Texas lawmakers have sent legislation replacing STAAR, the state’s widely unpopular state standardized test, to Gov. ’s desk.

Once Abbott signs , Texas will swap the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness for three shorter tests at the beginning, middle and end of each school year. Students will begin to take the new tests in the 2027-28 school year.

“House Bill 8 ends the high stakes and high stress nature of one test, one day,” Rep. , the bill’s author, said Wednesday evening before the Texas House voted to send the proposal to Abbott. “This is unprecedented oversight of the assessment and accountability system by this body.”

Legislators replaced STAAR amid frustration from families and teachers, who say the test puts too much pressure on students and that preparing for it takes up too much time in the classroom.

The bill’s passage comes after two earlier attempts failed to scrap STAAR. Legislation to that effect during the final hours of this year’s regular lawmaking session because the House and the Senate could not agree on what they wanted out of the new test. Chamber leaders reconciled many of their differences earlier this summer, but when they fled the state in an attempt to stop a rare mid-decade redistricting effort. in August, allowing the House to continue working on legislation.

School accountability experts celebrated the new standardized testing system, which is used to assess whether students have the core academic skills they need to be ready for life after high school. Testing throughout the year, experts said, will give families a better window into how their children are doing and help teachers tailor their instruction to meet students’ needs.

But some House members were displeased with the concessions the lower chamber made to the Senate to reach an agreement. They questioned whether HB 8 does enough to reduce the pressure on students and the amount of time spent on testing.

“This bill was supposed to be the bill that was the win for our public schools and for our kids,” Rep. , D-Austin, said on the House floor Wednesday. “This is no win. This is a terrible bill … I can’t even believe it’s made it this far.”

Here’s what you need to know about the changes coming to the state’s standardized test.

Students to take three, shorter standardized tests

The three shorter tests will replace the end-of-the-year STAAR in an effort to reduce the pressure that a single test puts on students and monitor more closely their academic growth.

Schools that already require students to take nationally recognized assessments will be able to count those as the beginning- and middle-of-the-year tests. It is unclear yet which exams will be acceptable to meet that requirement.

The Texas Education Agency will have a hand in creating the end-of-the-year test. Many House Democrats opposed HB 8 saying the TEA should have less of a role in shaping the test at a time when STAAR’s shortcomings have pushed school districts and families to distrust the agency. Buckley has defended TEA’s role by pointing to a committee of 40 classroom teachers that will act as a counterbalance, reviewing the tests’ questions and weighing in on their rigor.

Families can expect to get test scores in about two days, a much speedier turnaround compared to the current wait, which can take up to several weeks. Results for all three tests will now be presented as percentile ranks, which show how students are performing compared to their classmates. The end-of-year test results would also show the state’s assessment of whether students have approached, met or mastered grade-level skills, like the current STAAR test does.

Proponents of testing students throughout the year hope it will give teachers useful information about where students are struggling, so they can tweak instruction to meet those learning gaps.

Educators can no longer run students through practice tests

Teachers won’t be able to give their students practice exams ahead of the state standardized tests.

TEA Commissioner Mike Morath has told lawmakers that practice exams can take up weeks of instruction time and aren’t proven to help students do better on the test.

The ban on practice tests could buy back 15 to 30 hours of lost instructional time per student each school year, according to estimates from David Osman, an auditor of standardized testing.

Graduation requirement to pass English II ends

High schoolers will no longer need to pass the English II assessment, which is currently a graduation requirement. It’s the first time Texas has eased graduation testing requirements since 2015, Buckley said.

Students will still need to pass an end-of-the-year test on English I to get their high school diploma, along with exams in algebra and biology.

The House pushed to make exams optional for some subjects in HB 8 to decrease testing. Before the lower chamber voted on the bill, Hinojosa added a provision to get rid of the English II test.

Hinojosa also tried to get rid of social studies portions of the exam. But when HB 8 got to the Senate floor last week, Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, added them back in, saying students should test in that subject to ensure they have foundational knowledge for civic engagement. As a result, eighth graders will continue to test on social studies and high schoolers on U.S. history.

Scores on three tests will count toward schools’ A-F ratings

Texas uses standardized test results to grade schools on how well they are educating their students through what is known as the state’s A-F accountability system. With testing set to change, legislators instructed TEA to develop a metric for student progress based on growth over the three new tests, with the intent of factoring that metric into each school’s rating.

Such a metric hasn’t been introduced into any state’s school accountability system, according to analysis from EdTrust. It is unclear how the TEA will create a consistent way to track student growth given that schools will be allowed to take different tests for the beginning and middle of the year.

HB 8 also waded into how much power TEA should have in changing the benchmarks for schools to get a good grade, a key point of tension in between school districts and the education agency. The bill codifies that the TEA has the power to refresh those goal posts every five years. It also requires TEA to announce any changes to the accountability system by July 15 of each year, about a month before the school year starts.

The stakes for how the state measures schools’ performance are : Failing grades can bring on state sanctions, like forcing a struggling school to close or ousting a district’s democratically elected school board.

In response to calls to evaluate student success beyond testing, the legislation also instructs the TEA to track student participation in pre-K, extracurriculars and workforce training in middle schools. But none of those metrics will be factored into schools’ ratings.

This article originally appeared in at . The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Over the past few years, the education choice movement has taken off, with states from Arizona to Florida to Iowa launching or expanding ESA programs that allow parents to direct funding for their children’s education toward schooling environments, services or products that meet their needs. Texas’ program, which will launch in the 2026-27 school year, is the largest new investment in this idea to date. It couldn’t come at a more critical time. 

The strength of Texas’ new program lies not just in its size, but in its potential to drive innovation. Managing ESAs at scale is no small task. As more families gain access to these accounts, states are realizing that approving every expenditure on educational products, services and vendors one by one may not be sustainable. Parents need programs that are efficient, transparent and flexible — more like managing a health savings account than applying for a grant every time they want to buy a math workbook. 

Texas has the chance to lead the way by adopting a debit card model where parents use secure accounts linked to approved expense categories instead of an endless string of applications and approvals. Think about how a health savings account debit card works to pay for everything from a doctor’s visit to a pharmacy prescription. On the back end, that system uses codes to categorize eligible purchases. A similar system for education that categorizes tutoring, curriculum, therapies, classes and more would make it dramatically easier for parents to navigate their options without compromising accountability. 

Building a modern, intuitive ESA system in Texas would do more than serve families in the Lone Star State. It would create a blueprint for every other state in the country. Instead of reinventing the wheel, states could adopt common standards for educational expense categories and fraud prevention, all of which would lead to faster program launches, improved oversight and better experiences for families nationwide.

The country is standing at the brink of an era when education funding finally and truly follows students. Parents in the nearly 20 states that have adopted ESAs are empowered not just to access a quality school for their kids, but to customize that educational experience in a way that felt unattainable just a decade ago.

As we’ve learned in Florida over the past quarter-century, expanded choice must go hand in hand with thoughtful design. Parents deserve the freedom to personalize their child’s education without unnecessary red tape. Taxpayers deserve programs that are transparent and accountable. And states deserve solutions that scale as participation grows.

The Texas Legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott have shown they are willing to lead on education freedom. As this program moves from legislation to reality, they also can lead by building a model ESA program that operates efficiently, is easy to use and sets a high bar for excellence. If they succeed, the ripple effects will extend far beyond Texas’ borders.

Advocates should celebrate the incredible progress that school choice has made in recent years and recognize that how these programs are built matters just as much as generating the support to create them. The passage of Texas’ ESA program marks a new chapter, not just for Texas students, but for the future of education choice across America. 

If policymakers get this right, the next generation of ESA programs will be faster, smarter and more parent-friendly than ever before — guaranteeing that every family, no matter where they live, can access a customized education that unlocks their child’s full potential. 

was originally reported by Nadra Nittle of .

“A direct assault on the Texas public education system.”

That’s how social justice groups like the Texas Freedom Network are describing the passage of a bill that would create a $1 billion school voucher program in the state. The Texas House passed Senate Bill 2 early Thursday, with support from Gov. Greg Abbott, who has championed school vouchers. These taxpayer-funded subsidies divert money away from public schools, allowing families to use them to cover their children’s tuition at private or religious schools.

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“This is part of a coordinated strategy to dismantle public education statewide and nationally, since and told them that they had to vote yes on this voucher scheme,” said Emily Witt, spokesperson for the Texas Freedom Network, a grassroots organization of religious and community leaders. “Republicans have done a very coordinated job of framing this as something that it’s not. It’s certainly not ‘choice.’ It’s going to really devastate a lot of public schools and rural communities here in Texas.”

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The voucher bill’s passage has been characterized as a win for both Abbott and Trump. Abbott tried unsuccessfully to get voucher legislation passed in 2023. Trump, in January, issued an directing the education secretary to explore ways to route federal funding to states and families interested in school choice initiatives, which give students the option to attend their preferred public, private, charter or religious school. Critics of vouchers, a controversial way to facilitate school choice, worry that they take away valuable resources from public schools. They also argue that private schools may exclude students with disabilities or who are LGBTQ+ or have LGBTQ+ parents. Students from low-income or rural areas may also struggle to access private school, as may those from certain ethnic groups or religious backgrounds. The voucher program does not guarantee students admission to private schools.

The approval of a voucher program in the nation’s second most populous state could create a ripple effect across the United States, where the voucher movement has gained momentum in recent years in places like Arizona, Arkansas, Florida and Wisconsin — . The Texas bill next goes to the state Senate, where lawmakers in each chamber are expected to work out the disparities in their voucher plans such as how much money participants should get and which participants should be prioritized.

“It is absurd for Gov. Abbott and his pro-voucher allies to claim that a diversion of $1 billion in tax funds to private schools over the next budget cycle will not hurt our underfunded public schools, where the vast majority of our students will remain,” Ovidia Molina, president of education labor organization the Texas State Teachers Association, said in a statement. “That voucher drain will increase to $3 billion by 2028 and more than $4 billion by 2030 if this voucher bill becomes law, the Legislative Budget Board projects.”

In Texas, most students attend public schools, with an . Rural communities overwhelmingly attend public schools because of the dearth of private schools in such areas. Accordingly, voters in the country have typically opposed school vouchers, perceived as vehicles to help families in cities send their kids to private school. Even with the school voucher program, experts do not expect private schools to be inundated with new students from public schools.

“Most kids are still going to have to be served by public schools,” Witt said. “We do know that in other states where vouchers have passed, that most of the kids using those vouchers already were in private ˛őłŚłó´Ç´Çąô˛ő.”

While vouchers have been promoted as a way to help low-income families choose a quality education for their children, the subsidies often aren’t large enough to cover the tuition and fees associated with a private school education. The school voucher program the Texas House just approved is generous, as it will give families who qualify . The average K-12 private school tuition in Texas is over , with tuition for schools that and elite institutions reaching as high as $40,000. Parents would need to make up the difference for tuition costs that vouchers don’t cover, a move critics of the subsidies say is out of reach for disadvantaged families.

“So it’s still going to benefit mostly wealthy families,” Witt said. “Let’s say that it does cover the cost of tuition. It’s not going to cover extracurriculars. It’s not going to cover transportation. Private schools are not required to offer free transportation to and from school like public schools are, and they also don’t have to accept every child.”

Religious institutions, she said, could turn away students who don’t belong to the faith affiliated with the school. A private school could accept a student with a disability only to discharge them later if the school doesn’t have the resources to educate that child or is no longer interested in doing so.

“They could essentially reject a child that they feel just doesn’t meet the culture of their school,” Witt continued. “That could be because a child comes from a low-income family. It could be because they’re not White. It could be because they’re LGBTQ or their parents are LGBTQ or not married.”

Private schools also don’t have to use standardized tests, like the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR), used in public schools to track student progress. The GOP-run Texas House, she said, rejected an amendment that would have required private schools to use standardized testing to measure student outcomes just as public schools do.

“I don’t know how we’ll see if this program works and how it benefits kids, especially kids with disabilities,” she said.

House Republicans tabled 44 amendments to the legislation, including one that would have led to a referendum on school vouchers in November, effectively blocking voters from deciding the issue.

The bill is an additional blow as public schools slash programs and raise class sizes under a budget crunch, Molina said in her statement.

“Texas already spends more than $5,000 less per student than the national average, ranking Texas 46^th among the states and the District of Columbia,” she said. “The school finance bill also approved by the House will not come close to ending the state’s financial neglect of public education. The House’s $395 increase in the basic allotment, which hasn’t been increased in six years, will provide only a third of what is needed to cover districts’ losses from inflation alone.”

Supporters of the voucher program may not be happy with it a year from now, Witt predicts. In 2022, Arizona passed its universal school voucher program. It covers expenses related to private school tuition, homeschooling and related academic needs, but now the program faces a backlash as the costs associated with it have led to questions about oversight and funding for public schools.

“Republicans have sold people a lie,” Witt said. “They’ve said repeatedly that it won’t harm public schools, and there’s just no way that it won’t. And I do think that’s their goal. I genuinely think that their goal is to eliminate public education, and this is the first step there. A year from now, people are going to see that the neighborhood schools in their communities are shuttering or having to cut resources for students, and they’re going to be really upset. And I think that there’s going to be hell to pay at the ballot box.”

As Texas lawmakers wrap up the first week of the 2025 legislative session, Gov. has signaled another public education priority he wants on their list: banning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in K-12 public schools.

“No taxpayer dollars will be used to fund DEI in our schools,” Abbott said in a post on the social media platform X on Thursday, using the acronym for diversity efforts. “Schools must focus on fundamentals of education, not indoctrination.”

Barring DEI efforts at K-12 schools would expand a statewide ban for colleges and universities approved two years ago. The governor’s office did not immediately respond to questions from The Texas Tribune on Friday seeking more details on Abbott’s remarks.

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His comments came in response to posted by Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Culture Project, allegedly showing a Richardson school district official answering questions from an individual who recorded the interaction and asked whether the district would allow a transgender girl to share a room with other students on a field trip. The school official, identified as the district’s executive DEI director, said the district would respond to the situation on a case-by-case basis with parental input.

Richardson school district officials said in a statement to the Tribune that only students of the same sex assigned at birth share rooms. The district also said its schools follow all anti-discrimination requirements, including a law stating that student-athletes must compete in events according to their sex assigned at birth.

“The district is not aware of any instance where this requirement was not followed, nor of any RISD-specific information suggesting the requirement should not be followed,” said Tim Clark, the district’s executive director of communications.

During the 2023 legislative session, Texas passed Senate Bill 17, which offices, programs and training at publicly-funded universities. Under the law, universities cannot create diversity offices, hire employees to carry out diversity-related initiatives or require any DEI training as a condition for employment or admission.

Since the law was passed, universities across the state have moved to shutter DEI offices and efforts. Those offices played a pivotal role in helping Black, Latino, LGBTQ+ and other underrepresented students adjust to life on college campuses and foster a sense of community among their peers.

