values should be taught in schools or more parents should be able to send their kids to private Christian schools.

“Until that happened, it was really a closed possibility that the state funding could be used for private schooling, particularly religious schooling,” Martin said. “But now that that door has been opened, the argument that’s being made has increased salience in terms of viability as something state legislatures can promote.”

The Idaho GOP platform on education begins with the statement, “The Idaho Republican Party recognizes that the future of this great state lies with our faith and reliance on God our Creator, in our strong efforts to uphold family values, and in the quality of education provided for its citizens.”

Ehardt said she believed many of the problems in schools today are benign, caused by the “deterioration of the family” as well as too many “social issues” in the classroom.

The focus on the traditional family is one of the main goals listed at the beginning of Project 2025.

Many people on all sides of the “school choice debate” acknowledge there are problems with public education outcomes.

Some argue that it’s because of complex socioeconomic factors and the way school funding is set up that unevenly benefits some areas over others, Martin said, and others argue it’s because of indoctrination or other social culture war issues.

“There is truth at the center, which is that the school system is imperfect, and both sides want to fix it,” Martin said. “But the point of departure that they take is markedly different.”

Martin said that when considering voting, it’s important to consider that there is an organized plan in place.

“(Voting) is not a personal stamp of approval, it’s a decision that you’re making about what the nation should be like for everyone,” Martin said. “This is a movement coming together, and perhaps people want to have these kinds of laws and this kind of society, but folks need to understand that having a plan makes all the difference.”

Guido covers Idaho politics for the Lewiston Tribune, Moscow-Pullman Daily News and Idaho Press of Nampa. She may be contacted at lguido@idahopress.com and can be found on Twitter @EyeOnBoiseGuido. Ryan Suppe, reporter at Idaho Education News, contributed to this reporting