The Voucher Numbers Are In. Rural Texas Isn’t Surprised.

I’ve spent two decades in and around the Texas Capitol, working with Republican officeholders who believed in school choice as part of a larger accountability system. That’s exactly why the first numbers on Texas’ billion-dollar voucher program should trouble conservatives, not just critics.

The newly appointed Texas Comptroller has released data showing who is using Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA), also known to the rest of us as vouchers. The results won’t surprise those of us in rural Texas.

Well, well, well. You don’t say.

Participation is concentrated in urban areas where private schools exist, and many of the students slated to receive the money were already attending private school or being homeschooled. A program sold as an escape route for children trapped in failing public schools is functioning largely as a taxpayer subsidy for choices families had already made.

“No Texas child should be trapped in a failing school or forced to attend a school that is unable to provide the services they need,” Comptroller Don Huffines said.

That was the pitch. But approximately 70% of students who had joined the program or still had pending invitations were already attending private school or being homeschooled.

Senate Bill 2, passed in 2025, created the program, and lawmakers appropriated $1 billion for its first year. The standard private-school award is $10,474. More than 274,000 students applied, and approximately 101,600 had confirmed participation by August 13.

To be fair, supporters can point to several outcomes as wins. Four in five participants in the annual report came from households earning less than 200% of the federal poverty level—about $66,000 for a family of four—and nearly one-fourth had a documented disability.

Lawmakers promised lower-income families and children with disabilities would go to the front of the line. In the first round, they did.

However, if the goal was to expand opportunity for these groups, the state could have implemented a targeted grant program focused specifically on lower-income students and students with disabilities. Instead, lawmakers created a universal program and used income and need primarily to determine who received the first available funding.

If we are being frank, household income alone does not tell us whether the program created a new educational opportunity. A lower-income student already attending private school is still a student whose family made that choice before Texas taxpayers started paying for it.

That is the real story behind the 70% figure. For much of the first-year program, the voucher did not provide an escape from a struggling public school. The family had already left, or the child had never enrolled.

The help may be meaningful. Private-school tuition can strain a household budget, and families making that sacrifice will welcome the relief. But helping pay for a decision a family has already made is not the same as providing a new choice.

The students who most closely match the “trapped in a failing school” pitch also appear more likely to have turned down the opportunity. Of the more than 20,700 who declined or returned an award by early August, 68% had previously attended public school.

The state has not said why. Some may have decided to remain in public school. Others may have encountered the barriers rural Texans warned about: no available private option, rejection by a private school, tuition above the award or a private school too far away.

Winning a voucher is not the same as securing a seat.

Then there is the rural divide.

In Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth or San Antonio, “school choice” can mean choosing among numerous private schools. In Hansford County and much of rural Texas, the first question is whether one exists within driving distance.

As of July 29, those four metropolitan education regions accounted for more than half of the first 85,344 confirmed participants. Amarillo had 844 and Lubbock had 998. In Northeast Texas, Kilgore had 3,464, while the more heavily rural Mount Pleasant region had just 653.

The state can correctly say all 20 education regions are represented. But a handful of rural participants on a map does not open a classroom seat or erase a 70-mile drive. A $10,474 award cannot build a school where none exists.

The program also does nothing to reform the public schools educating more than 5 million Texas children. It does not address teacher shortages, declining enrollment, school closures or outcomes on struggling campuses. It offers some students a way out—where another school exists—without fixing the system most children remain in.

That is a program out of balance: Rural taxpayers help fund it even where usable choices do not exist.

We need to be talking more about vouchers on the campaign trail. Candidates who supported the program—and those who want to expand it—should be answering the hard questions: How many students moved from a public school into a new opportunity? How much of the billion dollars replaced private spending with taxpayer spending?

Because if we are being honest, for much of the first year, the school-choice program did not create a new choice. Instead, it subsidized choices some families had already made—and left Texas taxpayers paying for choices many of us still do not have.

Suzanne Bellsnyder is editor and publisher of the Hansford County Reporter-Statesman and Sherman County Gazette. A former Capitol staffer with decades of experience in Texas politics and policy, she now focuses on how state decisions shape rural life through her newspapers, including the Texas Rural Reporter. Subscribe at www.TexasRuralReporter.Substack.com