Lori Davidson, a parent and mother from Joshua, Texas, spoke to the Austin Journal this week about her position on school choice and experience with her children's education.
Davidson is concerned with the public school system and believes children would be better served with parents having the main role of choosing which education is best. She said an Education Savings Account (ESA), which is being considered in the Texas legislature, would have been very helpful for her family to choose the best type of education. Polls from The Heritage Foundation have found a significant majority of Texas parents are supportive of school choice.
"I believe school choice/education freedom will help Texas families to better educate their children with the type of education parents want for their children and not the WOKE anti-America agenda the federal government is pushing on our kids," Davidson told the Journal. "The government has put themselves in a position of believing that they know better what our children need. This is not true. In fact, school boards have stopped listening to parents and the federal government has stooped to calling concerned parents 'terrorists.' The government is not the “elite” they seem to think they are. They work for the people and need to serve the people’s agenda not their own.
"This is exactly why I chose private schools and homeschool venues to educate my son initially. We did have some years in public school which allowed me to see how deficient the public system was. Even now, children in a lot [of] public schools are not reading on grade level. These schools seem to be spending most of their time on STAAR tests and making sure kids are choosing the correct pronouns instead of actually teaching children reading, writing, and arithmetic. The basic skills that need to be mastered before anything else. If they can’t get that right, then they need to figure out why, address it and correct it.
"In regards to an education savings account, it would’ve helped immensely in our family to help pay for that education. We sacrificed to send our son to private school and homeschool. And, were happy to do so knowing that he would reap the benefit of that type of education rather than one that was lacking. If school boards and government don’t listen to parents in regards to their children’s education and parents choose to use this savings account, perhaps this will send a more clear message to them to clean up their act.
"We don’t want our children to wear masks, we don’t want them vaccinated, we don’t want Critical Race Theory, we don’t want new pronouns, we don’t want teachers ridiculing our values and replacing them with immoral ones. We do want a say-so in our children’s education, we do want our children to be safe without being in an environment pushing them to choose another gender they’re not and encouraged to take drugs to mutilate their bodies, we do want the government to get out of our business and stop indoctrinating our children."
Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) are growing in popularity in the United States, a March Education Week report said. Those accounts give families access to public per-pupil funds that can be used to pay for tuition to private schools, homeschooling supplies, curriculum materials and educational therapy services. The accounts began in Arizona in 2011 and were originally limited to students with disabilities, low-income students and students in failing schools. Following the pandemic, they have grown in popularity with more states opting for universal programs, allowing any student to use the accounts.
The Dallas Morning News reported this week that there was a recent development in the fight for a school choice bill. The Senate Education Committee in Texas has advanced school funding legislation that includes salary increases for public school teachers. But it also introduces a provision that would provide families with $8,000 per year to spend on private education through ESAs, a provision that was originally in Senate Bill 8. The move aims to empower parents to choose the best school for their children. The bill's fate depends on the approval of the Republican-led Senate and House, although efforts for ESAs have faced resistance from a coalition of rural Republicans and Democrats.
Ovidia Molina, Texas State Teachers Association president, views the committee's vote as an attack on public education.
"Pairing an expensive voucher bill with a so-called teacher ‘pay raise’ is an insult to educators because the money that would go toward pay increases would be minimal, the scraps left over from a $33 billion budget surplus," Molina said in a statement, quoted by the Morning News.
But Mandy Drogin, Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) Next Generation Texas campaign director, applauded the change.
"Parents are empowered to make the best education options for their children — whether that’s a simplified cross-district transfer process or utilizing an ESA, parents have the tools that they need at their fingertips," she told the Morning News.
The Journal previously reported that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had threatened a veto on any school choice bill that came to his desk with a limited scope. The governor is determined to pass an ESA bill even if that means calling a special session later this year.
A poll by The Heritage Foundation found that public support for education choice policies like ESAs has reached all-time highs due to concerns over long school shutdowns, mask mandates and politicization of the classroom. In a recent poll, 70% of all Texans and 77% of parents of school-aged children in the state support ESAs.