Tag: Texas Legislature

It’s here! Everybody has a take on the TX House’s School Finance Bill.

It’s here! It’s here!

No, not the phone book.

The Texas House’s bill, “The Texas Plan” to overhaul the State’s love-to-hate school finance system.

Now, every public school advocate will tell you, “this is a start.” But it’s also the best start Texas has seen in decades, and before horse-trading with the ultra-conservative Texas Senate begins, they are throwing their support behind the bipartisan bill.

Kevin Brown with the Texas Association of School Administrators tweeted:

The Center for Public Policy Priorities issued a release.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation has been pretty quiet, continuing to tweet their own priorities, but *shrug emoji.* Not a huge surprise.

The Texas Charter School Association has been similarly absent from the Twitter love-fest. The benefits for charters are more nuanced in the bill, and some of them may come out a little behind, because of the elimination of the Cost of Education Index. But an increase in base funding, and adjustment to the weighted funding for special populations may ease that. The radio silence may actually be the quiet patter of calculator keys.

There’s a lot for wealthy districts in there, including tax rate compression, and adjustments to the Robin Hood laws which took income from property wealthy districts to put into the State aid funds for property poor districts. Wealthy districts have long argued that Robin Hood was not taxing the rich to feed the poor, but was taxing anyone who could make ends meet in order to feed the State’s rainy day fund and corporate tax breaks (by reducing the State share of funding for schools). Some would like to see Robin Hood done away with forever, but Robin Hood was one of the mechanisms that kept Texas from being one of the most egregious offenders in the recent EdBuild report on the gross funding disparities between majority white districts and majority brown districts. We still have them, but Robin Hood kept us off the top of the list.

The bill creates two new chapters for the Texas Education Code, 48 and 49 to replace the current chapters that lay out the rules for property wealthy districts (chapter 41) and everyone else (chapter 42). It attempts to take Robin Hood back to its original intent.

Everybody is going to have their take, but the one I was personally most interested in was Seth Rau, SAISD’s guy at the Capitol. Seth’s legislative updates are required reading for those closely following #txed. (He also gives them live, on the last Thursday of each month.) SAISD has tons of interest in both ISD and charter policy, given their pursuit of partnerships.

Seth has given me permission to share highlights from his analysis of the school finance bill here. Enjoy.

