Gov. Greg Abbott's Texas-Size Victory for School Choice
27:01 Share

This episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. Washington Wise from Charles Schwab is an original podcast that unpacks the stories making news there. Listen at schwab.com slash Washington Wise. From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

Texas could be on the verge of passing one of the nation's largest school choice programs after Governor Greg Abbott put his political capital on the line to defeat Republican opponents in GOP primaries.

Plus, New York Senator Chuck Schumer says he'll block two nominees by President Trump for federal prosecutors in his state by refusing to return his so-called blue slip. Welcome. I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal. We're joined today by my colleague, columnist Kim Strassel. Happy Friday to you, Kim, and to all Potomac Watch listeners.

Two years ago, Texas Governor Greg Abbott's push for education savings accounts was voted down in the State House of Representatives with 21 Republicans joining Democrats to sink the idea. But Governor Greg Abbott didn't let it go, and he made a political issue out of it in GOP primaries endorsing school choice challengers to Republicans. And now that bet might be about to pay off.

On Thursday, the statehouse voted 86 to 61 to pass a plan that would provide about $10,000 scholarships to up to about 100,000 students. The bill still needs to get final approval by the state Senate, but Governor Abbott seems pretty confident about that. Here he is recently in an interview with the TV station KXII.

So if you're a parent of a student at any level, whether it be kindergarten or high school, what parents need to know is they're going to have the opportunity to choose a school that's best for their child.

I visited with parents in the Sherman area, for example, that had three kids and their family. And they said one went to public school, one went to private school, one was homeschooled. And they said each pathway was the right one for that child. The fact of the matter is that any one house, there are different children who have different needs. And the person who knows that the best is the parent.

of that child. We want to empower parents to choose a school best for them while at the very same time ensuring that we empower our public schools by providing more funding for them as well as teacher pay raises so that we will put Texas on a pathway to having the best education system in the United States.

Kim, what do you make of this as a matter of policy for the state of Texas that money families could use it for tuition or textbooks, other educational needs? This is fantastic news. It's a huge milestone in the school choice fever that has been sweeping the country. We have had numerous states moving to either create their own versions of these

savings plans or scholarships, others that have moved to expand the programs that they have. And Texas was this really notable holdout.

And the saga here is worth paying attention to and kind of impressive. Greg Abbott was like, look, we're one of the leading conservative states in the nation and we are way behind here. And he started working on this a couple of years ago and he had holdouts. And what's really fascinating, Kyle, is his holdouts were Republicans. And

And this debate exposed a kind of quiet part that nobody on the school choice movement had really addressed publicly, which is that there are a lot of rural Republicans.

And their constituents have pretty decent schools in their rural areas, and they don't have a lot of other options in terms of private school. And they didn't want to have to. They were very worried about diverting. That's the word they use, that there might be shortfalls in the public school funding that they got if there was the scholarship programs that largely went to kids in urban areas.

So they were the ones that were the holdouts. And Abbott got really serious on this, went and endorsed their competitors in some primaries, really put his political capital into getting some of these holdouts to school choice out of the job and some new allies in the job. And that finally paid off.

this week in the House vote. We're still waiting. The Senate had also passed a version of this bill. There are some technical discrepancies between the two bills, so there's going to have to be a decision as to whether or not the Senate agrees to the House version or if they have some sort of conference. But this now looks set to land on the governor's desk for a signature and, again, a billion dollars

for scholarships in Texas. And that is just, like I said, it's a huge moment for the school choice fight. On the point about this opposition in rural areas, I can kind of understand it in a sense in places where there are not a lot of private school options. You have maybe a small town where

with one high school in it and it is the centerpiece of the town. It's where people gather for sporting events and so forth. I get why representatives in those areas were not quite sure what is in it currently for them to expand this kind of school choice system statewide. On the other hand, Kim, I think that's looking at the world without imagining the options that could exist. And there's been some reporting on this. There was a story in the Texas Tribune

from 2023 talking about private schools that are just wanting to expand. Here is a line in it. If vouchers are approved, this is referring to the bill that Abbott was pushing that failed last time. If vouchers are approved, leaders of other private schools have the same dream, potentially expanding the reach of programs

into relatively underserved areas, particularly in rural parts of Texas. It talks about Promise Academy, a Christian private school in Northern Tyler. Not a wealthy area, not a well-off area, but that is the magic, Kim, I think, of these kinds of programs that allow funding, state funding, even if it's not 100%. This is, I think, 85% of the per-pupil funding for the public schools.

