News Briefs

Charter Report
charter-hro.thumbnail
To mark the 25th anniversary of the opening of the first 20 charter schools in Texas in 1996, the House Research Organization — a branch of the Texas House — published a 12-page history and fact sheet about charters in the state.

As of the 2020-21 school year, 184 charter operators ran 835 charter campuses in Texas, mostly in urban areas. Those charter schools served about 366,000 students — 6.8 percent of all Texas public school students.

In addition to focusing on the most numerous types of charters (open enrollment), the report examines other types of charters, including campuses operated as charters by ISDs, and district-charter partnerships formed under 2017’s SB1882.

Interim Studies
interim-studies-thumbnail
The Texas Legislative Council has posted a 114-page report that lists the hundreds of interim studies authorized by the Legislature during the regular session and the three special sessions.

Most of the interim studies are to be completed by the time the Legislature meets for its 88th regular session in 2023.

The report summarizes each interim study that is to be completed, the deadline for completion — and includes the link to the bill that authorized the study.

Some of the public education interim studies to be conducted address competency based education programs, special-ed funding, virtual education, COVID-19 funding to schools, school employee health coverage options and telehealth programs in schools.

UIL News
The UIL this month posted details about four new league rules that were approved by the league’s Legislative Council in October, and were adopted immediately after being cleared by the education commissioner. The four rules are in the areas of: 1) reclassification/realignment, 2) the June 2022 Scholastic Basketball Event, 3) softball and baseball post-season playoffs and 4) one-act play.

Rice University Research
rice-university
  • Rice University researchers released school related reports this month. Highlights:
  • School funding — This report by the Baker Institute for Public Policy predicts that the move by Texas energy producing companies toward cleaner, renewable sources of energy (away from oil and gas production) could result in reductions of funding for schools amounting to $2.5 billion to $5.8 billion sometime between 2022 and 2029.

    The report cautions, however, that while the numbers seem large, they represent only between 0.5 percent and 3 percent of the total baseline K-12 funding over the next 30 years.

    The researchers suggested that the funding shortfalls should not be an impediment to the transition to renewable energy because the shortfalls can be made up for in other ways, via modest policy changes.

    The report proposes three potential reform options to make up the funding shortfall: 1) sales tax expansion, 2) marijuana legalization and taxation, and 3) gambling and gaming revenue.

  • Changing schools — This study tracked “hundreds of thousands” of Houston area students, including “tens of thousands” who changed schools during a school year.

    The study concluded that one in 10 of the high schoolers who changed schools during the academic year ended up dropping out — a rate 40 percent higher than their peers who did not change schools.

    Mobile students were already scoring about 30 points lower in STAAR math tests before they ever changed schools, researcher Patrick Gill said, adding:

    “Changing schools dropped their scores further.” Students who changed schools who also showed a decline in their STAAR scores were more likely to be retained in their ninth grade year.

    The authors advocated for a program some districts have used to address the issue of students changing schools, called “home field advantage.”

    This lets students who move to a new attendance zone in the same district stay at their original school.