Intersect Ed

This episode of Intersect Ed was taped on the morning of Friday, November 14, 2025, just a few blocks from the Capitol, during the 2025 Texas Tribune Festival. Our panelists discussed the “Legacy Education Fund,” a new, proposed idea about a public education endowment that could move Texas beyond two-year budget cycles and establish a lasting investment in our public schools. Host Morgan Smith was...

This episode of Intersect Ed discusses the sticking points regarding HB 4 in Texas’ 89th Regular Session, as well as what the special session item – “eliminating the STAAR test” – could mean for accountability in our state. Our Intersect Ed host, Morgan Smith, is joined by Amy Dodson, Dean of Advocacy for Raise Your Hand Texas, in a question-and-answer session focused on the differences between cr...

This episode of Intersect Ed was taped on the morning of Tuesday, June 3, just a few blocks from the Capitol, the day after the 89th Texas Legislative Session ended. Public education and Texas legislative policy experts, who regularly meet with staffers, legislators, and advocates throughout the state, shared their top insights with a live audience. They discuss what has been hailed as Historic le...

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 priv...

Our Intersect Ed host Morgan Smith is joined by Steven Aleman, Senior Policy Specialist at Disability Rights Texas; Amanda Fuentes, Special Education Team Lead at Cibolo Valley Elementary School in Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District; and, Paige Meloni, Superintendent at Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District.   

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 legislat...

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 Te...

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 Legis...

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 s...

 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 ac...

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...

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. T...

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 coul...

 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,...

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 Gov...

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 gui...

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 CO...

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 th...

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, m...

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 for...

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 leg...

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...

This Intersect Ed episode examines the misconceptions around students who are “missing” from their public school. Critics often place blame on educators saying they are not doing enough to find their students. What we know is the exact opposite: educators are going above and beyond to stay connected to their students. As conversations around the state budget begin to happen at the Capitol, our pub...

We’ve said since the beginning that the Raise Your Hand Texas Foundation Poll is for everyone. It is for educators, researchers, lawmakers, and communities. It represents the voices of all Texans about an issue that impacts all Texans. It is Texas’ poll. The eighth Intersect Ed podcast episode features education experts from a variety of fields reflecting on the Foundation Poll data and how it imp...

It was March 2019 and early childhood education supporters, dressed in “pre-K purple,” flooded the State Capitol, asking legislators to “Stop the Yo-Yo” and fund full-day pre-Kindergarten for eligible 4-year-olds. We called it the Power of Pre-K Day. Thanks to this and the efforts of so many in the early childhood field, the yo-yo finally stopped bouncing. Full-day pre-K funding was part of the bi...