From CityLab: The Stadiums That Ate Texas Why are these Dallas suburbs funding the most expensive high school football stadiums ever built?

Good question.

For 2306 - mostly.

- Click here for the article.

In Texas, the old hands say there are only two seasons: spring football and fall football. But lately there’s a year-round game getting played as well: the competition to build the most expensive high school football stadium in the world.

Why would relatively small exurban school districts like McKinney build enormous football stadiums that will sit empty most of the year (and are often less than half-full even on game day)?

Part of the answer involves the area’s projected future growth. The town’s population has tripled over the past fifteen years. In the 2000 Census, McKinney had 54,369 residents. The most recent estimate (July 1, 2015) put the population at 162,898. Rick McDaniel, superintendent of the McKinney ISD and a former high school football coach, seems to be confident that the spectacular new McKinney stadium will soon fill up. “We’re visionaries,” he told the Dallas Morning News, and said that the stadium was part of “a vision for McKinney ISD that will propel us forward for a long time.” (His office did not respond to requests for comment for this story.)

The structure of the Texas school system also seems to encourage such infrastructure spending. By law, each ISD board has the power to call referendums when they choose to raise bond money. They act and can raise funds separately from their local municipal governments. But the bond money can go only toward construction and renovation of facilities, acquisition of land, and purchase of equipment, not toward expanding education opportunities for students or paying for teachers. (Texas ranks 38th out of 50 states in per-pupil education spending; in McKinney, per-pupil expenditures totaled $7,345 in 2013, compared to a national average of $11,841, according to an Education Week analysis of federal data.)

Curtis Rath, a McKinney community activist and blogger on city politics, has been an aggressive critic of this arrangement on his site, Texas Transparency; there, fans and foes of the McKinney stadium project hotly debate the issue in the comments. Rath argues that firms that stood to benefit from construction projects joined forces with local landowners, contractors, boosters, and school officials to market the benefits of high-profile school structures to McKinney voters. “They sold it by overstating the need for the new stadium,” he says.

Along with the political and business forces pushing to build new facilities for which there may be questionable need, there’s also the “wow” factor. Like many fast-growth Sun Belt communities, the burgeoning municipalities north of Dallas span vast landscapes interlaced by highways, office parks, and new housing developments. With all of these towns scrambling for residents and businesses to move into their new neighborhoods and shopping centers, splashy sports facilities serve as branding tools.

McKinney City Manager Paul Grimes says that the new stadium will help him better market the town as it competes with Allen, Frisco, Plano and beyond. “While it is a significant investment,” he says via email, “the stadium will…help to attract visitors and families to our rapidly growing community.”

From the Texas Tribune: Analysis: Texas makes do with broken but legal school finance system

Texas' complex system for funding education might be at a breaking point.

- Click here for the article.

As the Texas Legislature searches for a solution to the state’s persistent school finance problems, the Houston Independent School District is asking voters to reconsider its property tax policy, and Austin ISD is warning voters that a big chunk of their school tax dollars aren't going where taxpayers might think they’re going.

It’s a confusing time in school finance — a maelstrom of local and state governments trying to master a byzantine system that is broken in every way but the most important one: It remains, according to the Texas Supreme Court, constitutionally sound.

Many lawmakers and school districts had expected — some in hope, others in dread — that this would be a legislative session focused on building a new school finance system for Texas. They thought the court would force lawmakers to set things right.

Maybe the session will turn out that way without the court’s help. The Senate Finance Committee has dispatched a team led by Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, to try to rewrite the whole thing during the current legislative session.

Will it work? That’s a decent acid test to find out whether you are essentially optimistic or pessimistic. Whatever your disposition, a bona fide remedy designed by a committee with a short timeframe and no legal axe over its head would be unprecedented.

Until that or another effort changes the system, districts around Texas are wrestling with the current school finance system — a complicated and ramshackle machine that is supposed to get enough money to every school district in the state to adequately educate Texas children.

From the Texas Tribune: Texas Senate takes first step toward school finance overhaul - The Senate has tasked a new budget working group with coming up with ways to overhaul the state's school finance system.

This is a tall order that may or may not be accomplished by the end of the session

- Click here for the article.

Leaders in the Texas Senate are vowing to find ways to overhaul the state’s school finance system, saying a recent Texas Supreme Court decision granted them a prime opportunity to shake up the heavily criticized status quo.

