Texas Senate’s voucher proposal would give families $10,000 to fund students’ private school

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

---

The Texas Senate revealed a bill on Friday to create an education savings accounts program, a top priority for Gov. Greg Abbott and top lawmakers after a similar bill failed to pass last legislative session.

The bill, co-authored by Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Republican from Conroe who chairs the Senate Education Committee, would provide families with $10,000 a year per student in taxpayer dollars to fund their children’s tuition at an accredited private school and additional expenses like textbooks, transportation and therapy. The legislation would provide $11,500 per student for children with disabilities. It also would provide at least $2,000 a year per student for home-schooling families who participate in the program.

“Texas families are rejecting the status quo and calling for an education system that prioritizes their children’s success. Senate Bill 2 places parents at the center of their child’s education, empowering them with the freedom to choose the educational path that works best for their families,” Creighton said in a statement.

School vouchers, also referred to as “school choice” programs, use taxpayer money to help families pay for their children’s private schooling. Education savings accounts are a voucher-like program that allows families to draw funds from a state-managed account to pay for private school tuition and other education-related expenses.

Any child eligible to attend or already attending a public school could apply to the program proposed by the Senate, as well as those enrolled in a public school’s pre-K program. Families with children already attending private schools could also participate. Gov. Greg Abbott, the state’s top school voucher advocate, has previously called for any voucher proposal to have universal eligibility, which generally means that any student can apply. The bill would prioritize students in low-income households and children with disabilities if demand for the savings accounts exceeds the funding available.

Organizations helping administer the program would have to notify parents that private schools do not have to follow federal and state laws regarding special education that public schools must abide by, such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.

The bill also has a provision to address potential misuse of funds. It directs the state to refer to local authorities any organizations or individuals helping administer the program or participating in it who use the funds in ways not allowed. Approved expenses include private school tuition, training for an industry-based certification, tutoring and instructional materials.

The bill does not require participants to take the same state standardized tests issued to public school students annually, which some voucher opponents and school officials have said creates an unfair playing field. It does require that students take a nationally-recognized exam.

The Senate Education Committee will hold a public hearing for the proposal on Tuesday.

The bill arrives during the same week that both the House and Senate released their budget priorities for the 2025 legislative session. Both chambers proposed setting aside $1 billion in the next two years to create education savings accounts — a $500 million increase from what lawmakers proposed for such a program during the 2023 legislative session.

Under Friday’s proposal, that would mean roughly up to 100,000 students who want to enroll into an accredited private school could participate in the program. Texas public schools currently enroll about 5.5 million children.

Mandy Drogin, a campaign director with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, one of the state’s leading conservative organizations pushing for education savings accounts, told The Texas Tribune that the Senate bill would create the largest education savings account program in the U.S.

“Additionally, the universal eligibility would ensure that no children are left out and every single parent will have the opportunity to make educational choices for their children,” she said in a statement.

Chandra Villanueva, director of policy and advocacy at Every Texan, which opposes vouchers, said she doesn’t think the bill’s prioritizing of low-income students or children with disabilities if demand for the program exceeds funding will have that much of an impact.

“Most low-income families won’t be able to afford the tuition gap for a private school, or they’ll be sending their kids to a lower quality school because they market themselves as private but don’t really offer anything above and beyond what a public education would,” she said.

Villanueva added she doesn’t think the bill will help special education students much either, given a relatively small number of private schools in the state specializing in serving students with disabilities.

David DeMatthews, an education professor at the University of Texas at Austin, called it “absurd” that the proposal allows private schools to ignore federal and state protections that ensure children with disabilities receive proper evaluations and educational services.

“I think this is an example of the creation of an education market that is not for everybody,” DeMatthews said. “Because you're asking parents to waive protections that are solidified in federal law. There’s going to be parents who are not willing to do that.”

Meanwhile, Jeremy Newman, vice president of policy with the Texas Home School Coalition, said the education savings account bill proposed Friday was “pretty close to what we expected.”

“Home school families would be able to use it, and I think it would be extremely useful for them,” Newman said, adding that his organization plans to support the legislation during the public hearing set for Tuesday. “I'm fairly hopeful that we'll get something similar in the House.”

After years of hitting a brick wall, school voucher advocates in Texas entered this year’s legislative session with better odds than ever of passing a measure that would let parents use public money to pay for their kids’ private schooling. The Senate has largely stood in lockstep with Abbott as he has pushed for a voucher program.

The House remains the bigger challenge.

Last session, lawmakers in that chamber voted to strip from a massive education funding bill a provision to establish education savings accounts. Twenty-one Republicans, most of whom represented rural school districts, joined House Democrats in opposition to the legislation over fears that such a proposal would undercut the funding public schools rely upon.

The funding for the program proposed by the Senate on Friday would not come from the same pot of money the state uses to fund public schools. However, schools receive state money based on student attendance, so they would lose funding for every child who leaves a public school to attend a private school under the state’s voucher program.

Last year, Abbott campaigned against the Republicans who helped block his plan. He successfully did so with the financial support of people like Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass — a vocal critic of public schools — who have sought to use their money and influence nationally to sway the outcome of local elections against school voucher opponents.

Since then, many voucher opponents in the Texas House no longer hold seats, and Abbott has expressed confidence that the chamber now has enough votes to pass voucher legislation. Some opponents are holding out hope that pro-voucher legislators will stumble over disputes on the many moving parts still up in the air.

Brian Woods, head of grassroots advocacy at the Texas Association of School Administrators, said the recent prolonged House speaker battle shows that not all Texas Republicans “are on the same page” when it comes to vouchers or some other issues.

“Folks can agree on a general topic, but have a hard time reaching consensus on very specific items and that work is still yet to be done,” Woods said, though he also acknowledges the Legislature has a better chance of passing voucher legislation this session than in past years.

Earlier this week, the House and Senate also proposed allocating $4.85 billion in new funds to the state’s public schools. During the last legislative session, public schools did not receive a meaningful funding boost after lawmakers declined to pass a school voucher program. Abbott had promised not to sign a bill increasing public education funding without the passage of a voucher program. That left school districts across the state grappling with multimillion-dollar budget deficits, campus closures, declining enrollment, expired pandemic relief funds, inflation and teacher shortages.

This session, the Senate wants to increase teacher pay by $4,000. Teachers in rural areas would receive an additional $6,000 pay bump — a total of $10,000 — which Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said would close the salary gap between urban and rural teachers. It was not immediately clear whether teachers would receive the pay raise annually or one time only. The increase is higher than what lawmakers proposed last session but still falls short of what public school teachers say they need to bring their salaries in line with the national average.

Texas ranks 30th for average teacher salary, according to the National Education Association, which tracks educator pay across the U.S.

Disclosure: Every Texan and Texas Public Policy Foundation 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 list of them here.