In a recent blog post called Texans at the School Choice Showdown, I discussed the battle being waged by Texas Governor Greg Abbott to bring more school choice to Texas. In this reliable red state with Republican control of the Governor’s mansion and the legislature, you wouldn’t expect this to be a difficult hill to climb.
But Texas is so large that it has many rural counties where there are few other options for public school students. Republicans that represent these counties seem to believe that school choice doesn’t offer them anything better than the current public schools and may threaten their future.
To move the ball forward, Governor Abbott called a 30-day special session of the legislature to debate the issue. There is only one day left in the session and unless they come to an agreement, Abbott has threatened to call another 30-day session.
A breakthrough came last week when Mr. Abbott said he’d reached a deal with House Speaker Dade Phelan on a bill to establish education savings accounts, or ESAs, for families who want options outside of public schools. The universal program would be open to any K-12 student, and it would provide about $10,500 to each. That’s more generous than the $8,000 ESA package passed by the state Senate earlier in the session.
The agreement also includes billions of dollars for public education, including raises for teachers, which Mr. Abbott pledged to add to the agenda only when lawmakers reached a deal on school choice. The shrewdness of the Governor’s approach is that the political calculation ought to be simple: Voting yes means helping families who want out of public schools, while also helping public schools.
You’d think this would be a slam-dunk since it seems to benefit both charter and private schools, as well as public schools. But some of the rural Republicans have joined the Democrats in resisting ESAs. Their claim is that because their districts have few private schools, education choice doesn’t help their constituents. But ESAs could help change that, since they’d be a financial incentive for alternatives that might serve some families better than the local government school monopoly.
The Texas Tribune recently reported that the state has almost 1,200 private schools, but only 55 are in the 165 counties with 50,000 or fewer people. This sounds like an argument in favor of school choice, not against it. “If vouchers are approved to allow state money to be spent on private education,” the article says, private schools could act on their dreams of “expanding the reach of programs into relatively underserved areas, particularly in rural parts of Texas.”
The framework announced by Messrs. Abbott and Phelan is a good one, and it could be the starting point for negotiations in a renewed special session. If lawmakers still can’t come to agreement, the Governor might need to make good on plan B. Mr. Abbott has suggested he might support primary challengers to lawmakers who oppose ESAs, as Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds successfully did in 2022. At least eight school-choice advocates have already lined up to run against GOP incumbents.
School choice benefits all children since it gives everyone the freedom to choose the best school for their needs. It frees parents to make decisions in the interest of their children, instead of the interests of the teachers unions. In Florida, where I live, school choice is growing in popularity and private schools are rapidly making plans for expansion. School choice has been called the “civil rights issue of our times” by former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. It’s about time that everyone got on board.
