The Social Security, Pensions, and Family Policy subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance is holding a hearing on the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) on Tuesday, November 6. Though we have anticipated a hearing on the House legislation to repeal these two provisions that negatively affect so many Texas school employees, that hearing has not yet been scheduled.

TCTA will be providing testimony to the subcommittee, and comments from individuals are also welcomed. To submit a written statement, please follow these instructions precisely: Read more…

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TCTA today provided testimony before the State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) on the elimination of Temporary Teacher Certificates (TTC) and on proposed rules relating to the revocation of certificates for certain serious offenses. Read more...

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New School Safety Guides from USDE

Three new guides have been developed by the U.S. Department of Education: one for K-12 educators, one for higher education officials and one for parents. The guides are intended to help schools and institutions of higher education plan for, respond to and recover from a serious incident. Read more…

USDE Announces Results From Grants to Encourage Students to Take Challenging Courses

On October 25, the U.S. Department of Education announced national and state-level data from the first year of Academic Competitiveness (AC) and National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (SMART) grants. These grants encourage students to take more challenging courses in high school and pursue college majors in high demand in the global economy -- math, science, technology, engineering, and critical foreign languages. USDE's goal is to double the number of AC/SMART grant recipients by 2011. For more information, please visit the website.

Emergency Response and Crisis Management Newsletters Available

The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, in collaboration with USDE's Emergency Response and Crisis Management Technical Assistance Center, has announced the release of two new issues of its ERCMExpress newsletter. Read more…

Draft College Readiness Standards available for public comment until Dec. 10

The draft of the College Readiness Standards (CRS) was produced by the Vertical Team process and presented to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) at its October 25 meeting. The board accepted the CRS for the purpose of releasing the standards in draft form for public comment between October 26 and December 10, 2007. For those wishing to offer comments on the standards, the preference is to analyze each set of standards separately and offer recommendations or modifications on the online public comment form. Read more...

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