The 2025 School Choice Bill in Texas

I’ve been looking at SB 2, the school choice bill in the Texas Senate this session—and the arguments for and against it.

State Senator Brandon Creighton, author of SB 2, gives closing argument,
on the Senate floor, Wednesday, February 5, just before the bill passed in the Senate.
screenshot from here

I’ve been pretty clear that I am in favor of school choice. I claim the right of parents over the care and upbringing of children, which includes education.

Speaking ideologically (not practically), I also believe that education is not a proper role of government. And everything that government does beyond its proper role causes unintended consequences, usually the complete opposite of the stated purpose of the government action. So, if you want good education for all of our children, you need a non-governmental system.

For this reason, I am happy to see the federal government looking at abolishing the Department of Education—or, it may be moving out some non-educational purposes to other agencies and sending education money back to the states in block grants. (Why we need the federal government to take our money and then block grant it back to us is another question worth asking, but here we are.)

That said, I’m aware that states, for a century—and in some cases a century and a half—have taken on the task of education. And they’ve done it in the form of free public schools through 12^th grade. When many people say they “believe in public schools,” what they seem to mean is they believe that government institutions providing “free” education at taxpayer expense is the best form of education. I do not “believe in public schools” in that way. I believe there needs to be some sort of systemic change from the factory model we have now to something that works for each individual child—something under the control and guidance of the parents. And it does need to be provided to every child, regardless of family income—by some combination of philanthropy and community obligation, which could possibly include businesses being obligated to put money toward scholarships for each child.

Getting to there from where we are is a leap too huge for most to envision—even though it was the practice in our country up through most of the 19^th Century and into the 20^th. And note that regular people in a pub were educated enough to understand and discuss the Federalist Papers. I don’t foresee that we will recover true education—except family by family—anytime soon. We are stuck with the monopolistic government institution model. I am not fighting that. I am not trying to do away with public education. I am trying to make it better.

One thing that can make a monopoly better is options. The more the better.

Does the current bill, SB 2, which passed on the Senate floor this week, offer better options? Some. Not nearly enough to suit me. But I’ve long been willing to accept a little progress at a time, if that is what it takes. [In 2021 I supported a bill offering much less than this one—with a separate funding source, only for a very limited demographic of needy families; it was rejected.] This year’s SB 2 looks better than anything I’ve seen in past sessions. I’m willing to support it.

Let’s take a look at SB 2, and then talk about it.

About SB 2

The bill’s author, Sen. Brandon Creighton, offers this statement of intent: 

Texas voters have spoken loud and clear: they want meaningful school choice, and the Governor and Lieutenant Governor have made education freedom their first priority for the 89th Legislative Session. With their leadership and the strong mandate we have from parents across our state we must act decisively this session. Senate Bill 2 will serve more students with more funding than any proposal our body has considered yet.

In drafting this legislation, my office built upon the work accomplished during the special sessions with S.B. 1. As a result, the key provisions the Senate has worked together on, like anti-fraud safeguards, mandatory criminal history checks for vendors, rigorous reporting requirements, and robust data protections, are retained or expanded. Just as in prior iterations of the legislation, parents can direct their students' funds to preapproved vendors, but never have direct control of the dollars themselves, and no reimbursements are permitted.

Below are the key points:

Eligibility

Universal Access: Every student in Texas may apply and, if accepted, participate in the ESA program whether they are entering school for the first time, currently enrolled in public school, or currently enrolled in private school or homeschool.

Prioritization

If applications do not exceed the program's capacity, all eligible students are accepted.

If applications exceed capacity, 80 percent of available positions will be filled by lottery among students who previously attended public school and are either from low-income households or have a disability. The remaining slots will be filled by lottery among all other eligible applicants.

Allocation per Student

Base Funding: Each participating student will receive at least $2,000 per year in their ESA.

Private School Funding: If a family elects to enroll their child in an accredited private school, that student will receive $10,000 per year or $11,500 per year if the student has a disability.

As proposed, S.B. 2 amends current law relating to the establishment of an education savings account program.

So, to summarize, this is a bill to create an education savings account (ESA) program. Funding for this program is separate from and does not affect funding for public schooling, but it is based on per-child funding used for public schools. Each student gets $10,000 to use for private schooling (tuition and books), or $11,500 if the student has a disability. A homeschooled student would get $2,000 for use on curriculum and other designated expenses (paying the parent or a relative for tutoring or lessons would not be allowed); a homeschooled student with a disability would get $2,500.

By the way, when people refer to this as a voucher program, you can assume they are trying to stop it. A voucher would take public school funding and shift it to another recipient, such as a private or charter school. An ESA is more like a health savings account than a voucher; otherwise there could not be a homeschool use for it. And, again, the funding comes from a separate state grant, not in any way tied to public school funding. I’d like more choice—like being able to mix and match public school and private school classes or parts of a day, along with some tutoring or certification programs—any educational purpose. But this is a start.