  • An additional ADA incentive if districts offer at least 30 additional half days of instruction. Many schools in SAISD would like consider this incentive moving forward. The extra days are not mandatory.
  • Tax rates compression. My understanding is that it limits a district to $1.04 (as compared to the previous limit of $1.17), as all 8 of the enrichment pennies become “golden” pennies. In the $1.00 of Tier I that most ISDs in the state have, there will be a 4 cent compression going down to 96 cents. A hold harmless will exist for ISDs who don’t have 4% property value growth in this year.  In this tax rate compression, every district is guaranteed to not lose funds during the upcoming biennium. Therefore, some of the rates may be still be above $1.04 for a period of time until their rates can be compressed. The goal is continue tax compression in future session as value continue to rise. The rate of the “golden” pennies is decoupled from Austin ISD and is now 160% of the basic allotment. “Copper pennies” are now worth 80% of the basic allotment .
  • The bill creates a definition of a full-time counselor in PEIMS as one that works 40 hours per week along with some other technical changes in PEIMS.
  • The Commissioner gains discretion to make decisions to correct for unintended consequences of changing the school finance system that results in greater gains or losses than expected. The Commissioner gets 30 days for the Governor or the Legislative Budget Board to reject the change. If they do not reject the change, then the Commissioner may proceed in making the change. This section is only valid for the next 6 years.
  • Basic allotment. It increases from $4730 (in code)/$5140 (in budget) to $6030. The small schools allotment has one formula for LEAs with fewer than 450 students and then another formula for LEAs with between 450 and 1600 students. Then, there is a new mid-sized adjustment formula for LEAs between 1600 and 5000 students.
  • Throughout the bill there are a number of places where the SBOE’s authority for rule making is replaced by Commissioner rule making. One of those areas is giving the Commissioner more discretion on setting the appropriate indirect cost rates. 
  • The bill also creates a .1 dyslexia allotment for all students who qualify statewide. The districts only receive this funding if a student who qualifies via an approved evaluation and the teachers have properly trained to provide the appropriate instruction. A new weight for pregnant students of 2.41 on top of the comp ed weight is created. 
  • In very exciting news for (SAISD), our socioeconomic block system was included in the bill. The Commissioner has discretion on creating the specific system to be an additional multiplier onto the compensatory education weight. There will be 5 statewide tiers based on census blocks data for median household income, the average education attainment of the population, the percentage of single parent households, the rate of home ownership, and other metrics that the Commissioner deems appropriate. The tiers will be .225, .2375, .25, .2625, and .275. If there is not enough data, every student is the block qualifies for the .2 weight. LEAs receive the greatest possible funding option under any weight. This data must be updated by March 1st of any year.
  • Another idea from SAISD made into the bill creating a .15 weight for dual language (one-way or two-way), which would replace the current .1 weight. I believe other non-English proficient students may be entitled to a .05 weight (such as native English speaker in a two-way program). However, I am not certain on that part, and please reply to me if you can better explain this provision. The old indirect cost rules are eliminated for both compensatory education and bilingual.
  • The Career and Technical Education weight is expanded to include grades 6 through 8 and is also aligned with the Perkins Reauthorization.
  • Another recommendation from the School Finance Commission that made it into the bill was the early reading allotment. Every bilingual or comp ed kid will receive an additional .1 weight in grades Kindergarten through 3. That can fund full-day Pre-K for bilingual and comp ed 4 year olds across Texas. All programs will default to full-day Pre-K but half-day Pre-K can still be offered if it is part of a partnership and for students under 4 years old. All Pre-K classes must meet the 2015 high quality standards.  
  • For the transportation funding formula, linear density and daily costs are removed and it goes to a per mile rate that will be set each session by the legislature. We will be reimbursed for dual credit transportation and transporting kids from/to another ISD if programming is not offered in one of the locations. 
  • The New Instructional Facilities Allotment (NIFA) is added into this bill and the cap is increased from $25 million per year to $100 million per year ($200 million per biennium). With the amendments we won last session, CAST Med in SAISD should qualify for this funding for the next two years.  
  • The state’s minimum salary schedule is increased by 4.2% per year.
  • The bill creates a new effective educator allotment putting in $3000 for each recognized teacher, $6000 for each exemplary teacher, and $12000 for each master teacher. Schools receive these allotments in multiples based on student tiers based on the compensatory weight tiers. Rural schools automatically get a two tier boost. Each boost is worth is $1500 for recognized, $3000 for exemplary, and $5000 for master. That means a master teacher in a 4.0 boost district could receive up to $32,000 extra. The commissioner will assign the tiers to each campus. All funds must used for salary, specific exams, certifications, or professional development. Each teacher must be reconfirmed at each tier each year. Previous master teacher designations do not apply.
