Today is Friday January 24, 2025
ktbb logo


School choice, vouchers and the future of Texas education

Posted/updated on: January 24, 2025 at 4:54 pm

AUSTIN (AP) – School vouchers, often referred to as “school choice” programs, use public funds to help families pay for their children’s private education. Supporters say families should receive state support to send their child to a different school if public schools aren’t adequately serving them. Opponents worry a voucher program would strip vital funds away from already cash-strapped public schools.

Texas lawmakers and Gov. Greg Abbott failed to agree on the details of a voucher proposal during the 2023 legislative session, but passing such a bill will once again be a top priority for voucher supporters this year. Abbott, the state’s leading voucher advocate, successfully campaigned last year to replace many voucher critics in the Texas House with new members who have voiced support for them.

School vouchers are broadly defined as programs that allow families to use taxpayer dollars to help them pay for the costs of their children’s private or home-schooling education. “School choice” is a term used by proponents of school voucher programs who believe that parents should have more options for where to send their kids beyond their local public school. It can encompass programs that Texas already has like charter schools and magnet schools. But supporters in Texas have been pushing to expand it by calling for a voucher-like system. They argue families should have the ability to use state money to pay for any alternative forms of schooling they might prefer for their children.

In other states, the most basic school voucher programs allow parents to use taxpayer dollars to cover some of the costs of sending their kids to a private school, which includes schools with a religious affiliation.

Meanwhile, education savings accounts are essentially state-managed bank accounts for parents who remove their children from the public education system. These accounts allow parents to utilize taxpayer money to cover private school tuition and a wide range of approved educational expenses, like private tutoring, school supplies and home-schooling costs. Texas officials have sought to implement this type of program in recent years. Some other states also have tax credit scholarships, which offer tax credits to businesses or individuals who donate to a scholarship-granting organization. Money is then given to eligible students to use toward tuition expenses at a private school.

Top Texas Republican officials like Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, as well as conservative organizations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation, have advocated for education savings accounts in recent years. Religious organizations and some home-schooling coalitions have also voiced their support.

Many conservative politicians and organizations say parents should not have to keep their children in public schools they believe are unsafe or underperforming academically, an argument that has ramped up as schools throughout the country have struggled to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic. Voucher supporters argue such programs would push public schools to compete for students and perform better academically.

Billionaires from in and out of Texas have invested millions of dollars to help sway the outcome of local elections in favor of pro-voucher candidates. For example, Abbott received millions from Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass, a vocal critic of public schools, in the governor’s bid to unseat Texas House lawmakers who helped block voucher proposals in the 2023 legislative session.

Religious groups have argued that a voucher program would make it easier for families to choose and pay for a private religious school, regardless of their income level. Some home-schooling organizations say they would also welcome the financial assistance, noting that some parents spend thousands of dollars per year to educate their kids.

Democrats, teacher groups and some public education advocacy organizations have raised concerns that a voucher program would make things worse for already struggling public schools.

Texas is constitutionally obligated to fund public schools, and that funding is primarily based on attendance. If a voucher program caused students to leave the public school system, schools would receive less money. Opponents worry that impact would pile onto other challenges exacerbated by a yearslong lack of meaningful state funding increases. Those problems include budget deficits, campus closures, declining enrollment, expired pandemic relief funds, inflation and teacher shortages.

Some voucher opponents have accused supporters of wanting to undermine public education and establish an educational system that reflects conservative Christian values. Christopher Rufo, an influential conservative activist whom organizations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation have cited in articles and hosted on panels, publicly stated during a 2022 speech that “to get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.”

“Because in order for people to take significant action, they have to feel like they have something at stake,” Rufo added.

Rural Republicans have historically opposed the voucher movement. Their opposition largely stems from the fact that their communities often revolve around their public schools, which serve as major employers. They see vouchers as a threat to the survival of their schools, which serve high percentages of low-income students and are already struggling financially. Meanwhile, some home-schooling families are opposed to vouchers because they worry that receiving public funds could bring more oversight from the state and take away the autonomy they have to educate their children.

Public polling in recent years in Texas has consistently shown support for voucher-like programs in the state. An August poll by the University of Texas Politics Project found that 52% of voters support creating a voucher, education savings account or other school choice program in Texas. A different poll by the University of Houston and Texas Southern University showed that 65% of Texas adults support the creation of such programs, even if they agree with arguments against school vouchers.

But opinion on vouchers has differed based on how information is presented to people and how questions are framed. Historically, organizations and individuals on both sides of the voucher debate have funded their own research on the effectiveness of such programs and how the public feels about them. Their findings tend to reaffirm their respective viewpoints on the topic. The pollsters at the University of Texas at Austin examined just how much the framing of questions in polling affects how people respond to vouchers. They found that 27% of the people they polled opposed establishing school vouchers. But when the researchers more specifically asked participants about their opinion on redirecting tax revenue to help parents pay for some of the cost of sending their children to private or parochial schools, opposition increased to 42%. Forty-five percent of people supported the idea.

Gov. Greg Abbott has described the success of pro-voucher candidates in the 2024 Texas Republican primaries as an “unmistakable message” that voters support such programs. Only 2% of registered Republican voters listed vouchers as a key issue that affected their support of House candidates in the GOP primary. In rural communities with few private schools, some Republican voters have said they wanted a school voucher program. Others said they voted for pro-voucher candidates because they spoke to their other concerns, like immigration and their current representatives’ perceived shortcomings.

The most reliable measure of public opinion on vouchers has come at the ballot box — where voters, even in Republican and conservative-leaning states, have overwhelmingly opposed the implementation of such programs. During the 2024 general election, for example, a majority of voters in each of Kentucky’s 120 counties voted against a proposal that sought to change the state Constitution to allow the use of tax dollars to pay for private, religious and charter schools. Voucher proposals also failed in Nebraska and Colorado.

Texas has not brought the question of vouchers to the ballot. It would require legislative action for the state to do so.



News Partner
Advertisement
Advertisement Advertisement

 
Advertisement
Advertisement

© 1999 - 2025 Copyright ATW Media, LLC