Plato and Socrates would have quite a few questions for Texas lawmakers, by Deborah Beck, For the Express-News Jan 25, 2026

Friends:

This piece should alarm anyone who cares about freedom, truth, or higher education. When Plato is treated as a political threat and factual texts are recast as “ideology,” something has gone profoundly awry. This is not policy oversight—it is the raw politicization of knowledge itself. 

This is not just embarrassing, but shameful. Moreover, it is a cancer that threatens to impact institutions nationwide. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has a petition that I just signed for the freedom to teach and learn.

Professor Beck is not just right. She's righteous. A university that must ask permission to teach the truth has already forfeited its democratic purpose.

Personally, I was pleased to learn from Dr. Beck in this opinion-editorial published yesterday in the San Antonio Express-News about Aristophanes' human origin story where the "gods created three types of people that eventually gave rise to male homosexuals, female homosexuals and heterosexuals."

Geez, why on earth wouldn’t this be taught? Let’s stop infantilizing our students—they’re already grappling with these questions in their own lives. And anyway, aren’t Plato and Socrates supposed to be foundational to our so-called Western heritage? Such hypocrisy.

Our students, donors, community, and the nation at large are watching, and it is difficult to imagine who truly benefits from this—apart from a small minority intent on anesthetizing knowledge itself, weakening critical thought, eroding moral discernment, and depriving current and future generations of the civic consciousness—that is, the knowledge, skills and dispositions—essential to a democratic society.

-Angela Valenzuela

Plato and Socrates would have quite a few questions for Texas lawmakers

When leaders want to control what people think, they first strive to control knowledge. We're seeing that in Texas.

By Deborah Beck,For the Express-NewsJan 25, 2026

In recent months, political pressure has been reshaping Texas’ public universities. Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman

In recent months, political pressure has been reshaping Texas’ public universities.Teaching and research, the drivers of university excellence, increasingly answer to politicians rather than the knowledge of experts. Anyone who cares about freedom should be concerned about these developments. When leaders want to control what people think, they first strive to control knowledge: what is discovered, what is learned, what is taught. Such control is antithetical to what America stands for. We must reject attempts by politicians to constrain what we think.

Courses on gender at public institutions in Texas are being audited. Texas recently made national news after Martin Peterson, professor of philosophy at Texas A&M University, was told that he could not teach Plato because it would violate a policy that imposes restrictions on courses that “advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.”

One way to think for ourselves is to know the facts. In “Symposium,”  the text Peterson was told he could not include in his syllabus, what does Plato say?

The “Symposium” describes a dinner party of ancient Athenians, including Socrates, the teacher of Plato, and Aristophanes, a prize-winning writer of comic plays. Each guest gives a speech about love.

In the passage at issue in Peterson’s syllabus, Aristophanes tells a human origin story in which the gods created three types of people that eventually gave rise to male homosexuals, female homosexuals and heterosexuals. The upshot of Aristophanes’ story is that human beings and human love come in different varieties, and that all derive from the gods.

This is what Plato said. It is not “ideology” or “advocacy.” It is a fact.

In libel suits, truth is an absolute defense. Apparently, this is not so when writing a college syllabus in Texas.

For millenia, Plato has been part of an education that equips people for the freedom to govern themselves. The “liberal arts” got its name not from a left-leaning political stance but from the Latin word “liber,” or “free.” The subjects taught in the liberal arts befit us to exercise the responsibilities and to enjoy the privileges of freedom.

We need Plato more than he needs us. Long after this political moment has come and gone, Plato and Socrates will be thriving.

Socrates would have some questions for the University of Texas at Austin as well. News recently broke that departments facilitating community engagement, teaching effectiveness, student advising and undergraduate research will soon be closed. These programs have fostered the central missions of the university for decades. Yet the university has not explained why they were canceled or what will take their place.

For Socrates, a good and just life entails asking thoughtful questions, talking them over with lots of different people, and listening to the answers. If we don’t even know what questions led to the cancellation of these programs, let alone what the answers to those questions were, how do we know that the closure of these departments will foster the educational excellence of which Texans are justly proud?

Shuttering effective university services with no plan for what comes next does not lead to innovation or to excellence. It leads to chaos.

Socrates would have recognized this moment all too well. In 399 B.C., he was charged, convicted and put to death on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens. He kept asking questions his entire life, even as the fatal hemlock with which he was executed gradually took effect. He refused to go into exile to avoid punishment, because that would disrespect the laws of Athens and his own principles.

Needless to say, university employees today are not being executed by the state. But faculty and staff are losing their livelihoods. Many educators are trying to leave Texas rather than submit their subject area expertise to the oversight of politicians.

