Abbott celebrates explosive school choice demand as 100,000 Texas families apply

Over 100,000 students have already applied after the explosive launch of Texas School Choice — which Gov. Greg Abbott (R) calls “the biggest and best rollout of school choice in the history of the United States of America.”

“And it’s really a gamechanger for education in our state. You know, one thing about school choice is it provides school competition,” Abbott tells Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck on “The Glenn Beck Program.”

“What we want to see is competition in public education, private education, homeschool education. And when we have that, it is going to lead to better educational products for all the kids in the state of Texas,” he continues.

“And listen, if this can be done in the state of Texas, there is a lot of talk that this could sweep across the United States and truly transform education in the country,” he adds.

“Can you tell me either the demographics, or the income brackets, that are mostly benefiting from this? Because there’s people who say this is going to benefit the rich,” Glenn comments.

“I’m laughing because all those talking points are nothing more than the teacher union talking points,” Abbott laughs.

“There are, income wise, three different buckets for school choice in the state of Texas. The first would be low income, which would be capped at 200% of the poverty level. The second bucket would be the gap between the 200% poverty level to the 500% poverty level. And then the third would be anybody above the 500% poverty level,” he explains.

“And what we have in applicants so far out of about 100,000, they break down pretty evenly among those three different income levels,” he adds.

However, Glenn is still curious as to how exactly this will create competition between public schools.

“Public schools have had a monopoly on educating kids in the state of Texas, and they didn’t have to get up every day and find a way to compete and provide a better education product for their kids. They didn’t have to pay as much attention in the classroom and in doing what needed to be done to truly provide the kind of product that parents look forward to taking their child to every single day,” Abbott explains.

“Now, however, with a robust school choice program that’s being oversubscribed, which means that it may be expanding in the future, it means that public schools, they’re going to have to get back to the basics,” he continues, adding, “They’re going to have to provide the quality of education that will lead to a child actually learning.”

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