Research document. This one-pager is also available in its polished Maestro Press format and as a downloadable PDF. For the full constitutional and empirical analysis, see the policy brief.

The constitutional claim. The Texas school finance system fails the “efficient system” standard set by Article VII §1 of the Texas Constitution and applied by the Texas Supreme Court in Edgewood v. Kirby (1989) and Morath v. Texas Taxpayer and Student Fairness Coalition (2016). Four structural shortfalls accumulated during the decade since Morath fall below the suitability standard the 2016 Court articulated.

The fiscal finding. A campus-level regression on Texas Education Agency PEIMS data covering 1,203 districts and 8,674 campuses produces empirically derived at-risk weights that diverge substantially from the post-HB 3 (2019) tiered weights. The aggregate annual structural-soundness gap is $1.82 billion statewide, with $2.91 billion of aggregate underfunding among the 401 high-need districts whose empirical need exceeds the post-HB 3 statewide average weight. The Lost Decade (Texas AFT & Every Texan, 2022, 2024) documents a separate wage adequacy gap of approximately $4 billion per biennium. The two findings measure different axes of the same constitutional crisis.

Four documented shortfalls

• Inadequate at-risk weights. House Bill 72 (1984) set the TEC §48.104 compensatory weight at 0.20. House Bill 3 (2019) restructured it to a tiered 0.225 to 0.275 range keyed to census-block poverty. Adjusted for forty years of inflation, the post-HB 3 weights still do not cover actual instructional cost; empirical weights from the ARC regression run two to three times the post-HB 3 statewide average.
• Bond-dependent facility funding. Cleveland ISD failed four of five bonds 2019–2023 while serving 92.8% economically disadvantaged students. Ten Texas districts have passed zero non-athletic bonds across 39 attempts since 2016.
• Charter duplication. 118 non-HISD campuses operated by 51 different Local Education Agencies are inside Houston ISD’s boundary. Austin ISD and KIPP Austin both contracted simultaneously in November–December 2025.
• TIA pipeline. 46.1% of campuses in the highest economic-disadvantage quartile have zero TIA-designated teachers. House Bill 3 (2019) created TIA without the campus-type adjustment Dallas ISD added in 2020–21.

Eight legislative actions

1. Recalibrate funding weights every five years from PEIMS data, with campus-level and student-level allotment calculation; add absenteeism, homeless, and foster-care weights.
2. Index IFA and EDA guaranteed yields to construction-cost inflation.
3. Establish a state Facility Equalization Allotment for low-wealth districts.
4. Bond-Failed Fast-Growth Allotment: state per-pupil facility aid for fast-growth districts whose bonds have failed.
5. Restructure SB 1882 partnership program (TEC §11.174): public posting, sunset, conflict-of-interest bar, clawback.
6. Require ISD impact assessment before charter expansion; prohibit simultaneous ISD/charter board service.
7. Restructure takeover trigger (TEC §39.107(a)) to require de novo judicial review.
8. Amend TIA (TEC §48.112): campus-type adjustment + need-profile distribution cap (1.5x).

Full brief: maestro.press/blog/research • Contact: kevin.hopper@maestro.press