Texas is Leading the way. Again.

In Texas, the fight over school choice has laid bare a stark contrast: special interests versus everyday families. For years, powerful education unions insisted that school choice was unnecessary — that only “special interests” wanted it. They were dead wrong. Within just two weeks of launching the Texas Education Freedom Account program, more than 100,000 applications poured in from families eager for better options for their children. Forty-two thousand came on the first day alone. That makes this the largest debut of a school choice program in American history.

What does this tell us? It tells us that parents, not union bosses, know what’s best for their kids. These are working-class moms and dads from low and middle-income households, many of whom have been trapped in failing or mediocre public schools with little hope of improvement. They are not union lobbyists. They are parents who want better for their children.

Meanwhile, unions poured millions into fighting school choice in multiple legislative sessions. They filed amendment after amendment to kill parental choice. They acted like defenders of the public good while standing in the way of improving educational outcomes. Thankfully, Texas lawmakers chose to listen to parents over lobbyists.

This conservative victory is about more than school funding. It is about trusting families with decisions that have lasting effects on their children’s lives. It is about recognizing that competition and choice drive better outcomes, just as they do in every corner of a thriving free-market society. School choice gives parents options, and it forces schools to improve or risk losing enrollment. That accountability is exactly what our education system has lacked for decades.

Union resistance to school choice reveals their true priorities: preserving the status quo and protecting teacher job security at the expense of students’ futures. Texas has shown that reform rooted in freedom, not union control, succeeds, and that when parents are finally empowered, they will seize that opportunity in record numbers.

Texas is leading the nation not because union leaders changed their minds, but because parents did.