A Utah charter school founder is voicing support for the Trump administration’s effort to reduce federal involvement in K-12 education and give states more control over how federal funding is spent.
Carolyn Sharette, founder and executive director of American Preparatory Academy (APA), told Fox News Digital that returning funding authority to the states, with fewer regulations attached, would let her school serve students more effectively.
“It is very helpful to return the funding to the states that we already get, but with less regulation on those funds so that I can serve our students’ needs — precisely what they need — instead of maybe what somebody in Washington thought they needed,” Sharette said.
Sharette founded APA in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2003. The public charter school network now enrolls more than 5,000 students across eight campuses in the state.
“We know exactly what our students need here to progress, and so returning the education to the states means we get to use the money in more flexible ways to help our students,” she said.
A Stop on a National Tour
On Oct. 20, APA’s West Valley City campus hosted the 47th stop on Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s 50-state “Returning Education to the States Tour,” an effort meant to spotlight the administration’s K-12 reform agenda.
During a keynote address titled “The Next 250: K-12 Education,” McMahon called for shifting authority back to local leaders, investing in interventions with proven results, and expanding school choice options for families.
Department of Education officials say more than $3 trillion in federal money has gone toward K-12 education in recent decades. Despite that spending, national assessment data shows only about three in 10 students score at or above proficient levels in math and reading.
Broader Push to Shrink the Department
Since taking office, McMahon has said she intends to work toward dismantling the federal education agency, including appointing leaders charged with phasing out their own divisions. The effort is part of President Donald Trump’s broader education agenda, which he promoted during a Rose Garden event focused on school choice.
“School choice is really profound, actually,” Sharette said. “The role we play because we provide a place for parents to choose a different school if they’d like, and it’s wonderful that they have that option.”
Sharette described APA as a classical school. “We teach through literature, we teach the science of reading. We’ve always had very high reading scores at our school. So parents who are looking for a rigorous and classical education can choose our school and have that freedom,” she said.
Trump has also said he wants to remove what he has called “far-left extremism” from classrooms, arguing that years of federal oversight have not produced acceptable academic outcomes.
As part of the broader effort, the Department of Education has launched a new waiver process that lets states request greater flexibility in how they spend federal education funds while cutting administrative requirements. Iowa was the first state to join the flexibility initiative.
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