Educational institutions across the country made promises following the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer to work harder at creating more inclusive environments for their students. But many of those efforts have taken significant steps back as state officials have passed legislation to shutter them, labeling those efforts as left-wing indoctrination.

Abbott’s desire to now extend the law to K-12 public schools represents the latest attempt by Texas state officials to exert greater control over how educational institutions go about ensuring students from all backgrounds feel included, while limiting how they can teach and talk about gender, sexual orientation and America’s history of racism.

Abbott’s promise to prevent taxpayer dollars from flowing toward DEI initiatives at schools comes as public education spending is set to play a central role during the 2025 legislative session, which began earlier this week.

During the last session, House Democrats and rural Republicans’ efforts to block a school voucher program — Abbott’s top legislative priority for the last few years — came at the cost of not securing a funding boost for public schools, which has left Texas school districts grappling with multimillion-dollar budget deficits and other serious financial difficulties like school closures.

Abbott now says he has the votes to get a voucher program, which would allow parents to use tax dollars to pay for their children’s private education, across the finish line. He has also to increase public education funding this year.

The governor’s comments immediately drew praise from Sen. , R-Conroe, chair of the Senate’s Education Committee and author of the current DEI law.

“SB 17 has become a model for the entire nation, and I am ready to expand the law to protect the 6 million students in Texas schools from failed, divisive DEI programs,” Creighton wrote on social media. “Let’s get to work.”

This article originally appeared in at . The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Four Republicans prevailed in five contested Texas State Board of Education races Tuesday night, solidifying a GOP majority on the board responsible for determining what the state’s 5.5 million public school children learn in the classroom.

Factoring in the election results, the board now comprises 10 Republicans and five Democrats. Democrats regained a seat after it was vacated by Aicha Davis, who stepped down to run for the Texas House.

Republican incumbents Tom Maynard (District 10), Pam Little (District 12) and Aaron Kinsey (District 15) defeated their Democratic challengers, while Republican Brandon Hall, who ousted longtime GOP incumbent Patricia “Pat” Hardy (District 11) in the March primary, was also victorious.

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In the race for the District 1 seat currently held by El Paso Democrat Melissa Ortega, who decided not to seek another term, Democrat Gustavo Reveles defeated Republican challenger Michael “Travis” Stevens.

Democrats Marisa Perez-Diaz (District 3) and Staci Childs (District 4), both of whom ran uncontested, held onto their seats. Tiffany Clark, a Democrat running to fill the District 13 seat vacated by Davis, also won after running unchallenged.

The 15 members on the board play an extraordinary role in determining what students learn in the classroom and what’s required for kids to graduate, as well as in overseeing to support Texas public schools.

The stakes of were especially high this year, since the group’s responsibilities next year could include revising Texas’ social studies curriculum. Some conservatives on the Republican-dominated board campaigned on the idea that public schools are harming children with how they teach America’s history of racism and its diversity.

The board in recent months has fielded complaints about a Texas Education Agency-proposed curriculum that, if approved later this month, would insert into elementary school reading and language arts lessons. The group has on a long-awaited Native Studies course, covering the culture and history of tribes and nations across Texas and the U.S. And in recent years, the board has over their messaging on climate change and its to school vouchers, a program that would set aside public tax dollars for parents to pay their children’s private school tuition.

Of the eight races this year, here are the results of the five contested ones.

District 1

Democrat Gustavo Reveles defeated Republican Michael “Travis” Stevens in , which encompasses El Paso County and part of Bexar County.

Reveles, who currently serves as communications director for the Canutillo school district outside of El Paso, said he ran to ensure that Texas’ border community continues to have a presence at the state level. While acknowledging that he has not worked as a teacher or an educator, Reveles said the board needs people who respect educators as leaders and experts in the field. Top of mind for Reveles is helping ensure that students of all backgrounds feel represented in curricula. He also would like to see a more rigorous approval process of , which are publicly funded but privately managed.

District 10

In , which includes Bell County and part of Williamson County, Republican defeated Democrat Raquel SĂĄenz Ortiz.

Maynard, of Florence, has served on the board for 11 years. He is currently the chair of the board’s Committee on School Finance and helps oversee the known as the Permanent School Fund. With more than 30 years in education, Maynard spent more than a dozen of them as an agricultural science teacher. He also worked as of the Texas FFA Association. Maynard’s priorities include improving the quality of instructional materials, creating and implementing a library book review process and completing revisions to the social studies and mathematics standards as some of his top priorities. He also has said he opposes so-called “woke ideologies” in public education, , and has vowed to “continue to fight to ensure students are not subject to radical and inappropriate content in Texas classrooms.”

District 11

In , which includes Parker County and part of Tarrant County, Republican Brandon Hall defeated Democrat Rayna Glasser and Green Party candidate Hunter Crow.

Hall is a youth pastor who has described Texas as having “a broken public education system” where kids “face an onslaught against their innocence” — particularly with how America’s history of racism is taught in classrooms and what he has called “obscene library books” and a “sexualized agenda.” Hall his commitment “to making quality, conservative education a reality for all students” and to establish charter schools more easily. He also wants parents to “play a central role in shaping the educational trajectory of their children.”

District 12

In , which includes Collin County, Republican Pam Little defeated Democrat George King.

Little, of Fairview, has served on the board since 2019 and is currently the group’s vice chair. A co-owner of a fence company, she has taught courses in small business management in community college, according to her . Little has voted against presenting a “biased view” of the fossil fuel industry and social studies standards that “water down our history,” according to her . She listed as her accomplishments while on the board, among other things, implementing phonics-based curriculum standards, approving personal financial literacy education and updating the Texas Dyslexia Handbook.

District 15

In , which includes Ector and Lubbock counties, Republican Aaron Kinsey defeated Democrat Morgan Kirkpatrick and Libertarian Jack Westbrook.

Kinsey, of Midland, was elected to the board in 2022 and appointed chair by Gov. last December. Kinsey is a former Air Force pilot who now oversees an aviation oil field services company in Midland, according to . At the Texas Republican Party Convention this year, Kinsey acknowledged he did not know much about the State Board of Education prior to running but that he did “understand the greatness of Texas” and that his family’s values were not being represented in public schools. Among Kinsey’s top priorities, he said at the convention, is for schools to teach Texas children “how to think and not to hate themselves.” He also advocated for curricula that embrace “capitalism and self-reliance as nobel quests.” Kinsey proclaimed at the end of his speech: “You have a chairman who will fight for these three-letter words: G-O–D, G-O-P, and U-S-A.”

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Several GOP wins in the Texas House of Representatives on Tuesday will expand Republicans’ existing majority, giving Abbott an estimated 87 of 150 seats in the lower chamber. When lawmakers reconvene in January, that could finally give him the votes needed to successfully put forth legislation that offers a universal voucher, or education savings account — a proposal that many Democrats and rural Republican lawmakers have rejected in past legislative sessions.

“Frankly, it was a bit surprising that Abbott pulled this off,” said Jon Taylor, a political scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio. 

With flips of Democratic seats in Corpus Christi and Uvalde, the GOP now enjoys an 87-to-63 margin in the House. He noted, “At a minimum, the Legislature is likely to pass some form of an Education Savings Account plan,” which families could use to cover tuition or other expenses. 

Taylor added that two House districts in San Antonio came close to flipping the other way, from Republican to Democratic, but fell short by about four percentage points apiece, handing the seats to pro-ESA Republicans.

Abbott, who first began pushing for school choice , has aggressively fought for it ever since. In 2023, he called lawmakers into four special legislative sessions to pass a school choice bill, among other measures, and has proposed giving students about $10,500 per year, overseen by the state comptroller. 

He has also worked over the past year to oust lawmakers who fought his proposal to offer ESAs to all students, not just those whose families are low-income.

With deep pockets, Abbott targets ESA foes

Late last year, Abbott began actively campaigning against members of his own party who stood in his way, portraying them as weak on important issues like border security and property tax relief. He was aided by deep-pocketed donors and political action committees that poured millions of dollars into state legislative races.

Jeff Yass, a well-known school choice proponent and investor in TikTok parent company Byte Dance, contributed more than in this political cycle, while Miriam Adelson, owner of the Las Vegas Sands casinos, spent about , making the pair — residents of Pennsylvania and Nevada, respectively — Texas’ two biggest political donors.

Last spring, the effort helped persuade voters to unseat eight House Republicans who had blocked ESAs. One of them, of San Antonio, said in a September interview with ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ that he opposed Abbott’s plan because Texas families already have many options, from magnet schools to charters to a program that lets students in low-performing schools transfer to a better-performing school. Lawmakers, he said, have approved countless programs that provide “choice on top of choice on top of choice” within districts.

Abbott is already doing a victory lap. Taking to the social media site X , he wrote, “Every candidate that I backed in Texas House general election races won tonight. We even had Republican candidates win seats that had been held by Democrats. There are more than enough votes to pass school choice in Texas.”

Katherine Munal, policy and advocacy director of , said Tuesday’s election results in Texas mark “a significant victory for school choice advocates, signaling a continued momentum for policies that prioritize parental empowerment and educational freedom.”

Texas, she said, “is poised to expand opportunities for students and families, allowing them to access a wider range of educational options that best meet their needs. This shift reflects a broader recognition of the importance of individualized education and the belief that every child deserves the opportunity to thrive in an environment that works for them.”

Mark P. Jones, a political scientist at Rice University, said that for Abbott, “the night really couldn’t have gone better.” 

The question now, he said, isn’t whether school choice will succeed in Texas in 2025. “It’s really what form of school choice legislation will pass. How robust and expansive will it be?”

The most likely scenario, he said, would have Abbott offering an ambitious proposal with more students covered than in his 2023 plan, and with less money going to school districts that lose students to ESAs.

While foes of Abbott’s plan can probably still negotiate to help districts, he said any hope that Democrats and anti-school-choice Republicans had of blocking choice in 2025 “vanished last night.”

Abbott has pushed for ESAs despite recent polling that isn’t necessarily conclusive: of respondents to a recent University of Texas survey said they support spending taxpayer dollars to help families pay for private school. Meanwhile, a poll from the University of Houston and Texas Southern University found 65% support.  

The Texas Education Agency last year estimated that about 500,000 children, or about half of the state’s private school and homeschooled students, would apply for the program in its first stages, with more each cycle. The figures prompted Democratic Rep. James Talarico during a legislative hearing that it would be “a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top.”

He added, “It’s welfare for the wealthy.”

Elsewhere on Tuesday, voters in two states — Kentucky and Nebraska — defeated voucher-related ballot measures. A third measure, in Colorado, appeared headed for defeat.

But in late 2023, Abbott began speaking out against him. With the support of other lawmakers and several political action committees, the governor began portraying Allison as weak on border security and property tax relief — two no-compromise issues for Texas GOP voters. In February, one PAC ran a calling Allison “wrong for Texas.”

The San Antonio Express-News as “easily the most qualified candidate in this race,” but the attacks stuck: Voters in his district in the March 5 primary, overwhelmingly choosing Marc LaHood, a criminal defense attorney with no political experience, as the Republican nominee.

In an interview, Allison said his defeat came down to one unlikely issue: school choice, specifically his opposition to Abbott’s long-stalled effort to enact a statewide Education Savings Account to help families pay for private and homeschool expenses.

It’s a scenario that’s playing out in Texas and beyond as lawmakers, pushing to remake legislative maps, increasingly turn for assistance to groups like the American Federation for Children and the School Freedom Fund, a pro-ESA group tied to tech billionaire Jeff Yass. Yass, a well-known Pennsylvania-based school choice proponent and investor in TikTok parent company Byte Dance, has spent millions to promote ESAs.

The effort has already changed the ballot this November and produced an unprecedented shift in statehouses, with lawmakers increasingly approving taxpayer support for private education. Seventeen states now have universal or near-universal ESA programs. 

Whether it’s via a traditional voucher, which gives families tuition for private education, a tax credit, or a less restrictive ESA fund, the idea is increasingly finding favor in state legislatures. In Florida, families can receive 72% of what the state spends per-pupil; in Arizona, it equals 90%. The pro-school-choice group EdChoice has estimated that more than now take advantage of ESAs, up from 40,000 in 2022.

But many rural conservatives fear the funding won’t be useful in isolated areas where private schools are unlikely to open. In many small towns, school districts are the largest employer, making ESAs political kryptonite.

A few observers say the development also could backfire. Mark P. Jones, a political scientist at Rice University, warned that a rightward primary shift could spell defeat for Republicans in the Nov. 5 general election.

“It is possible, even after all the craziness, even after all the attacks and the millions of dollars spent, particularly by a particular TikTok owner, that you’ve got a situation where Abbott may not get his vouchers after all,” Jones said.

‘So wrong for Tennessee taxpayers’

For the moment, school choice efforts are moving full-speed ahead. FutureEd, a Georgetown University think tank, private-school choice bills in 34 states, with most aiming to broaden options like ESAs.

The effort is playing out in states like , and, most recently, in Tennessee, where the School Freedom Fund spent an estimated against Republicans who stopped a in 2024. Among their targets: Sen. Frank S. Niceley, a 20-year legislative veteran who boasted a lifetime on the conservative Tennessee Legislative Report Card. 

The fund painted him as “liberal Frank Niceley,” with one ad to give undocumented students in-state tuition benefits at Tennessee colleges, adding, “No wonder there’s an invasion.” Playing on his last name, it concluded: “Nice to illegals, but so wrong for Tennessee taxpayers.”

Niceley in July that allowing out-of-state PACs to label the most conservative senator as a liberal amounted to trashing elections in favor of pre-determined outcomes by interest groups. “Just call up and ask ’em who they want.”

A statewide voucher, Niceley said, ran counter to Tennessee’s reputation for curbing what he called wasteful spending.

Early evidence in other states suggests that while ESAs are popular, their benefits often take the form of tuition discounts for families whose children are . In Iowa last year, for the state’s ESA came from such students. In Florida, .

Despite Niceley’s plea for frugality, in August, primary voters ousted him in favor of Jessie Seal, a public relations director for a medical facility. 

Celebrating the defeat of Niceley and others, David McIntosh, a former Indiana congressman and the School Freedom Fund president, said, “Make no mistake: if you call yourself a Republican and oppose school freedom, you should expect to lose your next primary.” 

McIntosh declined an interview request.

Abbott’s ‘white whale’

On the flip side, teachers’ unions are well-known for supporting both Democratic candidates and anti-school-choice legislation. In this political cycle, the National Education Association has spent $21,800,773, according to , a nonprofit that follows money in politics. The American Federation of Teachers has spent $3,949,330.

In Texas, anti-ESA Republicans earned support from a PAC funded by H-E-B grocery store chain heir Charles Butt. It threw in more than $4 million last winter, equal to what the School Freedom Fund a dozen Republicans who blocked Abbott’s voucher legislation.

