On October 9, 2023, Governor Greg Abbott approached Texas lawmakers and demanded they be present in Austin for a special legislative session. This session was allegedly meant to focus on making decisions on several outstanding hot button issues including immigration, COVID-19 restrictions, and what lawmakers were calling “Education Savings Funds”. But the majority of the special session seemed to reveal Abbott’s overwhelming interest in getting these education-centered funds passed.
These Education Savings Funds, also called vouchers, have become more popular across several conservative states and allow parents to use public funds to pay for private school for their children. In essence, parents would receive vouchers, worth a set amount and usable towards tuition at participating private schools. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott’s proposed voucher program would mean a $8,000 per child per year allocation of state money to pay for private school tuition, homeschooling materials, online school or private tutors.
Now a point of consistent debate, supporters argue vouchers offer parents more choice in and control over their child’s education, especially as the state falls deeper into a culture war that seems to be centered on topics like DEI, gender identity and other topics deemed “woke” by the far-right. Supporters also believe that vouchers would increase access to quality education while promoting competition and innovation in education with the improvement of institutional choices.
Critics, though, argue that vouchers take funding away from public schools, potentially harming already underfunded and underperforming schools while funneling public funds to private institutions. Opponents also argue that private schools receiving voucher funds may not be subject to the same accountability standards as public schools. Naysayers also point out that vouchers fail to cover the full cost of private education, doing little to mitigate the financial burden for most families, even with the stipend.
The average yearly cost of private K-12 schools in Texas is around $11,017 (as of 2024) though the actual cost can vary depending on the specific school, its location, religious affiliation (if any), and other factors. Some schools may be significantly more expensive, while others may be less expensive than the average.
Texas wouldn’t be the first state to meet push back, though. Arizona has been a hot-bed of debate around the state’s school voucher program as it continues to churn out questionable results. According to 2023 research conducted by the Arizona Department of Education, 75% of vouchers have gone to students who were already attending private school options and that 78% of vouchers went to students who had no previous public school history – meaning the overwhelming majority of students using Arizona vouchers to attend private schools come from households that could already afford private school.
Still, though Abbott’s voucher program is accused by naysayers of being a “parent-led voucher scheme”, in Texas, voucher policy can actually be tied to a handful of rich donors, pushing money through groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Educational Equity PAC and American Federation for Children (AFC).
According to ALEC’s website, the organization is America’s largest nonpartisan organization of state legislators dedicated to the principles of limited government. The site boasts membership that includes over a quarter of the country’s state legislators. Though, according to a report from The Common Cause Texas, an organization whose mission is to reduce the influence of money in politics, ALEC habit of providing state legislators with pre-written “model policies” that they can introduce as their own bills touched Texas in recent years, quietly setting up the state’s legislature for a school voucher program.
Evidence of ALEC’s meddling in Texas education policy can be found as early as 2014, when upon the release of the 19th edition of ALEC’s Report Card on America Education, the organization accused Texas of “failing to offer private school choices”, subsequently introducing and began pushing voucher ideology by way of a 2005 bill called the “Great Schools Tax Credit Program Act”. By 2015, 17 states had already adopted some form of the bill while another 13, including Texas, were penning bills to either introduce or expand the tax credit in their respective states.
Seemingly a passthrough entity, funded almost entirely by a few large corporate donors and wealthy individuals, Educational Equity PAC has ties to plenty of pro-voucher donors. Super wealthy donors include Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings. Educational Equity PAC is also propped up by the Charter Schools Now PAC, which is heavily supported by the Alice Walton (Walmart) and Richard Weekley (David Weekley Homes), and Legacy 44 PAC, which backs Texas Democrats.
Then there is the American Federation for Children, or AFC, whose mission, according to their website, is to empower families with the freedom to choose the best K-12 education for their children. According to records of a September 2023 call between Governor Greb Abbott and Christian leaders, Abbott impressed his reasoning behind pushing school choice policy was to combat “public schools of indoctrinating students”.
Abbott’s solution to said indoctrination was to offer parents choices, by way of increasing accessibility via school vouchers. These vouchers, though, weren’t incredibly popular with even members of the governor’s party, and that was an issue. Enter AFC, who vowed to back those who’d be willing to run and challenge Republicans who’d voted against Abbott’s vouchers.
For the 2024 primary election, the AFC Victory Fund, the organization’s PAC spent almost half a million dollars, opposing 15 GOP House incumbents who’d helped to block the school voucher program. Of the 15 House incumbents who had AFC funded challengers running against them, 11 were unseated between the primaries and the May 2024 runoff. “While we did not win every race we fought in, the overall message from this year’s primaries is clear: Texans want school choice”, Governor Abbott said, seemingly confirming that dark money PACs had all but delivered him a win for public funds for private school vouchers.