  • The commissioner will criteria involving local stakeholders for creating the distinctions between recognized, exemplary, and master teachers. The designations last for 5 years as long as teachers maintain their standard of performance. Any teacher that holds a national board certification is automatically a recognized teacher. Recognized teachers should be in the top third of teachers. Exemplary teachers should be in top 20 percent, and master teachers should be in the top 5 percent. The Commissioner can change the percentages. 
  • Each district is required to set up their own district appraisal system with multiple years of student performance, student perception surveys (by 2022-3), educator leadership, observations, and other assessments. The district cannot receive funding under this bill until the Commissioner approves the local system. The Commissioner can audit the local system and suspend eligibility if the district is not compiling. The designation is valid in any Texas district or charter school. SBEC regulates parts of the designation. Teachers can hold multiple designations but can only receive funding for the highest. There will be a student performance study to see if this system raises student achievement. Commissioner has most of the rules control under this section.     
  • The state will once again pay for a college assessment, a change that we welcome in SAISD as we currently pay for the SAT twice for our students. We believe this reimbursement will cover one of those assessments. 
  • Recapture still exists but with the increased funding elements, its rapid growth should be reduced. The bill also guarantees that the amount of recapture can eat into a district’s FSP entitlement as was currently happening in some districts. Many provisions where Chapter 41 ISDs did not get full access like the CEI and transportation allotment in old form have been eliminated. The Cost of Education Index is entirely eliminated from the bill. 
  • For the 56 LEAs (mostly charters from our understanding) that lose money under these changes, there is a formula transition grant to support them through this transition period. There is a 10% reduction in these funds for FY21, 20% reduction for FY22, and it’s eliminated after that. 
  • The Legislative Budget Board is now required to estimate the percentage of the state share in the next biennium along with the compression that will be necessary to not increase the local share of funding. Districts can also adjust their tax rates during natural disaster or similar events that dramatically impact property values.   
  • The bill also allows for the Commissioner to enter into agreements with government agencies, political subdivisions, higher education institutions, and relevant private organizations to collect data necessary to measure college and career ready outcomes. 
  • Every district and charter (non-DOI exemptible) must adopt an early literacy plan to have 3rd grade reading targets for the next 5 years. The goals must be broken out by subgroup. It must include a targeted professional development plan for teachers who aren’t meeting their expected goals. Each district needs to produce an annual report with a public board meeting and have a district or ESC coordinator over their plan. 
  • Through this bill, TEA is requiring access to all statewide teacher evaluations. Previously, it was optional for LEAs to share that data with the state. This data includes past evaluations for investigations. Districts can also create performance tiers.  
  • Every district is required to have a Kindergarten readiness assessment. The Commissioner will expand the list of assessments that are eligible, and that office controls the rules. Results must be reported to TEA within 30 days. The state will be tracking both Pre-K and K results to see how they align with 3rd grade reading results.  
  • The Gifted and Talented Allotment is eliminated from the current school finance formula. However, if a district eliminates the services, 12% of its funding for 5% of its students will be removed. 
  • A blended learning grant program is also created. Priority goes to districts with the highest percentage of economically disadvantaged students. Districts must come up with a plan for blended learning that is approved by the Commissioner. It ideally should be implemented across the campus and at minimum a grade level at a time. Districts can receive the grant for up to 4 years. 
  • It also creates an enhancement services grant to provide for more resources for Special Education students, mostly using Federal funds as part of the state’s remediation services. All of the SPED weights stay the same in this bill. School districts can help students and families out with the application for the grant funds. The program will prioritize students who are economically disadvantaged and reflect the diversity of the state. Vendors have to apply to the state to be able to provide services through this grant.  
  • The state is also going to be required to produce a state of student achievement report statewide by December 1st of each year with significant outcome data. That being said, there is no direct outcomes based funding in the bill. 
  • Other things that are repealed include the High School Allotment and others elements that are now outdated by what is mentioned above. It also clears out all of the other hold harmlesses currently in the school finance system. 
  • Throughout the bill there is a lot of new terminology that is meant to be more citizen friendly and ideally make the bill easier/education code easier to understand. For example, property wealth/equalized wealth levels become local revenue.         

