Instagram / GovAbbott
Gov. Greg Abbott has made school vouchers, opposed by both Democrats and rural Republicans, a major priority.
The Republican governor likely will call a special session of the Texas Legislature on school vouchers in October, his top political strategist told the Dallas Morning News. That session would follow the impeachment trial of Attorney General Ken Paxton, scheduled for September in the Texas Senate.
“The governor, the team and our allies continue to work on this,” longtime Abbott strategist Dave Carney told the Morning News. “We’re getting closer every week. When we have the trial and everything else behind us, then the governor will call a special session, probably in October, and we’ll get everything done.”
Abbott staked considerable political capital on vouchers, touring the state and speaking at a religious schools to promote the idea. As in years past, the proposal faced strong resistance from both Democrats and rural Republicans and failed to build support in the Texas House.
A version of Abbott's plan that drew Senate support promised parents who pull their children out of public schools an $8,000 annual check to fund tuition at a private campus or help cover homeschooling. That bill also pledged to temporarily pay small districts, including rural ones, $10,000 per student who leave in a bid to offset financial losses.
Pointing to voucher programs in other states, Democrats warned that Abbott's scheme would decimate public schools while giving rise to non-accredited private schools with poor student outcomes. Rural Republicans are similarly resistant, worrying that vouchers will sound the death knell for already financially strapped rural school districts.
Academic research has largely supported those concerns. Test scores plummeted after Ohio, Indiana and Louisiana adopted large-scale voucher programs, largely due to the proliferation of substandard private schools, experts said.
"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," Joshua Cowen, a Michigan State University education policy professor and voucher expert, told the Current earlier this year.
Although vouchers have had a losing record in the Texas Legislature, Carney told the Morning News that Abbott's allies could use up to $4 billion in uncommitted education funding to shore up public schools. They also could sweeten the pot with teacher raises, which the Lege failed to pass both during the regular session and the recently ended session on property taxes.
“I’m sure that will be part of the package and discussion," Carney said.
Subscribe to SA Current newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter| Or sign up for our RSS Feed
