Voucher bills want to prioritize low-income families and be open to all students. Those goals might be at odds.

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In public hearings, during Capitol floor debates and in rooms packed with their constituents, Texas lawmakers have pitched school vouchers as a tool that will primarily benefit low-income students — and not just, as their critics argue, offer taxpayer dollars to families already sending their children to private schools.

“These are parents living paycheck by paycheck,” said Gov. Greg Abbott at a recent private school event in San Antonio. Families supporting his top legislative priority, he added, do “everything they can” to provide the best educational pathway for their children.

House Bill 3 and Senate Bill 2 — the signature school voucher proposals filed this year by each lawmaking chamber — would qualify virtually any family in Texas to receive taxpayer dollars through state-managed education savings accounts to fund their children’s private school tuition. If demand exceeds the $1 billion in proposed funding for the program, Republican lawmakers say they want to serve the most vulnerable Texans first.

“Both chambers are prioritizing low-income and special needs students, creating the largest school choice launch in the nation,” said Sen. Brandon Creighton, the Conroe Republican who leads the Senate Education Committee, in late February. “School choice” is a term used by voucher proponents who believe parents should have more options for where to send their kids beyond their local public school.

But both proposals’ broad eligibility — which would allow the vast majority of students in the state to apply — has prompted questions from education policy experts and public education advocates about whether Texas will live up to its promise of prioritizing the neediest children.

Early school voucher programs in other parts of the country limited eligibility to low-income students. But many of those programs have grown exponentially in recent years to allow applications from virtually any family hoping to participate. Now, many of the students currently benefiting from vouchers nationally had already attended private schools before signing up, meaning their families had previously committed to paying thousands of dollars in tuition without government assistance.

Texas’ HB 3 seeks to prioritize families in the following order if more students apply than there are spots available:

• Students with disabilities from families with a yearly income at or below 500% of the federal poverty level, which includes any four-person household earning less than roughly $156,000, according to 2024 statistics
• Families at or below 200% of the poverty level, which includes any four-person household earning less than roughly $62,400
• Families between 200% and 500% of the poverty level
• Families at or above 500% of the poverty level

SB 2, meanwhile, would reserve 80% of spots in the program for students from two groups who exit public schools to attend private ones: children with disabilities and children from “low-income” families, which, according to the bill’s definition, include those with an annual income up to roughly $156,000 for a home of four. Roughly 79% of school-age children live in a low-income household as defined by SB 2, according to census data.

The Senate’s definition of low-income families means the state would equally prioritize, for example, a family earning just over $40,000 per year — Texas public schools’ definition of low income — and a family making over $100,000 more annually. The remaining spots in the program would go to other applicants.

Education advocates and experts say eligibility for the program is not the same as access. Access goes a step further by ensuring families not only qualify to receive money from the state but can actually enroll their children in a suitable schooling option and obtain positive outcomes, said Liz Cohen, policy director of FutureEd, a nonpartisan education think tank at Georgetown University.

Neither the House nor the Senate bill requires private schools to take the same state standardized tests issued to public school students every year, a measuring stick Texas Republicans rely upon heavily to make decisions about public schools. Studies in multiple states have shown little evidence that vouchers lead to improved scores for low-income students. The Texas proposals do require that students take nationally recognized exams like the SAT or ACT and that the state include the results in an annual report. Voucher advocates often note that the benefits of the programs are best measured through parent satisfaction.

The bills do not impose any admission or enrollment requirements on the private schools that choose to participate in the program, meaning they would face no state pressure to adjust their costs, ensure more racial and ethnic diversity, or accept students from different faith traditions.

The average private school tuition in Texas sits at roughly $11,340, according to Private School Review, so vouchers may not fully cover the price at some campuses. Private schools in Texas host a predominantly white student population, a stark contrast to the majority Black and Latino student body in public schools. Many private schools also have a particular religious focus.

In addition, neither bill clarifies what would happen if a child makes it through the eligibility process but cannot find a private school in Texas to accommodate their needs.

Advocates and experts say the bills’ broad definition of low-income families — along with lawmakers’ unwillingness to require participating private schools to guarantee access to certain student groups — will likely mean Texas’ voucher program, like in other states, will end up primarily serving families who are already paying to send their kids to private schools.

