by Tim Holt
When Education Reform Creates New Problems
In Part 3, “Follow the Money,” I turned my attention to the business leaders behind CREEED and asked why an organization concerned with educational improvement isn’t placing greater emphasis on the economic conditions affecting students’ families. Low wages, inadequate benefits, expensive housing, and financial insecurity follow children into the classroom every morning. I also questioned the wisdom of preparing students for successful careers if El Paso’s economy cannot provide opportunities that encourage them to stay. We may be educating tomorrow’s workforce for Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio while doing little to improve the lives of the families raising those students today.
The Charter School Solution
There’s another aspect of CREEED’s history that deserves attention:
The organization hasn’t limited itself to helping existing public schools improve. It has actively supported the expansion of charter schools in El Paso, which often end up with substantial annual operating surpluses.
Amy O’Rourke was an early advocate of charter school expansion. CREEED subsequently recruited charter school operators to the region and established a $10 million fund to support the expansion of IDEA Public Schools. It also established a $2.25 million fund supporting Harmony Public Schools. These weren’t minor activities. Charter school expansion has been a significant part of CREEED’s educational strategy.
Now, before anyone starts yelling, charter schools are public schools, too. They operate under a different governance structure, but they receive public funding and are part of Texas’s public education system. The issue isn’t whether charter schools have a right to exist. The issue is what happens to traditional public school districts when students leave for charter schools. (BTW, can you name a single person on the IDEA Board of Directors? Who the regional superintendent is? I bet you can’t.)
Texas funds public education largely according to student attendance. When a student transfers from a traditional district to a charter school, the attendance-based funding associated with that student generally follows the student. When a school district loses 100 students, it doesn’t necessarily lose 100 students’ worth of expenses. The buildings still need electricity. The buses still need maintenance. The district still has administrative responsibilities, and it may not be able to reduce staffing proportionately.
So a district can lose revenue faster than it can reduce costs.
Charter school advocates reasonably argue that public education funding should follow students to the schools their families choose. Abbott’s flawed voucher scheme attempts to do just that. But that doesn’t eliminate the financial consequences for the districts those students leave behind. This creates an interesting possibility. CREEED may be supporting reforms that place additional financial pressure on the very traditional public school districts whose performance it wants to improve. The CREEED medicine may actually be making the educational disease they are trying to fix worse.
I said it may. To establish that this has happened in El Paso, we would need to examine actual enrollment changes, funding losses, and district expenditures. We would also need to determine whether charter expansion has produced educational benefits that outweigh any financial disruption. But surely an organization that places such importance on data should be interested in answering those questions. How many students have transferred from traditional El Paso districts to CREEED-supported charter schools? How much funding have those districts lost? Have academic programs, staffing positions, or student services been reduced as a result? (All those “IDEA” schools that have popped up around the area? You guessed it: CREEED helped bring them to town, along with Betsy DeVos, before she destroyed the U.S. Department of Education.)
And perhaps most importantly, has expanding charter schools improved educational outcomes for El Paso children overall, or has it primarily redistributed students and educational resources among different school systems? Those are two very different results.
Meanwhile, Back in Austin
And while we’re discussing the financial difficulties facing public schools, perhaps we should look a little farther east, toward Austin.
For years, Texas public schools have struggled with funding that hasn’t kept pace with inflation. The Republican-controlled state government has repeatedly emphasized school accountability, educational competition, nonprofit charters (which can generate substantial annual operating surpluses), and parental choice, while districts have struggled to pay teachers, maintain buildings, pay for unfunded state mandates, provide student services, and balance their budgets.
Now, before someone points out that Texas has increased education funding, yes, it has. The Legislature approved a major school finance package in 2019 and another in 2025. But those increases need to be considered alongside inflation, enrollment changes, and the rising cost of operating schools.
Consider what happened between 2019 and 2025. Texas’s basic allotment, one of the principal sources of school funding, remained frozen at $6,160 per student for six years. During that same period, the cost of practically everything increased. Electricity, insurance, transportation, salaries, maintenance, and instructional materials all became more expensive.
If your household income stayed exactly the same for six years while your expenses kept increasing, would you consider yourself financially better off? Neither would a school district.
And then there’s 2023, when Texas had a historic budget surplus but failed to approve a major increase in public school funding. The political dispute centered partly on Abbott’s insistence on establishing a flawed private school voucher program. Public schools continued struggling while state leaders fought over whether public money should help pay for private education.
In 2025, the Legislature finally approved approximately $8.5 billion in additional public school funding. That was welcome news, particularly for teachers and special education programs. But the basic allotment increased by only $55 per student, nowhere near what school officials said was necessary to recover from years of inflation.
The Legislature also approved a $1 billion private school voucher program.