On Monday, they announced the creation of a Senate budget working group — led by Friendswood Republican Larry Taylor — to tackle the issue. That group will work with the Senate Education Committee, which Taylor chairs, to propose replacements for the current school finance system.

“The opportunity is huge for us to get it right,” said Jane Nelson, chairwoman of the Senate’s powerful Finance Committee. “We need a whole new method of school finance.”
They'll face an uphill climb in a session where legislators face several obstacles to major reform, not the least of which is money. The announcement comes a week after the Senate unveiled its preliminary budget, which did not include additional funding for public education.

. . . The current system funds Texas public school districts arbitrarily and inequitably across the state and is held together by short-term fixes that have not been revisited in decades. Educators have repeatedly asserted the funding formulas do not provide them with enough money to meet the state's academic standards.

In May, the Texas Supreme Court upheld the state's existing funding system as constitutional, and at the same time tasked state legislators with reforming it.

"We're left with a question mark as to what this effort will mean by the Senate," said Lynn Moak, a school finance expert at the Austin-based consulting firm Moak, Casey & Associates. The main question is "whether they're trying to reform school finance within existing dollars or looking for possible additional dollars to fund the system."

Nelson last week unveiled the Senate’s $213.4 billion two-year budget proposal, calling it a bare-bones starting point for financial discussions in what promises to be a particularly tight-fisted year. That proposal did not touch funding formulas for public education.

The House’s base budget — also released last week — included an additional $1.5 billion that could be spent on public education only if the Legislature reforms the school finance system.

From the Texas Tribune: Thousands of school choice advocates expected to rally at Texas Capitol

File this under agenda setting - among other things.

- Click here for the article.

Thousands of students, activists and family members are expected to flood the Texas Capitol lawn Tuesday morning in a sea of signature yellow scarves as the Legislature prepares for a fight on whether to let parents use public money for private school tuition.

In advance of the "National School Choice Week" rally, an event that has become a session tradition over the past decade, organizers said they feel closer than ever to actually seeing a bill for private school choice make it to the governor's desk. For the first time, Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick will headline this year's rally, scheduled for 10 a.m. on the Capitol's south steps.

Patrick is expected to unveil his bill this week advocating for education savings accounts — state-issued debit cards that parents can use for private school tuition and other education expenses. A former chairman of the Senate Education Committee, Patrick has championed private school choice legislation since he first became a state senator in 2007.

Abbott last month was more vocal than ever in his support of private school choice, saying he would sign the "most pro-school choice law" arriving on his desk.

From the Texas Taxpayers and Research Organization: An Introduction to School Finance in Texas

This is a great look at school finance. Lengthy though.

We will look through this later this semester in 2306.

- Click here for the document.

- Here is a link to the website of the TTARA.

From Blinn College: On the Road to the 85th Legislative Session and Discussion of TACC (Texas Association of Community Colleges) and CCATT (Community College Association of Texas Trustees)

Blinn College offers a terrific set of power points focusing on issues relevant to community colleges in the state and their strategy for achieving their objectives in the 85th session of the Texas Legislature.

These will be worth looking at in class.

- Click here for them.

From the Texas Tribune: GOP operative John Colyandro to lead "school choice" lobbying group

The doors keep on revolving.

- Click here for the article.

Longtime GOP political operative John Colyandro has been tapped to head a new organization that will aggressively push Texas lawmakers to approve education savings accounts, the latest controversial proposal in private "school choice" and a priority of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

The advocacy group Texans for Education Opportunity announced Colyandro's hiring in a press release Thursday morning as a key move in their push for legislation that will allow parents to send their children to private schools using tax money.

Now the executive director of the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute, Colyandro "easily rose to the top" of a large talent pool of prospective leaders, said Stacy Hock, TEO's board chair. "As we are moving into session, we found that John has been a trusted voice and a champion of smart policy in and around the capitol for decades now. As he started to engage from a board perspective, it became clear that his engagement became more and more active," she said.

Colyandro has had an up-and-down career in Texas politics. In 2004, he was indicted by a Travis County grand jury on charges of money laundering after serving as the director of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's political action committee. DeLay, Colyandro and aide Jim Ellis were accused of illegally funneling corporate contributions to GOP candidates in key 2002 Texas legislative races. DeLay was convicted in 2011, and the conviction was overturned in 2013 by the Texas 3rd Court of Appeals. Colyandro pleaded guilty to lesser misdemeanor charges, was hit with a fine and his record was expunged after a year.

