Texas Supreme Court has opportunity to improve public education

*This is important for Latinos students in Texas. This is the inequity in a nutshell: “In Texas, with the average school tax rate of $1 per $100 value of property, the poorest district can raise $300 per student and the richest district can raise $158,000 per student.” VL


By Albert Kauffmann, For NewsTaco

This week, the Texas Supreme Court will hear what could well be its most important case ever — on public school financing.

The court has a chance to guarantee every child in the state has the same opportunity to get a high quality education, based on the requirements of the Texas Constitution. The court should adopt a straightforward and clear test for the Legislature to follow and the public to understand. Every school district should have the same access to funds for every student as every other district at any tax rate allowed by the state, taking into account differences in costs of education among students and districts.

[pullquote]I[tweet_dis]n Texas, with the average school tax rate of $1 per $100 value of property, the poorest district can raise $300 per student and the richest district can raise $158,000 per student.[/tweet_dis][/pullquote]

The court adopted a test close to this when it heard this case in 1989 and 1991. But over time, the standard has become increasingly vague and weak. In the case to be argued this week, most school districts, charter schools and voucher advocates are before the court.

The court should overcome any aversion to demanding true equality, as the Texas Constitution requires.

The court need only review the history of the creation of our 1,000 school districts, the built-in weaknesses of the school funding system, and the court’s approaches to the issues in past cases.

From the more than 6,000 separate school districts in existence in the early 1900s, about 1,000 remain. The lines were drawn after political struggles, not reasonable analysis. Powerful interests protected their property — expensive housing, commercial interests and mineral wealth — from higher tax rates paid by others. Those in control included or excluded populations and geographic areas based on the wealth and the “desirability” or “undesirability” of the population.

The entire Texas school finance system is based on the property value in each of the 1,000 districts. District ad valorem taxes support more than half of the total costs of public schools in Texas. This creates incredible inequities because of the incredible differences in property wealth per student among the districts.

[pullquote]The state system requires poor districts to pay higher tax rates than the wealthier districts to raise what the state considers adequate amount of funding.[/pullquote] [tweet_dis]In Texas, with the average school tax rate of $1 per $100 value of property, the poorest district can raise $300 per student and the richest district can raise $158,000 per student.[/tweet_dis] In Bexar County, one district can raise $11,000 per student and another district can raise only $830 per student. Similar disparities infect almost all Texas counties.

The state supplements locally raised funds with state funds. Texas sends more money to poor districts than to rich districts to raise the low-wealth districts to some level the Texas Legislature considers adequate. However, the state funds do not raise the poor districts to the same funding level as the wealthier districts.

The state system requires poor districts to pay higher tax rates than the wealthier districts to raise what the state considers adequate amount of funding. The state level of adequacy is far below what is actually adequate.

The state’s average total expenditure of about $10,000 per year per child is $1,000 to $2,000 below the national average. In the 2014 trial, the district court found that state and local funds together are $1,000 to $3,000 below what is necessary to provide a program to meet the state’s own standards.

Lower-wealth districts suffer the most from these deficits. The greater the deficit and the poorer the district, the greater the harm. The deficit is even greater for districts with large proportions of low-income students and English language learners. The deficit and the harm to lower-wealth districts are especially negative in the funding of facilities. Wealthier districts can generate funds for facilities from their own property wealth. Poorer districts cannot.

The deficits are greater because of the rapidly increasing numbers and proportions of low-income students and English learners in schools, and the increasing demands of the testing system and graduation standards. The political burden of persuading the Legislature to put more resources into the schools falls most heavily on poor districts, the least powerful in the legislative system.

These deficits negatively affect teacher hiring and retention, and harm students. In my own family, an early education teacher highly prized by her principal at an elementary school in a very poor district is leaving to work in an adjoining middle-wealth district for $5,500 more per year.

A student in special education in San Antonio is given a one-hour assessment and one hour of reading tutoring per week. The same student who moves to a Boston suburb is given a two-day assessment, two hours of weekly occupational and group therapy, and a half-time aide.

In general, the poorer districts have suffered the most in teacher hiring and retention, and in attracting more expensive housing and white collar businesses.

Legal challenges to state school financing are a recurring tale in Texas. In 1989 and 1991, the Texas Supreme Court declared the school finance system violated the Texas Constitution’s requirement that the Legislature “establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.”

[pullquote]The system is still inefficient, inequitable and inadequately funded. It is not suitable to meet the demands of the Texas Constitution or the needs of our students and community.[/pullquote]

In response, the Legislature crafted the first system that sought to equalize all school districts’ access to funds, the fairest system up to that time. Wealthy districts attacked that system, and the court rejected it in 1992.

The Legislature developed a new way to equalize funding in 1993, and the court in 1995, for the first time, upheld that system. The court developed the law of school finance adequacy, suitability and meaningful access to funding in opinions in 2003 and 2005; and in 2005 the court developed the law in all the issues the court has confronted since 1989.

In 2013 and last year, the District Court in Austin heard the case, and wrote the most complete and detailed explanation of the law and the facts of the system yet. It held the system is inefficient because all Texas students do not have substantially equal access to adequate funds; unsuitable in the structure, operation and funding; inadequate because it does not accomplish a general diffusion of knowledge due to insufficient funding; and creates a statewide property tax.

The court also found specific violations of these provisions because of the lack of adequate funding for the education of low income children and English language learners.

This sets the stage for the arguments Tuesday. The system is still inefficient, inequitable and inadequately funded. It is not suitable to meet the demands of the Texas Constitution or the needs of our students and community. The Supreme Court should uphold the District Court decision.

To clarify the constitutional standard for the Legislature and for the public, the court must strengthen the equity tests it has used. The court evidenced a clear commitment to equity in its 1989 and 1991 decisions, but moved to a more complex and vague set of standards in its 1995 and 2005 opinions.

The comparison of Texas funding to other states, and a clear record of inadequacy of programs and opportunities in even the richer districts shows the inadequacy of the system.

The Texas Supreme Court must make it clear that every Texas student has the right to live in a district that can raise the same amount of funds as any other district at any tax rate that district residents will support. And the state formulas — and total funding — must account for the legitimate differences in costs among students and districts.

It is the only way to treat all of our students equally, as demanded by our constitution.

The dilemma facing the court is the same faced by the Texas Legislature through the years. My mentor, Dr. Jose Cardenas of the Intercultural Development Research Association, said it best:

“What kind of a system can be devised that will provide all children an equal educational opportunity and still allow for a better education for privileged children?”

Al Kauffman is a professor of law at St. Mary’s University School of Law. As an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, he was the lead counsel for the Edgewood parties in the school finance lawsuit from 1984 to 2002.


Al Kauffman is a professor of law at St. Mary’s University School of Law. He wrote and filed the original Texas school financing case in 1984 and was lead counsel for the plaintiffs from 1984 to 2002.

[Photo by DoDEA/Flickr]
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