Advocacy
Creating systemic impact for students requires work beyond Dallas County. The Commit Partnership has a team of in-house staff dedicated to advocating for student-focused public policy on local school boards and throughout the state, including inside the Texas Capitol.
School Finance
In 2018, Commit CEO Todd Williams served on the Texas Commission on Public School Finance and helped craft a comprehensive set of recommendations that focuses on improving key academic outcomes through strategic investment and increased equity in our public school finance system. Commit and its partners, through the statewide InvestEdTX campaign, are dedicated to advocating for the implementation of several of the recommendations from the Texas Commission on Public School Finance.
Our platform for student-focused school finance reform is aligned with four central tenets:
- Students First: Students are the future of Texas. We strive to support them in all that we do.
- Teachers Matter: Teachers are the single most important in-school factor in determining student success. Great schools cannot exist without great teachers.
- Local Innovation and Autonomy: Texas is large and diverse; a one-size-fits-all approach will not work here. Local stakeholders and school districts must lead the effort to build effective schools.
- Additional Dollars to Improve Outcomes: Texas students have increasing needs and deserve additional investments, geared toward successful strategies, to provide the necessary supports.
- Policy Priorities
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- Strategically and sustainably improve our school finance formula to increase per-pupil funding with significant new dollars that supplement current funding.
- Focus on early literacy interventions, including Pre-K and K-2 literacy supports, to ensure that more students are ready to read by 3rd grade
- Provide additional funding for students to achieve critical gateways in the K-12 system, vwith greater weighting for low-income students and English Language Learners
- Increase teacher compensation by providing optional funding to districts that choose to implement a locally-developed multi-measure evaluation system approved by the Texas Education Agency.