The total $1 billion granted for the program in its first year (I think that would be 2026-2027) is enough to handle around 100,000 students out of the 5 million school-age children in the state, or 2% of students. Since all students can apply—not just those coming from public schools—this will not mean a 2% loss in students from public schools, but will be something less than that. As far as I can gather, the fear public schools have is the loss of students, since their allotment is based on a per pupil rate. But it’s also true that you don’t need as much money to educate fewer students—although, granted, the building still stands, and you pay a teacher the same for teaching 25 students in a class as you pay for 27 students. So there’s fear that they can’t manage. I sympathize. But we have a growing state, so that fear may only be valid in certain locations that do not see growth and have a relatively large number of students looking to escape.

At the close of the floor vote Wednesday night, Senator Creighton was able to give his closing argument. He pointed out that schools have never been properly funded, a battle he has been involved in since he was 19 years old. This has been a 40-year battle, including the drama of litigation. He said,

Public school stakeholders said for forty years, until that litigation is over, they would not support school choice opportunities. That litigation is over.

He reminded us that in the last session the Senate put forward historic money, a factor of 3X the normal. But teacher organizations came and spoke in their hearings, and told them, if it’s a choice of preventing (the then offer of) 40,000 ESAs for special needs and income vulnerable kids, or getting new money for teachers, they’d give up the teacher money to stop the choice opportunities for those who needed it.

That bipartisan bill they opposed last session included a pay raise of $10,000 for 83% of teachers; the only ones getting less were already near or at the top of the pay scale, so they’d have gotten whatever would bump them up to that limit. That’s what the teacher organizations opposed in order to prevent needy children from having a choice. Have we mentioned before that teacher unions are not about protecting teachers? And they’re certainly not about educating children.

Sen. Creighton gave this background to remind us who is really working to help public schools and all students, and who is standing in the way.

The Opposition

I have a number of teacher friends who are in a panic over this bill. Fact: If you’re being fed fear and panic, that ought to be a clue that you need to step back and gather more info from more sources.

There’s a statement going around about the differential in what Texas spends per student and what it’s offering for the taking of private schools in this ESA bill. (Here’s one example, passed on by a friend; I do not know this person, nor the one they’re crediting, but this person’s profile does show she celebrates pride month with her child, in case that tells you something about her core beliefs.) They say that public schools only get $6,500 per student, but the bill is giving $10,000 per pupil for use in a private school. I don’t know where they get the $6,500. I looked up the official numbers from TEA, and the state provides $9,956 per student; when you add in all funding sources, it’s $12,140 per student (after an adjustment down from $15,503 because of inflation). If they're trying to scream unfairness because of giving a larger amount to use at a private school than a public school, that's just wrong.

chart from Texas Education Agency transparency report May 2024

That same complainer also claimed Texas is in the bottom 10 states in student funding; but Texas is actually 33^rd, so there are 17 states with lower spending per student, rather than only 9. And it appears to me that states providing more per student tend to be states with higher cost of living, so teacher pay has to be higher, unrelated to education quality.

Another complaint is that schools are held accountable by standardized testing, and private schools are not. Senator Creighton believes they have addressed the accountability piece. But I’d be happy for public schools to have a better form of accountability. In the end, the parents decide whether the schools are meeting the needs of their children. The problem has been that, if the public schools failed, and the parents didn’t have resources, their kids were trapped in a failing school. This bill is aimed at helping those families in particular. If some already homeschooling or private schooling families are also helped out of the financial strains of providing what their taxpayer-funded public schools did not provide, so be it.

The bill requires that private schools accepting ESA money be accredited. There is no correlation between accreditation and quality of education. Most private schools are unaccredited, so this is, I believe unfortunately, a severely limiting factor in the bill. But it stops the panicking protectors of control from hyperventilating.

An additional argument against school choice (here’s an example) is that it’s a disguise for government control—as if a monopolistic taxpayer-funded government institutional public school system is not about government control.

I'm not sure what to make of this Churchill quote. Found the image here.

One of the arguments is that many states have the same language in their bills. Of course. Legislators do look to other states trying the same things, to look at language that has worked—and to look at the record in those states. As I’ve written, I became aware of ESAs in 2016. The presentation I first heard was from the Heritage Foundation, not some nefarious Soros-backed organization. They had already worked with Arizona on their fledgling program for special education ESAs, and a couple of other early adopters. This is now nine years later; of course other states are going to have similarly worded legislation. That doesn't make it a conspiracy.

Another organization this piece lists is Texas Public Policy Foundation. I looked up their statement online a month or so ago, because someone was claiming their goal was the destruction of public schools by taking money from them. Their statement is that school choice should come from a separate funding source, not touching public school funding. That is what SB 2 does—as you would expect, if you’ve been looking at past attempts at getting school choice. I don’t frequently research positions of TPPF, and I don't know how much, if any, input they had on this bill, but if their ideas are good, why rail against them?

