A new report on improving education in the state was published by the Texas House Select Committee on Educational Opportunity and Enrichment.
The report outlines a number of policy recommendations ahead of an anticipated special legislative session on school choice in October.
While a critical bloc of Republicans from rural districts and Democrats in the Texas House have historically stood against school choice legislation, the committee’s recommendations suggest there could be room to negotiate with the Senate.
“If the Legislature chooses to enact a parental choice program, it should clearly outline student eligibility to ensure success and target certain student populations to ensure that each program participant is assessed to make apparent academic outcomes,” wrote the committee. “The program should prioritize high need students. The program should include appropriate safeguards to ensure fiscal responsibility and accountability.”
Mandy Drogin, campaign director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s education initiative Next Generation Texas, suggested to The Dallas Express that she is fairly optimistic that state lawmakers will arrive at an agreement.
“I think more and more representatives, more and more parents, more and more Texans realize that there is not a downside to this and we need to put control back in the hands of parents where it belongs,” Drogin said.
She claimed that a common refrain of anti-choice stakeholders — that education savings accounts (ESAs) would be used to lure students out of public schools, consequently defunding them — did not hold water.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Dallas ISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde echoed the refrain during a school board meeting in May.
“The Senate passed a bill that would give Texas families $8,000 per child to send their child to private school, even if that child is already in and attending private school. That’s not a choice anymore. That’s a subsidy,” Elizalde claimed.
“By contrast, the state pays public schools $6,160 per student right now to educate that child. I kind of find it upsetting that the Texas Senate would pay people more to take their kids out of public schools than it pays to educate them in our own schools,” she added.
Drogin disagrees.
“When we look at spending as a whole, when you actually go to the Texas Education Agency website and you look at what our average spending per student is across Texas, it’s not even remotely close to that basic allotment number,” Drogin told The Dallas Express.
“Unions, associations, superintendents — those entities that have a vested interest in misdirecting the public about how students are funded — they use that basic allotment number, but it’s nowhere close.”
“I mean, when we actually look right now with all the federal money that’s added in, we’re over $13,000 per kid here in Texas. So it’s just not true,” she added.
Gov. Greg Abbott has voiced his intention to sign some kind of school choice legislation this year, come hell or high water.
“Every parent deserves choices about where they will send their child to school. All these parents know this isn’t a Republican issue, it’s not a Democrat issue. This is a civil rights issue,” Abbott previously said, according to the Texas Observer.
Polling conducted by the University of Texas at Austin indicates that support for school choice is on the rise, with a majority of respondents saying they support some type of school choice legislation.