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Texas: Something is Fishy about a School District Leader and His Charter Chain

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2026 //
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Texas has a peculiar law: if only one school in a district is “failing,” the state can take control of the entire district. That happened to Houston. The state takeover was triggered by the “failure” of Phyllis Wheatley High School, which had a higher proportion of high-needs students than any other high school in the district.

The State Commissioner of Education, Mike Morath, who is not an educator, appointed Mike Miles as superintendent of the Houston Independent School District and fired the elected school board.

Morath previously served on the Dallas school board. Miles, a former military officer and a Broad Academy graduate, was the state-appointed superintendent in Dallas, where he drove out a large number of teachers and left with no grand accomplishments. Miles is a top-down manager who believes in standardization and compliance.

But here’s the fishy part. After failing in Dallas, Mike Miles started his own charter chain in Colorado called Third Future.

Here’s the sweet deal: if a district brings in a Third Future charter school, the state won’t take control of the district! It is the only charter school with that privilege!

Third Future started opening charter schools in Texas. The Houston Chronicle reported that it is $14 million in debt.

The Houston Chronicle has the story. It is eye-popping:

One of Texas’ most high-profile charter school networks could soon begin laying off staff amid a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall, throwing its future into question just as more and more districts have turned to it to avoid a state takeover.

The Texas branch of Third Future Schools, founded by Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles, is facing a $14 million deficit, forcing it to cut many of the 700 new employees it hired this year. 

The grim budget projection follows years of multimillion dollar deficits and a dire warning by its auditor — issues that might have forced other charter schools out of business. Instead, the nonprofit has seen its footprint more than triple this year, and state officials continue to allow school districts that hire Third Future to avoid being taken over.

At a board meeting last month, its leaders said the nonprofit was experiencing the same problem as many of its traditional public school counterparts: fewer students.

“As you guys know, districts across Texas are seeing a declining enrollment,” Third Future Schools Superintendent Zach Craddock told board members. “Some of that is passed on to us.”

The Colorado-based nonprofit network is far from the state’s largest chain of charter schools, which are taxpayer-funded public schools operated by third parties. But it’s among the most scrutinized because of its ties to Miles, who was brought to Houston under a state takeover, and its unusual role. Rather than open its own campuses, school districts hire Third Future to turn around failing schools using a tool under state law that allows districts to avoid being taken over by the Texas Education Agency. 

To avoid takeover, districts have to have their plan approved by TEA, run by longtime education commissioner Mike Morath. Morath tapped Miles to lead Houston ISD in 2023, where he implemented Third Future’s rigorous learning model, which includes daily quizzes in core classes and requiring teachers to stick to provided curriculum rather than coming up with their own. The model employs high numbers of staff.

This year, Third Futures Schools Texas took over 15 campuses, bringing its total to 19 across seven school districts, including San Antonio and Waco. None of the schools are in Houston.

The Colorado-based nonprofit network is far from the state’s largest chain of charter schools, which are taxpayer-funded public schools operated by third parties. But it’s among the most scrutinized because of its ties to Miles, who was brought to Houston under a state takeover, and its unusual role. Rather than open its own campuses, school districts hire Third Future to turn around failing schools using a tool under state law that allows districts to avoid being taken over by the Texas Education Agency. 

To avoid takeover, districts have to have their plan approved by TEA, run by longtime education commissioner Mike Morath. Morath tapped Miles to lead Houston ISD in 2023, where he implemented Third Future’s rigorous learning model, which includes daily quizzes in core classes and requiring teachers to stick to provided curriculum rather than coming up with their own. The model employs high numbers of staff.

“(We) have a significant amount of right-sizing to do over the course of the next month,” one of its finance directors, Rich Billings, said.

This year, Third Futures Schools Texas took over 15 campuses, bringing its total to 19 across seven school districts, including San Antonio and Waco. None of the schools are in Houston.

To handle the growing workload, the six-year-old nonprofit hired 700 new employees this year and expected to oversee 9,600 students, Craddock told the board last month. At the time, just 7,775 were attending the 19 schools.

Since the nonprofit’s funding is based on student attendance, the gap is expected to leave a $14 million hole. Student attendance is expected to go up slightly, but the nonprofit will be forced to cut $9 million, including reducing staffing, this month, officials said. The other $5 million was expected surplus.

Billings did not outline where the cuts will be made. A spokesperson for Third Futures declined to comment for this story.

A charter school overprojecting the number of students it’s enrolling is nothing new. It’s by far the top reason why charter schools close, said Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and a critic of charter schools.

“It’s not that people are shutting them down because the test scores are bad,” she said. “The enrollment gets to a point where it’s unsustainable.” 

Third Future Schools Texas has struggled to break even for years, according to financial audits, and has faced controversy over its finances. Its agreement with Beaumont ISD to operate three schools ended prematurely last year amid a request for millions more than it had previously agreed to. News reports that the nonprofit was inappropriately paying its Colorado headquarters millions of dollars were investigated and dismissed by TEA in 2024. 

Miles stepped down as CEO of Third Future Schools in 2023, but was found this year to have accepted at least $190,000 in consulting fees from the nonprofit since then. Much of that was after a state law barred district administrators from profiting from outside education work.

Financial audits show that the nonprofit posted a $2.6 million deficit in 2023. In 2024, the deficit grew to $5.3 million, after a nearly $3 million “error in the payroll calculation” was discovered, auditors wrote. 

Last year, the same auditing firm wrote that the nonprofit’s deficit grew to $7.3 million, “which raises substantial doubt about the organization’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

That kind of language from an auditor would make it hard for an organization to attract lenders and suggests it could be headed toward bankruptcy, said Nathan Goldman, an accounting professor at North Carolina State University who writes a column for Forbes.

“For any organization, it’s a big deal,” he said.

Typically, TEA might move to shut down a charter school with those kinds of deficits. The agency performs financial integrity ratings for traditional charter schools that includes submitting audits. But because of Third Future’s unusual business model, it falls outside those requirements. TEA told the Chronicle that local school districts that hire the nonprofit are responsible for overseeing its finances. 

The agency does not approve those agreements, known as 1882 partnerships, but does approve the benefits, which can include a two-year delay for a state takeover. Some local school officials have said they felt they had to choose Third Future Schools because it was the only one with which TEA would agree to delay a takeover. TEA has said any outside group can be approved as long as it meets its requirements, including a track record of success.