Voters have rewarded the Freedom Fund’s efforts: Over the past few months, they’ve sent more than a dozen anti-ESA lawmakers packing. Abbott has persuaded a handful of others to retire rather than face difficult primaries. 

Yass, the TikTok billionaire, more than $12 million in this political cycle, while Miriam Adelson, owner of the Las Vegas Sands casinos, about $13 million, making the pair — residents of Pennsylvania and Nevada, respectively — Texas’ two biggest political donors.

School choice backers hope that kind of support ultimately results in a win for ESAs, a goal that has repeatedly eluded Abbott. 

Jon Taylor, a political scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio, joked that ESAs have become Abbott’s “white whale,” one of the few legislative wins he can’t seem to earn.

Jones, the Rice political scientist, noted that several red-leaning states, including Florida, Georgia and Arizona, have ESAs. Texas Republicans have enjoyed a unified government since 2003, he said, creating a kind of “dissonance” between Texas’ perception as the most conservative state and Abbott’s inability to seal the deal.

While the financial support of Yass and groups like the School Freedom Fund may seem unprecedented, Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform, said it merely serves to counterbalance “the enormously, humongously large coffers” of teachers’ unions and the educational establishment.

“The choice movement support, even with lots of wealthy people, pales in comparison to the tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars of in-kind and financial support that the unions put into legislative races,” said Allen, who also directs the . She called the development “obviously overdue.”

Allison said he opposed Abbott’s plan because Texas families already have many options, from magnet schools to charters to a program that lets students in low-performing schools transfer out. Lawmakers, he said, have approved countless programs that provide “choice on top of choice on top of choice” within districts.

Recent polling on school choice isn’t necessarily conclusive: of respondents to a recent University of Texas survey said they support spending taxpayer dollars to help families pay for private school. Meanwhile, a poll from the University of Houston and Texas Southern University found 65% support.  

‘We lost some very good members’

On occasion, the push to defeat lawmakers like Allison has taken an ugly turn. Last October, while he was down in Austin for one of several special sessions, an activist pulled a onto his suburban street. Mounted on the back were huge video screens that broadcast messages saying the former school board member “hates children” and “supports rogue administrators.”

“They also came up on the lawn and videoed and scared my wife and scared kids in the neighborhood,” he said. The truck’s commotion forced police to reroute a school bus.

Though lawmakers in Texas don’t convene again until early 2025, the effects are already playing out, said Allison. “We lost some very good members because of this — and some very experienced members.”

That could affect the legislature’s institutional memory and its ability to deal not just with education but other urgent issues, he said. “We’ve got a population that is growing by leaps and bounds. We’ve got some serious infrastructure problems: water, roads, bridges. Property taxes. I mean, it just goes on and on. So to single us out and to focus so much by the governor on this one issue is very shortsighted.”

Jones, the Rice political scientist, noted that while legislatures turn over regularly, the more immediate impact will be the “de facto purge” of House moderates. While he predicted that Abbott will likely gain enough support on Nov. 5 to pass some sort of voucher — perhaps not a particularly robust one — Taylor said Abbott’s aggressive pursuit of centrists could backfire, tilting as many as nine House districts into Democratic hands. Texas Democrats have said they hope to flip several seats based on what they call Abbotts’ .

In what may be the final irony of his ordeal, Allison reluctantly predicted that LaHood, who beat him in the primary, may have difficulty winning the seat against newcomer Democrat . LaHood in 2022 lost a race for county district attorney to a Democratic incumbent. 

One of Allison’s soon-to-be-former colleagues, Democratic Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, who represents a nearby district, in June Democrats’ hopes to gain seats “increased tenfold” with LaHood’s primary win.

For his part, Allison didn’t hesitate when asked if he thought the district might flip blue in November. “I think there’s a very good chance,” he said.

The shakeup could set the stage for a statewide roll-out of education savings accounts (ESAs), which allow families to use public dollars to pay for private school.

Vote tallies Wednesday morning — DeWayne Burns, Justin Holland, and John Kuempel — losing to their primary opponents, each of whom had been endorsed by Abbott and state Attorney General Ken Paxton. A fourth, veteran Texas House representative Gary Vandeaver, by a little under 1,400 votes.

The four men had all helped thwart the governor’s push last year behind legislation that would have made ESAs universal throughout the state. Along with House Democrats and a committed faction of rural Republicans, they voted the use of state funding for all forms of school vouchers last spring; in a special session called by Abbott several months later, the same coalition a school choice provision from an omnibus K–12 funding bill.  

In response, Abbott and several major conservative donors took the rare step of backing ESA supporters against the incumbents in state legislative primaries. In March, nine Republicans who’d previously defied Abbott lost the party’s nomination, while four more were denied majorities and forced into runoff elections decided on Tuesday. 

Taken together, 13 Republican ESA opponents were pushed aside, which would be more than enough to flip the 84-63 margin against universal ESAs that prevailed last year.  

But the passage of a new school choice bill is still not guaranteed. The Texas Legislature is out of session until next year; elections in November will determine the body’s partisan composition, and while Republicans are favored to retain control over both chambers, the size of their majorities — and the continuing willingness of anti-voucher Republicans to defect again — will help determine the prospects of statewide ESAs.

Ebullient in victory, Abbott announced that House Republicans now held “enough votes to pass school choice.”

“While we did not win every race we fought in, the overall message from this year’s primaries is clear: Texans want school choice,” the governor in a statement. “Opponents can no longer ignore the will of the people.”

Recent polling suggests that education savings accounts do enjoy the support of large numbers of Texans. While many voters are unfamiliar with the details of particular legislative proposals, that 49 percent of respondents — and particularly African Americans, parents, and churchgoers — favored vouchers, compared with just 27 percent who opposed them. A more recent poll from the University of Texas at Austin found a tighter margin .

Zeph Capo, president of the teachers’ union affiliate Texas AFT, said in that the primary results reflected a crush of spending from deep-pocketed school choice advocates. While the primary campaign had succeeded in its immediate goals, he argued, the fate of ESAs was still to be decided. 

“Just five out-of-state donors have flooded Texas with $33 million, the same as our state’s record-breaking budget surplus last year, in this election cycle,” Capo wrote. “What it’s bought them so far is a smattering of wins for extremist challengers who now must win outright in November.

It’s not often that statehouse elections in rural Texas steer the national conversation about school choice. But things might change later this month.

On May 28, voters will choose Republican candidates in 13 of the state’s 150 House districts. Four are currently held by representatives targeted by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for persistently stymying his attempts to create a statewide system of education savings accounts (ESAs). If the incumbents fall, many believe the plan will be enacted, turning Texas into the country’s biggest school choice marketplace as soon as 2025.

While presumptively on hold until January, when the legislature will next come into session, the proposal could gain irresistible momentum if the elections are decided in Abbott’s favor. Almost immediately, lawmakers and educators alike would begin seriously considering the fallout from what could be to school enrollments and financing.

The election is the culmination of a yearlong campaign by Abbott and his allies that has migrated from committee hearings in Austin to front-porch campaigning in East Texas. In March, knocked off nine Republicans who had blocked a push during last year’s legislative session to allow universal eligibility for ESAs, which provide state funds for families to use for educational expenses like private school tuition. Another handful were denied majorities, triggering runoff elections against opponents who have largely been endorsed by the governor. Abbott has openly predicted that if two more anti-voucher incumbents are defeated, the legislation can be revived and passed.

That victory, if achieved, would result from the interplay of local and national political pressures.

Abbott would immediately gain a critical policy win after multiple previous bids to expand ESAs, all of which have been thwarted by the same coalition of Democrats and rural Republicans. But national donors and advocacy groups have also taken a close interest in the electoral fight, to the tune of millions of dollars in the hopes of extending a generational winning streak for school choice that has unfolded over the past few years. 

Monty Exter is the director of government relations at the , a non-union organization that strongly opposes the governor’s ambitions. He said the success of voucher rollouts in other red states presented something of a “street cred issue” for Abbott, one of the most prominent conservative leaders in the country.

“Texas is the biggest red state in the country, and Abbott is the long-serving governor here,” he said. “He has clearly made it a huge priority where it hasn’t been a huge priority for him in the past. And it’s certainly not a new issue.”

Rural pushback

Indeed, the roots of this month’s extended primary fight extend far into the past, even predating Abbott’s time in office.

In 2007, 2009, and 2013, in response to prior Republican governors’ voucher designs, the Texas House of Representative adopted budgetary rules that explicitly prohibited the transfer of public funding to private schools. In 2017, an ESA bill passed the Senate only to be torpedoed in the lower chamber. And just last spring, Abbott’s renewed effort — sweetened with offers of extra per-pupil funding for traditional public schools — fell short again in the face of familiar bipartisan resistance. 

The overriding obstacle cuts against traditional partisan loyalties: A key faction of Republican legislators are perennially skeptical of the potential disruption of voucher programs to small-town school districts, often their communities’ largest employers. Local officials fear that families will quickly abandon public schools after receiving an ESA, leading to a collapse in both student enrollment and funding.

Those concerns weren’t allayed even after Abbott called last fall to force further consideration of the proposal. In the months following, he turned to the primary ballot, supporting a host of challengers to the House Republicans who defied him. He was joined in his endorsements by high-profile allies , while Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton whose leaders he accused of whipping up opposition to pro-ESA primary candidates. (While of those later resolved the complaints with the attorney general’s office, against administrators accused of using school resources for electioneering purposes.)

According to survey results, the public stir around school choice made little impact on Republicans around the state. In a February poll from , a research institute housed at the University of Texas at Austin, of potential Republican voters listed ESAs as a top issue influencing their primary vote. Asked which politicians’ endorsements might sway them, only 7 percent named Abbott. 

But the governor’s energetic campaigning clearly a healthy proportion of the state GOP’s biggest ESA critics in the March 5 primary. So did the heavy spending of conservative donors — including billionaire TikTok investor and school choice maven Jeff Yass, who in December to spend on the campaigns.

“What made this cycle different was that the governor decided to stake so much of his political capital on the passage of a school voucher program in Texas and — upon failing to achieve that goal — committed to spending significant amounts of money to unseat these incumbent legislators,” argued Joshua Blank, the Texas Politics Project’s research director. 

It remains to be seen whether the same recipe will unseat the four additional incumbents fighting runoff battles this month. Cal Jillson, a professor of government at Southern Methodist University and a longtime observer of Texas politics, said that runoff elections tend to draw a smaller and more ideologically committed electorate. That could be a bad sign for Abbott’s targets.

“We did see a lot of these incumbents go down in the primary,” Jillson noted. “With the low turnout in a runoff race, it’s usually the most motivated people who will end up turning out and casting ballots, and those tend to be people who are deeply committed to the party and social conservative issues.”

‘A clear message’

For now, ESA proponents are using every edge to grab more seats in an already-conservative chamber — particularly money.

In addition to the individual contributions made by Yass and other wealthy activists, the conservative challengers have drawn deeply from the coffers of the , a right-leaning advocacy organization based in Washington. Through an affiliated Super PAC, the School Freedom Fund, in the March primaries; they’ve dropped at least as much in the three months since.  

In a statement, Club for Growth President David McIntosh said the group jumped into the little-publicized legislative primaries not just to shape Texas policy, but also to send a message to all Republicans guilty of “denying parents and kids choice in education.” The organization might look for similar opportunities in places like Georgia and Tennessee, he added. 

“This election will send a clear message to Republicans in every state that you should retire or expect to lose in your next primary,” McIntosh warned. “We are also hopeful that this will push school freedom allies in other states to reform failing public schools, and we are looking at replicating these efforts in other states.”

That nationwide perspective has grown as more red jurisdictions have acted to establish or expand families’ eligibility for private school choice. In all, 11 states now boast , and with each newly adopted law — Alabama became the latest to pass its legislation in March — it has become more noteworthy that Texas still lags behind.

Jillson said he believed that vouchers would be all but inevitable if the embattled incumbents lose their elections next week. Even if a few survive, he said, they will be “sobered” against continuing to stand in the way of ESA expansion.

“I suspect that some of these four will be defeated. That will provide Abbott with a slim majority in the next regular session, which could grow if other members who’ve opposed vouchers in the past say, ‘I can’t do this anymore or he’ll come for me.’ ”

Many public school educators and advocates saw the Texas House’s vote last month as a forceful rebuke that should signal there’s no path forward left for Gov. ’s top legislative priority this year. But pro-voucher advocates, including private and religious school educators, say they will keep fighting for vouchers — both in the Texas Legislature and at the ballot.

The House voted 84-63 on Nov. 16 to strip education savings accounts — a voucher program that would give families taxpayer dollars to pay for their children’s private schooling — from , a massive education bill that also included teacher pay raises and increased public school funding. As the current special legislative session nears its end, it seems increasingly unlikely that a voucher program will pass before time runs out.

Twenty-one Republicans, all from rural districts, voted against the program. Despite Abbott’s efforts to sway voucher skeptics in the House, the bloc of rural Republicans against the measure remained mostly firm.

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Two dozen Republicans opposed the program during a House test vote on vouchers in April. After two legislative special sessions and threats from the governor to during next year’s primary elections, in the end just four of the GOP holdouts on vouchers flipped on the issue: Reps. of Lufkin, of Odessa, of Itasca and of Jacksboro. Public school advocates also gained a new anti-voucher vote in Rep. of Pearland.

Paige Williams, legislative director for the Texas Classroom Teachers Association, said advocates felt confident about defeating vouchers after speaking to rural Republican lawmakers throughout the past few months and realizing many felt the same way they had in April.

“We were thankful for the people who took a very hard public vote and who were willing to stand up and speak,” Williams said. ”But not much had changed since the original vote was taken, with the exception of the pressure that’s been put upon all the members of the House.”

The House vote assuaged public school advocates, who that a voucher program would divert funding from public schools. But with only a few days left in the special session, the measure’s defeat also means public schools won’t get additional funds for long-awaited teacher pay raises and inflation adjustments. Abbott has said he will veto any public education funding bill that does not include vouchers.

After the Legislature failed to pass public school funding in this year’s regular session, despite a , many school districts were forced into to keep up with costs. Underfunding has forced some districts to close cafeterias, cut extracurricular activities, and in some cases, altogether.

Williams said this trend is likely to continue if public school funding has to wait for another shot until the 2025 legislative session. Some districts may even turn to parents and community members to help raise money for expenses like teacher pay raises, she said.

Jerrica Liggins, secondary curriculum director for the , said her district went into a deficit budget this year and will probably stay in one next year because the district is unwilling to cut teacher pay to make up funding gaps.

Still, Liggins said waiting another legislative cycle for increased funding was an acceptable price for the defeat of vouchers. She and her fellow public school advocates are now preparing to come out “full force” for school funding — both in the next legislative session and in supporting pro-public school candidates in next year’s primary elections, Liggins said.

