Last week, Texas Democrats achieved what seemed impossible not long ago. Senator-elect James Talarico and Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, along with their colleagues down ticket, have an opportunity to renew the Lone Star State’s long legacy of education leadership.
Talarico, a politically savvy former middle school teacher, charted a careful course on education, offering takes that many on the center-left and center-right can support. Hinojosa, a former Austin ISD school board member, focused her campaign’s education policy talking points more on what she was against than what she’s for, capitalizing on constituent anger over vouchers and state takeovers.
Now it’s time to lead, and both can look to fellow Texans for a policy roadmap toward better opportunities for their state’s children. If they get it right, they could also lead the way for the nation.
Almost 100 years before Talarico and Hinojosa’s unlikely victories, Lyndon Johnson was a 20-year-old student at Southwest Texas State Teachers College, working his way through an undergraduate degree that his family couldn’t afford. He left for a year to teach at the under-resourced, segregated Welhausen School in Cotulla, between San Antonio and Laredo. He later recalled spending his first month’s salary to purchase playground equipment for his fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-grade students during a time when roughly half of all Mexican American children in Texas weren’t enrolled in school at all.
Johnson returned to finish his degree and soon moved on to a career in politics, but his experience in Cotulla stayed with him as he climbed through the ranks of Congress and into the White House. As president, Johnson pushed through the most consequential federal K–12 legislation in American history. In 1965, former students from Cotulla came to watch him sign the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which he believed would “bridge the gap between helplessness and hope for more than 5 million educationally deprived children,” largely through its Title I, designed to aid schools serving many low-income students.
The next year, President Johnson gave a speech at the Welhausen School:
No longer can we afford to say to one group of children: Your goal should be to climb as high as you can. And then say to another group: Your goal should be to get out as soon as you can.
Talarico’s path to D.C. also led through the classroom, where he taught low-income, mostly Latino sixth graders in San Antonio during his stint with Teach For America. His commitment to high expectations for all students seems apparent from the start. A New York Times profile describes a former student “being scolded by Mr. Talarico, who warned him not to slack off just because the material was easier for him than his classmates.”
Talarico brings fresh energy to an aging Senate—as the chamber’s youngest member, he’s part of an incoming class that averages almost 15 years younger than senators who will leave their posts in January. With Democrats back in the majority, Bernie Sanders (age 85) is likely to return as chair of the powerful Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and is already signaling a focus on healthcare. Talarico (age 37) is a natural fit for that committee and should be given support to make education a signature issue, one that matters for swing voters. (Yes, it matters. Just ask Glenn Youngkin, who appears to be testing his 2021 Virginia strategy right on time for the GOP’s 2028 shadow primary.)
ESEA is overdue for reauthorization, last dealt with by Congress near the end of Obama’s presidency. This may not happen while Trump remains at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but Talarico can use the next few years to lay the groundwork for the law’s next phase, especially if his Democratic colleagues accept that representing Texas long term requires finding common ground with center-right Republicans at least as often as siding with his own party’s left flank. He can start by talking up the Texas Teacher Incentive Allotment, which shows how the idea behind ESEA’s teacher and school leader incentive program can work at scale.
Hinojosa’s roadmap for education leadership looks very different—and should start with a positive agenda rather than her campaign’s DOGE-like talking points that throw out years of good policy. She, too, can lean on the experiences of her predecessors.
Back in 1993, Democratic Governor Ann Richards—a former social studies teacher—signed Texas SB 7, which shifted property-tax money from wealthy to poor districts around the state. The money came alongside a new statewide system to rate schools and districts on test scores, attendance, and dropout rates. George W. Bush unseated Richards in 1994, campaigning against what he characterized as inflated ratings, and as governor he worked with lawmakers in both parties to strengthen the state’s accountability system. Once in the White House, Bush tied LBJ’s Title I dollars to transparent, results-driven accountability nationwide under No Child Left Behind, the 2002 reauthorization of ESEA.
Johnson, Richards, and Bush understood that high expectations matter for all children, and that leaders must give local schools the capacity to improve and, at times, the pressure to do so.
In her campaign, Hinojosa captured the deep frustration that many Texans feel as the state directs funds toward private schools with minimal regulation while subjecting a growing number of public school districts to heavy-handed oversight. Yet while the voucher program isn’t cheap, it receives outsized attention compared to its share of overall state spending on schools. Its poor optics stem from both policy choices and politicking.
The Education Freedom Accounts offer near-universal income eligibility and welcomed many Christian schools while admitting Islamic schools only after a federal judge intervened. The program also walks away from the principle at the heart of both today’s Title I and the Richards-era law: public funding comes with public accountability for results. Voucher recipients take an annual test, but schools have broad leeway to select which one; they are not rated and face no consequences if students fall behind.
Even constituents who don’t mind the program’s design may be uneasy with the large donations from pro-voucher, out-of-state billionaires that helped unseat House Republicans who opposed Governor Abbott’s voucher plan in the 2024 primaries. This time, voters seemed less willing to be swayed by deep-pocketed donors. Abbott delivered on vouchers, but the incoming administration will test the program’s durability.
As governor, Hinojosa must separate frustration over the state’s voucher program from efforts to hold public school leaders accountable for their students’ outcomes. Anger in takeover districts runs deep, perhaps because the laser focus on results came at the expense of building public trust. Whatever the cause, that anger isn’t an excuse to lower expectations for students and educators. Rather than abandoning efforts underway to ensure all children have access to a school that meets their needs, state leaders can make family and educator engagement a priority so that all stakeholders understand why the state is stepping in and how communities can return to local control. State takeovers should be rare and time-limited but can’t be off the table in places where intervention could create better opportunities for children.
Hinojosa should begin by ensuring that all public dollars are tied to accountability measures, regardless of a school’s location or student population. That means transparent public reporting requirements for voucher recipients and consequences for poor student outcomes regardless of school type. It also means backing off attacks on testing that allows parents, teachers, and policymakers to understand what kids know, and where they need to grow.
Texas leaders have long understood the power of education to improve children’s lives. Like Johnson before him, Talarico appears poised to champion better schools around the country if party leaders give him a seat at the table. And if Hinojosa can find a balance between community responsiveness and high expectations for the state’s struggling schools, she too can lead on education.