But even allowing a portion of that funding to follow the student for families to take that to alternatives is then you start to see other alternatives spring up because there is demand. There are options for that. My bet is that there will be new schools created. I mean, maybe virtual schools, charters, learning pods, just a flowering of different alternatives.

for parents who don't think that the public school is working for them. And by the way, I would bet that the price of those will be keyed off the kind of money that the state is providing. So we'll find out actually what kind of great education alternatives you can get for that 85% of the per pupil funding. Yeah, all of those options. And another piece I'd mentioned in there too, Kyle, is homeschooling, which by the way, tends to be more popular in rural areas.

where you might have communities that either for religious or just because of lifestyle reasons, choose to do their own education of their kids. All of these options that you mentioned too, became so much more interesting to parents in the wake of COVID. We've had this

sort of waking up in education more broadly, where parents started getting more involved in local school boards, but also, as you said, these learning pods and different forms of education. But of course, to get to that wonderful world of competition and choice, you have to have the groundwork in place to allow it to happen and ease the barriers to it. And that's what this fundamentally came down to, is that you had these rural lawmakers, Republicans,

who claim to believe in freedom and claim to believe in choice and claim to believe in competition. But when it came to the issue of this money and the idea of starting this program, went to Austin and instead were voting entirely in a kind of don't take mine from me and we need more money attitude. And guess what? That didn't play with their own constituent's

in rural areas. These are very conservative voters in a lot of these places. And their attitude was, guess what? You need to walk the walk. And maybe there isn't all of these options, but a lot of us would at least like to know what that world could look like if it was more possible. And they threw him out in these primaries and Abbott got the people he needed to believe in this idea.

And again, I give a lot of credit to the governor because this has been a several years long fight now at this point. And there was no guarantee of victory. If he'd have gone in and endorsed some of these candidates and they'd have lost, it probably would have driven a bigger stake in the heart of the potential of getting this. But instead, he really did put his nose to the grindstone. And

And now Texas joins, like I said, what is a growing group of states out there, certainly double digits, if not higher, that are really moving ahead on school choice. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment. In an age of unprecedented disruption and opportunity, success depends on what you do with your data and how fast you do it. This is the era of AI. This is the era of KX. KX, survival of the fastest.

Welcome back. I would second that point on credit to Governor Abbott. It is no small thing for the leader of a Republican Party in a state to take up arms against fellow Republicans in some of these GOP primaries. In Iowa, there was a similar sort of dynamic. Governor Kim Reynolds there endorsed some school choice supporters in Republican primaries, and that was a route to success.

So the other thing about that is it creates a sense in at least two states, there may be some people in the state house or the state Senate who don't want these school choice programs and don't want them to expand, but it sure seems like Republican voters are not

of a mind with them on that. Republican voters, when they are asked when this becomes an issue, seem to be supporting the school choice candidates. And I think that is borne out in some of the polls that the pro-school choice side in Texas has shown majority support, I think strong majority support, even in these rural areas among voters for these school choice programs.

The other piece of the politics, Kim, that I always find interesting about this is the way that the creation of these programs seems to change the political dynamics in some of these states. And I guess maybe there's a couple of ways to think about that. One is just in terms of electoral politics.

Some of the exit polling in the Florida elections, the first election of Governor Ron DeSantis, suggesting that school choice moms and particularly non-white school choice moms were a part of the coalition that put him over the top in that very close election. And then, too, the creation, I guess, of a political constituency that wants to push to expand education.

these kinds of programs. I mean, this first bill in Texas is a limited amount of money. It may not be able to satisfy everybody who wants to take advantage of the scholarship. There are some provisions in the House bill giving priority to children with disabilities, for example. But as long as the program is written in a way that makes it open to a lot of people, then you end up with maybe a wait list.

and a real concerted push to say, you know, the legislature needs to just add some money to this bucket because we want to take advantage of the program too. And I think that that is a political dynamic that is very hard for opponents of school choice to resist. Yeah. Speaking of constituencies, I mean, one other, I think, movement that deserves a shout out in this victory in Texas and then elsewhere are these new lobby organizations you've seen made up of parents.

that are engaging now in some of these local school board races, but also these bigger state-level fights over competition and choice. And it's just good to see these activist groups working within the education world. It sort of felt like for too long that there's certainly parents out there that were deeply concerned about

about the state of public education and the lack of choice, but they were uncertain how to channel that frustration and sort of felt a little bit hopeless to the notion that anything would change. And now they feel very,

activated as it were. And that has a lot to do too. It isn't just with education and poor education, but this parental rights movement, which really got moving during COVID as well. And a lot of frustration among parents that schools were saying, well, we're just going to shut down and there's nothing you can do about it. And we're going to teach these DEI curriculum. And if you don't like it, lump it. And parents have decided to sort of step up and take back.

