Choosing School Choice

As I began writing this on Thursday, March 20, President Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education. So I want to give just a little space for that celebration, and then we’ll talk about the school choice debate in general, and more specifically in the Texas Legislature.

President Trump signs EO on Department of Education;
Photo from Washington Post, title from White House

 

Dismantling the Department of Education

President Trump did not, and could not, abolish the Department of Education unilaterally with an executive order; the Dept. of Ed was originated by a Carter EO, but was then established by Congress as an administrative body. Since education is not among the enumerated powers, it was never a good idea, but its establishing principles are not that terrible. Glenn Beck read through these on his show:

It is the intention of Congress in the establishment of the Department of Education to protect the rights of state and local governments and public and private educational institutions in the area of educational policies and administration of programs and to strengthen and improve the control of such governments and institutions over their own educational programs and policies.

I looked it up. The part Glenn Beck read is p. 4 under Federal-State Relationships. There was a more complete list, starting on p. 3, under Purposes, which already seem to go beyond what they had any business doing, but are not the controlling strings they’ve become over time. 

I’ve said myself that, while the federal government does not have education as an enumerated power, you could construe that there is a government interest in an educated populace. So, if there were something at the federal level (not that I would encourage it necessarily), it would be as an information source, a clearinghouse where states and local education entities could look to for research findings, and to share what they had tried and what their results were.

If this founding purpose was what the Dept. of Ed had ever kept to, we would not be needing this dismantling today.

Now, the dismantling—not abolishing—is a cut to about 50% of the workforce in the Department. Services deemed necessary by law are being kept there—such as Pell grants. Eventually—if Congress does its job in following up—those required services (if actually necessary) can be administered by other departments, and the Dept. of Ed can be completely abolished. And that would prevent it from being resurrected and re-expanded by a future administration.

But all in all, this was an important day’s work.

 

Parents Control the Care and Upbringing of Their Children

Eventually I’m going to get granular into the school choice legislation in Texas. But first I want to recommend a discussion between Jordan Peterson and author/school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis.

 

Jordan Peterson and Corey DeAngelis, screenshot from here

DeAngelis outlines a great many objective societal goods that come from increased school choice—even just the additional choice of charter schools. These include 30% increase in likelihood of graduation, and increased additional education opportunities after high school, and lower crime. Additionally, no school choice program has led to less funding for public schools (they’ve actually gotten more), nor government intrusion into private school curriculum or greater control over homeschooling.

Let’s start with his reference to the 1983 Nation at Risk report on education, which showed us doing much worse than in earlier decades. There was a push to spend more and more money on education—but we not only haven’t gotten better; in many ways we’ve gotten worse. DeAngelis says:

We spend about $20,000 per student per year now, which is about 52% higher than the average private school tuition in this country, that spending in the government schools has increased by about 164% inflation-adjusted since 1970. Have the outcomes gotten 164% better? No, obviously not. But it's because they're not focusing on math and reading; they're focusing on gender ideology and Critical Race Theory in the schools. And if you're focusing on those things and teaching kids to hate your country, it shouldn't surprise us that the academic outcomes aren’t getting any better.

If our interest was actually to get an educated populace, the data is actually telling us that paying private school tuition is both more cost-effective and more likely to get the outcomes we want (homeschooling aside—which is even more cost-effective and outcome-producing). No one in any state legislature is pushing to dump public schooling and give everyone a private school (or other) tuition voucher. School choice is always tentative—with probably far too much deference given to keeping public schools thriving.

Right now there are nearly as many desks open in private schools as there are students on waiting lists for charter schools—in other words, students who aren’t getting their needs met in public schools. It ought to be a simple solution, then, to give those families a way out of the public schools—to which they are bound by law to attend unless they have the personal resources, in addition to taxes they’re already paying, to pay for private school or homeschooling.

Opponents to school choice may claim to have many reasons, certainly worth addressing as legislation is crafted. But it comes down to saying they want to force students who are without family resources to remain in schools that are failing them.

DeAngelis uses an analogy of a grocery store.

In most places in America you live where you live, and you're assigned to a school just based on your address, which gives them no incentive to spend additional dollars wisely. I mean, just imagine if you had to shop at a government grocery store that you were assigned to based on where you lived, and they had empty shelves, no food. And when they did have food, imagine if you got food poisoning, or it was expired. And if you wanted to go somewhere else, they'd tell you to go complain to the grocery board, who wouldn't listen to you and would try to cut off your mic—which is what happens with the school boards right now. And if you had to just move houses to get access to a better grocery store, that would make zero sense. Or if you had to pay twice, basically once through taxes for the government grocery store you're not using, and then again out of pocket for a grocery store that actually provided you with healthy food.

 

That's what we have with the government school system today. You cannot go somewhere else unless you pay twice, essentially, and low-income families are basically just screwed in the worst failure factories that we call public schools.

