Reporting on Texas schools, universities, and education policy -- funding fights, school choice, and university governance.
The Texas Education Agency announced on July 16 that Houston ISD school board member Michelle Cruz Arnold has resigned after three years of service and that the agency has appointed Karen Duffy to fill the seat, effective immediately.
As Texas districts finalize plans for the coming school year, the verdict from the first full year of the state's classroom cellphone restriction is coming into focus, and educators are largely crediting it with measurable gains in attention and reading.
Governor Greg Abbott has announced 15 grants totaling more than $4.
Texas families will get their next hard look at student achievement on July 31, when the Texas Education Agency releases spring 2026 STAAR science results for grades 5 and 8, the final piece of this year's testing data and the first science scores measured fully against the revised science standards the state adopted in 2024.
The amount of local property-tax revenue Texas clawed back from property-wealthy school districts fell sharply in the 2025-26 school year, the first full accounting since lawmakers rewrote the school-finance formulas.
Governor Greg Abbott announced the launch of the Texas Classroom Commission, a new teacher-driven advisory body designed to put public school educators at the center of shaping state education policy.
Fort Worth ISD, the state's largest school district under a full Texas Education Agency takeover, is moving to close a campus and erase a tens-of-millions-dollar deficit as its appointed leadership tries to lift student outcomes fast enough to hand control back to an elected board.
Texas' first-year education savings account program is on track to fund nearly 96,000 students for 2026-27, roughly 23,000 more than began drawing money on July 1.
Texas will add exactly one new open-enrollment charter operator this year, after the State Board of Education signed off on Texas High School for Accelerated Learning, the single applicant the Texas Education Agency (TEA) advanced from a field of 18.
The Texas Education Agency has opened a second cycle of its Phone Free Schools Grant Program, offering roughly $2.