Houston ISD's state-appointed board unanimously approved a $2.1 billion budget for the 2025-26 school year that will continue funding Superintendent Mike Miles' highly debated reforms.  Four new board members — Edgar Colón, Marty Goossen, Lauren Gore and Marcos Rosales — greenlit the budget just two weeks after their appointment to the board by the state's education commissioner.  Commissioner Mike Morath removed board Vice President Audrey Momanaee, Cassandra Auzenne Bandy, Rolando Martinez and Adam Rivon, who served on the district’s nine-member appointed school board since June 2023. Of those removed, three had voted against the 2024-25 budget last year: Martinez, Rivon, and Auzenne Bandy, alongside Michelle Cruz Arnold. It had been the board's largest public rebuke of any proposal by Miles, who largely sees unanimous approval from the board. view article

Houston ISD's state-appointed board unanimously approved a $2.1 billion budget for the 2025-26 school year that will continue funding Superintendent Mike Miles' highly debated reforms.  Four new board members — Edgar Colón, Marty Goossen, Lauren Gore and Marcos Rosales — greenlit the budget just two weeks after their appointment to the board by the state's education commissioner.  Commissioner Mike Morath removed board Vice President Audrey Momanaee, Cassandra Auzenne Bandy, Rolando Martinez and Adam Rivon, who served on the district’s nine-member appointed school board since June 2023. Of those removed, three had voted against the 2024-25 budget last year: Martinez, Rivon, and Auzenne Bandy, alongside Michelle Cruz Arnold. It had been the board's largest public rebuke of any proposal by Miles, who largely sees unanimous approval from the board. view article

The Texas Education Agency released high school End-of-Course assessments for Spring 2025.  Newly released results of Texas high school students’ End-of-Course assessments for 2025 show “too many students are still not where they need to be academically,” according to the state agency that oversees public education.  The Texas Education Agency released Spring 2025 STAAR End-of-Course assessment results on Tuesday. Newly released results of Texas high school students’ End-of-Course assessments for 2025 show “too many students are still not where they need to be academically,” according to the state agency that oversees public education.  The Texas Education Agency released Spring 2025 STAAR End-of-Course assessment results on Tuesday.  STAAR is short for State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, standardized testing “designed to measure the extent to which a student has learned and is able to apply the defined knowledge and skills in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills at each tested grade, subject, and course.”  STAAR is short for State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, standardized testing “designed to measure the extent to which a student has learned and is able to applye defined knowledge and skills in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills at each tested grade, subject, and course.” view article

Karen Molinar didn’t wait. Just hours after the Texas Education Agency released early state testing data, the Fort Worth ISD superintendent brought results straight to the school board — including results not yet public. Third-, fourth- and fifth-grade reading scores are rising, Molinar told trustees at a June 10 board meeting. Middle school results improved slightly, too. But for a district under state pressure to improve, Molinar and trustees are hopeful recent instructional changes will pay off. view article

Officials with the Fort Worth Independent School District are celebrating preliminary results from a statewide standardized test that they said shows gains in reading performance for grades 3 through 8. Superintendent Karen Molinar presented the early test results for spring 2025 during a school board meeting on Tuesday, June 10, a week before the Texas Education Agency publicly releases statewide testing data from the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, for elementary and middle school grades. TEA released End-of-Course assessment results for high school subjects on Tuesday morning, which showed the district had seen gains in student performance in Biology and Algebra I, but losses in English I, English II and U.S. History. view article

Among the Houston area's most populated school districts, many outperformed the state's average STAAR test scores — but students in Aldine, Pasadena and Spring trailed behind. The three school districts had smaller percentages of students "meet grade level" standards compared to Texas' average for high school students in almost all subjects tested: Algebra I, Biology, English I, English II and U.S. History. Pasadena ISD performed better than the state average in Algebra I. view article

Austin Independent School District parents rallied outside the Texas Education Agency on Tuesday, demanding more time to improve outcomes at schools with repeated failing accountability ratings. Three of the district’s middle schools, Dobie, Burnet and Webb, are set to receive their third consecutive failing accountability score when the 2024 state ratings are released, according to Austin ISD officials. A lawsuit filed by several school districts is currently preventing the TEA from releasing any state ratings from that year to the public. view article