To press the point, he adds that in places like Chicago, 33 public schools have 0% of students showing proficiency in math, while they’re spending $30,000 per kid. And of course the teacher union boss sends her child to a private school; they know they’re failing. 

So, do I believe in public schools? I do not. But in the real world, where we spend half of the state’s revenue in taxes on education—and public schools are the huge elephant monopoly in the room—pushing for options is something reasonable people ought to do.

 

Texas School Choice Bills

School choice is likely to pass in Texas this legislative session. Unlike last session, when 21 House Republicans joined with all the Democrats to scuttle school choice, this session there are 76 Republicans who have signed on as co-authors. That’s enough to pass a bill. A Senate version, SB 2, has already passed—although it hasn’t been assigned to a House committee yet. The House bill, HB 3, had a committee hearing on March 12, but was left pending, meaning no decision was made yet, so there will have to be another committee hearing on it. Eventually it will get sent on to the floor for a vote. And then there will have to be reconciliation with the Senate before a final version gets sent to the Governor for signature—which Governor Abbott will sign, because school choice in any form has been a priority for him since last session and before.

I wrote about the school choice legislation in general a few weeks ago. Today I thought I’d do a deep-dive comparison of the two bills. Normally the Senate is more reliably conservative than the House. But there are actually several things I prefer in the House version.

Both bills are essentially ESA programs (education savings accounts). That’s where a set amount of money is allocated for a specific purpose—like a health savings account. You can’t use that money for some other purpose, but within the parameters, you can choose how to use the funds.

Both bills have funds coming through the general fund—through the State Comptroller. This in no way diminishes money going to public schooling; that state allotment is untouched by this bill. (There are other bills working to increase public school funding, mainly aimed at raising teacher salaries.)

Both have similar administrative and legal accountability/anti-fraud provisions. I had AI produce a chart summarizing the differences for me. I put a red * by features I prefer; I’ll point out a couple of things below:

Feature	S.B. No. 2	H.B. No. 3
Funding Amount	Provides $10,000 per year for children in accredited private schools ($11,500 for students with disabilities); $2,000 for homeschooled students	Provides 85% of the statewide average per-student funding for K-12 students; up to $30,000 for students with disabilities; $2,000 for homeschooled students *
Online Education	Prohibits using ESA funds for online or virtual education services	Allows funding for online courses or programs *
Income-Based Prioritization	Defines low-income as households under 500% of the federal poverty level but does not prioritize beyond public school history	Prioritizes children with disabilities and low-income families, dividing them into specific income brackets (e.g., below 200% and between 200-500% of federal poverty level)
Meal Coverage	Does not allow ESA funds to be used for student meals	Allows ESA funds to cover breakfast and lunch at private schools
Payment Schedule	ESA accounts are funded semiannually	ESA accounts are funded quarterly
Funding Cap & Growth	Capped at $20,000 per student	No cap beyond general program appropriation limits *
Application Priority	Priority given to students who were in public school for 90% of the prior year	Prioritizes returning ESA participants over new applicants *
Parental Responsibilities	Requires parents to administer an approved standardized test	Does not explicitly require standardized testing *
Appeals Process	ESA funding decisions by the Comptroller are final	Allows parents to appeal eligibility decisions *
Special Education Services	Offers additional funds but does not require public schools to provide evaluations.	Requires public schools to conduct special education evaluations upon parental request

Funding is set in the Senate bill, but in the House bill it is tied to statewide average per-student funding, which would mean the bill wouldn’t have to be redone with annual cost increases (or decreases, if that should ever happen).

The Senate bill prohibits spending for online or virtual education resources. These have been common resources used by homeschoolers since well before we homeschooled. And those resources have only grown. To prohibit use of them is a tremendous drawback in the Senate bill.

The prioritization is aimed at the most vulnerable, with more emphasis on that in the House bill. The amount allotted on this “trial” of ESAs is comparatively small, which means it’s only going to offer relief to a few select winners. In my view, any parent whose child is not being well served by the public school system is vulnerable—unless that parent already has plenty of money and/or time to homeschool. A similar problem has always existed with charter schools as well; children get in by lottery. I’d like to see more opportunity, so the result seems less about luck. But this bill is a start, if there’s the intention of expanding in future years. Those who intend to say, “Well, you said competition would improve quality and lower costs,” should realize that this program is too small to provide those outcomes yet.

The Senate bill prioritizes people who are coming from public schools; this is a first-year mentality. The House prioritizes returning ESA students—so those families don’t have to re-win the lottery in order to keep their schooling choice year-to-year. I think that’s essential.

Accountability differences are significant. The Senate bill requires participating students to take an approved standardized test. The House bill does not require testing. One of the problems (among many) that people have with public schools is the standardized testing—which inevitably turns into teaching toward the test, rather than simply teaching. And we’re never happy with the standardized tests.

