The flurry of talk around “school choice” has prompted a re-examination of what such a program can do for the Lone Star State.
School choice can refer to a number of different policies but the common theme among the various programs is that it shifts the focus of state education funding away from the public schools and towards the student. Gov. Greg Abbott has said school choice has the votes to pass in the Texas legislature next year after years of failed attempts, per The Texas Tribune.
Corey DeAngelis, commonly known as “Corey DeAngelis the school choice evangelist”, spoke to The Dallas Express’ Kellen McGovern Jones on the Cowtown Caller Podcast to make the case for reform in Texas’s education policy. DeAngelis holds a Ph.D. in education policy from the University of Arkansas and is the author of the national bestseller The Parent Revolution: Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools.
What Is School Choice?
He started by noting that the type of school choice program Texas is poised to embrace would not be one based on vouchers but an “education savings account (ESA).”
In this style of school choice, if a parent chooses not to send their kids to a public school, the money that would have otherwise been given to the public school to educate the child is deposited “into a parent-directed savings account that can only be used for education expenditures” and could then be used to educate a child at a private, charter, or home-based school, he said.
He described this as “the purest form of funding students as opposed to systems” and noted its similarity to Pell Grants for universities.
What Are The Benefits?
Although various forms of school choice have been on the books for hundreds of years and have purportedly benefited some rural states, DeAngelis said that there are tangible benefits for highly populated American states that have experimented with school choice.
“A couple of decades ago, Florida didn’t have school choice. And they were at the bottom of the pack on the nation’s report card,” he said. “Well, guess what? They’ve expanded to universal school choice in 2023. … They now have scores at the top of the pack. When it comes to the nation’s report card outcomes after adjusting for differences in student outcomes. U.S. News and World Report ranked Florida number one in education.”
Preemptively he hit back at the notion that there was some sort of cost obstacle to a program like Florida’s.
“It’s not a money issue. They spend 27 percent less than the national average –– and get better results.”
“In Florida, they have 11 studies looking at the competitive effects of school choice,” he added. “What happens to the kids who remain in the public schools? Well, 10 of the 11 studies find statistically significant positive effects of private school choice competition on the outcomes of the students in the public schools. So it’s a rising tide that lifts all boats academically.”
He went further, pointing to a school choice study by David Figlio in 2020.
“[The study] found that not just test scores improved in the public schools, but that behavioral outcomes and absenteeism reduced as well,” DeAngelis said.
In his own academic research, DeAngelis studied data from students and former students over the long term, until they were about 30 years old.
“We found that compared to the kids in the public school system within the same neighborhood — same demographic characteristics — the kids who got opportunities to go to a private school using their voucher program, low-income kids, were a lot less likely to commit crimes as adults,” he said. “We also found a reduction in paternity disputes — which could be caused by teenage pregnancy–– so you may be less likely to engage in other risky behaviors, which could lead to out-of-wedlock births.“
Will School Choice Drive Up Private School Costs?
DeAngelis says that assuming an increase in demand will necessarily increase the costs of private schooling, in the long run, is faulty because “it only looks at one side of the equation.”
He expressed a traditional free-market view that if demand for educational options other than public schooling increases, more private options like homeschooling and micro-schooling will become available. He noted that these market entries and the competition between the various educational institutions will drive down prices.
What If The ESA Money Does Not Cover The Full Cost of Private Education?
DeAngelis said that he found this to be one of the least compelling arguments against school choice. He noted that at the microeconomic level, individual families, especially low-income families, often do not pay the educational “sticker price.” He added that they frequently use some combination of scholarships, tuition discounts, and other means to afford education. That would not change in a school choice system, he says.
He adds “that every little bit helps,” even if it does not completely cover all tuition expenses at all schools.
Will School Choice Allow Disruptive Students To Drag Down Good Schools?
He responded that private schools and public schools would both be allowed to keep their disciplinary policies for any student who misbehaves in class. He added that reinforcement of these policies would be one of the many tools schools can use to improve educational outcomes and attract new pupils.
