Texas Education Agency to Unveil '65 Percent Solution' Guidelines

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Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 3/8/2006

Media specialists in Texas are anxiously awaiting the publication of rules by the Texas Education Agency (TEA), which would outline how to implement Governor Rick Perry's executive order that requires school districts to spend at least 65 percent of their budgets on classroom instruction.

So far, three states have adopted the "65 percent solution," a controversial educational funding formula mandating that school districts spend at least 65 cents of every dollar on "in-class instruction." But school librarians don't fall under the definition of classroom instruction and risk losing crucial funding.

Once TEA makes the 65 percent rules available, the public has 30 days to comment. If there are no changes, the rules will be published in the Texas Register and become law.

A group of media specialists, including Marcia Garman Zorn of Shady Oaks Elementary in Hurst, TX, has created a Web site urging that the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) include school librarians in the definition of classroom instruction.

"The outdated NCES definition does not acknowledge how much library media specialists and library media resources can directly enhance the quality of instruction for every student in every classroom," Zorn says. "Our library media centers are indeed classrooms, and as school library media specialists we indeed teach all of our students."