Reporting on Texas schools, universities, and education policy -- funding fights, school choice, and university governance.
Gary VanDeaver, the former rural superintendent who fought private school vouchers in 2023 who was one of only two House Republicans to vote no when they passed in 2025, will take over the Texas Association of School Boards on Oct. 1.
Heights Elementary School in Texas City Independent School District has been designated a 2026 Texas Lone Star Ribbon School, one of just 25 public schools in the state to receive the honor this year, according to a Sept. 22 news release from the office of state Rep. Terri Leo Wilson.
The Texas A&M University System regents will meet Aug. 27 to approve an interim provost for the flagship campus in College Station — a campus hire that until last year would not have reached the board at all.
The nine regents who run the Texas State Technical College system meet Aug. 27 in Waco to set tuition and fee rates for the fall of 2027 — more than a year out — and to adopt the system's operating budget for the year that begins Sept. 1.
Texas school districts received $1,000 for every teacher who started uncertified and earned a standard teaching certificate, and the state has now told them in writing that they may spend that money on whatever they like.
The Texas Workforce Commission will meet Aug. 25 to adopt a rewrite of the rules governing the state's child care scholarships, including a change that would end automatic eligibility for children whose families are homeless.
The Texas State Board of Education will vote Aug. 31 on rewritten standards for four high school social studies courses, the last and most contested piece of a curriculum overhaul the board largely settled in June.
The Texas Education Agency has adopted a rule letting the state education commissioner place an overseer inside any school district that falls behind on the state's school safety requirements.
Texas high school students who graduate after Aug. 31, 2027 will no longer have to pass a state English II exam to earn a diploma, the Texas Education Agency told school administrators in a letter dated Aug. 20, ending a testing requirement that has stood since the state built its current graduation system.
Texas is putting more than $2 million behind free college textbooks.
The 2026 A-F accountability ratings released Aug. 14 look like progress.
Texas parents, teachers and school districts have eight more days to tell the state what they think of a rule that would require a school to call a parent within one school day when a student discloses certain things — a second chance that exists because the Texas Education Agency published the wrong web address the first time.
The pension fund covering Texas public school teachers is no longer actuarially sound, and the reason is the teacher pay raise lawmakers passed last year.
The board that invests Texas's $60 billion school endowment votes Thursday on how much extra money to send public schools in 2028 and 2029.