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.

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.

The Short Answer Is Fear

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks working through resolutions from the precincts in our senatorial district and creating amendments and additions intended for the state platform. I headed the Education subcommittee in my SD, so much of my attention was there.

Rep. Tom Oliverson dropped in to speak at our SD7 Convention
on Saturday, a couple of days after announcing his intention to
seek the House Speaker position. (Wish I had better photos, but my precinct was
seated far back and to the side. And I forgot to get photos of any committee work.)

Our very large SD does things as a mini version of the state platform committee. And since rule changes from last biennium, we had open meetings. We also took testimony. It turns out, Education is where much of the testimony was aimed.

Two years ago there was a huge push for more parental rights and controls, and included in the many rights of parents is school choice. That became a governor’s priority, but it nevertheless did not get through the legislature, even during four special sessions (add-on month-long sessions for specific purposes).

Why is there pushback, especially among Republicans, against school choice? The short answer is fear.

At the state Republican convention two years ago, we were in permanent committee, taking the last hour or two of testimony before final deliberations. All of the testimony time for the Education section taken up by anti-school choice delegates. (I wrote about this here.) It gave the impression that there was a huge sentiment in that direction from across the state. But that was an illusion. Those people were organized to get their names on the list to testify. But there were literally hundreds of precincts around the state that had submitted resolutions in favor of school choice. The anti-choice people almost caused the plank to be taken out, but it was rescued by the Education subcommittee chair at the last moment, describing the overwhelming testimony for school choice.

So, moving ahead two years, we got the same organized group of vocal anti-school choice people (I don’t know if they’re the same individuals, just the same sentiments) taking nearly all the testimony time. This was in our temporary subcommittee, and again during our permanent committee at the senatorial district convention last Saturday. We gave them far beyond their allotted time. I wanted to fully understand their arguments. There’s actually a fair amount we agree on.

We want options to be available to all. They say there already are options, which they want to keep: those options are public school, charter school, private school, or homeschool. I personally do not think that is anywhere near enough choice—and most people don’t even have those choices available to them. I’ll get back to this.

What these opponents fear is that, if you have money follow the child anywhere away from public or charter schools (charter schools are a public school entity; it’s complicated), then you allow government influence into wherever that money goes.

Our platform already says that the money must follow the child with no strings attached. These opponents say you can’t have the money follow the child without strings. And, they claim, this is a back door to government getting control within private schools—namely, church/parochial schools, but also homeschools—where they have no oversight now. Any time the federal government gives money, they attach strings.

Our platform already states that we want to abolish the federal Department of Education. We do not intend for any money following the child to come from a federal funding source.

When we asked the testifiers, what about families who are trapped in public schools that are failing their children—people who are paying taxes for that education they’re not getting—who can’t afford to also pay tuition elsewhere, there were two responses: that isn’t paying double (um, yes it is), and who is deciding the schools are failing—that’s a government entity trying to get more control (um, no; in my case it was me observing and experiencing the failure to meet my children’s specific needs, so I as the parent decided to call that a failure, and I pulled them out).

In other words, they do not care about parents whose children are trapped in schools that do not meet their needs. They will insist that those parents continue to pay taxes with no promised benefit. Tough luck.

These people write books and give presentations (there’s one nearby this week). They will go through the history of education—as I have done (here’s a sample I wrote and presented in 2019, and a part 2 on related info here)—and show the growth of indoctrination over time—again, as I have done. And then they conclude that, because we haven’t yet stopped the indoctrination, we never will, so the only solution is to keep the status quo in order to protect homeschools and private schools.

And that is where we diverge. We haven’t yet stopped the indoctrination—but, while some of us have had that mission for a long time, most parents just woke up in 2020, when the schools utterly failed their kids. This army of newly awakened parents spoke up. In 2022, the call for parental rights and school choice were loud enough to be deafening. We’ve been successfully flipping our school boards to conservative majorities. And so far, since that awakening, we’ve only had one legislative try—and there’s a lot of opposition to overcome there. But we already have the state senate on our side, and we have turnover this year in the House (ousted in the Primary a number of rino-Republicans who had voted with Speaker Phelan to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton without presenting evidence; Speaker Phelan is on the verge of being ousted in a runoff, and Rep. Tom Oliverson, from here in our area, is stepping up to take on the speaker role, and he's on our side).

And the parents are continuing to call for their rights—including their right to choose concerning their child’s education.

Instead of doomsaying, maybe we ought to open our minds to more possibilities. We know that whenever the free market solves problems, it does it with higher quality and lower price than a government monopoly. So let’s see if we can inject some actual free market into the school system. And let’s do it by cutting strings to indoctrination sources—like the federal government, the teachers’ unions, the nonprofits offering “help.”

In our platform, the first Education plank already called for choice. We clarified what we mean—a lot more choice than what kind of classroom the child sits in. Who know what the state committee will do with it, but here’s our SD’s version of the plank with our amendments. Black is wording from the 2022 platform. Red indicates our additions. Green with strikethroughs is what we deleted:

101.  School Choice: Texas families shall be empowered to choose from public, private, charter, or homeschool options, or any combination thereof, including private tutors, lessons, therapies, online courses, technical schools, apprenticeships, certification programs, etc., for their children’s education, and the funding shall follow the student without strings attached, meaning accountability is measured by the parents, in place of any state or federal oversight. We also support tax credits and exemptions for education and choice within the public school system. Public Schools from which funding is removed when the funding follows the student elsewhere shall be prohibited from being replaced by funding with revenue collected from taxpayers or from state or local governments.

We deleted that green line, because the idea of putting choice within the public school system is now expressed in the “or any combination thereof” idea, so it became superfluous and confusing.

The last red sentence was an amendment during floor debate (when we present our platform to the body at the SD convention). The person who suggested it was dealing with that free-market idea. If an entity isn’t providing value, they should suffer the consequences, rather than be subsidized in their failures. I didn’t think the sentence was necessary, and I was concerned it might detract from the good we did earlier in the plank. But I agree with his idea. If they don’t provide the quality, the students leave, and the schools, who get paid according to attendance, lose money. So they are incentivized to improve.

There’s always concern about whether the schools have enough money, and there was another legislative change that made it so there could be quite a shortfall this year. But, as I have mentioned a time or two (or ten), in our district maybe we could empty out that brand new multi-level office building for administrative staff—who do not work in schools! No school district ought to have so many admins. So, let go of any non-essentials (I don’t know, maybe all but a dozen), and if that doesn’t cover the shortfall, then rent out the building as office space.

The mission is not about preserving the public school system; it is about providing the education every individual child needs—without indoctrination, sexualization, data mining, or any of the other things parents are rightly alarmed about.

(This photo is from a source no longer available; I previously used it here.)
We live not far from the bus barn, where lines of school buses come out onto
the street at certain times of the day. Back during homeschooling years,
my kids thought it was funny to hum the Darth Vader march from Star Wars
when we saw these.

But how can you have both freedom and accountability? You leave the accountability to the parents. You don’t need a huge bureaucracy to hover over the parents and examine their decisions. Think about how a health savings account works; you choose how to spend the money, but it can only be spent on healthcare. It’s up to you what out-of-pocket healthcare expenses you use that money on. Or, think of a GI bill, which can be used for higher education. The government doesn’t tell the veteran what to study, or where to study. It can even be used at a religious school, even to become a minister or chaplain. The only stipulation is that it be used for higher education. That’s the kind of choice we’re looking for in school choice.

Can it be done successfully? It can. Will it? I don’t know. But I’m not willing to keep children trapped in the status quo because a small but vocal minority has made it their life mission to prevent school choice—because of their fears.