When I homeschooled my kids, I did annual testing, but I never used a nationally recognized standardized test. For elementary years, we used one aimed at homeschooling families once or twice. I found it to lack rigor in most things and overemphasize memorization of some certain things the company valued (memorizing the Preamble to the Constitution, for example, rather than understanding what the words mean, but memorizing can be a starting point). For my older kids, we had a PSAT and later SAT prep program by Kaplan (back then it was a thick book and a CD to use on the computer). You could take tests, and then they showed you what kinds of errors you were making, so you could improve your study. This also made taking the eventual SAT or ACT test less stressful, because they’d done that so many times. I would very much have resented anyone forcing me to have my kids take a certain test—which was supposed to be a grade on me, the teacher, and wouldn’t do anything to help my kids learn and study anything they might be missing.

 

Government Strings

One of the “conservative” arguments against school choice is that anything you do will be used as a way for government to gain control over private and homeschools. While that’s a valid concern, it’s mostly irrelevant. We’re dealing with people who opt in—most of them coming from public schools. So any “strings” are what they’ve been dealing with all along. Any “choice” is better than no choice.

Texas State Capitol, from a visit in 2018

The concern seems to be, “if a private school accepts a student with ESA money, then they have to do what the government says.” In reality, that has been limited to “public schools must be accredited.” I do have a problem with that, because most private schools are not accredited, and there is no correlation between accreditation and learning outcomes.

But there’s nothing in there related to curriculum. A church-related school can continue its curriculum as always. So, then you’ve got the other side exclaiming that we can’t have government money going to a religion-related entity—as if that church/state argument even applied here.

DeAngelis points out that we have many places where government funds are used in this manner: Pell grants, GI bills, for example, and Medicaid vouchers can be used at religious hospitals. There’s no interference with the school or hospital by the government, and no religious limitation on the user. A GI bill can even pay for a person going to a seminary to become a pastor. Why would we create such limitations on K-12 education?

I’m on a social media thread with precinct chairs across the state. You would think these would be conservatives—and they think they are. But there’s a subset in this group that are virulently anti-school-choice. They claim that any Republican voting for the school choice bill (for which there is not a final version yet) ought to be censured. They are ridiculous. They claim there are all kinds of strings attached. So I looked.

As far as I can tell, here are the “strings”:

·        The STAAR or other standardized testing is required in the Senate bill. This is already not in the House bill, and I will let my representative know I’m against standardized testing in the bill. In the House version, if a parent uses a standardized test, they’re required to send the result to the Educational Assistance Organization (EAO), which will use it to measure program effectiveness. This seems reasonable.

·        No spending on online, virtual, or out-of-state tuition in the Senate bill. Again, this is not a limitation in the House bill, and I will let my representative know I prefer the House version on this point.

·        Payments can’t go to family members. I understand the purpose for this; a person could use the money to directly pay a family member (to a third-degree relationship) for, say, tutoring or music lessons—whether the service is offered or not, or whether the service is of qualifying quality. It’s an accountability decision, and while I think it’s unfortunate, it is reasonable to prevent fraud and abuse.

·        Funds are administered by Comptroller-appointed Education Assistance Organizations (EAOs), which verify qualifications of students (so they don’t receive benefits while also attending public schools), and to disperse the funds according to the law. I don’t see an EAO as a “string,” per se. Someone has to disperse the funds, or else the Comptroller’s office has to create additional departments to handle these across the state, which is essentially what an EAO is.

·        Mentioned just above, a student can’t receive benefits while also attending public school. I understand the “double-dipping” argument, but I hope it’s one we can eventually overcome. Why shouldn’t a student be able to use part of their allotment for a public high school class—such as band or theater or being on a sports team? That would be real choice. I’ve suggested that idea to my representative, and she says our state just isn’t there yet (even though the “less free” state of Washington was essentially there 30 years ago). Texas led the way on getting homeschool freedom, but in practically ever other way, our schools are stodgy.

·        Education providers must be pre-approved by the Comptroller. I don’t know exactly what this means. I think it means, if I were a music teacher, I would need to get some sort of certification. I have taught music (at under standard rates) without a certificate. I don’t know if this would burden the education provider or the parent. It’s to satisfy those “accountability” worriers, but it’s unfortunate.

·        Only accredited private schools would qualify—leaving out all unaccredited private schools including micro-schools, which proliferated after the COVID shutdown, when parents figured out ways to do what needed doing.

·        Parents, providers, and vendors must comply with state auditing and monitoring procedures, as you would expect. (If we’d had such compliance all along at the federal level, DOGE wouldn’t need to be doing that job now.)

Overall, while it’s not perfect, and not as large a program as I would like to see, nor as open to mixing and matching options (actually, none of that at all), the House version is probably the best school choice bill I’ve seen come before the Texas Legislature.

I think it will pass. I think, to use a retail term, it’s the “loss leader,” the thing the legislature is using to convince us they’re doing conservative things, while they fail on some other fronts, which will have to wait for their turn in future sessions. We’re still kind of swampy in Texas. But we’ll take what’s pretty good and work toward better in the future. It’s a good start.