Black Moms in Texas Want Vouchers for Microschools
Who benefits from supporting students instead of schools? Everybody.
![Black children learning in classroom Black children learning in classroom | Photo: Santi Vedrí on Unsplash](https://d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net/img/c800x450-w800-q80/uploads/2023/11/santi-vedri-O5EMzfdxedg-unsplash-800x450.jpeg)
Who benefits from choice in education? The answer, of course, is everybody—at least, everybody can benefit if they're allowed to choose schooling options that work best for them and their children. That opportunity is perfectly captured by a recent article about black families in Texas who hope to use school vouchers to launch microschools that do a better job than the public school at teaching their children.
When Public Schools Don't Suit Your Kids
Sneha Dey writes in a Texas Tribune article about a push in that state for school choice:
Here in the eastern suburbs of Dallas, three mothers are home-schooling to reimagine education for their daughters. During school days, the girls get in about two hours of core instruction like reading and math, but they also draw, go on nature walks and build fairy villages with the rocks they find.
The mothers say their public schools were not equipped to create a learning space that's wholly safe for Black kids or embraces their culture and identity. Together they create lesson plans to meet each girl's learning needs and adapt their pace when a child is struggling….
The mothers already have spoken with other parents ready to pull their kids out of private and public schools to participate in their collective. But to grow, they say they need the Legislature to create education savings accounts, a voucher-style program through which families could access state funds and pay for private school or alternative education settings.
The model the Dallas mothers want to emulate is that of Arizona's Black Mothers Forum, whose efforts I covered last year in a piece on microschools. The Black Mothers Forum dedicates itself to "tear down barriers to academic excellence due to low expectations, and break the cycle of the school-to-prison pipeline." Like the mothers in Dallas, its founders were motivated by doubts about public schools that are common to many families, as well as concerns specific to their experiences as African Americans.
A Surge in Tailored Education Options
As Dey's piece suggests, microschools span a continuum of education efforts between homeschooling co-ops, private schools, and learning pods. If that sounds a little amorphous, it's because such arrangements are structured to meet the needs of their participants, not to match institutional definitions. In whatever form they take, microschools are increasingly popular across the United States.
"Currently approximately 125,000 microschools exist across the country, reflecting an increase since the pandemic," The Wall Street Journal's Megan Tagami reported in August. "Across the U.S., microschools likely serve between one to two million students."
Dey and Tagami both emphasize that growth in microschools and other DIY education approaches is spurred by programs that make education funding portable so that it follows students rather than being dedicated to government-run schools. That's because many families find it financially difficult to shoulder the costs of education choices on top of the taxes they pay to support public schools they consider inadequate. And no, they wouldn't be satisfied with increased funding of public institutions—they see that as throwing good money after bad.
"I didn't just remove my daughter from a building in a school. I removed her from the consciousness that was there that was creating the symptoms of what I was seeing with her in her learning," Chantel Jones-Bigby, one of the Dallas moms, told the Texas Tribune. "Even if [schools] have more money, if you still have the same culture and consciousness, but new technology, what does that change?"
Funding Students, Not Schools
The usual approach for linking funding to students rather than buildings comes in the form of vouchers, which pay all or part of private school tuition. But flexible education approaches require equally flexible support, which is increasingly provided by Education Savings Accounts (ESA). Adopted so far by 13 states, ESAs put per-student education funding in an account to be drawn down by parents for tuition, homeschooling materials, and other related expenses. In Arizona, ESAs provide 90 percent of the money that would have been spent on each student in public school to be used by families for other approaches. As of this month, over 70,000 students in the state are taking advantage of the program. The Dallas parents want the same opportunity.
"Education savings accounts would allow families to exit the public education system and use taxpayer dollars to pay for alternative learning settings like a microschool," notes Dey. "The three mothers would welcome those funds to scale up and pay for instructional materials and a dedicated learning space."
Texas lawmakers are debating whether to add their state to the list of those offering ESAs. Opposition comes not just from Democrats allied with public school teachers unions, but also from rural Republicans who fear diverting resources from traditional district schools. But as the example of the Dallas (and Arizona) moms makes clear, attaching funds to students instead of schools is likely to create more education opportunities as supply increases to meet demand.
A 2022 report from Florida, which offers ESAs, found that "in 2021-22, 16.7 percent of students in Florida's 30 rural counties attended something other than a district school, whether a private school, charter school, or home education. That's up from 10.6 percent a decade prior." According to the report, the number of private schools in rural Florida almost doubled from 69 to 120 between 2001 and 2021.
