August 16th this year

One element of our new wacky education finance system I can get behind: mandating the fourth Monday of August as the earliest school start date. Every official explanation for early starts I've ever heard has been utterly specious. The number of instructional days doesn't change.

Early start dates are just a symptom of the standardized testing disease, and as long as they are ruled out across the state, the effect will be the same for all districts.

Now if they can just keep Rick Perry from drooling on the bill while he's signing it . . .