Most large Houston-area districts saw slight declines over the past two years on STAAR test data released Tuesday, but most still outperformed state averages. Katy ISD, a west Houston district with 96,000 students, took the lead over other large Houston area districts in all subjects. Despite the district having seen its own slight declines over the past two years, students performed better on average than in all other large districts, with Cy-Fair ISD and Conroe ISDs in tow. view article

State-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles offered "nothing but praise" for Houston ISD's four recently ousted board members on a Hello Houston radio episode with Houston Public Media Tuesday morning.  iles offered his first comments on Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath's unexpected decision to remove and replace four appointed board members as well as the two-year extension of the takeover to June 1, 2027. Two years into the state takeover, Miles commended the district's recently-released test scores, new teaching strategies, and programs introduced during the district's overhaul, defended a rise in teacher turnover and community distrust and acknowledged the district's failed $4.4 billion bond. view article

As part of our ongoing commitment to providing equitable, rigorous and sustainable academic programming across Leander ISD, we are moving forward with a consolidation of the district’s International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme to a single high school campus: Leander High School. This decision follows an extensive review of enrollment trends, student access, staffing capacity and the program’s long-term financial sustainability and viability. view article

Adam Rivon, one of the four recently ousted members of the Houston ISD Board of Managers, won’t speculate on why he was suddenly removed from his role this week, though he said “people are intelligent and they can make their own assumptions.”  Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath unexpectedly removed Rivon, along with three other appointees, from their roles on the Board of Managers this week, and replaced them with four new board members. Morath also announced the extension of the state intervention of the district through June 1, 2027.   In an interview with the Chronicle, Rivon said the TEA told him they “wanted to bring in a new team,” but he wasn’t given any specific reasons why they decided to remove him from the appointed board after serving in the role since the state takeover of Texas’ largest school district in June 2023. view article

The Texas Education Agency has announced an extension of its takeover of Houston ISD. A letter sent out by TEA head Mike Morath on Monday morning states that the state's takeover of the district will now be extended until June 2027. view article

A legislative effort to scrap the STAAR test to respond to concerns that the test puts unnecessary pressure on students died in the last days of the legislative session.  House Bill 4, authored by state Rep. Brad Buckley, would have swapped the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness test for three shorter tests given throughout the school year.  The Senate and House failed to come out of closed-door negotiations with a compromise in time, missing a key legislative deadline this weekend.  Legislators in the House and Senate agreed that Texas schools needed to do away with the STAAR test. But in the end, the two chambers could not close the gulf over what they wanted to see out of the new test and from the A- ratings system, which uses standardized test results to grade schools’ performance.  Tensions had come to a head in recent years when a dispute over how ratings should be calculated led to two years of scores to be held up in court.  The Senate wanted to solidify the Texas Education Agency commissioner’s authority to set stricter standards for the ratings system. And to discourage schools from taking legal action again, the upper chamber’s version of the bill gave the TEA commissioner authority to appoint a conservator to districts that initiate lawsuits.  The House version, meanwhile, required the TEA to get approval from the Legislature before making major changes to the ratings system. And it left an avenue for districts to sue to challenge the TEA in the future, while setting up a fast-track court process so those lawsuits would not halt the release of the ratings.  The two chambers also differed over whether to keep or do away with a mandatory social studies test, with the House in favor of less testing.  Keep tabs on Texas politics and policy with our morning newsletter  Keep tabs on Texas politics and policy with our morning newsletter view article

The state takeover of Houston ISD will continue for two more years before the Texas Education Agency announces the timeline for the transition back to elected board members overseeing the district. TEA Commissioner Mike Morath said in a letter that HISD has made "tremendous" improvements in student academic performance during the first year of state intervention, as well as gains in finance, operations, special education compliance and school board governance. view article

