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September 12, 2016      5:39 PM

Battle lines form over school choice ahead of Senate hearings this week

Public school supporters dismiss new proposals for school choice: “It’s still a voucher.”

A pro-public school coalition that wants to dismiss tax credit scholarships and education savings accounts as “vouchers by any other name” may be talking to themselves – at least in the Texas Senate anyway.

The Senate Education Committee will take up not just one, but two, “school choice” proposals at an interim hearing on Wednesday morning. The Coalition for Public Schools dismissed the two options with the classic analogy about putting lipstick on a pig: It’s still a pig.

“You can call a voucher something else, but it’s still a voucher,” Charles Luke with the group told reporters Monday afternoon. “Backers of vouchers in this state have figured out the state has repudiated vouchers over and over and over again for 20 years, and now they’ve taken to calling it something else.”

The key to the debate was one that Elgin ISD Superintendent Jodi Duron raised during today’s press conference: The use of state money without state accountability. No matter what kind of funding is used to pay for a voucher – either directly or indirectly – a public school is accountable to the taxpayers and accountable to teach the state’s standards.

And that’s the crux of it: How will state dollars be used?

Earlier this year, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick indicated he might shift strategy from a tax credit scholarship to an education savings account. So what exactly does that mean, and how would it impact next session’s debate?

By Kimberly Reeves