This episode of Intersect Ed was taped on the morning of Tuesday, June 3, just a few blocks from the Capitol, the day after the 89th Texas Legislative Session ended. Public education and Texas legislative policy experts, who regularly meet with staffers, legislators, and advocates throughout the state, shared their top insights with a live audience. They discuss what has been hailed as Historic legislation for public education – including the $8.5 billion package in school funding and teacher raises and the passage of Texas’ new voucher program – as well as the inability of the legislature to agree upon and, therefore, change our assessment and accountability system.

Host Morgan Smith was joined by Jaden Edison, public education reporter with the Texas Tribune, Scott Braddock, editor at Quorum Report.com, Edward McKinley, Austin Bureau reporter for the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News, and Bob Popinski, Senior Director of Policy at Raise Your Hand Texas.

Read the transcript here.

This episode of Intersect Ed discusses how we measure the performance of Texas public schools, the value of local accountability systems, and the ways HB 4 could provide meaningful assessment reform for our schools and better support student learning for the sake of learning instead of assessment. Additionally, if HB 4 passed, it would put public schools on more of an equal playing field with private schools when it comes to testing, something that is a focus of SB 2 – the voucher bill that was signed by Gov. Abbott on May 3, 2025. 

Our Intersect Ed host, Morgan Smith, is joined by Harry Feder, Executive Director of FairTest – The National Center for Fair and Open Testing; Brad Owen, Superintendent at Burkburnett ISD; and Max Rombado, Legislative Director at Raise Your Hand Texas.

Read the transcript here.

This episode of Intersect Ed discusses an often misunderstood topic: funding special education in Texas public schools. Our schools provide special education services to the almost 800,000 students with disabilities in the state. This episode will explore why it costs so much to do it right and the $2 Billion dollar gap that Texas school districts are covering after they allocate the funds received from the state and federal government to ensure special education students receive the services they need.

Our Intersect Ed host Morgan Smith is joined by Steven Aleman, Senior Policy Specialist at Disability Rights Texas; Amanda Fuentes, Special Education Team Lead at Cibolo Valley Elementary School in Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District; and, Paige Meloni, Superintendent at Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District.

Read the transcript here.

This episode of Intersect Ed explores Texas’ early education, focusing in on the challenges faced by public pre-schools and child care providers. Current half-day pre-K funding forces public school districts in Texas to cover costs for their state-mandated full-day programs. At the same time, many Texans can’t afford traditional child care. Learn about successful initiatives and how Texas legislative action can improve the futures of children aged 0-4 with increased state investment and streamlined regulations to expand access to quality pre-K.

Host Morgan Smith is joined by Sarah Baray, CEO, Pre-K 4 SA; David Feigen, Director for Early Learning Policy, Texans Care for Children; and Michelle Rinehart, Superintendent of Alpine Independent School District.

Read the transcript here.

This episode of Intersect Ed was taped on the morning of Thursday, Jan 30, just a few blocks from the Capitol, where the 89th Texas Legislative Session is already underway. Experts who meet with staffers, legislators, and advocates throughout the state and regularly report on the issues that matter most to public education shared their top insights with a live audience. Together, they discussed Texas’ newly named Speaker of the House – Rep. Burrows, SB 2, why we need to increase the basic allotment, teacher pay, and the political issues that will capture Texas news headlines over the next four months.  

Host Morgan Smith was joined by Jaden Edison, public education reporter with the Texas Tribune, Scott Braddock, editor at Quorum Report.com, Edward McKinley, Austin Bureau reporter for the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News, and Bob Popinski, Senior Director of Policy at Raise Your Hand Texas. 

Read the transcript here.

If one word defined the Legislature’s approach to education policy in 2023, it was gridlock. Bill after bill — including crucial proposals for school funding and teacher pay raises — fell victim to lawmakers’ battle over vouchers. This only intensified the pressure on Texas public schools, leaving them to deal with teacher shortages, budget shortfalls, and rising inflation as they continued to serve the state’s 5.5 million public school students.

In this episode you’ll hear from Myrna Blanchard, Ph. D., Talent Acquisition and Policy Director at Castleberry ISD, J. Jacob Kirksey, Ph. D., Assistant Professor of Education Policy at Texas Tech University, Lori Powell, M. Ed., GT Specialist & Social Studies Facilitator at Northside ISD, Bob Popinski, Senior Director of Policy at Raise Your Hand Texas and JoLisa Hoover, Teacher Specialist at Raise Your Hand Texas.

These experts will discuss how our state’s leaders can start this session ready to act on essential education policy items and focus on one area you’re likely to hear a lot about as the session gets underway — how teacher workforce issues, including a shortage of certified teachers, are affecting Texas students.

Read the transcript here.

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.

Read Transcript HERE.

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 retroactively applied, based on the performance of students who graduated in 2022. So going into the 2023-2024 school year, there’s nothing they can do to change it, even if they could.

So why is this happening? Put simply, it’s because of a paperwork change—or in more precise terms, a “technical adjustment”—in how the Texas Education Agency calculates the accountability ratings. So taking the Career, College, and Military Readiness Indicator, or CCMR, as an example—instead of requiring 60 percent of kids to meet the standard to receive an A rating, now 88 percent of kids must meet it.

The roll out of new standards was not directed by the Legislature, it is an 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.

In this episode, we will hear from Todd Webster, Former Interim Commissioner of the Texas Education Agency and Rep. Gina Hinojosa explain the rulemaking process. We will also hear from Dee Carney, Assessment and Accountability Policy Consultant and Dr. Bobby Ott, Superintendent, Temple ISD discuss the process and how it the upcoming changes can negatively impact schools and their local communities.

Read the Transcript Here

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” goes beyond test scores and we evaluated how districts prepare students for life and career through things like early childhood education, dual language, fine arts, and extra-curricular programs? Or the many crucial resources public schools provide to ensure the well-being of their students, like meals, mental health services, and campus security?

This is a wholly achievable idea — and one that had momentum and bipartisan support during the most recent legislative session. But, like so many other worthy public education issues, accountability and assessment reforms went down in the battle over private school vouchers during the 88th Session.

In this episode, hear from Lori Rapp, Superintendent at Lewisville ISD; Jacqueline Martinez, Former 4th grade teacher at Canutillo ISD; Daniel Saenz, CEO of Nieto Technology Partners; Paola Gonzalez Fusilier, School Board Trustee at Pasadena ISD; and Dr. Libby Cohen, Senior Director of Advocacy at Raise Your Hand Texas, each discusses assessment and accountability from their unique perspectives.

Read the transcript here.

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.

There was one tentative win for public education advocates. Thanks to a bipartisan group of determined House lawmakers who withstood enormous pressure from Gov. Greg Abbott — no private school voucher program passed.

In this episode, hear from Raise Your Hand Texas’ Libby Cohen, Senior Director of Advocacy, Will Holleman, Senior Director of Government Relations, and Bob Popinski, Senior Director of Policy, alongside Georgia Polley, public education advocate from Spring Branch ISD, as they discuss their views on the 88th Legislative Session, and why a victory to stave off vouchers is far from certain, and came at a great cost to Texans.

Read the podcast transcript here.