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"English-learning students’ scores on a state test designed to measure their mastery of the language fell sharply and have stayed low since 2018 — a drop that bilingual educators say might have less to do with students’ skills and more with sweeping design changes and the automated computer scoring system that were introduced that year.

English learners who used to speak to a teacher at their school as part of the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System now sit in front of a computer and respond to prompts through a microphone. The Texas Education Agency uses software programmed to recognize and evaluate students’ speech.

Students’ scores dropped after the new test was introduced, a Texas Tribune analysis shows. In the previous four years, about half of all students in grades 4-12 who took the test got the highest score on the test’s speaking portion, which was required to be considered fully fluent in English. Since 2018, only about 10% of test takers have gotten the top score in speaking each year."

"It was early 2022, and Kiany Casillas was in a panic. It had been two years since she and her newborn daughter had followed her husband from California to the Texas Panhandle, and during that time, she had enrolled at Texas Tech University Health Science Center to pursue a career as a psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner.

Casillas is considered the perfect student for Texas Tech’s online program because she lives in the rural city of Dalhart, an hour and a half northwest of Amarillo, and is willing to work there when she graduates. However, a year had passed, and Casillas and the school had yet to find a supervisor for her necessary clinical hours, and the deadline was fast approaching.

“I was anxious, nervous, and baffled. How can I help people if nobody is willing to help me? You know, I was just kind of sad,” Casillas said.

Supervised clinical hours are considered an essential part of the mental health field. They allow students to learn on the job while the supervisor, known as a preceptor in the medical field, assumes the risk of liability. However, only a limited number of mental health providers seem willing to take on this responsibility."

"On a recent appearance on MSNBC, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred was asked how Vice President Kamala Harris’ presumptive rise to the top of the party’s ticket was affecting his campaign in Texas to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

Allred’s response was polite, but muted: “Vice President Harris was a member of the congressional Black Caucus and I’ve known her for some time and I support her nomination.”

That five-second comment was all the time Allred spent discussing Harris. He quickly pivoted for the rest of the seven-minute segment to attacking Cruz for blocking bipartisan border security and immigration bills, opposing abortion access and leaving the state for Cancun when millions of Texans had lost power in their homes in 2021.

Harris’s impending nomination has injected the November election with renewed enthusiasm among Democrats, who are hoping the historic nature of her candidacy as a woman of color could also boost down-ballot candidates. But in Republican-dominated Texas, Allred — who has been running his campaign as a centrist — is not flocking to her side."

Texas is receiving federal aid for Hurricane Beryl later than needed because state leaders were slow to request an official disaster declaration from the White House, President Joe Biden told the Houston Chronicle Tuesday.

With Gov. Greg Abbott out of the country on an economic development trip in Asia, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has served as acting governor amid the storm, making him responsible for putting in the state’s request for aid.

A White House spokesperson told the Chronicle that officials had tried multiple times to reach Abbott and Patrick, and Biden said he only connected with Patrick Tuesday, after which he issued the disaster declaration. Beryl came ashore on Texas' Gulf Coast early Monday morning, bringing heavy rain and winds that wreaked havoc over Houston and other parts of southeast Texas.

Amarillo residents will vote on a so-called abortion travel ban in November, one of the few times Texas voters will have a say on abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.

Supporters of the measure, who gathered 6,300 verified signatures to petition for approval of the ordinance, submitted their request to city officials to have it placed on the Nov. 5 ballot after the Amarillo City Council rejected it last month, per local rules.

We see you, hard-core NPR readers — just because it's summer doesn't mean it's all fiction, all the time. So we asked around the newsroom to find our staffers' favorite nonfiction from the first half of 2024. We've got biography and memoir, health and science, history, sports and more.

LOS ANGELES – President Biden on Saturday night said he expects the winner of this year’s presidential election will likely have the chance to fill two vacancies on the Supreme Court – a decision he warned would be “one of the scariest parts” if his Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, is successful in his bid for a second term.

A group of financial firms and investors is planning to launch a Texas-based private market stock exchange and offer traders an alternative to the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.

The group, which includes BlackRock, Citadel Securities and about two dozen investors, raised approximately $120 million of capital to create the Texas Stock Exchange, which would be headquartered in Dallas. They are now seeking registration with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to operate as a national securities exchange later this year.

“Texas and the other states in the southeast quadrant have become economic powerhouses. Combined with the demand we are seeing from investors and corporations for expanded alternatives to trade and list equities, this is an opportune time to build a major, national stock exchange in Texas,” said James Lee, founder and CEO of TXSE Group.

After a monthslong review, Texas A&M University decided not to bring back the student bonfire tradition it discontinued 25 years ago after a deadly accident, President Mark Welsh III said Tuesday.

For decades, students built a 60-foot bonfire every year ahead of football matches between A&M and the University of Texas at Austin. The tradition was suspended after tragedy struck in 1999, when a stack of logs collapsed in the middle of the night, killing 12 people and injuring dozens, some severely.

Welsh said reviving the tradition would not be in the best interest of the university.

“After careful consideration, I decided that Bonfire, both a wonderful and tragic part of Aggie history, should remain in our treasured past,” Welsh said.

ST. LOUIS — Five states have banned ranked choice voting in the last two months, bringing the total number of Republican-leaning states now prohibiting the voting method to 10.

Missouri could soon join them.

If approved by voters, a GOP-backed measure set for the state ballot this fall would amend Missouri’s constitution to ban ranked choice voting.

ST. LOUIS — Five states have banned ranked choice voting in the last two months, bringing the total number of Republican-leaning states now prohibiting the voting method to 10.

Missouri could soon join them.

If approved by voters, a GOP-backed measure set for the state ballot this fall would amend Missouri’s constitution to ban ranked choice voting.

Andy Kim couldn’t rest one evening last September.

“I didn't get a single minute of sleep that night,” he recalled in an interview with NPR, “I really felt like I had to do something and really show people that, you know, when there's these problems in our politics, that there are people who want to step up and try to fix it.”

The problem was his fellow New Jersey Democrat, Sen. Bob Menendez. Last fall, Menendez was indicted for the second time on corruption charges. The news might not have rocked most voters in New Jersey — where as many as 80% of its residents said they viewed the state’s politicians as at least “a little” corrupt, according to a May 2023 Fairleigh Dickinson University poll.