To Get a Better School System: One Hundred Years of Education Reform in Texas

Chapter 1: Retreat and Recovery in Texas Schools, 1850–1900

Chapter  Retreat and Recovery in Texas Schools, – The idea of free public education was gaining popularity in the early 1820s when American and European settlers came to Mexican Texas to take advantage of the liberal immigration policies provided by the new government of the Republic of Mexico. When Stephen F. Austin built his colony in southeast Texas, he vigorously supported the establishment of a system of public education in his colonial capital of San Felipe de Austin. Although other private schools operated, Austin wanted a permanent, publicly supported school for the colony. While the concept of free public education was important to settlers in early Texas, the establishment of a system of schools throughout the state took many years to accomplish because the solution to funding public education eluded early nineteenth-century educational supporters . Like the proponents of state-supported public education elsewhere, Republic of Texas leaders planned to fund education with the sale of public lands. Unfortunately, the problem of relying upon the sale of land proved unworkable because the Texas government sold available land for only fifty cents an acre, two and a half times less than the United States charged settlers , in order to attract emigrants into the region. Considering the large amount of land given away to those who immigrated or served in the Texas Revolution, the republic gained little money for education from land sales. Limited funds and serious opposition to increased taxation stymied attempts to establish public education throughout the South, leading one author to characterize school laws as “a record of beautifully phrased plans that never materialized.” Furthermore, those who supported free public education remained a small minority. While Texans supported free public education for orphans 8 chapter 1 and indigent children, expanding this benefit to all children would have proved too costly. Cecil E. Evans wrote, “There was no sentiment in the Republic of Texas for school taxation.” He further explained, “Any attempt at this time to establish public free schools under laws and regulations similar to those of the twentieth century would have been condemned as tyranny.” Once Texas became a state, it again addressed the idea of establishing a system of public education. The Constitution of 1845 echoed the belief in the necessity of education for the preservation of a republic. “A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people,” section 10 began, “it shall be the duty of the legislature of this State to make suitable provisions for the support and maintenance of public schools.” The constitution further stipulated that a property tax would finance the school system, in addition to 10 percent of the annual state revenue that would be set aside to establish a permanent fund to support the school system. Few public schools, however, ever emerged from this provision under the state’s first constitution. When Texas relinquished its claims on Santa Fe and the New Mexico Territory as a part of the Compromise of 1850, the state received ten million dollars in exchange. The windfall paid for the state debt incurred during the Texas Revolution, and the balance gave state leaders the opportunity to support much needed public improvements, especially in transportation and public education. The legislature enacted the School Law of 1854 and set aside almost two million dollars for the permanent school fund, but it then loaned money from the fund to finance railroad construction within the state. The legislature believed that by investing the school fund in railroads the interest from these loans would go to further the amount of money in the public education fund. In less than a decade, however, the educational plans of the legislature were shattered. The railroad companies, notorious for going bankrupt because of the tremendous amount of capital needed for rolling stock, iron rails, laborers, and operating costs, defaulted. Additionally, the Civil War bankrupted the state’s hope of sustaining itself through Cotton Diplomacy because of the Union blockade of the Gulf Coast, combined with political instability in Mexico that restricted the trade with the textile mills of Great Britain and Europe. With a depleted school fund and the economic and manpower demands of the war, public schooling in Texas came to a halt. Efforts to bring a comprehensive public education system to Texas children had to wait for the sectional conflict to end—and for Reconstruction to begin. retreat and recovery...