Socrates lives on as one of the founding voices of European philosophy. His refusal to forswear what he believed makes him a beacon to anyone who is targeted because of their ideas.

Universities governed by political considerations are antithetical to freedom. Free people accept facts as true. They choose what to learn and they choose what to think.

Just ask Socrates.

Deborah Beck

Deborah Beck is the Christie and Stanley E. Adams, Jr. Centennial Professor in Liberal Arts in the Department of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin. She is expressing her views as a private citizen.

UT Austin Is Dismantling Its Academic Core—And Calling It “Optimization,” by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

UT Austin Is Dismantling Its Academic Core—And Calling It “Optimization”

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

January 27, 2026

The University of Texas at Austin has announced that it is closing its Center for Teaching and Learning, along with the Office of Community Engagement, the Vick Advising Excellence Center, and the Office of Undergraduate Research.

Geez, that's a lot to come down, to get dismantled, that is.

The decision—communicated quietly, with no meaningful consultation and almost no explanation—has left faculty stunned, confused, and rightly alarmed.

According to Provost William Inboden, these closures are part of an effort to “optimize” and “streamline” operations. But stripped of administrative jargon, the reality is this: UT is eliminating the very structures that support teaching excellence, interdisciplinary collaboration, student mentoring, undergraduate research, and community engagement—at a time when faculty and students need those supports more than ever.

As American Association of University Professors campus president Karma Chávez put it, there is no pedagogical or institutional logic for dismantling a centralized teaching center. For many faculty, the Center for Teaching and Learning was not a luxury—it was transformative. It created cross-college dialogue, supported innovative pedagogy, strengthened student learning, and allowed faculty to adapt to a rapidly changing classroom environment. For some, it was the single most meaningful professional development experience of their careers.

The administration’s claim that these functions are “rooted in colleges and schools” collapses under even minimal scrutiny. Many colleges—including the College of Liberal Arts, UT’s largest—have no teaching center at all. What this decision actually does is fragment support, deepen inequities across units, and eliminate the very spaces where interdisciplinary exchange and shared governance can occur.

Even more troubling is the broader pattern this decision fits into. The Office of Community Engagement—now being shuttered—was the last remaining remnant of UT’s once-robust Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, dismantled after Texas passed its anti-DEI law, Senate Bill 17. While these offices were not labeled “DEI,” they were grounded in the best research on how to support students, particularly those historically underserved, through advising, teaching, research access, and community connection. 

Eliminating them does not create neutrality. It creates a gaping void. And absence is not accidental. It's by design. And it's about more people losing their jobs when this is not about budgetary imperatives. Pointedly, UT Austin is not facing a financial crisis, and the provost’s email cited none. 

Nor does it make sense as cost-saving if the work is merely “redistributed” across colleges—duplicated, diluted, and stripped of the coherence it had. What is being optimized here is not efficiency, but control. What is being streamlined is not bureaucracy, but the university’s public mission.

This pattern is not unique to UT. Across the country, state laws and political pressures are eroding the capacity of universities to support students and faculty in substantive ways, not by accident but as part of a broader governance agenda that conflates equity-related work with political ideology (Sachs & Young, 2024).

At a moment when faculty are navigating political interference, curricular surveillance, and the chilling effects of state power, UT has chosen to remove the very institutions that help educators weather those storms. 

Teaching centers do not impose ideology; they defend pedagogical integrity.

 Advising centers do not indoctrinate; they catch students before they fall through the cracks. Offices of undergraduate research do not politicize learning; they democratize access to knowledge production.

Calling this “optimization” insults the intelligence of the faculty and students who know better. This is institutional subtraction masquerading as reform. And it should alarm anyone who believes that a flagship public university ought to lead—not capitulate—when higher education itself is under attack.

Flagships do not hollow themselves out from the inside. When they allow it to happen, they surrender their public mission. And to whose benefit? And toward what ends? Their silence is deafening.

Reference

Sachs, J. A., & Young, J. C. (2024). America’s censored classrooms 2024: Refining the art of censorship (Report). PEN America. https://pen.org/report/americas-censored-classrooms-2024/?utm_source=chatgpt.com


UT-Austin Is Closing Its Teaching Center. Faculty Members Ask: Why?

The U. of Texas at Austin campusSergio Flores for The Washington Post, Getty Images

By Beth McMurtrieJanuary 22, 2026

The U. of Texas at Austin campusSergio Flores for The Washington Post, Getty Images

The University of Texas at Austin is shuttering its longstanding Center for Teaching and Learning at the end of the semester, part of a wave of changes announced last Friday that include the closure of the Office of Community Engagement, a campus advising center, and the Office of Undergraduate Research.

The news, which came in an email from William Inboden, the university’s provost, presented these moves as part of an effort to “optimize” and “streamline” academic operations. He wrote that resources provided by the programs would be repurposed, but offered no details.