Where has CREEED been in this fight? Inviting TEA Commish Morath, probably the most despised public school official in the state, to your celebration luncheon is not exactly lobbying for better funding or showing the public school districts you love them. CREEED’s website says it supports school finance reform, strategic investment, and greater equity in educational funding. Good. Those are worthwhile goals. But what specific actions has it taken to persuade the anti-public school Republican leadership in Austin to provide traditional public schools with sufficient operating funds?
Has CREEED publicly challenged the state’s failure to keep basic school funding aligned with inflation? Did it object when additional school funding became entangled in the political battle over vouchers? Has it used its considerable business and political influence to demand that the Legislature provide adequate resources to the districts responsible for educating most of El Paso’s children?
Perhaps it has. If so, I’d be interested in seeing the legislative testimony, public statements, letters, and lobbying efforts documenting that work. CREEED has demonstrated that it can organize influential business leaders, raise substantial amounts of money, advocate educational policies, and help bring charter school operators into El Paso. It clearly knows how to make its voice heard when it considers something important. So why shouldn’t we expect that same energy when traditional public schools are struggling with inadequate inflation-adjusted funding?
Think about the position our local districts find themselves in. They’re serving children whose families face significant economic challenges. Many of those children are learning English while learning academic subjects. Districts must provide special education, transportation, counseling, and other services while complying with state accountability requirements. Meanwhile, the state controls much of the funding available to meet those responsibilities. And when the money doesn’t stretch far enough, who gets blamed?
The school district.
When test scores don’t meet expectations, who gets blamed?
The teachers and principals.
When programs are eliminated, positions disappear, or schools close, who gets blamed?
Usually the superintendent and school board.
There’s something peculiar about a system in which state leaders determine most of the funding, local educators are responsible for producing the results, and influential outside organizations help judge whether those results are good enough.
I’m not suggesting that money alone solves educational problems. Anyone who has worked in education knows better. But pretending that funding doesn’t matter is equally ridiculous. Try operating a successful business for six years without increasing your budget while your expenses climb, then explain to your shareholders why productivity hasn’t improved. I suspect the response would be considerably less enthusiastic than the speeches we hear about educational accountability.
And that’s what I’d like to see from CREEED: the same scrutiny of the decisions made in Austin that it applies to the decisions made in El Paso classrooms.
If we’re going to hold teachers accountable for student performance, shouldn’t we also hold state lawmakers accountable for providing the resources necessary to educate those students? And shouldn’t an organization with CREEED’s obvious political connections be among those asking the questions?
Changing Schools Doesn’t Change Poverty
Let’s assume for a moment that a student transfers from an EPISD school to an IDEA school because a parent fell for that slick, taxpayer-funded IDEA ad and thought that IDEA provides a “better education.” Maybe that’s a good outcome for that child. Maybe it isn’t.
But what happened to the child’s family income? Did the parents receive better wages? Did the family gain access to affordable housing? Did childcare become less expensive? Did the parents suddenly have more time to help with homework? Probably not.
The child’s educational environment may have improved, but the family’s economic circumstances remain largely unchanged. That’s the part of this equation I believe deserves considerably more attention. And here’s the kicker: What if a charter decides it doesn’t want that student anymore? Theoretically, of course, could a charter school pressure parents to send their kids back to their original public school? It can’t legally expel students simply because they aren’t making academic progress, but could it encourage parents to withdraw them voluntarily? (BTW, have you noticed that IDEA no longer claims that “100% of our students are college-ready” in its taxpayer-funded ads? Now it just says, “Most of our students are college-ready.” Hell, the public schools can make that claim.) Traditional public schools must educate the children who live within their attendance boundaries, including those who return from charter schools. And if charter schools could encourage parents of struggling students to leave, shouldn’t somebody be asking questions whether that practice is even allowed?
CREEED’s basic theory appears to be that improving education will eventually improve El Paso’s economy. Better schools produce better-educated students. Better-educated students attract better-paying jobs. Better-paying jobs create a stronger community.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that argument, assuming your better-educated students stay in El Paso. Education is an important part of economic development. But the relationship works in the opposite direction, too. A stronger economy can produce more financially secure families. More financially secure families can provide children with greater educational opportunities. Those children may arrive at school better prepared to learn and better equipped to succeed. In other words, better schools can help create a better economy, but a better economy can also help create better schools.
CREEED seems considerably more interested in the first half of that equation.
So we’re left with an interesting situation. Traditional public schools are being asked to improve their performance while competing for students, coping with financial pressures, and educating children whose economic circumstances remain largely unchanged. Meanwhile, the people promoting these reforms don’t necessarily have to deal with the consequences and actively promote actions that weaken the very schools they say need more help. Which raises another question: Who, exactly, is holding the reformers accountable?
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