Texas
Texas school districts say upgrades to the state’s student data reporting system could hurt their funding
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Upgrades to the system Texas uses to collect student, staff and financial data from school districts are causing serious concerns among school administrators and data specialists across the state who say the changes have led to thousands of unresolved errors that could potentially cause them to lose out on state funding.
Each of Texas’ more than 1,200 school districts is required to regularly submit data to the state, including information on attendance, enrollment, students who receive special education, children experiencing homelessness and the number of kids who have completed a college preparatory course. State officials use the information to determine whether schools are meeting performance standards and how much funding they receive each year.
Three years ago, the Texas Education Agency announced major changes to the reporting system. The goal was to make it easier for school districts and the state to share data and reduce the amount of manual labor required from school officials. Districts were supportive of the proposed changes.
Almost a dozen other states are using the same standard on which Texas based its system upgrade, said Eric Jansson, vice president of technology for Ed-Fi Alliance, the organization that created the standard. Texas is the largest state to implement the changes.
More than 300 districts participated in the pilot program during the last school year, according to the TEA. All school districts began using the new system this school year.
Before the upgrade, school districts would submit data directly to the TEA after working with a software vendor that would ensure the education agency didn’t have any problems interpreting the information.
Under the new arrangement, the software vendors are now responsible for transmitting the data to the state, a change that school officials say leaves them without a chance to fact-check the information before it goes out.
They also say a litany of errors and inaccuracies surfaced during the pilot program. In some instances, hundreds of student records — from enrollment figures to the number of students in certain programs — did not show up correctly.
A TEA spokesperson said the agency is confident districts will have ample time to resolve any errors between now and the first reporting deadline on Dec. 12. The agency also noted that districts have until Jan. 16 to resubmit any data needing corrections.
But districts say they have no idea how to solve some errors. Their concerns, shared in interviews with The Texas Tribune, have not been previously reported.
In an August letter to TEA Commissioner Mike Morath, Lewisville Independent School District Superintendent Lori Rapp requested that the agency delay the full transition to the new reporting system until all districts are able to submit “100% of all data elements” successfully.
Rapp said thousands of errors surfaced after the district’s software vendor submitted data to the new system during the pilot. Her staff spent “tons of hours” trying to figure out why the miscalculations had occurred, she said in an interview.
While Rapp’s staff had made some progress working with the new system since the pilot started, “[w]e have not been able to fully send, promote, and validate our data to the point where a successful submission could have been made,” Rapp’s letter said.
After receiving the note, the TEA organized a virtual meeting with Lewisville ISD officials to discuss their concerns. Rapp said the state did not seem concerned about whether school districts were prepared to make the transition.
“Maybe because there’s no ramifications to them and the stakes aren’t as high, they don’t have a concern,” Rapp said. “But for districts, the stakes are extremely high, and it’s a gross oversight on their part if they are failing to recognize that.”
While the TEA says it has resolved more than a thousand tickets submitted by school officials reporting problems with the new system, officials from nearly a half-dozen districts told the Tribune the state has not explained what’s causing some of the errors or told them if they have been resolved.
School administrators and data specialists who participated in the pilot say the implications of adopting a system that still doesn’t have a clear process to correct mistakes are massive. An inaccurate assessment of the students enrolled in Texas public schools could mean school districts receive less funding from the state. Schools are funded based on students’ average daily attendance, and they receive additional dollars if they have children with specific needs, like students with disabilities or kids learning English as a second language.
Funding has been a major point of contention between Texas schools and state officials in recent years. Many districts entered the school year having to spend more money than they have, largely because of the state’s rising costs of living and a half-decade of no increases to the base-level funding they receive from the state. Public school leaders remain upset that last year’s legislative sessions ended with no significant raises despite the state having a record $32 billion surplus.
Texas’ school accountability system also relies on the data school districts submit to the state. Some parents rely on those performance metrics to make decisions on where to enroll their children. Poor performance can also lead to state intervention — like it happened when the state ousted Houston ISD’s locally elected school board and superintendent last year.
Full accountability ratings have not been released in five years due to litigation over changes to how districts are evaluated. Many have publicly released their unofficial ratings to share their progress with their communities.
School districts say they can’t afford to have mistakes in their student data.
“I think everybody understands the situation that public education is in right now,” said Frisco ISD Superintendent Mike Waldrip. “And there is no confidence by anyone that I’ve spoken with that that data is accurate or will be accurate when it comes time to submit it to the state.”
School districts that have piloted the new system say they understand errors are part of the process. They just wanted more time to troubleshoot them before it went live.
“We need more answers around not only supporting the system to be successful, but while we are making sure that it’s successful, how are we going to continue to assure that we’re not suffering consequences for a delay or inaccuracies in the data?” said Mark White, assistant superintendent of accountability for the Tomball Independent School District. “And none of those assurances have been received by districts.”
A TEA spokesperson said the agency did not see a need to expand the trial period because the pilot showed the channels through which it receives data from software vendors worked.
The TEA said it plans to continue working with districts to help resolve any errors well before the first reporting deadline. The agency said districts should reach out if they are still experiencing problems.
