Days after taking office, President Donald Trump stunned tribal nations when he signed an executive order mandating the expansion of school choice to Indian Country by this fall.
The president’s Jan. 29 order led to an outcry from tribal members, including parents and educators, who feared the proposal would harm tribal schools that in many cases offer the only educational option for families living on remote reservations. They also warned — in public hearings and formal legislative action — that Trump’s order threatened to undermine U.S. treaties with sovereign Indian nations and their rights to self-determination in education.
“They put our kids in boarding schools to ‘kill the Indian,’” said Michelle Beaudin, a member of the governing board for the Lac Courte Oreilles Tribe, referring to the federal government’s century-long Indian boarding school program to forcibly assimilate Native American youth.
The tribe runs an Ojibwe language immersion school in rural northwest Wisconsin that Beaudin says has helped restore tribal identity and culture.* She worried any diversion of funds because of Trump’s order would harm that effort. “We’re working hard to get that language and tradition back again,” she said. “This is one more assault to take it away.”
Yet in late May, the agency that oversees schools on tribal lands, the Bureau of Indian Education, released preliminary details of a plan in response to Trump’s order that appears to bring much more modest changes than many anticipated. Citing the bureau’s history of poor academic outcomes and financial mismanagement, conservatives have long wanted to turn the BIE into a school voucher-style program.
The proposal, though, looks nothing like that. Instead of offering to pay for students to attend competing private, religious or charter schools, the BIE plans to give campuses the flexibility to offer additional services — like tutoring and after-school programs — that families can then pick for their kids.
In an email to The Hechinger Report/ICT, the BIE said it “structured the plan to ensure tribes retain a leading role in determining how educational choices are expanded for their students.”
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The BIE enrolls nearly 44,000 students at 183 schools that it directly runs or oversees on reservations in nearly two dozen states. About 8 percent of Native American students attend BIE schools; the vast majority attend traditional public schools. In his order, Trump set an April deadline for the bureau to come up with a plan for families to use federal funds at non-BIE schools — with it scheduled to go into effect this fall.
Sweeping government layoffs and budget cuts, meanwhile, decimated the BIE’s rank-and-file staff. The bureau didn’t hold virtual forums to discuss the executive order until mid-March, when nearly 800 parents, tribal leaders, agency educators and Native education advocates weighed in, many of them critical of the order.
Related: How a tribe won a legal battle against the Bureau of Indian Education — and still lost
Yet in a letter to tribal leaders in late May, the BIE notified them of a plan that would offer a limited amount of choice for families, while potentially increasing funding for schools like Beaudin’s that are directly managed by tribes.
The letter included just one line on its school choice plan: The bureau proposed it would set aside up to $1.3 million that schools could spend on additional services for families to choose for their children. Those could include advanced or college courses, tutoring and after-school activities, according to the May 23 letter. It also mentions gathering more feedback before the next school year on new and strengthened college and career pathways for students.
“These options will allow parents to exercise a meaningful choice in their child’s education,” the BIE letter reads.
In March, the Department of Education had encouraged state leaders to take advantage of similar flexibility with federal funds under existing law.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the plan. But a BIE spokeswoman said the bureau worked closely with the Trump administration “to ensure the plan is consistent with executive order priorities and federal responsibilities.”
The bureau, she added, attempted to craft a proposal that would offer “practical and impactful” services in remote and rural settings where many of its schools enroll kids and private options for education are scant.
In its letter, the bureau also said it would work to secure more funding for tribal schools by asking lawmakers to restore grants for tribes that directly manage their BIE-funded campuses.
Federal law allows tribes to directly manage all budget, curriculum and hiring decisions at BIE schools. Some 130 campuses operate today under that arrangement. The bureau said it will request that lawmakers boost funding that helps tribes with those costly conversions to local management. The letter suggests the funding must arrive before fall, when the school choice plan would go into effect.
Related: Investigating the Bureau of Indian Education — and Trump’s efforts to turn it into a school choice program
Trump’s proposed budget, released after the BIE sent its letter to tribal leaders, included no increase in funding for tribal education. The bureau actually stands to lose about $80 million, or roughly 10 percent, of its total budget for elementary and secondary programs — though lawmakers have indicated they will fund the BIE’s parent agency, the Department of Interior, above the level in the president’s “skinny budget” request.
“BIE proposes to carry out these initiatives within its allocated budget, to the extent possible,” the bureau’s spokeswoman said in an email.
Meanwhile, the BIE’s more modest proposal is already disappointing some of its loudest critics, including those at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
In Project 2025, a transition plan for the new president released last year, the think tank called for offering BIE families a voucher-style program of school choice like the one states including Arizona and Florida have made available to all children. Jonathan Butcher, acting director of Heritage’s Center for Education Policy, said the bureau’s proposal falls short of the president’s order.
“This is an opportunity to give students the chance to find something they cannot get now at their assigned school. Expecting that assigned public school to provide this kind of opportunity, I’m afraid, is unlikely,” Butcher said.
“The BIE’s students have not had a lot of great options for a long time,” he added. “We should be figuring out how to do everything we can for them.”
At the bureau’s consultation sessions in March, a few tribal members voiced support for school choice, including those who run schools in communities that do offer education alternatives to the BIE.
Rodney Bordeaux, former president of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, now runs the St. Francis Mission on the reservation. He said the private Jesuit school, which offers small class sizes and Lakota language classes, could use a boost from federal funds. It currently relies on private donations collected from across the country.
“Our students learn the Lakota values — the history and the culture, as well as language,” Bordeaux said. “However, our funding is somewhat limited, so we need this extra funding to become a very stable school.”
He added, “We can prove that our model works.”
Related: Native Americans turn to charter schools to reclaim their kids’ education
Before the bureau can implement its plan this fall, it will host a fresh round of virtual consultation sessions in July to gather feedback from tribal members, school boards, parents and teachers. Budget writers in Congress will soon release their proposed spending plan for 2026, revealing how much BIE schools will lose or gain as the plan moves forward.
Tribes that already control their schools, however, didn’t take it as a good sign that Trump’s budget would eliminate all funding for BIE school construction and repairs. Funding shortfalls and mismanagement have contributed to poor conditions in many BIE schools, and inspectors have deemed some of the buildings unhealthy and unsafe.
Michael Willis, a partner and lawyer with Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker, a Washington, D.C.-based firm that represents small tribes, said his clients remain worried about Trump’s order and the financial outlook for tribally controlled schools.
“Let’s fix what we have. Let’s put more investment in infrastructure and what we need to operate successful schools,” said Willis. “Unsafe, unsanitary, dangerous conditions just don’t pose a good option when parents want their kids to have the best experience possible.”
Correction: This story has been updated with the correct location of the Ojibwe language immersion school.
Contact staff writer Neal Morton at 212-678-8247, on Signal at nealmorton.99, or via email at morton@hechingerreport.org.
This story about school choice was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, in partnership with ICT. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
