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.
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.
Sen. Paul Bettencourt's committee will hear invited testimony July 28 on curriculum-review and governance changes, campus research security rules and whether the outcomes-based finance formula for junior colleges is holding up.
Sen. Joan Huffman's committee will take invited and public testimony July 28 on how public universities report their finances and on what fraud, waste and abuse cost the state budget.
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.
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 $4.7 million for Texas public community colleges and technical schools, funding career and technical education programs designed to move students into in-demand, high-earning jobs.
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.