Overspending is what hinders Texas public education

Mandy Drogin is one of Texas’s foremost education reform leaders, bringing extensive experience in grassroots organizing, public policy, strategic communications, legislative advocacy, coalition-building, and statewide campaigns.

Mandy founded the Parent Empowerment Coalition, a statewide alliance of parents, educators, policy experts, and community leaders dedicated to expanding educational opportunity for Texas families. She traveled across Texas speaking to thousands of parents and community leaders, including alongside Governor Greg Abbott during numerous Parent Empowerment Nights, helping build the grassroots movement that secured passage of SB 2 creating Texas Education Freedom Accounts. The coalition played a major role in enacting the nation’s largest Day-One universal Education Savings Account (ESA) program, serving more than 100,000 Texas students in its first year.

Mandy also led broad coalitions that successfully advanced two landmark reforms to Texas’s academic standards. Her work helped secure the nation’s first required statewide K–12 literature list, ensuring every Texas student reads many of the Great Books. The list includes foundational biblical stories and texts for their historical, cultural and literary significance, giving students a deeper understanding of the ideas, symbols, language, and references that have shaped Western civilization, America’s Founding, and the literary canon.

She also led that coalition in advancing Texas’s new K–12 social studies TEKS standards, creating the nation’s first comprehensive chronological history framework. The new standards restore history as a coherent narrative centered on the development of Western civilization, the American Founding, constitutional government, and the principles of liberty that shaped both Texas and the United States.

Before joining the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mandy spent nearly eight years with the American Federation for Children, where she led statewide campaigns to help families access these new educational opportunities, advancing school choice and parental rights legislation during the 2021 legislative session. Including the creation of Texas’s first parent-directed education funding program for students with disabilities, Parent-Directed Special Education Services (PDSES), and the Learning Pods Protection Act.

As President of the Texas Federation for Children PAC, Mandy led one of the state’s most successful education advocacy political efforts, compiling a strong win-loss record during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles and helping elect numerous pro-school choice candidates to the Texas Legislature.

A dynamic and sought-after speaker, Mandy has testified before the U.S. Congress and the Texas House and Senate, appeared on Fox News and other national and state media outlets, spoken at major conferences across the country, and hosts the weekly podcast Parent Empowerment with Mandy Drogin.

Mandy lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband, John, and their three young children.

Jorge Borrego is a Post-Secondary Education Policy Analyst for the Next Generation Texas initiative at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Borrego was a Legislative Director at the Texas House of Representatives. He also worked in the Nonprofit Sector, working for the Down Syndrome Association of Brazos Valley. Where he worked as an Event Coordinator, Data Administrator, and Policy Administrator. He is currently serving as the Treasurer on the organization’s Board of Directors.