With election day quickly approaching, the two frontrunners in the race for Texas governor canvassed North Texas earlier this month, touting different visions for education reform.

Challenger Robert “Beto” O’Rourke has been traveling across North Texas talking to voters about his platform. While speaking at a town hall in Decatur, a small town north of Fort Worth, O’Rourke emphasized issues dealing with public education.

He asked the audience, “What if [we] paid teachers enough to not have to work a second or third job to make ends meet for retired teachers? … What if we ensured there’s a cost of living adjustment every single year moving forward?”

He promised to “fully fund public schools and fully support teachers, students, and parents,” pushing for even more state and local taxpayer dollars to be allocated to public schools.

Meanwhile, incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott participated in a roundtable discussion with teachers at King’s Academy, a private religious school in Dallas.

He advocated for enabling parents and students to have more freedom to choose which school to attend.

The pro-school choice governor floated instituting a voucher system that would allow parents to see tax dollars allocated for their kids’ education directed to the school they want to attend.

“There are some parents in this state that want a choice that is different than the government assigned school for their child,” the governor explained.

Abbott claimed, “parents know better which school is best for their child than does the government.”

The governor’s campaign website clarifies that Abbott believes, “A one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn’t work. That’s why we need to empower parents to choose the school that’s best for their child.”

Supporters of school choice programs like a voucher system claim that allowing taxpayer dollars to follow the child instead of the zip code will expand opportunities for lower-income families who typically would be unable to examine options outside their local public school.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Next Generation Texas initiative highlights this sentiment, arguing that “parents should be the ultimate decision maker when it comes to the best education for their child” and that the state needs to “remove the barriers that limit where parents can choose to send their kids to school.”

O’Rourke disagrees, insisting in Decatur, “Not only are we going to stop the vouchers, fully fund teacher pay, we’re going to invest in our public schools.”

Recent polling suggests that Abbott enjoys a well-insulated lead over O’Rourke, with 46% of the estimated vote over only 39% for the challenger. A plurality (44%) of parents intend to vote for Abbott, potentially indicating that his appeal for increased parental control over education has granted him a slight edge in that demographic.

Abbott and O’Rourke have agreed to a debate on September 30, as reported by The Dallas Express.

As Texas falls behind the rest of the U.S., Dallas ISD has fallen behind the rest of the state. Dallas ISD’s STAAR scores for the 2020-2021 school year were below the statewide average across the board. For all grades and all subjects, only 60% of Dallas ISD students received scores of “approaches grade level,” compared to 69% in the state.

Additionally, a four-year longitudinal study on the class of 2020 indicated that only 82.8% of the district’s students graduated high school on time, compared to a statewide rate of 90.3%.