Why disadvantaged children in Texas need education savings accounts

Lawmakers in Texas are close to enacting a universal education savings account (ESA) program. Governor Greg Abbott made parental choice in education his top priority. The Texas Senate has already approved a bill to create a universal ESA by a vote of 19-12. Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows has stated that lawmakers will introduce “a robust universal school choice initiative that moves forward to the Governor’s desk for his signature.” On Thursday, Rep. Brad Buckley introduced House Bill 3 to that end. 

With more than five million students enrolled in Texas’s public schools, a universal ESA initiative has the potential to become the largest education choice program in the country. The state senate bill would offer ESAs worth $11,500 for tuition and other K-12 education expenses including tutoring to 100,000 students across the state. Based on the experience of other states like Arizona and Florida, the program could grow substantially over time. Importantly, HB3 includes a provision requiring that applications from disabled students and children from lower income households be prioritized if more than 100,000 students apply for accounts.

Why disadvantaged children in Texas need better options 

With such a historic reform close to the goal line, the teachers union in Texas has voiced strong opposition. A statement by the Texas American Federation of Teachers reads: “Our union has always opposed school privatization in any form, and we have worked session after session to educate and articulate the potential for widespread harm to public education and its funding should a voucher pass.”  

But a review of recent testing and spending data suggests that offering disadvantaged students a right-of-exit from their public schools may be the Lone Star State’s best hope for ensuring equal educational opportunity. 

Half of Texas’s low-income students scored “below basic” on 4th and 8th grade reading on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress. 

Source: NAEP, Texas’s 4th Grade Reading Results 

In Texas’s largest school districts, the results were even worse. The following are the percentages of economically disadvantaged students scoring below basic in reading in three large school districts: Houston (59 percent), Fort Worth (62 percent), and Austin (65 percent). If Texas’ public schools are to be judged on how they are serving the most disadvantaged children, it is hard to defend the status quo of a child having worse than even odds of learning to read by the end of elementary school. 

Increasing public school funding over the past decade

Some will surely wonder if these dire test scores reflect scarce resources or a school finance system that favors wealthier children. But federal data show that public schools serving children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds actually spend more than districts with more affluent students. The below is a snapshot of a table from a U.S. Department of Education report published last year. It shows that high-poverty districts spend 20 percent more (or more than $2,600 per student) than low-poverty districts.

Source: National Center for Education Statistics

Others may wonder if the Texas public school system overall needs more resources. But trends show that spending per-pupil has grown faster than inflation while test scores have declined over the past decade. The below chart published by the Educonomics Lab at Georgetown University clearly shows this troubling trend.

Source: Edunomics Lab

ESAs will make schools accountable to parents

Passing a universal ESA to help 100,000 students—and presumably more over time—leave public schools won’t fix these widespread problems overnight. However, it would introduce a fundamental change in the relationship between parents and students and their public schools. If a child is not learning to read in elementary school, she should have the chance to transfer to a different learning environment. In this way, a universal ESA makes schools directly accountable to parents. The prospect of watching thousands of students transfer to new schools should create more urgency for public schools to ensure that children receive a higher-quality education, spurring improvement across the state.