School choice advocates are on the cusp of a major victory in Texas — the nation’s largest red state without any school choice program — less than a year after the education establishment dealt them a serious setback in the state Legislature.
The issue became so important in the Lone Star State that it prompted Gov. Greg Abbott to deploy his political machine to back key opponents against fellow Republicans who blocked school choice legislation last year. Nearly a dozen incumbent Republicans have already been forced to retire or were defeated in the March 5 primary, while four more will learn their fate next Tuesday in the runoff elections that will determine the future of school choice in Texas.
In November 2023, 21 Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives joined all 63 Texas House Democrats present to eliminate education savings accounts from a $7 billion education bill. The 84-63 vote killed the school choice program — initially limited to just 40,000 students eligible for $10,500 private school vouchers in a state with nearly 6 million K-12 students — and also nullified the entire bill that spent more than 90 percent of school dollars on funding for public schools, including $4,000 raises for public school teachers.
Public school teacher unions and their allies argued that school choice would take away funding from public schools, and the Republicans who opposed the school choice law mostly came from rural districts with few or no alternatives to public education. “The supervisors of rural school districts are an important political force,” said Scott Jensen, a senior adviser at the American Federation for Children, an organization that supports school choice. “They are the largest employer in the city, have some of the highest paying jobs and buy things from everyone in the community.” Plus, Jensen added, “there’s Friday Night Lights” – the outsized importance of high school football in Texas.
“It’s a somewhat fallacious argument to simultaneously say, ‘We don’t have private schools in our districts, and if this legislation passes it will hurt our schools,’” said Mark Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University. The shipment. “If rural districts don’t lose students, they don’t lose money.” The more legitimate concern of public school advocates in rural districts, Jones noted, is that there are churches with existing infrastructure that could open schools in rural districts if they could count on a steady stream of school choice money.
After the education savings bills were defeated last year, school choice advocates tried to win the battle at the ballot box, with Abbott leading the charge. “The governor had said it all along [legislative] session, we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way,” Dave Carney, Abbott’s chief strategist, told reporters. The shipment. “As soon as we got the vote and lost, we started recruiting and went out to raise money … to run campaigns against 21 guys.” Five of the 21 anti-school choice Republicans retired, and Abbott endorsed the primary opponents against 10 of the remaining 16 Republicans. In a GOP primary on March 5, six of 10 candidates endorsed by Abbott won outright, with the remaining four races heading to Tuesday’s runoff.
That gives school choice advocates at least 74 seats — leaving them two votes short of the required majority in the 150-seat House of Representatives — and they are confident they can get at least two more votes in Tuesday’s runoff. “Our polls show that we are in the lead in all respects [four] of those races,” said Jensen The shipment. Carney was a little more cautious and spoke up The shipment it is difficult to hold elections with a small number of elections that take place the day after Memorial Day. Still, Carney said, “We feel really good. We think we will do well on Tuesday.”
Dislodging incumbents is notoriously difficult, so why has school choice now become such an important issue? Hillary Hickland, a Texas House Republican Party candidate who defeated an incumbent opponent of school choice in the March 5 primary, points to the COVID pandemic as a catalyst that turned her into a school choice activist and ultimately a political candidate. “COVID has alleviated a lot of problems for a lot of parents when it comes to education and schools,” said Hickland, a mother of four. The shipment. “We became aware of the level of rigor and also the content – the curriculum that was being promoted to our children.” For example, Hickland pointed to an extremely sexually explicit book that caused a stir because it was displayed at her district’s high school. She also expressed regret that her children were subject to a mask mandate for nearly a year after schools returned to in-person learning.
Polling data shows school choice is a political winner for Republicans across the state. During the March 2022 Texas GOP primary, Republicans made their views known by voting on a non-binding ballot proposal that declared: “Texas parents and guardians should have the right to select schools, both public and private , for their children, and the funding must follow the student.” Those Republican voters supported the resolution 88 percent to 12 percent, with solid majorities voting yes even in rural districts. Polling from the University of Houston in February showed that a vote against school choice would seriously hurt Republicans, with 63 percent of Republican Party primary voters saying opposition to 2023 school choice legislation would make them less likely to vote for the incumbent Republican would vote, with little difference between urban and national elections. and semi-rural provinces. Only 16 percent of Republican Party primary voters said the opposite.
But while “school choice is a big driver,” Jensen says, it is “not as big a driver as Governor Abbott.” By a margin of 64 percent to 14 percent, Republican Party primary voters said an endorsement from Abbott would make them more likely to vote for an incumbent president, according to the University of Houston poll. “Without Governor Abbott’s strong support for school choice, this issue alone would not be a major problem for most of these incumbents,” Jones said. According to Carney, the governor has spent about $10 million, on top of the millions spent by groups like the American Federation for Children. Abbott also was willing to campaign against Republicans who oppose school choice on a variety of issues, including border policy.
“We actually stole [Governor] Kim Reynolds’ playbook in Iowa, where she had a similar problem in her Senate,” Carney shared The shipment. “She had nine Republican senators who voted against school choice, and she went on a campaign and won seven of the seats, and lo and behold, Iowa has school choice.”
It’s not just school choice that has roiled Texas GOP politics this year: So too are the fallout from the 2023 impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. But only 46 percent of Republican Party primary voters said they were less likely to vote for a candidate who voted to impeach Paxton, while 31 percent said the Paxton vote would have no impact on their vote. and 23 percent said this would happen sooner. support a Republican who voted to impeach Paxton.
The overwhelming majority of the 60 Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted to impeach Paxton will run again next year, but the overwhelming majority of the 21 Republicans in the House of Representatives who defied Abbott on school choice, won’t do that. As an example of the relative salience of the two issues, Carney pointed to Republican incumbent Travis Clardy, who voted against both Paxton’s impeachment and school choice and lost his seat to pro-school choice candidate Joanne Shofner by 37 percent to 62 percent.
If enough remaining school choice advocates prevail on Tuesday, it remains to be seen exactly how big the policy win will be for parents and children who want options beyond what public schools have to offer. “The school choice package we will see coming out of the Senate in 2025 will be more robust than that compromise” that was defeated in 2023, Jones said. “The clear goal is to ultimately get school choice for everyone.”
“Texas is the biggest prize on the map. So in itself it dramatically increases the footprint for school choice in America,” Jensen said. “There are only four states that are completely Republican controlled and that don’t have private school choice. And I think all four could happen by 2025.” Idaho, Wyoming and North Dakota are the three states outside of Texas where the school choice movement could see victories in the coming year.
“Within the red states, we’re going to have bolder, bigger programs,” Jensen said. “We are still struggling in the blue states.”
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