In a historic victory for educational freedom, the Texas House of Representatives finally passed a universal school choice bill—marking not just a win for families in the Lone Star State, but a watershed moment for the entire school choice movement.
Once it clears the state senate and Gov. Greg Abbott signs Senate Bill 2 into law, half of America’s children will live in states where they are eligible for educational choice programs, including 15 states with “universal” choice policies for which every K-12 student is eligible. More than one in 10 U.S. students live in Texas.
The Texas House debated the bill for more than 12 hours Wednesday before passing the bill early Thursday morning. Opponents of the legislation attempted to obstruct it by filing more than 170 amendments. The House voted on more than 40 amendments, voting them all down, except for the friendly amendment proposed by House Public Education Committee Chairman Brad Buckley.
The Texas House passed the bill 85 to 63, mostly along party lines. The bill previously cleared the Texas Senate 20 to 11. Because the House amended Senate Bill 2, it will have to go back to the upper chamber before reaching the governor’s desk. The Senate will likely request a conference committee to hammer out a compromise.
Demonstrating the national import of the vote, before the session yesterday, President Donald Trump spoke with the Texas House Republican caucus expressing his support for the measure and encouraging the state lawmakers to vote for it.
Abbott has expended tremendous political capital to achieve this victory. During the last Texas legislative session in 2023, the Texas House failed to pass a school choice bill even after Abbott repeatedly called them back into special session. Twenty-one Texas House Republicans joined with all the House Democrats to defeat the school choice proposal.
In response, Abbott endorsed 16 challengers to incumbents who had opposed his school choice proposal. Five others—likely seeing the writing on the wall—did not seek reelection. Abbott-endorsed candidates who supported school choice fared well in the primaries, demonstrating once again that school choice is a litmus test issue for GOP voters.
When the dust had settled, only seven Republicans who had opposed school choice in 2023 remained in office. Of those, six voted for the school choice bill today.
Only two Republicans voted against it: former Texas Speaker of the House Dade Phelan, who was ousted as speaker in advance of the 2025 legislative session over his perceived opposition to school choice, and former public schoolteacher state Rep. Gary VanDeaver.
The school choice bill is not perfect. It would create education savings accounts that families can use to customize their children’s education. The accounts would be funded annually with around $10,000, compared with the average $17,000 spent at Texas public schools. Students with special needs can get significantly more—up to $30,000 depending on their disability—but homeschoolers will receive only $2,000.
Moreover, although every child is technically eligible, only a small number will actually get access to the accounts. The program is funded with only $1 billion, which is only enough funding for less than 2% of Texas students. Of the 100,000 students who will get access to an account, 80% must be from low- or middle-income families.
Children from higher-income families are only eligible if they are switching from a public school. As respected Texas-based economist Vance Ginn observed, “That’s a slap in the face to families already sacrificing for private or home education.” As Ginn noted, the taxpayers already “fund these families to go to government schools at a higher expense per student, so why wouldn’t everyone interested be able to receive an [education savings account]?”
There are additional structural flaws in the bill, including unnecessary accreditation requirements that will limit the supply of new schools and other education providers. This limited progress also came at a great cost—including $7.7 billion in additional spending on the bloated and inefficient Texas public school system that passed in a separate bill just before Senate Bill 2.
Still, if enacted, Texas lawmakers will have every right to brag that this represents the largest first-year education savings account program in the nation. The Lone Star State still has a long way to go to achieve truly universal education choice, but the policies in Senate Bill 2 represent a Texas-sized step in the right direction.
