Texas Spent $1 Billion on School Choice: What Parents Should Know About the 7-in-10 Number
The screenshot landed in our parent group at 3:12 in the afternoon, while I was inching toward elementary-school pickup. It showed a deposit from a Texas education spending account: public money available for private-school tuition, homeschool curriculum, therapies, and other approved education costs.
“Finally,” my friend Lila wrote. Her son had attended the same Catholic school since pre-K.
Behind me, my fourth grader, Sam, kicked the back of my seat. He was holding a math worksheet so crumpled it looked like he had tried to disappear into it.
“I’m stupid,” he said when we stopped at a red light. “Everyone else finished.”
I reached back and smoothed the paper against the dashboard. “You’re not stupid. You’re tired, and this page has too many words on it.”
By the time I got home, the group chat had split in two. Some parents saw the deposit as proof that school choice was working. Others asked why Texas was spending $1 billion on a program when, according to state figures, 7 in 10 children who received awards were already in private school or being homeschooled.
That number did not shock me. But it did make the question harder to avoid: what is this program actually for?
I thought about Lila, who is careful with money and had never hidden that she preferred private school. The account helped with tuition and robotics fees. She was not breaking a rule. She was using a program the legislature had designed broadly enough to include families like hers.
I also thought about Marisol, another mom from our neighborhood, whose daughter has dyslexia. Marisol had initially been excited about the money. She called three small private schools. One had a waiting list. One charged several thousand dollars more than the state award. The third said it had a “warm, structured classroom” but no certified dyslexia specialist on staff. If Marisol wanted specialized tutoring, she would have to hire it herself and drive across town twice a week.
Homeschooling meant reducing her work hours, buying curriculum, and figuring out speech services and social time on her own. She kept her daughter in public school and asked the district for reading intervention.
A school-choice account is often described as a ticket out. But a ticket only helps if there is a seat you can reach, a ride to get there, and a school that knows how to teach your particular child.
For Sam, the immediate problem was not that he needed an entirely new school. The problem was that no one had slowed down long enough to identify what was making school feel impossible. His class had 28 kids. Math came right after recess, when he was still overheated from running around. The problems were projected on the board, and he copied slowly. By the time he wrote down the second sentence, the class had already moved to the answer.
At home, the setup was not much better. He tried to do homework at the dining table while his sister watched videos and my phone buzzed with work emails. He would last five minutes before he was under the table, making toy figures talk instead of writing.
We changed some small things. After school, he got 25 minutes with no academics: snack, lying on the floor, throwing a ball for the dog. Then homework moved to the kitchen counter, where I could empty the dishwasher nearby without hovering. My phone went in a drawer. We used a ten-minute timer, and if he worked until it beeped, he could stand up, stretch, and get a glass of water.
I emailed his teacher a short, specific note:
“Sam is shutting down on multi-step word problems. Would it work if he does four instead of eight, circles the numbers first, and says the steps out loud before writing? He can do more later if this helps.”
She wrote back the same day. Yes. She also started giving him printed notes instead of requiring him to copy from the board, and she let him sit in a quieter spot for the first ten minutes of independent work. The school counselor gave him a small break card he could use when he noticed his fists clenching. He did not have to argue or explain himself. He could take a two-minute walk and come back.
Reading was harder. Sam avoided books because reading felt like proof that he was behind. We stopped making him read silently for twenty minutes. Instead, he listened to an audiobook while following along in a paper copy for ten minutes. Some nights I read a page and he read a page. Some nights he only listened. The librarian helped him find graphic novels and disgusting-sounding science books, because interest mattered more than reading level at that point.
These were not magical fixes. Sam still had days when he stuffed papers in his backpack and lied about having homework. But after a couple of months, his teacher noticed he was less defensive during math. When progress stayed slow, I put one more request in writing: “Sam is making limited progress in reading and becomes overwhelmed during written tasks. I am requesting an evaluation to see whether he qualifies for additional support.”
That sentence mattered more than any brochure about choice.
Parents considering these accounts should ask the same boring, practical questions before changing schools. Call the admissions office and ask for the full annual cost, not just tuition: fees, uniforms, books, trips, technology, and before- or after-school care. Ask whether the award renews every year and what happens if the legislature changes funding. Ask about transportation, because a “free” $10,000 seat does not help if you cannot get your child there.
If your child learns differently, get answers in writing. Ask whether the school has a certified special education teacher or dyslexia specialist on site. Ask who provides accommodations and what happens if the school decides your child is not a good fit. Private schools do not automatically provide the same services a public school must provide through an IEP. A local public school district may still offer some services, but the rules and locations can be complicated.
Homeschooling can be a genuine fit for some families, but it also costs time. Before choosing it, count the hours: lesson planning, teaching, record-keeping, testing rules, sports access, co-ops, and transportation to see friends. An account can buy curriculum, but it cannot replace a parent’s lost income or create a specialist who lives nearby.
The 7-in-10 figure is not mainly a story about individual parents doing something wrong. It is a story about program design. If a state offers money to families already paying private-school tuition or already homeschooling, many of those families will take it. That may be a reasonable public goal if taxpayers want to subsidize those choices. But it is different from creating new choices for children whose zoned schools are not serving them well.
A program aimed at that second goal would have to pay attention to seats, transportation, tuition gaps, special education capacity, and whether children actually move from one setting to another. It would also have to be honest that most children remain in public school, so underfunding those schools while celebrating a smaller number of departures leaves many families exactly where they started.
Last week, Sam brought home a math page that was not crumpled. He missed two problems, but he circled the numbers and showed me where he got confused. That is not a polished success story. He still has hard Wednesdays. Lila’s son is still thriving in private school. Marisol’s daughter is getting small-group reading help and recently made a friend who loves horses as much as she does.
Those outcomes do not answer the bigger Texas question. They just show what learning often looks like up close: a quieter seat, a shorter assignment, a teacher who answers email, a parent who finally asks for an evaluation, and enough stability for a child to stop crumpling the paper.
The money may keep flowing. The rules may change. But at our kitchen counter, the smaller, slower work is still the part that actually reaches Sam.
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