HB 2920 Testimony Before the Texas House Committee on Higher Education

April 18, 2023

Erin Davis Valdez

Erin Davis Valdez is an education policy director at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. She has been passionate about the transformational power of education all her life, having been given the gift of being homeschooled. She taught for over a decade in Austin-area schools and served as an assistant principal at a charter school in Lewisville. These experiences have given her the opportunity to see first-hand how students can thrive when they have excellent options.

My name is Erin Davis Valdez, and I am an education policy director at Texas Public Policy Foundation. I’m here today to voice our support of HB 2920.

At a time when having postsecondary education is more important than ever, we have seen two concerning trends in Texas: declining enrollment directly from high school and a loss of public trust in higher education.

Recent data from the Higher Education Coordinating Board point to a decline in the number of high school students enrolled in higher education the fall after graduation, from 55.5% enrolled in public and private colleges in the fall of 2011 to 45% in the fall of 2021.

View Full Publication

Erin Davis Valdez

Related content

Harvard’s Claudine Gay and DEI in Texas

Joshua Treviño Testimony | Congressional Border Security Caucus

Higher Education Subsidization: Why and How Should We Subsidize Higher Education?