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• KACI: Our public schools are funded through the weighted average daily allotment. When the students come to school each day, that's more money that the public school is getting. So, public school students use this voucher system to go on to a private school, which is money that public schools will be losing. And a big argument against that is that, well, that school has one less student to educate. But the reality is that schools have fixed costs, and those costs don't go down because students leave. It's going to put even more pressure on school districts and their budgets, and we could see even higher deficits going into future school years.

• LIZ: Hello. And welcome to today's IDRA Classnotes Podcast, where we discuss the real impact of school vouchers in Education Savings Accounts on Texas students. I'm your host, Dr. Liz Piñón, an education advocate, a former bilingual teacher, and most importantly, a mother of children with disabilities who has seen, firsthand, how these policies affect families like mine. So recently, we testified before the Texas Senate Committee on Education about SB2, a bill to expand private school vouchers through Education Savings Accounts. And to break it all down, I'm joined by Dr. Chloe Latham Sikes from IDRA and Kaci Wright from the Texas Legislative Education Equity Coalition. Dr. Sikes, as IDRA's deputy director of policy, can you briefly define what Education Savings Accounts are?

• CHLOE: Yeah. Thanks, Liz. And thanks for organizing this really important discussion. So, Education Savings Accounts are one form of what we call private school vouchers. And vouchers are a way to take public money to put it toward private education, like private schools and private educational services. A distinct factor of them is that it's public money for private use without a lot of transparency or accountability.

• LIZ: Kaci, you've been working with schools directly. What have you seen on the ground when funding shifts towards voucher programs?

• KACI: Yes. Great question. And thank you, Liz, for having me for this great discussion. As a former public-school teacher, I've seen for myself that public schools are doing all that they can right now. And they're trying to provide great education for our students, but the reality is things are getting expensive. And districts are having to pass budget deficits, and schools are struggling to meet their basic needs, especially with inflation recently. So, if investments are starting to go to voucher programs, it's going to be hard for districts to start getting that money back and start investing in things that we know work for students.

• LIZ: Yeah. So, as we start thinking of the realities of ESAs and our public-school funding, Chloe, your testimony pointed out that ESAs failed to meet the Texas constitutional requirement for the general diffusion of knowledge. Can you break that down? What exactly does that mean?

• CHLOE: Sure. So, in the Texas State Constitution, it says that Texas lawmakers are responsible for providing an efficient system of public, free schools for the purpose of the general diffusion of knowledge. And the writers of that constitution found a free public system of education so important that they decided to include it in the constitution and found it critical to the functioning of the state's society, our workforce, our population, our society, our state government, our social functioning, social and governmental functioning. Right? And so, they tasked lawmakers into the future - to today and in the future - with establishing and funding a system for the provision of the general diffusion of knowledge.

  Now, IDRA knows, and many, many listeners may know, there have been decades of litigation to discuss what that exactly means, how it's funded, if that's enough, for who, and how it's being provided. And there are some excellent past Classnotes Podcasts on that very topic of school finance litigation. But what is interesting about this Texas voucher proposal, Senate Bill 2, is that it says, in the purpose of this proposal, to create the voucher is to help provide a general diffusion of knowledge for Texas, even though it's a special program that cannot possibly serve every student in Texas. And there are about 6 million public school students in Texas.

  So, by today's lawmakers making this proposal and trying to create an ESA voucher program, they are essentially saying, "You know what? We're giving up on our constitutional responsibility to provide free public schools that are sufficient for the general diffusion of knowledge. And we think it's okay to make a special program to discount private education for, ultimately, a few students at a really large price tag, and with very few, if any, strings attached for how that's accountable to the rest of the state and how that's part of the state's investment in our future."

• LIZ: Wow, Chloe, you made that clear for me. That's heartbreaking for a lot of kids, especially kids like mine. Kaci, you've worked in schools that are underfunded while policymakers are pushing these ESAs. How could this bill worsen conditions for our public-school students across Texas?

• KACI: Yes. So, our public schools are funded through the weighted average daily allotment, which means that when students come to school each day, that's more money that the public school is getting. So public school students use this voucher system to go on to a private school, that is money that public schools will be losing. And a big argument against that is that, well, that school has one less student to educate. But the reality is, if you work in schools and you know, it's that schools have fixed costs, and those costs don't go down because students leave. Right? The price of lights hasn’t gone down because two students have left the building. Or if two students leave each grade level, you still have the same number of teachers to pay. So, it's going to be difficult with school districts having to still pay for, essentially, the same resources, same building facilities, same things, but they're going to be losing that money. And as I referenced earlier, with districts passing budget deficits, it's going to put even more pressure on school districts and their budgets. And we could see even higher deficits going into the future school years.

