My dissertation uses a case study of Texas’ school finance system to highlight how the United States’ complicated system of school finance developed over time. I employ an historical approach to school finance to detail change over time and illuminate the people and institutions that made the system what it is. Taking a longue durée view of Texas from the 1820s to the present, I capture the ways that Texas is representative of broader state-level school finance issues. Whether it is legacies of segregation and discrimination, rural depopulation and growing cities, or rapid demographic change and low-tax conservatism, Texas history contains important moments that reveal the nuances of school finance development across the nation. Evidence for my dissertation comes from archival sources and newspapers, as well as oral interviews of activists and lawyers from recent judicial battles over school finance equity in Texas. Public schools reveal the development of American state power because public schooling has long been a major component of state and local government capacities. My dissertation centers state public school financing to illustrate broad developments in state power and democratic decision-making in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States. School fiscal policy is the foundation upon which all of education is built and powerful actors have structured school finance to reinforce their political and economic advantages. My project explains how that system was created and who it was—and was not—meant to serve.