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After a wave of Texas Republicans dominated the poll field on Election Day, Gov. Greg Abbott expressed confidence Wednesday that he now has sufficient votes within the Texas Home to cross a college voucher program, his high legislative precedence since final yr.
The governor shared his optimism throughout a go to to Kingdom Life Academy, a small Christian personal faculty in Tyler, the place he proclaimed that the Home now has 79 “hardcore school choice proponents,” a quantity barely above the easy majority the 150-member chamber must approve laws.
Throughout the identical go to, Abbott additionally stated he was dedicated to completely funding Texas’ public colleges, offering lecturers with pay raises and enhancing profession coaching alternatives for college kids — all of which he refused to do final yr when vouchers stalled within the Texas Legislature.
Final yr, Home lawmakers voted 84-63 to strip from an enormous schooling funding invoice a provision to ascertain schooling financial savings accounts, a voucher-like program that might have provided dad and mom tax {dollars} to pay for his or her baby’s personal education and different academic bills. Twenty-one Republicans, most of whom represented rural faculty districts, joined all Home Democrats to oppose the laws over fears that such a proposal would undercut the funding public colleges rely on.
Abbott vowed to make use of the March major election cycle to marketing campaign in opposition to the agricultural Republicans who helped block his plan. He did so with the help of individuals like Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass, who’ve sought to make use of their cash and affect to again faculty voucher proponents throughout the nation.
Abbott’s reluctance to completely fund public schooling final legislative session — even with a report $32 billion funds surplus — precipitated many public faculty districts to enter this faculty yr with multimillion-dollar deficit budgets whereas additionally tussling with rising prices of dwelling, expiring federal pandemic aid {dollars} and insufficiently funded legislative mandates to enhance faculty safety.
However after a minimum of 11 of the 15 pro-voucher candidates he endorsed earlier this yr cruised to victory in Tuesday night time’s common election, Abbott stated each addressing public colleges’ funding wants and passing faculty voucher laws to his liking would occur throughout subsequent yr’s legislative session.
“They make it sound like you can’t have both school choice and robust public schools,” Abbott stated. “That’s completely false. The reality is we can have the best public schools in America and also have school choice at the very same time. It does not have to be one or the other, and it’s wrong to pit one against the other.”
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Kingdom Life Academy, the venue Abbott picked to boast about his occasion’s election night time success Wednesday, is a financially struggling personal faculty that gives “practical, Christ-centered learning” for a pupil physique composed of largely Black and Hispanic youngsters.
Much like what faculty voucher proponents have executed all through the nation, Abbott and Kingdom Life Academy founder and director Joel Enge promoted faculty voucher laws as a means to offer extra alternatives for the state’s most weak and deprived college students.
“I was a public school teacher in Tyler for over 20 years. … I watched students drop out of school in their hearts because they did not fit traditional education,” stated Enge, who’s Black. “We’re grateful for the opportunity to continue to fight and see school choice open up doors for more students and more families who need an alternative education.”
Faculty voucher packages throughout the nation, nonetheless, don’t all the time accomplish what their proponents describe. Whereas the nation’s first voucher packages launched within the late twentieth century with the purpose of serving to weak college students, lots of the youngsters who profit from a number of the extra expansive packages right this moment come from wealthier households who already pay for personal faculty tuition. In the meantime, households who reside in poor communities typically don’t use vouchers.
As for tutorial outcomes, research in a number of states have proven that vouchers don’t constantly result in improved standardized check scores for low-income college students — a metric Republican officers typically rely on to make choices about public schooling. In some circumstances, vouchers have resulted in steep declines in scores. Voucher advocates typically observe that the advantages of such packages are greatest measured by way of elevated faculty competitors and parental satisfaction.
