Texas School Voucher Bill Becomes Law

By Mackenzie Sams, masams@ttu.edu

Governor Greg Abbott signed the Texas school voucher bill into law on Saturday, after a decade long battle between the House of Representatives and the Senate. 

The law, which will come into effect starting in the 2026-27 school year, provides a taxpayer funded educational savings account to parents who wish to enroll their kids in a private or charter school. It appropriates $1 billion for these accounts, with the money being awarded on a lottery-based system, with preference shown to students from low-income families or with disabilities. 

The law will require parents to submit proof of citizenship in order to receive the money. Senator José Menéndez argued that such requirements violate the constitution under Plyler v. Doe, a Supreme Court case which held that every child, regardless of citizenship status, has the equal right to an education in the United States. 

“I’m a kid of two immigrants who came here as adults,” Menéndez said. “One with a fourth grade education, one with a nursing degree at the age of eighteen, and they didn’t know a word of English. All we spoke was Spanish at home. And if it weren’t for the education that they found a way to give us, there’s no way I’d be standing here, or anywhere else for that matter.” 

Menéndez also argued that since private schools still have the right to deny any student’s application – including those with an ESA – the law will lead to taxpayer funded discrimination. 

History of voucher bills

The first school voucher bill in Texas was a direct response to integration efforts following the landmark Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. 

In 1955, Governor Allen Shivers created the Texas Advisory Committee on Segregation in the Public Schools. The committee’s stated goal was “the prevention of forced integration” in Texas, and it recommended that the legislature create a voucher system similar to that being used in other states to pay for white children to attend segregated private schools. 

The aid would only be given if the parents applied on the basis of being opposed to integration and no aid was to be given to any parents who wanted to send their child to an integrated school. Misuse of the funds would have been a felony. 

The following year, the Texas House passed a bill that included the committee’s recommendations for a voucher system. When the bill went to the Senate, a team of six senators largely led by Henry Gonzáles, the first latino Senator in Texas history, and Abraham Kazen held a 36 hour filibuster to prevent its passage. 

Menéndez recognized this history, though he said he doesn’t believe that modern legislators have discriminatory intent with the school voucher law.

Senator Tan Parker argued that the law will allow for underprivileged kids to access better educational opportunities. 

“This ESA will give kids that are trapped in underperforming schools an enormous opportunity to have a bright and a prosperous future,” Parker said. 

Gov. Abbott’s involvement

A survey taken by the University of Houston and Texas Southern University found that 65% of Texans supported a school voucher system in 2024. 

The Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative advocacy group that has poured millions of dollars into Texas politics has supported school vouchers since at least 2009. In one of its publications from that year, it described school choice as one of its top educational priorities. 

School vouchers had become largely unpopular by then, with the House voting them down 129-8 in 2005. 

In 2015 and 2017, the Texas Senate passed school voucher bills, but they failed in the House. Governor Abbott, who is now one of school choice’s staunchest defenders, was almost completely silent about the issue for eight years. 

In 2021, however, oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks used a PAC to give $3.7 million to one of Abbott’s challengers in the Republican primary, citing school choice as one of their reasons for doing so. By 2023, Abbott had pursued school vouchers aggressively, including going on a tour across the state to promote the idea. 

The Texas Senate passed school voucher bills twice in 2023. Both times, the measure died in the House. 

Democrats and Republicans from rural districts opposed the bills, arguing they would take money from the public schools that their constituents relied on without offering them a realistic alternative. 

Governor Abbott attacked Republicans who didn’t support school choice in the 2024 primaries. In 2025, he named it as a top legislative priority. 

Abbott connected the concept of school vouchers to ideas that had been growing in conservative circles of “parental rights,” particularly when it comes to education. Parental rights has been used recently as a reasoning for loosening vaccine requirements, banning teachers from using a student’s preferred name and pronouns without parental consent and creating a portal system where parents can access a list of which books their child checks out from the school library.

School vouchers grew in popularity, with both the House and the Senate passing their own version of the bill. It was the Senate version that ultimately passed with amendments from the House. 

The opposition

Senator Roland Gutierrez, representing Southwest Texas, was one of 12 who voted against the bill. 

“I am not for this bill because this bill ultimately hurts rural Texans,” Gutierrez said. “I am not for this bill because it only helps a very small handful of kids. I am not for this bill because the vast majority of the kids it will help are already in private schools.” 

Most private schools in Texas are centralized in major metropolitan areas, mostly in East and Central Texas. In the Panhandle, all but two private schools are in Potter and Randall County. If a parent in Booker, for example, wanted their child to attend a private school using the school voucher system, their nearest option would be St. Anthony’s School in Dalhart, a two hour drive away. 

Every Representative and every Senator in the Panhandle area voted in favor of school vouchers. 

Senator Charles Perry of Lubbock voted for the bill, but said that he would change his mind when the time came to renew it if it contributed too much to 100% online learning. 

The bill was passed by the Senate on April 24. On May 3, Governor Abbott signed it into law. 

“Today is the culmination of a movement that has swept across our state and across our country,” Abbott said. “A movement driven by parents.” 

The Texas Comptroller is responsible for administering the school voucher program. It has not yet released information on how parents can apply.