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Texas Agriculture Archive

March 19, 2004

Texas education system study
by Legislature continues...

The Texas Legislature is slowly making progress on a thorough review of the Texas education system. One of the special committees assigned this responsibility recently received a much anticipated educational adequacy funding report.

The report, prepared by a research team from Texas A&M University, concluded that the average minimum funding level to meet state performance standards is approximately $6,220 per student. This figure is actually slightly less than the currently budgeted $6,503 per student.

What remains now for the Legislature is to decide if the minimum performance standards goals are high enough, if priorities need to be re-evaluated, if changes in the system and methods are needed, and most importantly how the state can pay a larger portion of the overall costs.

There seems to be a consensus that while Texas schools are performing relatively well, there is considerable room and desire for improvement. Some areas of improvement may be influenced by a priority to have more participation in advanced course work and college entrance preparation. Increased goals and advanced course work priorities will require changes in the system and probably result in higher per student costs.

One important distinction made by the report is that it cost more per student to educate in small school districts than it does in large. Certain capital expenditures are unavoidable, and with fewer students to spread the burden across, small schools are less cost effective. The study indicates that the maximum level of efficiency occurs in schools of 10,000. A higher cost per student is indicated at student levels below 10,000. It will be important that the Legislature continues to address this inequity by providing adequate resources and funding for students attending small and rural schools.

The biggest and most complex issue still remains on how Texas can raise the tax revenues to pay a larger portion of the costs and reduce our over-reliance on property taxes. No consensus has developed yet, but many options have been floated, including: placing more businesses under the franchise tax, increasing "sin" taxes, allowing video lottery terminals at race tracks, implementing a business activities tax, increasing the sales tax rate and expanding sales tax to cover services.

Much of this debate has been politically driven by the desire to end the much maligned "Robin Hood" system which resulted from our reliance on property taxes and unequal distribution of property wealth.

While the "Robin Hood" goal of equally distributing student funding across the state remains a court mandate, increasing the state's share of the burden can offset any disparities. Then the campaign promises of "Putting an end to Robin Hood" and the constitutional requirement of educating our students can be addressed by the Legislature.