CLEVELAND – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is all in on school choice, and he’s proposing a $20 billion block grant to give poor and minority students better educational options.

Trump discussed the plan at the Cleveland Arts and Sciences Academy, a small for-profit charter school that serves mostly minority students, on Thursday.

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“As your president, I will be the nation’s biggest cheerleader for school choice,” Trump told his audience, according to Politico.

“I want every single inner-city child in America who is today trapped in a failing school to have the freedom, the civil right, to attend the school of their choice,” he said. “Their parents will choose the finest school. They will attend that school. This includes private schools, traditional public schools, magnet schools, and charter schools, which must be included in any definition of school choice.”

Trump said the initiative, which he vowed to campaign for in all 50 states, would use “existing federal dollars” to help 11 million poor children attend the school of their choice, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“Mr. Trump also said he would ask every state to develop a plan to provide school choice for poor students, and would support candidates at the state and local level who supported his plan,” the news site reports. “Mr. Trump also vowed to support merit pay for teachers.”

Trump said he wants to increase the number of charter schools and school choice options nationwide.

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“If you look at our school systems all over the country, the sort of, I guess you would say, traditional way, it’s not working out so well,” he told those at the Cleveland charter school on Thursday. “There’s tremendous opposition, as you know. But the opposition has to break down, and it’s starting to break down, I think, I really believe it, because your results are so incredible.”

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Trump has been a vocal opponent of the national Common Core education standards promoted by the Obama administration through the president’s Race to the Top education initiative, which goaded states into adopting the standards for a shot at billions in additional education funds.

He’s also repeatedly criticized America’s mostly unionized public education system, pointing out that the country’s students achieve at roughly the same level as their counterparts in third world countries.

Trump did not detail exactly where the $20 billion in existing federal funds would come from for his school choice block grant proposal, but he did explain how the system might work.

According to The New York Times:

Rather than sending federal education dollars to schools, as the existing system does, Mr. Trump proposed giving block grants to states, which would have the option of letting the dollars follow students to whichever school they choose, including charter, private or online school. …

“Distribution of this grant will favor states that have private school choice and charter laws,” he said.

Trump’s views on education stand in stark contrast to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, who is heavily backed by the nation’s largest teachers unions.

Those unions oppose charter schools that are not replicas of existing public schools and staffed by union employees. The unions generally oppose school choice options, even for poor and minority families stuck in subpar public schools, because those nonunionized schools threaten their bottom line.

The Times notes that Trump’s support of school choice aligns with both the Republican agenda for education as well as the views of many poor black and Hispanic families driving the demand for school choice nationwide.

And unlike teachers unions and their sponsored Democratic candidates, Trump’s focus seems to be squarely on what’s best for the nation’s students, rather than dues revenue or political alliances. Trump seems to understand that choice drives competition, and competition breeds academic excellence.

“As president, I will establish the national goal of providing school choice to every American child living in poverty,” Trump said, according to the Times. “If we can put a man on the moon, dig out the Panama Canal and win two world wars, then I have no doubt that we as a nation can provide school choice to every disadvantaged child in America.”