Texas 2036: A “Nonpartisan” Think Tank with Deep Establishment Roots

Texas 2036 markets itself as a forward-looking, data-driven, nonpartisan organization preparing the state for its 2036 bicentennial. Scratch the surface, however, and the group looks less like an impartial public-policy shop and more like a well-funded extension of the same Texas establishment machine that dominated state and national politics in the early 2000s.

Founded by a Bush Family Insider

The organization was created in 2016 by Tom Luce, a Dallas lawyer who has spent decades as one of the most influential unelected figures in Texas Republican circles. Luce co-chaired George W. Bush’s 1994 and 1998 gubernatorial campaigns, served as a senior advisor during Bush’s governorship, and is widely credited with designing the high-stakes testing and accountability system Bush rolled out in Texas—the same system that became the blueprint for the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Critics on both the left (teachers’ unions, progressive educators) and the right (local-control conservatives) have spent two decades condemning NCLB as a disastrous federal overreach that narrowed curricula, punished poor schools instead of helping them, and enriched testing companies while burning out teachers and students. Luce later served in the Bush Department of Education and chaired organizations that pushed the same market-oriented, test-heavy “reform” agenda nationwide.

In short, the man who launched Texas 2036 is not a neutral technocrat—he is one of the chief architects of the most polarizing education policy of the last quarter-century.

Leadership Stacked with Bush Alumni

From 2019 to 2023 the organization was run by Margaret Spellings, George W. Bush’s second-term Secretary of Education and the public face of No Child Left Behind’s implementation. Spellings spent her tenure defending a law that even many Republicans eventually disavowed. Her successor, David W. Leebron (Rice University president 2004–2022), brings a more academic résumé, but the hand-off from one Bush Cabinet member to another hardly screams ideological diversity.

The board and advisory councils are heavy with corporate CEOs, energy executives, and longtime Republican donors and operatives. While the group occasionally includes token Democrats or moderates, the dominant DNA is unmistakably that of the pre-Trump, business-friendly Texas GOP establishment—think Perry, Abbott, and the Chambers of Commerce rather than teachers, labor, or environmental justice groups.

Funding: Follow the Money

Texas 2036 does not publish a full donor list (typical of many 501(c)(3) policy groups), but public tax filings and reporting grants from foundations and major corporate players in Texas energy, real estate, and grocery (e.g., H-E-B chairman Charles Butt, a longtime supporter of school-choice and testing-based reforms). The same philanthropic circles that bankrolled the Bush-era education agenda and today fund charter-school expansion and deregulation also keep Texas 2036’s lights on. When your budget comes largely from the winners of the status-quo economy, it is unsurprising that your policy menu rarely includes serious wealth redistribution, aggressive climate regulation, or labor protections.