Texas Must Secure Fair School Funding for All Students
All students deserve to go to excellent, well-funded public schools that prepare them to access and succeed in college and beyond. But not all Texas schools have sufficient funding to provide students with the education and opportunities they deserve.
State funding for public schools remains below 50% and does not account for inflation or actual costs of education.
IDRA Policy Recommendations for 2025
The state school funding system should be based on actual costs to provide fair funding to students, especially students of color, students from families with limited incomes, and students who require additional programs, support and services. The legislature can make sure public school students have excellent educational opportunities. IDRA urges the legislature to…
- Invest in the basic allotment to raise per pupil funding for all students, including by adjusting for inflation.
- Increase targeted funding for high-quality bilingual education programs, educators, programs and instructional materials.
- Protect local school districts’ ability to determine their own local taxing rates to fund schools (M&O tax rate) without disparate compression or reduction of local revenue by the state.
- Keep public dollars in public schools by opposing vouchers and similar programs (e.g., Education Savings Accounts, Tax Credit Scholarships) that use public funds for private purposes.
Resources
Tools
Issue Brief: How Texas Schools Are Funded – And Why that Matters to Collective Success – Issue Brief, By Chloe Latham Sikes, Ph.D., August 2022
Summary of Model School Finance Legislation
Infographic: Texas State Divestment of Education
Expert Analysis and Testimony in the Texas Taxpayer and Student Fairness Coalition vs. Michael Williams, et al., court case
Policy Brief: Fair and Essential Education Funding Requires State Investment
White Paper: The Cost of Inequity in Education
Textbook: Texas School Finance Reform: An IDRA Perspective
Video gallery: IDRA Education Advocacy and Testimony
Changing Policy
Letter to Commissioner Morath on Charter Application Pathway for High-Performing Entities, August 2, 2024
Sign-On Letter: Public Charter Transparency – Comments to the Texas Education Agency, April, 2024
Communicating Effectively
Podcast: A History of School Funding in Texas
Op-ed: No Place for Complacency in Educating Poor Children
For historical resources sampled from IDRA’s over five decades of work for fair school funding for Texas public schools, visit our Fair Funding for the Common Good webpage and see our textbook, Texas School Finance Reform: An IDRA Perspective, by Dr. José A. Cárdenas.
