(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
Health care has already been putting a squeeze on other forms of state spending. K-12 won’t be spared indefinitely. Handy pie charts from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts:
If you want to see why Texas leaders deregulated tuition back in 2003, keep an eye on the green “All Other” slice shrinking from 41.1% of the budget to a projected mere 27.7% in 2023. Ooops- you can’t charge tuition to prisoners and well criminal justice has to fit into that green slice along with transportation, universities and a whole bunch of other stuff. Texas universities set a good example for the rest of the country more than a decade ago by planning for a post-state funding world.
Now look at the blue K-12 slice- 44.9% of the budget in 2001 moves to a projected 37.4% in 2023. That doesn’t look all that bad until you consider what will be happening in terms of student and elderly population trends:
More specifically:
So that shrinking % of the budget for K-12 will need to cover a K-12 system that has almost a million more students in 2025 than in 2015. That’s what happens when you add a 100,000 or so new students in your K-12 system per year. Oh, and by the way, the Census Bureau projects a doubling of the elderly population between 2010 and 2030 to boot.
So what does Texas have to fear from parental choice again?
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Matt, that demographic graphic (demo-graphic?) is just stunning. Where can a discriminating reader such as myself find more such graphics?
The first one is from the Texas Comptroller:
http://thetexaseconomy.org/healthcare/federal-leg/articles/article.php?name=medicaid_primer
The second and third graphics are from Turn and Face the Strain:
Click to access ExcelinEd-FaceTheStrain-Ladner-Jan2015-FullReport-FINAL-embargo.pdf