Legality of the Robin Hood Act in Texas?

It seemed weird to me when I lived in Tejas. But I was educated in public schools in California where the state is controlling and the individual Unified School Districts get money on a pretty equal basis.

However, since prop 13 the state can only raise taxes on home owners to pay for the schools with the voter approval. Hence all the schools are in the toilet these days financially and the Govenator is now proposing to lower pay for teachers, yikes.

When I lived in Virginia the school districts where independent and raised taxes for public schools by tax autos and personal property as well as property tax. The public school education was pretty unequal in VA. In Northern VA, especially Fairfax County were wonderful. But just to the south in Richmond the schools were a mess at best.

Just some things you might want to look into. When I was in Dallas and Fort Worth I was under the impression the "Robin Hood" system was legislated to provide more equal funding and therefore render a more equal education but it seemed to me that is was not working to well and was the battle cry of the GOP against the Dems.

Because the Texas law has been in effect for so many years I would assume it is legal. Check out the state constitution to see if anything is stated directly about how the state is allowed to raise taxes to pay for ecuation.

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ok....well, what i'm thinking is that the robin hood act is not working....i live in texas and i've been in their public schools....they suck. so as a result, equal funding is not desireable because it does not have a useful outcome...maybe pragmatism would be a good approach? after all, the education in the round rock/austin area differs a lot from school to school, but the majority have bad reputations for their educational quality. since it doesn't make a difference to the education, the equalization does nothing for the system.

The testing seems a problem to me too. Both the Texas and the federal tests seem to influence the teaching.

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Methinks you'd need slighly more than "they suck!" in a debate.

Keep in mind that what "sucks" to you may be pretty darn good compared to a lot of other places. If you want to prove that they do indeed suck perhaps you could do some real comparisons to school systems in other states that have differing funding mechanisms and see how things pan out across the board for schools in the different states?