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After a wave of Texas Republicans dominated the ballot box on Election Day, Gov. Greg Abbott expressed confidence Wednesday that he now has enough votes in the Texas House to pass a school voucher program, his top legislative priority last year.

The governor shared his optimism during a visit to Kingdom Life Academy, a small private Christian school in Tyler, where he proclaimed that the House now has 79 “serious supporters of school choice,” slightly more than his simple majority need room of 150 members. to approve the legislation.

During the same visit, Abbott also said he was committed to fully funding Texas public schools, giving teachers raises and improving vocational training opportunities for students — all of which he refused to do last year when vouchers stalled in the Texas Legislature.

Last year, the parliamentarians of the Chamber voted 84-63 to take a provision out of a massive education funding bill education savings accountsa voucher-like program that would have given parents tax dollars to pay for their child’s private school and other educational expenses. Twenty-one Republicans, most of whom represented rural school districts, joined all House Democrats in opposing the legislation over fears that such a proposal would undermine the funding that public schools rely on.

Abbott has vowed to use the March primary election cycle to campaign against rural Republicans who helped block his plan. He did it with the support of people like Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yasswho sought to use their money and influence to support school voucher advocates throughout the country.

Abbott’s reluctance to fully fund public education last legislative session – even with a record budget surplus of 32 billion dollars — caused many public school districts to enter this school year with multimillion-dollar budget deficits, along with rising cost of living; expiring federal pandemic relief dollars and underfunded legislative mandates to improve school security.

But after at least 11 of the 15 pro-voucher candidates he endorsed earlier this year cruised to victory in Tuesday night’s general election, Abbott said both addressing public school funding needs and passing legislation on school vouchers at will will happen during next year’s legislative session. .

“They make it seem like you can’t have both school choice and solid public schools,” Abbott said. “It is completely false. The reality is that we can have the best public schools in America and also have school choice at the same time. It doesn’t have to be one or the other and it’s wrong to pit one against the other.”

Kingdom Life Academy, the venue Abbott chose to brag about his party’s success on Wednesday’s election night, is a struggling financially private school that provides “hands-on, Christ-centered learning” for a student body composed largely of black and Hispanic children.

Similar to what school voucher advocates have done across the country, Abbott and Kingdom Life Academy founder and director Joel Enge has pushed the school voucher legislation as a way to provide more opportunities to the state’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged students.

“I was a public school teacher in Tyler for over 20 years. … I saw students drop out of school in their hearts because they didn’t fit into traditional education,” said Enge, who is Black. “We are grateful for the opportunity to continue to fight and see school choice open doors for more students and more families who need an alternative education.”

However, school voucher programs across the country don’t always achieve what their advocates describe. While the nation’s first voucher programs were launched in the late 20th century with the goal of helping vulnerable students, many of the children who benefit from some of today’s more extensive programs come from wealthier families who already pay for private tuition. Meanwhile, families who live in poor communities I often don’t use vouchers.

As for academic resultsstudies in several states have shown that vouchers do not consistently lead to improved standardized test scores for low-income students — a measure that Republican officials often rely on to make decisions about public education. In some casesvouchers resulted steep declines in scores. Voucher advocates often note that the benefits of such programs are best measured by increased school competition and parent satisfaction.