The Wall Street Journal‘s editors are optimistic about school choice in Texas.

Texas. Everything is bigger here, but the Lone Star State has yet to prove it on school choice. Declaring ESAs an “emergency” item in his recent state of the state address, Republican Governor Greg Abbott is proposing a $1 billion program—twice as large as the $500 million he proposed in 2023.
The Senate last week passed a bill to provide scholarships of $10,000, with $2,000 for homeschoolers. House lawmakers, including Republicans, tanked ESAs last time around. But after the Governor backed school-choice proponents in the GOP primaries and November election, he has a new legislative majority that gives him a better chance of success. The House will likely take up ESA legislation in coming weeks.

I’m not sanguine at all about the bill. The nominally Republican-majority Texas House continues to be led by a Speaker who was elected by the Progressive-Democrats in the House along with a collection of nominally Republican politicians. It doesn’t matter that the Speaker is a different person than last session; he’s still in the hip pocket of Party, along with the cronies who voted with Party to elect him.

That’s enough to kill the Senate’s bill in the House. Actual Republicans and Conservatives need to be elected in those districts. Much progress was made last November toward replacing weak sister Republicans with those who have the courage of their Conservative convictions; we’ll need to make much more progress, though, in two years.