Faculty members were stunned by the news.

“I literally cannot think of any reason why you would dismantle a centralized center for teaching and learning,” said Karma Chávez, president of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors, and a professor of Mexican American and Latina/o studies. “It absolutely baffles me.”

Chávez said she had scant information — the email was sent to a small number of people on campus, including deans, she heard — but learned through conversations with colleagues who are directly affected that the “vast majority” of the staff will be laid off, more than 20 people. The teaching center is the largest of the four operations, and lists 13 staff members, along with 11 student workers, on its website.

In the email, Inboden said the changes “are designed to enhance collaboration, create new pathways for partnerships, prudently steward our resources, and strengthen existing units within our colleges and schools.”

Mike Rosen, senior director of media strategy, said in an email that the university’s commitment to undergraduate research, faculty support, advising, and student programming is unchanged. “Those functions are rooted in our colleges and schools, which are best equipped to meet their needs,” he wrote. ”Closing those particular offices will allow us to focus resources for these programs where they are most needed and most effective.”

Mary Neuburger, a history professor and chair of Slavic and Eurasian studies, said the argument that those functions are rooted in colleges and schools made little sense to her. The College of Liberal Arts, where she teaches, doesn’t even have a teaching center. “We have nothing,” she said. “And we’re one of the biggest colleges.”

Neuburger, who has taught at the university for almost 30 years, said her time working on a project with the Center for Teaching and Learning was “the single most transformative experience I’ve had at UT.” She was a Provost’s Teaching Fellow, she said, and was able to discuss teaching issues with faculty members from across the university. Now she worries that interdisciplinary collaboration and exchange of ideas will be lost.

Nina Telang, a professor of instruction in the department of electrical and computer engineering, was also a teaching fellow. The support she received at the center allowed her to build supplemental instruction into many courses in her department — not just her own — with the help of the campus tutoring center. She also developed wellness workshops for engineering students in collaboration with the campus wellness center. “Every single CTL initiative has ultimately benefited the students,” she said. “It’s all about the student.”

Josh Eyler, senior director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Mississippi, who is active nationally on teaching issues, said he was surprised that UT-Austin would shutter a distinguished center with a long history, particularly at a time when the challenges facing faculty members in the classroom are growing.

“At their best,” he said, “teaching centers provide a place to advocate for faculty and to help them make it through the storm of constant changes and new technologies and new fads and new approaches that are coming down the pike.”

Professors also mourned the closure of the other offices, saying they provided special services. Every college on campus has its own advising center but the Vick Advising Excellence Center “was for students who were slipping through the cracks to get extra help,” Neuburger said. “That was part of a huge initiative to increase our graduation rates, and it was working.”

She was also confused as to why the university would eliminate the Office of Undergraduate Research when engaging students in research has been an administrative priority. That office, in particular, has helped students find opportunities to do interdisciplinary work, Chávez said.

Rosen said he did not have information on any positions eliminated. He said that Inboden was not available for an interview. Neither Molly Hatcher, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, nor Jeff Handy, director of the Vick Advising Excellence Center, responded to email requests for interviews.

Not UniqueStaffing cuts to student-facing services are certainly not unusual given the tough financial situation many colleges now find themselves in. Last year Catholic University of America eliminated 16 positions in its Center for Academic and Career Success to help address a $30-million structural deficit. And Emerson College, which has been dealing with enrollment declines, cut half of its eight full-time staff in the Office of Student Success.

But UT-Austin doesn’t have financial woes, faculty members said, and the provost’s email said nothing about needing to trim costs. Chávez said that eliminating central offices doesn’t make financial sense to her if, in fact, the administration will just be moving that work to schools and colleges, duplicating it several times over. “I’m not sure how that would be a streamlining or a cost-cutting mechanism.”

Rather, she worries that this is more about eliminating the last traces of diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus. The offices being shuttered are not practicing DEI, she said. But the best scholarship on advising, teaching, community engagement, and supporting diverse students in undergraduate research relies on that framework. She noted, too, that the Office of Community Engagement is the “last vestige” of what was once the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, which was shuttered after the state passed a law banning DEI activities. That went from a division with dozens of people to an office with two staff, doing outreach work in the community. “That’ll be gone now, too.”

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.

To Their Shock, Cubans in Florida Are Being Deported in Record Numbers Cubans had long benefited from legal privileges unavailable to immigrants from other countries. President Trump has changed that.

Friends:

There is so much going on that it's hard to keep up. I'm deeply saddened by the recent death of Alex Pretti, the most recent shooting of a Minneapolis resident killed yesterday at a protest by federal immigration agents.

