After Texas GOP primaries, last year’s school choice losses look like a blessing | Opinion

When Gov. Greg Abbott approached the podium at Fort Worth’s Nolan Catholic High School last April to rally support for education savings accounts, he probably did not anticipate having to call the Legislature back not once but three times to pass his plan.

Even then, it was to no avail.

A fourth special session closed in November with lawmakers at an impasse, and some of his fellow Republicans in the House were largely to blame for the proposal’s continued failure.

Only months before, school choice in Texas (at least in some form) seemed an inevitability.

Prominent influencers — from Fort Worth Catholic Bishop Michael Olson to national school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis — testified before the Legislature or went stumping for the governor at events all over the state.

But the expansive plan was pared down in an effort to compromise before it was gutted, dying a slow, unremarkable death and leaving the Republican party divided; its leader in the governor’s mansion looking impotent and weak.

But after the recent primary elections, the governor appears to be having the last laugh.

Abbott-backed challengers trounced school choice opponents all over the state, and the future for education savings accounts in Texas is bright once again.

Even brighter, perhaps, than this time last year.

“It was a blessing in disguise,” said DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Federation For Children, reflecting on last summer’s school choice fiasco. “Texas [now] has a true conservative House with a body more supportive of school choice than it’s ever been.”

As it stands today, he’s probably right.

When legislators return to Austin next year, at least nine incumbents who stood in opposition of last session’s school-choice bills will not be among them.

Their likely replacements (assuming victories in the general election in November, an almost sure prospect given their districts) are all proponents of parental empowerment and school choice.

Abbott backed them all in an effort to fulfill his promise to oust those in his own party who stood in the way of his agenda.

At least three more incumbents were forced into runoffs; there’s more than a chance that one or more of those races will swing in Abbott’s favor as well.

DeAngelis likens this political tidal wave to what recently happened in Iowa.

Last January, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed into law an expansive educational choice bill that will phase in over three years and eventually include up to $7,598 a year in an “education savings account” for private school tuition.

The Iowa law also allocates $1,205 to public schools for each student within the district who takes advantage of a savings account and allows public schools to use funding more flexibly to raise teacher pay.

Like Abbott in Texas, Reynolds and her fellow school choice advocates endured several years of setbacks and failures before she had the legislative support to pass her proposal.

And like Abbott, Reynolds supported primary challengers to those who opposed school choice, growing the Republican majority in the state to the point that it could ultimately pass a sweeping bill.

Iowa’s new policy is structured a lot like several bills considered here, down to the debate over how to compensate public schools for the loss of funds they would sustain from children taking advantage of savings accounts.

Last I checked, the cash infusions to public schools proposed by Texas legislators were quite generous. They probably won’t be next time around.

As some have argued, that there were other issues at play in the Texas primary.

The Republican Party of Texas — at least its activist members — has moved closer to the fringe and been less willing to compromise in recent years, a microcosm of a national political party that is remaking itself in the image of Donald Trump.

Republican primary challengers had a slew of other issues — both real and imagined — on which to attack their incumbent opponents: whether they were tough enough on border security, property tax cuts and how they voted on the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton.

All those issues probably had an impact; how much the school choice fight played into challenger victories is difficult to quantify.

DeAngelis believes it was the most salient issue this cycle. Given that the vast majority of Republican primary voters (not to mention Texans in general), support school choice, it seems likely.

The real question is whether Texas will follow in the footsteps of Iowa and pass something even more expansive than it could have last year.

“They will start from a different bargaining position,” DeAngelis said, suggesting that the compromises made in last year’s proposals will be much further and far between.

Even school choice opponents who were able to fend off primary challengers, such as Fort Worth Rep. Charlie Geren, may be chastened and not eager to mount another defensive campaign in the years to come.

All this is good for Texas children and families who deserve more education options.

But it does make one wonder whether making compromises would have been the more prudent route for some Texas Republicans.

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