The Problems with the Texas Senate's School Choice Bill

Comptroller Glenn Hegar to Become Texas' New School Choice Headmaster

The Bible is full of instructions to parents about how to raise their children as it relates to education:

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. - Proverbs 22:6

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. - Ephesians 6:4

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. - Proverbs 9:10

Before we start talking about school choice, we must acknowledge reality about government schools and God’s instructions to parents. It is almost impossible for parents to obey God by educating their children in our godless government schools. Since government schools do not teach our children about God, everything the students learn in the schools fails to acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord, including as Lord over math, over geology, over biology, over language, etc. The students will not learn in their math classes that 2+2=4 because that is the way God designed the world. Nor will they learn in their geology classes that God created the world, in their biology classes that God created us male and female, or in their sociology classes that marriage is for one man and one woman. Additionally, government schools undermine the responsibility that Scripture puts on parents to educate their own children, not other people’s children.

I suggest this brief exegesis provides us with three metrics with which to judge any proposed school choice legislation. First, school choice should allow parents the ability to choose the curriculum and providers used in their children’s education with no interference from the government. Second, school choice should make publicly funded education more efficient and less expensive to reduce the burden currently placed on taxpayers who are paying for the education of other people’s children. Third, school choice should be universally available to Texas parents and students.

Given these metrics, the Texas Senate’s school choice bill (SB 2) filed last Thursday fails across the board.

Let’s start with availability. The Senate (along with the Texas House) have proposed to increase spending on education by $1 billion for the 2026-27 school year to support its school choice bill. While this is an increase over the Senate’s proposed $500 million from 2023, it is a drop in the bucket for a state that plans on spending more than $70 billion on government schools during the same period. And it makes one wonder what plans the Senate has for using the $24 billion budget surplus (tax overpayment). This means that probably 150,000 or so out of more than 6 million students in Texas will have access to school choice in the first year under the Senate’s bill. And up to 80% of the available slots are reserved for children who are currently enrolled in public schools and have a disability or are from a low-income household. Very few of the current 350,000 students in private schools or the 750,000 students being homeschooled will have access to the program. SB 2 is nowhere close to bringing universal school choice to Texas.

Now let’s look at the costs of the program. As I noted above, the Senate has set aside $1 billon in new funding for school choice. But this makes no sense. Texas spends about $11,500 per year in operating costs educating students. School choice programs cost less than this. Let’s say that Texas provides $8,000 per student through school choice. Texas taxpayers, then, should save $3,500 for every student who participates in school choice.

That is not how the Senate school choice bill works. Instead of funding school choice through the existing funding mechanism for government schools, the Senate creates a new pot of money to pay for school choice. Not only does this mean increased spending, but it also means no per-student savings. And it gets worse. In order to entice the government school establishment to not oppose—too loudly—school choice, the Senate is going to spending an additional $4.9 billion on government schools to increase teacher pay.

This means the actual cost of the Senate’s school choice plan is $5.9 billion over the next two years, but only $1 billion actually goes to the limited school choice plan—the rest goes to government schools. Despite the fact that the public education lobby has consistently opposed school choice and attacked politicians and others who support choice. Inefficiency and costs actually increase, not decrease, under the Senate plan, which ignores data that school choice, done correctly, can greatly improve efficiency and decrease costs.

We’ll finish with government interference into parental decision making. We all know how Texas government schools try to keep parents in the dark about what goes on in the classroom. And no wonder. Socialist curriculum, pornography in school libraries, and sex education teaching children how to use condoms are shameful things that few parents would want their children learning about. Obviously, with school choice, keeping parents in the dark will be impossible. But SB 2 does the next best thing for the government school lobby. It requires government pre-approval of the educational decisions parents make under the school choice program.

Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar will in effect become the new headmaster of students enrolled in the school choice program envisioned under SB 2. Rather than provide funding for school choice directly to parents through a property tax credit or a similar mechanism such as is currently used for the private education and health savings accounts under federal law, the Legislature tasks Hegar to “establish a program to provide funding for approved education-related expenses of children participating in the program.” The accounts will be held in Hegar’s office. To assist Hegar in his duties, the Legislature authorizes him to choose up to five corporate vendors.

The worst part of SB 2 is that it requires parents to agree that they may only use the “preapproved education service provider or vendor of educational products” that Hegar determines are suitable for their children’s education. It does not matter whether the parents want to enroll the children in a private school, purchase “textbooks or other instructional materials, hire a “private tutor or teaching service,” etc. Everything used in the ESA program must be pre-approved by Hegar. Here is what the bill says:

money received under the program may be used only for the following education-related expenses incurred by a participating child at a preapproved education service provider or vendor of educational products

We will be assured that this is being done to assure accountability for the use of taxpayer dollars. But such assurances collapse when we consider how taxpayer dollars are being used in government schools today. More importantly, the “accountability” undermines the very purpose of school choice programs—giving parents control over the education of their children. It also reveals that the designers of the bill do not understand how private schools and homeschooling operate.

I have taught at two different private schools. In both cases, the courses I taught were designed from scratch. We used modern books from a wide variety of sources, incorporated original sources, developed our own projects and assessments, etc. There was no one curriculum provider, although some schools may use purchased curriculum. The same is true for homeschooling and for tutoring, which often comes from mothers sharing their expertise with other families out of their own homes. It is not even remotely possible to require that Hegar preapprove all these different materials and providers and still give parents control over the education of their children.

Additionally, the “accountability” requirements of SB 2 ignore the precedent of federal education savings accounts and health savings accounts that have greatly increased access to higher education and health care. ESAs and HSAs at the federal level do not have preapproval requirements. For instance, funds from a federal 529 education account may be used on normal educational expenses such as tuition and fees, room and board (including off-campus housing), books, supplies, and other school-related material, computers and software, etc. None of which must be preapproved by the federal government. It is sad that the leaders of the Texas Senate cannot even match the freedom that the federal government gives parents over the education of their children.

Conclusion

From its inception in the early 1800s, public education was designed to take God and parents out of the classroom and put the government in charge of educating future generations of Americans. The collapse of American culture shows that the dreams of Horace Mann, John Dewey, and others to secularize America have been achieved far beyond their expectations. The vast capital of America’s previous Christian culture has been depleted; our society is running on empty. One thing that can help refuel our society is assisting parents to undertake their God-assigned responsibility God to “bring up [their children] in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” School choice is one possible way of doing this. But the Senate’s SB 2 is not the vehicle that will make that happen.

Note: Originally, this piece said that funding for school choice was $500 million per year over the next two years. However, the funding equals $1 billion for the 2026-27 school year. I have updated the number of students who might participate in the first year of the program from 80,000 to around 150,000.