Intersect Ed

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 testin...

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 ...

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 Hou...

MORGAN SMITH: Welcome to the Intersect Ed Podcast, where the stories of public education policy and practice meet. 

I’m your host, Morgan Smith, and I am back with you just in time for the 89th Legislative Session. And heading in, it’s fair to say lawmakers have a lot of unfinished business when it comes to education policy.

Let’s do a brief review of how we got here. If one word defined the Legislature’s approach to education policy...

MORGAN SMITH: Welcome to the Raise Your Hand Texas Intersect Ed Podcast, where the stories of public education policy and practice meet. 

Today, we’re talking about the special legislative session that began Oct. 9, and the intense financial pressure facing Texas public schools.

I’m your host, Morgan Smith.

Gov. Greg Abbott has called state lawmakers back to Austin with strict orders to complete some unfinished business from the regul...

 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 g...

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...

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 acc...

Morgan Smith: Welcome to the Intersect Ed Podcast, where the stories of public education policy and practice meet. I’m your host, Morgan Smith.

Today we are talking about something that could make a positive difference in the lives of many Texas teachers and their students: high-quality mentorship.

The formalized practice of having more experienced teachers coach those newer in the profession could help with a major challenge facing ...

 Morgan Smith: Welcome to the Intersect Ed Podcast, where the stories of public education policy and practice meet. 

I’m your host, Morgan Smith. 

Today we are talking about Texas teachers, and how much we pay them. Or I should say: how much we don’t pay them. 

What started as a slow drain — as stagnant pay forced teachers out of the classroom during the hardships of COVID, the economic downturn, and inflation — has now accelerated in...

Morgan Smith: You're listening to the Raise Your Hand Texas Intersect Ed Podcast where the stories of public education policy and practice meet. I'm your host Morgan Smith, and today, we're taking on a topic that has become a marquee fight of the 88th Legislature, private school vouchers. 

On one side, we have our state's two most powerful elected officials, Governor Greg Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who say every par...

Morgan Smith: You're listening to the Raise Your Hand Texas IntersectEd podcast where the stories of public education policy and practice meet. I'm your host, Morgan Smith. And today we're talking about the amount of money Texas pays to educate a student in public schools. 

This topic is notoriously complicated and can be very dense, but I've tracked down some very knowledgeable people to help guide us through it. We have three gues...

As the 87th Legislative Session kicked off last January, there was one word that could be used to describe how many were feeling — uncertain. Uncertain about school funding due to COVID budget woes. Uncertain about the logistics of navigating a legislative session in the midst of a pandemic. Nonetheless, thanks to the efforts of public education supporters around the state, billions of federal COVID relief dollars are going to our ...

Deep in West Texas is the tiny town of Presidio – a remote community that is 90 miles away from the nearest McDonald’s and more than 200 miles away from the nearest Walmart. So what does a remote city like Presidio have in common with more urban areas hundreds of miles away in the Rio Grande Valley? They are all communities lacking the infrastructure to provide reliable and affordable access to the internet to their residents.

With ...

From students using restaurants’ WIFI to parents spending hundreds of dollars a month on hotspots for their children’s schoolwork, our state’s public education system has been forever changed by the pandemic. 

In this podcast episode of Intersect Ed (part 1 of 2), we focus on the digital divide — what it is, who is affected by it, how it is affecting Texas public schools and their students, and, most importantly, how experts and law...

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed what schooling has looked like over the past year. It has entirely upended instructional models and brought about a myriad of new issues regarding the equity and accessibility of online instruction.

For some students and families, pandemic schooling has been unimaginably difficult. Other students, however, may have thrived off of this model. Moving forward, as online instruction becomes ...

In the 86th legislative session, Texas lawmakers committed to increase funding for public schools by passing House Bill 3. That unity led to teachers getting raises, school districts getting funds to offer or expand full-day pre-K programs to eligible 4-year-olds, and taxpayers getting property tax relief.

This year, the pandemic presents major budget challenges for public schools. In the 87th legislative session, vouchers could put...

Educators are telling us it will take teachers – lots of skilled, well-trained teachers – to close the learning gaps sustained during the last year. But will those teachers be there when the districts start to hire? The pandemic didn’t create the challenges facing the teacher pipeline in Texas, but it has certainly made addressing that problem more urgent.

Our 10th episode of Intersect Ed, part of our legislative agenda series, exam...