Faizan Zaki, 13, stood as the final contestant Thursday night in the Scripps National Spelling Bee and contemplated the word that could make him champion: éclaircissement.  The Plano ISD student went through the word, the excitement in his voice growing letter by letter and his breath catching slightly as he finished it perfectly and the judges declared him the winner.  Faizan dropped to the floor exhausted and triumphant as the confetti rained down on him. view article

Faizan Zaki — who was last year's runner-up — is the winner of the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee. The 13-year-old received the coveted Scripps Cup Thursday night after correctly spelling éclaircissement — a French word that means clarification, explanation or enlightenment in English. He outspelled more than 240 other competitors from across the country, including runner-up Sarvadnya Kadam. view article

AUSTIN -- School boards could pull books from school library shelves if they deem them profane or indecent under legislation given final passage Wednesday in the Texas House.  Librarians, who are charged with curating the book collections, would need to seek the school board's approval before buying books under Senate Bill 13, by Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney.  District officials could appoint local advisory councils, composed of parents, educators and community members, to review books and make recommendations to the school board. view article

Get ready San Antonio. More high school students are seeking workforce training and certifications. view article

RAVALLI COUNTY, Mont. — After years of putting it off, Montana’s Florence-Carlton school district had to decide: Would it join the many smaller districts in the state with a four-day school week, or stick with a five-day schedule?  This story also appeared in Chalkbeat and Montana Free Press  Until recently, some local education leaders thought the four-day week was a poor fit for the town of Florence. Staffing problems, including having to cut nine employees, the end of pandemic-era education funding, and the loss of 50 students this school year, however, put the district of about 730 students in a tight spot. view article

The Texas House gave preliminary approval Monday to a bill that would eliminate STAAR, the high-stakes standardized test that the state and school districts use to monitor student learning and teacher performance. The STAAR test “leads to anxiety in our classroom with our teachers, and it leads to absolutely no information that a parent can understand,” said Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Salado. “Assessment should be instructionally relevant and actionable.” House Bill 4 got a near unanimous vote in the House on Monday, but faces a tough road in the Senate. The upper chamber has its own idea for what an overhaul of the state standardized test and the accountability system should look like. The gulf between the proposals is wide — one lawmakers will need to close in the final weeks of this year’s legislative session.  Both the House and Senate versions of the legislation would swap the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, with a shorter test to free up time for more instruction. Students would be tested at the beginning, middle and end of the school year so teachers could use test results to identify areas for improvement and shape their lesson plans. The proposals would also change the state accountability system that grades districts on an A-F scale. view article

Multiple investigations have been launched against the state’s largest school district over allegations of electioneering after it already faced criminal fraud charges and federal, state and county investigations over the years. The latest allegation against Houston Independent School District is that board members again violated state law by using taxpayer money to urge voters to support a $4.4 billion bond last November. view article

The schools were closed last week after years of declining enrollment. The school communities said increased choices were to blame.  LUFKIN — Kurth Primary’s campus was quiet as parents pulled their cars into line to pick up their kids on Wednesday, the last day of school. The peace didn’t last long. As noon approached, teachers began helping kids to their parents' cars for the last time. Kids waved goodbye to their friends and teachers. Wednesday wasn’t just the last day of the school year at Kurth. It was the last day, for the immediate future, the school will be open at all. The Lufkin Independent School District board earlier this year voted to close it and another school, Coston Elementary. Jupiter Collins, 7, had big plans for the lake over Memorial Day weekend, she said as she waited to crawl into her dad’s car. As excited as she is for her summer plans, Jupiter is also nervous about going to a new school next year.  Schools are more than brick and mortar in Deep East Texas. They are the places where students experienced historic events with their peers. They are a common ground for generations of families who walked their halls. They are evenings spent performing plays and days spent taking tests and playing tag at recess. view article

The Angelina College Law Enforcement Academy on Monday held a ceremony honoring its Class 118 graduates as they head into their respective law enforcement careers. view article

A day after Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath toured multiple Houston ISD campuses, an elected trustee for the district asked him to restore local control of the state’s largest public school system. Savant Moore, who has no voting power on the HISD school board because of ongoing state intervention, told Houston Public Media that he sent an email to Morath on Thursday asking the commissioner "to respectfully urge that the transition back to local control begin on June 2025." view article

