2023/11/01 by Angus McLeod, A. Ian McLeod
Social Sciences · #Diverse Education Studies and Reforms #Indigenous and Place-Based Education #School Choice and Performance
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/heq.2023.31
openalex publication_date 2023/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Abstract Contrary to Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell’s majority opinion in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973), Texas’s school finance system was the result of years of legislation and state-building that gave some areas the resources and capacity to provide more educational opportunities than others. As this article demonstrates, during the century leading up to the Rodriguez decision, Texas political leaders developed a public school funding system reliant on the highly unequal spatial distribution of property wealth across rural/urban, class, and racial lines. There was nothing inevitable about this. In fact, the history of Texas’s system reveals four pivotal eras when the state’s White leaders created and maintained a school finance system reliant on local property taxes and defined by rural/urban and racial differences that cemented deep inequalities. This case study traces those changes over time and brings part of the story to life through the example of Kirbyville, Texas, and its struggle to finance a new White high school. Returning to the historical roots of school financing in Texas reveals how rural/urban, racial, and wealth inequalities have been foundational to Texas’s public school finance system.