Public Schools Can't Serve Everybody
Fueled by ESAs and vouchers, flexible approaches like microschools serve a wide variety of needs and preferences. That's important at a time when, as The Washington Post recently reported, the ranks of homeschoolers have swelled by 51 percent during a period of declining public school enrollment with participants who are "more racially and ideologically diverse" than in the past. The Dallas moms are part of a wide spectrum of families who aren't well-served by one-size-fits-some government-run institutions staffed by government-employed teachers using government-developed curricula.
"If there's been anything that's been highlighted in a postpandemic world, it's how necessary being attuned to the individual needs of the student is," the head of a New York City microschool told The Wall Street Journal.
"As much as I would love the public school system to work for my child, it doesn't," Jones-Bigby told the Texas Tribune. "Am I responsible to the system or am I responsible to my child?"
Millions of other American families have faced the same conflict and understandably chosen the needs of their children over sacrificing those needs to keep the system going. Lawmakers who want to help could best do so by getting out of the way of families' education choices.
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Texas mom, pay for your own kids education and you have unlimited choice.
While still paying for the indoctrination of everybody else’s kid?
Nobody should be coerced into funding the education of other people’s children.
Mm… unduly coerced. I don’t really see an issue with *somebody* being duly coerced into funding the education of Lunden Roberts’ kid.
And your babbling brain is the one to decide who is “unduly” and “duly” coerced.
Well, I say Hang Down Your Head, Tom “Duly!”
Either campaign to get coercive funding and attendance out of schooling and Separate Education and State or GTFO of anything resembling Libertarianism.
There have been public schools in America since 1635. Supported by coerced taxes. If you don’t like that, you are in the wrong country, Go back to whatever ignorant backwater your ancestors left.
How about stop relying on others to pay for your own household’s obligations. The current system is a dead end.
Look at the conservative over here. “We’ve always done it this way.”
The original constitution protected the legality of slavery and contains to this day the Fugitive Slave Law–Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3. “Conservative” was used in the antebellum Dem platform to describe all who saw this article as “the” Constitution. Later it was Republican Comstockists who saw 18A as “the” Constitution.
“In that document, I find neither warrant nor sanction for the hateful thing.”
–Frederick Douglass, Escaped Slave, Brickmason, Shipbuilder, Abolitionist Activist, Speaker, Printer, Ambassador to Haiti, and just all-around Bad Muthah…
When people who disagree with me resort to profanity I know that I have won the argument.
Irrelevant authority fallacy.
I imagine that same logic was used against the abolitionists.
The Puritans in Massachusetts also brought us compulsory attendance laws in 1642, specifically to coerce indoctrination into their Calvinist religious dogma. Are you saying opponents of this are from “ignorant backwaters” too?
Will you then let me stop funding the schools I do not use? If not, what you’re asking is not entirely reasonable.
—–
And I now see you’ve already been asked and answered that question. How do we make that a reality?
Change the attitude of the entire society. Y’know, nothing big.
I obviously actually agree with Chumby, but that’s not a thing that is particularly likely to happen as a single atomic event. (By which I mean “indivisible” here.) I see this devolution of education away from the Education Industrial Complex as a valid step towards where we want to be. Getting people used to the idea that they need to have more input into their children’s education, and that they need to be intimately involved in the direction of the funds for that is a critical first step.
Voting libertarian used to be an option, before National Socialist harvesting of tooth fillings began funding the von Caucasians.
Giga wut? Giga who?
I’m with you! As long as Gummint Skoolz exist, make them voluntary in attendance and funded on a voluntary pro rata basis by the parents or guardians who choose to use them.
Black Moms in Texas Want Vouchers for Microschools
“DON’T TAKE THE GOVERNMENT GREEN! GOVERNMENT GREEN IS PEEEEEEOPLE!!!”
Choice? Like resistance and treason, certain words are to be applied only as tribal doctrine decrees. Choice is only for what good people can do with children before birth, not after.
My only objection is why do people with kids get a refund on their school taxes? Just send everyone the money that would have been spent on their “child”, or better yet, just eliminate the school taxes altogether. Texas property taxes are high enough. I’m sure the teachers who aren’t a complete waste of space can start for-profit schools wherever and in whatever quantities they are needed.
Steps in the right direction. Collapsing the Education Industrial Complex isn’t going to happen overnight.
The school taxes could be replaced with income taxes.
I’d rather just not pay for the schools with any kind of tax, thank you very much. If I’m going to purchase some schooling for my child I’d rather do it the same way I buy all the other things in life.
So children whose parents can’t afford any education get no education, become unemployable in any legal job, and instead of paying taxes they will come and steal from you. If they get caught you will pay the taxes needed to incarcerate them forever.
People shouldn’t have things that they can’t afford.
You mean Biden et. al. should stop at the $33,700,000,000,000 that they already borrowed? Racist!
Just like the children whose parents can’t afford food starve to death.
