Among the first things you learn as a young working-class Texan, regardless of political persuasion, is that the Texas state government is crooked as a dog’s hind leg. The current school voucher scam is no exception to this rule, but under the watchful eye of Governor Greg Abbott, and with the promise of a pay-day for investors, the State Legislature capitulated to the false promises offered by school privatization April 18. The bill will go through one more procedural vote, and then will likely be signed into law by the Governor before Texan students go back to school this fall.
Voucher programs represent the educational frontier of the capitalist plot to privatize public services. School vouchers are taxpayer funded subsidies given to families that send their children to private schools. This shifts funding away from public schools and towards private schools, which have no public oversight. This shift in funding will be bad for everyone, but for rural students, disabled students and children in low-income areas who rely upon public schools — it will be catastrophic.
Public opinion in Texas is broadly anti-voucher, with approximately two-thirds of the population opposing the voucher initiative. Yet legislative momentum continues unabated, primarily driven by financial interests. After 2023, when school vouchers again failed to take root in Texas, a bitter Abbott and his billionaire backer Jeff Yass set out to replace every Republican disloyal to the regime with their pro-voucher opponent. Jeff Yass is a billionaire who considers Texas a testing ground for a nationwide school-voucher roll out. On his crusade to kill public education, Yass gifted Greg Abbott a whopping $12 million, and donated millions more to pro-voucher Republicans seeking seats in the Texas Legislature.
Yass parted with some pretty pennies in order to shift the legislature in his favor, but capitalists stand to gain more than they have lost. Last year, CNN obtained an internal presentation showing that the American Federation for Children, an ally of Jeff Yass and Betsy DeVos, have “deployed” over $250 million in the last ten years, to secure $25 billion in voucher funding across the states up to that point. That means that thus far, voucher-backers, for every dollar they invest, have secured $100 in public money that will go towards the private school businesses that many of them profit from.
Erica Hoffman, a Texas public school teacher and union member told Liberation News: “To the billionaires and politicians who are propping up this scam in the legislature, public education is just a multibillion dollar business opportunity.” The future of our children and those who educate them has turned into another Wall Street bet, with pro-voucher lobbying groups like “voucher vendors” standing to profit millions.
While Abbott’s voucher scheme takes on new meaning against the backdrop of the Trump/DOGE plot to privatize the postal service and other public goods, vouchers are a part of an older disregard for the wellbeing of public school educators and the students that they serve. The State of Texas has been gradually siphoning funding away from public schools despite the state’s massive budget surplus and rainy day fund.
The state’s per-student basic allotment hadn’t been increased since 2019, and the new increase in allotment of $395 is entirely insufficient to keep up with inflation, which would require a $1300/student raise. Billions of dollars of public school funding have been withheld by Abbott, a ransom conditional on the approval of vouchers, but even with the legislature capitulating to this political blackmail, there appears to be no end in sight for the state-wide funding shortage if Texans continue to depend on capitalist leadership.
While the school voucher fiasco has yet to be fully set in motion, we don’t need to sit around wondering what kind of effect vouchers would have on students. Three other states, Arizona, Florida, and Indiana, have their own version of vouchers– and the results are exactly what you’d expect.
NPR found that Indiana’s voucher system has disproportionately benefited white, suburban, middle-class families, and the voucher system in the country of Chile has resulted in increased levels of segregation– a no-brainer when one considers the racist, segregationist origins of the school voucher idea.
Proponents of school vouchers claim that vouchers would give poor students and students of color the opportunity to attend well-funded private schools if they so choose, but with barriers like actual tuition rates (which are much higher than the $10,000 the Texas voucher plan offers) and prohibitive parental requirements, school vouchers actually only offer a tuition subsidy to the already-rich, while working Texans foot the bill.
Public schools have been struggling to defend themselves as they face increasing demands on their infrastructure while receiving little support in return. The misplaced blame put on public schools by capitalist politicians and the mainstream media distract the public from the high-handedness of the elites and the benefits and rights that public schools afford students due to the tireless work of working-class organizers. The civil rights movements of the last century have resulted in reforms to our schooling system: public schools are legally required to be secular, provide bilingual education and may not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, class, gender or disability. Although these legal requirements are not always met, private schools are not accountable in the same way as private, for-profit enterprises. The result of a school voucher program will be private schools that receive public funding with minimal public oversight.
Although the big money is stacked against us, teachers, students, and working parents are not giving up the fight. From activists on the ground in Texas, the message is clear: the buck stops here. If allowed to go unchallenged, wildly unpopular voucher plans could sweep the country at the behest of President Donald Trump, who made last minute calls to whip Abbott’s Republicans into shape when rumors of disloyalty began to swirl before the Texas House voted on vouchers. Activists and union members want to make it known that they won’t roll over as easily as the Texas Legislature. Erica Hoffman says she won’t be backing down: “It’s time for us to build the strongest, most unified fight-back movement that Texas has ever seen, and we’re not gonna wait for this or any other bigoted, profit-driven bill to pass to start the work it’s gonna take to get us there.”
Feature image: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott with Pres. Donald Trump in 2020. Public Domain.
