The Left Smears School Choice

February 14, 2025

Brian Phillips

For over a decade, Brian Phillips has helped policymakers and political candidates develop effective messages and communication strategies. Phillips is a veteran of presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial campaigns, and has extensive experience working in the United States Congress and public policy think tanks. Previously, he served in a senior communications role as the Director of Rapid Response for Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign. Prior to joining Cruz, Phillips worked as Communications Director for U.S. Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who has played a role in nearly every major policy debate since joining the Senate in 2011, including Obamacare repeal, fighting Obama’s unconstitutional executive orders, protecting Americans’ Second Amendment rights, as well as promoting numerous innovative policy reforms. Before going on to hold several senior positions in House, Senate and gubernatorial campaigns, Phillips worked for the highly-respected conservative Heritage Foundation as a Media Adviser promoting conservative policy reforms.

After last year’s primary elections resulted in a clear and convincing win for parental empowerment, my colleague Sherry Sylvester warned, “the fight is gonna get worse before it gets better.”

She was right. The opponents of school have spent recent weeks lobbing absurd accusations and spreading shameful misinformation about the proposal, known as SB2, to create education savings accounts (ESA). We understand why. They’ve spent decades building a scheme that ensured tens of billions of dollars fed into the education system with little or no accountability for how it was spent. School choice – or more specifically, giving parents some control over where the money goes – is an existential threat to what they’ve built. They weren’t going to just let it go quietly.

So let’s set the record straight:

ESAs are opt-in. If you are happy with your current public, private, or homeschool – as about half of Texas parents are, according to polls – then nothing will change for you. No new strings, or mandates, or regulations. Nada.
Values are protected. Schools cannot be required to change values, curriculum, or any policies is they accept ESAs.
Funds are separate. None of the ESA funding comes from public education funding.
ESAs will cover private school costs. The average cost of a private school in Texas is $8,900 and the value of the ESA is between $10,000 and $11,500.
ESAs are cheaper than current per-pupil funding. The average cost of a student in public school is more than $15,000.
ESAs prioritize low-income and special needs. 80% of the program will be reserved for families under a specific income cap.

And my favorite…

School choice is conservative. Aside from being a foundational conservative policy reform for the last 50 years, ESAs are supported by President Trump, Governor Abbott, Lt. Gov Dan Patrick, Senator Ted Cruz, Rep. Chip Roy and every leading conservative voice and group in Texas and the country.

There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. For opponents of school choice, their time is up.

Brian Phillips

Related content

Mind the Body

When Political Rhetoric Goes Too Far

High Demand Shows Texas Families Want More Educational Freedom