Don’t Retreat on Educational Quality

Budget-strapped school superintendents are making a big mistake. Under the guise of “local control” and budget “flexibility,” they are asking the Legislature to allow them to retreat on critical standards of educational quality. I don’t think our parents want to see that happen.

With the state’s school finance system already under-funded and the Legislature trying to fill a revenue hole as deep as $27 billion, the temptation is great for lawmakers to give school administrators what they want, relief from what superintendents and local school boards like to call “unfunded mandates.”

These mandates, however, have strengthened our public education system. They include things like the 22-1 class size limit in kindergarten through fourth grade, a strong contributor to a quality learning environment for our youngest students because it affords teachers the opportunity to give them the individual attention they need. That limit has been state law for more than 25 years because it has worked, and polls indicate it enjoys strong support among Texas parents.

Now, superintendents are asking the Legislature to lift the cap, even though existing law allows districts to seek waivers from 22-1 if it poses an undue budgetary hardship.

There is a place for local decision-making in the public schools, but the Texas Constitution makes it clear that the ultimate responsibility for ensuring a quality educational system belongs to the Legislature.

The Legislature needs to maintain strong, uniform, statewide classroom standards. Many kids growing up in Llano, Abilene, Nacogdoches and hundreds of other communities will seek jobs in Austin, San Antonio, Dallas or Houston, and employers won’t be diluting their workforce requirements to accommodate graduates of the weakest school districts.

Barely more than a generation ago, “local control” was out-of-control. School districts set their own standards as high or as low as their local tax wealth allowed or local political sentiment demanded. This produced pockets of educational excellence, but they were swamped by mediocrity.

The Legislature reacted in 1984 with House Bill 72, a landmark education reform law that made sweeping improvements in the public schools. Standards were raised, and accountability was initiated. Some changes, such as the no-pass, no-play rule, were unpopular in some school districts, but the Legislature had put the focus where it belonged – on the classroom. The 22-1 limit on K-4 classes also was part of that law.

The return to “local control” that superintendents now are seeking would produce more than crowded classrooms and ultimately, perhaps, closures of neighborhood schools. It also would result in more inequity in educational programs among districts and a narrowing of the curriculum, as districts eliminate fine arts and other electives to cover budgetary shortfalls that largely are the result of inadequate state appropriations.

Texas ranks a poor 37th among the states in expenditures on per-pupil instruction, more than $1,300 per child below the national average. Instead of waving a white flag on educational quality, superintendents and school board members should join teachers and parents in demanding that the Legislature meet its budgetary obligations to the schools.

The Legislature should spend every dollar in the Rainy Day Fund, which is projected to have a record, $9.4 billion balance by the end of the next budget period, and then enact an equitable source of new revenue to adequately meet the state’s educational and other public needs.