Invited to provide testimony to the Texas House of Representatives House Committee on Public Education, Frisco ISD Superintendent Dr. Michael Waldrip spent part of Tuesday in Austin where he spoke on the cost of education index and outcomes based funding.

“It is probably an index probably impossible to fix it but whatever we do I would hope that we do something in an equitable fashion,” Waldrip said to the committee. “The index was last updated in 1991. Frisco was a rural community with a 6,000 people in it we now have about a 180,000 people on that. Frisco is not the same place it was in 1991, our school district in that same amount of time has grown by 38,000 percent, so we’ve dealt with all of that and one of our neighbors to the south that has a community very much like ours is today, has a higher cost of education index and receives significantly more funding per student and yet we’re exactly almost exactly the same community.”  

After providing his input to the committee on the cost of education index, Waldrip shared an example of a reading assessment in Frisco that takes a more holistic look at the entire student beyond a multiple choice test.

“The reading teachers in Frisco administered this assessment, it looks at nine different aspects of a student’s ability to read,” Waldrip said to the committee. “The student is actually reading to the very person that knows them best in terms of their academic ability and that’s their teacher.  I would put a lot more stock in a teacher using an assessment like that to identifying and improve reading in a student than I would on a 34 question multiple choice test.”

House Public Education Committee Invited Testimony on Commission on Public School Finance Recommendations

In addition to Waldrip’s testimony, FISD Chief Financial Officer Kimberly Smith submitted written testimony to the Senate Finance Committee: Senate Finance Committee Written Testimony