Texas Just Handed School Choice to a Democrat Who Vows to Kill It. The Same Fight Is Coming for Every State That Expanded Parental Freedom.
Gina Hinojosa beat Greg Abbott last night and wasted no time. In her victory speech she called the Texas Education Freedom Accounts “the Texas voucher scam” and promised to “repair the damage” and end the era in which schools are “sold for parts.” That is the plan. End the program Abbott signed into law in 2025 after years of failed attempts, the largest day-one school choice launch in the country. Families already using the accounts will face the risk of losing them. Low-income parents who finally had a real exit from assigned public schools will be told to go back.
TEXAS 2.0: Our new Governor is going to kill school choice and force low income families to pull their children out of private schools and put them back in failing government schools. https://t.co/84KrPMhUFK
— @amuse (@amuse) November 4, 2026
Texas Education Freedom Accounts launched with $1 billion. More than 274,000 families applied. Roughly 111,000 students are funded right now, with nearly 95,000 still on the waitlist. Priority went to students with disabilities and lower-income households. Comptroller data shows tens of thousands of participating families earn at or below roughly $66,000 for a household of four. Special-needs students make up a larger share than in the public system. The program pays about $10,474 for most private-school students, up to $30,000 for those with disabilities, and $2,000 for homeschoolers. Demand crashed through the first-year cap. That is the opposite of a program nobody wanted.
Hinojosa and her allies in the legislature have said the opposite for months. They call it a subsidy for families already in private schools. One Democratic state representative, Venton Jones, argued for removing the program completely because money is “pouring back into individuals that are already attending private schools.” State Senators Royce West and José Menéndez have pressed on funding losses to public districts and the lack of the same testing rules for every account. Those arguments treat parental choice as theft from the system instead of an escape hatch from it. Public school enrollment has been sliding in many Texas districts for years. The accounts did not create the problem. They gave parents a way out of it.
A governor cannot erase the statute with a pen. Repeal requires the legislature. Republicans still hold majorities there, though Democratic gains and any shift among rural members who once blocked vouchers could tighten the math for expansion or even basic survival of the program in the next session. The comptroller has already asked for more funding to clear the waitlist. Hinojosa’s priority is the opposite: stop it, fire Education Commissioner Mike Morath on day one, end state takeovers of struggling districts, and dump more money into the existing public system. She has framed the entire choice effort as billionaire-driven privatization. The families on the waitlist are the ones who will feel the difference first.
Milton Friedman saw a fundamental problem with the U.S. public school system:https://t.co/blczvyj6cb
He argued that a lack of competition creates a monopoly, leading to high costs and poor incentives to improve.
His solution?
Give parents more choice and let schools compete for students.
“The way to improve that is to have competition.”
— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) October 3, 2026
The same pattern is playing out elsewhere. In Iowa, Democrat Rob Sand won after campaigning against the state’s universal education savings account program and calling for income limits and more public oversight of the money. Arizona, Florida, Ohio, and other states with large choice programs saw Democratic candidates attack them as drains on public schools even as enrollment numbers showed parents lining up. Teachers unions remain the most consistent force against any program that lets dollars follow a student out of the assigned school. Where Democrats control the governor’s office and the legislature, private school choice has stayed limited or nonexistent for decades. Where Republicans expanded it, the next Democratic win becomes the rollback campaign.
A federal tax-credit scholarship program is now online, and some Democratic governors have opted in while others have not. New York’s Kathy Hochul and Colorado’s Jared Polis said yes. Others have asked for more rules or signaled resistance, citing the risk that money leaves public systems. The political message stays the same: choice is a threat, public monopoly is the default, and parents who use an exit are the problem. Texas just became the largest test of whether that message wins when the program is already running and the waitlist is real.
Parents in Texas who used the accounts did so because the assigned school was not working for their child. Some left public schools. Many more were already outside the system and finally got help. The data does not show a pure giveaway to the rich. It shows families using the option the legislature created. Hinojosa’s win means those families now have a governor who has promised to take the option away. The same calculation is being run in every state that expanded school choice over the last few years. The demand numbers are the part of the story that does not change with the election results. The question is whether the next legislature listens to the waitlist or to the people who spent the campaign calling it a scam.
— — The Whatfinger News Team: Beth and Lisa, with Grok on edits