I don’t see signs they’re associated with anything Soros-related. Soros is about putting in things like Common Core and other top-down “progressive” ideas that are pushed from the federal level on down. Fortunately, as I mentioned above, we have a president now who is about to quash federal control over state and local education and give us back our education freedom.

Another organization strongly behind school choice—and I believe helping to advise on the crafting of this bill—is Texas Home School Coalition. (President, Tim Lambert, shows steady support for it on X.) They, along with the vast majority of homeschoolers in the state support school choice, and are not fearful that this bill is a subterfuge for controlling their lives after they left public schools to DIY their kids’ educations. I assure you THSC is not Soros-backed either.

I’ve frequently seen anti-school-choice claims that other states with ESAs have not fared well; I have never seen research showing those bad outcomes. In fact, those states seem to like the outcomes they’re getting. Government infiltration into homeschools and private schools has not increased—one of the supposed fears. And in every case, their public school funding has increased, not decreased.

Outcome for This Bill

Some of the fearmongering made it seem this bill was about to be enacted. No. It made it through the Senate—as did four school choice bills two years ago (during the 2023 regular session and three special sessions). The Texas House is a roadblock. As of Friday, February 7, the 25^th day of the session, the House has not yet made committee assignments, let alone assigned bills to committees and held any public hearings on bills. It may be their strategy to yet again run out the clock and then tell constituents, “We did everything we could, but we just ran out of time.” They purposely ran out of time last session, or pretended some other excuse, for not giving any of those school choice bills a floor vote.

The new speaker, Dustin Burrows, chaired the Calendars Committee for that session. Among his ubiquitous campaign texts prior to his January 14, 2025, election, he says his opponent couldn’t be trusted on school choice. Hmm. Once he finally starts doing his job, we’ll see if he rushes to work on this Governor’s Emergency bill. He posted on X, following the Governor’s State of the State Address, February 2, that he was looking forward to getting to work on the Governor’s priorities.

Burrows post on X after Governor Abbott's State of the State

Anyway, those opponents still have House Committee hearings and floor votes in which to lobby and phone and email their representatives—because this week wasn’t actually time to panic yet; that’s just what they were told to do.

That also means there’s time to citizen lobby in favor of the bill, which I plan to do. My representative, who strongly supported Burrows, claims to be for school choice. I’d sure like her to prove it.

It comes down to this: do you believe that public schools or parents ought to have control over their child’s education? I believe it should totally be parents. A smidgeon of choice is at least a step in the right direction.

Resources

Here are some things I’ve written about ESAs (school choice and education in general would be a much longer list):

·        A Parent’s Job, May 2016 

·        The Separation of School from State, October 2016 

·        Disagreements Among Friends, February 2017 

·        The Family Educational Relief Program, March 2021 

·        Real Parental Choice in Education, March 2023 

·        Real Education Choice, August 2024 

Links to the bill online:

·        SB 2 Bill History: to know the bill's progress toward passing

·        SB 2 Text: the bill's original wording (which may be amended or replaced)

·        SB 2 Analysis: this includes the author's intent, plus several pages of pertinent information

Other resources:

·        Texas Scorecard’s Texas Minute, February 6, 2025, gives a couple of minutes to the issue: 

·        Governor Abbott’s full State of the State Address, February 2, 2025 

·        Governor Abbott’s promise to raise teacher salaries, on X, February 5, 2025

Real Education Choice

Back in the 1990s we had neighbors who homeschooled; this was in another state that is not the bastion of homeschooling freedom that Texas is. In that state they were required to meet regularly with a certified teacher. They had a homeschooling family friend with a teaching certificate, so they got together regularly to meet the state requirement. There’s no such requirement here in Texas.

But those parents were able to put a child (or two or three) into a public school classroom—just for a particular class. Math, or music. I don’t remember what classes they used the schools for. I do remember that they were able to do it with one child in two different high schools—in two adjacent but separate districts.

Here we are, nearly 30 years later, in the “free state of Texas,” and that option is completely off the table, never considered, and impossible. We have had problems getting even UIL participation for anyone but public school students—even though UIL was created at a time (1913 or so) when the vast majority of Texas students were homeschooled and/or private schooled. Public schools came in later and took over control, which is what government institutions do.

school choice advocates at the state capitol, image from Texas Scorecard

Currently the state conversation (by that I mean the resulting language in the Republican Party of Texas Platform) about school choice is limited to public, charter, private, or homeschool. For any given child, it’s one of these four choices, and one choice only. Two of these, public and charter schools, are already paid for with taxpayer dollars. Charter schools, however, are not available to all; they are usually provided by lottery. Private school means a family pays full tuition out of pocket, so that’s not available to anyone who can’t afford the tuition, unless they find a private scholarship. Homeschool means, usually, that at least one parent gives up income opportunities to handle the education of their children. Out-of-pocket expenses for homeschoolers are considerably lower. A refund of that family’s tax going to education would cover it. But, again, this isn’t available to families that can’t sacrifice a parent’s income. So the choice conversation has been about expanding “free” education to families whose needs are not met by public or charter schools to include using a voucher for a seat in a private school or to homeschool (although there’s not really a good description of how a voucher could be used for homeschooling).

