Reporting on Texas schools, universities, and education policy -- funding fights, school choice, and university governance.
The man who wrote Texas’ sweeping higher-education governance law came back to the committee that produced it Tuesday — this time as a witness, not a senator — to report that the campuses he now helps run are moving faster than the statute requires.
Governor Greg Abbott announced that Texas is extending the application period for the new federal Workforce Pell Grant program, giving colleges and technical schools more time to submit eligible short-term training programs.
Two of the biggest tests of Texas public education policy arrive within weeks of each other this August, and together they will frame how the state judges its schools heading into the 2027 legislative session.
The Texas Senate Committee on Higher Education will hear invited testimony July 29 on the distribution methods for the Permanent University Fund and the newer Texas University Fund, and whether either needs reform as more campuses seek research dollars.
In late July 2026, the structural foundation of the Texas public education system faced its most significant legal challenge in a decade.
Before it spent the afternoon fighting over municipal utility districts, the Texas House land committee opened Tuesday by auditing the state's biggest landlord.
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Governor Greg Abbott's new Texas Classroom Commission is set to begin work in the coming weeks, and the teacher-workforce numbers state officials delivered to lawmakers last month define the problem it has been asked to solve: attrition is easing but still high, pay is up but is it enough, and Texas classrooms are still being filled by teachers who never earned a certificate.
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.