Unhappily, Texas Returns To School-Finance Class

By Lonnie Harp

SAN ANTONIO--For many Texas lawmakers and policy experts, a national school-finance seminar here served as another unwelcome reminder that the arduous journey they had hoped to have finished must now be traveled all over again.

After spending five legislative sessions in the past two years drafting two separate school-funding systems, Texas officials arrived last month at the meeting sponsored by the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Education Commission of the States with every right to be cast as seasoned veterans able to help other states tackle their own school-finance problems.

Thanks to a January decision by the Texas Supreme Court overturning the legislature's most recent finance plan, however, the Texans found themselves once more as students searching for the answer to a seemingly impossible policy puzzle. (See Education...