The Texas Plan is Bad for Business
The state plans to sell off one of its most profitable investments — gifted education.
The convergence of short-sighted educational, legislative, and economic policies are going to cost the state and businesses an immeasurable amount of money over the next generation. Goodbye, Forbes’ #3 Best State for Businesses. It is time for Big Business to intervene.
Let us start with a bit of background. The Texas Legislature has decided that the funding of gifted education should be repealed in an effort to “clean up” school finance. In a whopping $9 billion proposal, designating a mere $165 million for gifted education was seen as too onerous. Presently, students who qualify as gifted are weighted in the school funding model and receive an extra 12% as opposed to a student with no other educational needs. Various other populations like special education and limited-English speakers also receive weighted funding. Districts are only allowed to receive gifted education funding, however, for up to 5% of their total population, regardless of how large the percentage of identified gifted students the district has. However, districts are free to spend more and many do. The allotment was valued at $165 million last year.
Instead of allocating gifted education funding to districts, the legislature plans to simply increase the basic allotment given to schools per student. This would allow districts voice and choice in creating gifted programs (something they already have). School districts would then “certify” they will have a gifted program in place or could be fined to the tune of the formula above. Interesting concept. Except there is absolutely nothing in the proposed law which clarifies or defines a gifted program. And therein lies the problem. Without a definition or set of stipulations, districts can decide what a “gifted program” might look like. Without allocated funding, the state has no teeth or enforcement. A solution might be to tie the existing Texas State Plan for the Education of Gifted/Talented Students as a blueprint for a quality gifted program, but that remains to be discussed.
What does this have to do with Big Business, anyway? Why should they care about all these intelligent, upper-middle class, white, and predominately male students? These kids turn out fine, right? They might. They might not. However, they are but a pixel of the bigger picture.
Texas will be leaving money on the table. Public education will be filling the stereotypical gifted kid described above with only 75% of his potential. The other 25% is left to either rot or (hopefully) be found and developed by someone outside of the system. The portions of potential that rot might’ve been the next Facebook, the next spacewalk, or the next medical miracle. The legislature is ambivalent about nurturing these talents and intellect and seems to feel that 1.87% (the percentage that the GT allotment makes up) of the state finance funding is worth the risk of underdeveloped potential. (The above 75% and 25% were theoretical for illustrative purposes).
Texas will actually be leaving far more potential on the table than the above example. Much of the current GT allotment funding is specifically for identification. Children from poverty, females, and the historically minoritized populations are identified at lower rates. This has been improving with policies like universal screening, local norms, and campus-set criteria. To implement any of the preceding policies takes expertise and money. And if there is no designated funding to implement these policies, districts and campuses will have to decide what gets funded, and if gifted education deserves it. It is no surprise that many of the schools with underrepresented gifted populations are also poorer schools. These are the schools who must meet the basic, in addition to, educational needs of their students. It is in these schools where gifted programming is already, to an extent, considered a luxury item. It is in these schools where quality and more representative gifted programs cost more. Contrary to a misleading published report from the Equity Center, there is not a relationship between the 5% and the number of students a district may identify. There is no arbitrary cut-off for identifying more students than 5% of the district population.
Now, let us revisit potential. How much potential will be left on the table when the schools with the greatest needs and greatest numbers of yet-to-be-found gifted students have to decide something like, fund an afterschool program or fund GT? We will have entire zip codes and entire congressional districts where our brightest learners are not being developed. This is not a case of elitism. This is an entire generation of students whose talent, productivity and potential for expertise will be limited. These are lost patents, businesses, and scientific discoveries that will never come to fruition, sustain, nor build the Texas economy.
We know the real reason for the repeal of gifted education funding. It is not to make budgets easier on districts, the legislature just does not like the idea of gifted education. They don’t like the idea of someone else’s kid being smarter than another. They don’t like the idea that one group of kids might get something “special” another group might not. They don’t believe that there are true, special educational needs for some children based upon their intelligence. They just don’t believe in gifted education.
This notion is anti-intellectual and contrary to the basic tenets of education: challenge your students. This anti-intellectual argument for repealing GT funding took place during an exchange between a witness and the House Public Education Committee on March 12. A gifted education teacher and parent testified and questioned why it was necessary to remove the GT allotment if a new allotment was being added for dyslexia. The committee response inferred that there was research to back up dyslexia as a special need but not gifted education. This refutes the work of many educational and psychological researchers and experts and is categorically untrue. (This is by no means to say that dyslexia is not criminally underfunded in the state of Texas. It is. Hopefully, it will finally receive the attention and funding it deserves. This is not an ‘either/or’ situation; it is a ‘both’ situation. Both gifted students and dyslexic students have special needs which must be funded).
Texas earned one out of four stars in Fordham’s 2016 review of states’ encouragement of their high-achieving students — what score might it receive after gifted funding is repealed? What businesses will the state attract or keep if they do not promote the full development of future workers’ potential?
By not ensuring its brightest learners are developed to their potential, Texas is risking a future of not being attractive to businesses and underdeveloping its learners into business leaders, inventors, and scientists.
It is high time for business leaders to tell the state senators and representatives that the “Texas Plan” is bad for business.
Read part one of this series, Gifted Education Receives the Death Penalty in Texas.
