Last week, after two months of back-and-forth, House Bill 4 won its final passage in the Texas legislature. The bill, which provides state funding for public prekindergarten programs, is now ready to be signed into law. In its finalized form, House Bill 4 provides for $130 million in grantsRead More

The sixth annual Building a Grad Nation report, released last week, showcases an encouraging trend. According to the most recent data, the United States is still on track to achieve a 90% high school graduation rate by 2020. The 2013 graduation rate of 81.4% was a record high. More importantly,Read More

Last week, it was announced that Texas would not be among the 18 states awarded a federal Preschool Development Grant for the expansion of Pre-K programming. The Houston Chronicle‘s Ericka Mellon has more. Pre-K has come to be a contentious issue within education policy; during the recent gubernatorial race, itRead More

This week, students in classrooms throughout America – including many right here in Houston – will be answering the challenge to complete an “Hour of Code” as part of Computer Science Education Week, an annual event championing computer science in K-12. Given the ascendance of computer science as an industry,Read More

On Tuesday, voters in some areas of Greater Houston will decide whether to accept their school districts’ bond proposals. Bonds – securities issued by school districts with taxpayer consent, to be paid back with interest using tax revenue – are a common means of funding school facilities projects throughout theRead More

On Monday, President Obama signed a new executive order intended to ease debt burdens for 5 million students. The centerpiece of the initiative will allow students to cap their monthly payment of Federal direct student loans to 10 percent of their annual income under a program called “Pay As YouRead More

Montessori-style programs have long been a popular choice among upper-class parents for their children,  but recent research suggests that Montessori-style pre-kindergarten may particularly beneficial for low-income Latino children – especially for acquiring language skills. Ayra Ansari of UT-Austin and Adam Winsler of George Mason University examined 13,000 low-income black andRead More

Sequestration cuts from the Budget Control Act of 2011 will continue to bite students and parents borrowing to pay for college, according to a report from Clare McCann at Forbes Magazine. The Federal Department for Education announced today that student loan origination fees will slightly increase for all loans takenRead More

At the beginning of January, the Texas Education Agency issued its new statewide summary of schools that failed to meet state standards for 2013 and whose students are eligible to seek transfer under the state Public Education Grant program. The feature of the summary that grabbed the most headlines wasRead More

On January 31, the Houston Independent School District announced annual instructor bonuses through its ASPIRE program, a merit pay program for teachers funded through state and federal grants and partly through local funds. Statistical analysis suggests that schools with the highest bonuses on average were wealthier, whiter and more selectiveRead More

During his fifth State-of-the-Union address on Jan. 28, President Obama announced no major new educational initiatives. Instead, he spent the modest amount of time he dedicated to education highlighting and defending his existing record on education, Obama also announced several modest expansions of existing programs and encouraged Congress to takeRead More

The 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress Scores for math and reading are in, and the results for Houston are definitely mixed. Locally, the conventional wisdom is that Houston continues its steady improvement in math, but lags behind in reading. HISD Superintendent Terry Grier is working with administrators and (presumably)Read More

When the Houston Independent School District Board of Trustees tentatively voted to ban the use of racially based mascots and nicknames at its schools during its Dec. 15 meeting, its actions joined a several-decade old trend of American schools and sports franchises de-emphasizing or eliminating logos and nicknames associated withRead More

Three things are certain in life: death, taxes, and rapidly increasing tuition costs –or at least that’s probably how many college students and their parents feel.  According to long-term data gathered by the College Board Annual Survey of Colleges and the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES), college tuition costsRead More

Photo by: Kenta Mabuchi   John and Laura Arnold, the young Houston couple that have donated millions towards criminal justice initiatives, research methodologies, and K-12 education endeavors, have donated $10 million to help fund the Head Start program amidst the current government shutdown. Head Start, a program that offers aRead More

Purdue University President Mitch Daniels went on Chuck Todd’s The Daily Rundown this morning to express his concerns over university rankings and their impact on the financial decisions that parents and students make. While the former Gov. of Indiana believes there should be measurable markers to determine how well aRead More