“Eventually our government is going to just have to do something because this isn’t going to go away,” she said of public school funding. “We have over 5 million [public school] students in Texas. They’re not going away.”

Kristen Harris, a humanities teacher in the gifted and talented program at Walnut Grove High School in , said she was encouraged to see the number of House Republicans who voted against vouchers.

But she said it’s still frustrating to see public school funding continually stalled. And even if teacher pay raises were eventually passed, she said the state’s is about more than funding: teacher morale is lower than ever after the hardships of teaching during a pandemic, classrooms being and school funding becoming collateral damage in the political faceoff over vouchers.

Last year, Abbott assembled a task force to examine the state’s worsening teacher shortage. The group , including a salary raise, mentorship programs and more sustainable workloads to respect teachers’ time. Aside from a new , lawmakers failed to pass most of these policies.

“We have to solve the human problem,” Harris said. “It can’t just become a band-aid that we slap on like, ‘Oh, teachers, here, maybe you’ll stick around if we give you more money.’ There’s definitely more to it than that.”

Voucher advocates undeterred

Though the House’s anti-voucher coalition held strong earlier this month, voucher advocates said they’re still committing to passing education savings accounts — if not now, then the next legislative session. And they’re ready to bring the fight during next year’s primary elections.

Laura Colangelo, executive director of the Texas Private Schools Association, said her organization is ready to launch back into the debate and is just waiting for Abbott to signal his next steps. The governor floated in the past the possibility of calling a to continue pushing for vouchers, though he has not mentioned the idea since vouchers were voted out of HB 1.

Jeremy Newman, vice president of policy and engagement at the Texas Homeschool Coalition, said his group has been tracking which anti-voucher Republicans are not running for reelection and preparing to support pro-voucher candidates in those districts.

The Texas home-school community — comprising nearly 480,000 students — has on the issue, with some in support of vouchers to help pay for their home-schooling costs, and others wary of the government oversight that may come with the funding. Jube Dankworth, president of Texas Home Educators, said her network of anti-voucher home-schoolers will also be engaging in the primaries by hosting candidate forums to ask officials the “tough questions” about their stance on vouchers.

Newman said he believes the home-schooling community will continue to thrive and grow even without vouchers. But education savings accounts could be crucial for families who to home schooling and cannot fund it themselves.

“You have this category of people who… know it would be better for their child to move to a different form of education, but they don’t quite have the resources to make that jump,” Newman said. “What we’re doing by not passing the bill is we’re leaving those people there.”

Tracy Hanson, principal of Oak Creek Academy, a private special education school in Killeen, said the vote blocking vouchers was “heartbreaking” for similar reasons. Oak Creek currently has 84 students enrolled, 98% of whom have a learning disability. The school’s tuition of about $9,500 would have been covered by the approximately $10,500 per student allotment proposed by HB 1.

HB 1 capped the voucher program funding at $500 million, meaning that only about 40,000 of more than 250,000 private school students in the state would be able to participate.

Hanson said Oak Creek can take up to 41 more students and she is committed to continue pushing for vouchers so more families can have access to these spots.

“We have a number of families that come through on a weekly basis that are in need of an alternative learning environment for their children, and they are not able to afford it,” Hanson said.

Rabbi Jordan Silvestri, head of Robert M. Beren Academy in Houston, said vouchers would also be a pathway to stabilizing tuition for some private schools. Beren Academy, a private Jewish school, has raised its tuition from 1% to 3% annually to keep up with rising inflation and make up for a temporary tuition freeze the school granted during the pandemic.

Tuition at the K-12 school ranges from $10,750 in lower grades to over $27,000 in the last few years of high school. Though education savings accounts would not cover full tuition for most students, Silvestri said it would allow the school to stop raising tuition to pay for financial aid and internal scholarships.

Like other voucher advocates, Silvestri said he hopes to see the program eventually passed to increase access to alternative forms of education.

“We have families who are coming from out of the country because they’re looking for better life situations or the ability to a deeply religious life, and they’re coming from impoverished states or very poor financial situations,” Silvestri said. “This is a huge way for us to make a difference.”

Disclosure: Texas Classroom Teachers Association and the Texas Private Schools Association have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

We recently moved from Texas to the Tampa area. Being closer to my family in Florida was a big reason for the move. But finding the right educational fit for my kids was also important.

In doing research before the move, I came across the many inclusive state-funded school choice programs that Florida offers, and I was thrilled to see education saving accounts for kids with learning differences or medical needs. This was critical because all three of my children — James, 18, and Max and Vanessa, both 15 — have learning and medical challenges. In Florida, they were all eligible for the ESAs, which I used to enroll them in a Catholic school.

That’s a huge contrast from what we faced back in Texas. There, my husband and I had enrolled my oldest son in a specialized private school after he failed first grade, as his local school was unable to serve children with dyslexia. After just a few months in his new school, his reading ability soared and his confidence returned. It was such a relief to see my child happy again and able to learn. 

But because Texas has no private school choice program, we had to pay for the specialized school ourselves. Our daughter also has dyslexia, and when she reached school age, we had to prioritize which child to send to a place that would best meet their needs. So after my son graduated from elementary school, we sent him to our local, zoned middle school and enrolled his sister in the private school. 

I know we’re not the only family in Texas who have had to make these kinds of agonizing decisions. I actually spent time at legislative sessions in Texas advocating for choice programs like the kind Florida has. But so far, Texas has not acted. Far too many Texas parents continue to feel frustrated and defeated. 

In Florida, we chose to put our children in a Catholic school. Our decision had to do with how well-rounded and nurturing Catholic schools are. They do an excellent job preparing students not just for college, but for a life in which they have the skills and character to make a positive impact on the world.

Across the country, including in Texas, Catholic schools are shrinking and closing. But it’s not because parents don’t want them. , thanks to school choice programs. A new from Step Up For Students, the organization that administers the choice scholarships in Florida, found the state’s Catholic schools now enroll a higher percentage of students of color than public schools do. It also found the number of students using special needs scholarships at Florida Catholic schools has nearly tripled in the past 10 years. My family would not have been able to send three children to Catholic school if we were still living in Texas.  

I love talking to Florida parents about school choice. I am amazed at the endless options families are using and even creating to get their children the best learning environment. ESA programs allow Florida parents to basically fit the pieces of their puzzle together to create the best learning experience for their kids.

I am grateful to have these options for my children. Families across the country want choices in education, and more and more states are doing the right thing in providing that. It’s time for Texas to join them.

The Texas Senate’s main school voucher proposal this special session, which was given in the Texas Senate on Thursday, closely resembles two of the biggest such programs in the country.

Like in Arizona and Florida, a voucher-like program known as education savings accounts. It would give families access to taxpayer money to pay for their children’s private schooling, be open to most students in the state and prioritize disabled and poor students if there are more applicants than funds available.

In some aspects, the bill’s architects took notes from those programs’ mistakes. In an effort to prevent fraud and misuse of funds, which has been a problem in Arizona, the Texas proposal doesn’t give parents direct access to the cash and requires the comptroller’s office to audit participants’ accounts.

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In other areas, Texas repeated ideas that garnered criticism in other states. Critics across the country point out that private schools receiving state funds through existing voucher programs aren’t required to show that students are succeeding academically, like public schools are. And like in other states, voucher supporters in Texas say that’s by design. Sen. , a Republican from Conroe and SB 1’s author, has argued that the market will weed out underperforming private schools.

Those voucher programs in other states also sparked vigorous debates, came with the same promises and faced similar concerns, providing a window into the impact they might have in Texas once enacted. The Arizona program, for instance, confirmed critics’ concerns that it would require increasingly larger amounts of funding as it grew — just like opponents in Texas fear. But it of students from public schools.

Here’s how education savings accounts have performed in other states.

Arizona and Florida

Education savings accounts around 2012 and currently serve more than 90,000 students across the country, according to EdChoice, a nonprofit organization that advocates for these policies.

There are 13 education savings account programs nationwide and 31 states — plus Washington, D.C. — offer some sort of voucher program that allows children to use either taxpayer money or tax-credit donations for private schooling.

To date, Arizona and Florida have the largest and most expansive education savings account programs in the country, where almost any child is eligible.

Arizona — which has “set the standard” for education savings accounts, according to EdChoice — began with a limited version of the program in 2011 that only served students with disabilities. It expanded this year and opened its doors to virtually every child in the state.

In 12 years, enrollment in the program grew from about 150 students to over 60,000. The Arizona Department of Education believes it would need $900 million by June to cover 100,000 students in the program. What once was a small program is now expected to balloon to nearly $1 billion.

Meanwhile, the state’s public school funding per student at the bottom when compared to the rest of the country.

Carrie Sampson, an assistant professor of educational leadership and innovation at Arizona State University, argued that the money being poured into this program could’ve been used to increase funding to the state’s public schools.

Earlier this year, Florida’s education savings accounts were also expanded to include virtually every child. — most already enrolled in private schools — have been admitted to the program, making it the biggest in the country.

Florida launched its program in 2014 focused on students with disabilities. The state launched another education savings accounts program that prioritized low-income families in 2019.

show that this school year about $1.5 billion will be diverted from Florida public schools to private schools as students leave.

Plenty of families have education savings accounts in both states for giving them access to other educational opportunities. But the programs have also attracted criticism for their loose financial oversight and for not requiring private schools to report student test scores or meet the same academic standards as public schools.

Arizona parents have spent on including buying chicken coops, trampolines and tickets to SeaWorld. The problems stemmed from the practice of sending program funds to participants through debit cards issued by the state, said Tom Horne, the Arizona superintendent of public instruction.

Horne, a Republican, said the program has phased out debit cards in an attempt to curb misuse of funds. Now, parents log on to a website where they can browse through pre-approved vendors and choose the services they need, which allows the state to approve the purchases.

“We want the program to be administered totally within the law and the money can only be used for educational purposes so we can prove that it’s a successful program both for Arizona and for the country, since other people are looking to us as an example,” he said.

In Florida, flat screen TVs, paddleboards and entry to Disney are . Critics there say that’s not how taxpayer money should be used; defenders of the program say education has evolved and those can be justified expenses.

Who uses the funds is also a concern for those against education savings accounts. In Arizona, as in Texas, the program was promoted as a way for low-income families who might feel confined within the public education system and want to explore other educational options for their children. But after the program expanded, the Arizona education department found that 75% of those in the program were not previously enrolled in public school, meaning they were already home-schooling, enrolled at a private school or had never entered the school system.

The Grand Canyon Institute, a non-partisan think tank, echoed those findings and that 45% of applicants were among the wealthiest quartile of students in the state.

Horne admitted that most of the money went to families already at private schools jumping into the program to get financial help from taxpayers. But he projects that the distribution of funds will eventually balance out as more families not in private schools apply.

And while program supporters promote them as a tool to help students with disabilities get a better education, only 17% of education savings accounts in Arizona have gone to students with disabilities, to the Arizona education department.

Arizona does not provide data on demographics or income for those enrolled in the program.

Texas

SB 1 would allow almost all Texas families access to $8,000 of taxpayer money to pay for private schools and other educational expenses such as uniforms, textbooks, tutoring or transportation, among other things.

Texas would become the third largest provider of education savings accounts in the country if the bill is approved with its current eligibility requirements and budget. It could serve nearly 60,000 students.

“Educating the next generation of Texans is a fundamental responsibility, and it is my belief that empowering parents with school choice will encourage competition, innovation and ensure that every student in Texas has the opportunity to find an educational path for their unique needs,” Creighton said in a statement.

SB 1 seeks to address some of the problems the Arizona and Florida programs have had.

The bill would allocate $500 million from the state’s general revenue fund for the next two years to pay for the program. The state comptroller’s office would establish and administer the savings accounts; be in charge of preventing fraud and misuse of funds; and hire a contractor to help process applications and approve vendors and participating private schools.

In addition, the bill would require the comptroller to compile an annual report that would include how many students are in the program, the number of applications received or waitlisted, feedback from users, public and private school capacity, and how many kids are considered ready for college, the military or a career after graduating in the program.

The legislation would also mirror much of what Florida and Arizona are already doing.

While almost any child is eligible for the program, SB 1 has a prioritization system if applications exceed the funding. To prioritize entry to underprivileged groups, the bill proposes that no more than 40% of spots be reserved for students who receive free or reduced lunch; no more than 30% for families who earn between 185% and 500% of the federal poverty line; no more than 20% for students with disabilities; and 10% for all other applicants who attended public, private or home-school in the last school year.

The prioritization system has garnered criticism though. Sen. , D-San Antonio, said the “no more than” language implies there will be a cap on how much funding goes to underprivileged applicants, instead of prioritizing them.

And like programs in other states, the bill does not require private school students to take a state-administered academic achievement exam, something that school voucher critics in the Texas Legislature have said an education savings account proposal should have to even consider it.

Creighton says that the program will not siphon money away from public schools — a recurring criticism of school voucher programs — as the funding comes from general revenue, not the Foundation School Program, which is the main source of funding for the state’s K-12 public schools.

But according to the bill’s financial analysis, school districts are set to receive less money as students sign up for education savings accounts and leave public schools. School districts in Texas receive funding based on student attendance.

Research

School vouchers — a term used to describe government programs like education savings accounts that provide taxpayer money to pay for children’s private schooling — have been a goal of conservative, free-market groups for decades.

Plenty of research has been produced on these programs. Creighton himself has from EdChoice that shows vouchers have a mostly positive impact on student scores.

But research on vouchers is often contentious, with studies ranging in methodologies, sample sizes and demographics. Donors advocating for and against these programs have directly funded their own research.

The Texas Tribune looked at independent research and spoke to experts who have studied voucher programs for decades. For the most part, studies suggest that test scores go down for students in such programs, especially in math. This has been the case in states like Indiana and Louisiana.

Some research from the suggests that there is a case that, as competition from voucher programs ramped up, test scores in public schools slightly improved. But there isn’t enough evidence to suggest vouchers are the main reason for improved outcomes.

Patrick Wolf, a proponent of vouchers and a distinguished professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas, said he’s found that test scores among students in voucher programs have been mixed but tend to have a slight positive tilt.

But in 2016, Wolf and his colleagues found that within two years after Louisiana expanded its limited voucher program to all students, there were “substantively large” negative effects on math scores of students in the program. Louisiana first only offered vouchers to students in low-performing public schools.

Wolf attributed the decline in academic achievement to Louisiana’s strict regulations on private schools, like requiring them to take a state assessment. In his research, he found that high-quality private schools did not want the state oversight that Louisiana proposed, leading those schools to opt out of the program.

Results “depend on policy design and context,” Wolf said.

Wolf believes voucher programs work if they start on a small scale and gradually grow and set up systems to avoid misuse of funds as best as possible.

