Vice President, Communications
Merrill helps Texans better understand the research, data and policy choices shaping the state's future. Before joining Texas 2036, she spent more than three decades advising Fortune 500 companies, trade associations and nonprofits across Texas on strategic communications and public affairs.
Every year, when the Texas Education Agency releases A-F accountability ratings for the state’s roughly 9,000 public school campuses, many of the same misconceptions resurface. We’ve collected a few here and we dispel each of them with facts: ❌ Myth: All students have to pass STAAR for a campus to earn an A. ✅ Fact:…
Every year, Texas assigns every public school campus, district and charter a letter grade meant to answer one basic question: how well is this school serving its students? Here’s a primer on what that grade actually measures and how Texas got here. What the system measures The A-F Accountability Rating System evaluates every district, campus…
Housing affordability conversations usually center on home prices, mortgage rates and property taxes. None are the fastest-growing fixed cost of owning a Texas home. In our statewide poll last fall, nearly four in five Texas voters said their property insurance costs had gone up over the past five years. After adjusting for inflation, homeowners insurance…
Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Speaker Dustin Burrows issued joint instructions to state agencies preparing Legislative Appropriations Requests for the 2028–29 biennium. The directive was clear: as the starting point for budget deliberations, each agency must reduce its base appropriation request by 3%. For most agencies, meeting that target will…
Around the turn of this century, a small solar array sat to the side of the Decker Creek Power Plant in northeast Austin with the capacity to generate 0.3 megawatts (MW) of solar power. This capacity represented a fraction of the nearly two million megawatt-hours (MWh) generated annually with natural gas across the property. And…
Statewide, 45% of Texas students met grade-level expectations in math (3-8 math & Algebra I EOC) this spring, and 55% of Texas students met grade-level expectations in reading (3-8 reading & English I & English II). But those numbers conceal a wide range of performance across the state’s 20 Education Service Center regions. That range…