Money does make a difference

To be absolutely clear, TSTA believes every school district that owes the state money under the socalled Robin Hood school finance law should pay up – and pay up on time. But one East Texas district’s delinquency serves to refute the old, wrongheaded cliché that spending more money on education doesn’t improve classroom quality.

That moldy oldie was repeated as recently as today by Talmadge Helfin, former budgetcutting legislator and now honcho of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a Libertarianleaning think tank that would like nothing better than to privatize most public services to the detriment of millions of low and middleincome Texans. Its leadership includes some of Gov. Perry’s biggest contributors.

“It makes the point that just putting money into education is not going to do the job,” Heflin was quoted in today’s Austin AmericanStatesman, in a story reporting that school districts are likely to see their state revenue cut by $3 billion to $5 billion over the next two years.

Heflin’s remark to the contrary, guess what happened, though, when the Hallsville ISD withheld $8.5 million in Robin Hood funds from the state and spent the money instead to help hire more teachers and make other improvements? According to an Associated Press report, the district raised its accountability rating from an unimpressive academically acceptable to exemplary. I don’t think the improvements were coincidental.

Yes, money makes a difference in educational quality. And, the education budget cuts the governor and legislative leaders are planning now will lower that quality because those cuts will mean fewer teachers and more crowded classrooms. Suggesting, as Heflin and the governor like to do, that those cuts will come strictly from administrative “fat” is perpetrating a fiction. Texas’ perpupil expenditures already rank in the bottom third among the states.

The Irving ISD, for example, is among districts already planning for big budget hits. District administrators already have proposed about $9.3 million in costcutting steps next year. Some administrators, nurses and technology specialists would lose their jobs, but the most lost positions by far – 95 – would be teachers.