Financial disaster is not success!

How did this sweetheart deal get approved?

Categories Education Reform, Houston, State Takeover, Texas

Scott Dworkin: Drag Queen Beats Texas and Gov. Abbott

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2026 //
2

Scott Dworkin has a terrific blog on Substack, where he often has news that you can’t find anywhere else. The following is one of those wonderful stories:

The Drag Queen Who Beat the Texas Government

The state of Texas spent three years trying to turn drag performer Brigitte Bandit into a criminal. Senate Bill 12 threatened any bar that booked performers like Bandit with a $10,000 fine, with performers possibly facing a year in jail.

In March of 2023 Bandit testified against that bill inside the state’s Capitol, wearing a dress that listed names of children killed in the Uvalde mass shooting. Lawmakers were arguing about drag queens, she said later, while kids were being killed in Texas schools.

After her testimony, Bandit sued—along with other Pride groups and businesses—Ken Paxton, three cities, and three district attorneys. A few months later, the whole thing went to trial in a Houston federal courtroom. For three years, Texas had said this law was about protecting children. Now it had to prove a child had been harmed.

It couldn’t. Attorney General Ken Paxton called an expert witness, a doctor brought in to talk about what explicit material does to kids. Under oath, that doctor said he had never seen anyone seriously hurt by a drag show. Not one of the seven government offices that were sued over this law offered any other evidence.

That December, Bandit was sent a package from Nashville, Tennessee—a gift from the one and only Dolly Parton. It was a custom guitar covered in rhinestones, signed by Dolly to Brigitte.

Texas appealed and won, and this spring the ban came back to life. Bandit was right back where she started.

But on Tuesday, Judge David Hittner struck the law down again and barred Paxton from enforcing it. A judge put on the bench by Ronald Reagan.

This Saturday night in Austin, Bandit brings out the guitar.

This story appeared last week, so Brigitte Bandit has already performed.

A few words about Reagan-appointed Judge David Hittner, as reported by The Texas Tribune.

In his ruling striking down the 2023 law for the second time, Judge Hittner said that the ban was overly broad and clearly unconstitutional:

The ruling described SB 12 as overly broad in its definitions of performance and nudity, stating that provocative cosplay at conventions, swimming athletes or Dolly Parton and Elvis impersonators could potentially be penalized under the law.

“The vast majority of the law’s numerous applications violate the First Amendment because all the performances that it has an actual impact on are constitutionally protected and are targeted for prohibition based on content and viewpoint,” Hittner wrote…

“Finally, for those who find such activities as described in this case offensive, the solution is relatively simple … just don’t go,” he wrote.

It’s reassuring to know that Texas has some rational Republican justices. Hurrah for Judge David Hittner!

SB 12 as adopted in law contains no language explicitly referencing drag performances, however a previous version while in the Legislature specifically included references to drag. Hittner noted in today’s ruling that opponents of drag performances are not obligated to attend them.

If you don’t like drag shows, just don’t go.

If you don’t like certain books, don’t read them.

If you object to abortions, don’t have one.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Evil, Extremism, Texas

Houston: How the State-Appointed Superintendent Cheated His Way to “Success”

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2026 //
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Texas has a bizarre and punitive approach to public school accountability. If only one school in a large district is “low-performing,” the state can take control of the entire district. Houston is under state control because of only one school, as is Fort Worth.

The State Commissioner of Education, Mike Morath, is not an educator. He served on the Dallas School Board, but he is a businessman.

In Houston, he appointed former military man Mike Miles, to be the state-appointed superintendent. Miles is a “graduate” of the Broad Superintendents’ Academy, where would-be school leaders were taught to be tough, make demands, close schools, and enforce top-down commands. As a military man, Miles flourished in this environment. He led the Dallas school district, but things didn’t work out because of a exodus of teachers.

He then crested a charter chain based in Colorado. And now controjj on a the Houston Independent School Disrrict.

Daniel Dawer and Ruth Kravetz dissect Mike Miles’ “success” in Houston, which they call a shell game.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Cheating, Houston, Texas

Texas: Latest Poll Shows Democrats Surging

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2026 //
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The Texas Pulse Poll shows James Talarico leading Ken Paxton in the US Senate race, Gina Hinojosa only one point behind Governor Greg Abbott, and Vicki Goodwin leading in the crucial race for Lieutenant Governor.

If this trend continues, Texas could flip blue, which would be historic.

Polls are evanescent, but the trend from red to blue is impressive.

Categories Elections, Opinion Polling, Texas

James Traub: The Surprisingly Impressive Reading List in Texas

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2026 //
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As a native Texan, I have become unaccustomed to hearing good news about the state’s education system. Under the reign of Gregg Abbott, the state has persistently underfunded its public schools, and Abbott went to extreme lengths to enact a huge voucher program that will inevitably drain even more money from the public schools. The state’s elected leaders are more devoted to religious schools than to public schools, which enroll over five million children (most of whom are Hispanic).

These youngsters will one day be the majority in Texas, but the state legislature–which is about 2/3 non-Hispanic white–doesn’t care about them.

Imagine my surprise when I read this article by James Traub in The New York Times. I consider this account to be very good news indeed. Traub is a highly accomplished journalist, and I’m always interested in whatever he writes.

I have been a devotee of E.D. (Don) Hirsch Jr. and his ideas about curriculum since 1983. That was when I first read an essay he published in The American Scholar titled “Cultural Literacy.” I invited him to participate in a conference organized by me and Checker Finn, Jr. I urged Don Hirsch to write a book expanding his thesis, and he did. It was called Cultural Literacy, and it was a huge national bestseller.

In 1985-87, I helped to write the California History/Social Science Framework and inserted as much cultural literacy as possible, especially in the early grades. I wanted to oust the reigning ideology of “expanding environments,” which assumed that children were eager to learn about their neighborhood and community, replacing it with biographies and stories drawn from history, mythology, and timeless tales that children love.

Traub is wrong when he says that the reliance on classic children’s literature found in Rexas would not be welcome in California. I helped to plant the seeds for a similar approach in California.

In this article, Traub describes the mandated list approved by the Texas State Board of Education. It is heavily influenced by Hirsch’s ideas. I approve.

