Some voucher opponents are ready to compromise; others are hoping supporters will fumble over the program’s size, eligibility and accountability.
After years of hitting a brick wall, school voucher advocates in Texas are entering next year’s legislative session with better odds than ever of passing a measure that would let parents use public money to pay for their kids’ private schooling.
But first, lawmakers will have to agree on what the program looks like.
Gov. Greg Abbott, the torchbearer in Texas’ voucher movement, has insisted that the Legislature pass a “universal” program that would make every Texas student eligible to access taxpayer-funded education savings accounts — a voucher-like policy that would give families direct access to state funds they could use to cover the costs of tuition, uniforms, home schooling and other education-related expenses.
Beyond that, however, pro-voucher legislators will need to iron out details like how to prioritize applicants if demand outstrips funding and what sort of testing, if any, should be used to measure the performance of participating students. And they will have to get a voucher program across the finish line while also navigating calls to boost public education spending — a challenge that led to the passage of neither in 2023.
With diminished power to quash vouchers this time, some opponents are holding out hope that the pro-voucher contingent will stumble over disputes on the many moving parts that are still up in the air.
This shift in tone around vouchers — from questions about whether supporters could muster enough votes, toward a sharper focus on what they should ask for in the bill — illustrates how Abbott transformed the political landscape with astonishing speed, fraying what was once an imposing anti-voucher coalition of Democrats and rural Republicans in the Texas House. Backed by a retinue of deep-pocketed allies, the governor led the charge to oust numerous anti-voucher lawmakers from his own party earlier this year, leaving him with what he claims are 79 “hardcore school choice proponents” in the House — three more than needed to pass legislation in the 150-member chamber.
Despite the slim margin, voucher supporters are bullish that their primary wins generated enough momentum and political will to keep members in line.
“I think that many Republicans are going to second-guess how much they want to double-cross the governor and how much they want to fight him, because he’s proved that he’s willing to push all the chips in on this,” said Genevieve Collins, director for the Texas chapter of the conservative political group Americans for Prosperity, which is pushing for education savings accounts.
After adopting the mantle of “school choice” in his 2022 reelection bid, Abbott tried to muscle a voucher program through the Legislature last year by using a mix of hardball tactics. When those efforts failed, the governor doubled down at the ballot box, spending millions of his own campaign dollars and numerous hours on the stump boosting primary challengers against fellow Republicans who had helped sink his voucher proposal last fall.
The upshot: More than a dozen of those Republicans lost their seats or chose to retire and were replaced by voucher supporters. The coalition was further bolstered in November, when two Abbott-backed GOP candidates flipped open seats held by retiring Democrats — including, symbolically, the district being vacated by Robstown Rep. Abel Herrero, who regularly authored anti-voucher budget amendments that served as the yardstick to measure the House’s voucher resistance by putting his colleagues on record with an up-or-down vote.
Still, some voucher critics argue that Abbott’s 79-vote majority assumes backing from numerous incoming Republicans who voiced general support on the campaign trail for “school choice” or education savings accounts but have never laid out what kind of voucher proposal they would back.
In a memo to members last month, House Democratic Caucus leaders urged defiance, pointing to comments made by pro-voucher Republicans acknowledging that the passage of voucher legislation is not a done deal yet. The memo noted that, “like any bill before the House, the devil is in the details.”
“Voucher proposals vary greatly from bill to bill and it has never been clear what type of bill is desired by the Governor,” the memo reads. “Certain concessions to some members may result in others [no longer supporting] the bill.”
Advocates for education savings accounts hope some of the concessions that caused heartburn between the House and Senate last session — particularly those aimed at appeasing voucher skeptics — won’t be needed now that the House is working with a tentative pro-voucher majority.
“My hope would be that in the political moment we’re entering, there are fewer factions involved, and so you can focus more on the core program and a lot less on all of the peripheral accommodations for the different factions who will hopefully not be quite so prominent,” said Jeremy Newman, vice president of policy for the Texas Home School Coalition.
State Rep. James Talarico, an Austin Democrat and former public school teacher, said he remains optimistic opponents can once again block a voucher program, in part because Abbott has developed a tendency of “manufacturing momentum” by overstating support for past proposals. Talarico noted that in October last year, the governor said the House was “on the one-yard line” on passing vouchers. About a month later, a bipartisan bloc in the lower chamber axed vouchers in what proved to be the fatal blow.
