page_title: Education in Texas
section_title: Primary and secondary education
hierarchical_section_title: Education in Texas / Primary and secondary education
caption_attribution_description: English: Mirabeau B. Lamar High School with a map of Texas Español: Escuela Secundaria Mirabeau B. Lamar con un mapa de Texas
context_page_description: Texas has over 1,000 public school districts—all but one of the school districts in Texas are independent, separate from any form of municipal government. School districts may cross city and county boundaries. Independent school districts have the power to tax their residents and to assert eminent domain over privately owned property. The Texas Education Agency oversees these districts, providing supplemental funding, but its jurisdiction is limited mostly to intervening in poorly performing districts.
  36 separate and distinct public universities exist in Texas, of which 32 belong to one of the six state university systems. The Carnegie Foundation classifies nine of Texas's universities as research universities with very high research activity: Rice University, The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Texas at Arlington, University of Houston, University of North Texas, Texas A&M University, University of Texas at Dallas, University of Texas at El Paso, and Texas Tech University.
context_section_description: Texas has over 1,000 school districts—ranging in size from the gigantic Houston Independent School District to the Divide Independent School District in rural south Texas, which has had as few as eight students at one time in the district.  All but one of the school districts in Texas are separate from any form of municipal government, hence they are called "independent school districts", or "ISD" for short. School districts may (and often do) cross city and county boundaries. School districts have the power to tax their residents and to use eminent domain. The sole exception to this rule is Stafford Municipal School District, which serves all of the city of Stafford.
  Texas Education Agency (TEA) has oversight of the public school systems as well as the charter schools. Because of the independent nature of the school districts the TEA's actual jurisdiction is limited. The TEA is divided into twenty Educational Service Center "regions" that serve the local school districts. The Robin Hood plan is a controversial tax redistribution system that provides court-mandated equitable school financing for all school districts in the state. Property tax revenue from property-wealthy school districts is distributed to those in property-poor districts, in an effort to equalize the financing of all districts throughout Texas.
  Especially in the metropolitan areas, Texas also has numerous private schools of all types (non-sectarian, Catholic, and Protestant). The TEA has no authority over private school operations; private schools may or may not be accredited, and achievement tests are not required for private school graduating seniors. Many private schools will obtain accreditation and perform achievement tests as a means of encouraging future parents that the school is genuinely interested in educational performance.
  It is generally considered to be among the least restrictive states in which to home school. Neither TEA nor the local school district has authority to regulate home school activities; state law only requires that the curriculum 1 must teach "reading, spelling, grammar, mathematics and a study of good citizenship" (the latter interpreted to mean a course in civics) and 2) must be taught in a bona fide manner. There are no minimum number of days in a year, or hours in a day, that must be met, and achievement tests are not required for home school graduating seniors. The validity of home schooling was challenged in Texas, but a landmark case, Leeper v. Arlington ISD, ruled that home schooling was legal and that the state had little or no authority to regulate the practice.
  As of 2010 49% of children enrolled in public Pre-K through 12 primary and secondary schools in Texas are classified as Hispanic. In the decade from the 1999-2000 school year to the 2009–2010 school year, Hispanics made up 91% of the growth in the state's public K-12 schools. The overall student body increased by 856,061 students, with 775,075 of those students being Hispanic.
  Although unusual in the West, school corporal punishment is not uncommon in more conservative areas of the state, with 28,569 public school students paddled in Texas at least one time during the 2011–2012 school year, according to government data. The rate of school corporal punishment in Texas is surpassed only by Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas.
caption: The entrance to the Lamar High School auditorium in Houston is decorated with a map of the state of Texas.
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