As appalling as that is, I want to alert everyone to a quietly devastating shift that is unfolding in Florida. Cubans—long treated as a special humanitarian case in U.S. immigration policy—are now being deported in record numbers under President Donald Trump.

As New York Times reporter Patricia Mazzei documents, families who once believed themselves protected are being torn apart with little warning, including parents separated from breastfeeding infants and longtime residents deported over decades-old convictions. Legal pathways for Cubans have been slashed, family reunification halted, visas denied, and even pending asylum and residency cases frozen. Detention centers like the Everglades facility ominously dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” now hold Cuban migrants who never imagined they would be treated like everyone else. 

The shock runs deep through Florida’s Cuban communities—especially among elders who remember being welcomed as refugees—and fear has replaced the sense of security that once defined Cuban life in the state. 

What emerges is not simply a change in immigration enforcement, but a moral rupture: a severe policy reversal that erases history, fractures families, and leaves even lawful, working, and deeply rooted immigrants living in constant fear of disappearance. That this transformation has unfolded with the support—and in some cases the explicit rhetoric—of Marco Rubio, the nation’s most prominent Cuban American political leader, makes the rupture all the more painful and consequential.

This, together with the hardship we are witnessing in Minnesota underscores a simple truth: elections matter. Our power must be reclaimed at the ballot box.

-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

To Their Shock, Cubans in Florida Are Being Deported in Record Numbers

Cubans had long benefited from legal privileges unavailable to immigrants from other countries. President Trump has changed that.

By Patricia Mazzei

New York Times,

Reporting from Miami

Jan. 19, 2026

Leer en español

Heidy Sánchez took her 17-month-old daughter to a routine check-in last April with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tampa, Fla. During the appointment, federal authorities told her that she was being detained and that her husband should pick up their daughter, who was still breastfeeding.

Two days later, Ms. Sánchez, 44, who worked as a home health aide, was deported.

Ms. Sánchez’s story quickly spread across social media, in part because she is Cuban, a group that had long been treated differently than other immigrants, even when they entered the country illegally.

REMAKING AMERICA

This story is part of a series about how President Trump is changing the country, state by state.

That has changed under President Trump.

He has repatriated more than 1,600 Cubans in 2025, according to the Cuban government. That is about double the number of Cubans who were repatriated in 2024. And in the years that Mr. Trump has been president, he has sent more Cubans back than his three predecessors.

Those numbers are greater for Cubans who were deported by land into Mexico. Some of them had been in the United States for decades and built families and businesses, but were removed because of an old criminal conviction — say, from Miami’s infamous cocaine cowboys days in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

President Trump has repatriated more than 1,600 Cubans in 2025, according to the Cuban government.Credit...Alfonso Duran for The New York Times



Little Havana in Miami.Credit...Alfonso Duran for The New York Times

Some Floridians worry that these deportations could stain the state’s proud Cuban identity.Credit...Alfonso Duran for The New York Times

Nowhere has the shock of treating Cubans like other migrants been felt more than in Florida, which was shaped in modern times by exiles of the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

Families, businesses and communities that once felt removed from or immune to immigration enforcement now must face it head-on. Some Floridians worry that these deportations could stain the state’s proud Cuban identity, turning older immigrants against newer ones.

Under Mr. Trump, many other countries saw similar increases in repatriation. The difference is that Cubans had not previously been targeted as aggressively for removal. Regular deportation flights to Cuba began in January 2017, under President Barack Obama, paused during the coronavirus pandemic and restarted in 2023.

Many Cubans have also been detained for weeks or months in a facility in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” At another nearby detention facility, Cuban detainees protested last June by writing “SOS Cuba” on their shirts and spelling out “SOS” with their bodies in the recreation yard.

Legal immigration has also been all but cut out. Mr. Trump enacted a travel ban on 19 countries, including Cuba, and ended a family reunification program. U.S. officials are rejecting visa applications, which can take years to complete. Last month, the Trump administration paused all Cuban immigration cases, including pending naturalization, residency and asylum applications.

“It’s the most sweeping rollback of Cuban migration channels since the Cold War,” said María José Espinosa, the executive director of the Center for Engagement and Advocacy in the Americas, a nonprofit strategy organization based in Washington.

Polls suggest that most Cuban American registered voters, who tend to be Republican, continue to support Mr. Trump, said Michael J. Bustamante, an associate history professor and director of Cuban studies at the University of Miami who studies Cuban American political culture. But he said that he had noticed “a growing amount of unease” throughout the community.

