Intersect Ed

We’re talking about the special legislative session that began Oct. 9, and the intense financial pressure facing Texas public schools. 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 education policy.

But it’s not teacher pay raises, increases to per student funding to help districts keep up with inflation, or reforms to the state’s standardized testing and accountability system the governor has directed lawmakers to tackle. It’s passing an Education Savings Account that would allow parents to use taxpayer dollars to send their kids to private schools.

There are a lot of reasons why this is bad policy for Texas, and so many lessons we can learn from the mistakes of other states that have already adopted these voucher-type programs.

In this episode, we’ll hear from Raise Your Hand Texas’ Michelle Smith, executive director, and Bob Popinski, senior director of policy, alongside Channelview ISD superintendent Tory C. Hill, State Rep. Abel Herrero (HD-34), Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, and Jolene Sanders, advocacy director at The Coalition of Texans with Disabilities as they discuss their views on the current funding crises facing Texas public schools and what’s at stake during the Special Session.

Today, 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. What’s happening now with the rollout of new standards was not directed by the Legislature, it is an agency (Texas Education Agency) level decision. And to understand how we got to this point, we have to take a trip to the opaque world of agency rulemaking.

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. This episode brings a superintendent, a school board member, a former teacher, a CEO, and an advocacy leader together to discuss why Texas students deserve to be graded on more than just one test on one day.

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 to help recruit and retain high-quality teachers.

The formalized practice of having more experienced teachers coach those newer in the profession has the potential to 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 skills, to the newer teachers they are supporting, and to the students who now have confident, calm educators in the classroom.

Hear from current and former teachers Mario Piña, Regional Advocacy Director - Central Texas at Raise Your Hand Texas, Jennifer Cook, 7th Grade English Language Arts Teacher at Livingston ISD, and Jerome Johnson, 8th Grade English Language Arts Teacher at Channelview ISD in this episode. They will share how mentoring teachers can create higher-quality classrooms across Texas, and why Texas lawmakers need to take the framework of what’s already a good program and expand it so that more teachers — whether veteran or new in the classroom — can benefit from teacher mentoring for generations to come.

With just a few weeks left in the 88th Legislative Session, lawmakers are deciding how to spend a record-breaking $33 billion surplus, with tens of billions more in estimated growth in revenue over the next two years. And, as the hours creep closer and closer to the last day of the 2023 legislative session, they are not deciding to spend it on teachers.

You may have seen headlines about some major legislation — Senate Bill 9 and House Bill 100 are two of the proposals out there that would increase teacher pay. But here’s what you need to know about those bills: they don’t come anywhere close to moving Texas teacher pay in line with the national average OR bumping their salaries enough to keep up with inflation.

Hear from Raise Your Hand Texas teacher specialist JoLisa Hoover and three Texas teachers. They will share the reasons why a real pay raise is needed, and why one of the teachers is leaving the classroom at the end of this school year.

We're taking on a topic that has become a marquee fight of the 88th Legislature: private school vouchers, which are also known as education savings accounts. 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 state, including Raise Your Hand Texas, who all say that vouchers will do nothing but harm students, teachers, and communities. This episode discusses how vouchers will harm Texas’ rural communities and the implications and disadvantages of special education vouchers.

What is the amount of money Texas pays to educate a student in public schools? What's known as the basic allotment is the per-student sum the state uses as the foundational building block to determine how much money it will pay to educate a student. Learn why it should be increased in the 88th Texas Legislative Session.

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 dollars are going to our schools. Listen as we reflect on this past session — the bruising moments and the bright ones — to uncover how, in the end, it was a win for Texas students.

With conversations happening about virtual education options for the future, Texas must solve the digital divide and that solution rests on solving infrastructure and access issues. The solutions need to work for students in major metropolitan areas as well as the students in the most rural communities. In part two of Intersect Ed’s look at the digital divide in Texas, we focus on what innovative solutions communities are finding to close the gap between the haves and the have nots of the internet age.