Quorum Report: Ratliff: The Untold History of School Vouchers in Texas

In this guest article, Republican former State Board of Education Vice Chair Thomas Ratliff points out that the first version of a voucher proposal in Texas was a response to Brown v. Board of Education. At the time, vouchers were proposed to allow parents who opposed integration to send their children to segregated private schools

The issues of what to teach about history and school vouchers have both been in the news quite a bit lately. This made me wonder how much modern-day Texans really know about the history of vouchers in this state. Today we hear a lot about letting “parents choose” what is best for their child and about vouchers being a civil rights issue.

As you will see, these sentiments go back to the earliest days of the idea for vouchers.

First, we must go way back to Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. This was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that said racial segregation laws did not violate the United States Constitution as long as facilities for each race were equal in quality. This became the doctrine known as “separate but equal” in the law.

Of course, in 1954 the court issued another landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, ruling that U.S. laws establishing racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional even if the schools were otherwise equal in quality.

In response to this ruling, Texas Governor Allen Shivers created “The Texas Advisory Committee on Segregation in the Public Schools” in July of 1955.

The committee’s charge was to address three issues that were new at the time, the first of which was “the prevention of forced integration” of public schools.

On page 2 of the committee’s report, its members wrote “The fact that this is an election year has urged us to delay until after the primaries, in order to prevent this report’s entanglement in primary politics.” This is quite the departure from today’s discussions regarding public schools and the intersection with the upcoming GOP primary. But that’s another conversation.

What else did the report say? In the interest of transparency, you can see the whole thing right here. But here’s a warning: The vernacular of the day is difficult to read.

Here are a few key passages:

• “This, then, is the decision which has been used as the wedge which will force integration of not only our schools, but also our transportation system, our recreation system, and every other facet of our lives. Again, we reiterate our firm conviction that if this decision is left unchallenged in our law books, the beginning of the end of our liberty is upon us.”
• “On January 9, 1956, the people of Virginia gave overwhelming support to the report of the Gray Commission, and the great counterattack on the decision began.” (note: The Gray Commission was Virginia’s version of this same committee)
• “The pattern in each state varies, as it must, in order to represent the trend of thought in the respective states involved, but all plans have one thing in common: The dual system shall be maintained, or the entire public school system will be in jeopardy.”
• “The situation in Texas as regards to segregation is a varied one. The fact which strikes one immediately upon studying the problem is that there is not A problem, but rather there are hundreds of problems.”
• “What is the will of the people of Texas? By a ratio of three and one-half to one, seventy-eight percent of the voters expressed themselves as being in favor of maintaining segregation in the public schools.”
• “As might be expected, the percentage in favor of maintaining our racial mores is generally highest in those areas in which the percentage of the negro population is the highest. This is only natural, for the people in these areas best understand the advantages which segregation offers to both races because segregation is a fact and not just a legal theory. As the percentage of negro population declines, so declines the vote in favor of segregation, for those who have fewer contacts with the other race must by nature have less understanding of the necessity for and advantages of segregation.”

What does this have to do with vouchers? Glad you asked. The report goes on to make recommendations to the Legislature including how to get around school integration by creating a special tuition grant plan.

“This subcommittee finds itself confronted with a dilemma. The federal courts, correct or not, have ruled in favor of integration, but the people of the State of Texas have made their wishes, in regard to segregation, quite clear. We believe that the recommendations herein submitted reconcile the two as far as possible.”

Among those recommendations is the following:

“The abolition of compulsory education in such situation gives the parent a choice, the choice of an integrated education for his children or no education. We do not believe that this is a satisfactory choice, and accordingly we recommend that the Legislature give serious consideration to some sort of tuition grant plan, whereby a parent who does not wish to place his child in an integrated school may receive state funds to have the child educated in a segregated, non-sectarian private school. Such aid should be given only upon affidavit that the child was being withdrawn from the public schools due to the parents’ dislike of integration.”

There you have it.

The prevailing thought in the state’s leadership about public education was to let “parents choose” to use taxpayer dollars to take their kids out of the public school but only if they opposed integration.

To be clear, I am not accusing every voucher supporter of being motivated by racism. I’m merely pointing to the racist origin of this issue in Texas. But I am absolutely saying it is naïve to think a voucher program wouldn’t lead to re-segregating our schools along religious, racial, and economic lines in addition to those with abilities or disabilities unless certain elements are included in any voucher proposal.

Why do I say all this? Keep reading.

More than 25 years ago, Texas created the Charter School option for K-12 students. This gave parents a choice from their local public school without facing the cost of a private school. But even though more than 350,000 students attend charter schools now, voucher supporters are still not satisfied that parents have enough choice. How could that be?

Well, now that you know the history of vouchers in Texas, take a look at the demographics of ISDs compared to charter schools. This is data from the Texas Education Agency for the 2021 school year.

I firmly believe that one of the reasons vouchers are still being discussed is the student body in charter schools is just as diverse in race, religion, ability, and economics as the ISDs from which these parents are trying to remove their children.

At the end of the day, vouchers are an attempt to return to the “separate but equal” days by saying each child gets the same voucher amount and they can take it to the school their parents choose. That proposal doesn’t just cause a new problem, it causes hundreds of problems. Those attitudes have been and will continue to be debated in Austin. But we will ultimately come back to the same root issue of segregating kids with state money. The “great counterattack” to integration of schools began in 1955 and it continues in 2023.

The question now is whether the Texas Legislature in 2023 will vote to move back toward segregation. Even in 1957, Texas lawmakers knew better than to do that.

Thomas Ratliff is a Republican former Vice Chairman of the Texas State Board of Education member who served from 2011 to 2016.