“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.”
That was yesterday’s Gospel, from Ecclesiastes, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it as I watched an old battle take new form in Texas.
Because there really is nothing new under the sun.
For more than 30 years, Texans fought over whether parents — not bureaucracies, not ZIP codes — should have greater power to determine how and where their children are educated.
The fight began long before most people now weighing in were paying attention. Texas lawmakers were debating publicly funded scholarships for children in struggling schools as far back as 1995. Proposals came and went, year after year, session after session.
And finally, in 2025, Texas enacted Education Savings Accounts, now called Texas Education Freedom Accounts. Beginning with the 2026–27 school year, eligible families can use them for approved educational expenses including tuition, tutoring, career and technical education, homeschooling expenses and other services.
One head of the Hydra, finally cut off.
But anyone who knows the Hydra knows what happens next.
It grows another.
Or two.
Enter Ronan Farrow and James Talarico.
Farrow, a famous Hollywood son, is using his considerable platform to take aim at Texas education choice. Talarico, a Texas legislator now running for the United States Senate, has made his opposition to the state’s school choice program clear. He fought its passage and even attempted to make implementation contingent on a statewide referendum. Neither of them are parents.
They come at the issue from very different places, but both have now entered a battle over power—power that Texas parents fought for decades to secure.
And at the heart of that battle, a battle I’ve written about extensively, is a fundamental question:
Who should have the power to decide what education fits a child?
The irony in Farrow’s case is difficult to miss.
Ronan Farrow did not have a standardized education.
He had almost the definition of an individualized one.
He attended private Montessori schools. At Washington Montessori in Connecticut, educators recognized very quickly that this extraordinarily precocious child needed something different. By ten, he was in a seventh-grade classroom, taking individual high-school classes and pursuing independent research. At eleven, he left the traditional K–12 trajectory altogether and entered Bard College at Simon’s Rock.
And thank goodness he had adults around him with the freedom and resources to make those decisions.
His mother, the talented Mia Farrow, has spoken beautifully about it. She recalled how the school listened to her son, respected that his needs were legitimate and found ways to meet them. She said that in the wrong school and the wrong structure, he could have been “boxed in.”
Exactly. Education should fit the child. And isn’t that precisely the point?
The Farrows possessed the resources and freedom to find an education that fit Ronan rather than requiring Ronan to fit an institution.
Why should that freedom depend upon who your parents are or how much money they have?
I’ve seen this movie before — almost literally.
Years ago, in 2017, the actor Matt Damon, cavorting with the likes of Diane Ravitch and teachers union leaders, narrated Backpack Full of Cash, a film attacking charter schools and private school choice, using a quote I helped popularize and said on national TV— that we should give every child a backpack full of cash and they should vie for the opportunity to educate the child, to which the parent would then, in effect, hand over the cash. It was and remains an exceptional analogy to help people see what we mean when we say money should follow the child. But the opposition twisted it to mean that opportunity supporters want cash for their own profit.
Mean.
I went after him publicly for it, because Damon himself had exercised education choice for his own children. He had explained that his family chose private education because they couldn’t find the kind of progressive education they wanted for their children in their local public schools. (Related, this week’s explosive debate over Nikole Hannah-Jones deciding to not exercise choice for her daughter, and the painful consequences, mirrors his attitude.)
But I digress. Again, on making decisions as parents, good for them.
Parents should find what works for their children, not sacrifice them at the high altar of public education ideology, itself a pseudo-religion.
The elite of the world who make the choices that are easy for them should be able to recognize that parents without their resources deserve meaningful choices, too.
Texas joined the rolls of other states which finally begun to give more families that ability, because it’s about principle, but also, about the need.
On the 2024 Nation’s Report Card, only 28 percent of Texas fourth graders reached NAEP Proficient in reading. Among Black fourth graders, it was 17 percent. Among Hispanic fourth graders, 20 percent. Subsequent grades get worse, not better.
There are bright spots in Texas education generally, particularly in mathematics, and extraordinary educators and schools doing exceptional work. But there are also far too many children for whom the education assigned to them isn’t delivering what they need.
Why should their parents have to wait?
Why shouldn’t a middle class family have choices, too?
They pay taxes. They have children with different talents, struggles, temperaments and aspirations. Yet somehow we have accepted the idea that education freedom is perfectly respectable when purchased privately but controversial when public policy makes it possible for families who couldn’t otherwise afford it.
That brings us back to Texas.
Former school teacher James Talarico argues that vouchers divert money from public schools and has positioned himself as a defender of traditional public education. The one-size-fits-all style. Did he educate that way, too? I wonder.
It all comes down to one major question for all of us —
Who is defending the child when the assigned school doesn’t work?
After more than three decades of trying, Texas finally answered that question differently.
It gave parents another tool.
And almost immediately, the Hydra began growing its heads back.
This Big Texas moment feels incredibly connected to my book, The Education Avengers.
I wrote the book to tell the stories of 12 extraordinary people who saw something that wasn’t working for children and refused to tolerate it and to explain why it’s necessary. They didn’t wait for permission. They didn’t accept that the existing structure was necessarily the right structure. They saw children worth fighting for and acted.
But the stories are only the anchor.
Because the question at the heart of The Education Avengers is much bigger:
What makes someone decide that children are worth the fight?
Texas is now ground zero for answering it.
A historic education freedom program has finally arrived. Families are beginning to exercise choices they were denied for generations. And the forces that believe the institution should retain primacy over the parent are organizing again.
Nothing new under the sun.
The Hydra grows another head.
So the Avengers have to assemble.
It may not be like much-anticipated Avengers: Doomsday, the new Marvel movie coming out this December, but it’s probably close, especially for the children—so many of them with special needs, challenging personal circumstances, poverty and isolation. For them, it’s doomsday if the Hydra takes away their right to a great education.
It’s not too dark to say people need to consider that if they do not assemble, do not fight, doomsday is on the horizon. Winning the freedom was only the first battle.
Keeping it — and making sure every child can benefit from it —i s the next.
As The Education Avengers closes:
“Schools do not need yellow buses to be schools. They do not need traditional classrooms to be places of learning. They do not need rules that stifle joy, curiosity, and belonging to be legitimate. What they need—what has always been needed—are people willing to stand for children when the old world no longer serves them.
”Education is wherever people decide that joy, dignity and human flourishing are worth the fight.
”And now it’s your turn.”
You in?
Thanks for reading this special Friday Forza. If you haven’t yet read The Education Avengers: How and Why a New Class of Heroes Is Fighting America’s Biggest Battle, now is the time.
These aren’t just stories. The battle is here. It’s time to assemble.
With gratitude - Jeanne
Yes! This election cycle is critical to the continuance of Parental School Choice for all students not just a lucky few, not only in Texas but Florida as well. Choose Wisely!