Why are the options that limited? Why not various combinations of the four options? And why not add in a whole lot of other options: private tutors, online courses, private lessons, therapies (equine therapy comes to mind), apprenticeships, skills certification programs?

The first time I heard about Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), back in 2016, they included all of these options. Very much like a health savings account—which can only be used for healthcare purposes—an ESA would be a fund attached to the child (meeting thereby the state requirement to provide free education to all) that could be used for any combination of those educational purposes. Families have an incentive for getting a good deal, because the money could be rolled over to the next year for that child, or eventually toward college tuition.

It would require an involved parent. But a parent who is aware that their child is being underserved and is looking for a way out and not finding it—that is a parent who’s already involved and is motivated. It’s not going to be enough to endanger the monolithic government institution.

So, our battle for school choice continues in Texas. And it’s divided into multiple battles; there's a battle between school choice and no school choice, as well as essentially between school vouchers and ESAs.

If it were up to the parents, we would have school choice already. And ESAs are the preferred way for the money to follow the child. I believe it would also be the best way of introducing the free market into the otherwise socialist public school monopoly—giving us better quality at a lower cost, as the free market does. But it would also have the bonus of being the best way to prevent government intrusion and indoctrination, which is one reason conservative opponents give against money following the child.

from UH and TSC study on school choice

A recent study done by University of Houston’s Public Administration program and Texas Southern University’s masters program in Public Affairs, shows that every demographic and party affiliation favors school choice—and particularly ESAs—with the lowest support among white Democrats, who come in at 58%. The highest proponents were black Republicans, at 86%. [Full report here.] Texas Scorecard has a story here. The Houston Chronicle has a story here. 

With numbers like these, you’d think it would be a slam dunk to get legislation passed. It has been a governor’s priority, with multiple special sessions in 2023 to get it done, after it didn’t pass in the regular session. But it was never even given a vote. As a result, the obstructionist House Speaker, nominally Republican Dade Phelan, was challenged and nearly beaten in the Primary (it is believed Democrat crossover voters kept his candidacy alive, just barely). It looks likely he will not get the speakership again, we can hope.

While Texas was an early leader in homeschooling freedom, it lags badly behind many other states in school choice. Right now—well ahead of the 2025 legislative session—is the time for bills to get written. We didn’t get what we wanted in any bill last time. This time, with maybe more chance for debate and passage, we ought to insist on a bill that offers real education choice, not a nominal choice between public school or a seat in a better nearby public school, or failing that a seat in a private school. We want a bill that offers any and all combinations of educational options, all chosen by the parents for their individual child.

This is from a 2022 Hoover Institution article on school choice.
The original is interactive. They identify the various types of choices
available in each state, and a glossary defining the terms.

Then comes the question of how to fund it. There are people who spend all their time on this question, deem it impossible, and therefore oppose school choice, even for low-income students trapped in failing schools. That’s not acceptable. Let’s just note that, adding health savings accounts to a person’s insurance benefits didn’t have the outcome of bankrupting insurance companies. And, as an even more apt example, we have multiple states who have tried ESAs, and we can learn from them.

No more excuses. This year needs to be the year the power of education gets put back into the hands of parents.

Stop Paying for Failure

Wednesday night I got to hear from our three newest, conservative school board members. One of them told this story:

I’ve got a friend of mine. He and I went to school together. He was the failure in our class. That man today owns a barbershop three blocks from my school. Right down the road. He was the number one problem kid in my class. Two years behind me. Number one problem kid. Today he owns a barbershop.

Today, the number one problem in my 7^th grade wanted to work for him. And when he went, and he had a failing grade in that school, on his report card, that man said, “You cannot work for me until you pass.” That young man got his grade to passing. The second he got his grade of passing, he ran the three blocks—left school, ran three blocks—to get to that barber shop and hold up his report card and say, “I passed!” (applause. Someone calls out “Expectations!”)

Expectations. Because that man, being in that young man’s life, said, “I will not allow you to continue to fail yourself—until you get that straight….” And the young man figured it out.

I want to come back to this story.

Scott Henry, Luke Scanlon, and Natalie Blasingame,
three of our school board members,
at a community gathering Wednesday, April 12, 2023

On Monday night our school board met. I watched it online while finishing my work for the day. Near the end they held a vote related to the board’s support of a position to oppose any state funding going to any voucher or school choice program.

During their discussions, one of the board members asked for clarification. There’s already a limited ESA [education savings account] program in place for certain special education students; the way this is worded, would it include eliminating that funding? It would have, so they reworded to carve out that exception. He has a special needs student himself and has a special place in his heart for their care.

