This year, for the first time, students' scores on standardized tests will count 15 percent toward their final grades. It sounds straightforward, but how some districts are applying the so-called 15 percent rule threatens to spark the next political battle over a test that has seen plenty of them.

The TEA has released new guidelines that set tough thresholds for school districts hoping to take advantage of special legal exemptions passed by the Legislature and intended to help schools cope with significant budget cuts.

Every time a student drops out of public school, taxpayers save money. That’s one fewer student, at an annual savings of more than $11,000 per year from state and local sources.

As the popularity of online learning grows, public schools are grappling with how to most effectively integrate it into their classrooms — and some in the education community worry about the increasing influence of for-profit companies.

We'll be liveblogging throughout the weekend from The Texas Tribune Festival's public and higher education track — which includes panels on the role research should play at state universities and how to pay for public education.

Despite more details from the Obama administration today about how it would exempt states from complying with the law's signature requirements, the Texas Education Agency has yet to decide whether it will apply for a waiver on federal accountability requirements under the 2001 act.

With the Tribune’s Texas Public Schools Database, parents, students and other readers can access key academic, financial and administrative information about every public school district and campus in the state.

DAY 23 of our month-long series on the effects of new state laws and budget cuts: The state's prison education system, known as the Windham School District, eliminates or reduces classes for Texas inmates. 

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

DAY 1 of our 31-day series on the effects of new state laws and budget cuts: Thousands of Texas teachers will not have jobs to return to in the fall, the result of a school finance plan that cut $4 billion from districts statewide. 

The new accountability ratings released Friday for public school campuses in the state's 1,228 districts and charter schools are markedly lower from the ratings given last year.

It took a series of often rancorous debates this session to reach agreement on how to finance public education for 2012-2013. Use the Trib's latest interactive to track what lawmakers said about Texas education.

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.

The most drastic change for many students will come in the spring, when approximately 350,000 new ninth graders will be the first to take the end-of-course exams that are part of the new standardized testing system known as STAAR.

Expect the Texas House to revisit old battles over school finance — and open a new one, for the lower chamber at least, over pre-kindergarten accountability — when it takes up Senate Bill 1 today on the floor.

A bill in the Legislature aims to adjust the formula for assessing completion and dropout rates at dropout recovery charters, which supporters say penalizes the schools who serve challenging populations. 

Michael Marder, the co-director of the University of Texas' UTeach program, which trains secondary school math and science teachers, looks at public education data and explains the significance of poverty, why he thinks charter schools are not necessarily the answer and how public education is like a Boeing airplane.