Survey: Two-thirds of Texans support school vouchers

One of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s top-line priorities has been what many call school vouchers and what Abbott calls Education Savings Accounts (ESAs). The idea is to provide state money earmarked for education directly to families who could use those funds to pay for private education.

Abbott was not able to pass a voucher program last legislative session. But a new survey shows high levels of support for the idea.

Mark Jones, who coauthored the project for the public affairs schools at the University of Houston and Texas Southern University, joined the Standard to share the survey’s results.

Listen to the interview in the player above or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard: What were the top-line results from your survey?

Mark Jones: We asked them about several types of voucher and Educational Savings Account legislation using the “voucher” language that critics tend to use and the “Educational Savings Accounts” that supporters use. We found pretty similar support.

About two-thirds of Texans support the adoption of legislation that would provide school vouchers to all parents in Texas, with about 33% strongly supporting this legislation. And if you use ESAs, it just is a little bit higher: 69% of Texans support the adoption of ESAs that would benefit all parents.

Support is a little lower if you restrict it to low-income parents only for vouchers: 59% of Texans support the adoption of legislation for low-income parents only, and 64% ESAs for low-income parents only.

You also found high levels of agreement with anti-voucher arguments such that they take money away from struggling public schools and may not benefit special needs students. How do you evaluate those results alongside the general support that you found for vouchers?

A lot of that has to do with a couple of specific demographics.

For instance, African American Texans are the group that is most supportive of vouchers, but also is the group that is most likely to agree with the anti-voucher arguments. And what it reflects is that there’s a segment of the population that understands that vouchers do have these negative externalities, but all the same still support them. That is, they believe that the benefits of vouchers outweigh the costs of vouchers.

I know that you sorted this out in terms of Black Republicans, Black Democrats, Latino Democrats, Latino Republicans. Was there anything of note that you found in those distinctions?

I think one thing that’s interesting is that if we look at overall support for the legislation benefiting all parents, you have white Republicans supporting that at 73%, much more than white Democrats at 49%.

But if you restrict the voucher legislation only to low-income parents, then white Republicans and white Democrats have pretty much the same level of support, 54% and 52%.

We also see among Democrats a very sharp split between Black Democrats, 66% of whom support school voucher legislation, compared to only 49% of white Democrats, with Latino Democrats in the middle – although leaning closer to white Democrats.

Does this provide a strong argument for advocates of voucher programs, or is it more complicated than that?

It provides support that suggests that a significant proportion of Texans, about two-thirds, favor vouchers.

What it also shows is that for Republicans, there is really much more support among Texas Republicans for vouchers that would benefit all parents, as opposed to those that would only benefit low-income parents, such as the legislation that Republicans were trying to get passed in 2023.

And what it also says for Democrats, especially African American Democrats who represent African American majority districts in the Texas House and Texas Senate, that an overwhelming majority of your constituents support voucher legislation. Yet Democrats during the 2023 session unanimously voted against all voucher legislation.

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it here. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on texasstandard.org and KUT.org. Thanks for donating today.