Could ‘Crack Moms’ Spend ESA Money On Frivilous Or Illicit Purchases?
The author did not deny that this could happen in some cases. However, he gave the caveat that those who raise this argument to denounce school choice are “using outliers to try to dictate policies.” He said that those who raise these concerns do not point to public school teacher misconduct as a reason not to have public schools.
“Do we say, oh, well, there’s sometimes educator misconduct in the public school system too? Should we fire all teachers because of that? Should we defund every single public school because of a few bad apples? No, we should hold people accountable when there’s wrongdoing,” DeAngelis said.
He used Arizona’s school choice program as an example of a policy that was not overly regulated but also protected against fraud and misuse.
“[Arizona has] an annual random audit just to make sure that the funding is being spent on a broad sense of education expenditures. You can’t use the money on drugs or frivolous expenses. It has to be on education.”
Later, he added that parents cannot simply declare themselves to be homeschool teachers and pay themselves a salary with the money.
He said that this audit policy yielded a less than 1% fraud rate in the Grand Canyon State.
Will Rural Schools Collapse If School Choice Is Embraced In Texas?
Concern for rural schools is one of the most frequently cited objections to any type of school choice system in Texas. The Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) says that for the approximately 950,000 Texas students who attend rural schools, “options other than their local public schools are few and far between.”
TASB’s website adds that “It’s disingenuous to claim that vouchers will give these families more choice when that means driving dozens of miles every day to a private or religious school. It’s not a realistic option for hard-working Texas families in rural areas of our state.”
DeAngelis finds this criticism unconvincing.
“It’s the most brain-dead argument I’ve heard against school choice,” he said.
He depicts the opposition argument as falling along these lines: “‘I’m in a rural area. The public school is the only option,’ they’ll say. And then the next breath with a straight face, they’ll try to tell you that, well, ‘school choice, giving families an option will destroy my fantastic rural public school.'”
Comparing this dichotomy to the two-button meme, where someone wants to pick two mutually exclusive options at the same time, he asked rhetorically “Which one is it?”
He told DX that this was a new union talking point as the Teachers Union has, in his view, had to update its playbook to fight these efforts in red states. He believed it was losing its efficacy as a means to repel rural voters from school choice, however.
West Virginia, he said, was “the first to go all-in on school choice.”
Notably, some rural Texas GOP voters have booted their incumbent reps in whole or in part because of the school choice issue. DeAngelis cites Representative Glenn Rogers, who was defeated by Representative-elect Mike Olcott in a campaign that heavily focused on this issue, to represent State House District 60.
Representative-elect Shelley Luther, a former public school teacher, defeated incumbent District 62 Rep. Reggie Smith in the GOP primary on a platform that also included school choice. Luther is also the famous Dallas salon owner who was jailed for defying lockdown mandates in 2020.
Toward the end of the interview, he reminded listeners that Maine and Vermont have had an equivalent “town tuitioning” program on the books since the 1870s.
“These were scholarships for students who lived in areas that were so rural that they didn’t even have public schools in their district,” he said. “And so the state understood that not having a lot of options was an argument to expand opportunities, not to restrict them. They gave the funding directly to the parents to take to a private religious or non-religious school. You could even take the money to another public school in a different district. Sound familiar?”
He concluded this thought with these words: “They figured this out over 150 years ago. Maybe we can figure it out in 2025.”
How Will Voters Know A Good School Choice Bill From A Bad One?
He said a good bill would be to “go as big as possible.”
He shared his belief that a “universal” bill is best because it does not allow the government to pick “winners and losers” based on arbitrary criteria.
A bad bill would overly interfere with the private educational process, DeAngelis says. A sign of a bad bill would be “random admissions mandates, saying that if you participate in the program, then you can’t have any admissions processes whatsoever. That is way too much government overreach. That is way too much control of the private sector. And so you’ve got to look out for those things,” he added.
Will School Choice Pass In 2025?
“We have the votes. It’s going to happen, and it’ll be a great day in history once that bill passes,” he concluded.