How Texas Is Transforming Education

Newsweek

6 hours ago

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The education landscape in Texas is undergoing a massive transformation, with changes set to impact students from K-12 to college.
The state will soon implement a $1 billion school voucher program—one of the largest in the country—that will use public dollars to fund private school tuition, which critics have warned will direct resources away from public schools and exclude those with disabilities and low-income households.
Earlier this month, lawmakers approved Senate Bill 37, which will give governing boards appointed by the governor new powers to control the curriculum at public higher education institutions and eliminate some degree programs. The legislation marks the latest effort to increase political control of public higher education institutions in Texas, where a ban on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives took effect in January last year.
Also this month, a federal judge blocked a Texas law that had given college students without legal residency access to reduced in-state tuition.
"This was maybe the most consequential session for public education in the history of Texas, or certainly one of the most consequential sessions," Vivek Datla, regional education policy fellow at the Intercultural Development Research Association, told Newsweek.
Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty/Canva
$1 Billion Voucher Program
The voucher program that Governor Greg Abbott signed into law last month will allow Texas families from the 2026 school year to receive $10,000 per year to help pay for students' private school tuition. Children with disabilities can qualify for up to $30,000 a year.
Advocates champion vouchers as a way to put parents in control of their children's education, with Abbott saying that it will ensure that Texas families "whose children can no longer be served by the public school assigned to them, have the choice to take their money and find the school that is right for them."
But opponents argue that it will drain money from public school and mainly benefit children from wealthier families since voucher payments rarely cover the full cost of sending children to private schools.
They also say that unlike public schools, which must accept all students, private schools can be selective about which students they admit, meaning the most vulnerable students are likely to be excluded from taking advantage of the program.
Critics have also slammed Texas lawmakers for approving the voucher program while failing to act on a separate bill that would invest $7.7 billion in public education over the next two years. Earlier in the year, lawmakers had pledged that passage of a school voucher bill and public school funding legislation would happen in tandem.
"Schools have been dealing with a lack of investment for over six years," Jaime Puente, the director of Economic Opportunity for Every Texan, told Newsweek. "School districts across the state are currently dealing with closures, they're dealing with reduced services.
"That lack of investment has been exacerbated and will be exacerbated by the introduction of a third system of education that is entirely unequal, through the voucher program."
'Huge Shift' In How Universities Are Governed
Senate Bill 37 shifts some responsibilities traditionally held by professors to political appointees on university governing boards at public colleges and universities. The governing boards will be tasked with reviewing general education curriculum requirements to ensure that courses are necessary to prepare students for civic and professional life, equip them for participation in the workforce and worth the cost. The boards will also have the authority to eliminate courses with low enrolment.
The legislation also creates a state ombudsman's office, which will have the power to investigate complaints against institutions and threaten funding if they don't comply with the law. It was approved by the Texas Legislature earlier in June and Abbott has until June 22 to sign it into law.
Republican state Representative Matt Shaheen, who co-sponsored the legislation, said the aim was to "provide consistency with respect to our curriculum and the degrees we're offering our students."
But the legislation "represents a huge, huge shift in the way that universities are governed and how curriculum decisions and general academic policies will be made" in universities, Datla said.
"By shifting curricular authority away from faculty and towards these politically appointed boards, students could lose access to diverse, rigorous and thought-provoking courses," he said.
Limiting what can be taught "undermines students' ability to think critically" and "ultimately receive a truly comprehensive education," he said. "Their academic experiences may increasingly reflect political or economic agendas rather than scholarly or student-centered priorities."
Cameron Samuels, the executive director of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas who will start a graduate program at the University of Texas next year, told Newsweek that Senate Bill 37 will make students question whether it will worth pursuing higher education in Texas.
"Texas is home. It's a place I care about. It's a place I want to thrive in," Samuels said. But legislation Senate Bill 37 "deters people from wanting a Texas education."
Others have warned that the legislation could lead to a "brain drain" of students, faculty and researchers—along with their grant funding—from Texas institutions.
The Texas American Federation of Teachers reported earlier this month that among the union's membership alone, 40 faculty members have reported leaving Texas because of "legislative attacks."
"Hundreds of faculty and students testified to the expected catastrophic impacts of this legislation, from the exodus of top teaching talent to the waning of Texas higher educational institutions' prestige," Zeph Capo, president of the Texas AFT, has said.
This bill "represents a fundamental shift in the very things that made our universities attractive," Datla said. "And there's a lot of fear from professors and a lot of fear from students about whether or not they want to continue their work or continue their education here."
Striking Down The Texas Dream Act
On June 4, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor struck down the Texas Dream Act, which for more than two decades had given college students without legal residency—"Dreamers"—access to reduced in-state tuition.
The ruling came days after the end of the Texas legislative session, during which a repeal bill pushed by group of Republicans was considered but ultimately did not come up for a vote.
The Department of Justice sued to block the policy and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a motion agreeing that it should not be enforced, clearing the way for O'Connor to issue an injunction.
"Ending this discriminatory and un-American provision is a major victory for Texas," Paxton said following the judge's ruling.
The policy was initially passed by sweeping majorities in the state Legislature in 2001 and signed into law by then-Governor Rick Perry, a Republican. But it soon came under fire as debates over illegal immigration ramped up.
Still, legislative efforts to repeal the law have repeatedly failed. In the legislative session that ended in early June, a bill to repeal the law did not even get a vote.
Supporters of the policy say the ruling will lock many students out of higher education and ultimately harm the state's economy. Research from the American Immigration Council estimates that Texas will lose roughly $461 million annually if the Texas Dream Act is repealed.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which on Wednesday filed a motion to intervene in the lawsuit, says that the repeal of the law would prohibit many students from continuing their education. In some cases, tuition costs could increase from $50 per semester credit hour to $455. Texas has about 57,000 undocumented students enrolled in its public universities and colleges, according to the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a nonpartisan nonprofit of university leaders focused on immigration policy.
These students "are part of Texas' future workforce, contributing over $80 million annually to our higher education system and poised to fill critical roles in key sectors like healthcare, education, and technology," said J.R. Gonzales of the Texas Association of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce, one of more than 80 organizations that have urged Paxton to reverse course. "Removing their access to affordable education will reduce college enrollment, shrink our talent pool, and weaken our state's long-term competitiveness."
Datla noted that even the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature did not have the political will to repeal the law.
"They understood the economic benefits of the Dream Act," he said. "And yet closed-door negotiations happened to strike that law down...that's bad for the many students who wish to pursue their dreams here, and bad for our state economy as a whole."
Puente also noted that many of the students that benefited from the law are now public school teachers in Texas.
"We know that these students and these people, not only do they produce economically and they are able to buy homes and create businesses and things like that, but in a very real sense, they are subsidizing our public education system with their labor," he said.
Datla said that the Texas Legislature could in its next session seek to further control what is taught in universities, noting that a provision that restricted how professors could teach about certain subjects, including race and identity, had been removed from Senate Bill 37.
"There's definitely a strong potential that in the next legislative session, we see a reemergence of that, not only that attempt to control structures, but continuing of attempts to control content," he said.
The changes in the education landscape efforts to "socially engineer who we are as a state," Puente said.
"It's being done in a way that singles out and targets particular people, whether its teachers in K-12...or defenseless high school students who are just trying to get a college degree. All of this is being done in a very particular and targeted way to eliminate the kinds of dissent that would prevent these actions from happening."