STAAR Report Card

STAAR Performance Labels: Is ‘Approaches’ On or Below Grade Level?

Introduction: STAAR performance labels offer helpful information to parents and policymakers because they indicate students’ success and are also an early-warning sign that students need more support. The STAAR performance labels are: Masters, Meets, Approaches, Does Not Meet. Each label offers an indication of how a child is performing in three categories: a child’s likelihood...

Fool Me Twice: Why the Texas Grid is Still Vulnerable to Winter Storms | Part 3: How Texas Can Solve Its Winter Reliability Problem

Part 3: How Texas Can Solve Its Winter Reliability Problem Five years after Winter Storm Uri, the ERCOT grid is still not ready for the next major winter storm. The first two installments of this series showed that demand has grown more than 20% since 2021 while firm generation capacity has barely budged, and the...

Taxes are High. Local Spending is to Blame.

Over the last few months, local property taxes have been described as: “steep,” “burdensome,” “stressful,” “too high,” and “out-of-control.”   Yet despite these sharp (and accurate!) criticisms of Texas’ property tax, many local governments seem oblivious to the system’s excesses, as evidenced by the adoption of high tax rates this year (see TPPF’s Taxman Cometh series) as well as historical tax, spending, and debt patterns. Worse, what once may have been excused as indifference or detachment now borders on exploitation.   Consider some recent revelations about local government compensation.  ...