Aug. 8, 2025: The Future of Texas Public Education
Publish Date: August 11, 2025 3:03 pm Author: Texas AFT
Share on
Friday, August 8, 2025
The Future of Texas Public
Over the next year, this state’s leaders will plan and implement a private school voucher program. The ripple effect of this third taxpayer-funded school system (after public schools and charter schools) will be enormous.
As we prepare for the 2026 implementation of Texas’s version of this unpopular policy, it remains critical that educators, parents, and students keep the conversation going about what’s to come.
We have joined forces with Students Engaged in Advancing Texas to pitch a panel for the 2026 conference titled, “Vouchers and the Future of Texas Public Education.”For that panel to become a reality, we need our public education community to vote for it online before Aug. 24.
Academic freedom: the pillar of higher education, and the target of the 89thlegislative session. For the past two years, the Texas Legislature has fixated on our public colleges and universities, attempting to control every aspect of what makes our schools great: the freedom the teach and the freedom to learn.
While Senate Bill (SB) 37 took center-stage in the fight over academic freedom, other bills like SB 530 and SB 412also made their way through the Legislatureand may have major implications for the quality of our public colleges.
A reckoning is underway in the dizzying landscape of charter schools, and Texas finds itself squarely in the spotlight. A major new report from the Network for Public Education (NPE) lays bare the financial waste, poor academic performance, and growing disillusionment surrounding charter schools nationwide. Coupled with state-specific data from Our Schools Our Democracy’s (OSOD) 2025 legislative wrap-up, the message is clear: the decades-long charter experiment has failed too many students and taxpayers.
As Texas school districts get ready to open their doors for the 2025-2026 school year, educators and families have much to contend with and understandable levels of anxiety. On many fronts, public education in Texas and nationwide under attack. In response, our union is doing the only thing we can: stand up and fight back.
We are all in for public schools. Lately, that means we’re in court for public schools, taking every action that we can to ensure federal and state dollars make it to our schools to support our students and pay our educators what they’re worth.
Texas House Democrats attend a press event with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Photo Credit: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker/X
The third week of the Texas special session has been dominated by a standoff between Republicans and Democrats over congressional redistricting. More than 50 Texas House Democrats left the state at the start of the week in protest of a proposed congressional map that would potentially net Republicans five additional U.S. House seats while “cracking and packing” districts in Dallas and Houston with historically greater numbers of Black voters.
It’s back-to-school season, and our long-time corporate partner Horace Mann is celebrating our members with a sweepstakes full of chances to win. From classroom makeovers to free coffee, they’re giving away prizes to help you feel ready, set and inspired to make an impact.
Enter now for your chance to win:
$25,000 classroom makeover (fulfilled by Lakeshore Learning)
*Residents of Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, and Washington are only eligible for a $100 gift card. The $25,000 classroom makeover and $1,500 school celebration prizes will be awarded to the school of the winning educator. No policy purchase, renewal or quote is necessary to enter or win. Void where prohibited.
Recommended Reading
Education news from around the state and nation that’s worth your time.
📖 Eliseo’s Walk.Last summer, 17-year-old high schooler Eliseo Jimenez came to Washington, D.C., but he didn’t take a plane, bus or train — he walked. Over 1,600 miles. In the summer heat. It took him 40 days and 39 nights, walking an average of more than 40 miles a day, to get from Lubbock, Texas, to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. (AFT Voices, Aug. 6)
📖 The Lege’s ‘Big Government Intrusion’ into University Academics. Expanding on last session’s anti-DEI campus crackdown, some Republicans in the Legislature are now going after gender and ethnic studies programs and faculty independence. (Texas Observer, April 24)
🎧 The Shocking Billionaire Plot to Dismantle Public Education. Texas is on the verge of passing a law that could defund public education. Vouchers send public taxpayer dollars to private schools. It could cost taxpayers $10 billion by 2030. And it could destroy Friday Night Lights. (More Perfect Union, April 22)
This Education Department Official Lost His Job. Here’s What He Says Is at Risk. Fewer teachers. Incomplete data. Delays in addressing problems and getting financial aid information. Those are just some of the impacts Jason Cottrell, who worked as a data collector at the Department of Education for nine and a half years before being laid off along with more than a thousand other agency employees, warns the Trump Administration’s massive cuts to the department’s funding and workforce could have on the country’s education system. (Time, July 18)
This Education Department Official Lost His Job. Here’s What He Says Is at Risk. Fewer teachers. Incomplete data. Delays in addressing problems and getting financial aid information. Those are just some of the impacts Jason Cottrell, who worked as a data collector at the Department of Education for nine and a half years before being laid off along with more than a thousand other agency employees, warns the Trump Administration’s massive cuts to the department’s funding and workforce could have on the country’s education system. (Time, July 18)
Want the latest news delivered directly to your inbox? Sign up for our Legislative Hotline email list!
Sign Up Now