More metal detectors and less STAAR seemed like a good idea at the time

The 2019 legislative session is off and running, with new leadership cut from old cloth at the helm in the House of Representatives and no bathroom bill on the agenda. 

Promising signs range from stryofoam cups embossed with the message “School Finance Reform: The time is now” to a speaker pro tem wearing a Notorious B.I.G. tie at his swearing-in.

Not that all signs are good. We’ve already seen a strong effort to disassociate poverty and standardized test scores, and age-old trick to try to prove that funding makes no difference in education.

In addition to the serious buzz around school finance reform, we’ve also seen a wave other education-related bills filed. Two so far address major concerns of ordinary parents—those who mainly experience the school system via their children, rather than think tanks, policy analysts, and budget reviews.

HB 797 filed by Shawn Thiery (D-Aleif) would put metal detectors in every single public school facility. 

HB 736 filed by Brooks Landgraf (R- Odessa) would lower the stakes of the STAAR test. 

On the surface, both of these simple, seemingly common sense bills draw a near-universal, “yay.” Safe kids who are less stressed out about a single test that determines whether or not they advance to the next grade. 

However, sweeping bills like these should be thoughtfully considered. They often come with unintended consequences. 

Metal detectors won renewed attention in the wake of the mass shooting at Santa Fe High School, but they’ve been a fixture in some schools for decades. Those schools, as you can predict, are not suburban, wealthy schools. They are schools in urban areas, where many kids live in poverty and where gangs are highly visible. These schools are disproportionately attended by children of color. 

Thiery’s district includes Alief ISD which fits that description pretty well.  Gang activity and incidents of violence are high. The white population is small. It isn’t in the heart of urban Houston by any means, but represents the sprawl-meets-gentrification phenomenon of increasing poverty in what were once suburbs. 

In 2017-2018 the district reported more incidents of gang activity in school than did neighboring Houston ISD, despite the latter being 4.5 times the size of Alief. 

Mass school shootings, however, seem to be a uniquely non-urban phenomenon, hence, I suppose, the metal detector bill being extended to all schools and stadiums. All. Charters too.

The question to be asked, however, is whether metal detectors have been effective at preventing either kind of violence—mass shootings or person-to-person violence. 

The answer, unsurprisingly, is that we don’t know. 

So far all school shootings have begun outside the school building, so there’s no indication that metal detectors would have prevented anything.

The American School Health Association conducted 15 years of research on whether metal detectors decreased school violence in any way. They could not show that violence decreased. Their report suggested that it did make students feel like their school was a dangerous place to be. 

Which reminds me of Maddisyn, the junior at South San High School who told me that gang members were the most stressed out people she knows. She also told me that the increased police presence in South San ISD—a response to the Newtown mass shooting—made students feel as though their fellow students were a constant threat, and even that they themselves were somehow in need of policing. 

Basically, when you fill a person’s world with danger cues, they respond to danger cues. If those danger cues—like seatbelts, Caution tape, and bicycle helmets—are making them more safe, then we consider that appropriate safety education. There’s a danger, and our precautions remind us to be careful. They should have the appropriate adrenal response to the situation—increased alertness, circumspection, etc.

However, if the danger cues are not actually keeping them safer…what’s the point? To have them living in a state of constant adrenal stimulation? 

And how much would we pay to make schools, stadiums, and other public school facilities feel less safe? 

At $4,000-$5,000 per metal detector, we’re looking at at least $40 million to put one machine in each school. But to make that math work, you also have to subscribe to the Dan Patrick one-entry-one-exit solution to school shootings. It would take about an hour to get into the school building. Even airports have more than one detector, and not all planes take off at once. 

So really we’d need a ton more. I’m not usually a budget hawk, but I don’t like paying for things that are counterproductive.

Speaking of that, we are paying for STAAR tests. The state pays $90 million to Educational Testing Services. I have never heard anyone say anything positive about STAAR tests. No teacher, administrator, parent, or student. 

With that in mind, Landgraf’s declawing of the STAAR test makes a ton of sense. Pre-No Child Left Behind, we had standardized tests…we just didn’t worry about them. A note went home saying, “eat a big breakfast! The test is long.” And that was it. Far far cry from the madness we currently have. 

So, as Texas House of Representatives Public Education chair Dan Huberty asked Commissioner Mike Morath…can’t we just get rid of STAAR altogether?

Only if we want to get rid of accountability and federal funds altogether, Morath replied (that’s a broad paraphrase.)

