Texas will not adopt national school curriculum standards, risking its ability to get a $700 million federal grant.

The Dallas church community has vowed to forge 25 partnerships with high-poverty public schools and push for 700 units of housing for the homeless — a down payment on a larger effort to heal wounds left by racism and injustice.

A for-profit company hopes to get approval to start two charter schools in Texas. Thursday's SBOE meeting will set the precedent for dealing with this murkier side of the charter school system. 

KBH resigns herself to staying in the Senate, Grissom investigates the broken border, Ramshaw outs IT contractors who make gigabucks from state agencies, Hu gives Hutchison and Perry the Stump Interrupted treatment, the new head of the Foresenic Science Commission faces his critics, Stiles posts a searchable database of fines levied by the state ethics commission, and Hamilton discovers the consequences of party switching (none): The best of the best from November 9 to 13, 2009.

The federal government is giving away $4.35 billion to state education systems through Race to the Top. But is Texas already out? 

State schools chief Robert Scott recently failed to get the Legislature to increase the cap on charter schools — then found a legal way to do it anyway, much to the dismay of state Democrats and teachers unions.

If Williamson County DA John Bradley is sick of the spotlight, then he got appointed to the wrong commission.  Of course, many people would argue that regardless.  

Federal officials say Texas' testing standards in reading are below the “basic” proficiency standards — and that low bar means  those passing the TAKS may not be as proficient as advertised.

Under new legislation, school districts for the first time can spend a portion of state “book” money on computer hardware and digital content. Some fear the explosion of choice will produce an erosion of quality content.

So what if he's no longer the chair of the State Board of Education? Self-described "religious fanatic" Don McLeroy has big plans for Texas education — and science is just the beginning.

“I represent a district that has 80 percent renters, 70 percent of people speaking a first language other than English, where there’s a high school with 42 languages and 40 percent turnover of the student body every year — now tell me how you plan to calculate the dropout rate,” Rep. Scott Hochberg said. “I will stipulate that it’s too big — let’s just start there. I wish we fought over solutions as much as we fight over the number.”

Despite years of research, the true picture of dropout and graduation rates remains elusive, even the subject of cross words between researchers. The consensus: Far too many Texas public school students, particularly those from poor and minority families, don’t cross the high-school finish line.

"The real issue here is, you don't do something like this after school starts," Scott said in an interview this afternoon. "And you don't just decide it in a letter or an email... They leave themselves open to criticism and litigation when they do something outside the rule-making process."

Thousands of "highly qualified" Texas public school teachers don't actually meet the federal definition for that standard — which could jeopardize their jobs and will certainly cause bureaucratic headaches for them and their school systems.

It may not be Mad Men, but the State Board on Education will begin broadcasting its meetings online on Wednesday.