Traub writes:

This summer the Texas State Board of Education approved a mandatory reading list for public school students that includes fairy tales and nursery rhymes for little children, stories of America’s founders and Aesop’s fables for elementary schoolers, poems by Rudyard Kipling and Langston Hughes for middle schoolers and Shakespeare’s plays and Dante’s “Inferno” for high schoolers — and passages or stories from the Bible for every grade, save kindergarten.

In our highly decentralized educational system, states don’t tell teachers which books to assign — the model Texas will begin using in 2030 makes it an outlier. Yet almost all of the reaction to the list, pro and con, has centered on the Bible. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, an organization that promotes strict separation of church and state, described the list as “a brazen promotion of religious doctrine” that threatens to convert public schools into Sunday schools.

This is a wild overreaction to what is, after all, a tiny fraction of the required readings. What’s worse, the whole debate obscures the pedagogical radicalism of what Texas has done in issuing a mandatory reading list full of classic works at all.

I spent the 2023-24 academic year in public schools across the country researching a book on civic education. I was braced for the culture war in the classroom: conservative versions of history in red states, progressive versions in blue ones. And I did see that.

What I had not expected to find was that the pedagogical and curricular problems in American schools are more damaging than the political ones. Most students, even in the well-regarded high schools I visited, knew precious little about American history and government and had only a hazy sense of chronology. Teachers in English classes complained that students would not read whole novels — and so teachers didn’t assign them.

There are many culprits for this failure, including everyone’s favorite, children’s addiction to social media. But the root of the problem lies in the way we think about teaching and learning. The view that has dominated education for several generations holds that students learn by mastering general critical-thinking skills that can be applied across disciplines and occasions. If you learn to find the main idea, you can navigate through texts. If you can recognize and articulate perspectives, you can make sense of a primary document in history.

This doctrine makes content (that is, the specific material from which these skills derive) a secondary consideration. Combined with children’s real or apparent resistance to struggling with difficult material, that leads many teachers to choose works that pose the fewest challenges or have the most surface appeal — short excerpts from classics or young adult novels about troubled teens.

Texas seeks to solve that problem not only by requiring schools across the state to teach specific books but also by choosing works that are — with some telling exceptions — rich in language, ideas and feeling. (The list is meant to constitute only part of each year’s reading curriculum; the rest will be supplied by local schools and teachers.)

More than that, the list embodies a very different pedagogical theory, one most famously propounded by E.D. Hirsch in his 1987 best-selling book, “Cultural Literacy,” and other works. Literacy, he argued, is context-specific. We become good readers and learners not by mastering generalizable skills but by acquiring the vocabulary, grammatical knowledge and stock of information that allow us to make sense of a text. A child who knows a lot about baseball will do a better job reading and summarizing a passage on baseball than a child with a higher reading level but no knowledge of the subject.

From this perspective, it is better to read a classic than a relatable contemporary story not only because one is beautiful and the other is not but also because a classic, by the very fact of its persistence over time, has become part of our shared culture. It thus increases our conversancy with all the texts from that culture. That is why it makes sense for fifth graders in Texas to read “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” “The Phantom Tollbooth,” “Paul Revere’s Ride” and even, speaking of baseball, “Casey at the Bat.”

Texas has also created a social studies curriculum that has received less attention. It embodies a kindred principle to the one behind the reading list: You cannot learn to think like a historian until you have gained fluency in the materials history is made of — dates, places, events, names.

Children in Texas will start studying chronological history in third grade, a time when social studies is often devoted to broad themes like community. Fifth graders will be expected to explain how the Protestant Reformation encouraged people to question religious and political authority and why Montesquieu believed in divided government and the like, according to a draft of the new curriculum.

The Texas model will not suit everyone. The state’s idea of classic literature might not pass muster in, say, California. While educators everywhere regard Pericles’ funeral oration, which Texas students are to read in high school, as a rhetorical masterpiece, they may not feel the same way about Margaret Thatcher’s eulogy for Ronald Reagan or the works of Ayn Rand and the conservative Black economist Thomas Sowell, which are also assigned. Although 53 percent of students in Texas public schools are Hispanic, the state school board included works by only a few Hispanic authors in the reading list.

Those choices reflect Texas’ conservatism. But there is nothing inherently conservative about the idea of a stipulated reading list or about the belief that children need to be exposed from an early age to great works of literature and to history taught chronologically, that they should memorize poems and speeches, that they should learn grammar. A different reading list could achieve the same goals. Cultural literacy is not a Procrustean bed: As we become more diverse and less anchored in the Western tradition, what it means to be conversant in our culture changes as well.

After my book was published, I was contacted by some of the leading philanthropic funders of public schools; they wanted to talk about how they could help improve civic education. Here’s an idea for them: Raise Texas’ bet by promoting an equally rich reading list suitable for students in blue states. Show the world that academic rigor is not just for conservatives.

Categories Curriculum, Education Reform, Literature, Texas

Will a Fascist, Racist, Anti-Semite Win a Major Election in Texas?

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2026 //
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Bo French is an uber-bigot who is running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission. Don’t be misled by the title. The Railroad Commission has very little to do with railroads. It oversees the oil and gas industry in Texas and wields enormous power over an essential industry.

You might want to learn about Bo French, because he is running for an important statewide seat. Also because he voices the sentiments of the dark underbelly of American political life.

The Texas Monthly reports on the ascent of a native fascist:

Last week Bo French, the Republican nominee for the Railroad Commission of Texas, sent out a bizarre fundraising email. Framed as a reminder of the 108th anniversary of the Communist overthrow of Russia, the email included an AI-generated image of his Democratic opponent, Jon Rosenthal, smiling in the chambers where the country’s then-ruling Romanov family was executed in 1918. Rosenthal, French’s campaign continued, has “much in common with the Marxist revolutionaries who brutally executed” the Romanovs, and has plans for his own “infernal revolution” of Texas. “My opponent has spent his time in office mocking Christianity, the Virgin Birth, and Christian Communion, while voting against religious liberty and for the spread of Islam,” the email continued. 

If you’re wondering what, exactly, a century-old Russian coup has to do with the railroad commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, then you’re likely not alone. But among a small audience—those attuned to white supremacist dog whistles—the accusation almost certainly perked up some ears. 

