'Texas legislators have filed voucher proposals in every legislative session since 1995, but all of them have failed to become law.
Near the start of this year's legislative session, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick stood on the Capitol's steps and exhorted lawmakers in the House and Senate to vote on 'school choice' legislation, saying it's 'it's easy to kill a bill when no one gets to vote on it.' An advocacy group opposed to public funds supporting students going to private and religious schools urged a different course. In a Jan. 23, 2017, press release, the Coalition for Public Schools, which says it represents religious, child advocacy and education organizations, urged the Legislature to 'focus its efforts on providing support for our neighborhood public schools instead of funneling public tax dollars' to private school 'voucher schemes with little or no accountability for how our tax dollars are spent.' The eight-paragraph release closed with a historical claim: 'Texas legislators have filed voucher proposals in every legislative session since 1995, but all of them have failed to become law.' That'd be a big 0-for-10 for voucher proponents because state lawmakers convene in regular session every odd-numbered year. We decided to check the record. For starters, we knew that Texans in 2017 can't access government-backed vouchers to attend nonpublic schools. Nationally as of December 2016, 27 states afforded some kind of private school choice--and 14 states had voucher plans in law, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan group that offers 'support, ideas, connections and a strong voice on Capitol Hill' for legislators. Wondering how the coalition reached its claim, we contacted a coalition member, the Texas Freedom Network, which says it watchdogs far-right issues, organizations, money and leaders. The network's Jose Medina, who'd distributed the coalition's release, emailed us a web link to a 2007 network report including an appendix listing Texas 'voucher legislation' dating to 1993. Medina also pointed us to the network's 'legislative watch' web page showing bills filed under topics including vouchers from 1999 through 2015. Defining vouchers We paused to cover some definitions. Huriya Jabbar, a University of Texas education administration professor who has studied school choice and the political dimensions of education reforms, told us that 'school choice' can include access to charter schools or the option to transfer to a different public school. Meanwhile, 'private school choice' involves the use of public funds for private or parochial education. Asked about defining school vouchers alone, Jabbar pointed us to a 2015 article in Education Week, which covers schooling from kindergarten through high school. The article, 'What's the Difference Between Vouchers and Education Savings Accounts?,' explains differences in private school options that often get described collectively as vouchers, a 'politically loaded term,' the author wrote. The article says vouchers give parents 'public funding allocated for their child toward tuition at a private school of their choice, including religiously affiliated private schools.' Education savings accounts, similar to vouchers, can also pay for private tuition, the story says, though money in an account could be put toward out-of-class educational expenses such as tutoring or online enrichment. States that support such accounts set aside funds based on per-pupil funding estimates; parents may withdraw money for approved expenses, the story says. In Texas in 2017, state Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, filed Senate Bill 3 proposing education savings accounts for students from all income levels plus scholarships for students with the 'greatest financial and academic need,' Taylor's measure states, to be supported by tax credits. That's a funding approach taken by 17 states as of December 2016, according to the NCSL. States employ the credits, the article says, to 'incentivize businesses or individuals to donate money to a scholarship-granting organization, which then gives money to students' to use for tuition at a private school. Texas is one of the states with constitutional amendments (often referred to as Blaine Amendments) that prohibit state funds from going to religious organizations. In those states, the Education Week article says, tax credit scholarships and education savings accounts 'offer workarounds.' We asked Josh Cunningham, an NCSL education policy specialist, if education savings accounts and tax credit scholarships would reasonably be grouped with vouchers in that each approach furthers public funding of non-public schooling. Cunningham suggested they could, as 'they all for the most part serve a similar purpose, providing support for a public school student to enter into private school.' Dozens of proposals Next, let's review what we spotted in legislation considered since the 1995 session, which we based on text searches of 'voucher,' 'scholarship' and 'education savings account,' to cover bills that dealt with public funding for private school tuition. We ran the terms through both the Texas Legislative Service website Telicon and the Texas Legislature online, which is managed by the Texas Legislative Council, session by session, coming up with 29 proposed bills related to school choice with funding in the form of vouchers, scholarships or savings accounts. We then checked each of the bills listed in the Coalition for Public Schools' list in both services, to account for any that our search may have missed. In total, we found 54 relevant bills from every session that covered private 'school choice' options. Among the proposals over the years, 11 envisioned pilot programs limited to certain student populations. For instance, House Bill 2366, which didn't advance out of a House committee in 1999, called for a pilot program for 'educationally disadvantaged' students. Six years later, HB 3042, which died in committee, more broadly called for vouchers for all students eligible to attend public schools. Texas Voucher and Voucher-Like School Proposals, 1995 through 2015
Our ruling The coalition said: 'Texas legislators have filed voucher proposals in every legislative session since 1995, but all of them have failed to become law.' All told, we identified 54 failed bills, at least one in each of the 11 regular sessions from 1995 through 2015, that proposed the use of public funds for private school tuition, though not every one was a pure voucher proposal. We rate this statement True. TRUE - The statement is accurate and there's nothing significant missing. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check.
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