The Trump administration would eliminate federal funding for public charter schools under its budget request for 2020, instead allowing states to tap into a $19 billion pool of money to spend on K-12 education as they see fit.

The proposal – from an administration that has made school choice its No. 1 education priority – stands in stark contrast to the last three budget proposals, all of which included major funding increases for the $440 million federal charter school program.

Once a priority, now the federal charter school program is one of 29 elementary and secondary education programs that the White House says it considers "narrowly focused or duplicative," which would be rolled into a new $19.4 billion block grant. States would be able to use that money to establish new public charter schools and replicate successful ones, but also for things like arts and civics education, school safety, teacher training, support for homeless students and much more.

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The political motivations aren't entirely clear, but set alongside a pitch for a $5 billion tax credit scholarship crystallize the administration's preference for private school choice.

"The symbolism is an odd one considering the fact that this administration talks so much about school choice and included it in the State of the Union," Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, says. "From this budget proposal, it's clear that for them it's really about private school choice rather than public school choice."

White House officials said the proposal was made in the spirit of the federal K-12 education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, which seeks to grant states more control over how they spend federal dollars.

"The new program would give states and school districts the flexibility to better meet the needs of their students and families, eliminating federal intrusion into state and local education systems," a White House budget document states.

A budget document from the Education Department explained it this way: "Consolidated programs include narrowly focused competitive grants and programs that have not proven to improve student outcomes."

Education budget experts generally agree that when programs are consolidated into a large block grant, it often results in decreased funds for those programs because they compete with each other. As it stands, the proposed block grant is already $4.8 billion less than the total amount of federal funding currently earmarked for the 29 consolidated programs. The funding would be disbursed to states using the same formula currently used to dole out federal Title I money for poor students.

"Different states will spend their share of the block grant differently, and that's OK," Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said during a press conference Monday. "They can better figure out what they're students need because they know their students."

The proposal was a major surprise for supporters of charter schools. Some wondered whether it was a punishment for not embracing the administration's tax credit scholarship program, which would allow public funding to flow to private schools, after consecutive years of proposed increases for public charter school funding.

In addition to charter schools, school choice refers to things like tax credit scholarships, education savings accounts and voucher programs, the majority of which primarily provide tuition assistance for private schools.

Charter schools are public schools that are run autonomously from the traditional public schools in a district – meaning, for example, that they could have an extended school day or year, a curriculum that focuses on social justice issues or technology and engineering, a dual language program taught half in English and half in Spanish, or other types of school characteristics that stray from the norm.

"Ultimately, charter schools are going to get created anyway because they are a product of state law," Rees says. "But this would reduce the amount of money available for single site operators to be able to launch properly."

That's a big deal, she says. While new charter schools that are already part of a larger, well-established charter school chain – like KIPP, Rocketship or Green Dot – will have most of the start-up costs covered, someone establishing a new, one-off charter school faces steep financial hurdles that the federal grant has historically alleviated.

The proposal comes as Democrats are pushing back against and reevaluating their support for charter schools, which have become a flashpoint in the Democratic primary with leading candidates like former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont all proposing to freeze or eliminate federal funding for charter schools.

"I do think the Democrats' concerns with charters, certainly the way it's playing out at the national level, is cause for concern," Rees says. "The fact that their rhetoric is lukewarm or anti-charter is a problem because they are the ones who are representing the constituents who are sending their kids to charters or launching them themselves."

Today, 44 states and the District of Columbia have charter schools. Nearly 60 percent of all charter schools are located in urban school districts. Black and Hispanic students accounted for 59 percent of all students enrolled in charter schools during the 2016-17 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics , and white students accounted for 32 percent.

The president's annual budget request is rarely – if ever – enacted in totality. For the most part, the document reflects an administration's ultimate wish list and provides congressional appropriators, who ultimately set funding levels, a spending roadmap of sorts.

When it comes to K-12 education spending, the federal government has one of the smallest roles to play, contributing just 7% of the $860 billion that local governments, state governments and the federal government spend in total.

The president's budget requests $66.6 billion for the Department of Education, a $5.6 billion or 7.8% decrease compared to the enacted level for 2020, which was set at $72.7 billion.

On the K-12 front, the budget request also includes an additional $900 million for career and technical education, which would bring the total to $2 billion – an increase the president teased during the State of the Union address earlier this month. In addition, the budget proposal includes a slight increase for federal funding for students with disabilities

Notably, the $5 billion tax credit scholarship program included in the budget request is not part of the Education Department's budget proposal. It resides in the Treasury Department budget as a tax expenditure.