But the constituency part, a building of a constituency through this program is also really important. You are right for as much as I am raving about this program. It's generally modest. I mean, even though a billion dollars is a lot of money, these scholarships are meant to be about $10,000 per

per kid. If you add that up, it's about 100,000 scholarships. There are 5 million students in Texas. So this is not going to necessarily save demand.

And there are already estimates that this thing could grow in size and funding pretty quickly and hugely just in the coming years in order to sate that demand. And I think it will only grow as more options are made available and these private schools and other charter schools and other schooling options become more available to people. So that's useful. The one other thing that I would just note was a bit unfortunate about this bill is that

In order to get it across the line in the end, while there was a billion dollars that went to these scholarships, there was an $8 billion increase to public school funding. And that was the price of this bill that's going to go to teacher pay raises and a bunch of other provisions that's meant to guard public schools from much change. And that provision somewhat undermines the notion of this, which is the idea is that funding

Funding needs to follow kids and schools that do a better job need to be rewarded by those finite number of dollars going to those, not that everybody just deserves more everywhere. That's not exactly the idea of competition. So again, a cost to get this off the road, but maybe you'll see those funding formulas change and rebalance as time goes on. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment.

ADP imagines a world of work where smart machines become too smart. Copier, I need 15 copies of this. Printing. By the way, irregardless, not a word, Janet. Yeah, I know. Page 6 should be regardless of or irrespective of. Just print them, please. If it were a word, Janet, it would mean without irregard, which is... Copier! Switch to silent mode. Let's put a pin in it. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP helps businesses take on the next anything.

Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker. Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

Welcome back. Let's turn to the U.S. Senate and what New York's Chuck Schumer is up to this week. President Trump has nominated a couple of people for U.S. attorney federal prosecutor jobs in the state of New York. One is Jay Clayton, nominated for the Southern District. That's Manhattan. The other is Joseph Nocella, nominated for the Eastern District prosecutor's job in New York.

And Kim, on Wednesday, Chuck Schumer said that he would unilaterally block these nominees by refusing to return his blue slip. This is an old Senate tradition, but some listeners might be surprised to find out that one Senator

can block these kinds of presidential nominees, given that we have a Senate that is majority Republican and a bit of cushion even there in the Republican margin. So maybe the place to start is, what is this whole blue slip business? As you say, this is an old Senate tradition that's been around since at least, well, at least 100 years, probably going back to about 1917. And it's a courtesy. It's a courtesy tradition. And what it holds is that senators can work

withhold a blue slip when it comes to presidential nominees for their states in terms of the judiciary and prosecutors. And, you know, usually senators have reserved it because they have some sort of grievous concern with the nominee at hand. Sometimes they wield it, they'll hold it back and sit on it because they're trying to negotiate something else that they want done. And so in order to hurry that along, they'll sit on their blue slip and kind of use it as leverage.

By the way, I should note that this tradition was abused enough that a number of years ago it was abolished for Justice Appeals Court nominations, but it still exists for prosecutors and district court judges.

And the joke of this Schumer thing is, I mean, this is Jay Clayton who has been nominated to the Southern District of New York that encompasses Manhattan. This guy is as heavyweight, sober, and serious a lawyer as you get. He's the former head of the SEC. He worked forever at Sullivan and Cromwell, which is one of the leading lights in the legal world. Nobody would suggest for two seconds that Jay Clayton is A, an unlawful

qualified to do this job, or B, doesn't have the right temperament to do this job. In fact, he kind of probably much needed given some of the uproar that's happened recently in the Southern District with the incoming Trump administration. So the reason he's doing this, it's flat out politics. He might as well have just said, I'm withholding my blue slip so that Democrats know that I still have some fight in me. And please, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, don't primary me.

Notable that Schumer in his statement on this blue slip thing does not even mention either of the nominees that Trump has named. Here's part of what he said. Donald Trump has made clear he has no fidelity to the law and intends to use the Justice Department, the U.S. Attorney's Office and law enforcement as weapons to go after his perceived enemies.

unquote. And I understand the argument that he is making there. I have some of my own concerns about the way that the Trump administration is using the law. The reference that came that you made to what was happening in the Southern District, that was about the Justice Department's meddling in the federal corruption case against Eric Adams.