• LIZ: Wow, Kaci, as you're saying that, I'm thinking of my own children's school. Right? aS a parent, I see how these schools are already struggling to meet the needs of our diverse learners. My daughter, for example, needs accessible material, she needs adaptive PE, she needs adaptive computer systems, and technology. And if public schools lose this funding to private institutions that don't even have to provide these services, what's going to happen to families like mine, children like mine that already need so much more extra help. And now we're shorting them again. It's just heartbreaking. So, this myth of choice. Who gets left out? One of the biggest misconceptions about school vouchers is that they expand opportunities for all students. But private schools aren't legally required to accept every child. As a mother of children with disabilities, I know firsthand how difficult it is to find schools willing to accommodate. Even private special needs schools have a choice in allowing students in or not. Chloe, can you explain why vouchers don't guarantee access for students with disabilities?

• CHLOE: Yeah. Thanks, Liz. And I always appreciate hearing your own story of navigating these challenges as they exist already. And it gives us insight into how voucher programs can exacerbate the inequality for students with disabilities and their families to navigate those systems. One way is that private schools don't have to have any state or federal regulations over the types of services that they provide for any of their educational services or in their policies or codes of conduct, admission standards and policies, which types of programs and teachers that they have on staff and how they are trained. They don't have to comply, and that's their prerogative. They are private institutions.

  But we are tying, with these types of programs, public dollars to the education that's going to be provided by private schools. And this is what happens in other states. So, some key things are that we know that most voucher programs in other states do not have special inclusion or guarantees for admission into the program or any other private school for students with disabilities. And that can be a wide-ranging category, various learning disabilities, different types of learning challenges and accommodations, physical accommodations, and additional therapies and specialists that might be needed. So they don't necessarily have to guarantee the rights of those students in the program, to admit those students into schools, and certainly to provide the education to accommodate their needs for their learning success. They do not. Most programs that we've seen nationwide, in other states, do not have protection for students with disabilities.

  And I think that that's particularly clear because all the proposals we've seen in Texas - and this appears in other states' language as well - say, "For a parent to apply to this voucher program, they must understand that they are waiving their rights under existing federal law for students with disabilities under IDEA." So, it's making clear, "To access the funds of this program, you must understand you are waiving your rights for you to advocate for that student, to make it clear that their accommodation should be met, to have any other legal recourse to ensure that," which public schools are all subject to. So that's a really clear way that we know these programs are, in fact, not designed for students with disabilities to be able to access them.

• LIZ: So, Chloe, in truth, what you're saying is that our kids with special needs must leave their rights at the door of these private schools when they're signing off or doing these voucher programs.

• CHLOE: That's exactly right. And something that comes up a lot, I know, across states, and has come up here in Texas, in these debates, is that there are specialized schools, sometimes, for student needs. And when those schools share how many students, they're able to serve, it's in the double digits tops. It's maybe 35 students, maybe 40. And it often is at a much higher cost than what a voucher proposes. So, there's still even an economic disparity and difference in how students' particular needs and disabilities might be able to even access those types of schools within these voucher programs.

• LIZ: That's so heartbreaking. And just to give a tidbit, just last week, our doctor suggested a special school in our area. It has a $25,000 price tag. But even in the application, it says, "Well, we're not sure who we will accept or not accept." So that's heartbreaking. Right? So, Kaci, you also mentioned that students from marginalized communities are often the ones left out of these programs. Can you give us an example of how private schools can cherry-pick students whom they admit?

• KACI: Yes. And I'm just thinking about what you both are saying about special education, the needs of our students. I was working in a public school. I remember, we had to follow so many laws around that. We have to have annual reviews to see what support our students need. We have to follow an individualized education plan. And those things are work, but it's work that's needed to meet students' needs. And private schools that might not want to do that or follow that process will just say, "Hey, we can't support your student. We don't, essentially, want your students because of the needs that they have." And they can cherry-pick in that way.

  They can also cherry-pick students who they know are academically successful in things to show that their school is thriving. But they get to pick exactly what kind of students walk in their door. And a big thing that has been talked about a little bit is that we have anti-discrimination laws that our public schools must follow, and private schools don't have to follow any of them.

  One of the biggest examples I can think of is the CROWN Act, which was passed in 2023, to protect against racial discrimination based on hair texture and hair type. And that was huge. Right? Because private schools don't have to follow that, they can have a policy that says, "Okay. You come to our school, but you have to cut your dreads, or you have to straighten your hair." And that is horrible that our public dollars are going to be going to, essentially, fund that type of discrimination in our schools.

  And there are way more, a lot more anti-discrimination laws that protect LGBTQ+ students that will also be taken away. So, all those laws that we know we put in place for a reason to protect our students are, essentially, gone, and our tax dollars will be paid for that.

• LIZ: Thank you, Kaci. That was good insight, especially about our marginalized communities that are often not discussed when we're talking about things like these vouchers. So, to truly understand why all this matters, I want you to hear directly from my daughter, Felicita, who testified before the Texas Senate about how SB2, our current voucher bill, affects students like her.

• FELICITA: My mom has tried to get me into private schools before. But they said no, because I'm in a wheelchair. They don't want to deal with-- they didn't want to deal with things like ramps. Public schools are the only place where my siblings and I can go and feel comfortable and included. They give us the support we need, like teachers who'll help, technology that works for us, and spaces that are made for kids like me.

