Other states have made similar funding changes in the past for gifted education programs, with unexpected consequences. For example, in 2009, the state of Ohio chose to move their G/T funds to its general education funds. As a result, complaints of inequities in G/T services increased to such extent over the next 9 years that in 2018, the Ohio General Assembly mandated the Ohio Education Agency to conduct a research study on the costs of G/T programming within the state. The study reached two important conclusions:

  1. Students in need of services were no longer being identified: “Within this picture, there is a lower rate of identification and there may be under-identification of students in poor rural (12.7 percent), urban (8.8 percent) and major urban (9.7 percent) school districts.”
  2. Program accountability needed to be improved: “Ohio’s school funding formula provides funding for gifted education. However, this funding flows into school district general funds without a requirement that these resources be spent exclusively for their intended gifted education purpose. Fiscal and programmatic accountability would be increased by stipulating that state gifted funding must be based on the number of students identified and/or served and that these funds be used exclusively for gifted education provided by school districts or through sanctioned outsourcing. Foundation funds currently earmarked for use by educational service centers (ESC) for gifted education could be treated in the same manner.”

More information on this study and its results can be found here. However, the results of this study show that Texas could run the risk of underidentifying G/T students in Texas without funding, along with possible issues of fiscal and program accountability.

From the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented