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For much of his 10-year gubernatorial career, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has been trying to pass a school voucher bill — a goal he insists he’ll be able to accomplish this year. 

Now, a new analysis, exclusive to The 74, sheds light on why he’s had so much trouble. While it’s common knowledge that rural Republicans in the state House have been standing in his way, homeschool parents opposed to education savings accounts have also been part of the resistance. 

Leslie Finger, a political science professor at the University of North Texas, analyzed roll call votes on 13 private school choice bills that reached the floor of either the state House or the Senate between 2013 and 2023. She found that lawmakers were more likely to vote against private school choice not only if they represented a rural area, but also if they had more homeschoolers in their districts.

“We specifically opted out of this system,” Faith Howe, president of Texans for Homeschool Freedom, said about public schools. While proponents of the voucher plan say it will be optional for families, that doesn’t satisfy Howe. “I don’t think they’re going to have a problem coming back and saying ‘Well we need more regulations on these homeschoolers.’”

Texas voters ousted the Republican holdouts in last year’s primary election after Abbott campaigned against them. He is counting on their replacements to deliver a victory this session. But even if that happens, Finger’s results point to a segment of parents who have been getting louder in recent years as ESAs, which parents can spend on tuition or homeschooling costs, have spread across red states. Many traditional homeschoolers fought for the right to educate their children at home and fear that ESA laws could erode some of those protections — even if they don’t take the funds. 

While voucher advocates dismiss many of the homeschoolers’ concerns, Finger said her findings should serve as a warning.

“The presence of big homeschooling communities could make selling private school choice challenging,” Finger said.

‘Government control’

That was certainly the case in Colorado, one of three states last November where voters defeated school choice ballot measures. 

“Government money comes with government control,” said Carolyn Martin, who monitors state legislation for Christian Home Educators of Colorado. Her group viewed the measure as a potential infringement on parents’ rights to educate their children as they see fit.  

Two issues raised red flags for them. The measure said all children should be able to “access a quality education,” which they interpreted as an opportunity for the government to define quality for homeschoolers. It also gave students, as well as parents, the right to school choice. That could spell trouble if kids and parents aren’t on the same page when it comes to education, Martin said.

“At some point the state would probably have to step in and arbitrate between the parent and the child,” she said. “That is not our worldview.”

Other homeschoolers say ESAs contradict conservative values, such as smaller government and less regulation. Gary Humble, executive director of Tennessee Stands, a Christian organization, called the state’s recently passed voucher bill “wealth redistribution.”

“This is another Tennessee entitlement program,” he said. “It’s expensive. It’s irresponsible.” 

The state is expected to spend $1 billion on the program over the next five years. While opponents weren’t able to stop the Republicans from passing the law, Humble tells homeschoolers that if they participate, they could be giving up the freedom to educate their children the way they choose.

“All they hear from special interest groups is that they get seven grand and there are no strings attached,” he said. “They’re not policy wonks, so they don’t understand the trap doors that are laid out ahead of them.”  

ESA programs often require homeschooling families to reapply for funding every year, to take annual standardized tests and to only buy approved items from specific vendors. Homeschooling families who don’t participate want to ensure such restrictions don’t eventually extend to them. 

But those worries fall under what Jeremy Newman, vice president of policy and engagement for the Texas Homeschool Coalition, calls “free-floating anxiety.” 

“They’re concerned somebody is going to do something, sometime, but they’re not sure who or when or what,” he said. 

His organization is strongly in favor of passing a voucher bill in Texas, saying that tax-paying homeschoolers should have just as much access to state education funds as parents who send their kids to public school.

He points to research on “regulatory creep” from Angela Watson, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and an expert on homeschooling. She found that publicly funded school choice programs, like ESAs, don’t contribute to more government overreach. 

Not ‘a monolith’

But the fact that some homeschoolers are so opposed to them proves a point, Watson said. 

“The mistake that everyone makes when they talk about homeschooling is that they continue to think of it as a monolith,” she said. “Homeschooling is just so varied.”

Nationally, about 6% of the nation’s students are homeschooled, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Traditional homeschoolers often chose that path for ideological or religious reasons. 

But many new converts, who left public schools during the pandemic, show support for what former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos calls “backpack funding” — allowing parents to spend education dollars on any type of schooling they choose. It’s a policy that polled high in a December survey from the National Parents Union, with 71% of parents favoring such a system. 

The split among homeschoolers over ESAs, Watson said, has created some “interesting bedfellows” — conservative parents aligning with liberal teachers unions to oppose school choice ballot measures. That’s what happened, not only in Colorado, but also in Kentucky, where two-thirds of voters rejected such a proposition last year.  

Howe in Texas has heard the criticism. “We’re being accused of being leftist, Marxist and supporting the teachers unions,” she said. 

Newman, with the Texas coalition, said his group is watching out for homeschoolers’ interests. Leaders maintain a “strong presence” at the state capitol in Austin to ensure legislation doesn’t interfere with homeschoolers’ freedom to choose their own curriculum and teaching methods, he said. 

Homeschooled himself as a child, Newman sympathizes with those who recall when it was illegal in most states to educate children at home and not unusual for child protective services to investigate a family when a neighbor reported children not being in school.

But Howe notes that it was a state regulation in Texas — not legislation — that treated homeschooled students as truant. After a lengthy legal fight, the state Supreme Court ruled that parents who homeschool are essentially small private schools.

In Idaho, it’s the state tax commission that will be writing some of the rules for a new private school choice program that Gov. Brad Little signed into law last month, despite overwhelming opposition from the public. The state also has an existing ESA-like grant program targeted toward lower-income families.

Audra Talley, a board member of Homeschool Idaho, said Republican lawmakers have assured her that as long as they control the legislature and the governor’s office, homeschoolers don’t have to worry about rules encroaching on their parental rights. But that’s what she finds disturbing.

“It’s an admission that the potential exists,” she said. “Now we are relying on a certain party or a certain group of individuals to keep those regulations from coming at some future date.”

‘Don’t want to go back’

She’s not exaggerating that some Democrats would prefer to increase monitoring of families who homeschool.

A proposal in Illinois, for example, would require families to notify their local school district if they intend to homeschool. Families would have to submit teaching materials and their children’s work if authorities are concerned about their education. Hundreds of parents rallied at the state capitol against the bill earlier this month.

Under another controversial plan, Michigan homeschoolers would have to register with the state. Superintendent Michael Rice argues that officials should have a count of students in all types of schooling — public, private, parochial and home. Reports of abuse and neglect involving homeschool families led to his proposal for more oversight. 

Homeschoolers opposed to ESAs often point to West Virginia — a Republican-led state — as an example of how lawmakers sometimes forget that not everyone wants the government’s money.

The state passed its Hope Scholarship ESA program in 2021, which requires homeschooled students receiving the scholarship to take annual standardized tests or have their work reviewed each year by a certified teacher.  The law specifically exempted homeschoolers not in the program from the requirements, but a 2023 bill would have erased what advocates call a “carve out” if they hadn’t stepped in. 

ESA proponents use the same example to say the homeschoolers’ fears were overblown and no harm was done. Colleen Hroncich, a policy analyst with the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, thinks the division among homeschoolers over school choice will fade over time.

“As we get further past the generation of homeschoolers that fought for the right to homeschool, it seems like most homeschoolers support funding programs,” she said. “Hopefully the bigger numbers also help push back on additional regulations down the road.”

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