You see, Rosenthal is Jewish. And while French did not explicitly name the Bolshevik revolutionaries who overthrew Russia a century ago, the email appears to be nodding to an antisemitic conspiracy theory that claims there is a Jewish Communist cabal intent on controlling the world and stamping out Christianity. Known as Judeo-Bolshevism, the theory was crucial to Adolf Hitler’s rise and a key justification for the Holocaust. It remains central to the worldviews of many modern fascists, who maintain that communism—and, by extension, immigration—are tools used by Jews to destroy the West and white people.  

In a statement to Texas Monthly, Rosenthal called French’s post “true to form.” The Texas House member from the Houston area and longtime mechanical engineer in the oil and gas industry continued: “While I’m working on substantive solutions for the people of Texas and our energy grid, his whole campaign is about pejorative and racist attacks.” 

Neither French nor his campaign responded this week to numerous requests for an interview, or to clarify whether he intended to invoke the conspiracy theory. But his other recent posts make clear he has a deep familiarity with esoteric racist views that were once largely confined to fringe corners of the far right. 

This week, in response to a video that purported to show nonwhite people trespassing in a restricted part of Yellowstone National Park, French posted a quote from “The Camp of the Saints”—an obscure French dystopian novel that depicts immigrants as diseased, feces-eating hordes and has enjoyed a recent resurgence among the global white nationalist movement. “Your universe has no meaning to them,” French wrote on X to his 80,000 followers, without revealing the source of the quote. “They will not try to understand. They will be tired, they will be cold, they will make a fire with your beautiful oak door . . .”

Citing fears of “gay race communism,” an impending “massacre of heritage Americans,” and the nation ending up like modern South Africa, French has called for the United States to “be Rhodesia,” the African pseudostate in the sixties and seventies in which Black people were violently oppressed by a ruling white minority. Rhodesia has inspired numerous racist killers—most infamously Dylann Roof, the self-described “Last Rhodesian” who massacred nine Black congregants at a South Carolina church in 2015.

“We are all Rhodesians now,” French wrote in January. 

It wasn’t long ago that such views were largely relegated to the online backwater of the neo-Nazi movement or manifestos left by fascist mass shooters, according to Wendy Via, a veteran researcher of the far right and cofounder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “They are well-known to people who study extremism,” Via told me. “But they’re not well-known to even your average racist. These are the ideological basis for the white supremacist movement.” 

Even if they’re not yet widely accepted, she said, such views are slowly being normalized by President Donald Trump, the scaling back of moderation on many social media websites, and the proliferation of the “great replacement” theory—which claims there is an intentional, often Jewish-driven, effort to demographically replace white people in Western countries. In May, for instance, Greg Bovino, the former Border Patrol commander-at-large under Trump, spoke to a global conference of neo-Nazi-affiliated activists and extreme far-right political figures who had gathered in support of the “remigration” movement, which seeks to forcibly remove people of color, including legal citizens, from their countries. (Detractors have another name for such efforts: “ethnic cleansing.”) 

In Texas, French has been a key purveyor of similarly extreme rhetoric, and he helped make anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry mainstream in the broader state GOP. He’s called for 100 million people—nearly a third of the American population—to be deported, and for two nonwhite Texas House members to be stripped of their citizenship and removed from the country. He wants some Native Americans—“third world savages”—to be kicked out of America too. French says Texas needs to “ban Islam” and “round upevery Muslim” for deportation. Last week he toldhis followers it was “time to go round up all the Chinese and send them packing!” McCarthyism and the Christian Crusades, he argues, didn’t go far enough. And this week he referred to America’s “not in labor force” population—an economic term for nonworkers that includes retirees, students, and those with serious handicaps—as “low IQ parasites.” 

Categories Texas, Bigotry, Racism, Evil, Fascism, Elections, Extremism

Texas: 350 Teachers Were Investigated for Comments They Made After Charlie Kirk’s Death

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2026 //
5

The Texas Monthly reported on the aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk. Texas legislators wanted to punish public employees that posted “inappropriate” responses to his death. Their scrutiny ensnared 350 teachers who had not responded in a way that expressed sympathy. Eventually almost all the teachers were cleared of wrongdoing, but in the near term, they lived under a cloud of fear, fear that they would be fired, fear that they would lose their license. The hero in this story was the Texas AFT, the union, which stepped in to defend the teachers, few of whom could afford to pay for legal defense.

Naina Srivastava of The Texas Monthly wrote:

In her 28 years as a teacher working at schools in the Harris County area, Jennifer Courtemanche felt most at home at Lee High School. That changed for the 54-year-old English teacher on September 10. Hours after conservative influencer Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Courtemanche made a series of posts on Facebook about the right-wing influencer’s death and was met with dozens of comments, texts, and voicemails from strangers attacking her positions. Someone—it’s unclear who—reported her to the Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District, while others attacked her directly. “I hope you’re next,” one read. “I hope you die by violence in front of your family,” said another. “Kill yourself,” said a third. 

Courtemanche, who was born in Dallas and has lived in Texas for her whole life, had made four posts about Kirk that day. The first, in response to Utah Governor Spencer Cox’s statement that Kirk’s assassination was a tragedy, read, “I’ll bet if the victim had been Black or Brown or a Democrat influencer he’d have been singing a different tune. Could Kirk have baited just ONE too many people? Could this have been the consequences of his actions catching up with him?” The second was a repost of a friend’s post, containing a list of controversial statements on civil rights, the LGBTQ community, and gun deaths that Kirk had made throughout the years. The third was another repost, this time from Occupy Democrats, a progressive advocacy group, that quoted Kirk— “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually,”—with the caption “#karma.” And the last was another Occupy Democrats repost about President Donald Trump and other Republicans’ silence after Melissa Hortman, a former speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, was assassinated in her home last June. 

At some point, Courtemanche’s posts reached the attention of Texas State Representative Briscoe Cain, a Republican from Deer Park who represents her district. On X, he called for her immediate termination for “celebrating the news of Kirk’s assasination.” That post now has over 550,000 views. 

That night, Courtemanche recalls furiously searching for the settings to make her account private. A half hour before midnight, she received another voicemail. “I found your address. Someone is going to come to your house and f— you up, bitch,” an anonymous caller said. As messages continued to pour in, she worried about how people in the community might react. Courtemanche said she and her husband didn’t even go to church that Sunday, despite being regulars. Scared, Courtemanche reached out to her school principal, asking what she should do. He told her to call her local police department and to contact the district’s Human Resources. She did. 

