Experts to Lawmakers: Fund Schools Less to See How Creative They Get
Depending on whose measure you’re using, Texas is somewhere between 38th and 49th in the nation when it comes to per-student funding. Instead of wallowing in our poor luck, or paying something closer to the national average, Senate Education Chairman Larry Taylor convened a hearing Tuesday that considered a more sanguine response: A big round of applause for forcing schools to do so much with so little.
“The school districts are capable of generating high outcomes with low funding,” Education Resource Group President Paul Haeberlen assured the Senate Education Committee. “If you give them less money, they are forced to deal with it.”
Since 1999, Haeberlen’s group has measured and promoted efficiency in Texas school districts. This year, he was one of a handful of experts — along with Lori Taylor of the Texas Smart Schools initiative — invited to address an interim charge from Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick to study “performance-based funding mechanisms that allocate dollars based upon achievement versus attendance.”
In other words, Patrick wants to study how to fund schools not based on their needs, but on their results.
Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/public-ed-funding-hearing-august/
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