Texas Poised to Pass Universal School Choice

VDB Photos/Shutterstock

Commentary

The Texas House now has the votes to pass universal school choice this session, after 75 Republican coauthors were added to House Bill 3, Texas state Rep. Brad Buckley’s universal school choice bill.

The Texas House needs only 76 votes for a bill to clear the chamber. In other words, as Gov. Greg Abbott said in a Feb. 26 statement, “For the first time in our great state’s history, the Texas House has the votes to pass a universal school choice program.”

That number of coauthors does not yet include Republican Dustin Burrows, speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, a strong school choice supporter. The total also doesn’t yet include state Rep. Brian Harrison, another Republican school choice champion.

The bill allows all Texas families to apply to take a portion of their children’s taxpayer-funded education dollars—about $10,000 per student each year—to the school that best meets their needs. Homeschooling families are also eligible to receive funding, at $2,000 per student each year.

The Texas Senate already passed a similar universal school choice bill in February in a 19–12 vote, with all but one Republican voting in favor. All Senate Democrats opposed the school choice bill, although most of them sent their own kids to private schools. These hypocrites have no shame.

President Donald Trump congratulated the Texas Senate for passing school choice and called on the state House to do the same. Texas House members are apparently listening.

“The Texas House must now pass School Choice to deliver a gigantic Victory for Texas students and parents,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

The budget proposals from each chamber set aside $1 billion for the initiative, meaning that about 100,000 students could receive school choice funding in the first year. This proposal would make the Texas victory the largest day-one school choice program in U.S. history. Everything is bigger in Texas, as they say. School choice included.

I expect demand to exceed the supply of school choice funding in Texas, as we have witnessed in other states recently passing similar bills. The Texas Legislature should immediately work to clear all families from any waiting list that arises by approving any additional necessary funding. After all, each school choice student is funded at a level far below the nearly $17,000 per student spent in Texas public schools each year.

Texas will pass school choice because parents held their representatives accountable at the ballot box. Conservatives witnessed indoctrination and ideology, particularly in their public schools, and realized that the school boards didn’t want to listen to them. School choice allows these same parents to hold the public school monopoly accountable by giving them the power to send their children to schools that align with their values.

More politicians are now reading the tea leaves.

In fact, one of the Republicans who voted against school choice last year, state Rep. Keith Bell, is listed as a coauthor on this year’s legislation.

Another former opponent who signed a pledge to pass universal school choice—Rep. Ken King—said at a recent panel discussion that “the fight is over” on school choice. “The politics of the day have won this battle,” he said.

King can say that again. Last year, after 21 Texas House Republicans locked arms with all Democrats to kill their own GOP platform issue of school choice, a political earthquake rocked the state. Only seven of those representatives survived their 2024 primary elections.

The hardest thing to do in politics is to take out a sitting legislator. Incumbents generally lose their reelection only about 5 percent of the time. Last year, 67 percent of the Republican incumbents who were targeted for voting against school choice lost their seats.

The writing was on the wall. Eighty percent of Republican primary voters supported a school choice proposition on the ballot last year. A 2025 University of Houston poll also found that 67 percent of Texas voters support universal school choice, including 77 percent of parents and 71 percent of voters in rural areas. The lowest level of support for school choice was among white Democrats (52 percent).

The wind is at the sails of the school choice movement. Fifteen states with Republican-controlled legislatures have passed universal school choice since 2021.

About 10 percent of school-aged children reside in Texas. With Texas getting universal school choice across the finish line, more laboratories of democracy are likely to follow.

From the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER)

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.