With weeks until the deadline to announce a potential extension of the state takeover of Houston ISD, Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath expressed strong support Wednesday for the “spectacular” reforms that have occurred in the district since June 2023. view article

Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath is visiting Houston on Wednesday to tour several Houston ISD campuses; however, the visit is already stirring controversy among parents. Ahead of his scheduled press conference with HISD Superintendent Mike Miles—set to take place at the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts—parents are expressing frustration over what they describe as a last-minute effort to make schools appear cleaner and better maintained than usual. view article

Officials in the Fort Worth Independent School District say that closing and consolidating more than a dozen campuses would save the district millions of dollars over the next five years, allowing them to redirect more money toward academic priorities. District officials presented a proposed five-year facilities plan at a school board meeting Tuesday. The plan includes the closure and consolidation of 18 small and under-enrolled schools, including S.S. Dillow Elementary School, which is scheduled view article

Gathered together in bright blue school caps, parents from Fairmont’s De Zavala Elementary School made their case against Fort Worth ISD’s plan to shut down their school in 2027. “We were told by the district no decisions to close De Zavala would be made anytime soon. That does not seem to be the case,” said one parent. De Zavala scored an A on the latest TEA A–F ratings. It was one of the few A-rated schools in Fort Worth ISD. The district is at risk of state takeover for having too many failing schools. view article

The Texas House gave preliminary approval Monday to a bill that would eliminate STAAR, the high-stakes standardized test that the state and school districts use to monitor student learning and teacher performance.The STAAR test “leads to anxiety in our classroom with our teachers, and it leads to absolutely no information that a parent can understand,” Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Salado, said on the House floor Monday. “Assessment should be instructionally relevant and actionable.”  House Bill 4 got a near unanimous vote in the House on Monday, but faces a tough road in the Senate. The upper chamber has its own idea for what an overhaul of the state standardized test, and the school rating system largely based on that test’s outcomes, should look like. The gulf between the proposals is wide — one lawmakers will need to close in the final weeks of this year’s legislative session. view article

House Bill 4 would make the test shorter and base scores on how students’ performance compares to national averages. view article

The Texas education commissioner is now officially weighing his options for Fort Worth ISD after a now-closed school triggered the state’s school intervention law. In a May 5 letter to Superintendent Karen Molinar and board President Roxanne Martinez, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath said the district’s accountability ratings triggered a state law that requires him to intervene.  The issue: The Leadership Academy at Forest Oak Sixth Grade failed to meet state standards for five straight years — a threshold that mandates either a campus closure or the appointment of a board of managers to govern the entire district.This former Fort Worth ISD campus placed the entire district on state's potential takeover list view article

Austin ISD is looking to hire dozens of experienced teachers with proven track records in the classroom to help turn around three under-performing schools. The school district says it's looking for "transformative teachers" who can have an immediate impact on student achievement at Dobie, Webb, and Burnet Middle Schools. Those schools have received multiple "F" ratings from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) state accountability rating system. view article

Houston ISD's Board of Managers and state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles heard the concerns of more than 60 HISD high schoolers in a report presented at a board meeting Thursday as the district nears the two-year anniversary of its state takeover. While some students pointed to improvements after HISD implemented new programs and reforms, including the district's college, career and military readiness programs, others shared concerns about poor student morale, teacher fear and burnout and inflexible instruction, according to a new report from the board's Ad Hoc Community Engagement Committee. The committee's second report came as Houston ISD's Board of Managers approved its district-developed curriculum materials for the 2025-26 school year Thursday. view article

Dallas Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde told a theater full of educators on Tuesday that Texas could be “standing on the precipice” of eliminating the STAAR test. During her annual State of the District address, Elizalde lauded a legislative proposal to scrap the state’s much-derided standardized test and replace it with a series of shorter exams that would be given to students throughout the year. view article

Klein ISD maintained its B rating with the release of the 2022-2023 Texas Education Agency accountability ratings. Serving 54,000, Klein ISD has 50 schools from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade. view article