A recent essay in The Houston Chronicle by Brett Perlman, CEO of the Center for Houston’s Future, prompted me to revisit a few previous posts on the characteristics and distinctiveness of my hometown.  Perlman is rightly proud of the fact that Houston was recently added to the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities program, the members […]

This will be a limited edition because I have been temporarily displaced by our friend Harvey and related flooding in the Houston area and many of my research capabilities and resources have been curtailed for awhile.  But I want to say a few words about this unprecedented calamity and the response it has produced. This […]

The announcement last week that The University of Texas System has ended its planning for development of its proposed 332-acre Houston “intellectual hub” to focus on so-called Big Data in energy, health care, and education left me with mixed emotions.  First, the rollout of the land acquisition transaction left a lot to be desired, with […]

The Texas Supreme Court, in a long-awaited ruling, has concluded in a decision without dissent that the Texas public school finance system, while deeply flawed, “satisfies minimum constitutional requirements”.  In the opinion written by Justice Don Willett, the Court declined to usurp legislative authority by issuing systemic reform dictates, but upheld the trial court’s ruling […]

The 84th regular session of the Texas Legislature is now history and we will now be sifting through the results and soon enough know what good it has accomplished and what damage it has done, and there certainly have been some of both. But what is already clearly evident to me and has been so […]

It’s an election year in Houston and this year that means a race for Mayor, as incumbent Annise Parker is term-limited.  There are quite a few announced candidates already and supposedly more to come, so it will be a crowded race.  And it is easy and trite in all elections–national, state, and local–to say that […]

The 84th Session of the Texas Legislature is in full swing and no policy issue under consideration is more important than education in general and PreK-12 education in particular.  In fact, it could be said that Texas is at a crossroad in determining which direction it wants to go in furthering its public education reform […]

Texas has made good progress and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has provided good leadership on the 15-year strategic plan implemented by the Board in 2000, significantly increasing the number of people enrolled in higher education and meeting the objectives for the number of undergraduate degrees or certificates awarded and the increase in the […]

The recent dustup between University of Houston Chancellor Renu Khator and Texas Senator John Whitmire over the school’s proposed requirement that, with some exceptions, all freshmen would be required to live on campus, poses some interesting questions about the role and aspirations of this and other similarly situated universities. Under Khator’s inspiring and impressive leadership […]

Once again, after a significant delay in issuing a written decision, a State District Judge has finally ruled in favor of over 600 school district plaintiffs that the Texas school finance method is unconstitutional, primarily because it “cannot provide a constitutionally adequate education for all Texans” and “it is financially inefficient because all Texas students […]