The vise squeezing Texas schools since the Legislature voted to remove $4 billion in state funding is getting a little tighter.

There's a day in July that school districts eye with a mixture of anticipation and dread. This year, it's on the 29th, when the Texas Education Agency will publicly release the accountability ratings for the state's more than 1,000 districts.

With less than five weeks left to go in the session, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst sat down with the Tribune to talk about his future political plans, the status of the budget in the Senate and in the biennial parley between the Senate and the House, redistricting and the tug-of-war over the Rainy Day Fund.

The Social Security numbers of 164,406 students who graduated from eight Texas school districts over the past two decades were placed at risk for identity theft, according to Texas Education Agency documents obtained by The Texas Tribune.

Six months after Congress established the $10 billion Education Jobs Fund to help states retain and hire teachers, Texas is one of only two states that has not received its money. Whether the state will gets it depends on a game of political chicken between Gov. Rick Perry and a certain Austin Democrat.

With a budget shortfall of historic proportions looming and legislators looking desperately for savings, state Rep. Fred Brown, R-Bryan, is proposing a drastic step: the elimination of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Thevenot on the fastest-growing charter school chain in Texas, Hu on the continuing legal fights between tort reformers and trial lawyers over the state's windstorm insurance pool, Hamilton on the push for accountability in Texas colleges, Philpott on legislative skirmishing over federal education funds, Grissom on misdemeanor convicts choosing jail time instead of probation that's more expensive for them but cheaper for the state, M. Smith on Bill Flores' challenge in what's billed as the hottest congressional race in the country, Ramshaw looks at scandals that have put some otherwise safe statehouse incumbents in deep electoral trouble, yours truly on the closest and ugliest race on the statewide ballot and Galbraith and Titus on pollution from idling vehicles and why it's so hard to control: The best of our best from September 27 to October 1, 2010.

Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott's absence from joint hearing at the Capitol today left some lawmakers annoyed.

Officials announcing controversy-laden public school ratings Friday could barely contain their upbeat unease.

In new public school ratings released this afternoon, three-fourths of the state's public schools — graded under a controversial formula called the Texas Projection Measure — now rank "exemplary" or "recognized," the highest two of four categories of performance. Less than two percent of schools are ranked "unacceptable."

State public school ratings will be issued this afternoon — with one Texas-sized asterisk.

Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott has been taking heat for ducking questions from reporters and a legislator regarding the Texas Projection Measure, the magic formula that last year suddenly moved thousands of Texas schools into higher state rating categories with little underlying achievement gain by students. He finally took questions from the Tribune, walking a fine line between defending the formula’s much-maligned statistical validity and saying it wasn’t his idea in the first place and, as he put it, “I’m happy to scrap it” if legislators and other critics have a big problem with it.

Last school year, the Texas Education Agency implemented a new “growth measure” purported to reward schools for improving student performance — even if they still fail state tests. The effect on state accountability ratings was immediate and dramatic: The number of campuses considered “exemplary” by the state doubled, to 2,158. But a new analysis shows the projections of future student success may be wrong as much as half the time.

Gov. Rick Perry wasn't interested in federal "Race to the Top" money before — and he isn't now, either.

More than five years after Katrina, a long-term Texas Education Agency study finds that Louisiana students in Texas schools — many who came from among the nation’s worst campuses — have generally thrived here. 

Austin ISD chief Meria Carstarphen talks bluntly about the poisonous politics between the state and the district over the bungled “repurposing” of Pearce Middle School (spoiler alert: she blames the state) and how it informs her efforts to reform the city's failing schools. 

As Texas education officials predicted when objecting to federal Race to the Top grant rules, the feds may now be moving to tie billions more in federal funds to the adoption of national curriculum standards, according to an Education Week report.