Updated 03122025
The efforts to take taxpayer funds from public education to fund private, mostly religious, schools began in the 1970s.
"Despite overwhelming evidence of the harms of voucher programs and the unpopularity of attacks on public education, right-wing anti-education privatization advocates have prioritized the creation or expansion of school voucher programs as a policy goal this year in statehouses across the country. As of March 2023, public education advocates are tracking voucher bills in at least 24 states. As of mid-April, universal voucher bills—which will allow all families, regardless of income, to use public funds to pay for private education—have passed in four states: Iowa, Utah, Arkansas, and Florida. Meanwhile, voucher expansion bills have failed in at least six states so far in 2023: Georgia, Texas, Idaho, Virginia, Kentucky, and South Dakota."
The latest efforts to pass school voucher legislation were in Texas. Governor Abbott and Lt Governor Patrick tried to pass voucher legislation in the bi-annual session of the Texas legislature early this year, and in two special sessions, the last one ended November 7. Each special session required members of the legislature to attend in Austin, cost taxpayers at least $3 million each, as well as costs to members and being away from their homes and professions.
Those efforts failed due to a coalition of every Democrat and some rural Republicans. The latter know that their public schools are often the largest employers in their districts, and important to their communities.
In the current 2025 session voucher legislation will probably pass. Abbott, Patrick, Tim Dunn and the Wilks brothers spent $millions purging members of their own party who voted against them.
Texas has among the lowest state funding of public education in the country, $6,100 per student. Vouchers would give parents $8,000-$10,000 per student, school districts lose $6,100 for every student who leaves.
In the 2024 primary elections Abbott spent at least $12 million, Dunn and Wilks more, purging Republicans who voted against vouchers. In the 2024 session in January, they’ll succeed in passing vouchers, which will go mostly to evangelical and Catholic schools. Religious right Republican states are already giving them $billions.
In 1999 Responsive Education Solutions opened their first private schools in Texas. RES is a project of Hillsdale College in Michigan, a "conservative christian" college. They were teaching creationism and global warming denial.
RES now has more than 100 campuses in Texas and Arkansas with more than 20,000 students, and an online school run from Virginia. Revenue in 2021 was more than $279 million, $9 million in federal funds, most of the rest from Texas taxpayers.
Wisconsin was the pilot state in diverting public funds to religious schools. The Devos family and Bradley Foundation were major funders, as well as to Republican politicians, led by governor Scott Walker. They also provided much of the money spent on conservatives in state Supreme Court elections. Now more than $700 million a year is going to religious schools, by far Catholic. One of the largest recipients of vouchers and tax credits is the Salaam Islamic school in Milwaukee.
The Catholic Church has lost more than $5 from lawsuits, bankruptcies, and settlements over sexual assaults. The Milwaukee diocese was one of more than twenty that went bankrupt or paid settlements.
The latest Catholic settlement I’ve seen was an unknown amount from a Jesuit school in Dallas. They’ll get voucher funds. The most despicable action was recently by the archbishop in New Orleans. He fired people who ran a charity food bank for not giving him $millions to help pay for hiding and defending pedophiles.
The Bradley Foundation was also involved in attacks on teachers' unions. Activist Catholic Michael Joyce was the driving force behind the Bradley Foundation's funding of far right organizations. He was director of the John Olin Foundation until it was depleted, one of the early donors to Paul Weyrich, founder of the American Legislative Exchange Council, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation with Catholic activist Edwin Feulner, co-founder of the Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell.
Weyrich was one of if not the most influential never elected man in modern history.
ALEC's early funders were $billionaire Adolph Coors and tobacco companies. Now it's mostly fossil fuel interests and other corporations, still including tobacco, which kills more than 600,000 people a year. Republicans have repeatedly blocked efforts to control distribution and availability. Now teens are vaping and using tobacco mouth pouches. A Chinese $billionaire is a leading provider of the pouches.
The ALEC affiliate in Texas, one of the State Policy Network organizations operating in most states, is the Texas Public Policy Foundation. It was funded by Tim Dunn and the Wilks brothers, but they had to change the name when it became public knowledge there had been a meeting with white supremicist Nick Fuentes.
There are five Texas oil and gas $billionaires who are major donors to Republicans. Three are religious fundamentalists who fund several right wing organizations in Texas and elsewhere, the Wilks brothers and Tim Dunn.
Kelcy Warren is one, he made $3 billion from excess gas prices allowed by Abbott’s ERCOT during the 2021 freeze disaster. He contributed to Perry’s presidential campaign, put Perry on his company board. The fifth is Pakistani Muslim immigrant Sayed Anwar. Like the others he benefits from no regulations and low taxes. There are twenty-five Islamic schools in Texas.
The Wilks brothers recently gave Dan Patrick $3 million to support his voucher program.
The most wealthy man in Pennsylvania donated $12 million to push vouchers in Texas, Jeff Yass. He’s also an important Trump donor. He has a substantial investment in the owner of TikTok, doesn’t want to see it banned.
The Texas legislature will probably pass voucher legislation, giving religious schools more than $1 billion a year, will continue refuse to adequately fund public schools, and will continue taking more than $5 billion in our property taxes in “recapture”. That money was supposed to go to schools in poor areas, in fact it gets lost in the general education fund.
Voter turnout in even the last president election was 11.2 million, 62% of registered voters. Texas has 18.2 million registered, probably just 79% of all eligible voters. That’s pitiful and why our state is run by theocrats and billionaires.
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