To see if students absorbed classroom lessons, schools across America were given a number of measurement tools. One of the most recently popular is state-standardized assessment programs.

Concerned about encroachment on free speech in the Lone Star State, Senators Rodney Ellis (D-Houston) and Robert Duncan (R-Lubbock) coauthored SB 966. It protects journalists from having to reveal confidential sources unless they were eye witnesses to a crime or somebody's life depends on information from that source.