The next morning, the HR department rang her back. The district told her not to come in and that she was being put on administrative leave. By the next Monday, Courtemanche received an email from the district notifying her that it had reported her to the Texas Education Agency.

In the wake of Kirk’s assassination, there was a wide push by the Texas GOP to discipline teachers who’d made posts about his passing that it deemed offensive. Two days after Kirk died, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath instructed ISDs to report instances of educators sharing inappropriate content online to his agency. In total, 350 complaints were levied, including those against Courtemanche. According to documents obtained by Texas Monthly via public-records requests, some school districts, like Goose Creek, chose to terminate employees after conducting investigations. Others simply reported the complaint for a state investigation into the matter. But more than six months after Kirk’s death, it appears the discipline Texas politicians promised hasn’t gone very far. All but two of the 350 complaints against teachers had been dismissed as of April, according to the testimony of Keith Ingram, an attorney with the Office of the Attorney General.  

Courtemanche’s case is an instructive one outlining how the state attempted to crack down on anti-Kirk speech. On September 22, less than two weeks after her original posts, the Goose Creek school board voted to terminate her contract by a vote of 2–0 with four abstentions. Mercedes Renteria III, one of the two members who voted for Courtemanche’s termination, gave an interview with the town’s local paper, TheBaytown Sun. “[S]he is an incompetent teacher, and she shouldn’t have crossed the line and spoken publicly on social media and every other venue to say bad things about Charlie Kirk,” he said. “I think she should be fired, and karma’s a bitch. How about that?”

Courtemanche immediately sought legal representation via the Texas American Federation of Teachers, a statewide labor union. By November, she had reached a settlement with the school that cleared her of wrongdoing. She chose to retire, but per the settlement, she waited until December 31 to resign, giving her an additional year’s worth of credit—worth $200 each month—under the teacher-retirement system.

Courtemanche was not alone. In January, the Texas AFT,  which has more than 66,000 members, filed a lawsuit against the TEA, arguing Morath’s instructions for districts to report teachers violated teachers’ First Amendment right to speech and “unleashed a wave of retaliation and disciplinary actions against teachers.” The AFT contends that simply being placed under investigation—even if the probe leads nowhere—negatively impacts an educator’s reputation. When the state opens an investigation, it places a flag on the educator’s certification and can even include them on the agency’s public registry listing employees “Not Eligible For Hire,” according to the TEA’s website. Such investigations can result in the sanction or revocation of their teaching certificate.

AFT President Zeph Capo estimates that thirty to forty educators reached out to the AFT regarding discipline about Kirk posts. Some ended up being part of the litigation, while the AFT offered verbal counseling and individual representation to others. Capo said the organization’s biggest concern was for educators who were unable to renew their certificates while under investigation. If an educator’s certificate lapses, the school district could fire him or her automatically, he said. 

“Just imagine you’ve went to school, you’ve paid a lot of money, you are now at risk of not being able to renew your certification to keep your job, all because of something you said on a Facebook post that had nothing to do with kids or anyone else,” Capo said. “That has an absolute chilling effect on those individuals.”

The Texas AFT’s lawsuit is supported by six anonymous teachers’ experiences, though filed on behalf of all its members. One teacher was placed on the “do not hire” registry for three months, preventing them from finding work, according to the lawsuit. Another was unable to renew her certification because she was under investigation and may lose her job this month as a result. 

Texas Monthly’s investigation found that some teachers were reported for fairly tame posts, including reposts of popular progressive infographics regarding Kirk’s statements and gun violence. An educator who wrote, “He was ok with children dying in schools. I am not saying he should have been shot. He defended guns above all else,” received a complaint. Another educator posted a screenshot of a Newsweek article with the headline, “Charlie Kirk Says Gun Deaths ‘Unfortunately’ Worth It To Keep 2nd Amendment,” with the caption, “First Amendment meets Second Amendment.” That educator also received a complaint. To some observers, these posts, in particular, seem to squarely fall under the protection of the First Amendment.  

Because teachers are public employees, however, their free speech rights are limited in some contexts. There have not been any notable Supreme Court rulings that directly address teachers and students’ social media usage, but the landmark 1969 Supreme Court ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines established that if speech outside the classroom “materially and substantially disrupt(s) the work and discipline of the school,” it can be restricted. 

Daxton “Chip” Stewart, a Texas Christian University professor and First Amendment expert, said that the question at the heart of the Kirk cases is whether speech outside of the classroom may have affected lessons within it. “Posts about Charlie Kirk are undoubtedly a matter of public concern,” Stewart said. “That’s core First Amendment-protected speech. People should be able to comment about that kind of thing. So really, it comes down to, does that speech interfere with teachers’ [abilities] to do their jobs.”

This question has come up repeatedly in the complaints to the TEA obtained via records request. For example, in an email to an educator with the district who received a complaint for her posts, the Eagle Mountain–Saginaw ISD superintendent wrote, “You do not get to stop being a teacher off contract hours. You continue to be seen as a public service provider that is entrusted to take care of a vulnerable, impressionable community of children. It is expected that you conduct yourself in a manner at all times that is conducive to earning and maintaining the trust of the community, parents, students and coworkers.” 

Stewart believes this standard is unfair. If a teacher spoke about Charlie Kirk in the classroom, it would be a different story, a “no-brainer,” he said. But in teachers’ private time, the state must prove that the speech is something outrageous for it to be punishable. (Ultimately, both Eagle Mountain–Saginaw and the TEA declined to take action against the educator.) 

In the past, the TEA has protected teachers’ right to speech that is controversial. In 2019, a Fort Worth English teacher asked president Trump for help removing the “illegals” from Fort Worth’s school system. She was fired. Morath said that her tweet was protected by the First Amendment, that the school district had overstepped, and that she should be reinstated. Later, courts upheld her firing.

That Morath is now taking a different stance strikes Capo, who agreed the Fort Worth teacher should not have been fired, as evidence of viewpoint discrimination in the TEA when it comes to free speech. “At least be consistent,” he said. “If you’re going to fire people for speech, then fire them for speech no matter which political direction it runs, and if you’re not going to fire them for speech, then you should be doing the same regardless of [the] political direction it comes from.”

