School vouchers may finally be coming to Texas. How do Fort Worth leaders feel about that?
Texas could be the latest state to adopt a school choice policy that allows parents to use public funds to decide where to send their children, including to private schools, depending on who is elected as the next governor.
That is one of the hot-button education issues candidates for governor are clashing on as they vie for votes from parents, teachers and students in the Nov. 8 election with markedly different pitches.
Capitalizing on a grassroots movement of parents critical of public schools and demanding transparency and accountability, Gov. Greg Abbott has spent the last several months pushing for school choice — a politically fraught topic that has failed to gain traction in years past.
Pointing to a “parental bill of rights” introduced at the beginning of the year, an Abbott campaign spokesperson said the campaign’s position is “restoring parents as the primary decision-makers over their child’s education and healthcare, while also fully funding public education and allowing funding to follow the student.”
Beto O’Rourke, Abbott’s Democratic challenger, says such a move would take resources from a public school system that is already struggling.
“There’s no scenario where vouchers that the governor is proposing makes sense,” O’Rourke told the Star-Telegram at a recent campaign event in Dallas. “They would drain money out of our public school classrooms, making it even harder for those teachers and parents to deliver a world-class education to our kids.”
School choice vouchers and other similar proposals have garnered bipartisan disapproval in the past, namely from Democrats and rural Republicans — whose constituents have few to no choices other than public schools.
In Fort Worth, where — despite recent improvements to accountability test scores in some local districts — only 36% of students can read on grade level by third grade, leaders have differing views on what is the right move to ensure quality education for all students.
Fort Worth superintendent says parent choice is future of education
Parental choice in one form or another is the future of education, Angélica Ramsey, Fort Worth ISD’s newly minted superintendent, told the Star-Telegram in a recent interview.
But expanding choices beyond public charters and ISDs would set up a two-tiered education system, at the disadvantage of students in need, she added.
“How you ensure economic viability …in an area and region … is by providing a sound public education system for every child,” Ramsey said. “And pulling out and maybe having folks attend either charters or private schools with those public dollars, you’re now getting to a place where you’re creating even more of a two-tier system, because the parents with the agency, the parents that have reliable transportation ... are able to pull their kids.”
“And then the parents of children with the least resources end up in an even more under-resourced school. And to me, that’s criminal,” she added.
That doesn’t mean that the traditional neighborhood school is the only option, however.
“The days of ‘you go to the school you are zoned for’ are over,” Ramsey said.
Programs of choice, including specialized schools for students interested in culinary, agriculture, or air and ground transportation, among other options, give parents options within the Fort Worth district.
Despite the variety of programs, however, Fort Worth schools have seen a steady decline in enrollment since 2016. Just since the pandemic the enrollment numbers have declined by nearly 10%, according to Texas Education Agency data, with more than 85% of transfers leaving for charter schools.
Charter schools on the rise in Fort Worth
While the debate over whether money leaving for other schools could defund already struggling schools, parents are contending with what they see as low-quality education from public schools.
At the groundbreaking for Dennis Dunkins Elementary school earlier this year, parents and elected leaders pointed to the Rocketship charter school as a solution for an at-risk neighborhood with a chronically underperforming campus.
Yolanda Seban, who has four kids, drove all the way to Austin to voice her support for the campus before the State Board of Education.
“ISDs have been around for a very long time,” she told the Star-Telegram at the ground breaking ceremony. “For the longest time, that is all we had.”
The low accountability rating at her locally zoned school led her to explore charter schools even before Rocketship considered opening a school in Texas, and galvanized her to support it, Seban said.
Gyna Bivens, the city council member for the Stop Six area, lauded Seban at the ceremony, and also thanked state officials for approving the charter school’s application.
“You can look around Fort Worth ISD schools and I’m not throwing any kind of shade,” she said. “But if there is a way to get your children a quality education, I admire you for stepping off that path.”
Charter schools in the state of Texas, unlike private or religious schools, are funded with public dollars — and are under the oversight of the Texas Education Agency.
The Fort Worth Education Partnership, which regularly presents findings to the city council on education, told the Star-Telegram it does not support vouchers.
Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker wouldn’t say whether she supported vouchers when asked for this story, but said in a statement that her “priority is to make sure that every student in every ZIP code has access to a high-quality education, regardless of what type of school you choose for your children.”
According to a September poll from the Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler, most Texas voters want voucher-like programs that allow state funding to be used to send children to private schools.
A cautionary lesson from child care subsidies
Texas parents in need can already access government funds to help offset the cost of early education through child care subsidies.
The child care subsidy system has a fundamental flaw, however, according to providers and advocates: The amount is too low to offset the actual costs of running a business and providing a quality education.
The result, in the world of early childhood education, is a workforce held back from providing quality care to the best of their ability, Green Space Learning CEO Audrey Rowland said. The same could happen in the K-12 space.
“If those vouchers become a major source of funding for private institutions, are those vouchers enough to pay for private overhead and quality of care?” she asked. “If not, then we are undermining both programs, public and private. We’re taking money from a cash-strapped public school and we’re not giving enough to make a private school a good employer and a good provider of quality education.”
That wrinkle should be considered when looking at any sort of voucher program, according to Gabriel Huddleston, the director of TCU’s Center for Public Education & Community Engagement.
“Rarely, if ever, is a voucher going to equal what it costs to go to a private school,” he said. “It’s going to cover part of it, but it’s not going to cover the full thing.”
Students moving back and forth could further complicate that math, Huddleston said, since state funding would not necessarily revert to the campus if a student were to leave for part of a year and then return to an ISD.
The quality of private, charter and religious schools is also variable, Huddleston said — meaning you aren’t guaranteed a better academic outcome by switching schools.
Vouchers could lead to state oversight of private schools
In addition, the introduction of state funding could come with state oversight — something parents and operators of private institutions are looking to avoid.
This adds to what TCU associate professor of educational leadership Jo Beth Jimerson called “a spaghetti bowl of complication,” with the election issue.
“Politics makes strange bedfellows,” she added.
Advocacy groups that are against vouchers since they would siphon funds from public schools align with those that want to avoid state mandates like standardized testing and curriculum requirements.
“There’s a concern that if your funding is coming from (the state), we’re going to be beholden to the state curriculum and having to take these tests,” Jimerson said. “Which I think is a fair concern, because if you’re going to have tax dollars, how do you send those to private institutions without some form of accountability? And comparing who’s getting better results?”
Those are just a few questions that could vastly change the stakes of school choice measures, as parents across the political spectrum size up the implications of a voucher program.
Fort Worth leader says academics will draw students back
Whether vouchers are approved or not, Superintendent Ramsey said academics will be key to getting students back into Fort Worth public schools.
“You’re always going to have families that choose to maybe not attend public school or traditional, for other reasons,” she said. “But I’m going to say that some of it is, a lot of it, is if you weren’t the best choice then they were having to make other choices. We have to be the best choice in Fort Worth.”
Through work on academics, climate and culture, Ramsey said, students can have “avenues of parent choice in a way that doesn’t put kids on the bus ... for 45 minutes.”
