🚨 What if your “choice” comes with a religion?
Texas is now giving eligible families an average of $10,500 in public money to pay for private school.
A new Houston Chronicle analysis identified 56 Houston-area private schools with tuition below roughly the value of that voucher.
👉Only one of those schools is secular.👈
The affordable options are overwhelmingly religious schools—Christian, Catholic, Baptist, Adventist and Islamic.
So when politicians and supporters sell vouchers as “school choice,” this is the part they leave out:
A family may technically be free to choose from participating schools. But what kind of choice is it when nearly every option they can actually afford comes with religious instruction, religious rules or a religious environment?
For families who do not want religion incorporated into their child’s education, the publicly funded marketplace may offer almost no comparable option at all.
This is absolutely not an argument that one religion should receive funding while another should not. 🚨 It is a warning about what happens when government builds an education system around private providers and assumes that “choice” automatically means freedom. It does not.
Sometimes it means taxpayers funding a menu of religions- with almost no secular option available.
THAT is what voucher expansion looks like once the slogan meets reality.
DO YOU SEE IT YET?
Source: Houston Chronicle, July 20, 2026.
What people are saying:
- Secular Education Association: Source: Houston Chronicle — “These Houston-area private schools could be tuition-free with Texas vouchers”
- Facebook User: Pretty much the same situation in Huntsville, AL — tuition at our our only major secular private school (Randolph) is much higher than the annual $7k offered by the state’s “choice” program. (I know of one secular school that was operating as a “homeschool hybrid” model that is working on getting an accreditation so it can operate as a private school, making its students eligible for the $7k instead of the $2k offered homeschoolers.) The majority of private schools are church-affiliated.
- Facebook User: Giving families $10,000/yr for private school is giving parents choice and power, giving out $10,000/yr to families to buy food is socialism. Make it make sense.
- Facebook User: Last time I checked every single taxpayer’s taxes pays for public schools including those people who don’t take advantage of them. So how is it fair for people who do not send their kids to public schools, to pay for schooling for other kids? Stop crying Secular Education Association
- Facebook User: Facebook User It is against the Constitution to fund religion. Government is not allowed to favor any one religion over any other.
- Facebook User: Facebook User first, where is that happening in this example?
Second, all the constitution says is “Congress shall make no laws…” And, Congress is indeed not making any laws regarding religion in this example.
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