Aaron Garth Smith
Director of Education Reform, Reason Foundation
Aaron Garth Smith is the director of education reform at Reason Foundation, a nonprofit think tank advancing free minds and free markets.
Prior to joining Reason, Smith was senior director of analytics at YES Prep Public Charter Schools, a nationally-renowned charter management organization serving over 12,000 students in Houston.
Smith has worked in numerous states on school finance reforms and his writing has appeared in various publications, including Education Week, Orange County Register, Los Angeles Daily News and Los Angeles Business Journal.
Aaron graduated from the University of Maine with a bachelor's degree in business administration and earned a Master of Business Administration from Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. Aaron is based in Houston, Texas.
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Center for Student-Based Budgeting Newsletter, July 2017
“Between fiscal years 1992 and 2014, inflation adjusted (“real”) per-student spending increased by 27 percent. However, real average salaries for public school teachers actually fell by 2 percent during this time period."
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Center for Student-Based Budgeting Newsletter, June 2017
"There has been a growing understanding that school budgets are less about properly populating Excel spreadsheets and more about how to get great outcomes for kids."
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Center for Student-Based Budgeting Newsletter, May 2017
"Our results support the funding of students directly, using a weighted student funding formula, a.k.a. "backpack" funding."
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Using Property Taxes to Fund Public Schools Prompts Inequities
The most glaring problem with relying on property tax revenues to fund schools is that a child’s ZIP code can determine a school's resources.
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Center for Student-Based Budgeting Newsletter, April 2017
"If we seize the unprecedented opportunity this sleeper provision in the Every Student Succeeds Act offers, we will be better equipped to tackle some of education's most pressing issues"
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Center for Student-Based Budgeting Newsletter, March 2017
"The state's neediest students should actually receive the tax dollars that voters and the Legislature intended to spend on them."
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An Education Savings Account Program for Texas
Public testimony before the Texas Senate Education Committee on Senate Bill 3