And yet, obesity is a national crisis, particularly of the poor. This is the problem with handing stuff out for “free”. We hand out education for free, and Johnny can’t read. We hand out houses for free, and homeless fill the streets. Thank goodness we don’t hand out food for free like they do in every communist country or people would be starving in the streets (like they do in every communist country).
With no income taxes, parents and guardians would have the capital to invest in either tuition for existing schools, media, and curricula or to create their own.
V-Tech, Cocomelon, and Ava Twist, Scientist Toys and streaming TV are great starts for young minds.
And CuriosityStreaming, Nebula, and Great Courses Online are excellent for older, lifelong learners too, and all are very affordable ($20 a year for CuriousityStreaming, for example.)
Wonder if black moms in Texas will still vote democrat across the board?
“Who benefits from choice in education? The answer, of course, is everybody”
Nope. Teachers’ unions and those who want to control what kids learn don’t benefit.
“Opposition comes not just from Democrats allied with public school teachers unions, but also from rural Republicans who fear diverting resources from traditional district schools.”
The author clearly doesn’t know anything about Texas. There are no teachers unions in Texas. Texas is a “Right To Work” state that bans collective bargaining for public employees. And rural Republicans know that there will never be real private school options. “Competition” only works when there can be competition. Rural Texas is so sparsely populated that it is difficult enough to fund one school, much less “competition”.
And microschools won’t be cost effective, unless you don’t pay teachers and staff. (The 13th Amendment had something to say about that.) There are significant economies of scale in education. One reason why New York City has low property tax rates (a fraction of what Texans pay) is that we have huge school populations. There are many high schools with over 3,000 students and there is one in Brooklyn with 6,000. There are many school districts in Texas that don’t have that many students; there are even dozens of COUNTIES in Texas that don’t have that many PEOPLE. That is why the rural members of the Texas legislature (almost all Republicans) aren’t buying this attempt to push this ideological agenda.
It is interesting how the usual left right alignment breaks down on this issue. Urban minority parents, almost 100% Democrats. love the many private charter schools here in NYC. The entire state of Virginia, a pretty evenly divided state, has zero private charter schools.
One reason why New York City has low property tax rates
1. That’s a city tax rate, not a state tax rate. NYC charges 0.98%. Dallas, for comparison, charges 0.73%.
2. New York state does not charge a property tax rate, it does however charge a top income tax bracket of 10.9%. Just so you don’t think I’m being unfair, the bottom income tax rate is 4%. Texas, by comparison, has a 1.6% property tax rate (after a $100,000 exemption for a primary home) and no income tax.
3. Oh, and New York City also charges an additional 3% income tax.
And what a glorious public school system that buys. Truly, a NYC education is the envy of the nation with it’s <50% proficiency ratings in English and math.
NYC has some of the best public schools in the US, in addition to bad ones. There is a high school near me whose graduates include nine Nobel Laureates. Please identify any other high school with that kind of record.
Blue-staters love to put a microscope on the property tax rate in TX.
Here in Cali, there’s an occasional wave of memes about “if you’re thinking about moving to TX for low taxes” that cite a rate of 2% (no mention of an exemption), and compare it to the CA state rate of 1% (no, exemption, but it’s been locked since the 70s by a ballot proposition that the Dems here are now constantly trying to find a way to repeal). The thing about the “1% rate” in CA is that it’s assesed on the purchase price of the property (with something like 2% per year growth added to the valuation from there); not to mention that the voters in places like L.A. County never met a special levy that they weren’t in love with for a long time, so I actually pay almost 2% tax on my house anyway (I live in an unincorporated area, so I don’t know if the cities are allowed to charge their own taxes in addition, but they can have municipal levies which I don’t have to pay). That’s not taking into account that a comparable house to mine in the DFW area would cost 50-60% of what I paid a decade ago, and more like 30% of what comps in my area are going for now (20% taxable value if there’s a $100k exemption), so even at a higher rate I’d either be paying less than half as much tax or living in a house with bathrooms the size of my current back yard. And that’s before factoring in the no income tax, lower sales tax, $3/gallon cheaper gas, lower utility rates, and a business environment that doesn’t force everyone selling anything to add 20-30% to the retail price just to keep their own lights on.
I grew up in Colorado though, so I don’t want to move to TX for a number of completely unrelated reasons, but I responded to one of the property tax memes once that in terms of tax burden and cost of living, don’t threaten me with a good time. Financially the worst consequence would be that if I sold my house here, I’d be able to pay cash for one in TX with the profits, which would cost me my mortgage interest deduction along with my $10k in SALT write-offs on my federal taxes.
I imagine the Californians defending California taxes are huffing dangerous levels of copium due to the fact that they still live in California, whereas it seems like the rest of them have all moved here to Texas. Drive around in cities north of Dallas, around Frisco and Plano and you can sometimes see more California plates at a stoplight than Texas ones. It’s crazy.
