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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Student-Based Budgeting Newsletter, August 2016
“Education finance is one of the big civil rights issues of our time."
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School Choice, Funding Portability, and Trends In Educational Privatization
Education Chapter of Annual Privatization Report 2016
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Student-Based Budgeting Newsletter, July 2016
“If you expect us to do something different you have to give us the opportunity to craft something.”
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California Needs Better Schools, Not Expensive Ones
Parents should have a chance to vote with their feet by implementing school choice programs that allow students and parents to choose the public schools they believe are best for them.
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Student-Based Budgeting Newsletter, June 2016
“So, while the research continues to focus on aggregated finance databases, the answer to the problem of why funds are poorly linked to student outcomes lies more in how funds are realized at the school level.”
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Making Sure Parents Can Hold Schools Accountable
How to best track the progress of California’s public schools and hold them accountable for educating students continues to spur debate.
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Student-Based Budgeting Newsletter, March 2016
"We believe instructional needs should drive funding and budget decisions, not the other way around."
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Student-Based Budgeting Newsletter, January and February 2016
“So where the public hears about efforts to close achievement gaps between minorities and white students or between higher-performing and lower-performing students, in truth different parts of the finance system are directly at odds with those stated obje
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