Once that exception was made as an amendment, that left him with no visible reason to go against the policy—which the board’s discussion had made clear was wrong on its face, because it could divert funds from public schools, which already need more funding. So they held the vote. Five voted in favor, including two of our new conservative board members. One abstained, and one was absent. So it passed. Since I strongly favor school choice, and have been following the legislature, I was disappointed to see this.

Wednesday night I had a brief moment to talk about this with the board member who abstained. She said not to worry about it; the bill is very likely to pass in the legislature. This was just a game the board is playing, I think she meant, to try to force conservative members to oppose school choice.

There are plenty of questions about the legislation. There are bills related to employing an ESA program, with limited funds that would affect maybe 60,000 students statewide. Small school districts would be paid, I think for up to three years, for any student that leaves to take advantage of the program. This is to calm rural district fears that they would lose school funding that they have no way to make up—rural districts whose legislators have consistently shut down any possibility of school choice over many legislative sessions. So this might work to get through the limited trial.

Meanwhile, in the budget bill in the legislature, opponents to school choice stuck in an amendment saying no state funding could go to any schooling except public schools. (This amendment is what the local school board was supporting.) I’ve been assured that this will get taken out during reconciliation. I hope that’s true, because it’s in direct opposition to the other ESA legislation that is likely to pass. 

The same school board member who told the story above, also pointed out this statistic for our district: only 44% of 3^rd graders are reading at grade level. This is the average across the district, including all demographics. Far below half can read at the minimum level required to be considered acceptable for their grade level.

Teaching reading is not that difficult an undertaking. All but the most severely disabled can learn to read. Nearly all Down Syndrome kids learn to read. Some take longer than others. But, without some interference or neglect, most kids can learn to read. In fact, most kids can figure out the phonetic code well before the end of first grade—unless they’re not taught the phonetic code.

But not in our public schools in this relatively prosperous suburb of northwest Houston. Here, far under half are reading at a 3^rd grade level in 3^rd grade—probably because they didn’t figure it out in 1^st grade.

The one basic thing we expect from schools is that kids learn to read. Our school board  pointed out that math is reading. Every problem is a word problem. If you don’t learn to read, you also fail math.

By the way, another school board member said that across the state, across all our curriculum, only 19% meets grade level. Our district, Cy-Fair Independent School District, has an A rating, even though it's teaching less than half of students to read. But I guess the rest of Texas is failing even more catastrophically.

One more story. I’ve told this in more detail. But I had three kids in this district. Two of them had already been functioning well in a gifted magnet school in the state we moved from. This district thought they might not qualify (they did). And our daughter qualified as well. But this exclusive program the district thought they probably wouldn’t qualify for was essentially nonexistent.

Back in the day, I got a year of calculus in high school. We had two classrooms full of calculus students, close to 8% of the graduating class. Here in Texas there wasn’t a track my kids could get on that would allow them to take calculus in high school. Advanced math, by that point in high school, was considered an elective. So were foreign language, music, and PE. They offered one gifted class, a different version of world history—also elective. A kid was only allowed up to two electives in their four-year high school plan, and the district’s recommended plan was zero electives.

The basic education I got back in the 70s, before a Department of Education even existed, with three AP classes and plenty of options, simply wasn’t available for gifted students in this district. So, after two frustrating and stultifying years, we pulled them out and homeschooled.

Private school wasn’t an option. We didn’t have the additional funds for one student, let alone three. That was for the best, since homeschooling—and later combined with dual credit classes at the community college—was the best fit for our family and our kids with their particular quirks. Gifted kids are special ed, I think I mentioned. They need to be taught differently. We could accommodate that. It can be done in a classroom; we saw that in our previous state. But nobody here seems to know how or care to bother. After all, those kids are smart enough to learn to read and do math no matter how little you offer them, right?

Right. In this case because our kids had parents who cared and took on the responsibility. What did that mean for the schools? They didn’t have to bother with our kids anymore—but they still get our tax money. They get a per-student amount of money, so they didn’t get to count our three kids. But the overall amount is budgeted based on taxes. And they got ours. Meanwhile we paid in addition for the education of our children. No tax break to us. No stipend.

The purpose of education is to prepare the next generation of students to be good, contributing community members—not to preserve a particular government institution called public schools. So their failure to teach my kids is a mission failure. It's not about the money; it's about the principle.

What happens to them when they fail? They claim they need more money in order to improve.

Over the years the per-child amount has tripled or more—since my kids were there. It has grown much faster than inflation. And yet the results are abysmal. It looks as though the more money you give them, the more they will fail.

Is it possible that, at some upper backroom level, the plan is to fail? In the case of my kids, the more they fail them, the less is required of them and the more money they get. And the more money it costs parents who take responsibility for the education of their children.

