Texas Legislature will approve school vouchers, boost public education spending, governor says

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

After a wave of Texas Republicans dominated the ballot box on Election Day, Gov. Greg Abbott expressed confidence last week that he now has enough votes in the Texas House to pass a school voucher program, his top legislative priority since last year.

The governor shared his optimism during a visit to Kingdom Life Academy, a small Christian private school in Tyler, where he proclaimed that the House now has 79 “hardcore school choice proponents,” a number slightly above the simple majority the 150-member chamber needs to approve legislation.

During the same visit, Abbott also said he was committed to fully funding Texas’ public schools, providing teachers with pay raises and enhancing career training opportunities for students — all of which he refused to do last year when vouchers stalled in the Texas Legislature.

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Last year, House lawmakers voted 84-63 to strip from a massive education funding bill a provision to establish education savings accounts, a voucher-like program that would have offered parents tax dollars to pay for their child’s private schooling and other educational expenses. Twenty-one Republicans, most of whom represented rural school districts, joined all House Democrats to oppose the legislation over fears that such a proposal would undercut the funding public schools rely upon.

Abbott vowed to use the March primary election cycle to campaign against the rural Republicans who helped block his plan. He did so with the support of people like Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass, who have sought to use their money and influence to back school voucher proponents across the country.

Abbott’s reluctance to fully fund public education last legislative session — even with a record $32 billion budget surplus — caused many public school districts to enter this school year with multimillion-dollar deficit budgets while also tussling with rising costs of living, expiring federal pandemic relief dollars and insufficiently funded legislative mandates to improve school security.

But after at least 11 of the 15 pro-voucher candidates he endorsed earlier this year cruised to victory in Tuesday night’s general election, Abbott said both addressing public schools’ funding needs and passing school voucher legislation to his liking would happen during next year’s legislative session.

“They make it sound like you can’t have both school choice and robust public schools,” Abbott said. “That’s completely false. The reality is we can have the best public schools in America and also have school choice at the very same time. It does not have to be one or the other, and it’s wrong to pit one against the other.”

Kingdom Life Academy, the venue Abbott picked to boast about his party’s election night success Wednesday, is a financially struggling private school that provides “practical, Christ-centered learning” for a student body composed of mostly Black and Hispanic children.

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Similar to what school voucher proponents have done throughout the country, Abbott and Kingdom Life Academy founder and director Joel Enge promoted school voucher legislation as a way to provide more opportunities for the state’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged students.

“I was a public school teacher in Tyler for over 20 years. … I watched students drop out of school in their hearts because they did not fit traditional education,” said Enge, who is Black. “We’re grateful for the opportunity to continue to fight and see school choice open up doors for more students and more families who need an alternative education.”

School voucher programs across the country, however, do not always accomplish what their proponents describe. While the country’s first voucher programs launched in the late 20th century with the goal of helping vulnerable students, many of the children who benefit from some of the more expansive programs today come from wealthier families who already pay for private school tuition. Meanwhile, families who reside in poor communities often do not use vouchers.

As for academic outcomes, studies in multiple states have shown that vouchers do not consistently lead to improved standardized test scores for low-income students — a metric Republican officials often rely upon to make decisions about public education. In some cases, vouchers have resulted in steep declines in scores. Voucher advocates often note that the benefits of such programs are best measured through increased school competition and parental satisfaction.

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