• LIZ: But this is why we're having this conversation today, because real students, like Felicita, deserve better than all these false promises and our underfunded schools. So, what can Texas learn from other states? What's the bigger picture? Chloe, your testimony referenced voucher programs in Indiana, where student achievement declined after vouchers were implemented. Can you share a little bit of what the research tells us about the long-term effects of these programs?

• CHLOE: So, some programs in other states-- and there are these types of voucher programs in about 30 states and DC. Some have expired, some have existed and gone away. For instance, Illinois let theirs expire because they found it ineffective for student achievement. So that's one example that we know to be true. We also have a lot of data. Right? It can vary by state. But we have a lot of time and a lot of different settings to research and compare. And there have been decades of research on the effectiveness of voucher programs for student achievement.

  With the example of Indiana, in particular, the study that I was citing found that students who entered that state's voucher program in early grades experienced a decline in math achievement. And particularly, if they entered after fourth grade, they did experience a decline in English and language arts reading achievement.

  Overall, when we look across a lot of peer-reviewed and longitudinal studies, we see either flat student achievement, whereas it's not differ significantly from public school peers, or even negative achievement. And it is worsened-- and this was true also in the Indiana study-- worsened for students who entered a voucher program and then, for whatever reason, had to leave, or chose to leave, and came back to the public-school setting. They had even further declined in their achievement-- and this is largely measured by test scores, but in that academic achievement than their peers, indicating that they experienced some type of instructional loss.

  And then, with public schools, we can presume that they need to require more resources to either remediate the student, catch that student up, and try to ensure their success, even though they've lost ground through their participation in that type of voucher program. So that's not just bad for students - although, of course, it is clearly immediately important, and a loss to a student's academic achievement and opportunities - but it also means that public schools, as Kaci illustrated, have fewer resources for students coming back into the system because they haven't budgeted for students. They've left the system. And they do have to accept all students. If a student comes back into the public school system, they need to serve that student, and they need to serve them well. And they will be held accountable by the state and parents for how they serve that student. But they've experienced a loss and resources to be able to do so. So, it's concerning for several reasons. And there's a lot of research that shows that's what can unfold.

• LIZ: And a lot of this was shared during these Senate conversations. Right? So, Texas isn't the first state to go down this path. What lessons can we learn from states like Arkansas and Florida, where vouchers have already been expanded?

• KACI: Yeah. I think that's a great question, Liz, especially because so many other states, like Chloe mentioned, have passed voucher programs. We must learn from what they have done, and we try to implement that in a program if a voucher program ends up passing in Texas. One of the biggest things we're seeing is accountability is so important to see how these voucher programs are playing out. Are they successful? Are they not? And we think it's important - especially here in Texas, we're designating a billion dollars to be invested - we need to make sure that we see, down the line, that this is a good investment or if it's a bad investment and decide whether this should even continue if it's not. Right?

  And we want to be able to get accurate data on all the students and how they're doing. Something that we should have learned from other states is that we need that disaggregated data to see how each student is doing. We also need to make sure that this isn't going to blow up our state budget one day. A lot of other states are seeing that voucher programs are way more expensive than what they were initially budgeted for. So, we need to ensure that, if this money is budgeted towards vouchers, that it doesn't increase and go more than that, which is only going to further take money away from public schools. We need to take all that information we learn and make sure that we don't have the same mistakes.

• LIZ: So, Kaci and Chloe, you've given us a lot of good information. We've covered a lot today. SB2 voucher programs are bad for public schools. They're bad for students with disabilities and that come from marginalized communities. And it doesn't even deliver on its real promise of improving education. We need to be fully funding our public schools equitably, not just funneling taxpayer dollars into private institutions that have no accountability. What are your final thoughts as we wrap up our conversation today?

• CHLOE: Well, I can say, Liz, I know here at IDRA, we're advocating for strong public schools that serve all students because education isn't a commodity, it is a public good. And we're doing that in Texas, in Georgia, and through our national work.

• LIZ: Thank you, Chloe. And Kaci, what are your final thoughts?

• KACI: I just want to leave everyone with, our public schools are doing an amazing job to do the best they can with, essentially, what they've been given. And it's the state's job to help public schools out, not to essentially provide an out from education. We should be investing in the schools that we know have a majority of our children in Texas, over 5.5 million that are in public schools. We should be prioritizing the current education setting and improving it before we invest in money that will essentially be taken to private schools.

• LIZ: It was wonderful listening to both of you today. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and joining me today. If you want to learn more or act, check out idra.org and subscribe. We have wonderful resources. We also have advocacy tools at idraseen.org, IDRA S-E-E-N dot org. Subscribe and follow us on social media. Please make sure to share it with your networks. Let's make sure all our families understand the real impact of these policies.

• NARRATOR: Thank you for listening to IDRA Classnotes. For more information on IDRA and other Classnotes topics, go to www.idra.org. You can also send us your thoughts by email to podcast@idra.org.