But it does seem to me that if the goal is to get that shop back to regular order, Jay Clayton is maybe about as good as a nominee as Chuck Schumer could expect somebody with some independent stature coming into that office. And the alternative, I guess, that Chuck Schumer wants is just to have no Senate confirmed U.S. attorney there and to keep the whole place running under some kind of

acting leader that does not have the kind of independent stature to maybe be a counterweight to the Trump administration on some of this stuff. And so, Kim, one question that raises is whether it's going to raise additional pressure within the Republican Party to not respect

these kinds of blue slips. The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Chuck Grassley, has recently said he intends to. But if you're going to have senators who are blocking presidential nominees without even making any complaints about the nominees themselves, then it does make you wonder how long this blue slip thing is for this world. Yeah, I mean, this point you make, this is not good for the Southern District of New York.

I mean, the idea that it's just good to leave a place rudderless and have nothing happen is silly. And Chuck Schumer should be wanting better for the residents of his state. And he should want someone in that office that also can be held politically accountable for the decisions that are made there, rather than some nameless, faceless acting person who just sort of got the job by default. If Democrats are serious that they would like to hold the Trump administration to account,

then there is no better way to do that than to have confirmed appointees who have to answer to the Senate or to the House if something goes wrong. So that's a bit of nonsense. Also, I would just point one of the things that makes Schumer's use of this is

Such a stretch and beyond the usual pale. And you just mentioned it is that oftentimes, as noted, when senators refuse to return blue slips, it's because they have very specific complaints or issues with the nominee at hand.

And often, by the way, we don't even get to blue slips because often administrations will confer with home state senators, even of the opposing party, about the people that they are considering putting in these judicial nominations or prosecutor positions to make sure that there isn't going to be a problem or a fight on the ground and to give them the courtesy of some sort of say as to who is going to operate in their state.

The fact that he is withholding this just as a general kind of protest against the Trump administration is a new use of this. Or, I mean, or such uses of this would certainly be very, very rare. And I can't think of any that come to mind. And that gets to the point is if people are going to start using blue steps for that purpose, not for their original intentions.

And their intention, again, was to give home state senators a chance to flag something that might be of serious concern about the character or judgment or ability of a certain candidate. But if you're going to use it as a protest against anything that administration is doing, there is going to be

Right.

And he's going to get some blowback now because he hasn't moved and just abolished it right away. I'm glad that he's attempting to preserve it, but that's going to come down to Democrats and if they decide to abuse it. And, you know, it's much like

The filibuster, they were the ones that blew that up as well too. And then it's come back to boomerang on both parties to a certain degree. And maybe they need to think hard about do they really want to flush this courtesy, which has worked for people over the years, down the tubes.

because Chuck Schumer doesn't want a primary from AOC. One final point to mention here is after Schumer's announcement, President Trump said on Truth Social that he intends to name Jay Clayton as the interim U.S. attorney, which is something that the law allows when there are vacancies. But appointments like that are generally time limited. My understanding is that this one is 120 days away.

So Jay Clayton will have an opportunity to get his shop set up there. And then Kim, I guess the question will be whether Schumer is willing to bend maybe and say that he's been convinced by Clayton's good faith or whether the Republicans will be making the argument that

to Chuck Grassley that they can't let this stand. - Yeah, that's gonna be the thing to watch. I mean, there's a possibility that Clayton gets in there, he's working and Schumer waits for a quiet moment to just shuffle his blue slip back and hope that nobody notices. But he is under a lot of pressure and we've been having these stories come out

The younger faction of the Democratic Party are gearing up. They believe that all of their party's problems, that they've got too many old guys that are out of it and that if they could just get some more kind of firecrackers in there, all their problems would go away. So they they are mounting bids and gunning for guys like Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin and some of the more mature, shall we say, guys.

in years of members of their caucus. And if Chuck Schumer really feels as though that heat is on him in a potential primary, it's not for a few years yet, he could well escalate in this. And I would just note again that for the sake of

Trump-Schumer's parochial electoral interests, he is putting a big tradition at risk. Thank you, Kim. Thank you all for listening. You can email us your own blue slips at pwpodcast at wsj.com. If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button. And we'll be back next week with another edition of Potomac Watch.

Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service, cultural enrichment, and all-inclusive fares. Discover more at viking.com.