Tammy Eagans, who oversees the student data reporting process for Leon ISD, said the agency was helpful throughout the pilot year whenever the school district had problems submitting information. She added that the task of switching to the new system may not pose the same problems for her small district of fewer than 800 students as it might for larger districts with thousands of children.
Still, she said she is “not 100% confident” that the system as it’s being rolled out works as intended. Extending the pilot “would not have been a bad idea,” Eagans said. But she is also hopeful that the education agency will be understanding of districts’ concerns and not blame them for errors out of their control.
The upcoming reporting deadline “just kind of puts a little extra pressure on us,” said Eagans, adding that she’s “a little nervous, a little apprehensive, but hoping that it goes smoother than I think it will.”
Other school officials say the pilot was unsuccessful, and if adopting the new system requires more time, the state should be willing to cooperate. The looming fall reporting deadline is “the most important” submission of the school year, said Tomball ISD Superintendent Martha Salazar-Zamora.
“If the data is inaccurate, then we live with that inaccuracy throughout the entire year,” she said. “So it has a lot of relevance on many levels.”
Mary Mitchem, a former TEA employee, said she started worrying about the system’s readiness shortly after she was hired in June to make sure the system met the needs of its users. Mitchem said she left the agency last month after a dispute over a leave of absence request.
Within days of being hired, she said it appeared that no one had done the work to ensure the data coming from software vendors accurately translated into the education agency’s system. Having worked on other major data projects throughout her career, she said she was also surprised that, two months before the pilot was set to conclude, no one had audited or tested the system.
“You’re converting a state accounting system, and you have to make sure it balances — you have to,” said Mitchem.
Mitchem sounded the alarm up the chain of command, but a supervisor told her that anything beyond making sure the data was flowing into the new system was the responsibility of the software vendors and school districts.
“It just blew my mind,” Mitchem said.
In early August, she sent an email to Morath saying, “You will be in litigation if you don’t help fix it, and it will be with the largest districts in the state of Texas.”
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DALLAS – Starting in February, some American Airlines passengers will have the option of eating authentic Texas barbecue as their in-flight meal.
The airline said they’ll be partnering with Pecan Lodge restaurant to serve Texas barbecue on board.
American Airlines to serve Texas BBQ
The meals will be available to first-class passengers on flights from DFW International Airport to LaGuardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The meals will be available for preorder starting on Jan. 11 through aa.com or American’s mobile app.
What they’re saying:
“As we celebrate American’s centennial anniversary in 2026, we’re looking forward to delighting our customers in new ways that honor unique regional tastes, beginning right here in our home state through one of the most beloved barbecue restaurants in Texas,” said Rhonda Crawford, American’s SVP of Customer Experience Design and Strategy. “Our customers deserve nothing but the best, and Pecan Lodge is certainly that.”
Pecan Lodge meals
February offering: Pecan Lodge barbecue platter
Smoked brisket and smoked sausage, paired with creamy mac and cheese, crisp coleslaw and a side of pickles, onions and barbecue sauce
March offering: Smoked chopped brisket sandwich
Chopped brisket on a fresh brioche bun, served with roasted green beans, creamy potato salad and a side of pickles, onions and barbecue sauce
The Source: Information in this article comes from American Airlines.
HIDALGO — During a visit to the border Friday, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn said changes in immigration laws should wait until the border is completely secure, a contrast from Republican lawmakers who are willing to explore legal status for immigrant workers to address labor shortages prompted by enforcement efforts at work sites.
Cornyn was part of a group of Republican U.S. senators and Senate hopefuls who flocked to the Rio Grande Valley to praise President Donald Trump’s border policies as they attempt to promote their achievements and shape political narratives ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Aggressive enforcement by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has prompted some unauthorized workers to stay clear of job sites, leading to labor shortages in construction and restaurants. The Valley has been among the areas hardest hit by the worker shortage, prompting a group of local builders to call for solutions to economic struggles in their industry.
U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, an Edinburg Republican, met with the group and expressed support for a visa program for construction workers, akin to the H-2A visa program that allows foreign nationals to work in the agriculture sector.
Cornyn, though, said it was too early to consider such an option.
“The first thing we need to do is secure the border,” Coryn said during a news conference along the border in the city of Hidalgo. “There is no way that the American people, and certainly my constituents in Texas, would allow us to take another stab at reforming our immigration laws until we’ve got the border secure.”
After securing the border, he said, the next step would be to remove people who “never should have been here in the first place.” Only after that had been accomplished, Cornyn said, should lawmakers delve into changing immigration laws.
Much of Trump’s border policy has been set by executive action. The Republican Congress passed $170 billion in funding for immigration and border enforcement through 2029, making ICE the best-funded law enforcement agency in the country and giving the agency unprecedented recruitment, enforcement, deportation and detention powers. But the effort did not codify many of Trump’s changes to border practices.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who stood beside Cornyn during Friday’s news conference, said he was open to legislation that would address the need for qualified workers but also said the first priority was to secure the border.
