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.
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 $2.39 million to school systems that did not receive an initial grant to help them buy the secure storage needed to enforce the state's bell-to-bell cellphone ban.
Texas is preparing to fund special education based on how much service a student needs rather than where that student sits, one of the largest structural changes in the state's school-finance system in years, as the Texas Education Agency rolls out implementation guidance for House Bill 2 ahead of the 2026-27 school year.
Texas began distributing its first Education Freedom Account payments on July 1, with nearly 73,000 families set to receive funds in the opening round, according to a news release from the state comptroller's office.
Texas school districts paid more than $2.3 billion back to the state in recapture during the 2025-26 school year, with 192 districts writing checks under the "Robin Hood" system, according to figures compiled by the Texas School Coalition and Texas Policy Research.
With the 2025-26 school year now complete, Texas has finished the first full year under House Bill 1481, the statewide prohibition on student use of personal communication devices during the school day, and the early assessments from educators, teacher groups, and researchers point in the same general direction: noticeably calmer campuses, with the harder questions about discipline and academic results still unresolved.
Nine months into one of the largest school-district takeovers in Texas history, the first round of statewide test results offers an early measure of whether new state-appointed leadership is moving the needle in Fort Worth.
The Texas State Board of Education is scheduled to take final votes on Friday, June 26, on two changes to the state's public-school curriculum: a rewrite of the social studies standards and a new statewide reading list that would add Bible stories to required reading.
In late June 2026, a sweeping set of executive directives from the Governor's office placed the future of the state's economic infrastructure at the center of intense institutional and regulatory planning.
The Texas Comptroller’s office has awarded nearly 3,800 additional Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA) to students previously held on the program’s waitlist.
A large coalition of Republican members from the Texas House of Representatives sent a joint letter to the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) urging the immediate, unaltered adoption of the state's proposed literary works list and the comprehensive revisions to the Social Studies Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).