From the Texas Tribune: Analysis: Rising local school property taxes ease state budget woes

This is good news, I guess.

- Click here for the story.

It would not be completely accurate to say billions in local school tax money is being used for general state spending.

But it wouldn’t exactly be wrong, either.

Property-rich school districts in Texas hate sending money to the state to help property-poor school districts. But the state has little incentive to change that system: Every dollar the rich districts send in is a dollar the state itself doesn’t have to spend.

The money coming in from those property-rich districts is quite a pile, too. For lawmakers writing the 2018-19 budget, that “recapture” money will increase by an estimated $1.44 billion, freeing that much state money for other general spending.

The richer school districts (“richer” here refers to the value of their real estate and not to the incomes of the residents) are sending $3.69 billion to the state in the 2016-17 budget period. The state has to use that money on public education; it’s an effort to level out the differences in how much money is available to educate kids from different parts of the state.

That said, any money that comes in from the rich districts allows the state to spend the dollars it would have spent on education on other programs and services. The numbers are rising, too. The Texas Education Agency estimates it will “recapture” $5.13 billion during the next budget period, up from $3.69 billion in the current budget.

At the same time the agency’s official budget request to state lawmakers would require the state to spend 8.4 percent less from general revenue than the current budget a drop that’s partly attributable to the increase in recapture money available to the state.

Intentionally or not, it’s a great political deal for state lawmakers. They can squawk at local school districts for high property tax rates at the same time they’re using some of that money to lower the state’s expenses for public education.

The locally raised taxes recaptured from property-wealthy districts lower the amount of state-raised money — sales taxes and so on — that have to be spent on schools. Local taxpayers, in this case, are saving state taxpayers some money.

Intentionally or not, it’s a great political deal for state lawmakers. They can squawk at local school districts for high property tax rates at the same time they’re using some of that money to lower the state’s expenses for public education. The state budget is easier to balance because of the local tax money marbled into school spending.

From the Houston Chronicle: State to HISD officials: Get leadership training or face punishment

It has a large number of low performing schools - and a dysfunctional board.

- Click here for the article.

The Texas Education Agency has directed the Houston school board and superintendent to undergo leadership training or face serious sanctions. Those could include trustees being forced from their elected positions and the closing of schools.

The order comes as the state takes a hard line on districts with chronically low-performing schools.

A.J. Crabill, a deputy commissioner at the state education agency, sent letters this week to the Houston Independent School District and 10 other districts, citing concerns with the plans they submitted to improve their low-performing campuses. Because of that, he wanted the boards and superintendents to agree to "agency-directed governance training."

If the districts reject the training, Crabill said, he would not approve their school improvement plans, which means the agency would be required under state law to take major action. It could send in a state-appointed board to run the district, close the schools or assign an outside manager to oversee those campuses.

The board has been particularly divided since January. Two new trustees, Diana Davila and Jolanda Jones, took office, and at their first meeting then-board President Rhonda Skillern-Jones surprised some veteran trustees by bringing forward several controversial proposals, including renaming campuses named after Confederate loyalists and banning suspensions of young elementary school students.

The board, however, united over the summer to hire Superintendent Richard Carranza, the former schools superintendent in San Francisco.

For more:

- Surprise announcement: HISD Trustee Mike Lunceford is resigning. 

From Off The Kuff: Two point of view on the HISD ballot proposal.

Yes - Interview with Jay Aiyer.
No - Interview with David Thompson.

From the Houston Chronicle: Robbing HISD - Voters should say 'no' to putting district under the Robin Hood recapture plan.

Voters who live in the boundaries of HISD have the chance to approve or disapprove subjecting itself to recapture - otherwise known as the Robin Hood plan.

The paper argues that voters should vote against the referendum.

- Click here for the article.

Voters will face a test on Election Day, and whether they answer correctly will determine the future of the Houston Independent School District. It should be a simple question, but it's written in the obtuse vernacular of lawmakers who really don't want voters to understand it.

The ballot provision will ask voters to authorize the board of trustees of HISD to purchase attendance credits from the state with local tax revenue. That sounds like a good, progressive measure, but be warned - it is a trick question.

The ballot is really asking whether HISD should submit itself to state recapture and send $162  million in local property tax dollars to Austin. The correct answer is "NO," or "AGAINST."

