Texas has some amazing and innovative charter schools, yet tens of thousands of Texas school children who would like to attend one are unable to do so.

State lawmakers had an opportunity to fix this problem by expanding quality charter schools and raising the cap on the number of schools that can open. Unfortunately for Texas schoolchildren, politics prevailed over good public policy and the bill died in the closing moments of the legislative session on a technicality.

Lifting caps and increasing the number of high quality charter schools have been strongly supported by Republican officeholders and are explicit priorities of the Obama Administration. A recent poll conducted by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools found that 74 percent of voters support raising the cap on charter schools. Yet a legislator from President Obama’s own party thwarted those efforts in Texas.

Charter schools are free public schools funded by public dollars that are open to all students. Students choose to attend a charter school. While subject to the same state and federal testing requirements as traditional public schools, charter schools are freed from some regulations and red tape – allowing them to innovate and develop new educational approaches that better serve students and provide examples of reform for other public schools.

More than 110,000 Texas students attend a charter school. Our research identified that nearly 17,000 students were on a waiting list last year.

Texas has a cap (or ceiling) on the number of open-enrollment charters it may authorize. The cap is currently 215 and was reached last November. Thus, no new charter school entities can open in Texas until a charter school closes or the cap is raised.

With demand outweighing supply as demonstrated by the large waiting list, several proposals were filed to remove the cap altogether or to raise it incrementally by 10 or 20 a year with a moving cap.

Charter school legislation by state Sen. Dan Patrick had many good provisions to help charter schools expand and succeed, such as allowing 12 new charters a year, making it easier for schools meeting high academic and financial standards to expand, and making it easier for the Commissioner of Education to close charter schools with ongoing academic or financial failures.

On the last night for the Texas House to approve bills, state Rep. Lon Burnam killed the charter school on a technicality known as a point of order. As reported by Quorum Report, he said, “This is a massive charter school expansion bill. I hate charter schools. I’m going to kill this bill.”

In multiple e-mails to their members, teacher union leaders have bragged about giving the legislator the point of order and gloated about the bill’s demise, as more charter schools in Texas mean more competition against the public school monopoly. Since they couldn’t win on the merits of the argument, they had to nitpick on process to preserve their power.

Sadly, it is the children that will suffer. As a result of the legislature’s failure to lift or raise the cap on charter schools, nearly 17,000 Texas children on a waiting list will not be able to attend the public charter school of their choice. In addition, it is harder for the Commissioner of Education to shut down the few failing charter schools.

Many education reformers agree that the charter school movement is one of the most significant education reforms in the last 20 years. Unlikely alliances are developing to support innovative charter schools as a way to improve education and provide students with more options. Students want and deserve greater variety in educational models so they can choose the school that is best for them.

While Texas may be the national leader in many economic categories, Texas is trailing states like New York, California, and Florida for its inability to use common sense and give students more educational options.

Brooke Dollens Terry is an education policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin.