Category — History

The Texas Association of School Boards recently updated their school finance publication, and you can download it free of charge from the store on their web site.     There is also a printed version of the document available for sale.

This week the Texas Observer provided a contextual look at Texas school finance struggles over the past decades.  With the title “We’re Not Gonna Take It:  Texas’ starving school districts lawyer up for (another) epic battle for survival,” the article traces the long story of public school funding.

Now, just seven years after the Texas Supreme Court last ruled the system unconstitutional, more than half the school districts in the state have sued again. Together, the plaintiffs in the four separate suits account for more than 60 percent of the students in Texas public schools. Sequels usually promise to be bigger, better, and badder than before, and this case is no different. Get ready for the school finance fight of the century.

Find the whole article here.

A recent article titled “Pay it Forward” notes that those of us who attended public schools did so because “someone else — many someone elses — paid the dollars to create that opportunity.”    Have we as a society lost that unselfish desire to consider the “common good?”

Read the article here.

The Texas Tribune featured an article that sorted out the various issues involved in the four school finance lawsuits against the state.  Here’s a link to the article.

Texas ranks 43rd among the states in per pupil funding.  Earlier this year, the state legislature underfunded public schools by $4 billion (so expect our 43rd ranking to slip lower).  In recent history, the way to stimulate improvement in the school finance system has been through the courts.

According to A Guide to Texas School Finance:

In the last 35 years, plaintiffs have filed six major lawsuits over the structure of school finance in Texas  –  one in the federal courts, San Antonio v. Rodriguez (1973), and five in the state courts, Edgewood I- IV (1984-95) and West Orange-Cove (2001-05).  All of them have addressed the equity problems associated with uneven distribution of property wealth, and the conclusion of each lawsuit resulted in legislative changes to address deficiencies in the system.

Apparently, even some legislators have come to rely on the courts to decide when and how the Texas school finance system will change.  In one widely repeated story, a legislator during the debates about school funding last spring messaged school proponents: ”please sue us soon.”

Why are fewer of our schools meeting the federal Adequate Yearly Progress requirements?

That’s a valid question.   The announcement was made recently that the percentage of Texas public school campuses meeting the AYP requirements dropped from 86 percent in 2010 to 66 percent this year.

What happened?  Is student learning declining?   No.   Our schools did not get worse, the measuring stick changed.   The requirements got tougher.

Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, a greater percentage of students had to pass both reading and mathematics tests in 2011 than in 2010.

Looking forward, in 2012, the standard will be even higher.  And by 2014, 100 percent of students will need to pass both of these tests for schools to make AYP.

That’s why Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has called the federal school accountability law a “slow-motion train wreck.”  That’s why he wants to waive the law’s requirements for states that have adopted their own testing and accountability programs and are making other strides toward better schools.

According to a recent New York Times article,  ”Under the current law, every school is given the equivalent of a pass-fail report card each year, an evaluation that administration officials say fails to differentiate among chaotic schools in chronic failure, schools that are helping low-scoring students improve, and high-performing suburban schools that nonetheless appear to be neglecting some low-scoring students.”

For more information about AYP and how it is structured, go to this overview.

Question:  My legislator says that the Legislature added $1.6 billion in funding for schools.  I thought school funding was cut.  Who is right?

Answer:  Here’s what happened.

The Foundation School Program is funded from the state’s General Revenue.

In 2009, Texas received $3.4 billion in one-time federal stimulus money.  The Legislature used that money instead of General Revenue (GR) to help fund the Foundation School Program in the state’s 2010-11 budget.  At the time, everyone knew this was a one-time band-aid to school funding.

This year there is no federal stimulus money.  In order to fund currently enrolled Texas students at the same level, the Legislature needed to add $3.4 billion to the amount appropriated from GR last time.  Instead of the full $3.4 billion, they added only $1.6 billion to the amount funded by General Revenue in 2009, which means that funding for students currently enrolled in Texas schools was cut $1.8 billion in the 2012-13 state budget.

Additionally, they did not provide funds for the 160,000 students expected to enroll in Texas schools during next two years ($2.2 billion).  When you add the $1.8 billion and the $2.2 billion, you have the $4 billion cut that is often mentioned.  

 The Legislature also cut grant programs for schools ($1.3-1.5 billion depending on what you consider a grant.)  

So, for Texas schools to maintain the current level of services through the next two years, they needed about $5.5 billion more than what was appropriated in the 2012-13 state budget.

For the past several decades, when the Legislature did not provide enough funding  for schools, the conversation moved to the courthouse.  According to A Guide to Texas School Finance:

In the last 35 years, plaintiffs have filed six major lawsuits over the structure of school finance in Texas  –  one in the federal courts, San Antonio v. Rodriguez (1973), and five in the state courts, Edgewood I- IV (1984-95) and West Orange-Cove (2001-05).  All of them have addressed the equity problems associated with uneven distribution of property wealth, and the conclusion of each lawsuit resulted in legislative changes to address deficiencies in the system.

Now — following the regular and special sessions of the Legislature –   the word “lawsuit” is starting to pop up in newstories throughout the state.  They say to expect a lawsuit around the time school starts this fall.

According to the Texas Education Agency (TEA):

STAAR is a more rigorous assessment program that will provide the foundation for a new accountability system for Texas public education. . .

STAAR will replace the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) beginning in spring 2012.  The STAAR program at grades 3-8 will assess the same subjects and grades that are currently assessed on TAKS.  At high school, however, grade-specific assessments will be replaced with 12 end-of-course (EOC) assessments:  Algebra I, geometry, Algebra II, biology, chemistry, physics, English I, English II, English III, world geography, world history, and U.S. history.

For more information about STAAR, go to TEA’s  resources page where you can find assessment attributes, assessed curriculum documents, and test blueprints.

Michael Soto, State Board of Education member, takes a look at the Texas Constitution and comments:

“This much is clear:  the Texans who crafted our Constitution certainly didn’t envision a miserly or cheap system of public schools, one with just enough resources to scrape by.”

Read his guest commentary from today’s Austin American Statesman here.