Texas Public School Finance, 1997

General dissatisfaction may lead to legislative efforts to completely revamp school finance

An Overview of School Finance Policy: Key Federal and Texas Litigation

Since Brown (1954), educational finance inequity has taken center stage on national and state level reform platforms. We begin with an overview of the three waves of federal school finance litigation and argumentation concerning equity, adequacy, accountability, and transparency in public schooling. We then outline key school finance legislative and judicial history within the Texas context. We conclude our review with a discussion of policy implications for public education in Texas and beyond.Educatio

The Texas Miracle: Racial Discrimination Alive and Well Sixty Years after Brown

The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not and how race plays a role in the funding of Texas public school districts. Beyond these determinations, we explore the legal implications that would come from evidence of a discriminatory funding system, specifically in light of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. In this study, we use both quantitative and legal analysis. We explore population-level data containing information on the funding and racial composition of all Texas public school districts. Descriptive methods such as cross-tabulations were paired with correlation and measures of effect size to explore the relationship between race and school district funding. In our legal analysis, we review relevant legal statutes and case law, situating our quantitative findings within the larger, school finance jurisprudence context.Educatio

The Texas School Finance Litigation Saga: Great Progress, then Near Death by a Thousand Cuts

The Texas Legislature’s system for financing Texas schools is significantly more equitable after Edgewood v. Kirby. Edgewood I and Edgewood II effectively forced the legislature to improve the finance system. However, the rulings in the first two Edgewood cases have been whittled away by the last four Edgewood decisions.. As a result, courts now approach fundamental issues, legislative power, and the relationship between them differently. The Edgewood v. Kirby legacy still improves the equity and adequacy of Texas’s public education finance system. This legacy is expanded upon with observations regarding long term impacts of the Texas school finance litigation saga

Keys to economic growth: what drives Texas?

Texas continued to grow after the nation sank into recession in December 2007. Staying up so long in down times adds to the state's reputation for superior economic performance. For the past 40 years, employment has consistently grown faster in Texas than the U.S.--by 1 percentage point a year on average. ; In looking at the drivers of economic growth, recent research has put increasing emphasis on human capital and institutions, such as taxes and public spending. These factors partly explain why some U.S. states and regions have managed to maintain business climates conducive to faster growth. ; Various studies have tied Texas' edge over the rest of the nation to such advantages as low tax burdens and flexible labor markets. The challenge will be to preserve these features while positioning the state to compete in a more knowledge-intensive economy. ; Texas faces issues in public finance, education, changing demographics and infrastructure. How the state addresses them will help determine whether it can maintain its edge.>Economic conditions - Texas ; Economic development

Everything’s Bigger in Texas: Examining the Mandatory (and Additional) Financial Burden of Postsecondary Education

Student fees remain an under-researched aspect of postsecondary education and finance (Kelchen, 2016). This study examines the mandatory and additional fees charged to full-time, in-state undergraduate students by public and private not-for-profit four-year institutions in Texas (n=96). Findings demonstrate the average four-year institution in Texas charges over $1,500 per academic year in mandatory fees,$500 higher than the national average. Moreover, private institutions charge an average of $1,100 less than publics, while fees comprise 6.8% of the total cost of attendance at private and 29.1% at publics. Institutions of higher education compose fee explanations above the 12th-grade reading level and only 5.2% of the sample provided fee explanations in a language other than English, thus further marginalizing non-English speaking language populations in Texas. Implications for policy makers, practitioners, and future research are addressed.Educatio

Prescription for public school finance reform in Texas

In the summer of 1984, Governor Mark White called a special session of the 68th Legislature to address the problems of public education in Texas and to deal with the state's needs for additional revenue. That session followed a decade of fitful attempts at and retreats from substantive reform of the methods of public school finance. In fact, the comprehensive education reform bill that resulted from the session, House Bill 72, was similar in its intent to the comprehensive reform bill of 1975, House Bill 1126. The finance portions of HB 72 have been the subject of controversy since the bill's inception. In January of 1985, the Legislature will be faced with the task of adjusting the hastily passed HB 72. The narrow purpose of this report is to provide a foundation for evaluating the proposed adjustments to HB 72. The larger purpose is to provide a basic understanding of the fundamentals of public school finance. The report will present a normative model against which school finance measures may be evaluated and will use the model to critique education funding measures since 1975. From the model and the critiques, the author will present several recommendations for legislative actionPublic Affair

The Texas Supreme Court Retreats from Protecting Texas Students

The Texas Supreme Court has now fully retreated from a powerful line of previous Texas Supreme Court decisions protecting the rights of public school students and low-wealth districts.\u27 Returning to Texas history\u27s dual system of poor districts and wealthy districts, the Court removed itself from its constitutional role as a vital ingredient in progressing toward school finance equity and adequacy and has instead regressed to a dual school system in Texas that is divided between poor and wealthy districts. This regression becomes evident by analyzing seven major school finance decisions: (1) Edgewood Independent School District v. Kirby (Edgewood I); (2) Edgewood Independent School District v. Kirby (Edgewood II); (3) Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District v. Edgewood Independent School District (Edgewood III); (4) Edgewood Independent School District v. Meno (Edgewood IV); (5) West Orange-Cove Consolidated Independent School District v. Alanis (Edgewood V); (6) Neeley v. West Orange-Cove Consolidated Independent School District (Edgewood VI); and (7) Morath v. Texas Taxpayer and Student Fairness Coalition (Edgewood VII)

Market Solutions to Public Recreation Finance: The Texas State Parks Example

11 pages. Contains 1 page of references

An act relating to the continuation and functions of the Texas Public Finance Authority.

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to the continuation and functions of the Texas Public Finance Authority