Back to that story I told at the beginning, of the boy who was failing. He was told he couldn’t have the paying job he wanted until he stopped failing himself in school. That was the incentive he needed. He needed someone who cared to hold him accountable.

Maybe our failing schools shouldn’t be paid for failing. Maybe they need to have an actual and real threat of loss of money when they fail. Maybe then they would focus on the basics that are essential: reading, writing, math—and, as is required of homeschoolers, good citizenship. Schools don’t need to teach sex education at all. We can argue in favor of science, music, arts, PE—when a student is a successful reader.

How do we pull the funding for failing schools? ESAs might be a way. Thirty-two other states have tried some form of ESAs, in some 72 programs, and the result has been—not a sudden exodus from the local public schools, but an improvement in public schools.

Prager U has a video, explaining why public schools should favor school choice. This is the best 5-minute video you’ll watch today.

The video highlights Texas. Will this be the year we finally get a tiny amount of “the money follows the child” in Texas? We’re so far behind where we should be, we ought to abandon any fear that schools might lose the funding they need. Funding they need to do what? Keep failing? The status quo is absolutely unacceptable. Other states have tried this, and the result was significant improvement—in their public schools, not just for individual students.

The state is not the parent. The state should get out of the way of parents who are responsible for the education decisions for their own children. The bonus is that doing so will improve the educational outcomes for the whole state.

Real Parental Choice in Education

Whose responsibility is it to educate the children of the rising generation? The parents. That is the most local level—the family, the basic unit of civilization.

It is not the responsibility of the state, and certainly not of the nation. It is not even the responsibility of the school district. Letting those other levels grasp responsibility has caused the problems our schools are in.

Let’s start with making sure we're talking about the same thing. What is the finished product when we educate a child?

Aristotle says we educate a person to produce a great soul. That’s still pretty vague. Joe Harless, in his book The Eden Conspiracy, is a bit more specific. He says we are producing an accomplished citizen. We should teach the knowledge, skills, and information relevant to becoming accomplished members of society. The attributes of such a person include:

•             Being obedient to the law.

•             Making informed voting decisions.

•             Contributing to stability.

•             Resolving interpersonal conflict.

•             Contributing to community improvement.

These are what an accomplished member of society does regardless of how that person makes a living.

Do we need to teach ways to make a living? Yes, but that is incidental. What we’re doing is providing the knowledge, skills, and information a good citizen will need in order to work out their own way to make a living that sustains themselves by making a contribution of worth to someone willing to pay for it.

So producing that civilized person, that contributing member of society, is the mission. That is the mission of the parents.

Back in 2008 a bunch of us homeschoolers put on Shakespeare's
A Midsummer Night's Dream, in a park. We did a Shakespear play annually.

But what options—parent choices—are available to do that? In theory, the choices today are wide open. Information is everywhere. Much of it is free. You could guide your child through a series of elementary through high school-level learning with resources available for free or very low cost. Excellent resources. Better than you got when you were a student.

You could even guide your child through college level learning through online mostly free resources. You can give them great opportunities for learning, if you and the child are willing to put in the effort. You can do everything but give them the college diploma.

In reality, however, there is a monopoly. It is the public school system, controlled by the teachers’ unions, which are about making money for the teachers’ unions, not about improving teaching for teachers, and certainly not for improving the education of students.

There are a couple of basic things in the way of breaking free from the monopoly: availability of the parent, and money. And they are related. If a family can make enough money while allowing at least one of the parents to be with the student, overseeing the education, then total homeschooling is an option. But it is very difficult to homeschool while committing an eight-hour day to an employer—even working from home. You can’t sit down to do math with your child while you’re writing a report for your boss.

And private school is expensive, while public school is “free.” It isn’t really “free,” though. That has always been a trap.

The providers of whatever is “free” always want something. In the case of schools, it is money and control—control of how your children are raised and what kind of citizen—or subject—they are formed into.

If we and those providers of “free” education were of the same mind, this wouldn’t be so bad. But we are not of the same mind. And that has become abundantly more clear in the past few years. Parents are waking up. They’re expressing their disapproval with what has been going on. And they’re being insistent that they are not abdicating their God-given role as decision-maker in the care and upbringing of their children.

We’re seeing that play out in school board meetings, in school board races, and in legislation.

And one big way we’re seeing it is in the debate over school choice.

Stephanie Lambert, speaking at Cypress Texas Tea Party, March 16, 2023
screenshot from here

Last week at our Tea Party meeting we heard from Stephanie Lambert, daughter of Tim Lambert, founder and head of Texas Home School Coalition, talking about their two prongs: educational choice and parental rights. And we got some interesting statistics concerning school choice, particularly Education Savings Accounts, or “the money follows the child”:

·        There are currently 72 such programs in 32 states, some of them with long years of data we can look at.

·        Whether in high-regulation or low-regulation states, these programs have not led to increased regulation.

o      In fact, regulation for homeschooling has plummeted.

o      In no state has regulation of homeschooling increased in the past two decades.

o      Also, here in Texas we saw a three-fold increase in homeschooling since the pandemic shutdown.

