GOP Victories in Texas House Give Abbott a Path to Universal ESA

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This article is part of The 74’s EDlection 2024 coverage, which takes a look at candidates’ education policies and how they might impact the American education system after the 2024 election.

After yearslong failures to give families tax dollars for private tuition, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott now appears to have enough legislative support to move forward.

Several GOP wins in the Texas House of Representatives on Tuesday will expand Republicans’ existing majority, giving Abbott an estimated 87 of 150 seats in the lower chamber. When lawmakers reconvene in January, that could finally give him the votes needed to successfully put forth legislation that offers a universal voucher, or education savings account — a proposal that many Democrats and rural Republican lawmakers have rejected in past legislative sessions.

“Frankly, it was a bit surprising that Abbott pulled this off,” said Jon Taylor, a political scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio. 

With flips of Democratic seats in Corpus Christi and Uvalde, the GOP now enjoys an 87-to-63 margin in the House. He noted, “At a minimum, the Legislature is likely to pass some form of an Education Savings Account plan,” which families could use to cover tuition or other expenses. 

Taylor added that two House districts in San Antonio came close to flipping the other way, from Republican to Democratic, but fell short by about four percentage points apiece, handing the seats to pro-ESA Republicans.

Abbott, who first began pushing for school choice in 2017, has aggressively fought for it ever since. In 2023, he called lawmakers into four special legislative sessions to pass a school choice bill, among other measures, and has proposed giving students about $10,500 per year, overseen by the state comptroller. 

He has also worked over the past year to oust lawmakers who fought his proposal to offer ESAs to all students, not just those whose families are low-income.

With deep pockets, Abbott targets ESA foes

Late last year, Abbott began actively campaigning against members of his own party who stood in his way, portraying them as weak on important issues like border security and property tax relief. He was aided by deep-pocketed donors and political action committees that poured millions of dollars into state legislative races.

Jeff Yass, a well-known school choice proponent and investor in TikTok parent company Byte Dance, contributed more than $12 million in this political cycle, while Miriam Adelson, owner of the Las Vegas Sands casinos, spent about $13 million, making the pair — residents of Pennsylvania and Nevada, respectively — Texas’ two biggest political donors.

Last spring, the effort helped persuade voters to unseat eight House Republicans who had blocked ESAs. One of them, Rep. Steve Allison of San Antonio, said in a September interview with The 74 that he opposed Abbott’s plan because Texas families already have many options, from magnet schools to charters to a Public Education Grant program that lets students in low-performing schools transfer to a better-performing school. Lawmakers, he said, have approved countless programs that provide “choice on top of choice on top of choice” within districts.

Abbott is already doing a victory lap. Taking to the social media site X early Wednesday, he wrote, “Every candidate that I backed in Texas House general election races won tonight. We even had Republican candidates win seats that had been held by Democrats. There are more than enough votes to pass school choice in Texas.”

Katherine Munal, policy and advocacy director of EdChoice, said Tuesday’s election results in Texas mark “a significant victory for school choice advocates, signaling a continued momentum for policies that prioritize parental empowerment and educational freedom.”

Texas, she said, “is poised to expand opportunities for students and families, allowing them to access a wider range of educational options that best meet their needs. This shift reflects a broader recognition of the importance of individualized education and the belief that every child deserves the opportunity to thrive in an environment that works for them.”

Mark P. Jones, a political scientist at Rice University, said that for Abbott, “the night really couldn’t have gone better.” 

The question now, he said, isn’t whether school choice will succeed in Texas in 2025. “It’s really what form of school choice legislation will pass. How robust and expansive will it be?”

The most likely scenario, he said, would have Abbott offering an ambitious proposal with more students covered than in his 2023 plan, and with less money going to school districts that lose students to ESAs.

While foes of Abbott’s plan can probably still negotiate to help districts, he said any hope that Democrats and anti-school-choice Republicans had of blocking choice in 2025 “vanished last night.”

Abbott has pushed for ESAs despite recent polling that isn’t necessarily conclusive: Just under half of respondents to a recent University of Texas survey said they support spending taxpayer dollars to help families pay for private school. Meanwhile, a poll from the University of Houston and Texas Southern University found 65% support.  

The Texas Education Agency last year estimated that about 500,000 children, or about half of the state’s private school and homeschooled students, would apply for the program in its first stages, with more each cycle. The figures prompted Democratic Rep. James Talarico to quip during a legislative hearing that it would be “a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top.”

He added, “It’s welfare for the wealthy.”

Elsewhere on Tuesday, voters in two states — Kentucky and Nebraska — defeated voucher-related ballot measures. A third measure, in Colorado, appeared headed for defeat.

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