The case between the TEA and Texas AFT hinges on the interpretation of Morath’s directive: whether it constituted a policy that school districts were required to follow. The letter sent to superintendents noted that if superintendents were made aware of “additional instances of inappropriate content being shared,” they should report it to the agency. In a September media statement, Morath said, “While all educators are held to a high standard of professionalism, there is a difference between comments made in poor taste and those that call for and incite further violence — the latter of which is clearly unacceptable.”

Capo said Morath has failed to define what would be considered “poor taste” or “inciting violence,” leading many districts to report teachers improperly out of caution. Indeed, some districts, like Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, reported they were influenced to submit complaints to the TEA because of the letter, even though they believed their employees’ speech fell within their rights. In an email to the TEA, the general counsel for Cy-Fair ISD, for one, wrote, “The District reviewed each instance of reported misconduct related to the death of Charlie Kirk individually and in light of the legal standards applicable to the specific situations. Because none of the posted comments were determined to violate District policies and to fall within the First Amendment rights of each employee, the complaints do not fall within the reporting requirements of Chapter 22A of the Texas Education Code.” However, the district still chose to report the complaint, it said, because of the notice letter. 

So far, the courts have sided with the TEA. At an April preliminary injunction hearing in the U. S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Alan Albright, appointed by Donald Trump in 2018, said he failed to see how Morath’s letter infringed upon the First Amendment. “He’s not recommending punishment here,” Albright said. “He’s recommending that if the superintendents determine that inappropriate statements, in their view, were made, that there might be, you know, one of these investigations. I don’t understand how that’s chilling.” 

The Texas AFT now has the option to appeal the ruling, but Capo said it likely will not, owing to the dismissal of most of the complaints against teachers. He said every AFT member who was terminated has now reached a favorable settlement or returned to work without disciplinary action. “Ultimately, what I was really looking for, it has been accomplished,” Capo said. He told me the union now believes that its other members won’t have to worry about state sanctions or issues that could impact their teaching certifications.

For Courtemanche, however, even reaching a settlement felt like a bittersweet resolution. She told me she’s just starting to heal from what happened. Some people she went to church with unfriended her, she said. “And so I guess if they weren’t friends to begin with, I could still go and worship with them. But if they pass judgment on me, that’s on them,” she told me.

Initially, when the social media firestorm started, Courtemanche feared she’d be pushed out of the classroom before she was ready to stop teaching. But after the investigation, she was eager to retire. She’s eligible to find work at a different school next year, but she told me it’s unlikely she’ll go back.She said the environment for educators has gotten worse in Texas, and she doesn’t want to subject herself to further difficulties. 

Categories Censorship, Freedom of Speech, Texas

You Can Help Turn Texas Blue!

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2026 //
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I am once again posting a fascinating account of an important district in Texas. The district is Tarrant County. It’s the third largest district in Texas. For a long time, it was reliably red. Now, we learn in Michelle H.Davis’s post, it is close to turning blue.

You can help by sending contributions of any size to candidates she describes. I was moved to send $100 to Alisa Simmons, whom she describes near the end of the post. Any of the candidates mentioned would appreciate $10, $25, whatever you can afford.

The best part of the post is that it gives you a flavor of why these races matter. Like the contest for leadership of the prison, where more than 70 prisoners have died while in custody since 2017.

Davis writes:

This is the third installment of this series, where we’re looking at election data from the largest counties to see where we need to be for our hypothetical big blue wave in November. If you missed our previous installments:

Harris and Dallas, the only counties with higher populations than Tarrant, are reliably blue and need to focus on turnout. Tarrant, on the other hand, is where the battleground is. It’s a swing county because Republicans have held the reins of county government for too long. 2026 could be the year that changes. 

Twenty years ago, Tarrant County was over 75% white and the largest red county in America. 

Tarrant County

And of course, we know that Demographics are not destiny, but we can see in Tarrant County that votes have been trending blue for a long time. 

More than that, there’s a heavy burden on Tarrant County, just like Harris and Dallas. In 2024, 7.96% of all Texas Democrats lived in Tarrant County. And in a state as big as Texas, that’s a lot of weight to pull. 

The good old boys are still hanging on. 

Because here’s the thing about Tarrant County. This isn’t a story about demographics slowly working their magic while everybody waits around for the numbers to catch up. This is a county government that knows exactly what’s coming and is doing everything in its power to make sure it never arrives. They’ve gerrymandered maps. The Tarrant County jail that can’t stop killing people. The County Judge told the only Black woman on the Commissioners Court to shut up. This is what a dying regime looks like when it still has its hands on the levers.

Start with Tim O’Hare, the County Judge. Before Tarrant, O’Hare was mayor of Farmers Branch, where he made it his life’s work to run Latino residents out of town, an obsession that ended up costing that city millions in legal fees. He brought the same energy to Fort Worth. He’s taken money from the Defend Texas Liberty PAC, an organization with documented Nazi ties, and he has never denounced it, not once, not even when asked directly. He led the charge to defund Girls Inc. of Tarrant County, a program that serves Black and Hispanic girls. And in April of 2025, in front of the entire Commissioners Court, he told Commissioner Alisa Simmons, a Black woman, to “sit down and be quiet,” then accused her of lacking “a semblance of class.” Read that however you want. 

He’s not doing this alone. Tony Tinderholt, the just-retired state rep, announced he was running for Simmons’ own Precinct 2 seat the day after the county’s gerrymandered map passed. Tinderholt is also one of the Texas House’s top recipients of Defend Texas Liberty PAC cash, and he was one of the few Republicans in the state to vote against the CROWN Act, a bill that simply says you can’t fire someone for their hairstyle.Matt Krause, another commissioner, used to represent a State House district that federal courts had once found to have been racially gerrymandered. This is the bench.

And then there’s the jail. Sheriff Bill Waybourn has been in office since 2017, and in that time, more than 70 people have died in his custody. Anthony Johnson Jr. died of asphyxiation after a jailer knelt on his back for over a minute while he said he couldn’t breathe. Two former jailers are now indicted for murder. The county has paid out more than $4.3 million settling lawsuits over deaths and abuse in that jail. When Commissioner Simmons has tried to get Waybourn to brief the court on what’s happening inside, she’s refused, calling her requests “hostile.” Waybourne has also spoken at a Turning Point USA event, an organization with its own well-documented ties to white supremacist rhetoric.

