July 30, 2015 5:23 PM

Superintendents express skepticism over rebirth of financial accountability system

The conservative strategy of using data as a weapon or a label, rather than as a tool, has stunted efforts to utilize data to make schools better in Texas.

School districts, and especially the Fast-Growth School Coalition, are far from eager to see new life for a data-driven financial accountability system once housed at the Comptroller’s Office and now turned over to a conservative-leaning group.

Texas continues to remain a state with one of the longest, and most comprehensive, histories of data collection. But as other states have begun to leverage data collection as a tool for school improvement, Texas has lagged behind, refusing to link teacher and student data and only sporadically considering data in policy decisions.

That’s due, in part, to the conservative strategy of using data as a weapon or a label, rather than as a tool. It gets personal in fast-growth school districts, which saw a lot of finger pointing about bond debt but little in the way of support or funding for growth.

By Kimberly Reeves