“I don’t think many states are prepared to implement a universal school choice program instantly from the jump,” Wolf said.

Joshua Cowen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University who has studied school choice programs for more than a decade, said test scores for students in voucher programs decrease in part because of low-quality private schools. Some just open to collect tax dollars, he said, and most of the high-quality private schools cost too much money for parents to afford anyway, often leaving them with few viable options.

“They’re not these elite college, prep type environments,” Cowen said. “These are sub-prime providers.”

In Wisconsin, home of the oldest voucher program in the country, a study found that 41% of all private voucher schools operating in Milwaukee between 1991 and 2015 closed.

Cowen said Texas lawmakers should stay away from voucher-like programs because he still doesn’t believe that there is enough credible data that shows vouchers are good for student test scores.

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Just hours after the Texas Senate its priority school voucher bill, Gov. said he would add teacher raises and public school funding to his if the Texas Legislature passes vouchers.

Abbott, who spoke Thursday at a parental rights event organized by the conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, so far has listed education savings accounts, a voucher-like program, as the only education item in his agenda for the special session. Though lawmakers have already drafted a bill on public school funding — which was also cleared by the Senate on Thursday — it cannot pass unless Abbott adds the issue to his agenda. The school vouchers and funding bills now head to the Texas House.

“I want to make sure we provide a carrot to make sure this legislation gets passed,” Abbott said of vouchers. “Once [education savings accounts] are passed, I will put on the legislative agenda full funding for public education, including teacher pay raises for teachers across the state.”

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During the regular session, lawmakers failed to pass a number of policies to support teachers amid a standoff over school vouchers. The stalemate came despite to better teachers’ working conditions from a task force assembled by Abbott last year to examine the state’s worsening teacher shortage.

Teachers were the only state employees to not receive a raise in the regular session and have said they feel their raises are being “held hostage” to a vouchers bill. Many have said they’d than see school vouchers implemented in the state.

Abbott, who took the stage at the summit just a few blocks from the Texas Capitol, said he thinks the House is at the “one-yard line” from passing education savings accounts. A coalition of Democrats and rural Republicans have historically blocked voucher legislation in the House.

Since before the special session, the governor’s office has been working with a group of House Republicans to draft a voucher bill that currently stands at 181 pages, Abbott said.

“I will not stop until we get [education savings accounts] passed in the state of Texas,” he added.

Earlier in the daylong event, several pro-voucher, Republican representatives laid out paths to passing the proposed bill in the House.

Rep. , R-Wichita Falls, said previous legislation has failed because voucher opponents, particularly teachers and superintendents, are “highly motivated” to stop the program.

“Some of the Republicans that aren’t voting for it are very scared to go against the school, principal, superintendent,” Frank said. “These are very well-connected people in every district in the state. Those are not people that you want to cross, if you can help it politically. I don’t like crossing them.”

Frank said he’s also spoken to rural representatives who argue that private schools either don’t exist in their district or are more expensive than the proposed $8,000 voucher. But if residents had access to money to specifically pay for private school, the market would respond by establishing schools that more closely fit their budgets, Frank said. He added that he would support a voucher closer to $10,000 to reflect the average cost of private schools in Texas.

To garner public support for vouchers, Rep. , R-Lakeway, said advocates need to frame the program as giving taxpayers who opt out of the public school system their dollars back. Voucher opponents have often voiced concerns that an education savings account program would siphon away public school funds.

“I had a superintendent yesterday tell me, ‘How can you support public dollars going into private schools?’ And I said, ‘I just don’t agree with the premise of your question because it is parents’ dollars to begin with,’” Troxclair said.

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A coalition of Texas bookstores and national bookseller associations filed suit on Tuesday over , which aims to ban sexually explicit material from school libraries.

in the Legislature and was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this year. It is set to go into effect on Sept. 1 and requires book vendors to assign ratings to books based on the presence of depictions or references to sex. In school libraries, books with a “sexually explicit” rating will be removed from bookshelves. And students who want to check out school library books deemed “sexually relevant” would have to get parental permission first.

Plaintiffs in the suit include two Texas bookstores, Austin’s BookPeople and West Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop, as well as the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

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They are suing defendants Martha Wong, chair of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission; Keven Ellis, chair of the Texas State Board of Education; and Mike Morath, commissioner of the Texas Education Agency.

According to the , the plaintiffs argue that HB 900 violates the First and 14th amendments by regulating speech with “vague and overbroad” terms and targeting protected speech.

They go on to argue that HB 900 forces the plaintiffs to comply with the government’s views, even if they do not agree, and that the law operates as prior restraint — which is government action that prohibits speech or other expression before the speech happens.

“The book ban establishes an unconstitutional regime of compelled speech, retaliation, and licensing that violates clear First Amendment precedent and this country’s history of fostering a robust marketplace of ideas,” the complaint says.

The CEOs of both bookstores say it is not possible for them to comply with the rating system required of book vendors in HB 900. The sheer volume of titles they would need to rate is too much, Charley Rejsek, CEO of BookPeople, said in a statement.

In a joint statement by the three bookseller associations, they said they are not questioning that content for students should be age-appropriate, but rather that they believe HB 900 does not accomplish such a goal.

“It robs parents, schools and teachers from across the state of Texas of the right to make decisions for their respective communities and classrooms, instead handing that role to a state entity and private businesses,” the statement says.

The complaint emphasizes how the plaintiffs believe HB 900 will “shatter” small bookstores in Texas, placing “additional economic pressure” on them.

Supporters of HB 900, like Cindi Castilla, president of conservative think tank Texas Eagle Forum, characterized the proposal as a child protection bill. In a Senate education committee hearing in May, Castilla said explicit materials in books are educationally unsuitable for students and that taxpayers should not fund such books.

“Our schools must not sexualize our students or provide them pornographic reading material or introduce them to inappropriate materials that distract from the educational goals we’ve set as a state,” she said.

Lawmakers like state Sen. , R-McKinney agreed, arguing that HB 900 is a “tool” to be used by communities to address “harmful sexually explicit material.”

Opponents ofhave been worried that by targeting so-called “sexually explicit material” lawmakers will be specifically targeting books that explore LGBTQ+ themes, including books such as “” and “” Bill author Rep. , R-Frisco, also condemned the book “ a graphic novel that traces the author’s experiences with gender growing up.

Many librarians and booksellers, including representatives from the Texas Library Association and individual libraries across the state, testified to the House and Senate in May that the bill will slow down book sales and acquisition of books by school libraries.

“Such oversight has not been needed in the past and is not needed now,” said Mark Smith, the former director of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. “The bill will interfere with student learning and achievement by blocking access to materials that have been restricted.”

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Texas lawmakers ended this year’s regular legislative session without giving public schools any money for employee raises — so school districts are finding ways to give their workers modest raises, even if it means digging into their savings accounts.

“We’ve taken the position that in the absence of state leadership, we’re going to take care of our staff, even if it means that we have a deficit budget,” said Bobby Ott, superintendent of the Temple Independent School District.

Ott and his district’s school board are in the process of approving their budgets for the next school year. And for Temple ISD to give its teachers and other staff members a modest 3% raise, it will most likely have to adopt a deficit budget, meaning that its expenditures will outweigh its revenue. The decision would put the district in a $2.2 million hole, even after Ott asked his department heads to make cuts to their spending budgets.

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“Passing a deficit budget is not sustainable,” Ott said. “Board policy stipulates that school districts keep a certain amount of fund balance or savings account.”

Still, school districts are digging into their savings to make their teachers feel valued as the state struggles to keep educators in the classroom.

While the average teacher salary has increased over the last decade, it has not kept up with the rate of inflation. Low pay, working overtime, health worries during the pandemic and being caught in the crossfire of Texas’ culture wars have led more As a result, classroom sizes have gotten bigger, and in some cases, schools are finding themselves struggling to find teachers.

In North Texas, Fort Worth ISD a budget last month with a $45 million deficit, with raises accounting for more than half of that amount. Frisco ISD also a $24 million deficit to pay for modest staff raises.

In Central Texas, Austin ISD a budget with a $52 million deficit to give employees a 7% raise. San Antonio ISD is giving its teachers raises between 3% and 9%, and it’s paying for them by slashing . In the much smaller Smithville ISD, about 45 miles east of Austin, board members approved a 4% raise that will leave the district with a deficit of more than half a million.

The raise “is important because that may be the most we can comfortably do right now, but it shows our teachers we’re trying to fight for them,” said Josh Magden, a Smithville ISD board member.

Many other school districts across the state find themselves in the same situation thanks to rising inflation, financial disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic and insufficient state funding. Even districts that are deemed property wealthy are contemplating and cutting extracurricular activities to save money. Some, like Fort Davis ISD, have closed their cafeterias.

Lawmakers didn’t approve extra money this year to help schools balance their budgets or pay for raises, despite having an unprecedented $32 billion surplus in their hands — and even after Gov. last year to improve teacher pay and retention.

The political fight over school vouchers the only school funding bill that had a chance of passing.

That proposal, House Bill 100, authored by Ken King, R-Canadian, would have given teachers modest raises — an of an extra $100 per month — and helped ease schools’ financial strains by raising the base amount of money schools get per student, retooling the state’s school funding formula and giving extra money to smaller school districts.

Districts across the state were hopeful the bill would pass and even delayed drafting their budgets or approving any raises until the legislative session had ended.

They were sorely disappointed. The bill died after Senate Republicans a voucher-like program into their version of the legislation, a measure that the House vehemently opposed.

“When you’re sitting on $30 billion at the state level, there’s no reason public schools would not think that they’d get a dime,” Ott said.

But some hope still remains for them. Abbott has kept lawmakers in Austin for two special legislative sessions . Last week, Senate Republicans added an to their property tax bill that would give teachers in urban school districts a one-time bonus of $2,000 and those in rural districts $6,000 through the next two school years.

A similar proposal was brought up during the regular session in the form of Senate Bill 9, authored by Sen. , R-Conroe. At the time, teachers and unions criticized the use of a district’s size to decide which educators get the bigger bonus, saying it’s a scattershot way to determine who needs the money the most.

Abbott is expected to call another special session this year to push for school vouchers once more. The governor made vouchers one of his top legislative priorities this year, and his recent alignment with House Speaker on how to cut property taxes .

Phelan formed a committee to focus on identifying “educational opportunities” while also providing schools with more financial support. Committee members will meet publicly for the first time Tuesday.

Rep. , a New Boston Republican who is in the committee, said a special session on public education would allow lawmakers to focus on finding a compromise. He said he’d prefer to discuss teacher raises in the committee than tacking them in any property tax legislation.

A Texas Tribune analysis shows that teachers in major suburban school districts get paid an average of about $61,432 a year and those in major urban school districts get paid an average of about $59,446 a year — almost $10,000 more than those teaching in rural areas. But costs of living are usually higher in larger metropolitan areas.

House Democrats Thursday that would increase the base allotment schools get per student, which would allow them to pay for teacher raises. But it’s unclear if the proposal will go through in the Republican-dominated Legislature.

The Texas American Federation of Teachers, a group that represents about 66,000 teachers, support staff and higher education employees in the state, is urging lawmakers to pass the teacher pay proposals.

“I am grateful to see this issue addressed in a special session on property taxes as there should be no tension between property tax relief for homeowners and renters and adequate funding for their community schools,” Texas AFT President Zeph Capo said. “This state has enough money in the bank to do both. It merely lacks the political will.”

Some school districts have been able to pass raises and keep balanced budgets without dipping into their savings. Del Valle ISD approved a 6% raise for its employees for the upcoming school year, along with other perks like a $1,000 professional development stipend and discounted child care for teachers.

Annette Tielle, superintendent of Del Valle ISD, said the district did not have to rely on state lawmakers for funding because of the so-called Chapter 313 program, a business incentive plan that allowed school districts to give tax breaks to corporations that move into their areas. In return, schools get some of the company revenue.

Del Valle ISD has a partnership with electric automaker Tesla, which has a factory in the district’s bounds. The district received a sizable payment after the company’s property values were assessed higher than predicted.

Critics of the program said that while it has been great for some districts’ finances, it leads to unequal school funding as only districts lucky enough to attract corporations to their areas benefit.

The Chapter 313 program was allowed to expire last year, and lawmakers a new version during the regular session. The program requires a 10-year commitment but will phase out for participating school districts and corporations when that time is up.

While districts that have benefited from the Chapter 313 program will head into the year without financial headaches, others haven’t been able to afford teacher raises for quite some time.

In Fort Davis ISD, about 150 miles southwest of Odessa, Superintendent Graydon Hicks has not given a pay raise to his teachers since 2019, the last time the Legislature set aside money for it.

The small district of less than 200 students and about 20 teachers has been passing deficit budgets for the last nine years. This school year, it will be about $500,000 in the hole.

Already, the district has been running on the minimum requirements needed to operate. It doesn’t have a cafeteria, or art or tech programs. Hicks said there is nothing left to cut.

Hicks predicts the district will be out of money by next year. If that happens, Fort Davis ISD might end up being absorbed by a larger district.

“I’m just frustrated. I’m angry,” he said. “It’s a shame that we have politicians fighting for election talking points instead of fighting for the kids.”

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Amid a crush of late-breaking business in Austin, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s proposal to grant education savings accounts (ESAs) to every family in Texas before the May 30 deadline. Months of wrangling had yielded enough twists to both encourage and dismay the policy’s backers: an early passage out of the state Senate; a 16-hour hearing in the more moderate, skeptical House; and even a compromise measure, quashed after a veto threat from Abbott. 

But in the end, the hope of instituting universal school choice didn’t advance nearly far enough, even under unified Republican control over both the legislature and executive. An effort that could have transformed Texas, virtually overnight, into the biggest school choice marketplace in the country — and potentially bolstered its governor’s conservative bona fides — instead faltered before the goal line. And while the chances of a statewide voucher offering haven’t been extinguished entirely, the greatest prize for voucher proponents appears to be slipping away.

James Henson, director of at the University of Texas at Austin, said that while Abbott is “not inclined to back off” of his conservative policy instincts, he still hasn’t won over the allies he needs after spending considerable political capital.

“At the most mundane level, the governor has found himself in a position where he’s very publicly committed” to vouchers, Henson said. “But he may have overestimated his ability to turn votes in the House.”

The fight isn’t quite over, as that he will call legislators back for a special session dedicated to the question of ESAs. Whether that move will be announced in the coming months, the fall or even later is still unknown, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, one of the state’s loudest voucher advocates, has candidly said what tradeoffs the bill’s passage might necessitate.

It could make for a puzzling endgame to what had been a conservative breakthrough in statehouses around the country. Fueled by activist calls for greater parental rights and fierce battles over the teaching of subjects like race, gender and sexuality, the movement for private school choice has proceeded from strength to strength this year, with Iowa, Utah, Arkansas and Florida all instituting voucher-like initiatives for every student. But Texas, the nation’s biggest red state, couldn’t close the deal.

