Final rules for Texas’ private school voucher program recently clarified that families interested in sending their children to private pre-K could receive an estimated $10,800 per year, the same amount designated for most other participants.
But the benefit may not radically transform Texas’ early childhood learning landscape, as the students eligible for private pre-K services through the program will be limited to those who already qualify for free public pre-K.
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The state law that created the program earlier this year established that virtually any school-age child can apply for an education savings account, a form of vouchers that will allow families to access public taxpayers’ dollars to fund their children’s private or home-school education. But a lesser-known part of the law also granted certain families the option to use state funding to send their children to an accredited private pre-K provider as long as they do not simultaneously attend a public program.
That incentive only applies to 3- and 4-year-olds who meet at least one of several criteria to receive free public pre-K — including being an English learner, residing in a low-income household, or having a parent who is active in the military or teaches at a public school.
Creating another pre-K option will likely help those families who successfully make it through the voucher program’s application process and find a private provider to accept them. But Texans should not consider it the remedy to access and affordability challenges currently plaguing the broader early education environment, said Catherine Davis, director of policy for the Fort Worth-based Child Care Associates, which advocated for the inclusion of private pre-K as an option in the program.
“I think, generally, this is not going to be the game changer for pre-K,” Davis said.
Research on pre-K has demonstrated that high-quality programs contribute to positive academic and social-emotional outcomes for students. But the state faces obstacles that advocates say prevent all Texans from reaping those benefits.
Texas requires that public schools provide a full day of pre-K for eligible families — but it only funds the programming at a half-day level. To fund the other half-day, school districts must often decide whether to prioritize investments in pre-K or use their limited financial resources in other areas.
Additionally, around 250,000 students attend a public pre-K program in Texas, while another 282,000 eligible children do not. That could mean, among other things, that some families do not know free public pre-K is an option for them.
Meanwhile, families who do not meet the limited criteria for public pre-K must look elsewhere — and the private sector is not always a practical solution for Texans struggling to make ends meet. The average private preschool in Texas costs $13,521 per year, according to Private School Review, an online tuition resource. Preschools may also have waitlists. So do scholarships for families searching for alternative ways to pay for child care, which includes pre-K.
While school vouchers will create another pre-K option for some families to choose from, the significance of the investment is less clear — and not just because of the eligibility requirements.
The $1 billion program will only accept around 100,000 students, and the applicant pool will also include some families among the more than 5.5 million children who attend Texas’ K-12 public schools.
“The question that I think remains is whether families will opt out of using public pre-K when vouchers are an option,” said Erin Baumgartner, director of the Houston Education Research Consortium at Rice University.
The success of private pre-K in the voucher program will also depend on public awareness. A recent Texas Southern University survey of 900 Texas families with children in pre-K through 12th grade found that 53% had either little or no familiarity with the program.
Several agencies share the responsibility of maintaining Texas’ child care system, each with its own rules and eligibility requirements — which can translate to confusion about where families should go to find accurate information. The same barriers tend to hold steady in programs targeting low-income families more broadly — the demographic that will qualify to receive state funding for private pre-K.
If existing voucher initiatives in other states are a guide, overall participation in Texas’ program will likely skew heavily toward more affluent and white families whose children already attend private schools.
“All that data is going to be really interesting to follow over the first couple years to really see how this shakes out and who’s really using” education savings accounts, said Kim Kofron, director of early childhood education for Children at Risk, a research and advocacy nonprofit. “That’s really going to be, to me, really, where the story is: What do parents really want?”
CJ Walia, a private pre-K provider in North Texas, said the more than $10,000 in state funding would cover about 70% of his school’s fees, and families would have to pay the difference.
Walia still plans to notify his school community about the voucher program. But he doesn’t think many of them will qualify because they make too much money.
Parents seeking information about child care options could benefit from more cross-sector collaboration between public and private providers, who at times treat each other as competition more than partners, said Wendy Uptain, executive director of Early Matters Texas, a child care advocacy organization.
“No single group — public schools, child care providers, or policymakers — is going to solve this one on their own,” Uptain said. “The communities that are making the most progress are where those partners are working together.”
Disclosure: Rice University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.