And the redistricting, the whole reason Tinderholt is running for Simmons’ seat in the first place, is because the Commissioners Court redrew Precincts 1 and 2, the only Democratic-held seats, and O’Hare admitted on camera it was to lock in a Republican majority. Simmons and her fellow Democratic commissioner had the UCLA Voting Rights Project analyze the new maps, and the conclusion was that every proposed map packed Black and Hispanic voters into a single district to dilute their power everywhere else. Lawsuits were filed. They got dismissed on procedural grounds. The map stands for 2026.

But something has shifted in Tarrant County. Democrats have been sweeping local races, and Taylor Rhemet’s win was the cherry on top.

Last year, Democrats flipped multiple school boards in Tarrant County. This year, they flipped several city council races across the county. And on January 31, Democrat Taylor Rehmet beat Republican Leigh Wambsganss for a state Senate seat that hadn’t gone blue since 1991. Not close, either. 57% to 43%, in a district Trump carried by 17 points just over a year earlier. Wambsganss outspent him by two million dollars. She’s the chief communications officer for Patriot Mobile, the outfit that’s spent the last several years funding the Christian nationalist school board takeovers. 

Hispanic voters did that. In some of the heavily Latino precincts on Fort Worth’s north side, Rehmet outperformed Kamala Harris’s 2024 numbers by more than 50 points. That’s a mobilization story, the same one I’ve been telling you about Harris and Dallas counties, except this time it happened in a district that hadn’t elected a Democrat to that seat in 35 years. Rehmet and Wambsganss go at it again in November for the full term, and if Tarrant Democrats can do what they did in January one more time, that seat is gone for good.

Down at the State House, the map is a little friendlier, if you squint.

Five Republican-held House seats anchor themselves in Tarrant County, and depending on how big this wave gets, we could see two of them flip. Maybe four. Maybe all five, though that’s the kind of year Democrats haven’t had here in three decades.

HD93 and HD96 are the two to watch first. HD94 is Tony Tinderholt’s old seat, now open since he’s bailing to run for Simmons’ commissioner spot, and Democrat Katie O’Brien Duzan is running there. HD96 has an open seat left by David Cool, defending against Democrat Ebony Turner, in a district that’s been quietly drifting for years.

HD98, Giovanni Capriglione’s old seat covering Keller, Colleyville, and parts of Southlake and Grapevine, is open too after his retirement, with Democrat Cate Brennan running.

HD94 and HD97 round out the list, the kind of districts that turn competitive the moment turnout ticks up, exactly like it just did in SD9.

Two of these flip in a decent night. Four flip if Tarrant does in November what it just did in January. And if all five go blue, that’s no longer a wave. That’s Tarrant County telling the rest of Texas the fight is already over.

Congressional seats to watch.

Tarrant now sits inside four competitive-adjacent congressional districts, and all four have a name on the ballot worth knowing:

  • TX24: Beth Van Duyne vs. Kevin Burge, a Marine Corps veteran who worked in the DIA and served in Biden’s White House Situation Room. Not a top-tier flip on paper, but this is the district that got carved through Tarrant’s fastest-diversifying suburbs, and it’s the one to watch for over-performance.
  • TX12: Craig Goldman vs. Heli Rodriguez-Prilliman, a Fort Worth entrepreneur running her first race. Goldman inherited Kay Granger’s old seat, and this is the most Tarrant-heavy of the four districts.
  • TX25: Roger Williams vs. Dione Sims, who won her primary runoff outright. This district picks up Arlington and Grand Prairie, the same ground that just delivered Rehmet’s win.
  • TX06: Jake Ellzey vs. Danny Minton, though only a sliver of this district touches Tarrant at all, it may be the most populated part of the district.

None of these is the marquee pickup Rehmet already delivered. But they’re the four names that turn a good night in Tarrant into a great one down-ballot, and if the county keeps trending the way Rehmet has shown it can, one of them stops being a long shot sooner than people think.

Now let’s talk about Alisa Simmons, because she’s the whole ballgame.

Simmons is the Precinct 2 commissioner Tim O’Hare told to sit down and be quiet, and this November, she’s running to replace him.

Before politics, Simmons spent 12 years as a broadcast journalist and then 18 years running budgets and public safety communications for the Tarrant County 9-1-1 District, the kind of job where you learn exactly how county government works and exactly where it breaks down. She spent ten years as president of the Arlington NAACP, served as second vice president of the Texas NAACP, and sat on the ACLU of Texas board. She ran for HD94 in 2020 and lost, then won her Precinct 2 commissioner seat in 2022. Since then, she’s been the loudest, most consistent voice on that court, demanding accountability from the jail, fighting the defunding of Girls Inc., and opposing the elimination of free rides to the polls.

When O’Hare and his Republican majority redrew her own precinct to make it harder to hold, Simmons ran countywide instead. And on March 3, she didn’t just win the Democratic primary for County Judge, she buried it.

Her platform is exactly what you’d expect from someone who’s spent years watching this county’s dysfunction up close. A full Department of Justice review of jail operations, independent oversight with actual teeth, and a direct reckoning with the 76 lives lost in that facility since 2017. She’s running on affordability, on fiscal responsibility that doesn’t require dipping into reserves to cover basic obligations, and on ending what she calls the constant partisan theater that’s replaced actual governance on that court. In her own words, it’s time for the Tarrant County government to get to work instead of getting into shouting matches.

I expect her to win in November. I’m not just saying that because I like her, although I do, a lot. I’m saying it because the numbers back it up, because O’Hare’s own party is nervous enough about Tarrant that they’re gerrymandering commissioner precincts mid-decade instead of just running on their record, and because Simmons has already shown she can win a race Republicans specifically redesigned to make sure she couldn’t.

So what does it actually take to get there?

Turnout, same as always. Tarrant County has nearly 1.5 million registered voters, and the difference between a good night and a great one lives entirely in the precincts that already agree with us and just haven’t been asked to show up yet. 

The Hispanic vote that swung so hard left for Rehmet in January has to swing that way again in November, and it will, if the same organizing that worked in that special election gets replicated at scale. 