I think we all agree that a more well-rounded evaluation mechanism would be ideal. The Every Student Succeeds Act (which is tied to our federal funding) gave states the chance to consider other criteria than test scores…Texas has a number of outcome-based components to its ESSA plan, as well as a consideration of discipline data. But very little in the qualitative categories.

There’s not much of that high-touch, observation-based assessment in Texas’s ESSA plan at all. Probably because there are 5 million children, 9,000 schools, and 1,200 districts in the state.

But that’s really what people instinctively want. They want their kids to be evaluated by someone who knows them. So why not just leave it up to teachers?

And we all understand why teachers and even district administrators can’t be the only ones responsible for determining whether their kids progress to the next level…right? 

Making a child’s mastery of a topic subjective to his teacher’s assessment is the recipe for inequity. Think discipline statistics and G/T referrals, both of which overwhelmingly favor highly verbal white girls from professional homes. There will always be borderline kids for whom their relationship with their teacher will be a determining factor to their success unless there’s an agnostic evaluation tool. Implicit bias is real, even with the best of intentions.

Districts can’t be the last word on assessment, because regional politics and economics also make it possible that kids in one region might not be held to the same standards as kids from another. But if kids from San Augustine and going to compete against kids from Highland Park for admission to UT-Austin, they’re going to need to be held to the same standards from day one.

Educators are awesome—anyone who chooses to spend all day trying to fill young minds and hearts is a hero— but they also need accountability to make sure that their skills match their good intentions. That’s nothing to run from. Every profession should embrace evaluation, whether it’s by an industry standards board or consumer feedback or sales conversion rates. The question is, are we using the right evaluation tool? 

Probably not, but before we go scrapping it, we need to consider what could and should take its place to better accomplish its goals.  

And that, dear reader, is the challenge before all of us watching bills pop up into the headlines as the Legislature progresses. Education, when done equitably, is complicated, and our gut reactions to things should always be balanced by the boring, wonky, details, and the question, “who might we hurt?” 

Texas School Finance Commission: You get the teacher you pay for

A teacher at Olmos Elementary in North East ISD works with students. Photo by Robin Jerstad for Folo Media

When Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath was Dallas ISD Trustee Mike Morath, he championed a performance-based teacher salary system.

Three years in, student outcomes are up, teachers are happy, and it’s going very well, DISD superintendent Michael Hinojosa told the Texas School Finance Commission, except that it’s bleeding the district dry.

“We’ve put all our money into teachers, and (now) we don’t have any,” Hinojosa said. 

Gov. Greg Abbott’s 2017 commission to study school finance met for the third time today, with two groups on the agenda: teachers and pre-schoolers. (The pre-kinder presentations will be covered in a subsequent blog post.)

Teacher quality, pay, retention, and evaluation occupied most of the day for the commission, which seems appropriate as personnel costs account for about 42.9% of total education spending in Texas, according to the Texas Education Agency.

Practitioners, interest groups, and experts all agreed that teacher quality is essential to equitable education. They also agreed that compensation matters. 

Some go above and beyond trying to quantify the value-add (or subtract) of a good (or bad) teacher. The commission heard from Eric Hanushek, a Stanford University economist who made the argument that one good teacher can add $430,000 to the lifetime earnings of his or her class. Hanushek also went so far as to say that money spent incentivizing teacher performance was more effective than the total amount of money spent on education. 

“If you confine your discussion to how much you spend or how much you add, you’re not going to get very far,” he said, perhaps unintentionally echoing Craig Enoch, the first presenter of the first commission meeting.

When pressed by commission member Rep. Diego Bernal (D-San Antonio), Hanushek would not say that total money spent didn’t matter at all, only that how it was spent mattered more. Like Enoch before him, Hanushek presented a scatter plot graph that, he said, demonstrated no correlation between increased spending and improved outcomes for students. States like New York and Wyoming increased their spending more than any other states between 1992 and 2011, but it was frugal Florida with the highest growth. 