Ybor City in Tampa, a historic Cuban neighborhood. Nowhere has the shock of treating Cubans like other migrants been felt more than in Florida.Credit...Zack Wittman for The New York Times

Many Cubans have also been detained for weeks or months in a facility in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” Credit...Zack Wittman for The New York Times

Mr. Trump enacted a travel ban on 19 countries, including Cuba, and ended a family reunification program.Credit...Zack Wittman for
The New York Times

As a senator, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Trump administration’s most prominent Cuban American, often criticized Cuban immigrants who received government benefits like food stamps and Medicaid, and frequently returned to the island. Over the summer, Mr. Rubio said in a video commemorating huge anti-Communist protests in 2021 that many Cubans had found it “easier” to “abandon” the island than stay and fight the regime.

Immigration enforcement in South Florida has not involved a mass federal operation, as in Los Angeles or Chicago, and previous administrations had made changes that started to erode Cubans’ immigration privileges. Still, Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration campaign has shaken some Cubans unused to feeling at risk in the United States.

“I am scared of everything,” said Javier González, a 36-year-old salesman in the heavily Cuban city of Hialeah, northwest of Miami.

Mr. González and his family crossed the United States-Mexico border in February 2022, fleeing what he described as a threat to his life in Cuba, where he was a political dissident.

Mr. González and his wife, like hundreds of thousands of recent Cuban migrants, were released under what is known as conditional parole. That does not allow them to apply for residency under the Cuban Adjustment Act, a law that Congress passed in 1966, and leaves them vulnerable to deportation.

But Mr. González and his wife legally obtained Social Security numbers, work permits and driver’s licenses. He applied for political asylum and has a pending court date in 2028. He found work as an HVAC technician. Mr. Trump’s campaign promise to deport criminals seemed sound to him.

Then early last year, ICE officers, during regular check-ins in South Florida, started detaining Cubans with conditional parole. Now, to avoid immigration sweeps, Mr. González said he avoided unnecessary car rides and local Hispanic supermarkets. He cannot fathom the repression he might face in Cuba were he to return as a former dissident.

“Sometimes I tell myself, ‘Why do you have to feel as if you were a criminal when you are an upstanding person?’” Mr. González said. But, he added, “They can grab you and do whatever they want.”

Some older Cuban American immigrants are angry over the turnabout in circumstances. Alicia Peláez, 78, arrived in the United States as an unaccompanied minor in 1960, under Operation Pedro Pan, a secret program run by the Catholic Church with help from the State Department that resettled some 14,000 young Cubans.

Alicia Peláez, 78, arrived in the United States as an unaccompanied minor in 1960, under
Operation Pedro Pan.Credit...Alfonso Duran for The New York Times

Dominoes in Little Havana in Miami.Credit...
Alfonso Duran for The New York Times and the Miami Freedom Tower

“We were welcomed into the country,” said Ms. Peláez, who is a registered Republican, but has not voted that way in recent elections. “Now, it’s the complete opposite.”

Ms. Sánchez, who was separated from her baby and husband, remains in Havana, with a pending visa interview that will determine whether she can apply for a waiver to return to Florida.

She came to the United States through the border, presented herself to request asylum, and waited in Mexico. But she missed a hearing because of safety reasons, which resulted in a deportation order and nine months of detention. In the end, she was released in the United States because Cuba at the time did not accept her repatriation.

Once in Florida, Ms. Sánchez studied and became a nursing assistant. She met and married her husband, an American citizen, who petitioned for her residency. She underwent fertility treatments and had their daughter. Three months before her deportation, they had bought a house.

After being returned to Cuba, Ms. Sánchez said she was so upset that she had to see a psychiatrist. Her daughter, in Tampa, was no longer her cheery self.

“She didn’t laugh anymore, which really worried us,” Ms. Sánchez said.

Her husband and daughter visited Ms. Sánchez over Christmas, which lifted their spirits, she said. But she did not know how she would handle more months of separation.

Her daughter, she said, “is our joy, our happiness, our life.”

Patricia Mazzei is the lead reporter for The Times in Miami, covering Florida and Puerto Rico.

Texas Taxpayers Will Fund Dozens of Private Schools that Openly Discriminate, by Josephine Lee, Texas Monthly, Jan. 13, 2026

Friends:

In a deeply reported investigation for the Texas Observer, staff writer Josephine Lee reveals that Texas’ newly enacted school voucher program—branded by Governor Greg Abbott as “education freedom”—will instead funnel public dollars to private schools that openly discriminate on the basis of religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability status. 

Drawing on an analysis of 291 state-approved private schools serving students beyond kindergarten, Lee finds that more than 90 percent are religiously affiliated, over 100 prioritize or require students of a particular faith, and at least 60 maintain written policies excluding or disciplining LGBTQ+ students. 

Despite taxpayer funding of $10,474 per student (and up to $30,000 for students with disabilities), these schools are not required to accept all students, comply with Title IX, or provide meaningful special education services.

