Learn More / Resources

Learn more about school funding.

Fund Schools First is a collaborative initiative of urban, suburban, and rural school districts, the business community, and other organizations across Texas with support from the North Texas Commission. This initiative is designed to provide consistent and accurate information regarding school funding and the impact of inflation to lawmakers, business leaders, and the community at large.

Learn more about school vouchers.

School Vouchers 101*

What are School Vouchers?

School vouchers are taxpayer-funded subsidies given to private schools and vendors without transparency and accountability for results. Current conversations in Texas refer to them as a “school choice” option.  They also often go by a variety of other names, including education savings accounts (ESAs), tax credit scholarships, and virtual or special education grants, to name a few.

Regardless of what you call them, school vouchers and ESAs siphon public dollars away from public schools without the accountability and transparency required of traditional public schools. That’s a problem because accountability and transparency are strongly favored by Texans. 

In fact, a recent survey of Texans found 88% of respondents agreed that if private schools received state funding, they should publicly report all school finances (Source: Charles Butt Foundation Poll, 2023).

* Raise Your Hand Texas

Learn more about charter schools.

Network for Public Education (NPE) Toolkit: School Privatization Explained

The Network for Public Education Toolkit: School Privatization Explained was first created in 2017 to alert the general public regarding the various forms that privatization takes and the consequences associated with each. We’ve updated the toolkit to ensure the information is up-to-date. This toolkit presents evidence of what we already know about charters, vouchers and other forms of privatization. It is organized around key questions, providing answers in clear language to the questions we at NPE are most often asked.

Each dropdown below contains a link to a PDF that we hope you will read, share and download.