From Eric Hanushek’s presentation to the Texas School Finance Commission

Commission member Rep. Paul Bettencourt (R- Houston) immediately suggested looking into what Florida is doing right.

“It’s hard to put any state in the shoes of any other state,” cautioned Hanushek, though he did note that Florida has a robust school choice program instituted under former governor Jeb Bush.

After spending a very long time discussing the minutia of Hanushek’s data, too long according to commission chair Scott Brister, the commission got back on track to talk about teachers. 

Teacher attrition in Texas was 16.5% in 2016. Environment was a major factor in attrition, presenter after presenter confirmed, as was lack of opportunity to grow in any way other than seniority or leaving the classroom to get into administration. Compensation, of course, is one way to measure professional growth.

Hinojosa, as well as representatives from Lubbock ISD and rural districts, spoke about the various systems of teacher compensation and talent development they have in place, and how that relates to both student performance and teacher retention. While the systems varied in scope and sophistication, all shared common elements: 1) pathways for teachers to promote up without leaving the classroom, such as a “master teacher” track, 2) evaluations systems that consider factors beyond state test scores, and 3) more pay for high performing teachers. 

DISD, which has the most highly developed system, the Teacher Excellence Incentive, also uses incentive pay to get the most effective teachers in front of the students with the most obstacles between themselves and their goals. These thirteen ACE (Accelerating Campus Excellence) schools where high performing teachers are paid an extra stipend, have gained considerable ground in academic and disciplinary outcomes as well as parent satisfaction, according to the district.

Commission member Todd Williams, education policy advisor to Dallas Mayor Mike Rowlings, reported that it would cost around $1,200 per student to implement the ACE model at the average Texas school.

Pay is only part of the equation, Holdsworth Center executive vice president Kate Rogers said. At the Holdsworth Center, the focus is on intrinsic motivation in talent development. Rather than “carrots and sticks” she said, they train district leadership to cultivate those inherently driven to succeed. Such people will be attracted to a system where their compensation reflects their performance, Rogers explained, but they don’t need compensation to drive their performance.

Nikki Beaty, a teacher at a high need school in Lubbock ISD, affirmed Rogers’ assessment. Lubbock ISD also uses performance pay to encourage the best teachers to stay in high-obstacle classrooms. While she would be there anyway, Beaty said, the extra pay was an encouragement to her family, who sacrificed along with her when her students needed extra time and energy from her. That support made it easier to stay, and affirmed her commitment. 

Lubbock’s system includes intensive mentoring and professional development, and Beaty said that works with the performance pay to create a collaborative professional environment.

Many teachers support the idea of differentiated pay, said representatives from the Association of Texas Professional Educators, the largest teacher representative group in Texas, as long as it is accompanied by sufficient minimum salary requirements and effective mentoring.

All of these efforts, many presenters noted, amounted to professionalizing and adding prestige to what has become a discounted career.

“It’s not that highly regarded respected position it used to be,” said Don Rogers of the Rural Texas Educators Association.

Of course, Finland and Singapore each came up several times. These countries are known for the high social capital and carried by the teaching profession. 

Dallas ISD and a growing number of other districts appear to be moving in that direction. But superintendent after superintendent confirmed that, at current funding levels, it is unsustainable. In Dallas ISD non-instructional staff has not received a cost of living wage increase in over a year. In Lubbock the program will simply end. Centerpoint ISD, could not afford pay increases, so they used days off and special mentoring lunches, paid for by the superintendent himself.

This kind of inconsistency keeps teachers from enthusiastic buy in, ATPE executive director Gary Godsey said.

With that testimony before them and around them, those going before the commission to say that money doesn’t matter appear to be increasingly in the minority.

To be continued…

Post Script

The night before the commission meeting Bernal sat on a panel for an “Ed Chat” hosted by Communities in Schools of San Antonio. To Bernal’s right, co-panelist Raúl Rodríguez Barocio lamented the lack of competitive spirit in the city, and the drain that put on the middle class. (It should be noted that Hanushek made the same comment about Texas as a whole.)

