Texas Sends $1 Billion in Public Funds to Private Christian Schools

Texas began rolling out $1 billion in public funding this summer for families to spend on private education, and Christian school operators are moving fast to capture it. Keith Castello drives his white pickup through Dallas-area suburbs scouting empty office parks, a shopping mall, and an old church as campuses. This fall he opens three classical Christian schools under his Kyrie Christian Academy brand.

"I have been praying for 28 years for things that are coming to fruition right now," Castello said.

The money reshapes a market. Half of school-age children in the United States are now eligible to apply for state funds to attend private schools, after Republican-controlled legislatures approved a cascade of programs over the past six years. Most U.S. private schools are religious.

Who is building the 5,000 schools?

The Association of Classical Christian Schools, or ACCS, formed a coalition last year with Turning Point Education and the Heritage Foundation. The target: 5,000 new or converted classical Christian schools within a decade, enrolling 1.5 million students nationwide.

"It sounds like a very ambitious goal, but this money has never been there before," said ACCS President David Goodwin.

ACCS membership already includes about 500 schools and has grown by nearly 200 since 2019. Goodwin credits pandemic-era mistrust of public education, when debates over closures, books, race, sexuality and gender identity ignited. The campaign is branded the "Battle for the American School," a riff on the 2022 bestselling book Goodwin co-wrote with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who sent his children to ACCS schools and has since brought a form of classical education into Pentagon-run schools on military bases.

What does the founder believe?

ACCS was founded in 1994 by Doug Wilson, a self-described Christian nationalist Idaho pastor who helped start the Logos School in Moscow, Idaho, in 1981. Wilson has advocated repealing women's voting rights, suggested homosexuality should be criminalized, and describes his politics as "slightly to the right" of Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart. He still advises the ACCS board, and his books are required reading in some member schools.

Education is "the central cultural battle," Wilson told some 1,000 ACCS leaders at the June conference in Atlanta. "Classical Christian education is a hot center of the conflict of our time."

Castello calls some of Wilson's statements "vilely offensive" and compares him to a family elder with reprehensible views. This year, three mothers pulled their children from a San Diego-area school pursuing ACCS affiliation over Wilson's coursework and patriarchal views. Author Sarah Stankorb called ACCS schools "definitely a mode of transmission into the Doug Wilson pipeline."

How much money moves?

At Coram Deo Academy, where Castello served as vice president of operations until last year, more than 360 of 2,000 students have been approved for Texas Education Freedom Accounts, or TEFA. The school could receive $3.5 million in TEFA funds this year — nearly 17% of its budget — and the funds are on track to cover half its financial aid budget, according to CFO Scott Head.

TEFA income limits reach $165,000 for a family of four, and eligible students receive at least $10,474, which covers Coram Deo's average tuition. At Covenant Christian Academy, at least 78 students qualified; tuition there runs around $20,000. At one of Castello's startups, 22 of 25 students use TEFA.

"This year and probably for years to come, it's everything. It's the only way that this works for us," said Nathanael Wydner, who cried with his wife Candice when they got off the TEFA waitlist.

What happens to public schools?

Critics say the programs drain public schools, because state money allocated to each student leaves when the student does. "It's an abject violation of religious freedom to force a taxpayer to fund a school that discriminates against their faith," said Rachel Laser of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Tulane economist Douglas Harris noted Texas Democrats and rural Republicans blocked the accounts for years, worried "rightfully" about rural public schools.

Castello predicts Texas will expand the accounts — an outcome that may hinge on November's governor's race — and a new federal tax credit will send more money to private schools. He plans to lobby lawmakers to ease purchases of shuttered public school buildings.

"If private schools are being funded by taxpayer funds, then what is the difference between public and private?" he asked.