Stop Texas “Education Savings Account” (ESA) Bills

Why it Matters

Members of the Texas Legislature are seeking to enact an “Education Savings Account” (ESA) bill. Although this proposal might sound good on the surface, it actually severely threatens individual liberty and parental rights by shackling parents and religious schools to government funding — and the various strings attached, even if those strings are not initially obvious. Urge your state legislators to oppose ESAs, protect genuine educational freedom, and abolish all government involvement in education.

Senate Bill No. 2 (SB 2) and House Bill No. 3 (HB 3) would create an ESA program in Texas. Although the two chambers are still negotiating the program’s specific provisions, these bills would massively increase government involvement in education — instead of defunding government schools, as they ought.

Supporters of ESAs often describe it as “school choice” or “money following the child.” However, ESAs actually represent a major — and potentially disastrous — intrusion of government into private and home education.

First, ESAs are closely connected to the United Nations and its push to indoctrinate children with international-socialist ideology. For example, the UN’s education agency, UNESCO, has advocated subsidizing private schools with tax money in order to control them — i.e., impose the same leftist standards on them as public schools — thus enabling the implementation of the UN’s totalitarian Agenda 2030 scheme.

As implied above, vouchers and ESAs are dangerous also because government can easily attach strings to the funding, forcing parents and private schools to submit to far-left indoctrination and other draconian government policies. In foreign countries, including Sweden, Australia, and Canada, private schools — including Christian ones — now teach leftist ideology and are practically indistinguishable from public schools, because they are shackled to government funding. The United States is next — there is a growing effort to use ESAs to regulate and eventually eliminate homeschooling.

Furthermore, contrary to the slick “fund students, not systems” slogan, government schools will continue to receive the same levels of funding under ESA/voucher policies. Such policies will simply increase — not shift or reduce — government meddling in education.

More information on the dangers of vouchers and ESAs can be found in Alex Newman’s article “Vouchers: ‘School Choice’ Trap” in the April 10, 2023 issue of The New American magazine, as well as the video “Bringing Homeschools & Christian Education Under Control.”

Ultimately, government must completely abolish its involvement in education — as had been the case in the United States before the late 1800s. Additionally, all parents must get their children out of the government-school system and instead pursue sound alternatives such as homeschooling and patriotic private schools.

Urge your state legislators to oppose all ESA and voucher programs, and to instead support fully defunding and abolishing the government-school system. Only then — rather than by false solutions — will we achieve fully educational freedom.