Texas Republicans haggling on school choice should remember why it matters to begin with | Opinion

The Texas Senate and House have shown their cards on school choice, and one thing is clear about the year’s top legislative priority for Republican leaders: There remains plenty of work to do.

Neither the bill approved by the full Senate nor the one laid out in a House committee constitute the nightmare scenario that opponents portray. Neither would take a wrecking ball to public education or, as a small but vocal number of conservatives opposing the idea have it, meddle in the business of private schools.

But either version risks creating a program that mushrooms in cost and goes far beyond where Texas should start: a modest trial program that offers lessons on whether vouchers can help those who need them the most. As lawmakers negotiate the details, they must avoid overreaching.

Both measures reflect the gusto that’s built up on behalf of choice, whether one calls it “vouchers” or the kinder-sounding “education savings accounts.” They also demonstrate an alarming trend overall in the era of budget surpluses: New spending obligations that could force lawmakers into brutal choices to make the next time the economy sours.

Our view is that a limited voucher program is one of the tools that may help address the ongoing crisis of learning in Texas schools. Some families need services they can better obtain outside of their local public schools, and a choice program would inject another measure of competition to prod local districts to provide more and better options.

We recognize, however, that the overwhelming majority of Texas students will remain in public schools, and those schools must be well-funded and effective. Competition has merits, but when the goal is a public good, it is not as powerful a force as in the private sector.

On balance, the House bill does better in meeting these priorities. Both chambers would spend about $1 billion in the program’s initial stage, but the House plan offers more structure to help ensure that money flows to the families who need it most. It splits recipients into four groups, with the first two focused on students with disabilities. The Senate would have a broad lottery that lumps most low-income and disabled students in competition with those from families with upper-middle class incomes of more than $150,000 a year.

We preferred the approach offered two years ago, when initial plans would have limited savings accounts to students newly enrolling in private schools. But supporters such as Gov. Greg Abbott, emboldened by victories in Republican primaries and an increase in support, have reached for “universal” school choice in which every family is theoretically eligible. The Senate would maintain some priority for newly enrolling students in its lottery, but a strict limit would be preferable, at least at first.

The House bill also links public-school spending to the amount available for a private account. A voucher would be worth 85% of what the state spends on a public school student; the Senate fixes most accounts at $10,000. The House provision would help ensure the accounts maintain enough value to be effective. But it’s also a blow for fairness for public schools. If future budget shortfalls mean cuts, the voucher program will bear its share of the burden (assuming future lawmakers keep the provision).

Right now, leaders are saying all the right things about boosting overall education funding. The Senate would raise teacher salaries, dramatically so for rural schools. The House pairs its voucher bill with an increase in basic per-student spending from the state.

If this is all starting to sound expensive, it is. Budget analysts estimate that the cost of the voucher program would rise to more than $5 billion by fiscal year 2030, the program’s fourth year of operation.

Right now, despite the alarms sounded by education bureaucracy groups, money is available thanks to Texas’ robust economy, which has sales- and energy-tax collections humming. It’s similar to how Republicans are cutting local property taxes by sending state money to local schools.

Every year, those cuts have to be maintained. Every time they meet, legislators try to cut taxes further, setting the bar a bit higher for the next Legislature. A school voucher program could be similar. When an economic downturn pinches sales-tax collections — and history shows it’s inevitable — where do the cuts come from to balance the budget, as required?

As they work out the differences, GOP leaders would do well to remember the principles behind decades of conservative advocacy for school choice. The priority has always been to lift up underserved children who, as the rhetoric often goes, are consigned to bad schools merely because of their ZIP code. Texas has a crisis among poor children, particularly Black and Hispanic students, in terms of basic reading and math achievement. School choice is not a panacea for that, but applying pressure to neglected schools and giving some children another path could be part of the solution.

Lawmakers have to be willing to tweak and experiment, too. The pressure of competition won’t come if the state just ends up giving out money to families already choosing private education. If the elaborate tiers and lottery leave too many of the neediest families out, the plan isn’t working.

The differences in the bills might seem easily solved, especially with more than two months to go in the legislative session. But it may take Abbott’s direct involvement to get it done. If so, we hope he recalls why he’s put so much political capital on the line over school choice in the first place.