If this misleading ballot provision passes, HISD will not only be required to send $162 million in local property tax dollars to the state next year. The district will also likely face higher annual payments for the foreseeable future under the state's broken school finance system.

The mandate comes about because rising property values have made HISD subject to "Robin Hood" provisions under the Texas Education Code. All those skyscrapers and rapidly appreciating homes have apparently pushed HISD over the top.

As Texas schools are financed through property taxes, the recapture provisions (what we know as Robin Hood) were supposed to provide a way to equalize school funding across the state - for poor and wealthy schools alike.

In May, the Texas Supreme Court held that this system of school finance is marginally constitutional. Consider that assessment a D-minus grade. The fact of the matter is that the state's school funding formula fails to accomplish its intended goals of helping poor school districts.

Technically these recaptured funds are supposed to help schools that need the resources. If the provision worked like a true Robin Hood, it would "rob" from the rich and "give" to the poor. But in reality, the system robs from the poor and gives to legislators so that they don't have to raise state taxes. There's no guarantee that poor schools will receive a single extra dime if HISD pays up.

How does this work? Simply put, the state keeps two bank accounts: one for general revenue and one for the recaptured Robin Hood sums. Every dollar that the state pays from Robin Hood frees up general revenue money that the state otherwise would have to spend to help poor schools. So instead of giving extra money to needy districts, any HISD money will essentially be spent on highways, border security or some other appropriation besides education.

If this passes, then HISD is projected to send more than $1 billion of our local property taxes to the state over the next four years. Not only does that hurt HISD, but it looks an awful lot like a state property tax - which is prohibited in the Texas Constitution.

For the relevant statutes: TEA: Chapter 41: Wealth Equalization.

And there's this:

- Wikipedia: Robin Hood Plan.

From 538: Where Do Clinton And Trump Have The Most Upside?

Yet more on a theme that seems to grow over the course of the campaign:

Non-college-educated whites are moving toward Donald Trump. Non-whites and college-educated whites are swinging Hillary Clinton.

Plus the follow up question: are we finally witnessing the realignment in the parties that has been anticipated for several election cycles?

- Click here for the article / study.

The 2016 election is poised to be among the most polarized elections ever, not only along gender and generational lines, but especially along lines of race and educational attainment.

In August, Nate Cohn of The New York Times put it well when he wrote: “The simple way to think about Mr. Trump’s strength is in terms of education among white voters. He hopes to do much better than Mitt Romney did in 2012 among white voters without a degree so that he can make up the margin of Mr. Romney’s four-point defeat and overcome the additional losses he’s likely to absorb among well-educated voters and Hispanic voters.”

There’s evidence that Trump is underperforming Romney among Asiansand African-Americans, not just Latinos and college-educated whites. Clinton, on the other hand, has been underperforming President Obama among non-college-educated whites.

To get a handle on how these shifts could affect the electoral landscape, we modeled how many of Romney’s votes came from college-educated whites and minorities and how many of Obama’s votes came from non-college-educated whites in each state, county and congressional district. The difference between these two vote totals, shown in the map above, can tell us where Clinton and Trump have the most potential to build on 2012.

Then we went a step further: How would the 2016 map look if one out of every five whites without a college degree who voted for Obama in 2012 defected to Trump and if one out of every five non-whites and college-educated whites who voted for Romney in 2012 switched to Clinton?

From Bloomberg: Education Level Emerges as Sharp Dividing Line in Clinton-Trump Race

This is the third article making the same basic claim about an emerging dividing line among Republican identifiers - and the electorate in general.

- Click here for the article.

There are many demographic fault lines emerging in this year’s presidential campaign, but few are deeper than the division among likely voters based on educational attainment.

Those with the least number of years of education are far more likely to support Donald Trump, while those who have had the most schooling are much more likely to back Hillary Clinton, according to a Bloomberg Politics national pollreleased this week.

“The presence or absence of a college degree is more predictive of the vote in this election than we’ve seen in past elections,” said pollster J. Ann Selzer, who oversees many political surveys for Bloomberg Politics.

Another trend may also be developing in the campaign that could pose a threat to Clinton: apathy among potential voters under age 35.

Both of these subplots were revealed in the new poll, with educational level offering the starkest contrast.

Clinton wins the college-educated segment by 25 percentage points, 59 percent to 34 percent. Trump’s edge among those without a college education is 10 points, 52 percent to 42 percent.

