MORGAN SMITH: Welcome to the Raise Your Hand Texas Intersect Ed Podcast, where the stories of public education policy and practice meet.  Today, we’re talking about the special legislative session that began Oct. 9, and the intense financial pressure facing Texas public schools. I’m your host, Morgan Smith. Gov. Greg Abbott has called state lawmakers back to Austin with strict orders to complete some unfinished business from the regular legislative session that ended back in May. And if you listened to our legislative recap episode, you know there’s a lot of that when it comes to educatio ..read more

 We’re talking about a big change that’s about to wallop Texas school districts. At the end of September, as lawmakers approach an anticipated special session this fall on private school vouchers, about one out of every four public school campuses will see the letter grade that marks their performance in the state’s A-F accountability system drop.  In many cases this will happen despite student achievement at these campuses having gone up. And for high schools, there’s an added hit: a key component of their rating, the Career, College, and Military Readiness Indicator, will be retroa ..read more

How we measure success in Texas public schools? Right now, standardized testing and an A-F accountability system that assigns grades to campuses is used almost entirely to grade our schools.  Accountability, and the transparency it brings, is essential. We need to make sure the 5.4 million students in Texas public schools are provided with the tools they need to eventually enter the workforce, and that taxpayer money is being put to good use.  But what if we had a system that looked at more than how students do on one test on one day? What if we decided that what makes a “good school ..read more

The 2023 legislative session started with a lot of promise. Lawmakers had a historic $33 billion dollar budget surplus, and there was energy and consensus to address a number of public education issues. Instead, lawmakers failed to give Texas public schools enough funding to even keep up with inflation, much less provide teacher pay raises to help stop the exodus of educators from the classroom. They lost efforts to improve our accountability system so that teachers could focus on their students’ learning instead of their performance on standardized tests. They did not pass any policies t ..read more

Morgan Smith: Welcome to the Intersect Ed Podcast, where the stories of public education policy and practice meet. I’m your host, Morgan Smith. Today we are talking about something that could make a positive difference in the lives of many Texas teachers and their students: high-quality mentorship. The formalized practice of having more experienced teachers coach those newer in the profession could help with a major challenge facing Texas public schools — teacher shortages. It also benefits everyone involved — from the experienced teachers acting as mentors who now have a chance to learn new s ..read more

 Morgan Smith: Welcome to the Intersect Ed Podcast, where the stories of public education policy and practice meet.  I’m your host, Morgan Smith.  Today we are talking about Texas teachers, and how much we pay them. Or I should say: how much we don’t pay them.  What started as a slow drain — as stagnant pay forced teachers out of the classroom during the hardships of COVID, the economic downturn, and inflation — has now accelerated into a crisis. Texas public schools simply can’t keep the teachers they need in the classroom. It’s hard to overstate the urgency of what’s ..read more

Morgan Smith: You're listening to the Raise Your Hand Texas Intersect Ed Podcast where the stories of public education policy and practice meet. I'm your host Morgan Smith, and today, we're taking on a topic that has become a marquee fight of the 88th Legislature, private school vouchers.  On one side, we have our state's two most powerful elected officials, Governor Greg Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who say every parent should get the freedom to decide how to use taxpayer money in educating their children. On the other, we have every public education advocacy group in the ..read more

Morgan Smith: You're listening to the Raise Your Hand Texas IntersectEd podcast where the stories of public education policy and practice meet. I'm your host, Morgan Smith. And today we're talking about the amount of money Texas pays to educate a student in public schools.  This topic is notoriously complicated and can be very dense, but I've tracked down some very knowledgeable people to help guide us through it. We have three guests with us today, Laura Yeager, a public school parent and founder of Just Fund It TX, a nonpartisan group of parents, students, and community members, Bob Pop ..read more

As the 87th Legislative Session kicked off last January, there was one word that could be used to describe how many were feeling — uncertain. Uncertain about school funding due to COVID budget woes. Uncertain about the logistics of navigating a legislative session in the midst of a pandemic. Nonetheless, thanks to the efforts of public education supporters around the state, billions of federal COVID relief dollars are going to our schools.  In the 15th podcast episode of Intersect Ed, Director of Advocacy and Outreach, Libby Cohen, and Director of Policy, Bob Popinski, break down all of t ..read more

Deep in West Texas is the tiny town of Presidio – a remote community that is 90 miles away from the nearest McDonald’s and more than 200 miles away from the nearest Walmart. So what does a remote city like Presidio have in common with more urban areas hundreds of miles away in the Rio Grande Valley? They are all communities lacking the infrastructure to provide reliable and affordable access to the internet to their residents. With conversations happening about virtual education options for the future, Texas must solve the digital divide and that solution rests on solving infrastructure and ac ..read more