The Tarrant County Democratic Party fielded its broadest slate of candidates since 1994 this cycle. That’s not an accident either. That’s what happens when people stop waiting for demographics to save them and start building the infrastructure to ensure demographics actually show up.

Tim O’Hare knows what’s coming. That’s why he’s spent his entire tenure trying to outrun it instead of earning it. Alisa Simmons is the one running straight at it.

You can learn more about Alisa Simmons on her website, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Threads.

If you’re in Tarrant County, please consider volunteering for her campaign.

Donate here if you can.

Tarrant County doesn’t need to wait for a statewide wave to matter.

It needs its own county government back, and it’s closer than it’s been in thirty years.

Rehmet already broke the seal. Simmons is next. Somewhere between two and five House seats are up for grabs. The good old boys know it, which is why they gerrymandered instead of governing.

Show up, and Tarrant stops being the excuse Texas Republicans hide behind. It becomes the county that ends them. And in 2026, Democrats take back Tarrant County.

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Texas

Texas Tech Professors’ Group Sues to Overturn Restrictions on Academic Freedom

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2026 //
1

Federal courts are overturning bans that tell college professors what they are not allowed to teach. And more campuses are taking a stand.

At the Texas Tech University system, the American Association of University Professors and its Texas affiliate are the latest to do so.

The Dallas Morning News reported:

Two faculty groups filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday to block the Texas Tech University System from implementing its policies on how professors can discuss race, gender and sexual orientation in the classroom.

The suit, which marks a major legal challenge against a Texas university system over increased restrictions on what can be taught, focuses on two memos issued by Texas Tech Chancellor Brandon Creighton in the last academic year.

One memo, sent in December, banned content that advocates for one race or sex as “inherently superior to another” and prohibited faculty from teaching that there are more than two sexes. The second memo, sent in April, ordered universities to cut all academic degrees “centered on” sexual orientation and gender identity.

The two groups, the national American Association of University Professors and its Texas chapter, argue Creighton’s policies violate their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

Who is named 

The lawsuit names Creighton, a former Republican lawmaker, as a defendant, as well as the nine members of the system’s Board of Regents. Representatives from the Texas Tech University System did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“This case presents an extraordinary system of censorship in higher education,” the suit reads, “in which professors in the Texas Tech University System are prohibited from teaching the most basic scholarship, while at the same time not fully comprehending the contours of prohibitions that place them under threat of losing their employment and livelihood.”

The groups in the lawsuit say the system’s policies “suppress” professors’ constitutionally protected speech and “obscure documented history, facts and theories.”

In one instance, a law professor was blocked from teaching information about race related to the landmark Supreme Court case Dred Scott v. Sandford, which ruled that Black people were not U.S. citizens, according to the filing. The lawsuit against Texas Tech also says that medical faculty have been instructed to remove content about treating transgender patients and racial minorities. Professors are not named in the filing.

Allegations 

The lawsuit argues that Creighton’s policies violate professors’ Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process because its language is “so vague and ambiguous” that they are “unable to discern what is, and is not, permissible.” That ambiguity, the filing says, has led to a chilling of speech.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Ethics, Extremism, Higher Education, Texas

Texas Vouchers Subsidize Students Already Attending Private Schools

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2026 //
5

When Governor Greg Abbott sold his voucher program, he talked about helping the poorest kids escape public schools and choose better private schools; he talked about enabling those with disabilities go to private schools. He talked about spreading opportunity through school choice.

Some moderate Republicans and rural Republicans supported their community public schools, and they repeatedly voted down Abbott’s vouchers. So Abbott used the millions of dollars contributed by Pennsylvania billionaire to replace them with conservatives who backed vouchers.

But now the data are in on which students are getting vouchers. Three-quarters of them are private school students. This is similar to what happened in other states. Vouchers are not about helping public school students; the reality is that they subsidize kids who never attended public schools.

Maryam Ahmed of The Dallas Morning News reported:

As Texas’ $1 billion school choice program approaches rollout this fall, preliminary data shows most of the program’s applicants were already enrolled in private schools, fewer applications came from families in poorer districts, and less that 30 students with special needs got the top award amount of $30,000.

The Dallas Morning News analyzed data from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, which runs the Texas Education Freedom Account program.

The first year of TEFA has exposed key challenges voucher programs have faced nationwide: insufficient funding for some families to make the move to expensive private schools, difficulties for special education students finding private schools that can support their needs, and minimal benefits for lower-income and rural families.

Since similar data are reported in every state that has no income limits, it’s reasonable to conclude that the transfer of public money to kids in religious and private schools is a feature of school choice, not a bug.

Out of 5.4 million students enrolled in Texas public schools, 275,000 applied for vouchers. The legislation, passed last year, offers students $10,474 while disabled students can receive up to $30,000. Homeschooled students can get $2,000. Median private school tuition is about $9,400, not including books and transportation. Elite private schools charge much more.

Now we learn that the purpose of the voucher program was to “ease the burden” on families already paying for private school, not to help kids in public school:

TEFA spokesperson Travis Pillow said the program’s goal is not to “lure away” public school students but make private school affordable across the board. Many families with children in private school make major sacrifices to keep them there, Pillow said, and TEFA eases that burden….

Out of 5.45 million public school students in Texas, only about 68,000 even applied for TEFA — barely one percent. Half of those students were awarded funds, as of June 16 records provided to The Dallas Morning News, but more could drop out of the program if they can’t find a school to fit their needs.

But even a small drop in public school enrollment leads to budget cuts.

Florida’s voucher program has ballooned to more than $4 billion dollars since it was implemented in 2023, taking up nearly a quarter of the state’s public school fund.  In Arizona, which has the country’s oldest universal school choice program, vouchers contributed to a $1.4 billion budget shortfall in 2024…

In Texas, public school districts receive a $6,215 allotment per student from the state, meaning fewer public school students directly translates to less funding…

About one in four of the voucher awards went to students with disabilities but only 20 in the entire state received the top award of $25,000-$30,000. However, private schools are not bound by federal law and may deny admission to students with disabilities. It is anticipated that many who received vouchers may return to their public school, where they are guaranteed admission and services.

If the state’s public education budget becomes strained, said Daniel DeMatthews, an educational policy professor at the University of Texas at Austin, lower-income and rural districts would likely be hit hardest.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Lies, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Texas, Vouchers
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