Parents and guardians who volunteer to teach in the microschools they create are not slaves, so it’s not a 13th Amendment issue.
Yep. Just ask the Chicago Teachers Union. Those fuckers try to stop, stymie, and get rid of any school choice while sending their own kids to expensive private schools themselves. And they use your tax dollars to do so.
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/teachers-unions-hand-nearly-1-5-million-to-lawmakers-ahead-of-invest-in-kids-vote/
The majority of Illinois voters approve of Illinois’ tax credit scholarship program for low-income elementary and high school students, but not the teachers unions putting significant dollars behind their attack on the program.
They’ve invested over $21.5 million in sitting state lawmakers since 2010, with nearly $1.5 million of that since June, Illinois State Board of Elections records show. Teachers unions are working to kill the low-income scholarships for good.
Teachers unions have funneled at least $1,479,150 into current lawmakers’ political committees since June 1, according to records with the Illinois State Board of Elections.
That includes $834,050 since Sept. 1, with more than $224,600 in the past month alone.
Most of that has come from the National Education Association, which has contributed $1.1 million since June 1. The Chicago Teachers Union, which has come under fire for its use of member dues for political purposes, has contributed at least $40,500 to lawmakers since June 1.
In all, current lawmakers have received more than $21.5 million from teachers unions since Jan. 1, 2010.
Those same unions want lawmakers to kill the Invest in Kids program. The Illinois Education Association – the state affiliate of the National Education Association – earlier celebrated the seeming demise of the program when the spring legislative session ended and it had not been extended. The Chicago Teachers Union wants it to end “for good.” The Illinois Federation of Teachers has called on their followers to “keep the pressure on lawmakers to sunset” the program.
It was actually the awful Citizens United decision that allowed labor unions to directly participate in partisan political activity, rather than requiring them to have separate political action committees with funding separate from the rest of their operations. And it allowed them to politic to the general public not just to their members. Thank you for agreeing with me that Citizens United needs to be overturned.
I don’t have a big problem with Unions being able to get into lobbying, but it does seem like there should be some kind of different rules for those representing government employees since their funds are coming in a straight line (passing through a few sets of different accounts, but on a direct and traceable path) from public budgets and therefore from tax revenues.
FWIW, I’d be fine with applying the same set of rules to lobbying by corporations whose primary/sole customers are government departments or agencies (military and nonmilitary contractors/subcontractors, private prisons, traffic camera operations, etc).
There’s probably no way around the idea of political speech having 1A protection regardless of who’s doing it, but allowing payments for “access” to be made with what’s essentially taxpayer money seems like just creating another loophole for kickbacks.
Yes, let’s bring back segregation.
Separate but Equal is discriminatory (not that the separates were very often actually equal).
Separate but Unique is “inclusive”. It’s amazing that CA hasn’t updated their building code to require all commercial buildings have 278 separate restrooms (one for each recognized “gender identity”), and a drinking pavilion containing a reserved fountain for every racial/ethnic identity listed on the census form and for every possible permutation of mixes including up to 3 races.
1. The Black Mothers Forum sounds like a racist group.
2. I wonder if the democrats would object if the parents had to join the teacher’s union and pay dues?
The Black Mothers Forum sounds like a racist group.
I know race is the most important thing but, again, why’s it always got to be *only* about race? Couldn’t just a few of them be in it for the grift? It sounds like they’re going to end the school-to-prison pipeline by using voucher funds to provide “holistic re-entry programs to empower formerly incarcerated individuals with access to upward mobility”. You can’t tell me that at least a couple of them won’t
rehabilitatere-empower and upwardly mobilize a few white and white-adjacent people too, as long as they get paid.I could buy your argument if it was called “The Concerned Mothers Forum” or something similar.
On point one, it sounds like they are trying to poison pill the school choice legislation currently being considered in the legislature..kinda like when the libs put out the youtube about blacks thanking the NRA for allowing them to arm themselves thinking that would scare us into changing our minds about the second amendment. It did not change my mind then and this won’t change my mind now.
So libertarians–not the other half of the looter Kleptocrcy–did a video to undermine the Second Amendment? Surely the link or title is in the erudite saucepuppet’s blog, right? Your Youtube handle is…?
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/vouchers-special-session-18471851.php
Democrats allied with teacher unions and rural Republicans. Meanwhile the 45% of Americans who just want to be left alone STILL have almost no representation in King George the Third’s government almost 250 years later.
any children out of public schools is a good start.
Excellent!
Schools? At a statewide Klan rally? Surely Tuccille jests.
The lefturds have really been letting their condescending racist flag fly on this issue. They’re getting roasted for it on Twitter.
-jcr