AUSTIN, Texas – Private school vouchers could soon become a reality in Texas.

Texas state Sen. Donna Campbell, who is likely to succeed Lt. Gov.-elect Dan Patrick as chair of the Senate Committee on Education, recently introduced a “Taxpayer Savings Grant Program” that would allow families to use up to 60 percent of their child’s state education funding to attend better schools, the Austin American-Statesman reports.

The move was backed by a study commissioned and unveiled by the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Texas Association of Business that shows such a voucher program holds the potential to greatly improve public education through competition, and would help poor and minority students especially.

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The Taxpayer Savings Grant Program could also save the state as much as $1.7 billion over two years, “depending how many parents opt in,” Campbell said.

“No child should be trapped in a poor or under-performing school,” Campbell said at a press conference Wednesday, according to the news site.

Campbell introduced similar legislation in the past and met opposition from teachers groups and others who don’t want public money flowing to private schools. Lawmakers have also raised concerns about regulating standards and curriculum in private schools.

Voucher supporters, however, are hopeful that with Patrick – an advocate of school choice – presiding over the Senate, that the time may be right to implement a voucher program.

“We can’t lose on this issue because we have the high ground and the Democrats, I hope, will come around,” Patrick told attendees of a panel discussion on school choice Wednesday, according to the American-Statesman.

Patrick, a Republican, said his party has “the majority in the Senate and we have the majority in the House and we ought to be able to pass whatever we want.”

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House Public Education Committee Chairman Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock, a Republican from Killeen, said the proposal “will certainly get discussed,” but said concerns remain about imposing the state’s education standards on private schools.

“We require curriculum control, we require teacher quality control, we require all sorts of regulations,” he told the American-Statesman. “If I could be assured somehow that there was good quality control that followed the state money, then I’d certainly be willing to talk about it. As far as turning the money lose without any control – I’m pretty hesitant to do that.”

Campbell said the Taxpayer Savings Grant Program would only allow accredited schools to participate, which requires an audit and other curriculum and staffing requirements, according to the news site.

From there, parents “will vote with their feet,” she said.

Beyond the potential to improve the quality of education students receive, particularly poor and minority students stuck in bad schools, the potential economic benefits of the Taxpayer Savings Grant Program are staggering.

“Specially, universal school choice as proposed by the TSG program would increase Texas state GDP up to an estimate 17% to 30% over twenty-five years, meaning an additional roughly $260 billion to $460 billion for people of the state each year,” according to the Texas school choice study.

“he improvement in standardized test scores that has already been shown to develop from broad school choice reforms indicates a present value net gain of future GDP increase for Texas alone of $4 trillion to $10 trillion. And the increased economic growth in Texas would produce between 560,000 and 985,000 new jobs.

“Such an economic boom would draw population in-migration to Texas from the rest of the country of between 650,000 and 1.1 million people,” according to the study.