As Lee makes clear, the program’s structure all but guarantees exclusion rather than access. Many participating schools charge tuition above the voucher amount, offer little to no special education services, and retain broad discretion to reject applicants. Nik Nartowicz of Americans United for Separation of Church and State captures the core constitutional and moral concern succinctly: 

“Taxpayers should not be forced to fund someone else’s religion or discrimination; it’s a violation of taxpayers’ religious freedom.” 

Far from expanding educational opportunity, Lee’s reporting shows that Texas’ voucher scheme primarily subsidizes families already in private schools, drains resources from public education, and entrenches a two-tier system in which discrimination is not a side effect but a legally protected feature—one poised to grow into a multi-billion-dollar public entitlement. 

If this concerns you—as I believe it should—now is the time to act. I urge you to join Our Schools Our Democracy for its Week of Action, February 2–6, to demand transparency, defend taxpayer dollars, and insist on fairness for Texas public school students. Participants will be equipped with ready-to-use tools—including sample social media posts, an op-ed template, and a draft email to lawmakers—so you can take immediate, effective action.

-Angela Valenzuela

Texas Taxpayers Will Fund Dozens of Private Schools that Openly Discriminate
The state has signed off on voucher funds for schools that exclude non-Christian and LGBTQ+ kids.

by Josephine Lee | Texas Monthly | Jan. 13, 2026

Upon signing school vouchers into law last May, Governor Greg Abbott pronounced that he had delivered “education freedom to every Texas family.” But the billion-dollar program, which opens to parents on February 4, has enrolled dozens of private schools that openly discriminate against Texas families on the basis of religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity, according to a Texas Observer analysis of information gathered from the schools’ websites and handbooks, and survey responses and phone calls with school leaders.

The Observer gathered information about all 291 schools selected by the state that offer education beyond the kindergarten level. More than 90 percent are affiliated with or owned by a religious or faith-based group, the analysis found. More than 100 of those schools require or prioritize for admission students of the same faith, and more than 60 have a written policy that discriminates against LGBTQ+ students, the schools’ own data shows.

The Texas Comptroller’s office announced December 22 that nearly 600 private K-12 and early pre-K schools had already been enrolled in the Texas Education Freedom Account (TEFA) program, as the state vouchers have been dubbed. But only about half that were listed on its website as of January 1 serve students beyond kindergarten. The comptroller’s office, which administers the voucher program, has not provided comment for this story.

About 70 percent of these schools are concentrated in the greater metropolitan areas of Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Austin. Many rural Texas families will have no options; more than 180 of Texas’ 254 counties have no elementary, junior, or senior high schools enrolled so far.

Participating students in approved private schools will receive $10,474 for the 2026-27 school year—though students with special needs may receive up to $30,000 and homeschool students will receive $2,000. If applications for the voucher program exceed available funding, program rules state that the comptroller must prioritize applications of students with disabilities and lower incomes.

But these rules don’t guarantee student access to enrolled private schools.

The Observer’s analysis found that around a third of the schools enrolled in the program have a 2025-26 tuition that exceeds $10,474 and few offer special education services. Private schools generally increase rates every year, and the tuition excludes other fees and costs, such as registration, testing, sports, supplies, field trips, or uniforms.

Governor Greg Abbott in 2023 (Logan Hannigan-Downs/College Station Eagle via AP)

Unlike public schools, private schools are not required to accept all students and can weed out students through a lengthy admission process that requires recommendations, testing, and interviews. Chinquapin Preparatory School, a secular school in the Greater Houston area, only invites students to take an admissions test if they first pass a review of prior standardized test scores, report cards, and recommendations. Even after passing the exam, they still have to clear interviews and classroom observations.

In addition, around 40 percent of the religious schools have policies that favor students of their own faith and around 25 percent have policies that discriminate against LGBTQ+ students.

Nik Nartowicz, lead policy counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the organization has opposed private school vouchers for many years because of such inherent biases. “Taxpayers should not be forced to fund someone else’s religion or discrimination; it’s a violation of taxpayers’ religious freedom,” he told the Observer.

Of the participating schools included in the Observer’s analysis, 268 are religious—with 176 Catholic, 91 Protestant, and one Jewish. Only 23 are secular.

Of the 176 Catholic parochial schools, at least 40 percent prioritize admission of students from their own parish or other Catholic students, based on a review of policies posted on school websites and handbooks. For many of these schools, non-Catholic students are at the bottom of the priority enrollment list. For example, St. Theresa Catholic School in Austin prioritizes in order: children of faculty, siblings of current students, children of parishioners, children of alumni, and children of other Catholic parishes, before enrolling all other applicants, based on “alignment with the school’s mission and values” and assessment results.