“I think we can work in a constructive way on how we come up with a mechanism whereby people who come to this country legally can contribute and be members of our work force,” said Thune, R-South Dakota.
ICE activity at construction sites has intimidated workers — those unauthorized to live in the U.S. and those with legal authorization — from accepting work, builders say. This labor shortage has prompted construction delays that economists suggest will drive up housing costs.
Absent a change in immigration laws, Cornyn suggested job sectors would benefit from cuts to assistance like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid, saying it would encourage people to work.
“If you are an able-bodied young adult, you can’t qualify for food stamps, you can’t qualify for welfare benefits like Medicaid and the like, in order to encourage more people to get off the couch,” Cornyn said. “That’s good for them, good for their families, good for their communities.”
For Cornyn, who is locked in an expensive primary race with Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston, the news conference was also an opportunity to tout a major provision from Republicans’ 2025 mega-bill — reimbursement for Operation Lone Star.
Cornyn publicly stated during spring negotiations that his vote in support of the package was contingent on reimbursing Texas for Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative. Ultimately, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed in July with support from nearly all Republicans and no Democrats, included $13.5 billion in two funds to reimburse states for border security spending.
Abbott had requested $11.1 billion, and the vast majority of the bill’s money is expected to go to Texas. But six months after the bill’s passage, the Trump administration has yet to allocate funding. State Republicans, led by Cornyn, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and U.S. Rep. August Pfluger, sent a December letter asking the departments of Homeland Security and Justice to prioritize Texas in the disbursement.
“That money will now soon be flowing into the coffers of the state of Texas, to the tune of roughly $11 billion, to do justice — which is to reimburse Texas taxpayers for stepping up and filling the gap when the federal government simply refused to do so,” Cornyn said Friday. “That would not have happened without the leadership of the majority leader and the whip and the direction of the president of the United States, to whom I am very grateful.”
The Cornyn campaign and allied groups have spent more than $40 million in advertising, helping to close Paxton’s initial polling lead. Polls have shown no candidate close to the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff in the March 3 primary.
Cornyn has the backing of Thune and OneNation, a group aligned with the Senate Republican leader that organized Friday’s border trip after spending millions in pro-Cornyn advertising.
Thune on Friday praised Cornyn, whom he beat out to become majority leader in 2024.
“He has been such an advocate through the years on the issue of border security — foremost expert on it,” Thune said. “Most of us, what we know about the border, we know from him.”
Part of Cornyn’s campaign strategy has been to emphasize his support for Trump in ads and on social media. Thune, Cornyn, other Republican senators and Senate hopeful Michael Whatley, former chair of the Republican National Committee from North Carolina, praised Trump’s border actions, with Cornyn expressing his gratitude for Trump’s leadership in getting the One Big Beautiful Bill passed and for his Border Patrol leadership appointments.
The president’s endorsement — or lack of, thus far — has factored heavily into the state’s Senate primary. It is one of a handful of Republican contests for Senate where Trump has yet to put his thumb on the scale, and the president has said that he likes both Cornyn and Paxton.
Cornyn and Thune have appealed to Trump for his endorsement.
The border trip was also an opportunity for Cornyn’s opponents to press their cases.
Paxton preemptively criticized Cornyn’s visit in a Thursday statement that noted the senator said a border wall “makes no sense” in a February 2017 speech in Weslaco, among other instances of wall skepticism in early 2017. At the time, Cornyn said technology and personnel are more effective than physical barriers in some areas. On Friday, Cornyn praised the border wall and its outfitting with cameras, sensors and other technology.
“His 40-plus year career has been spent fighting for amnesty for illegals, cutting deals with Democrats, trying to stop President Trump, and standing in the way of building the wall,” Paxton said in the statement. “Texans aren’t going to forget how Cornyn’s betrayed our country, and no last minute trip to the border to try and act tough is going to change that.”
Hunt posted an ad on X criticizing Cornyn’s previous apprehension for a border wall.
“Now that Trump’s secured our border, John Cornyn wants to take the credit for the wall he tried to block,” the ad said.
Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.
Disclosure: Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc. has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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One of the biggest questions facing Rhett Lashlee and his SMU football program this offseason is how the Mustangs will replenish the tight end position.
Not only did SMU’s tight ends coach leave, but the Mustangs are losing their top four tight ends from the 2025 roster. RJ Maryland, Matthew Hibner and Stone Eby all graduated and redshirt sophomore Adam Moore entered the transfer portal.
SMU began its rebuild of the tight ends room with a commitment from Texas A&M transfer Theo Melin Öhrström.
Melin Öhrström entered the portal on Dec. 26 after four years with the Aggies. The Stockholm, Sweden native appeared in 40 games for Texas A&M, catching 29 balls for 352 yards and three touchdowns. In 2025, the 6-foot-6, 257-pound tight end made four starts and caught 19 passes for 168 yards and a touchdown.
Melin Öhrström redshirted in 2022, so he has one year of eligibility remaining and will have a chance to secure a bigger role during his final collegiate season. He chose the Mustangs over Houston, Kansas State and Auburn
Find more college sports coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
Find more SMU coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
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