·        71% of Texas homeschoolers support ESAs. Only 20% oppose.

So let’s take a look at that opposition. Last year, at the state GOP convention, testimony from these opponents of school choice lined up and took the public comment slots before the Platform Committee. They seemed a much stronger force than they actually are, and very nearly got the Committee to strike the language “money follows the child” from the platform plank. A good speech from a Committee member rescued it at the last moment.

I have noticed a fair amount of pressure from these opponents on social media sites where conservatives communicate. They’re forceful and insistent. I’ve collected some of the arguments to try to understand them and possibly express the choice side better.

One early clue was their accusation, “Look where the money is coming from.” They claim the choice side is funded by people who really want to gain control over homeschooling families. Since I’m one of these pro-choice people, and I know that my voice is independent and absolutely not connected to any money, that does not ring true.

And since I have been a member of THSC while homeschooling, and continue to follow them, particularly during the legislative session, I’m also aware that THSC is very grassroots, not a big money outfit, nor is it controlled by some nefarious higher elites. I have reason to trust them. So that first opponent argument doesn’t fly with me.

They linked to this article in the past week: “School Choice: Are We Willing to Sell Our Children for a Pittance?” by Tiffany Boyd, a Tennessee homeschooler opposed to school choice. This is from the article:

She [Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt, author of The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America] predicted that all types of “school choice” will eventually be tax-supported, with the tax money following each child.

“Each child, regardless of type of ‘choice’ education, will have an individual education plan (IEP). This will be determined by decisions made by the school/business partnerships (for which kind of workforce training they have determined your child’s intelligence/talents are best suited, for their own profit-seeking purposes). This is the failed communist/socialist job quota system from which millions of foreigners escaped. These immigrants, the backbone of our nation, made enormous sacrifices to come to the United States of America in order to enjoy the upward mobility guaranteed by our free (unplanned) economic system.”

I haven’t read the book quoted from, written originally in 1999. But we can look at this quote with some hindsight now—and the data we mentioned above. Do you know where you will have an individual education plan (IEP)? In a public school. Any student with a special need will have one. It isn’t determined by the parents, although the parents may be pressured to comply with the school’s plan.

You know where you don’t have one imposed by any outside entity? A homeschool. You, as a parent, plan or go by the seat of your pants as you see fit, and as seems to fit your particular child. Our family had a moderate amount of structure (I needed it, and so did the kids), but we bristled at anything beyond our plans being messed with by anyone. We got to decide everything—except these particular requirements: we had to teach reading, math, spelling, and good citizenship, all of which we were glad to do. I can attest that we did all of those things—and quite a lot more—better than the public schools we pulled them from when they were failing us.

My experiences are anecdotal. But the data about the various places that have implemented ESAs is telling: regulation of homeschooling plummets, and no increased regulation of homeschooling is even tried.

ESAs, by the way, are similar to a medical savings account. You get to choose the doctor and the service that you want. But the money can only be used for medical purposes. There are some purposes that might be excluded from your account—certain alternative therapies, for example—but you’re free to pay out-of-pocket for those extras. There isn’t a huge amount of oversight; you simply can’t use your HSA for a vacation (for your mental health, you claim) or something most people would see as quite a stretch to call it a medical service.

ESAs would be limited to educational purposes. But that can be a lot broader than tuition or textbooks. This is the point at which people worry, however. Someone makes the decision of whether a service applies or not. But, again, that hasn’t been a big issue with HSAs; they provide greater freedom, not less. And they are similar to a GI bill, which is used for any type of education, at any institution, including religious, that the veteran chooses to use it for.

Did I mention, ESAs can roll over the money to the following year, so there's incentive for the parents to find cost-effective resources. In some programs the leftover upon graduation can be used for college tuition.

Here’s another part of the article—about those evil, selfish parents who resent having to pay taxes for a school system that doesn’t serve them:

I often hear parents say, “It’s my money and I want it back.” My retort to that statement is, “What is more important to you, your freedom or your money? What is more important to you, your child or the money?”

That is usually met with the following: “I want freedom to choose.”

The truth is, parents already have the freedom to choose. They can choose public school, private school or home school. With school choice, you are simply choosing more of the same. It’s still the same system parents insist is failing, funded by government. The teachers are still all trained the same and the state controls the curriculum. So, what would they be choosing that is any different?

This is where the catch is: the choice shouldn’t be between two forms of public school, regular or private; and two forms of private school, high-tuition classrooms or homeschools. What a bogus limitation!

