For years, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) has vowed to bring school choice to Texas families. Thanks to a runoff election that went in his favor this year, he’s now claiming he’s certain he’ll be able to make good on that promise. Will Texans have education options in the next year or could there still be a fight ahead in the Texas legislature?
“The Texas legislature now has enough votes to pass School Choice,” Abbott posted on X on May 28, the date of Texas’s runoff elections. “Congratulations to all of tonight’s winners.”
Six of eight House members who did not support school choice lost. Republican challengers who supported school choice, and whom Abbott had specifically backed, successfully ousted their Republican incumbents during the GOP runoff.
This is now 15 incumbents who lost their races due to their school choice opposition. Seventy-six is the threshold needed to pass something in the Texas House. The Texas legislature does not meet again until January 2025.
“This is a victory for every Texas family across our great state. While we did not win every race we fought in, the overall message from this year’s primaries is clear: Texans want school choice. Opponents of school choice can no longer ignore the will of the people,” Abbott said.
School choice in the form of a $10,500 Education Savings Account per student had been the hot-button issue of the 2023 legislative session. Abbott called several special sessions in an attempt to convince a handful of rural Republicans who oppose school choice to cave. Sixteen House Republicans who voted against school choice originally were up for reelection.
“We needed to pick up 13 votes in the Texas House to pass school choice,” Corey DeAngelis posted on X. “We took out 6 incumbents who voted against school choice in March and 3 more tonight. We picked up 5 more votes in open seat races. We now have enough votes to pass school choice in Texas.”
DeAngelis, a self-described “school choice evangelist” and author of The Parent Revolution, has been advocating school choice in states across the country, targeting one at a time. He’s been focused on Texas for months now.
On Fox News in March, just before the primary, DeAngelis predicted such a win: “This should be a no-brainer for a state like Texas, controlled by Republicans. … This is a conservative GOP litmus test issue, and this is partially why these 16 RINOS have challengers. … A lot of these guys are going to lose their seats in the election on Tuesday or in the runoff later on.”
The primary winners still must win in the November election, but given the way the districts are drawn and the conservative nature of Texas, all the Republicans are nearly guaranteed to win.
Abbott campaigned for reelection in 2022 on a handful of promises that would be hard to fulfill, including lowering property taxes and implementing Education Savings Accounts or school choice. After lowering property taxes somewhat in 2023, he turned to his school choice pledge.
Rural Republicans joined Democrats in refusing to give Abbott the votes he needed, so he pushed harder. He vetoed bills voucher holdouts supported and even tried to throw everyone a delicious, long-awaited bone: increasing public school funding.
Twenty-one Republican lawmakers refused to accept a bill that combined increased funds for education with the Education Savings Account program he’d been promising voters. In the end, lawmakers stripped the education omnibus bill of its voucher provision and nothing passed.
When this strategic but ultimately ineffective bargaining chip failed, the Lone Star State governor went scorched earth. He campaigned against incumbents he had previously supported if they opposed school choice. He vowed they would be kicked out of the Texas House by voters, who he has always said overwhelmingly support education freedom.
The runoff results show Abbott’s decisive and severe consequences-based plan worked.
Now, he is sure the results of the last few months have all but guaranteed victory on school choice. But he may still face some hurdles.
“The runoffs brought mixed results for Texas’ hard right: the House gained a pro-voucher majority — for now — and the 15 GOP incumbents ousted by insurgent challengers across both rounds of the primary amounted to a record,” the Texas Tribune reported. “But House Speaker Dade Phelan, the top target of the party’s rightmost faction, survived his runoff, setting the stage for a period of major turbulence and uncertainty for the lower chamber as it shifts even further right.”
Abbott still faces Democratic opposition, and the details of the program will still need to be hammered out. The 2023 session saw a couple of versions of school choice bills from the House and Senate, each with variances. Senate Bill 1 allotted about $8,000 per student per year to use for education-related costs and less for homeschooled students. House Bill 1 allotted an Education Savings Account of $10,500 per year for K-12 students to spend on any form of education expenses. It also included one-time teacher pay raises and other increased spending for public schools.
The 2025 legislative session may see the House and Senate wrangling over how much to budget for Education Savings Accounts, whether it will apply to all incoming and current K-12 students, and if a bill will include much-needed teacher raises. Texas American Federation of Teachers, a teacher’s union, said Texas is one of the “worst funded” states for public education. Though many school choice advocates would disagree with this assessment, Abbott has been sympathetic to this argument.
It’s always been a bit surprising that Texas lacked a more expansive school choice program such as Florida’s, given its history as a red state. (It has charter schools but no voucher or Education Savings Account system.) Ten states, including West Virginia, Florida, and Arizona, have universal school choice systems like the kind Abbott wants.
This could be life-changing for millions of Texas families. I’ve lived in Texas for almost six years now. While it boasts a lot of great qualities, its K-12 public education could use significant improvements. In national rankings, it places 28th. One of the clear advantages of school choice is that the competition should force fledgling public schools to do better if they want to retain students.
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Schools that are succeeding will set a new bar for quality: If a public school is doing something right and seeing a high retention rate of students or a private school is seeing increased applications, this should pressure other schools to improve their academic rigor, communications with parents, and other issues parents care about.
Texas may also serve as a beacon for other states, red or otherwise. Texas educates nearly 11% of public school students in the whole country due to its population. Lawmakers have held out for so long that if school choice finally becomes a reality, the grassroots efforts that stirred change here may hold Texas up as an example and convince similar states to go ahead and side with education freedom. Let’s hope 2025 sees a new dawn of school choice for Texas families. It’s about time.
Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist for USA Today. She lives in Texas with her four children.