Robert Inks

Texas’ Constitution, courts and lawmakers have combined to make funding public education almost impossible, writes outgoing House Public Education Committee Chairman Jimmie Don Aycock.

How odd it would be if, after this grueling election season, neither one of our major candidates gets a majority of electoral votes? It’s happened before, writes political consultant Mustafa Tameez.

The thousands of compassionate Texans who have helped resettle refugees for over four decades in the Lone Star State will not abandon them in their hour of need, writes Aaron Rippenkroeger of Refugee Services of Texas.

A collaborative, thoughtful approach to dual-credit expansion will better prepare students either for further academic work at higher education institutions or for the workforce, writes Texas Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes.

Texas has become the nation’s economic engine in large part by allowing competition to thrive in markets, even in such unlikely activities as providing benefits for injured workers, write Bill Peacock and Jennifer Minjarez of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

If Texas uses STAAR testing as a basis for school funding, the state’s slow creep toward a separate and unequal school system will turn into a sprint.

While HB 2 is gone, one of the harshest barriers to abortion access for Texans — the Hyde Amendment — remains, write Amanda Williams and Laila Khalili of the Lilith Fund.

While The Texas Tribune’s “Unholstered” series contributes to a critical public discussion, too much detail is lost when reducing police-involved shootings to statistics, writes Randy Petersen of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Right on Crime initiative.

With emotions particularly high this year, Texans from both ends of the political spectrum are spending a lot of time demonizing each other. But, Center for Public Policy Priorities Executive Director Ann Beeson asks, are we really so different than our neighbors?

Comparatively higher levels of support among liberals for amending the constitution might well reinforce conservative impulses to defend the status quo and defeat Gov. Greg Abbott’s plan for a convention of states, write Jim Henson and Joshua Blank of the Texas Politics Project.