Texas is ranked 40th in public education, 48th in K-12 performance and 44th in school funding and resources. Instead of attempting to improve the public education system, Texas is shoveling public money into private schools with the Texas Education Freedom Accounts voucher program.
With this program, public taxpayer dollars will fund children’s private school education and their school-related expenses. A total of $1 billion will be allocated to the fund, serving approximately 80,000 to 100,000 students statewide. Over five million students are enrolled in Texas public schools, meaning this will serve a lousy 1% of students. Only the lucky will have a chance to experience improved education.
Over 229,000 students have applied, with at least 71% of these applicants having attended non-public schooling during the 2024-2025 academic year. This shows who this program is being targeted to and actually meant for: people who do not really need it. Texas is trying to keep economic wealth contained to the upper class by educating their children and leaving low-income families behind.
Select children will receive around $10,474 to pay for their private schooling. Disabled children may be eligible to receive up to $30,000, and homeschoolers may receive $2,000. The average annual cost for Texas private education is $14,000, so the $10,000 voucher is not enough to cover the entire tuition in many cases — leaving $4,000 unaddressed that low-income families simply cannot shovel out.
After the approved list of over 2,000 participating private schools was released, four Muslim parents and two private schools sued the state for discrimination. Texas failed to include any Islamic private schools. Making a program that obviously caters to wealthy families and then ensuring marginalized cultural groups cannot participate is discrimination. A federal judge has since extended the application deadline, forcing the state to include some Islamic schools. Texas should be ashamed of this program, not acting like it has saved education.
In the most impoverished county in Texas, Dimmit County, where 42.6% of the population have an income below the poverty level as of 2020, there are no private schools. The children who would benefit the most from a voucher do not even have a chance to attend a private school, exposing how ridiculously unhelpful TEFA is.
The most concentrated areas for private schools are major Texas cities — Houston, Dallas and Austin, where public schools are already more likely to be more funded than rural schools — again, leaving lower-income students in the mud.
In Texas, public schools’ funding is mainly based on property taxes, so richer areas receive more funding for their schools. This system fails in many ways, leaving 73% of schools underfunded and about 17% of schools severely underfunded, with funding gaps exceeding 40% of students’ needs.
Even the recapture system, meant to reallocate funds to lower-income schools, has become a revenue source for the state, with around $3 billion taken away from schools yearly. It IS obvious that Texas does not care about ensuring public education benefits students, unless it is fiscally beneficial.
Texans are fed up with the state ignoring their pleas for proper public education. To slap on this voucher program only furthers the gap in education. Texas needs a total rework of education; the system continues to fail Texas children. Low-income families deserve support from the state, but this program is obviously not meant to do that. TEFA is clearly meant to widen the divide between the educated and uneducated — between the wealthy and not.