State of Texas Public School Finance

You have read about and applied some of the school finance formulas. School finance in Texas has been in litigation for years. It was declared unconstitutional in February 2013 and, after some changes, declared constitutional in 2016. The most recent Texas Legislature passed HB3, which made significant changes to the school finance formulas in Texas.

This week you will write a 1-1/2 page position paper on the status of public school finance in Texas. Please use the resources from the “Additional Resources – Week 2” tab, from the “Week 6 – Resources” tab, and any other resources you deem necessary to determine and support what you believe should be done to make the Texas School Finance system fair for all students. You can also address the history of school finance in Texas or the history of Texas finance lawsuits.

Feel free to use the resource materials I have shared with you, and/or any other material you can find to support your position on financing public schools in Texas. Remember to appropriately acknowledge any sources you use, including websites. Practice your APA formatting!

What you will submit: The body of your essay should be at least one page and not more than 2 pages. You should offer suggestions to improve the fairness of the finance system and support your suggestions with the works of other authors. So, you will have:

a title page (APA format) with a Running Head;
a header with page number on each page;
1-2 pages of body with sources cited using APA style (authors, year) as you refer to them; and
a reference page. If you do not have the APA manual, there are some great resources on-line that even have templates you can use. Don’t forget to use spell check and grammar check. APA 6th edition is great – APA 7th edition is not yet fully available.