“Parochial schools maintain admission requirements so we can faithfully live out our educational and spiritual mission,” Camille Garcia, Secretariat Director of the Diocese of Austin, wrote in response to the Observer’s inquiry on St. Theresa Catholic School’s admission policies. “These requirements are not meant to exclude, but to ensure alignment with the mission and with the parent’s vision for their children.”

About a third of the other participating 91 Christian schools bar from enrollment students who are not from Christian families, based on admission policies posted on websites and handbooks and some responses via phone calls. Some identify themselves as “covenant schools” that aim to only partner with Christian families in the education of their children, as opposed to “mission schools” with an evangelical objective. Many of these covenant schools require an applicant’s family to be professing Christians, to be active members of a Christian church, or provide a character reference from a pastor. That includes Conroe’s Lifestyle Christian School, whose website states: “For a student to be eligible for admission or re-enrollment, the family must be Christians, a member of an evangelical, Bible-believing church, and REGULAR in attendance at the church.” Even if families fit this criteria, its handbook states, “LCS reserves the right to decline admission or re-enrollment of any student at the sole discretion of the school’s administration.”

Lifestyle Christian School’s head of school Chris Brown did not respond to the Observer’s multiple requests for comment on the school’s admission policies.

Students enrolled in Christian schools generally have to attend chapel services and are taught scripture. But some of the approved schools also practice “Kingdom Education,” a religious education model that integrates the Bible into all subject-area instruction. For example, the the McAllen-based Covenant Christian Academy’s curriculum map for 8th Grade American History states that for all units from European settlement to the Civil War to the Industrial Revolution students will learn the guiding Biblical principle that begins with, “God is creator. All things, including time, were made by and for Himself” and ends with, “God’s plans for history are beyond my full comprehension.” Its curriculum map for a unit on “Prokaryotes and Viruses” for 9th Grade Biology states students will learn about creationism, the “success of pathogenic organisms as a result of the Fall and Curse,” and “disease as a result of sin.” Learning addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, according to its 3rd Grade Math curriculum map, means learning about the “absoluteness-immutability” of God.

Milton Gonzalez, executive director of Covenant Christian Academy declined to comment on the school’s curriculum for this story.

Covenant Christian Academy and other approved schools, like the First Baptist Academy in the San Antonio area, use textbooks from Abeka or Bob Jones University Press which have included inflammatory and controversial racist statements that describe slavery as “black immigration” and characterize slaves as “better investments than indentured servants.”

Christine Povolich, head administrator of the First Baptist Academy did not respond to the Observer’s multiple requests for comments on the school’s curriculum.

In 2005, the Association of Christian Schools International sued the University of California for religious discrimination because the university system had rejected credits from high school courses based on Abeka and Bob Jones textbooks. The attempt was quashed by a 2008 United States District Court for the Central District of California decision in favor of the University of California and a year later upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. But Texas’ approval of schools that use these texts could raise more questions about whether these schools are appropriately preparing students for colleges.

For at least 25 percent of the 268 participating religious schools, behavioral expectations include adherence to strict sexuality and gender policies. Some of these schools forbid enrollment of or allow schools to kick out LGBTQ+ students, according to the Observer’s review of school handbooks.

Many Christian schools use the Association of Christian Schools International’s template “Statement on Marriage, Gender, and Sexuality,” which states that “rejection of one’s biological sex is a rejection of the image of God within that person,” that “‘marriage’ only has one meaning: the uniting of one man and one woman,” and that “any form of sexual immorality (including adultery, fornication, homosexual behavior, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, and use of pornography) is sinful and offensive to God.” The Bay Area Christian School in the Greater Houston area states in its handbook under a section called “Bay Area Christian School Lifestyle Stance” that “The school reserves the right to refuse enrollment or discontinue partnership when the atmosphere or conduct within a family or actions or stances of a student oppose the scriptural posture” of the school, including “immoral heterosexual activity, homosexual activity, bisexual activity, transgender activity, or sexual deviancy.”

Many Catholic schools included similar statements in their policies. For example, Catholic schools in the Diocese of Corpus Christi use “Human Sexuality: Guiding Principles for Catholic School Leaders,” which states that students will use names, pronouns, and facilities corresponding to their biological sex and that “expressions of a student’s sexual identity” and “expressions of a student’s disordered inclination for same‐sex attraction” are prohibited as they may cause “disruption or confusion regarding the Church’s teaching on human sexuality.” The Diocese also suggests conversion therapy should be used when school leaders identify gay and transgender students. The document states that school leaders should “encourage the family to seek the guidance of their pediatrician and counseling by a trained licensed professional who may be able to assist with this issue in accord with Catholic teaching and natural law.”

