Texas Education Case Study

Education development has been an important matter in Texas for decades. Texas has been known for their improvements and reformation in public schools since their first attempt of a public school system. Within these improvements, came issues that escalated to create our public education system today. The issues that helped arrange the system are desegregation, equity in funding, and education policy.

The education conflict in Texas is a major factor of chaos. There is kids without college tuitions. The 2011 Texas Legislature chopped more than a billion dollars from higher education, dashing the dream of college for many Texas students. While scholarships disappeared, many campuses were forced to raise tuition costs, a deadly combination for families without the resources to make up the difference.

The Texas Constitution guarantees an "efficient system of public free schools," but schools have recently found themselves unable to provide an adequate education to the more than 5 million students in Texas because of the many problems within the education policy in the state. Such issues involve school financing, lack of preparation for college, early childhood education, teacher quality, and school choice. Tough all of these conflicts pose a potential threat to the school system’s competence and effectiveness as well as to Texas’ economy, there are a broad number of possible adjustment and reforms that could be placed to improve the adequacy of Texas’ school system.

Texas faces many problems with the current educational system and many of them continue to go unresolved due to the way Texas has established certain laws. A decline in education has been seen since 2006 when legislators decided to cut property tax which pays for education (Maule). Those policies only further hinder the progress of education improving, which is why policies like those do not need to be further implemented. More involvement with students is needed and that will be acquired by having more effective teachers. Many studies have shown that students with effective teachers do better in class than those with ineffective teachers. Not only do students do poorly with ineffective teachers, but “[s]tudies show that most students drop out due to poor academic performance. And studies have proven that the teacher in the

The two states of Texas and California have vastly different methods of taxation and they also differ in how they spend these taxes collected. In the past, many people packed up and moved out west to California because they saw it as the land of opportunity, but recently, this trend has changed as many individuals and businesses have been moving from California down to Texas. This is a relevant point to discuss because this movement has much to do with how California and Texas both tax their citizens. Texas prefers a regressive tax system, which taxes citizens by letting the taxes fall as the tax base increases, California implements the opposite method through more progressive taxes. While citizens may prefer Texas’s system of limited taxation, this also severely effects what services the government is able to provide to its citizens, which is why I would argue for slightly higher taxes so that Texas can obtain more benefits in the long run.

According to 2002 Census of Government figures, Texas has 1,196 cities, 254 counties, 1,089 school districts, and 2,245 special districts. During the past 20 years, the num- ber of special districts has steadily increased, due mainly to the rapid creation of water districts in unincorporated areas. Conversely, the number of school districts has steadily de- clined, as smaller systems have consolidated with larger ones. The number of counties has remained constant for 100 years, while the number of cities is increasing at an av- erage of about 10 per year.

Though the Texas' economy has diversified in recent decades, the state's abundant oil and gas resources remain a valuable asset - especially when prices for those commodities are high - that most other states lack. Even if it were possible for other states to replicate these features, the fact that so many Texans have failed to benefit from them - with poverty, low-wage jobs and lack of health insurance all above the national average - makes Texas a less-than-desirable model to

In Erica Grieder’s book, she points out that Texas has a governing philosophy called the The Texas Model where it calls for low taxes and low services (23). It can be said that this would not be deemed helpful for the people, since many require the public services of the government, especially in the fields of education and health care. However, Grieder states that statistics show otherwise, the model is working for Texas. Apparently, Texas is highly averse to taxes, part of the aversion due to the limits in taxing authority of the state itself, which also helps to create a business-friendly state. Due to the

The state of Texas receives the majority of funding from two sources; taxes and federal receipts. “Currently, Texas is one of nine states that does not levy a personal income tax on its residents and, in addition, its property tax system is a function of local governments. This makes Texas somewhat unique, in that, its state government largely relies on revenue generated from sales taxes and a business tax.” (Texas Public Policy Foundation, 2012) For

More than 600 Texas school districts were left disappointed and confounded with the recent ruling of the Texas Supreme Court, which upheld the state’s public school funding system as constitutional, while also advising state legislature that the system is indeed flawed and in need of thorough reformation.

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) requires all public school districts and charter schools to submit a technology plan that aligns with the district’s improvement plan and the both Long-Range Plan for Technology, 2006-2020 (LRPT). Each year teachers and campuses evaluate their progress in meeting the goals of the LRPT by completing the Texas School Technology and Readiness (STaR) Chart. The goal is for all STaR chart objectives to be at target level.

A large portion of the general population who head the official branch of Texas government have never had full control over it. Other chose authorities head a portion of the real offices, and an effective administrative branch can, with solid identities in control, control the organizations to some degree by controlling their financial plans.

Texas uses what is called a balanced budget, according to Governing Texas a balanced budget is, “whenever the projected income from tax revenues is equal to or exceeds the projected expenditure.”(Champagne Harpham 313). This is different from many other states such as California who don’t use a balanced budget due to the fact that those states usually end up in debt. Texas’ sources of revenue for the state include: sales and use tax, oil production and regulation tax, natural gas production tax, motor fuels tax, vehicle and home sales tax, corporate franchise tax, and many other forms of sales taxes. Some of the spending Texas uses its budget on are education, infrastructure, hospitals, and public welfare.

In Texas social conservatism is very important. It is a place where there is a culture of favoring traditional values and moralism. It is one of the states that is reluctant in legalizing gay marriages. Additionally, the state took its time to legalize abortion and established various regulations to control abortion in Texas. This is a place that favors social conservatism and supports the traditional values. Additionally, class liberalism is an important political value in Texas. Class liberalism is a concept that allows individuals to exercise fully individual liberty as long as their freedoms do not affect the liberties of others. Individualistic political culture is drawn from belief that individuals should be at liberty to exercise their rights without interference if their rights do not interfere with that of

The Texas government reflects a negative attitude towards having centralized governments. A centralized government is when the power of the government belongs to very few people and is not dispersed among a larger group. That could include things like monarchies and dictatorships where there only a single authority. Centralized governments is exactly the opposite of what Texas displays. Texas is an example of a decentralized government where the power is dispersed amongst a group of multiple people. There is no single authority in a Texas government because it includes many people with power like attorney generals, governor, senators and representatives. What really makes Texas decentralized is the citizens having the ability to choose whoever they want to have power in the Texas government.