School choice creates more disparity

In his “State of the State Address” last month, Gov. Greg Abbott declared the expansion of school choice one of his most important “emergency items.” His suggestion that parents are so dissatisfied with their local public schools that taxpayers should finance private school education through vouchers or Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) stands in direct contrast with public polling released just two days before his address. It also overlooks one important fact about private schools: Even if parents weren’t satisfied with their child’s public school, private schools don’t exist in a majority of Texas counties.

By and large, Texas private schools are urban, and any effort asking taxpayers to finance private schools will largely result in subsidizing private school education in the four metropolitan areas of Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. According to my analysis of data from the Texas Private School Accreditation Commission, TEPSAC, an overwhelming 72 percent of Texas private schools are in 10 counties. This is not the same for Texas public schools, where only 47 percent of the state’s public schools exist in those same 10 counties. In the 93 counties that represent the remaining 28 percent of Texas private schools, just four private schools exist per county, compared to an average 41 public schools.

The counties without private schools are non-urban, but that doesn’t mean nobody lives there. In the 59 percent of Texas counties where private

schools don’t exist, 647 independent school districts educate just under 1.4 million students. That’s about a quarter of Texas public schools’ enrollments and exceeds the student populations of 40 states, including Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington. For private schools to absorb even half of this unserved population, private school capacity would need to roughly triple over a short period.

Critics are quick to celebrate this gap and suggest an education market would easily solve this problem, but history shows this is far from true. In Chile, home to one of the largest universal school choice programs in existence, it took 27 years for private-voucher schools to reach half the capacity of Chile’s student population. Private-school vouchers in Chile did not improve education quality; when academic gains happened, they were largely due to other factors like class sizes or educational attainment levels of parents.

A 2017 analysis of multiple private school data sources conducted at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin found Texas private schools skew toward serving mostly younger grades and operating religious education. It found only 4 percent of Texas private schools were standalone high schools and 71 percent, which accounted for 82 percent of all enrollment, had a religious affiliation — some requiring faith commitments as part of admission.

Paired with the fact that some school choice bills would allow private schools to discriminate against students with disabilities (something public schools cannot do), school choice efforts are not about opening up opportunity for all. They’re about increasing opportunity for a very small, select group of predominantly wealthy, religious and able-bodied Texas students.

In a state with roughly 5.4 million public school students, Texas needs an education system with sufficient capacity to serve all grade levels and all students — regardless of gender, sexuality, race or religion.

Funding private schools through vouchers or Education Savings Accounts risks devastating many rural economies. Recently, an official from the Texas Education Agency acknowledged in leaked audio that losing a few students to private schools could result in shutting down a public school classroom.

In many rural communities, public schools are the heartbeat of local economies. Ruining them to fund private schools that exist in predominantly urban areas is simply not fair, especially when recent polls show public education was the biggest funding priority among Texas voters, even more important than reducing property taxes or improving our electric grid.

Simply put, school choice initiatives such as vouchers and ESAs would be bad for Texas. They’re not based in reality, and data suggests they’d increase education disparities. Lawmakers should vote no on any effort to pass them.

Logan Hannigan-Downs/Associated Press Gov. Greg Abbott, center, touts his support of funding private schools at Brazos Christian School in Bryan on Tuesday. Most Texas counties don’t have private schools.