Educrats beware! School finance reform gaining momentum

Education finance formula in Texas (artist's crude rendering!)

Monday shaped up to be an encouraging day on the public education reform front in Austin. 

In Northwest Austin, Texas State Board of Education Member Ken Mercer, Austin ISD Trustee Julie Cowan, Round Rock ISD Trustee Terri Romere, and Peggy Venable of Americans for Prosperity-Texas gathered with the Northwest Austin Republican Women to discuss the future of education policy.

Meanwhile downtown, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) rolled out an easy-on-the-eyes position paper on education finance and how the system must radically change from a district-focused approach to one that puts the students first.

From TPPF's paper:

The way we fund education in Texas is so complex that even those who run the system on a day-to-day basis have difficulty understanding how it works. ... [T]he district court judge who ruled upon the most recent school finance lawsuit concluded that formula elements do not relate to student needs. This is a natural result of a system that has been designed piecemeal, and is not based on what works for students, but on what delivers votes in the Legislature. 

... Whereas litigation and political disputes over the past several decades have revolved around the issue of equity for school districts, the focus should be upon equity and efficiency for students. The opacity and litigation will continue unless we focus, as our Constitution intended, on funding students instead of districts. 

This is the kind of news we needed to hear. Amid projections of lessened state revenue due to falling oil prices, taxes running off small businesses in Austin neighborhoods, and the perennial confusion caused by judicial opinions declaring the Texas public ed funding scheme unconstitutional, clearly, we need to do something major to alter the status quo. Public outreach efforts like these keep conservative activists at the local level hopeful that we can indeed save our classrooms from bureaucrats who continually game the system and who rob teachers, parents, and students.

It will take both the professional class (e.g. the folks at TPPF) to expertly plot the course and the grassroots (like the Northwest Austin Republican Women) to determine the overall direction for public ed reform. We're pleased to see the two "worlds" of Texas politics interacting on this critical issue of how to fix our public school system.

As it happens, TPPF just announced their newest executive vice president this morning. Dr. Kevin Roberts will succeed Arlene Wohlgemuth at the post. Congratulations!

NW Austin Republican Women Education Panel, moderated by Rosemary Edwards (standing, right)

Image credits: Thinkstock, Facebook