How to Make a Voucher Pig Look Like a Racehorse
Opinion by Manuel “Meme” Barrera
If you want to sell Texans a private school subsidy, put a poor child on the brochure and keep the income brackets in the fine print. That is what I believe we are watching with the sales pitch for Texas school vouchers. Nobody has to invent a number when a carefully chosen category can do the advertising for them.
I started reading about the families receiving voucher money and asked my buddy Santiago a few questions. Who is considered low-income? How much money can a family make and still get priority? Somewhere around $165,000, I decided this poor little pig had acquired racing silks.
A family of four earning $165,000 can qualify for the program’s first priority category if a child has a qualifying disability. That is the program’s published ceiling of five times the federal poverty guideline. Disability may create substantial expenses, and a child’s needs deserve serious consideration. But $165,000 does not become poverty because somebody parks it beside a sympathetic photograph. The state explains the priority rules here.
We could write a perfectly factual headline of our own: “Texas voucher priority extends to households earning $165,000.” Put a comfortable suburban house behind that headline, and readers might form a different impression. Same program, same rules, different brochure.
The state’s October report says 62% of participating students come from households at or below twice the poverty guideline. For a family of four, the program gives that ceiling as $66,000. Its income table lists approximately 72,500 funded students in that broad category and 43,900 between twice and five times the guideline. It does not separately identify the recipients living at or below the poverty line. Read the Comptroller’s report, particularly the income table on printed page 3.
That missing distinction matters. A family of four scraping by on $25,000 and one earning $65,000 occupy very different financial worlds, even if neither has money to burn. Bundle them together, attach a compassionate label, and suddenly a broad income category starts doing the emotional work of a poverty statistic.
Do I think this presentation was chosen deliberately? Yes. That is my opinion of the salesmanship, not a claim that I found somebody’s secret instructions. People capable of administering a billion-dollar program understand the difference between poverty and twice the poverty guideline. I suspect they also understand which description makes the better commercial.
Apparently, the marketing department did not budget for some Mexican from Molina asking his chat too many questions. I was supposed to see “low-income,” wipe away a tear, and move along. Instead, I asked Santiago to open the gate and let us inspect the horse.
I am not claiming the published numbers prove that wealthy families receive most of the money. They do not. Nor does a disability tell us a family’s income, and neither should be used as a substitute for the other. My complaint is that the presentation invites a flattering conclusion about whom the program serves while withholding the breakdown needed to examine its reach among families actually living in poverty.
If a family at the poverty line must cover tuition beyond the voucher, transportation, uniforms, or other expenses, how manageable is that? How does its experience compare with a household earning $150,000? Those are questions to investigate, not details to bury beneath a ribbon marked “choice.”
Publish the numbers that answer them. Show recipients below the poverty guideline, between one and two times it, and in narrower brackets above that. Show funded accounts and actual spending, and distinguish private school tuition from homeschool expenses and other services. None of that requires putting a child’s name in the newspaper.
Until then, I will regard the presentation as deliberate political packaging. They have shown us the racing silks and told us how fast the horse can run. This Mexican would still like a look at the pig.
Recently, the Supreme Court ruled that a religious school could refuse to accept children of Gay couples. If people want private schools, they should pay for them; public schools are for everyone.