Some of the state’s leading players in education say that the halting progress shouldn’t be seen as a surprise. Going back nearly two decades, Republicans have tried to establish school voucher systems — only to be thwarted by members of their own party. No matter the ideological currents, GOP members from rural areas have consistently proven hostile to programs they believe would unsettle the finances of local school districts, which are often the biggest employers and social anchors in their communities. Their support, in Texas and other states, could determine the path forward for perhaps the most controversial K–12 idea today.

“There is a group of Republican lawmakers who are otherwise very conservative in the ways that they vote, but who see this as a measure that would take money away from their communities’ public schools,” said Christy Rome, executive director of the anti-voucher Texas Schools Coalition. “Largely, they don’t have private school options in those communities, so they feel that this is a way in which the state invests in education without benefiting their ˛őłŚłó´Ç´Çąô˛ő.”

The rural factor

For all the new momentum behind school choice — often born of parents’ dissatisfaction with COVID-era policies or their suspicion of teachings on race and gender — this year’s push for ESAs in Texas carried unmistakable echoes of earlier, similarly unsuccessful efforts.

In 2017, rural Republicans joined forces with urban Democrats , even after Abbott and Patrick signaled their forceful support for the measure. In 2013, 2009 and 2007, House members passed the use of public funds to pay for private schools. Even in 2005, with arch-Texan George W. Bush occupying the Oval Office and the education reform era in its ascendancy, a Republican-led voucher proposal by a similar coalition.

This year’s model, dubbed , was to circumvent common objections to private school choice, with $8,000 ESAs made available only to students who hadn’t attended private school the previous year; temporary subsidies were even offered to smaller districts that saw students leave for private alternatives. 

Nevertheless, the law was huge in scope. An analysis from the state’s Legislative Budget Board would increase to $1 billion by 2028. 

That price tag bred resistance from the start. Although the state just before the pandemic began, K–12 schools are still funded to a large degree through local property taxes. Given the challenging economic and demographic trends facing many communities in the more remote stretches of Texas — 86 of the state’s 254 counties lost population between 2010 and 2020, by the Texas Association of School Boards — many state representatives jealously guard resources for public institutions like schools, hospitals and fire departments.

“Nobody has been able to come up with a deal that persuades enough rural school districts, and rural members, that this is not going to hurt them,” Henson said. “If there’s a structural factor, it’s the size and geography of Texas — it’s hard to change the situation in these very small, far-flung districts where the economics of keepings schools in business are just very difficult.”

Abbott got a taste of public disapproval for his plan while traveling the state to persuade families. The tour, which around Texas, was met with by local educators and community members. 

Judge Scott Brister, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Texas appointed by Abbott to chair a , said that schools “are what hold these small communities together. They’re frequently the main business in town, the thing keeping people there. And if those schools die, the towns will die.” 

But while he wasn’t involved in this session’s ESA debate, Brister is bullish on the ability of tiny communities like Penelope, TX — a Central Texas town with a population of 207, where his mother worked as a school counselor — to adapt to changes in how educational services are delivered. 

Supporters even see the policy as a means of arresting years of flight from small towns. Michael Barba, K–12 policy director at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, said vouchers held the promise of attracting parents who might otherwise give up on rural life.

“A number of the rural counties have a declining population of school-aged kids because young families aren’t dropping roots in their hometowns,” Barba said. “They’re moving to the big cities because they don’t have the educational opportunities, the workforce opportunities, in their hometowns.”

Doubts about special session

Barba said he was encouraged by Abbott’s focus on vouchers, calling it the governor’s “number-one issue.” The commitment was evidenced last month by Abbott’s pledge to call a special session if SB 8 wasn’t brought to his desk.

But that legislative maneuver comes with peril as well as promise. Already, a special session called in late May to deal with property taxation from the House and Senate, which have been divided this year on a number of issues besides school choice. Hyper-focused on a narrower set of priorities than are typically debated, such sessions offer fewer opportunities to horse-trade in pursuit of a compromise. They also tend to catch the eye of the local political press, making it harder for quiet deals to be struck.

One question on the minds of local education observers is why the conservatives — including Abbott and Patrick, but also their allies in the state Senate — didn’t aim for a narrower victory, perhaps by launching a voucher system solely for low-income or special needs students. Similar, small-bore programs were established in states like Arizona and Florida before incrementally being expanded statewide.

Rome, of the Texas Schools Coalition, suggested that a recent round of legislative redistricting, wherein with other jurisdictions, partially diluted the strength of the rural anti-voucher bloc. That may have led the governor’s team to think they could dispense with more marginal steps, she argued. 

“The shift in membership of the Texas legislature made state leaders believe they had the votes to pass a voucher proposal without starting small,” Rome said. “There was some thinking that the coalition would disband or not have the votes to prevent full vouchers, but that hasn’t proven to be the case.”

A special session would offer the opportunity to rethink that strategy, and existing legislation could point the way forward. A late in the regular session, for instance, linked vouchers with a $50 increase in per-pupil allotments from the state. Another version, originated in the House, would have provided vouchers only for the roughly 800,000 Texas students either attending a failing school or diagnosed with a disability; that idea from the governor’s office.

Whatever the details, Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson said that Abbott would have to be willing to accept something less than his ideal package. Without paring back the voucher footprint, or adding additional sweeteners to financially strapped districts, he said, the effort was likely doomed.

“I can’t imagine why you would bring this up in a special session in the same form, because you’re just offering to get beat again,” Jillson said. “Unless you’re going to change the offer, there’s no reason at all to bring it up.”

Bipartisan legislation that would overhaul how Texas funds its community colleges is heading to Gov. ‘s desk for approval after the House agreed to accept the Senate’s amendments Wednesday.

Last week, the Senate unanimously approved a House bill to fund the state’s community colleges based on how many of their students graduate with a degree or certificate or transfer to a four-year university. Currently, schools are largely funded based on the number of hours students spend in a classroom.

Bill sponsor Rep. , R-New Boston, had previously told The Texas Tribune the House was likely to accept the Senate additions. VanDeaver served on a commission of lawmakers and community college presidents last year that recommended the changes, along with a long list of ways the state could better support the more than 642,000 students who attend Texas’ 50 community college districts.

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The Senate added language from seven smaller higher education bills to the legislation, nearly all of which have already passed out of one or both chambers. These include legislation to provide new grant funds for students and workforce development, legislation to ease the student transfer process between two- and four-year schools, and one bill dealing with student privacy.

In a press release, a coalition of business and higher education advocates celebrated the bill’s passage.

“By 2030, 62 percent of all Texas jobs will require postsecondary credentials — but Texas businesses are already struggling to find qualified workers,” Justin Yancy, Texas Business Leadership Council President, said in a statement. “Now, thanks to the passage of House Bill 8, state leaders can continue to address the skilled workforce shortage, support our businesses, and ensure more Texans can earn self-sustaining wages.”

A new budget provision that is contingent on the legislation passing shows that in the next two years, the new funding model would direct about $2.2 billion toward public community colleges, compared with the old system, which would have provided $1.8 billion.

Texas community colleges are primarily funded by local property taxes, student tuition and fees, and state money.

While every community college receives a little over $1.3 million for core operations in each two-year budget, the rest of the money it receives from the state is allocated in two ways. The vast majority of that funding depends on how many hours of instruction students receive, called contact hours. The rest — around 10% — is awarded based on milestones like the number of students who complete their first year of math, earn 15 credit hours or graduate with an associate’s degree.

But over time, the state’s share has not kept pace with other sources of funding and now accounts for less than 25% of community colleges’ budgets. School leaders say the state needs to rethink how community colleges respond to workforce demands and prioritize efforts to enroll more students in programs for industries that pay well but don’t take a long time to complete.

House Bill 8 would shift the funding balance so most of the money that schools get from the state is based on student outcomes. Schools would compete for funding against their own progress in those areas.

Specifically, the legislation says the state would allocate funding to colleges based on metrics like the number of credentials they award in high-demand industries, the number of students who earn 15 credit hours and then transfer to a four-year university, or the number of high school students who earn at least 15 credits through a dual-credit program.

Instead of waiting for lawmakers to allocate a pot of funding each session, schools would be able to look at their data and determine what their funding levels would be.

“The new finance system will fundamentally shift how community colleges support their students, ultimately providing them with more valuable options as workforce programs receive as much of an emphasis as academic programs,” said Renzo Soto, a policy adviser for Texas 2036, a nonprofit focused on improving Texas’ future through public policy. “This all culminates into a greater focus on ensuring community colleges are delivering workforce returns for students, employers and the state through state funding tied to the student outcomes that matter most — earning a credential of value that prepares them for the workforce.”

HB 8 lays out a road map for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to implement the new funding system, but it would require the state agency to determine many specifics such as the new formulas to calculate just how much money each college would receive. As the bill is written now, the state agency would have until Sept. 1 to put the new system in place. Texas Higher Education Commissioner Harrison Keller said that means the board would need to have the details decided by mid-July to get state approval.

Keller called the legislation historic and said it was crucial that all the community college leaders across the state backed the change.

“We could not contemplate making such a dramatic change so quickly without that strong partnership and buy-in from community college leaders across the state,” he said.

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The Texas Legislature gave final approval Sunday to a bill that will criminalize performers that put on sexually explicit shows in front of children as well as any businesses that host them.

Originally designed as legislation to restrict minors from attending certain drag shows, lawmakers agreed on bill language that removed direct reference to drag performers just before an end-of-day deadline. The bill now goes to Gov. ’s desk.

Under , business owners would face a $10,000 fine for hosting sexually explicit performances in which someone is nude or appeals to the “prurient interest in sex.” Performers caught violating the proposed restriction could be slapped with a Class A misdemeanor, which carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $4,000 fine.

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After lawmakers from both chambers met in a conference committee to hash out the differences between their versions of the bill, the House and Senate released that expanded the penal code’s definition of sexual conduct. The bill classifies as sexual conduct the use of “accessories or prosthetics that exaggerate male or female sexual characteristics,” accompanied with sexual gesticulations.

Advocates said this addition is aimed at drag queens’ props and costumes, which is evidence that lawmakers are still targeting the LGBTQ community.

Rep. , R-Plano, amended the legislation in the House by removing explicit reference to drag. Shaheen told The Texas Tribune that members had viewed videos of performances in which children were exposed to “lewd, disgusting, inappropriate stuff.” He said the updated bill addresses what was in those videos. Shaheen did not specify which videos concerned lawmakers.

Sen. , R-Mineola, authored SB 12 after a small but loud group of activists and extremist groups by filming drag shows and posting the videos on social media. Those groups characterized all drag as inherently sexual regardless of the content or audience, which resonated with top GOP leaders in the state, including Lt. Gov. .

Advocates say the revisions to the legislation still target drag, even if those types of performances aren’t directly mentioned in the bill.

Brigitte Bandit, an Austin-based drag performer, criticized the addition of “accessories or prosthetics” to the bill. Drag artists performing in front of children don’t wear sexually explicit costumes, Bandit said, adding that this bill creates a lot of confusion over what is and isn’t acceptable to do at drag shows.

“Is me wearing a padded bra going to be [considered] enhancing sexual features?” Bandit asked. “It’s still really vague but it’s still geared to try to target drag performance, which is what this bill has been trying to do this entire time, right?”

Shaheen said that including direct reference to drag performers wasn’t necessary to the intent of the bill, which was to restrict children from seeing sexually explicit material.

“You want it to cover inappropriate drag shows, but you [also] want it to cover if a stripper starts doing stuff in front of a child,” Shaheen said.

Rep. , D-Clint, spoke against the bill Sunday just before the House gave it final approval in a 87-54 vote. She criticized the removal of language that previously narrowed the bill’s enforcement to only businesses. González warned that the bill’s vague language could lead to a “domino effect” of consequences.

“The broadness could negatively implicate even the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders,” said González. “It can go into your homes and say what is allowed in your homes after the lines ‘commercial enterprise’ were stricken out.”

During a House hearing on SB 12, Democrats questioned whether the bill’s language would also ensnare restaurants like Twin Peaks that feature scantily clad servers. Shaheen said the way the bill is written exempts these types of performances.

LGBTQ lawmakers of the direct reference to drag performers. But advocates fear the phrase “prurient interest in sex” could be interpreted broadly since Texas law doesn’t have a clear definition of the term, said Brian Klosterboer, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas who testified against the bill in a House committee.

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, the term is defined as “erotic, lascivious, abnormal, unhealthy, degrading, shameful, or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion,” though the language’s interpretation varies by community.

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Texas lawmakers sent a sweeping school safety measure to Gov. on Sunday, including in their response to last year’s Uvalde massacre a requirement to post an armed security officer at every school and provide mental health training for certain district employees.

The measure also gives the state more power to compel school districts to create active-shooter plans.

Both chambers gave their final approval to after ironing out their differences over the past week.

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“It’s time to act,” said Rep. , R-Canadian, before the vote was taken. “We need to prevent the next Uvalde.”

The provision to require an armed person at every school campus was added back into the bill during the negotiation process after the Senate took it out earlier in the session. The armed person can be either a peace officer, a school resource officer, a school marshal or a school district employee, according to the law.

That provision caused the most consternation among the opponents of the bill, who have argued all through the legislative session that fewer guns — not more — is the solution to mass shootings. Still, the bill passed by a relatively large margin in the House, 93-49.

Rep. , D-Austin, said requiring an armed person at schools will endanger students instead of ensuring their safety.

“The potential for disastrous consequences is staggering,” Goodwin said.

The proposal requires the Texas School Safety Center — a Texas State University think tank that has been reviewing schools’ safety protocols since the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting — to review best practices to best secure campuses every five years. In the Uvalde shooting, the gunman entered Robb Elementary through a backdoor that to properly lock. The bill would also create regional safety teams that would conduct intruder detection audits at least once a year.

HB 3 would create a safety and security department within the Texas Education Agency and give it the authority to compel school districts to establish robust active-shooter protocols and follow them. Those that fail to meet the agency’s standards could be put under the state’s supervision.

The bill would also require the TEA to develop standards for notifying parents of “violent activity” on campus and set up school safety review teams to conduct vulnerability assessments of all the school campuses once a year.

Both chambers have said school safety is a priority this session after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at a Uvalde elementary school last year. However, parents of the Uvalde victims were left disappointed after the raise-the-age bill they advocated for earlier in the session. The bill would have changed the age to legally purchase semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21.

To further harden schools, the state would give each school district $15,000 per campus and $10 per student, a figure that many school officials say isn’t enough. In addition, lawmakers have allocated $1.1 billion to the TEA to administer school safety grants to the state’s more than 1,000 school districts.

Sen. , a San Antonio Democrat who represents Uvalde, said Sunday that he voted against the bill because of the funding concerns.