On Bernal’s left, sat part of the solution. Panelist Mohammed Choudhury, chief innovation officer at San Antonio ISD, was part of the team that designed the DISD system, and there’s no reason he can’t do the same in San Antonio except that,“it’s expensive.”  He noted that SAISD had to raise its tax rate to pay for the district’s new master teacher initiative. The district also received a $46 million federal grant for teacher incentives.

Texas School Finance Commission: Rough Equity


The Texas School Finance Commission meets for the third time on Thursday, Feb 22 to hear from more experts on how to to improve the state’s infamous school funding system. You can and should watch.  Below are my notes from the first meeting on Jan 23. The second meeting was on Feb 8.

People who would like to see school finance reform know two things about the Gov Greg Abbott’s 2017 commission to study the issue.

First, it is Texas’ only active chance of seeing changes made to the universally reviled funding system currently in place.

Second, it’s a slim, slim chance.

During the last legislative session, the passing of House Bill 21 created the Texas Commission on School Finance after the Texas Supreme Court passed the school finance overhaul ball to lawmakers. By declaring the current system constitutional in 2016, “the court has all but closed the door on future court interference,” former associate Texas Supreme Court Justice Craig Enoch said in his testimony before the commission on Jan 23. The court will likely give “high deference” to whatever the Legislative designs. 

The court would override a new system only if it failed to achieve “rough equity” between districts Enoch said. But short of that, Enoch explained, the lege has a ton of wiggle room.

Furthermore, Enoch said, there is no reason that education funding needs to be tied to property taxes, as it currently is. The commission is free to “think outside the box,” he said.

There’s a lot of freedom, and a full toolbox for the 13-person commission, which will take its recommendation to the legislature by Dec 31 in preparation for next year’s session.

So why the pessimism? They have the power, the time, the flexibility, the data.

The commission met for the first time on Jan 23 in Austin, and by the end it was clear why the chance of reform is so slim: it will require the Legislature to admit that not only does poverty matter, but that something can be done about it.

“I want you to understand,” Enoch said, “Scholars and educational experts disagree on whether there is a demonstrable correlation between educational expenditures and student outcomes.”

Immediately Chandra Villanueva, a senior analyst at the progressive Center for Public Policy Priorities, tweeted: “Show me a low cost alternative to a high quality teacher or small class size and I’ll start to consider that money in education doesn’t make a difference.”
Of course, neither Enoch, nor anyone else on the dais saw that tweet in the moment.

Equal outcomes should guide the school finance system, Enoch argued, not equal funding. Rather than ensuring that every district get the same amount of money, the Legislature should ensure that each district has what it needs to reach the desired outcomes, he said.

He went on to present a graph that showed districts spending very little money, but performing very well, while other spend plenty of money and performed poorly.

Enoch’s graph presented to Texas School Finance Commission.

“There is a pattern here, but it’s not finance,” Enoch said. 

This is a trend in the Legislature, commission member State Rep Diego Bernal D-San Antonio told me. “There’s a will to prove that there’s already enough money and that it’s inefficient spending that’s the problem.”

Pflugerville ISD superintendent Doug Killian, a commission member, asked Enoch if the spending estimates on his chart included transportation costs, new facilities costs, and other costs that some districts include and some do not include when calculating per pupil expenditures.

“I don’t have an answer to your questions,” Enoch acknowledged, the variables in accounting made it very difficult to compare district expenditures. He also clarified that he wasn’t saying money didn’t matter. “The experts are saying that it’s dangerous to say that only money matters in the education system.”

His graph, he insisted, demonstrated that.

“The devil is in the details,” Killian said, warning that such data might lead the commission to an erroneous conclusion.

Enoch acknowledged that he could not guarantee that the data was consistent, but stood by the conclusion that spending does not determine outcomes. He called on the TEA to determine what really makes a difference.

Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath, the third presenter of the day, already had the answer.

