By Alexes M. Terry, Ed.D | City Teaching Alliance Executive Director – Dallas Region

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The Promise of Choice, The Reality of Access

Texas education has shifted in a big way over the last year. In 2025, state lawmakers passed a package of bills: Senate Bill 2, which created Texas Education Freedom Accounts (a voucher-style program giving families public dollars to put toward private school tuition or other education expenses), and House Bill 2, which increased funding for public schools. Together, they were sold to families as a turning point: more choice, more resources, more freedom to decide what’s best for your child.

As an educator, education researcher, and mother, I’ve watched this rollout closely. But more importantly, I’ve lived it.

In 2024, at the end of her first-grade year, my daughter was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Before that diagnosis, she was already receiving speech and language services, and that experience was a good one. She was progressing in her language development, even as she quietly fell behind academically. For a while, no one had the full picture of why. From my years working with neurodivergent students, I recognized some of the signs early in my sweet girl.

As parents, we carry a responsibility to advocate for our children. For parents of kids with unique learning needs, that advocacy is a full-time job. After my daughter’s diagnosis, it became mine. 

I want to be clear about something: the fight was never with her teachers or her school. It was with a system that hadn’t yet given them what they needed. Specifically, the lack of training, staffing, and resources to fully support a student like her. So we looked for other options.

The Uneven Burden on Black Families

This isn’t just our story. A 2026 Texas Tribune analysis found that Black students make up about 13% of Texas public school enrollment but 16% of students receiving special education services, and that Black students receiving those services face exclusionary discipline, like suspension and expulsion, at disproportionately higher rates. When special education programs are underfunded, the students who aren’t being over-disciplined are too often overlooked or misdiagnosed instead. For Black families raising a child with special needs in Texas, that reality sits heavy. I know it well.

Tucked into a neighborhood in far North Dallas, we found a school that felt built for her. But it came with a cost. Private school tuition in the Dallas Metroplex  runs $30,000 to $50,000 a year, before enrollment fees, technology costs, and uniforms are added on. Numbers like that can make any promise of funding feel like a lifeline — which is exactly how the Education Freedom Accounts were marketed: up to $30,000 a year, framed as an option finally open to every family, not just those who could already afford it.

Navigating the Education Freedom Account System

So we decided to see what was possible for our family. Because we’d already been navigating a private school and had guidance through the application process, we moved through it with relative ease. My daughter’s private school, which serves a mostly white student body, had spent months walking parents through exactly what documentation to gather and how to time the application window. I know that wasn’t true for most families, especially those trying to track down the right codes on their child’s Individualized Education Plan for the first time, on their own, without a school’s help. 

According to reporting from the Texas Tribune, the majority of families who applied for the accounts were already homeschooling or already enrolled in private school, meaning the program reached fewer new families than the “choice for all” framing suggested. Of roughly 28,700 families with special needs who applied for the full award, fewer than 25 received it. The Dallas Morning News reported that out of 274,000 total applicants, only 20 received between $25,000 and $30,000, with the average award closer to $16,000.

Even applying at all required a kind of preparation and prior access that not every family has equal footing to build. That gap didn’t start with this program, and it won’t end with it either. A policy marketed as leveling the playing field can still leave the field just as uneven as it was before if the families with the most information and the fewest barriers are the ones best positioned to benefit.

The Hidden Costs Beyond Tuition

From personal experience, $16,000 isn’t enough to cover private school tuition plus the fees and logistics that come with it. And even when a family does receive funding, there’s a cost the marketing never mentions: the drive. On average, it takes our family an hour each way to get our daughter to and from school on a good traffic day. Reliable transportation, a flexible job, and a lot of coordination make that possible. Not every family that wants this option can build a life around it, no matter how much funding they receive.

I share all of this not to argue that one type of school is right and another is wrong. Public, private, charter, home school, every family has to weigh what’s true for their child and their circumstances, and no one outside that family is in a position to judge the choice they make. What this past year has shown me is that “choice” only means something if a family can actually act on it — logistically, financially, and with the information they need to navigate the process in the first place. Right now, that’s not equally true for everyone the program was promised to.

Why Teacher Preparation Still Matters Most

What I keep coming back to is this: no matter which door a family walks through, the thing that actually determines whether a child thrives is the adult in front of them. A well-prepared, well-supported teacher can change the trajectory of a child’s year in any building. My daughter’s early progress came from teachers who knew how to reach her. The gaps that showed up later came from a lack of capacity, not a lack of care. That distinction matters, and it’s why I believe so deeply in investing in how teachers are trained and supported, before they ever step into a classroom, and long after.

This is the work I get to do every day as the Executive Director of City Teaching Alliance’s Dallas region. Our organization prepares and supports teachers to walk into classrooms already equipped to see the full range of students in front of them, including students like my daughter. HB2 put real new dollars into public schools, and that matters. But dollars alone don’t build a teacher’s capacity to recognize a struggling reader, adapt a lesson for a neurodivergent student, or know when a child needs more than a general classroom can offer on its own. That takes intentional preparation, and it’s a piece of this landscape I think deserves just as much attention as the accounts themselves. Closing the gap between what families are promised and what their kids actually experience starts there, with the person standing at the front of the room.

July is Disability Pride Month, and I’m thinking of my daughter and of every family in our community still learning how to make a system see their child fully. I’m proud of her. I’m proud to be her mother. As the educator and organizer Bettina Love writes, our children deserve more than a system that punishes them for dreaming. They deserve adults equipped to help them build something. 

That’s the choice I want every family to have access to, regardless of the zip code, the school building, or the paperwork required to get there.

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