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After years of grassroots campaigning, Texas is finally set to get school choice, beginning next fall. The state is hard at work preparing to roll out the program, choosing tech firm Odyssey to develop the necessary systems.
Education expert Dr. Carole Haynes says this is just one of the many things that need to be done in preparation for the rollout next fall. She said, "There are so many things to get in place. They have to set up the people that work for them, the vendors, and then those vendors must be approved by the state."
She went on to say that partnering with a firm like Odyssey should make a huge difference in putting all those pieces together because "what we have here is an implementer who is already experienced. They already know how to put all this in place. It's not like they have to establish all new relationships."
Dr. Haynes says she thinks school choice will be a huge benefit for Texas, and she's cautiously optimistic about its rollout, but don't expect everything to be perfect on day one. She warned, "We're going to have to monitor it, and we're going to have to look at the good things and keep them, and then take the bad things and throw them out."
She says having a company with the very best systems and internal modeling helping us with that will be key.