I am a strong supporter of Texas Teachers and Students!
Education is the largest item in the Texas budget (more than 37%). There is no question that public K-12 education should be equitably funded throughout the State of Texas. Teachers and students deserve adequately funded schools and Texas taxpayers deserve not to have their property value raided time and time again to meet perennial finance objectives. Property taxes need to be separated from school finance – period – we will not fix education funding until this is accomplished. Its not even a debate – there is broad consensus that use of property taxes to fund education leads to racial discrimination, inequality and is resoundingly inefficient.
Rather than expect more dollars from taxpayers without showing a correlated performance improvement, Texas should embrace a competitive education market including school choice, vouchers and homeschooling. Texas should focus more on how money is spent rather than how much, and education dollars should be primarily focused on attracting and retaining great teachers.
Common Core and all other federal mandates on public education should be eliminated. Standards and objectives for Texas students should be determined by Texas parents and educators, not bureaucrats in Washington or in Austin.