Katia Uriarte, director of communications for the Diocese of Corpus Christi, declined to comment for this story.

Bay Area Christian School’s Head of School Les Rainey did not respond to the Observer’s multiple requests for comment on the school’s admission policies.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 mandates that public schools prevent and redress sex-based and gender-based harassment of students in public schools. But “Private religious schools don’t have to have that framework,” said Paige Duggins-Clay, chief legal analyst at the Intercultural Development Research Association, a Texas education and civil rights policy organization. “Private schools can say our religious beliefs or our moral beliefs dictate that having a gender identity or sexual orientation that doesn’t conform with traditional male-female binaries is against our religion.”

Texas’ voucher law also states that private schools will not be considered “state actors,” thus restricting the state from “imposing requirements that are contrary to the religious or institutional values or practices of an education service provider.” Attempts during the legislative session to include anti-discrimination provisions in the voucher law were blocked.

Unlike public schools, private schools are also not required to enroll or provide special education services to students with disabilities that are otherwise required under federal law—so long as they don’t receive federal funding under those provisions.

Even though Texas’ voucher program prioritizes students with special needs, most private schools currently enrolled lack special education services. The Observer received information from 257 schools regarding special education services through a mix of survey responses, phone calls, or information from school handbooks. Of those, less than a dozen schools stated that special education services are available to students. If students with special needs are accepted, some schools said they provide limited accommodations, such as extended time for tests, preferential seating, small-group instruction, and testing; fewer schools offer services for dyslexia and dysgraphia or tutoring for extra costs. Most Catholic school handbooks include a statement similar to that by the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, which states, “Students with exceptional learning needs are admitted to the extent that the needs of students can be met within the scope of the programs and available resources on each campus.”

These private schools’ limited ability to provide special education services to students has not stopped private school leaders from encouraging families to obtain an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) to qualify for up to $30,000 in school vouchers. The Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops, for instance, has created a handout for parents instructing them how to request an evaluation for an IEP from their local public school district. (The Texas comptroller enacted rules requiring an IEP to qualify.)

Steven Aleman, senior policy specialist with Disability Rights Texas, which advocates for public school students with disabilities, told the Observer he’s concerned this will “only divert precious public resources away from remaining public school students with disabilities.”

State Representative Gina Hinojosa, a longtime voucher opponent who is running to be the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, told the Observer, “Make no mistake, every time they talk about ‘school choice’ they are actually taking options away from Texans.” She added that Abbott is “making taxpayers pay the tuition of families who are already enrolled in private school.” 

Gina Hinojosa on the House floor in May 2025 (Jordan Vonderhaar for the Texas 

Observer)

Last December, Brentwood Christian School in Austin held a webinar on the program for families whose students were already enrolled at the school. During the meeting, a parent expressed concern that the award-winning school would change if there was a “run of people” from public schools.

But President Jay Burcham eased their concerns. “We’re full,” Burcham said, explaining that the school only has 15 remaining seats across 14 grade levels. “We do not have to change our accommodations for anyone. We are Brentwood Christian school. This program is for the parents. You’re the beneficiary,” he said.

Burcham suggested students already enrolled in private schools would be prioritized. “It’s been said they want this first go-through to be more for the people who are already in private schools,” he said, later adding, “We want as many of our people in as possible.” During the webinar, Burcham instructed parents how to qualify for the program’s first priority tier for students with disabilities: “If you got the diagnosis, that’s step number one. … Then we have to work really hard with the school district to get an IEP in place.” Even if they don’t qualify for the priority slots, Burcham still encouraged existing Brentwood parents to apply.

In response to the Observer’s inquiry about the webinar, Burcham said the school also held an informational meeting including prospective applicants. But he wanted to make sure currently enrolled families knew they could also apply. “BCS tuition is quite a bit lower than most Central Texas private schools. Even with this lower tuition, we still have many families who receive financial aid subsidies through BCS. These are families who are making ongoing sacrifices to keep their kids in a private and parochial school environment, and they are an intended and welcome participant in the TEFA program, just like the students who may be using TEFA to transfer from a public school to a private school are intended and welcome participants,” Burcham wrote via email.

According to the voucher law’s fiscal note, the billion-dollar program could grow past $6 billion in the next biennium since the Legislature can appropriate more money to expand it to cover more students.

“We need you to register, because the intent is that they’re going to grow this,” Burcham told Brentwood parents during the webinar. “In other words, if you register, but you don’t get TEFA, in two years, you have a high likelihood. So, think of the long game.”

Josephine Lee is a staff writer at the Texas Observer. She has previously worked as an educator and community organizer. Her reporting on labor, environment, politics, and education has been featured in Salon, The Daily Beast, Truthout, and other outlets. She was raised and lives in Houston.