Educational Excellence

A child's zip code should not determine their educational destiny. Yet in too many parts of TX-07, it still does. After the 2023-24 school year, just 46 percent of Texas third graders met grade-level proficiency in reading on the STAAR exam, rising only modestly to 49 percent in 2025—meaning more than half of the state's third graders still cannot read on grade level after a year of legislative reform.^{11Texas Education Agency, "TEA Releases Results for 2024 STAAR 3-8 Assessments" (June 14, 2024) — only 46 percent of Texas third graders met or exceeded grade-level proficiency in reading on the STAAR assessment following the 2023-24 schoo…} In Alief ISD only 40 percent of elementary students tested at or above proficiency in reading—meaning roughly six in ten did not.^{22U.S. News & World Report, Alief Independent School District Profile (2024-25), citing Texas Education Agency state testing data — 40 percent of Alief ISD elementary students tested at or above the proficient level for reading; 34 percent…} That is a generational emergency. Chronic absenteeism nearly doubled nationally between 2018-19 and 2021-22, from 15 percent to 28 percent,^{33Brookings Institution, "Student-level attendance patterns show depth, breadth, and persistence of post-pandemic absenteeism" (September 9, 2024) — documenting that the K-12 chronic absenteeism rate (missing 10% or more of school days) ne…} and remained elevated at roughly 24 percent in 2024,^{44American Enterprise Institute, Lingering Absence in Public Schools: Tracking Post-Pandemic Chronic Absenteeism into 2024 (Nat Malkus, June 2025), and AEI/College Crisis Initiative Return to Learn Tracker — national chronic absenteeism ra…} with urban districts still reporting rates above 30 percent in the 2024-25 school year.^{55RAND Corporation, "Chronic Absenteeism Still a Struggle in 2024–2025: Selected Findings from the American School District Panel and the American Youth Panel" (RR-A956-34, 2025) — documents that chronic absenteeism in 2024-25 remained abo…} Parents who can afford to are voting with their feet — moving, paying private tuition, homeschooling — while the families who can't are stuck in a system that too often treats them as captive customers. Alexander believes that quality education is one of the most powerful engines of opportunity that America has ever built, and it is being squandered by a federal apparatus more interested in mandates than in outcomes. The answer is to push power, money, and decision-making back to parents, teachers, and the communities closest to the classroom.

School choice is the centerpiece. Alexander supports universal Education Savings Accounts so that every parent receives their child's per-pupil allocation as a portable account they can use at the school that fits their child — public, private, charter, or homeschool. A robust school-choice system creates competition, raises standards across the board, and respects what good teachers and good principals have always known: kids learn differently, and one-size-fits-all schooling fails too many of them. For faith communities across TX-07, school choice is also a freedom-of-conscience issue. Parents should not have to give up their values to give their kids a good education.

Beyond choice, the federal role in education needs to be rebuilt around block grants instead of categorical strings. The federal government today sends education funding to states through dozens of separate categorical programs, each with its own compliance burden, reporting requirements, and Washington-mandated priorities. President Reagan's 1981 Education Consolidation and Improvement Act consolidated twenty-nine federal education programs into a single block grant and repealed forty smaller programs entirely.^{66Bipartisan Policy Center, "U.S. Department of Education 101: What are Block Grants?" (2024) — explainer documenting that Chapter 2 of the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act of 1981, passed as part of the Omnibus Budget Reconcili…} Alexander will push to consolidate K-12 federal programs into flexible block grants that Texas can deploy according to Texas priorities. Texas already runs one of the most sophisticated state education funding formulas in the country. We do not need Washington bureaucrats second-guessing the Texas Education Agency.

Academic rigor and curriculum transparency are non-negotiable. Parents have the right to know what their children are being taught — in textbooks, in libraries, and in classroom materials — and the right to weigh in when those materials cross from education into ideology. Alexander supports Texas's parental-rights framework on curriculum transparency, library content, and age-appropriate instruction, and will resist federal efforts to override it. Just as importantly, he will fight to restore academic rigor: real reading instruction grounded in phonics, real math standards that prepare students for college and career, and an end to the ideological capture of subjects like civics and history. Excellent teachers — the ones doing the hard work in classrooms every day — deserve to be paid better, protected from frivolous lawsuits, and freed from the administrative bloat that consumes more of every education dollar than it should.

Finally, college is not the only path to a successful life, and we should stop pretending otherwise. The skilled trades are a real path to the middle class: per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the top ten percent of plumbers and pipefitters earn more than $105,000 a year, the top ten percent of electricians more than $104,000, and experienced workers in Houston's industrial and petrochemical sector consistently outearn the national medians given the region's energy-industry pay premium.^{77U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2024 — May 2024 national median annual wages: plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters $62,970 (top decile $105,150); electricians $62,350 (top decile $104,…} Meanwhile, too many four-year graduates leave school with debt they cannot service and degrees employers don't value. Alexander will elevate vocational pathways as equal in prestige to four-year degrees, and partner with Houston Community College, Lone Star College, and Texas's industry-led apprenticeship programs to scale what is already working. Houston built its middle class on people who worked with their hands and their heads. Educational excellence in TX-07 means making sure that path stays wide open.