“It is sick and twisted that we have the largest budget surplus in Texas history and we aren’t doing a damn thing to keep our kids safe,” he said. “We aren’t doing anything to prevent another Uvalde.”

Under the bill, school employees who regularly interact with children would need to complete an “evidence-based mental health first-aid training program.” The TEA would reimburse the employee for the time and money spent on the training.

In counties with fewer than 350,000 people, the bill requires the sheriff to hold semi-annual meetings to discuss school safety and law enforcement response to “violent incidents.” This includes making sure there is a clear chain of command and that all radios are working.

In the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting last year, nearly 400 law enforcement officers from different agencies descended upon Robb Elementary in a chaotic, uncoordinated scene that lasted for more than an hour.

Each district would also be required to give the Department of Public Safety and other law enforcement a walkthrough and a map of each campus in an effort to avoid confusion when responding to an incident.

“This is a huge win for the safety of our children,” said Rep. , R-Dripping Springs.

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Gov. said Sunday that he would veto a toned-down version of a bill to offer school vouchers in Texas and threatened to call legislators back for special sessions if they don’t “expand the scope of school choice” this month.

“Parents and their children deserve no less,” he said in a statement. His dramatic declaration came the night before the House Public Education Committee was scheduled to hold a public hearing on , the school voucher bill. That measure passed the Senate more than a month ago but has so far been stalled in lower chamber as it lacks sufficient support.

The committee is set to vote Monday on the latest version of SB 8, authored by Sen. , R-Conroe, which would significantly roll back voucher eligibility to only students with disabilities or those who attended an F-rated campus. This would mean that fewer than a million students would be eligible to enter the program.

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Abbott doesn’t believe the revised version does enough to provide the state with a meaningful “school choice” program. Since the start of the legislative session, Abbott has signaled his support for earlier that would be open to most students. The governor also said he has had complaints over the new funding for the bill, saying it gives less money to special education students. It also doesn’t give priority to low-income families, who “may desperately need expanded education options for their children,” he said.

The centerpiece of the original Senate bill was education savings accounts, which work like vouchers and direct state funds to help Texas families pay for private schooling.

The version approved by the Senate would be open to most K-12 students in Texas and would give parents who opt out of the public school system up to $8,000 in taxpayer money per student each year. Those funds could be used to pay for a child’s private schooling and other educational expenses, such as textbooks or tutoring. But that idea has faced an uphill climb in the House, where lawmakers signaled their support last month for in the state.

Last week, state Rep. , R-Killeen, chair of the House Public Education Committee, prepared a version of the bill in which children would be eligible only if they have a disability, are “educationally disadvantaged” — meaning they qualify for free or reduced lunch — or attend a campus that received a grade of D or lower in its accountability rating in the last two school years. A child would also be eligible if they have a sibling in the program.

About 60% of Texas’s 5.5 million students qualify for free or reduced lunch, and kids in special education programs account for 12% of the total student population. Last year, about 7% of all school campuses graded received a D or lower but were labeled “not rated” because of coronavirus interruptions.

But even that proposal seemed to hit a brick wall in the House. Last week, the chamber denied Buckley’s request to meet in order to vote the new version of the bill out of committee, signaling that there was still deep skepticism.

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Six years ago, Gov. Greg Abbott riled up a crowd of school choice supporters on the steps of the Texas Capitol, calling on lawmakers to send him a bill that would allow parents to use tax dollars to take their kids out of public schools.

“I hope and I urge that that law reach my desk,” Abbott said, donning a yellow scarf — the uniform of school choice advocates — to mark National School Choice Week.

That never happened, and soon enough, the proposal lost momentum as state leaders realized just how uphill of a battle it was. For the next two legislative sessions, Abbott skipped the Capitol rallies for National School Choice Week and was more muted in his support for the proposals.

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But now, Abbott is pushing harder than ever for school choice as part of a broad focus on “parental rights” this session, strongly signaling that the issue is his top legislative priority. He has crisscrossed the state speaking at a dozen “Parent Empowerment” events often at nonpublic schools in more rural communities, laying out why he believes the Legislature should back so-called education savings accounts for every Texas parent.

But passage of a school choice measure is anything but a sure bet, as there is little evidence that he’s been able to convince rural Republicans in the Texas House — who have for years been a reliable firewall — to drop their opposition.

To go all in on such a risky bet is an unusual play by Abbott, a cautious operator who’s used to getting his way when it comes to his highest legislative priorities — and who tries to avoid waging losing battles. On issues that have split his own party, Abbott is known to withhold wielding his political capital until there’s a clear path for victory — as was the case with the 2021 passage of permitless carry of handguns, as one example.

“There does seem to be more emphasis and more of a priority on getting this legislation passed this session,” said Shannon Holmes, executive director of the Association of Texas Professional Educators, which opposes Abbott on this issue. “Obviously in past sessions … bills have been filed and it hasn’t been a real focus for Abbott.”

“School choice” generally refers to policies that allow parents to take their kids out of their assigned neighborhood public school and send them to other types of schools, like private or religious, with the help of government funding. The chief school-policy proposal this session is , which would create an education savings account with up to $8,000 in taxpayer money per student. The proposal differs from vouchers, which were the previous vehicle for school choice legislative proposals, in that the money would go straight to the parents instead of the school. The Senate Education Committee Tuesday.

Such proposals have been met with resistance in the House by Democrats and rural Republicans who are protective of the public schools they see as the lifeblood of their close-knit communities. Lawmakers have sought to win them over this time by shielding school districts with fewer than 20,000 students from any funding losses caused by SB 8.

Abbott has named “education freedom” one of seven emergency items for the session and hit the road for it more than any other priority. Since early January, he has spoken at a dozen “Parent Empowerment” nights across the state, spanning Texas from Corpus Christi to Amarillo.

Some advocates for school choice who’ve previously criticized Abbott for a lack of commitment have taken notice of how far the governor is going now. Luke Macias, the far-right Texas consultant who previously worked for an Abbott primary challenger, said on a recent podcast that Abbott’s efforts were “incredibly encouraging.”

“I haven’t seen anything like it,” Corey DeAngelis, the national school-choice activist, “This is true leadership. All Republican Governors should be fighting just as hard to empower all families with school choice.”

Abbott’s intense campaigning has anti-school-choice lawmakers on alert. But they’re confident that their coalition in the Legislature will withstand the governor’s lobbying effort.

“I think that coalition is holding strong and I think Gov. Abbott knows how unpopular vouchers are in the Texas Legislature,” said Rep. James Talarico of Round Rock, one of the Democrats on the House Public Education Committee. “That’s why you’re seeing the governor putting as much lipstick on this pig as possible.”

Talarico and other lawmakers hope that the House will send a strong signal on the issue Thursday, when it is scheduled to take up the state budget and consider amendments to it. In 2021, lawmakers approved an amendment that prohibited the “use of appropriated money for school choice programs.” It passed 115-29, with a majority of Republicans joining Democrats to approve it. The amendment never made it into the final budget, but it served as a key indicator of the House’s appetite for such proposals.

The author of that 2021 amendment, Rep. Abel Herrero, D-Robstown, has proposed a similar amendment for the budget debate Thursday. A released Monday features the support of Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, a key member of House GOP leadership who serves as speaker pro tem.

The first stop for any school choice bill in the House would likely be the Public Education Committee, which has a new chair this session, Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Killeen, who has generated considerable intrigue. When House Speaker Dade Phelan. R-Beaumont, appointed Buckley to lead the panel in early February, school choice advocates voiced optimism. But it was unclear why — Buckley has been on the record against vouchers — and most groups did not explain why they were so hopeful.

One pro-school-choice group, the American Federation for Children, remains confident in Buckley.

“We praised Rep. Buckley’s appointment because he has always been a fair-minded guy and has long been committed to providing the best education possible for Texas children,” AFC spokesperson Nathan Cunneen wrote in an email. “We still believe that.”

Buckley has repeatedly declined to share his thinking on the matter this session. And he did not attend the second parent empowerment night that Abbott headlined, which was just outside Buckley’s district in Central Texas.

“I look forward to hearing bills that explore a wide range of options that keep parents at the center of their children’s educational opportunities,” Buckley said in a statement for this story. “In the end, the members of the public education committee will decide which options, if any, make their way to the floor for debate.”

Of the eight House Republicans that Abbott has appeared with on his parent empowerment tour across the state, four voted for the budget amendment in 2021 that banned state funds for school choice programs. Three opposed the amendment. The eighth Republican was not in the Legislature at the time.

The Texas Tribune reached out to all eight House Republicans that Abbott has appeared with and asked if they supported universal education savings accounts. Their offices either did not respond or declined to comment.

The Tribune also contacted the offices of nine more House Republicans, all representing rural areas, and they also chose not to comment on Abbott’s push.

Notably — and perhaps strategically — the education savings account legislation also contains other school priorities important to some Republican lawmakers, including a provision that would restrict classroom discussion about sexual orientation and gender identity through the 12th grade.

Phelan himself has said he is fine with an “up-or-down vote” on the proposal, but he has noted the historical opposition it has faced in the House. He also was the only one of the so-called “Big Three” — a reference to the governor, the House speaker and the lieutenant governor — to not name school choice as priority legislation.

As for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate’s presiding officer, he has long championed school choice and proclaimed in his inaugural address in January that he is “all in” on it with Abbott. Patrick has also vowed to try to force a special session if lawmakers cannot pass a school choice bill in the regular session. That decision is ultimately up to the governor.

Abbott’s office did not answer a list of questions for this story, including whether he was prepared to call a special session over the issue.

Abbott’s evolution

Abbott’s last push on school choice came in 2017, when the Senate passed an education savings account bill, but it died in the House. The same thing happened in 2015.

The issue fell off the radar in the 2019 session, when Abbott and other state leaders decided to prioritize property tax relief and public education funding ahead of what was expected to be a challenging election.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened. School choice advocates say the pandemic opened parents’ eyes to what their kids were being taught and spurred frustration with prolonged school closures at the hands of Democrats and teachers unions.

“They just went too far, and it’s a perfect storm,” said Dave Carney, Abbott’s top political adviser.

Indeed, it was a natural next step for Abbott, who had spent much of the pandemic fighting to make sure no local entities — including schools — could mandate COVID-19 safety policies.

Parents wanted more control over issues like mask mandates. Then, as the nation endured a racial reckoning after George Floyd was murdered by police in 2020, some parents and politicians started pushing back against conversations and books about race in schools.

After the 2021 session, Abbott rekindled some hope for school choice advocates when he signed into law an expansion of an education savings account program for students with disabilities.

It was not until his reelection campaign began that he really seized on the issue, introducing a “Parental Bill of Rights” in January 2022 that offered a host of ideas for giving parents more say over their kids’ schooling. His most consequential statement, though, came four months later, when he declared during a San Antonio campaign stop that parents should be able to “send their children to any public school, charter school or private school with state funding following the student.”

It was his clearest support yet for a voucher-like plan. And he later acknowledged it was a deliberate move, saying he wanted to make it “abundantly clear” he not only supported school choice but the strategy to achieve it.

The timing of the statement was intriguing. Abbott had already won his primary, but the governor, ever attuned to criticism on his right, was getting flak from some — including DeAngelis — for endorsing Texas House candidates in primary runoffs that month who allegedly opposed school choice.

Like many moments in Abbott’s reelection campaign, he bet — successfully — that soothing his right flank was worth the wrath of the other side. His Democratic challenger, Beto O’Rourke, assailed Abbott over his comments that funding should follow the student, especially in rural Texas, but lost by 11 percentage points in November.

Abbott came off that win believing he had a mandate for the next legislative session to push harder for school choice than ever before.

“I’ve talked about school choice every year that I’ve been governor,” Abbott said in early March while addressing the Texas Pastor Council in Austin. “But not only do we have a better opportunity this session than we’ve had before, but as I will explain to you, we have a necessity.”

One factor that Abbott cited, in an explanation that he does not often use publicly, was “an extraordinary movement to expand transgenderism in schools in the state of Texas.” He accused public school teachers of “using their positions to try to cultivate and groom these young kids” into being transgender.

If Abbott prevails, it could be a legacy-making moment for a third-term governor who occasionally faces questions about what exactly he will be remembered for. It could also bolster him with Republicans if he decides to run for president in 2024, a race that already includes former President Donald Trump.

Abbott regularly gets compared to a likely 2024 candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who , expanding a suite of programs the state already had in place. During a visit to Texas in early March, DeSantis gave a speech to Harris County Republicans in which he in “bringing a big school choice package across the finish line.”

The rural Republicans

Speaking to the pastors, Abbott was frank about the challenge before him, saying it is House Republicans who “are holding up our ability to pass school choice” and they are “coming from rural Texas.”

Abbott has sought to appeal to rural Republicans by trying to convince them that the policy is popular. Over 80% of Republican primary voters approved a ballot proposition on it last year — and it enjoyed nearly as much support in rural Texas. Abbott’s office has further broken it down by House district, eager to show individual members that their base voters would have their back.

In some settings, Abbott has spoken more harshly about the forces weighing on rural Republicans.

“These Republicans who say, ‘Listen, I want to support it, but my constituents back home, they just are against it’ — that’s wrong!” Abbott said. “Now, some of their constituents are against it. We call them ‘educrats.’ The educrats — whether they be superintendents or some teachers or primarily the teacher unions — they’re against it, but they’re a minority and they’re a minority of voters in that district.”

Abbott’s appearances have put rural Republicans in a tough position politically — caught between their historical opposition to vouchers and their desire to please their party’s popular leader. The makeup of the legislation — which includes “anti-woke” policies that mimics Florida’s infamous “don’t say gay” legislation — also muddies the waters for Republicans who are at odds with only the education savings account component of the bill.

For the House Republicans who have agreed to introduce Abbott at his school choice tour events, their remarks have been carefully worded — and have avoided any specific policy endorsement.

One House Republican introduced Abbott at his event last week in Giddings by touting the schooling options that are already available to parents.

“Here in Texas, parents have great choices for how they choose to educate their children — excellent public schools, charter schools, private schools and more freedom to educate their kids at home than any other state in the country,” Rep. Stan Gerdes, R-Smithville, said.

One of the most interesting lawmaker appearances on Abbott’s school choice tour came in Corsicana, where Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine, introduced the governor. A member of the House Public Education Committee, Harris has firmly opposed vouchers but has been an Abbott booster on other issues. (His Twitter profile picture is a photo of him talking with the governor.)

In his introductory remarks in Corsicana, Harris did not explicitly back Abbott on school choice but found a way to appeal to his rural constituents.

“[Abbott]’s leading the effort to push back on the woke indoctrination of Texas kids that we’re seeing in urban schools,” Harris said. “And he’s doing that by putting you, the parent, back in the driver’s seat.”

