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
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