School choice and rich curricula are good, even if conservatives like them
Democrats and Republicans are both guilty of frequently putting ideology above results for children: Democrats by opposing any way to check whether kids are learning, and Republicans by mixing their good ideas (such as knowledge-rich curricula) with illiberal ones (such as insisting on putting the Ten Commandments on the walls of classrooms and finding reasons for all Islamic schools to be ineligible for the voucher program).1
Hinojosa and the (likely) new Democratic majority on the Texas State Board of Education have the opportunity to do this right. They should build a pluralistic and liberal school system, rather than just rolling back the ways that Republicans built an illiberal one. And while the voucher program itself might be too expensive and unpopular to maintain, they should keep in mind that it’s a real injustice if rich families have educational options and poor families don’t.
The hottest topic in Texas education for the last year has been vouchers. In 2025, Gov. Greg Abbott got a $1 billion state voucher program passed by the state Legislature; it gives low- and moderate-income Texas families around $10,000 per child to spend on private school.
Critics have pointed out that most of the families that took it were already sending their children to private schools, and only 17% had transferred from public schools; Hinojosa campaigned on ending the voucher program and said she would block its proposed expansion. She could also veto voucher funding in the next state budget.
I’ve always had mixed feelings about vouchers. Private schools are not, on average, better than public schools at educating kids.2 Some liberals treat that as a knockdown argument against school choice, but I’m less convinced — after all, parents don’t care about averageeducational outcomes; they care about the outcomes of nearby schools they could plausibly send their kids to. If they have the choice of several schools, they will want to choose the best one available to them.