In reality, Abbott himself has rebuffed the notion that such “indoctrination” is a solely urban trend. He told the pastors it was happening regardless of whether “you’re in a tiny little town in East Texas or a large urban area.”

Regardless of whether it is successful, the school choice battle will likely spill over into the 2024 primaries for state House as members will face pressure to explain why they sided with — or against — Abbott on the issue. Abbott’s campaign says it stands ready to help lawmakers who stick out their necks to support his agenda.

“There should be no question, except if you drink too much, that Abbott doesn’t back up your support of him with his political support of you around election time,” Carney said.

Disclosure: The Association of Texas Professional Educators has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

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A that would allow families to use taxpayer money to send their children to private schools and restrict classroom lessons on sexual orientation received initial approval Tuesday and will now go before the Senate for a full vote.

The Senate education committee, led by Sen. , R-Conroe, voted 10-2 to advance Senate Bill 8. The vote took place along party lines, with Republican lawmakers favoring the bill and Democrats of San Antonio and of South Padre Island voting against it.

The committee also voted unanimously for an accompanying piece of legislation, Senate Bill 9, which would give pay raises to teachers and increase funding for classrooms, among other measures. The bill will also go to the Senate floor for a vote.

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The bill would give parents who opt out of the public school system access to a savings account with up to $8,000 in taxpayer money, per student, which could be used to pay for a child’s private schooling and other educational expenses, such as textbooks or tutoring.

A priority for Republican Lt. Gov. , the bill classroom lessons, school activities and teacher guidance about sexual orientation and gender identity in all public and charter schools up to 12th grade. The bill is pieces of legislation under consideration that could affect the lives of gay and transgender Texans, including one that would restricttransgender children can receive.

The bill’s language banning certain types of lessons mirrors Those in favor of the bill say parents are best equipped to teach children about topics like gender identity and sexual orientation.

Historically, rural Republicans have opposed programs similar to vouchers because they fear they could take away money from their local school districts, which are often large employers with fragile budgets. SB 8, however, seeks to address those concerns by shielding school districts with fewer than 20,000 students from any funding losses caused by the savings account program.

Schools in Texas are largely funded based on student attendance numbers. Those smaller districts would receive $10,000 for two years for every student who enrolls in the savings account program and leaves their district.

SB 8 is likely to get approval from the full Senate, but it is not yet clear if the added funding for smaller districts will be enough to get the legislation through the House, which has been traditionally more skeptical of similar programs.

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Parents, teachers and advocates traveled from across Texas on Tuesday to hear from Gov. and make their case to lawmakers for expanding support for private schools.

Abbott is all in this session on passing , which if passed would give families up to $8,000 in taxpayer money, per student, to pay for private schooling through an education savings account, called an ESA.

Lt. Gov. and many Senate Republicans have embraced the bill, which is set to be considered for the first time this session in a Senate committee hearing Wednesday. However, House Speaker hasn’t made “school choice” legislation a priority in the House, and there are questions whether the measure could pass his chamber.

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Speaking in the rain, Abbott rallied a crowd of around 200 supporters on the north Capitol steps to say “parents matter.”

“We’re going to show up, we’re going to show out and we’re going to show the Legislature exactly why it is so important that we empower parents to choose the education that is best for their child,” Abbott said.

Students who leave public schools will perform better under his plan, as would the schools they leave, Abbott said.

That rang true for Larry Romine, a principal at River City Christian School in San Antonio. The K-12 school specializes in teaching students with learning challenges such as ADHD, dyslexia and autism. He called them “educational crack babies,” meaning children who fall through the cracks of the education system and get overlooked. Parents and students end up trapped in a public school that doesn’t work for them, he said.

“It’s one of those situations where they’re like that little mouse on the wheel, running and running and running and they can’t ever get ahead,” Romine said. “They can’t get out, they can’t change it and it breeds a sense of hopelessness.”

Abbott has spent recent months traveling the state to advocate for school choice, monitoring school curricula and other so-called parental rights issues at “parent empowerment” nights.

School choice is an umbrella term that includes a variety of policies, including education savings accounts and vouchers, that give parents the option of enrolling children in schools other than their assigned district public school. It can also include online schools; charter schools, which are public schools run outside the traditional school district system; and magnet schools that are run by school districts but offer targeted programs.

“Our children are being taught a radical woke agenda,” Abbott said at the event. “There’s no reason why any students should have a woke agenda pushed on them. Our schools are for education, not indoctrination.”

The governor’s office and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, helped organize the event at the Capitol on Tuesday. TPPF hosted information sessions in the morning and afternoon for attendees and arranged buses for those like Romine and his students who traveled from out of town.

Danny Strassman, a parent who traveled to Austin from Dallas with members of the Jewish community, said it’s important for religious Jews to provide religious instruction to their children, which isn’t allowed in public schools.

“It’s expensive to run schools. We’re a small community. We pay property taxes and I’m happy to support all the schools, but we’d like some of that to help us as well,” Strassman said.

Strassman is supportive of Abbott’s approach, but he would like to see the program expanded to include children who are already in private schools.

Andrew and Jessica Brummett of Pflugerville are educators and parents of five children. Their children attend Austin Classical School, a private Christian school where Andrew is head of the upper school.

Andrew Brummett said he wants to see teachers be able to open their own schools, as an accountant might open their own practice.

“Part of being a professional is being able to own your own shop. It’s not working in a union shop,” he said. “I value the associations and the unions and people taking care of teachers because I am a teacher and we’re all part of the same team. But at the same time, I want to help teachers to be true professionals and be able to start their own small schools, start their own new program, and a universal ESA would be the kind of thing that can really empower all of us to do our jobs better, to see better results for the whole state.”

A family of seven like the Brummetts would need a household income of less than $159,000 to qualify for ACE scholarships, Texas’ program that provides scholarships for private schools. Andrew Brummett said their situation is emblematic of the middle class and the struggle of having a large family, and having education savings accounts would help address that.

“We’d be able to send our kids to where we want to. I don’t have to work at a school to be able to send them to a great school. I could choose whatever school works best for them,” he said. “We’ve made sacrifices to get them in good schools and to do the best that we were able to do, but it sure would be nice to have some more options.”

Although Republicans control the Legislature, SB 8 faces an uncertain future in the House. There, rural Republicans like state Rep. , R-Canadian, oppose the measure. If enough House Republicans oppose private school vouchers, proponents may have to snag support from House Democrats.

Abbott said opponents of school choice argue such measures would defund public schools and kill “Friday night lights” and high school football games. He pointed to the increases in public school funding made under his first two terms as governor.

In a statement to The Texas Tribune, state Rep. , chair of the House Democratic Caucus, disputed Abbott’s characterization that the governor has been a champion of public schools. In particular, the San Antonio Democrat highlighted the .

“As he’s on his statewide road show about parental rights, the governor should visit parents in Houston ISD and look them in the eye to say that he did everything in his power to support their children and their schools,” Martinez Fischer said.

Disclosure: Texas Public Policy Foundation has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Gov. said Monday he will be “heavily involved” in the push for an this legislative session as the idea continues to face an uphill battle in the Texas House.

Abbott, in an interview with The Texas Tribune, said he would be traveling the state to make the case directly to voters, particularly in rural areas. Such a program away from public schools as parents use that money to pay for their children’s private school, online schooling or private tutors. Similar proposals have typically from a coalition of Democrats and rural GOP lawmakers.

“Among Republican rural voters, about 80% support this,” Abbott said, “and I think that Republican officeholders will see that more and more, and I think there may be a change in the perception of what their voters expect of them in Austin, Texas.”

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Abbott addressed that topic and a few others in an interview on the heels of his State of the State address Thursday.

Education savings accounts

One of the emergency items that Abbott announced was “education freedom,” including education savings accounts for every parent. Those would allow the state to deposit taxpayer funds that parents could then use to help pay for sending their kids to schools outside the traditional public education system.

State House Speaker , R-Beaumont, has said he is fine with an up-or-down vote on those kinds of proposals, but he has noted that the House has previously rejected them by wide margins. In rural parts of Texas, public school systems are major employers and a source of community pride. Many rural regions have few private schools.

In the interview, Abbott sought to distinguish between rural Republican lawmakers and their voters, saying “rural Republican voters strongly support this.” Last year, 88% of GOP primary voters approved of a nonbinding proposition saying “parents and guardians should have the right to select schools, whether public or private, for their children, and the funding should follow the student.” Large majorities .

To build legislative support, Abbott said he would be “taking this show on the road across the state of Texas to appeal to voters themselves.” He spoke at a “parental empowerment night” last month in Corpus Christi that was hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the Austin-based conservative think tank. And he headlined a similar event Monday night in Temple, appearing in the backyard of the new chair of the , state Rep. of Killeen.

Buckley has been opposed to vouchers in the past, but advocates have expressed optimism that he is now open to the idea.

“I think that there at least is the opportunity to have this have a better chance than ever before, in part because of the makeup of the committee, but also in part because of the makeup of the constituents of the members,” Abbott said.

Florida and DeSantis

Abbott shrugged off the idea that he is locked in a conservative policy rivalry with Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is likely to run for president in 2024. Abbott is also a possible White House contender, though he is seen as less likely — and formidable — as DeSantis for now.

“The reality is we really just focus on Texas and working for our constituents here in our state,” Abbott said.

While Abbott did not mention Florida or DeSantis by name, he did boast that Texas “has been a national leader” on restricting abortion and expanding gun rights. He alluded to the laws he signed in 2021 that banned most abortions in Texas and allowed the permitless carry of handguns — two conservative policy priorities in which Florida still trails Texas.

Abbott also argued that Texas has led the nation with its 2021 law that bans large social media companies from blocking users’ posts based on their political viewpoints. He said he believes it is the only such law in the country “that’s been upheld by courts so far.”

Abbott said Texas was even ahead of the curve with a 2021 law preventing local bans on natural gas as a fuel source. That issue became a national controversy recently after the Biden administration that it was interested in outlawing gas stoves, a notion it quickly denied.

Abbott’s remarks come as DeSantis is preparing to make his . He is set to visit Houston and Dallas over the first weekend in March to headline annual fundraising dinners for the county parties in each city.

Paxton settlement

Attorney General has stirred unease in the Legislature with a tentative to end a whistleblower lawsuit brought by former deputies. Phelan said last week that he personally opposed using taxpayer dollars on the settlement, which would have to be approved by the Legislature.

Abbott also has a role in the process as the person ultimately responsible for signing the state budget into law or vetoing it. While he did not voice outright opposition to taxpayer dollars being used for the settlement, he did echo Phelan in saying Paxton will have to convince lawmakers to sign off on the deal.

“It may or may not even reach my desk, but as Speaker Phelan made clear, this is an issue that the attorney general is going to have to fully explain to both the House and the Senate,” Abbott said. “I’m also in the boat of having to learn more about this.”

At the same time, Abbott seemed to downplay any particular controversy over the settlement, saying it is “just like every other budget-type issue I encounter.”

“I need full information on the budget issue to determine if I’m gonna sign it or not,” Abbott said.

Paxton appeared at a legislative hearing on the state budget Tuesday where the settlement was a topic. State Rep. , D-Houston, asked Paxton if he would be willing to pay the settlement out of his campaign funds rather than state coffers. Assistant Attorney General Chris Hilton jumped in to say the whistleblowers are suing the attorney general’s office for retaliation, not Paxton personally. He said there’s no precedent for an individual paying out a whistleblower case from their own money.

“If we lose at trial, the damages exposure would obviously be higher than that,” Hilton said.

Health care for transgender kids

As conservative activists continue to lobby for legislation banning certain health care therapies for transgender kids, Abbott said in the interview that it is a proposal he would sign if it reaches his desk.

Abbott and other Republicans’ rhetoric has focused on surgeries for transgender kids, though medical experts say those procedures are very rare. Abbott suggested such surgeries are “something that a person should at least wait until they’re adult to make a decision on.” LGBTQ advocates have warned that such rhetoric is dangerous for kids’ mental health.

Still, “ending child gender modification” is one of Lt. Gov. ’s top . It is also a legislative priority for the Texas GOP. Phelan has been less clear on the issue, suggesting last month it could be considered by a select committee that he later appointed a Democrat to chair.

Abbott already took on health care for transgender kids last year when he ordered the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate transition-related care for children as . Yet that did not satisfy Abbott’s intraparty critics, who continue to push for a legislative solution. A similar measure failed in 2021.

Abbott declined to put the proposal on any of the calls for the special sessions in 2021, saying its chances of passing in the House were “nil.” However, he did express support for a law at some point in the future that defines transition-related care — like puberty blockers and hormone therapy — as child abuse.

​​“We do need it as a law,” Abbott , “and it would be stronger obviously if the Legislature would pass it, and I want to see the Legislature pass it.”

Disclosure: Texas Public Policy Foundation has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

This article originally appeared in at .

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The win secures the GOP trifecta in Austin that, over the last several years, has fought COVID-19 restrictions, enacted classroom censorship policies and blocked gun safety measures after the elementary school mass shooting in Uvalde.

The Associated Press called the race for Abbott at 11 p.m. Eastern Time Tuesday.

“Tonight, Texans sent a very resounding message,” Abbott said in a victory speech from the southern border city of McAllen.

Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke sought to cast the contest as a referendum on the Republican incumbent’s last four years in office, which included a statewide power grid failure that killed hundreds, new restrictions on abortion and controversy over school safety after the killing of 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School. 

The result confirmed Abbott’s strong support within the growing and rapidly diversifying state of 29 million people, but came as Democrats nationwide fought off what was widely predicted to be a red wave, outperforming pre-election polling.

Following the May 24 tragedy in Uvalde, which was carried out by an 18-year-old gunman who bought two AR-15-style rifles immediately after turning the legal purchasing age, Abbott made no moves to reform gun laws. The inaction was by the victims’ family members.

Meanwhile, O’Rourke pressed the issue, arguing that the mass shooting was preventable. That produced a memorable moment at an August  , when an Abbott supporter laughed while the Democrat described the damage done by an AR-15.

“It may be funny to you, motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me,” O’Rourke said.

Still, Abbott carried the mostly Hispanic Uvalde County by a 22-point margin, a slight increase beyond former President Donald Trump’s advantage there in 2020.

Capitalizing on anxieties over crime and inflation, the incumbent won majorities in nearly every county except those on the border and those representing the urban centers of Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas. More than 4 in 10 Texans named the economy as their chief concern, according to an Associated Press .

Facing his third defeat in four years, this time after breaking state fundraising records and outraising his opponent, O’Rourke did not specify his future plans. The high-profile candidate has become a fixture in Texas Democratic politics since his surprisingly close race against U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018.

“I don’t know what my role or yours will be going forward, but I’m in this fight for life,” he said.

With over 95% of the ballots accounted for, Abbott received 54.8% of the vote and O’Rourke received 43.8%. 

A Democrat has not been elected to state office in the Lone Star State for nearly three decades.