Addressing a San Antonio crowd on May 9th, for his campaign, Governor Greg Abbott proposed a state-wide voucher program if elected.
“School vouchers are education tax dollars that are diverted from public schools to help subsidize the tuition of private and religious schools,” says to the National School Boards Association.
The program comes in response to the controversy of what courses are taught in public schooling. Topics of concern include gender studies and Critical Race Theory.
Abbott has been promoting his “Parental Bill of Rights,” which pushes parent access and input in school curriculum, having more say in their child’s education, and determining what courses are appropriate for their student.
Now, the Governor is going further with school choice in having parents’ tax dollars follow their child.
“Empowering parents means giving them the choice to send their children to any public schools, charter school or private school, with state funding following the student,” said Abbott.
This new promise for the state is receiving praise from some Texans who believe it is reasonable for their tax dollars to follow their child. Additionally, proponents think it will lead to a better quality of education, as schools would focus on having desirable curriculum to pull in students and their funding.
“School choice competition leads to better outcomes in public schools. School choice doesn’t ‘defund’ public schools. If anything, public schools defund families. School choice initiatives just return the money to the rightful owners, or at least the intended beneficiaries of the funding (students and their families),” said the National Director of Research at the American Federation for Children in an interview with Fox News Digital,
However, The Texas School Alliance disagrees.
“You can’t fully fund public schools and address the worst teacher shortage in Texas history by siphoning off public dollars to private schools. The math doesn’t work.” Said the TSA in a statement shortly after Abbotts speech.
The concerns Texans have with this proposal is the question around public schools losing their funding. Yet, Abbott states this will not happen.
“There’s neither an upside nor a downside for the public schools in rural Texas. They lose absolutely nothing. They will continue to receive the exact same amount of funding that they would otherwise be entitled to,” said Abbott on the Chad Hasty show. However, those details have not been put forward.
With all this, the majority of Texans are not convinced a state voucher program is a good idea. The Texas AFT Union of Professionals and Change Research conducted a poll with 1,083 likely Texas voters on how they feel about the issue.
According to the Poll:
- 53% “of likely Texas voters are against taxpayer-funded private school voucher programs after hearing that vouchers mean less money for their local public schools,”
- 80% of voters “agree that publicly-funded schools should be open to everyone….and that taxpayer money should not be given to private schools that pick and choose which students they accept.”
- 82% are “concerned that voucher programs will take money away from public schools, leading to higher property taxes.”
- 75% of voters “who do not currently send their children to private schools are unlikely to ever send their children to private schools.”
[Story by Jacob Lehrer]