Last week, Senate Bill 8, a proposal that would let Lone Star State families use taxpayer money to send their kids to private school, made it out of the Texas Senate's Education Committee, clearing it for a vote by the full body.
Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has crisscrossed the state in recent weeks isell the idea that the bill — which faces a far rockier road in the House — would let Texas parents choose how to best educate their kids.
However, education experts said Abbott's promises are misleading at best. SB 8 will likely lead to lower test scores, a deterioration of public schools and a rise in non-accredited private ones, they argue.
For all of the Republican governor's suggestions that middle-class and lower-income Texans would be able to afford elite educations for their kids, critics say that's far from the truth.
Few additional San Antonio families would be able to send their kids off to Central Catholic High School, for example, experts said, noting that instead they're far more likely to end up at ill-equipped and underfunded campuses that pop up in the wake of the bill's passage.
"It's not the elite private schools that are doing really well and have endowments and are propped up by a Catholic Church diocese or wealthy alumni and have waiting lists," said Michigan State University education policy professor Joshua Cowen, who's spent years studying vouchers across the country. "Those are not the schools that participate in school voucher programs. They don't want anything to do with it."
If passed, SB 8 would provide parents who pull their children out of public school an $8,000 annual check, known as an "educational savings account." That money could fund tuition at a private school or help cover homeschooling expenses. Families with kids already enrolled in private school or being homeschooled won't be eligible.
Advocates for SB 8 argue that vouchers will increase the competitiveness of Texas' public schools, forcing them to cut what conservatives characterize as bloated school district bureaucracies.
However, Cowen warns he program being pushed by Abbott would slash funding for existing public schools fwhile failing to deliver on the school choice that voucher advocates trumpet.
While San Antonio boasts elite private campuses, including Keystone Private School, Texas Military Institute and the aforementioned Central Catholic, Cowen said most residents who tap into the program wouldn't be able to send their children to any of them.
Instead, if Senate Bill 8 passes, the state is likely to see a gold rush of what Cowen describes as "subprime" or "pop-up" private schools — campuses run out of church basements or established by nonprofits to make money on the side.
Cutting corners
After Wisconsin passed its "school choice" program in 2013, around 120 pop-up private schools appeared — some almost out of thin air — to accept parents' vouchers. The average shelf life of those campuses was four years, according to Cowen's research. Some 40% of all private schools in Wisconsin have closed since the state launched its program.
Many of the pop-ups were never accredited, Cowen said. Further, since a large share were set up as money-making ventures, many drastically slashed services to stay open.
"[Every] dollar that gets spent is a dollar out of [the school operator's] wallet," he added. "And so, the incentive is to try and save every penny and to cut corners."
The state of Texas spent, on average, $9,900 per student on education during its 2022 fiscal year, according to the Education Data Initiative. If a private school sets its tuition at $8,000 — the maximum amount of a voucher under SB 8 — that enterprise would be spending less money per student than what public districts already spend.
Combine that lower spending with an incentive to cut corners, and the quality of that education declines considerably, according to Cowen.
What's more, in states with voucher programs — including Ohio, Indiana and Louisiana — test scores fell dramatically after the measures' passage, largely due to the substandard education offered by pop-up schools, according to the professor.
"Those impacts on test scores in Louisiana and Ohio had roughly twice the effect that the COVID-19 pandemic did to test scores and about the same size of what Hurricane Katrina did to test scores in Louisiana," Cowen said.
Harming rural districts
Just as voucher programs tend to diminish education outcomes for participating students, they also pose serious risks students who remain in public schools, especially those in rural districts.
Parents who sent their children to a substandard pop-up school are likely to find the district they left is now struggling financially because public education money was drained to fund vouchers, said Aaron Hood, superintendent of Robert Lee ISD and president of the Texas Association of Rural Schools Districts.
Further, those returning students are likely to bring the baggage of their time at a substandard pop-up back to the public campus.
"Let's say they're gone for three-quarters of the school year, but they're having trouble at their new school — let's say for behavioral problems — and that school says, 'We're no longer taking you,'" Hood hypothesized. "They're fixing to be wrapped back into the school district that's mandated to take them back, and that public school is going to be held accountable for their testing scores — and they weren't even being taught in that school district."
Hood isn't alone in his concerns about the financial drain SB 8 would have on the state's many rural districts. Rural Republicans in the Texas House have spoken loudly and decisively against vouchers.
Most rural Texans live around 20 miles from the nearest private school, meaning even if vouchers pass, they're not left with many options beyond a public campus. Many parents in those areas recognize that, if vouchers pass, their tax dollars would end up subsidizing the private educations of children who live miles away, Hood said.
Despite Abbott's effort to paint vouchers as a win for conservative Texans, many rural Republicans oppose the idea. A similar school voucher bill rammed through the Texas Senate in 2017 failed miserably once it reached the House.
The governor's voucher push also comes amid growing evidence of similar programs failure in other states. So, why is it among his top priorities this legislative session?
Why Now?
Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson blames the Republican zeitgeist.
Republican Glenn Youngkin's surprise victory during Virginia's 2021 gubernatorial campaign energized Republican strategists around the notion that they could win on a platform of fighting "wokeism" in schools. Such parental grievances were exacerbated by school lockdowns and mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I think Republicans and conservatives generally saw Youngkin be able to use these education issues to win the governorship in Virginia," Jillson said. "And a bunch of other Republicans running for statewide offices saw the effectiveness of these parental rights educational opportunity issues and decided to use them themselves, particularly in Florida and Texas."
Last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential Republican presidential contender, signed into law one of the nation's largest private school voucher expansions. Similar to what's being proposed in Texas, that measure would award families who pull their kids out of public schools roughly $8,500.
GOP strategists view the passage of voucher bills as ammunition for winning statewide and even national elections, according to Jillson.
"Someone like DeSantis would run for president on their successes in reforming public schools in their state and empowering parents knowing that at least conservative voters liked the idea," he said.
But Jillson added that Republicans' fixation with vouchers has more to do with partisan victories than ensuring real educational improvements for parents and students.
"All these school voucher programs talk about parents empowerment," education scholar Cowen said. "But they ignore the idea that it's the schools getting the money and making the decision about who they select."
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