There was a video these opponents on social media linked to of how “school choice” ruined education in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. The hurricane had devasted entire areas, so many schools were literally wiped out. So they created a Recovery School District, which they claimed was completely free choice for all parents. Since there was no local school to choose, it allowed the parents to send their child to any other school they wanted. But the parents had plenty to complain about: the schools they wanted didn’t always have openings; the schools they wanted didn’t always provide transportation; they schools they wanted ended up being whatever they could scramble to get, of whatever quality, at whatever location. Some parents ended up sending each of their kids to a different school, with all the transportation and confusion that would entail. What these parents wanted to choose was a free school down the street that actually educated their child—like the parents had had growing up. But that wasn’t an option.

Let’s just point out that this wasn’t exactly putting the free market to work in education. It was a shoddy approach to dealing with a catastrophe.

image found here

What does real choice look like? How about if that ESA can go to multiple different approaches and places for each child. Maybe the local school has a good drama program—fine, put the student there for those hours. Maybe the local community college is a better fit for math. Maybe a nearby private school has a really good history teacher. Maybe private music lessons are worth using part of the allotment for. There could be online courses for special interests of the student. Part of the allotment could go to that.

Homeschoolers have been finding these sorts of combinations for decades. Before we moved to Texas—so, well before we homeschooled—we had homeschooling neighbors who sent their kids to an hour for one subject in one school district and an hour for another subject in the next school district over, and then did some other subjects at home. While there were more regulations for homeschoolers there than here in Texas, the schools themselves were actually more flexible. Here the public schools are all or nothing.

The image I've painted, with all those options, looks like it would be parent intensive, just providing transportation. Until you’ve got a student who drives and has a spare car, that’s true. But what if the local public school allowed private vendors to use their rooms, perhaps for a fee to cover maintenance costs, etc., and parents could have their child at the same general location all day, but with multiple educational opportunities there?

In an actual free market, where there’s a need, an entrepreneur steps in to fill it. Transportation between educational locations could become a thing. Maybe there could be an educational "mall," a general location with lots of options, and you can easily walk from one to another, like you walk from class to class on a college campus.

There seems to be a fear that, if you allow any money to go beyond the current status quo public school, you’re harming public schools—and by extension putting the education of all children in jeopardy. Gasp! But is maintaining public schools—at the expense of the students they are failing—the ultimate goal?

Public schooling is a relatively new experiment. In 1910, when UIL was established for extracurricular competitions, private schools and homeschools were the norm, the vast majority, while public schools covered only a relatively small percentage of children. By the 1940s, compulsory education laws were put in place, not for improving education, but for controlling thought, using a uniform factory model. 

Since public schools have already failed, I would indeed like to see public schools as we know them done away with. But that does not mean I want there to be no teachers or opportunities for educating our next generation. I want ALL the choices to be available to ALL the children. The only ones stuck in the monopoly then would be those whose parents won’t take responsibility for even the decision-making.

Some of the opportunities, of course, are going to depend on location. In Houston, we can find plenty of resources. In a small town with one public school and no private school, choice might need to include options that homeschoolers do and have done for millennia: teach them yourself; combine with others to pay for a private school, or hire private tutors, which today includes access to the internet, so it’s pretty unlimited, depending on availability of the parents and some common technology.

Educating our children will require a new way of thinking. Public schooling as it is done now has failed to meet the mission and has subjected kids to indoctrination of things parents absolutely oppose. ESAs might not be the final solution. I think a fully free-market education, with scholarships provided by local businesses (and maybe willing taxpayers) could do an even better job. But ESAs would be a step toward injecting actual free market choice into schooling.

And we know what we get from a real free market: better quality at lower cost.

Legislation This Session

 

Texas Senate Committee on Education, March 22, 2023
screenshot from here

This legislative session in Texas, we have a number of bills trying to protect children, regain parental rights, and allow school choice. There are two I’m looking at: SB 8, Bettencourt, Creighton, et al (including Middleton); and SB 176, Middleton (with Bettencourt as a co-author). Both bills are long and attempt to accomplish a lot. I trust both Senators Bettencourt and Middleton; both have a record of being pro-school choice. Bettencourt is my state senator. Both bills do two main things: codify a Parents Bill of Rights and implement an ESA program. They are not, however, considered companion bills.

Friends tell me Senator Middleton and crew have spent 18 months carefully crafting the wording of their bill, SB 176. My friends were disappointed to have Bettencourt’s bill come in and seem to replace all their work. But I didn’t get from my friends any specific problems with SB 8. I’ve only just scanned both of them. SB 8 is 50+ pages, and SB 176 is around 36 pages. There may be very similar sections. The low bill number on SB 8 means it is a high priority and is more likely to see movement.

If you click on the bill numbers above, I’ve linked to the Bill History page for each. From there you can see what movement the bill has had so far, and you can click on Text to get the wording of the bill and any amendments that may come.

Public testimony was heard in committee for both bills on Wednesday, March 22, and both were left pending in committee. That means there will likely be another day of public hearings before they take a vote.

It will take more time for me to determine what to recommend or amend. But I do hope we get a bill passed here in Texas that will do what parents have been calling out for.