Texas sets record with school choice applications spanning race, income, geography

After Texas set a nationwide record with 274,000 applicants to its new school choice program – the most in a program’s first year – the fight to characterize the applicant pool continues.

Media outlets wrote that “most” of the applicants were white, well-off and already in private school, but the facts say otherwise.

While 45% of applicants are white, the majority (55%) are Hispanic, Black, Asian, American Indian and multiracial.

Middle-class and wealthy families did apply, but the percentage of lower-income families aligns closely with the overall number in the state. And the state’s priority on lower-income families and special needs students means only those students should receive scholarships in the $1 billion program’s first year.

Statistics, such as the high number of private school applicants, are normal when a program starts but tend to level out, said Colyn Ritter, a research analyst with EdChoice, a leading school choice advocate, who took issue with how outlets have characterized the program.

“I’m so tired of hearing, ‘Oh, it’s only going to private schools. Oh, it’s only going to white families,’” Ritter told The Lion in an interview. “What about Arizona, where the program is three or four years old and we see the share of applicants coming from private schools decreasing?

“They’re coming from charter and public schools more frequently than ever,” he continued. “That’s my expectation for Texas. It will just take time.”

A predictable cycle of attacks

Ritter said school choice critics “are not arguing in good faith” because they only see problems, not any of the benefits.

West Virginia’s HOPE Scholarship program is more diverse than the state’s population, Ritter said, but critics do not acknowledge that. Instead, they resort to the same arguments – and even have a predictable cycle for attacking school choice.

“It’s always, ‘These programs are welfare handouts to the rich.’ (Michigan State professor) Josh Cowen has made his career talking about how these programs are scams and calling them ‘vouchers.’ He can’t even bother to call the program what it is. It’s an education savings account. It’s not a voucher. It’s fundamentally different.”

After claiming the program only helps the rich, “the next argument will be, ‘It’s costing a billion dollars. Look at the public school system that’s being underfunded. Do you want taxpayer dollars going to private school? It’s costing a billion dollars.’”

Although ESAs like Texas Education Freedom Accounts are funded separately from public schools – and often passed with an increase in public school spending – the anti-choice lobby still claims they are taking money from government schools. No matter how much states spend on public schools, they are always “underfunded.”

“It’s like clockwork,” Ritter said. “They abandon the issue, and the next time a state enacts a choice program like this, you’ll see, ‘Oh, it’s only white kids, it’s only private school kids.’ Then it becomes, ‘Look how much this program is costing.’

“After that, it’s, ‘How do we know these kids are learning?’ Then, ‘There’s fraud. You can go to Arizona and find your taxpayer dollars going to diamond rings and lingerie.’

“No: 1%, the tiniest sliver of bad actors, are spending that money, and they are going to get punished. That’s bad. They shouldn’t do that. Transparency is good. We know that.”

One Arizona media outlet is under fire for misreporting the fraud rate in the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program as 20% when it is actually 2% erroneous spending and 0.3% blatant fraud, which is far lower than other government programs.

Ritter said critics do not hold public schools to the same standards.

“I saw an article the other day about a school district in Arizona that spent $15,000 on gaming systems. I’m not going to say gaming systems can’t be educational, but where’s the outrage at that? I don’t think there should be much if a school can justify it and say kids are learning. It’s asymmetric. It’s bad-faith arguing.”

Others have pointed out how school choice opponents selectively challenge arguments, such as using a now-discredited Florida case in lawsuits in other states but not challenging the Florida decision directly. Thomas Fisher, a lawyer for EdChoice, said he wishes critics would “put up or shut up.”

Demand for school choice strong across demographics

Texas’ program is good news for school choice as a whole, demonstrating its wide appeal. The applicant pool represents about 4.5% of K-12 students in the state, a stunning number for a new program that would make Texas among the top states in terms of school choice usage if each one received a scholarship, Ritter said. 

Interest was strong statewide, with at least 1,350 applicants from each of Texas’ 20 Education Service Regions, the comptroller’s office said. This includes rural areas in central and western Texas, which helps dispel claims that school choice will not work in rural areas.

Houston saw the most applicants, at nearly 65,000, followed by Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin. The state took over the failing Houston Public Schools in 2023, instituting reforms under superintendent Mike Miles. While there have been improvements, the district will close 12 schools this year as it continues to contract.

Applications averaged nearly 4,900 per day over a roughly two-month period, which was extended from six to eight weeks after a court ruled for Islamic schools that said they had been excluded from the program.

To date, 247,000 applications have been approved, with another 2,200 under review. Grants will be about $10,500, with special needs students eligible for up to $30,000 and homeschool students receiving $2,000.

Seventy-seven percent of applicants indicated they wanted to attend private school, with 23% saying they would homeschool.

Kindergarten and pre-K students made up the largest share of the applicant pool, with numbers decreasing gradually through sixth grade, then dropping sharply in the older grades.

School choice serves special needs students

Nearly 16% of applicants indicated a disability, the comptroller’s office said, demonstrating demand from special needs families.

School choice critics often allege that programs fund private schools that are not required to serve students with special needs, but Ritter said that does not tell the whole story.

His organization polled Texas private schools last year about whether they served students with disabilities. Of the 447 schools that responded, 83% said they did, up from 75% of respondents the year before.

“It’s almost like these families are not getting what they need at their traditional public schools,” he said, noting the ESA offers flexibility in how the funds are spent. “What I’ve heard from other families is, ‘What my child needs to learn just costs more, and we might need different things on top of what they’re receiving from their school.’”

Other critics criticize TEFA because some elite private schools are not accepting them. Ritter said that creates opportunities for other schools “who would love to have you.”

More concerning to him is the rapidly changing needs of the economy and giving parents a choice in how their children are educated.

“We are countering some of these claims, but the claims are silly and they’re missing the main point,” he said. “From what I can tell, school choice is a better bet to help families achieve a quality education, and what a quality education means, for both opponents and advocates, is changing by the day.”

Parental satisfaction matters and increases with school choice, which ranks highly across the political spectrum.

“We see it every time in our polling,” Ritter said. “Democrats, Republicans – they support it at a roughly similar rate of about 75% for ESAs. Find me something that’s bipartisan that gets that support.”

In spite of this, the politically-entrenched arguments continue.

“I don’t know how people are missing the fact that these opponents are not arguing in good faith,” he said. “There’s never any sort of concession.”