Trump’s lead is 4-to-1 among white men with less than a college degree, 76 percent to 19 percent. Clinton’s advantage with college-educated women is 64 percent to 31 percent.

That’s vastly different from what was recorded in the 2012 presidential election, when exit polling showed 47 percent of voters were college graduates. In that contest, President Barack Obama only narrowly beat Republican challenger Mitt Romney among college graduates, 50 percent to 48 percent.

It’s also different from the two presidential contests before that. In 2008, Obama won among both those who did and did not graduate college by almost identical margins over Senator John McCain of Arizona (53 percent to 45 percent, and 53 percent to 46 percent).

In 2004, President George W. Bush beat then-Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts among those with no college degree, 53 percent to 47 percent. Among those with college degrees, the two men tied at 49 percent.

Plyler v Doe

This illustrates a few points in class including access to education and how the Supreme Court interprets (and reinterprets) the 14th Amendment.

- US Courts: Access to Education - Rule of Law.
- Oyez: Plyler v Doe.
- Wikipedia: Plyler v Doe.

Judicial challenges to Texas' education funding system

Texas has been front and center - not always in a good way - regarding the constitutionality of education policy.

For consideration:

1973 - San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriquez.
1981 - Plyler v. Doe.
1991 - Edgewood v Kirby.
2015 - Morath et al v. Texas Taxpayer and Student Fairness Coalition et al.

From Brookings: Federal Preschool Development Grants: Evaluation needed

An example of federal grants, as well as policy evaluation. Brookings is a think tank, so file this under interest groups as well

- Click here for the article.

In December 2014, then Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan announced that $226 million had been awarded to 18 states under the Preschool Development Grants (PDG) program. Duncan said that expanding access to high quality preschool programs was critically important, and that the states receiving funding would serve as a model for others. The goal for these programs is to close the “opportunity gap.” However, no part of the $226 million included an independent and objective evaluation of the variety of programs states implement or their short- or long-term effectiveness. This paper reports on the dangers of continuing to implement an elementary school-based program in terms of its likely longer term effects and advocates for a serious evaluation of this policy so that it does not have the same fate as others that have been tried.

A description of the grant from the U.S. Department of Education:

The Preschool Development Grants competition supports States to (1) build or enhance a preschool program infrastructure that would enable the delivery of high-quality preschool services to children, and (2) expand high-quality preschool programs in targeted communities that would serve as models for expanding preschool to all 4-year-olds from low- and moderate-income families. These grants would lay the groundwork to ensure that more States are ready to participate in the Preschool for All formula grant initiative proposed by the Administration.

Based on the information provided, I can't determine whether this qualifies as a categorical or block grant.

Everything you ever wanted to know about school finance in Texas

Well, very likely more than you ever wanted to know.

For 2306 - lot's more detail than what you get in the text:

- From the TEA: School Finance 101:Funding of Texas Public Schools.
- From the TTARA: An Introduction toSchool Financein Texas.
- From Texas Code: Texas Education Code.
- Texas Comptroller's Office: Texas School Funding at a Glance.

From the Texas Tribune: Teacher Group Sues Over Plan to Tie Evaluations to Tests

Still more on education in Texas - this time one that involves interest groups, the courts and civil law.

- Click here for the article.

A teachers group filed a lawsuit Wednesday in an attempt to block the state from implementing a controversial system that for the first time ties assessments of educators to student performance on standardized tests.

In a lawsuit filed against Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath in Travis County district court, the Texas State Teachers Association alleges that the new teacher evaluation system — the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System, or T-TESS — violates state law by requiring school districts to base 20 percent of each teacher's evaluation on “student growth measures” that include standardized test scores.

Those student growth measures may include “value added measures,” or VAM, which “is typically based on a complicated formula that compares actual student test scores to the scores predicted by a mathematical target based on the standardized test scores of similar student populations,” the association explained in a statement.

“TSTA contends that state law … clearly requires a teacher appraisal system adopted by the commissioner to be based on ‘observable, job-related behavior,’” the statement said. “But a VAM model is not ‘observable’ and is not even available to teachers and others who wish to understand the basis for their evaluations.”

This and That about the SBOE

- Some Texas State Board of Education Members Don't Know What The Big Deal Is With Textbook Misprints.

Over the weekend, social media blew up over the misprint in a Texas social studies textbook that implies that African slaves were brought as "workers." To make matters worse, the wording in that particular section of the textbook fails to distinguish indentured workers from slaves.