Lawmakers “are in a tough spot, the ones that really want to do this for real, for kids,” said Josh Cowen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University and an outspoken critic of school voucher programs. “What they're trying to do is craft a universal voucher bill to give a win to the governor and at the same time adhere to a message, and maybe even a policy, that's intended to help lower income and middle income families. And those two are conflicting goals.”

In a conversation with The Texas Tribune, Creighton dismissed those concerns. He remained adamant that the eligibility framework outlined in the proposal will prioritize students with disabilities and low-income families.

Creighton also said he sees all families as worthy of benefiting from education savings accounts, regardless of their income. The Senate’s education chair said he doesn’t think the state should “impose public school strings” on private schools. He also expressed confidence that families will ultimately decide what steps to take if they can’t find a private school to accommodate their children’s needs.

“​​Some families are committed in a way where they will commute to the next private school opportunity that is available,” Creighton said. “They might consider the home school opportunities at the lesser amount that the ESA offers. Or they may decide that, even though they were awarded an ESA, they've searched around, and they found that the public school opportunity really was their preference, and they declined to use the ESA. And that frees up a spot for someone else to be able to have that opportunity.”

If the legislation passes this year, Creighton said lawmakers will have a chance in the next legislative session “to review the consequences of our intentions.”

“We've already won when we get this bill passed. I don't mean that we won't make adjustments. I just mean that we're winning because they are,” he said, referring to families. “I've heard their stories, I know their testimony and have really studied the success of what this has done in a powerful way for kids that need help the most. And so I already feel very optimistic based on that.”

The office of Rep. Brad Buckley, the Republican chair of the House Public Education Committee who authored that chamber’s voucher proposal, did not respond to an interview request.

Buckley’s committee has scheduled a public hearing for his voucher proposal next week. The Senate approved Creighton’s version of the bill in February.

When asked by Democrats about the Senate bill’s broad eligibility provisions during a floor debate last month, Creighton reiterated that he does not want to exclude middle-class families with multiple children from accessing the voucher program, notably those with essential jobs like first responders and teachers.

He has also called attention to a provision in both the House and Senate bills that would require the state to produce regular reports with details about the voucher program — including the demographic makeup of the Texans it serves — suggesting they would allow lawmakers to see whether the program unfairly benefits certain groups of students over others and take corrective action if needed.

But that has not reassured public education advocates closely monitoring the two proposals.

SB 2 would reserve most of the program’s spots for students with disabilities and families it considers low income — but only if those families attended a public school for most of the previous year. That provision is notable because budget officials recently predicted that only 24,500 of the state’s nearly six million public school students would leave for private schools in the program’s first year. In their SB 2 analysis, budget experts predicted that half of Texas’ roughly 350,000 students currently enrolled in private schools would apply.

Barring a mass departure of students from public schools — which voucher supporters and budget experts predict won’t happen — some public education advocates worry students from families already with the financial means to afford private school will take most of the program’s spots.

Supporters of education savings accounts say the voucher program needs to offer expanded eligibility to ensure every child in the state — including those from low-income families and students currently attending private school — can receive government assistance and thrive in parents’ preferred educational setting. They also argue that not every child who currently attends a private school comes from a wealthy family.

“We're not going to force outcomes, but making it universal and prioritizing special needs and lower income families does mean that, to the extent applications exceed availability, we will ensure those folks are taken care of,” said James Dickey, executive director of Liberty For The Kids, an organization that describes itself as “dedicated exclusively to passing school choice in Texas.”

Dickey said if either of the House or Senate proposals passes into law and down the road the state finds that certain demographics of students are benefiting over others, he would “absolutely support” increased efforts to spread the word about the program to families not aware of it. The bills currently include language aligning with that goal.

Nathan Cunneen, the Texas state director for the pro-voucher organization American Federation for Children, also said awareness plays a significant role in who applies to receive access to education savings accounts. He praised lawmakers for working to ensure the program wouldn’t fully launch until the 2026-27 school year.

“We have a full year to educate the public that this option exists. We will be endeavoring. We will be doing everything we can to make sure that low-income students and special needs students are aware of the program,” Cunneen said. “And because of this detail, I feel very strongly that the vast majority of the roughly 100,000 slots available under a $1 billion program will be filled by priority category students.”

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