Morath’s own graphs show a correlation between student poverty and student performance. Wealth makes the difference – not how much a district spends, but how much a family has.

From TEA Commissioner Mike Morath’s presentation to the Texas School Finance Commission.

Morath’s presentation seemed to support the money-doesn’t-matter narrative, in a way. “It’s not as simple as dollars in a budget functional area,” Morath’s presentation read, “Instead it is programmatic choices and execution quality of that spending that matter the most.” 

Texas is among the lowest 10 states in the country for per pupil spending. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Massachusetts, which scores near the top of most education rankings, spends $14,515 per pupil (average). Texas spends $8,299 (average).  

The lawmakers on the commission offered plenty of alternative explanations for that dubious distinction. Perhaps it has to do with economies of scale, commission member Sen. Larry Taylor R-Friendswood said. Texas educates five times the number of students Massachusetts (number one in spending and outcomes) does, and yet both are run by one central administration.

Or perhaps, commission member Rep. Dan Huberty R-Humble suggested, Texas spends less because the cost of living here is less than in Massachusetts.

Morath to Huberty’s and Taylor’s points in stride. Whatever the reason, the low spending per pupil did not squelch the quality of education students were getting. When the various demographic subgroups are broken out, and when the scores are adjusted for economic disadvantage, Texas scores near the top on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test, the gold standard of standardized tests. Texas does a better job educating Hispanic, black, and economically disadvantaged populations than most other states.

from Morath’s presentation to the Texas School Finance Commission.

With low per pupil spending!

But don’t look away just yet, Morath warned, because life does not adjust for poverty. Employers don’t ask what resources you had at home, or how often you moved, he explained. 

The data shows that in college readiness, graduation, and subsequent lifetime income, economically disadvantaged kids do not outperform their middle class and wealthy peers–not in Texas, not anywhere.
“I’m less concerned with Massachusetts,” Bernal said after the meeting. “We heard today that our students are increasingly unprepared for life after high school.”

It’s not enough to move kids forward, Morath said, they have to reach proficiency. Even though one student is running with crutches, and one student is running with optimum health, both students have to run the race, he said, speaking in metaphor.

When the scores are taken all together and not adjusted for poverty, Texas falls near the middle on performance. Our economically disadvantaged kids do better than other states’ economically disadvantaged kids. We just have more of them.

From Morath’s presentation to the Texas School Finance Commission.

Since 1996, the percentage of Texas students considered economically disadvantaged has grown, Morath.

Morath made recommendations with this reality in mind. He agreed with Enoch that big budget numbers were not the key indicator, but went on to show that targeted spending in certain areas with proven efficacy for all students, including those living in poverty: teacher quality summer learning opportunities, and “coherent curriculum.”
Commission member Sen. Royce West D- Dallas,  indicated that the commission might consider different funding streams to support students in poverty, such as health and human services funding. Morath added to that they might consider ways to incentivize spending in certain areas so that money, wherever it might come from, is spent in ways that have been proven to best support those populations.
For example, Morath said, we know attendance improves student outcomes, and so it’s helpful that out current finance system uses daily attendance to allocate funds. Morath would like to see more of these kinds of mechanisms. One idea he floated: higher pay for the most effective teachers at high need campuses.
Herein, Enoch’s proposition might be more expensive than the current system. Forgetting the arbitrary per student allotments assigned by past Legislatures, if Texas studied what it would cost to close the gap between economically disadvantaged kids and their wealthier peers, we may be paying more than we are now. If we paid for the programs, services, and supports that allowed economically disadvantaged kids to test like wealthy kids, how much would that cost? The commission has the power to ask.
But first, what is the real root cause of low performance, Commission member Paul Bettencourt R-Houston, asked. Is it really poverty? Or is it not speaking English as a first language? Is it high mobility rates?

“The thing that matters is poverty,” Morath said leaving no room for doubt, “Everything else is a proxy for that.”

To be continued…