Texas Voters Choose School Choice
Voters elected majorities in both houses of the state legislature supporting universal education choice. That would be the biggest such program in the nation if it goes through.
Education choice has been on a roll in the United States in recent years, with states across the country passing new voucher and scholarship programs in response to parents and taxpayers clamoring for change since discovering the extreme politicization and sexualization of curricula and continual decline in student achievement scores in government-run schools. As parents and taxpayers saw what their children were being taught through in-home schooling during the lockdowns, they rose up in opposition and called for big changes.
Currently 17 states have education savings account (ESA) programs that allow parents to use state-level education funding for whatever option they think best for their children, 16 states have voucher programs for the same purpose, and 20 have tax-credit scholarship programs. Some states have more than one kind of choice program in place.
One state that has been surprisingly resistant to choice is Texas. As I have reported in previous issues of this newsletter, the Texas Legislature, which has been under Republican majority control since 2003, has repeatedly voted down school choice measures over the years. The most recent choice bill to go down to defeat was a measure to implement ESAs statewide.
Rural Republicans joined all Democrats in defeating the bill last fall in the state’s House of Representatives. The Texas Senate had already passed the bill, and Gov. Greg Abbott called the House into a special session to get a bill passed, but 21 Republicans joined all Democrats to scuttle the bill. For many rural Republicans, the local public schools provide the largest and most strongly motivated interest group in the district, and many receive large campaign donations from teachers unions.
Noting that 89 percent of Texas Republican voters approve of education choice, Abbott, a Republican, endorsed 11 primary challengers this past March, hoping to oust GOP lawmakers who had voted against the ESA bill. In addition, five choice opponents had already dropped out by that point, to be replaced by choice-friendly candidates also endorsed by Abbott.
Eight of the 11 Abbott-endorsed challengers won in the primaries, and in the recent elections all were elected, plus other choice-supporting candidates endorsed by Abbott in races for open seats. Republican candidates who support education choice flipped two Democrat-held seats as well.
In all, Republicans won 88 seats in the 150-member House, and Abbott sees a solid majority of the House as in favor of the ESA program. “Counting what I call only true, hard core school choice proponents, there are 79 votes in favor in the Texas House. It takes 76 votes to get it passed,” Abbott said after the election, KXAN Texas reports. Others may ultimately support the plan as well, The Wall Street Journal notes.
Meanwhile, the Texas Senate remains in safe hands from a school-choice perspective in the wake of the elections.
The proposed Texas ESA program would be the largest in the nation, serving approximately five million students, the WSJ reports. Abbot will have to keep the pressure on his fellow Republicans in the state’s House and Senate until legislation reaches his desk, to ensure that there are no further disappointments. However, prospects for passage of the nation’s largest ESA program to date look very good.