School vouchers will cost us plenty of money
“We have to start somewhere, and there is a scarcity of dollars.”
The Legislature is in session in Texas, and those words could’ve come out of the mouth of any one of the 181 lawmakers hard at work. In this case, it was Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, talking about his effort to expand education savings accounts, also known as private school vouchers — which lawmakers have repeatedly rejected through the years.
We oppose such programs, which tend to deplete public education while funneling taxpayer money to unaccountable private schools where, more often than not, promised academic gains failed to materialize.
Senate Bill 8, which also includes “parental bill of rights” provisions, drew more than 380 speakers who signed up to discuss it at a recent hearing. Republican Lt.
Gov. Dan Patrick, who has been fighting for an expanded voucher-like program for years, only to encounter rural opposition in his own party, is no doubt more optimistic this year as the balance in the Senate now tilts in his favor.
So, does the legislation — just one of several bills filed that would create expanded voucher programs — address our concerns?
Nope, not even with the new sweeteners thrown in.
For rural school districts, which are often one of the main employers in small towns and have historically opposed voucher proposals, the bill includes at least two years’ worth of funding for every student who takes advantage of the program. It essentially helps those districts break even during that time, even if students leave their public schools.
The bill also restricts eligibility to current public school students or prekindergarten and kindergarten students just enrolling. This is apparently an attempt to address the concern that, as data from other largescale voucher programs suggests, most families benefiting from private school voucher programs already attend private school.
Unfortunately, that teaspoon of sugar doesn’t quite mask the snake oil hidden in this voucher scheme.
The promised $8,000 per student, which can go toward tuition, tutors, uniforms and other related private school expenses, might close the tuition gap for higher-earning families, but it almost certainly will not cover the costs for the rest of us to send our kids to the most esteemed private schools. And it doesn’t change the fundamental fact that public dollars would flow to private schools — free, by and large, from any accountability.
In fact, our best voucher research, according to Josh Cowen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University who has studied voucher programs for years, suggests that students who switch from public schools to private with the use of a voucher face some of the worst outcomes.
Estimates in the state’s own fiscal note show the cost of the voucher program climbing annually, from $512 million in 2025 to $1 billion by 2028. The total cost for providing grants during that period? More than $2 billion.
We suspect the cost could creep even higher because the current estimate is based on assumptions about the existing capacity of the state’s private schools to accept students. What often happens, though, in these low-regulation programs, is that new, disreputable private schools crop up. Cowen likens them to subprime operations looking to cash in on your tax dollars.
“Things will get worse with each budget cycle, and that’s where those new providers are going to start to pop up fast,” Cowen told the editorial board.
Creighton has said the legislation is not intended to hurt public schools. It would draw from the general fund, for example. But public schools would still feel the hit from declining enrollment. The state’s fiscal analysis estimates that more than 133,000 students would leave traditional public school districts through 2028, about 43 percent of them from smaller districts. What that will cost districts, the state fiscal analysis doesn’t say, but it does expect the state’s Foundation School Program to spend nearly $335 million less annually by 2028, even though the voucher program would be funded through general revenue.
Hence the temporary lifeline to rural districts. School funding is complex, but in the end, every dollar spent on vouchers could go instead to public schools. There is, after all, a “scarcity of dollars.”
If this bill is, as Creighton said, just the start, costs will only continue to soar, funneling ever-growing piles of our taxpayer dollars into unaccountable private schools while starving our already underfunded public ones.
Costs could soar over time, further hurting state’s classrooms.