Local districts don't have much say in curriculum after the "No Child Left Behind" act.

The push for more public funding to charter schools really only benefits districts with lower population and higher property taxes as the charter schools generally have a much higher teacher to student ratio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_child_left_behind

> Local districts don't have much say in curriculum after the "No Child Left Behind" act.

Yes, they do (unless states took it away from local districts, but that's not a direct consequence of NCLB or the subsequent federal law, even if it is in some way motivated by it.)

NCLB created, and subsequent federal law has modified, requirements for testing and accountability based on that testing, but left to the states most of the actual standards and content of the testing (and did virtually nothing to direct curriculum.)

In theory yes, but in practice the teachers are incentived above all else to cater everyday they can to push the standardized testing material into all of the students leaving very very little room for creative teaching.

I don't know about local districts, but individual states still control the curriculum under NCLB. As far as I can determine, NCLB only imposed requirements on testing, and left the standards of proficiency to test up to the states. And of course, the only tool the Department of Education has to enforce anything is funding. They have no power over schools that take little or no federal funds.

Local funding in Texas gets re-distributed from richer to poorer areas. Given the terrible conditions down in S.Texas it's probably a good policy.

I agree it's a good policy. But Texas still ranks near the bottom in state funding for schools. Texas is a welfare state, education-wise, getting half its money from the federal government.