McGraw-Hill Education said it “conducted a close review of the content and agree(s) that our language in that caption did not adequately convey that Africans were both forced into migration and to labor against their will as slaves.” The textbook publisher promised to change the caption's wording in their textbooks, which caused some Texas State Board of Education members to say that they didn't understand what all the hubbub was about.

- SBOE Members Question Teacher Prep Requirements.

Texas education officials took an initial step Thursday toward asking the state to reconsider raising the minimum college GPA needed for prospective educators to enter certification programs.

"A little nod ... saying 'we know you can do it, and we support you in this' would be a positive thing," said State Board of Education Chairwoman Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands, who added that the change would help restore "pride and value" to teaching.

Cargill made her remarks at a Thursday morning hearing of the SBOE's Committee on School Initiatives, which recommended in a 3-2 vote to reject rules recently passed by State Board of Educator Certification, which oversees the teaching profession in the state.

- Education Board Rejects Panel to Review Textbook Errors.

Weeks after a Houston-area mother sparked an uproar over a caption in her son’s textbook that inaccurately described African slaves as “workers,” the State Board of Education tentatively approved several changes to its textbook adoption process.

However, the 15-member elected board on Wednesday narrowly rejected a proposal that would’ve given it the option of creating an expert panel for the sole purpose of identifying errors in textbooks.

- SBOE: Trustees Can't Hire Just Anyone as Superintendent.

The State Board of Education on Wednesday rejected a rule change that would have allowed school boards to hire anyone they wanted as superintendent — even if the candidate had no public education experience — as long as they had some kind of post-baccalaureate degree and intended to pursue superintendent certification. 

But the 15-member elected board still appears poised to drop a current requirement that would-be school district chiefs have classroom teaching experience. That's something representatives from several teacher groups said Wednesday was crucial to effectively running a school district.

- Outspoken Candidates Could Revive Rancor on Education Board.

Save for some flare-ups in the past few years over what to put in social studies textbooks — and how to handle an error in one of them — the State Board of Education has seen more turbulent days.

The 15-member board in charge of crafting curriculum and textbooks for the state’s more than five million public schoolchildren spent years building a national reputation as the center of raucous quarrels over how — and whether — to teach young Texans about evolution, Islam and climate change.

Now, such charged exchanges are less common. Those who closely watch the board attribute the shift to the dispersion of a cadre of fervent right-wing conservatives, many of whom either retired or were voted out.

But the relative camaraderie could soon come to an end as two more moderate members step aside — and not just among the board’s Republican membership, where nearly all the notorious infighting has occurred.

From the Austin American Statesman: Grusendorf: School finance should value each student the same

A subject we've been covering in several 2306 sections. Texas' method of financing public school continues to be a - constitutional - mess.

- Click here for the article.

Any day now the Texas Supreme Court will likely rule on the pending school-finance case. Four issues are before the justices:

Efficiency: Is the system productive of results with little waste?
Equity: Is money equitably allocated?
Adequacy: Do schools have enough money?
State property tax: Is the state in violation of the prohibition against a state property tax. Texas taxpayers, legislators, and school officials anxiously await this pending decision.

The efficiency issue is before the court for the first time and was plead by the Texas Association of Business and five families. The other three issues have been litigated multiple times in the past and have consistently been brought to the courts by public schools and their various associations. Historically the focus of school-finance litigation has been money and how that money is allocated. However, the court has continued to indicate that money is only one issue and that the school-finance system needs systemic change.

For more than three decades, the Texas Legislature has been wrestling with the thorny issue of school finance and school finance litigation. Time and again the legislature has tweaked the system only to find the state back at the courthouse defending the latest legislative action. Although the Texas Supreme Court has consistently called for “structural” change, the legislative solution has always been more patches to the existing structure.

Clearly, a different approach is required if the seemingly endless cycle of litigation is to ever end. On the first day of the trial in 2012 the lead attorney for the school districts indicated that litigation was just part of the school finance system. That should not be the case.

The way education is funded today consists of a hodgepodge of highly complex outdated formulas that would make a nuclear physicist’s head spin, formulas which the trial court found have little relation to what is required to educate a child. The current formula system has evolved over time based primarily on political considerations. In other words, politicians tweak the school funding formulas to deliver additional funding to whichever school districts politicians wish to favor in order to harvest sufficient votes for passage of their preferred legislation. School finance has become a way to earmark funds for political purposes.