InFocus DN School Vouchers Will they help or hurt Black children?

By Ignacio Perez

In addition to the Texas Education Agen- cy’s takeover, the Houston Independent School District faces a potential loss of funding because of GOP-backed schoolchoice legislation that is moving ahead in the 88th Texas Legislative session.

The Senate Education Committee recently approved Senate Bill 8[MOU1] , which would allow parents to set up an Education Savings Account (ESA) in which all eligible students are granted $8,000 for use on approved school materials and private tuition. Under the bill, originally proposed by Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, students would be deemed eligible if they previously attended public school or are enrolling in preschool or kindergarten for the first time. Supporters say funds would originate from tax-credited donations, public funds, general revenue and grants. In a nod to rural districts, which have long seen school choice as financially devastating, school districts with fewer than 20,000 students would be granted funds for students who take advantage of out-of-district programs.

The GOP has no such concerns for urban districts like HISD, the largest school district in Texas and composed of 276 different campuses and 194,000 students. Public schools are expected to lose money if parents opt for school choice.

WRONG FOCUS?

Rep. Ron Reynolds, D-Missouri City, said the Legislature should have different educational priorities.

“Focus on fully funding our public schools, giving our teachers and retirees a much-needed pay raise,” Reynolds, the chair of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, said. Texas public schools have consistently fallen behind in per-pupil funds when compared to the rest of the country. The country’s average is $16,993; Texas spends $9,871. Texas per-pupil funds have remained about the same over the last decade.

“This would be the public demise of the Houston and inner-city urban schools,’’ said Reynolds. “This is going to have long-term negative impacts on our students.”

Reynolds added that the TEA takeover “will only worsen the situation.” The TEA will be removing the superintendent and elected school board after Wheatley High School failed to meet statewide standards for seven consecutive years, triggering the agency’s takeover attempts since 2019.

School choice would allow parents and their children to access public school alternatives through various state-funded programs. The majority of school choice programs, such as school vouchers and education savings accounts, transfer public funds from local schools to individual families, normally the average amount it costs to educate the child per year. There are already smaller school choice opportunities in effect, magnet schools, intradistrict transfer programs, and charter schools. Thus, school districts like HISD could potentially lose considerable funding.

“Our public schools have to take everybody,” said Reynolds. Private schools, on the other hand, don’t. “They wouldn’t have to take students with disabilities,” he said. “They can pick and choose who they want to take.”

Opponents of the ESA legislature brought up Arizona’s school-choice program as a warning for how the state could end up funding students already in private schools rather than those choosing to leave public schools. In July 2022, Arizona expanded its school voucher system, allowing the majority of students to qualify for use of vouchers for enrollment in private schools. While advocates for school vouchers claimed that the program would allow for disadvantaged students to attend private schools and parents to place their children into schools that fit their children best, nearly 75% of students who participate in Arizona’s voucher system have never attended public schools, meaning the state was now funding private education previously paid for by parents.

“It would subsidize the rich and the upper class,” Reynolds said. “It would subsidize their ability to send their kids to the schools they were already sending them to.”

As funds are siphoned from public schools, opponents of school choice say the students who are most affected are Black and Brown students, the majority population at HISD schools.

Creating A Gap

A large issue within school choice is that disadvantaged families would not be able to make up the difference between the ESA and the actual dollar amount that attending a private school constitutes.

“There are private school opportunities that fit within the dollar amount of our ESA,” Sen. Creighton said. “But there are also many scholarship efforts, private philanthropy, and all kinds of different opportunities to fill that gap.”

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick emphasized school choice legislation in both this term’s inauguration speech on Jan. 17 and later in his top 30 Senate bill priorities for the 2023 session,

Other Educational Bills

TEXAS PARENTAL EMPOWERMENT ACT (Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston)

Allows families to draw from state funds to send their children to private schools.

SENATE BILL 176

Parents would get up to $10,000, the average amount of money that it costs a public school to educate one child, for withdrawing their child from public school and sending them to private, or alternative, schooling. Funds would be derived similarly to SB 8.

HOUSE BILL 619 (Rep. Matt Shaheen)

Discusses tax credits for donations to scholarship programs.

At the end of the day what all these bills do is leave it to parents. I believe the best decision maker for a child is letting the moms and dads of Texas pick which educational options are best for their child.”

- Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston placing school choice at No. 8 and teacher raises at No. 9.

“Parents deserve the freedom to choose the education that’s best for their child,” Patrick said.

Republicans say school choice would allow parents to bypass schools whose values don’t align with their own or seem inferior to private and alternative schooling. Under expanded school choice, these private schools would essentially gain access to state funding.

Sen. Larry Taylor, the former Friendswood senator who attempted to advance school choice in 2017, testified during the committee meeting that the majority of students who switched from public schools to school-choice initiatives either improved in test scores or stayed the same.

Dr. Catherine Horn, the Interim Dean of Education for the University of Houston, is not as positive about the results.

“The argument for school choice, at least based on research, doesn’t hinge strongly on its connection to improving academic outcomes,” Dr. Horn said. “At the very best, school choice options often only have a modest positive influence on student outcomes, and that is not for all students.”

Taylor’s bill in 2017 passed in the Senate but was stopped in the House because of opposition from Democrats and rural Republicans. Few rural counties would benefit from a school choice bill, leaving these counties with students opting out of public schools for publicly funded online learning. School choice was so opposed at the time that the House passed a state budget amendment banning the use of state funds for private school choice, crossing out the possibility for a formal voucher system to be instituted until the current session.

“When folks make choices to leave the district, it can have really challenging implications for how the district can fully support students who are choosing to stay,” Dr. Horn said. “We need to be sure we are looking at the whole story. What is ultimately good for the individual kid and what works good for the system.”