Texas Scorecard by Michael Quinn Sullivan October 26, 2023
Texas House pushes funding for systems, not students, in a deliberate attack on Greg Abbott’s special session agenda.For months, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been warning lawmakers that education freedom is the policy hill on which he is staking the political fights of 2024. Despite a majority of states providing parents with the flexibility to choose the best educational settings for their children, Texas still locks families into a century-old funding scheme that ties academics to residential locations.
In announcing the agenda for the special legislative session last month, Gov. Abbott was unambiguous in the outcome he expected: “Legislation providing education savings accounts for all Texas schoolchildren.”
“There’s an easy way to get it done and a hard way to get it done,” said Gov. Abbott at an event in September. The “easy way” is legislatively this fall. The “hard way,” according to Abbott, would be for recalcitrant lawmakers to pay the price with tough re-election bids.
COVID lockdowns revealed to parents how poorly their children were educated, and revelations that LGBT activists have been stocking school libraries with pornography and classroom programs with indoctrination materials have only increased the public’s frustrations.
Polling among Republican primary voters finds the governor’s position to be the winning one. In the 2022 GOP primary, more than 87 percent of voters supported a non-binding proposition that stated “funding should follow the student.” It carried even larger majorities in rural parts of the state than in the urban cores.
“Of the 67 most supportive counties, 58 have populations under 100,000,” noted the state’s Ag Commissioner, Sid Miller, in a commentary published in late 2022. The issue was one of eight legislative priorities set by the Republican Party of Texas for the 2023 legislative session.
And it is not just Republicans. Recent polling finds a majority of all Texas voters support school choice.
By and large, the Texas Senate delivered on the “easy way.” In fact, the Texas Senate has repeatedly passed various forms of “school choice” over the last several years.
More:
https://texasscorecard.com/state/house-to-abbott-wont-pass-choice-without-a-payoff/
