Education Reform

What to Know: The Texas House of Representatives has now rolled out its own school finance plan.

“For more legislative sessions than we can remember, state lawmakers have promised to reform public school financing, only to disappoint school districts and, of course, taxpayers and their children,” an editorial in the Dallas Morning News reads. “But now, at last, we can say we are cautiously optimistic that a real plan to overhaul the school finance system, emerging from the Texas House, is a major step in the right direction. It focuses on the right things, and we would urge the Senate to produce an equally serious proposal when it unveils its full plan later this week.”

The TPPF Take: The time is right for Texas lawmakers to do more than reform the way we pay for schools; they should work to ensure that Texas children receive a quality education, not merely a more costly one.

“It’s important to look at how we’re spending our education dollars, not just how much we’re spending,” says TPPF’s Kara Belew. “We must encourage districts to set clear, public goals, provide merit pay to reward and retain our best teachers, and improve civics education. That’s how we’ll truly reform Texas education.”

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