Legislative

Connecting the Dots Between School Spending and Results

Texas Comptroller Susan Combs is leading the effort to examine how our school districts and campuses spend their money and how this spending translates into student achievement. The study is intended to identify cost-effective practices that promote academic progress.

The 2009 Legislature’s House Bill 3 directed the Comptroller to “identify school districts and campuses that use resource allocation practices that contribute to high academic achievement and cost-effective operations.” In response, the Comptroller’s office created the Financial Allocation Study for Texas (FAST) to examine district and campus resource allocation – and the relationship between these allocations and student achievement.

“Connecting the Dots: School Spending and Student Progress” is Comptroller Combs’ report on this subject. Follow this link to the Executive Summary that includes Comptroller Combs’ recommendations for class size limits, use of districts’ fund balances, and other cost drivers.

Visit the Financial Allocation Study for Texas (FAST) for more information. The Comptroller’s Financial Allocation Study for Texas (FAST) examines both academic progress and spending at Texas’ school districts and individual school campuses. Each district and campus is assigned a FAST rating of one to five stars, indicating its success in combining cost-effective spending with the achievement of measurable student academic progress. Five stars reflects the strongest relative progress combined with the lowest relative spending.

This site allows districts to run their own custom reports on school district finances.