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State testing data released Friday shows students' math and science scores slipped as they continue to struggle to catch up after the pandemic.

Texas elementary students who took the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness exam this spring saw striking drops in their understanding of science. Only 26% of fifth graders met science grade-level standards this year, a steep decline of 21 percentage points from 2019.

In math, Texas students lost ground after two years of modest post-pandemic gains. About 41% of students demonstrated an adequate understanding of math on their tests, with declines across grades compared to last year.

The results further illustrate the toll the COVID-19 pandemic exacted on student learning and the long road toward recovery still ahead. Education experts worry the disruption in learning could have long-lasting impacts on how students fare in the workforce.

“It's clear that math performance is not where students need it to be for success after graduation,” said Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath. “Pandemic-induced disruptions to learning exacerbated students' difficulties in mastering fundamental math concepts.”

Elementary and middle school students from third through eighth grade are required to take the STAAR test in math and reading. In addition, fifth-graders are tested in science and eighth-graders in science and social studies.

A bright spot in the STAAR test data was the gains bilingual students have made, though their scores still lag behind the rest of the state. They've surpassed pre-pandemic levels in reading and social studies by 12 and 6 percentage points, respectively. Bilingual students have narrowed the gap between their pre- and post-pandemic performance in math and science, compared to their peers.

This is a developing story; check back for details.

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An Austin gun shop owner succeeded Friday on a years-long quest to overturn a federal ban on bump stocks, winning a 6-3 victory from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bump stocks are devices that allow semi-automatic rifles to fire hundreds of rounds in a minute. The court ruled the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives can not include bump stocks under legislation banning machine guns. The overturned ATF rule required owners of bump stocks to either destroy them or surrender them to the ATF to avoid criminal prosecution.

The case was filed by Michael Cargill, the owner of Central Texas Gun Works and an outspoken proponent of gun rights in Texas, after he surrendered two bump stocks to the ATF. He argued that ATF incorrectly identified bump stocks as machine guns, and overstepped its power in banning them. He brought the case with the support of the advocacy group the New Civil Liberties Alliance.

The almost 100-year-old law banning machine guns defines the weapon as “any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.” The ATF began including bump stocks under the definition of “machinegun” during the Trump administration in response to the deadly mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip in 2017.

“We hold that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machinegun' because it cannot fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger,'” wrote Clarence Thomas in the majority opinion. “And, even if it could, it would not do so ‘automatically.'”

This case does not directly address the Second Amendment but rather the limits of executive agencies' authority.

In an X.com video, Cargill expressed hope that this ruling would prevent the ATF from banning other gun accessories like braces and triggers.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, disagreed with the majority's interpretation. She wrote, “When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”

She argued that a bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle fits the definition of a machine gun because it fires “automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”

As debates over gun control and Second Amendment rights continue, this ruling underscores the ongoing tension between legislative intent and regulatory authority.

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The Texas Supreme Court has declined to take up a major in vitro fertilization case that could have potentially upended access to the procedure.

The justices allowed a lower court's opinion to stand, and, for now, sidestepped the question of whether a frozen embryo has the same rights as a living child in post-Dobbs Texas.

The case centers on Gaby and Caroline Antoun, a Denton couple who divorced in 2022. They divided up their assets and settled on a custody agreement for their children. The major point of contention, however, was the frozen embryos the couple created while doing IVF in 2019.

While doing IVF, the couple signed a contract saying that in case of divorce, the embryos would go to Gaby Antoun, the husband. At a hearing on June 29, 2022, a judge upheld that contract and awarded him the embryos.

Two months later, Texas' near-total abortion ban went into effect, and Caroline Antoun asked the court for a new trial. She pointed to the abortion law, which defines an “unborn child” as “an individual living member of the homo sapiens species from fertilization until birth, including the entire embryonic and fetal stages of development.”

“Because fertilization has occurred, the embryos are unborn children and thus people as Texas defines them,” her lawyers wrote in a brief. “They are unborn children and should be treated as having all the rights and constitutional protections of children.”

The court disagreed, and Caroline Antoun appealed. The 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth ruled that her arguments were “a classic example of taking a definition out of its legislatively created context and using it in a context that the legislature did not intend.”

“Dobbs held that the United States Constitution does not guarantee a right to an abortion,” the judges wrote. “Dobbs did not determine the rights of cryogenically stored embryos outside the human body before uterine implantation. Dobbs is not law ‘applicable' to this case, and thus its pronouncement did not justify a new trial.”

Caroline Antoun asked the Texas Supreme Court to consider the case. In an unsigned order without any comment, the court denied her request.

Historical precedent

Even before the overturn of Roe v. Wade, courts have been called on to wrestle with questions about the legal status of frozen embryos. In the earliest case in 1992, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos were somewhere in between person and property, an “interim category that entitles them to special respect because of their potential for human life.”

The Texas courts waded into the issue in 2006, when a man named Randy Roman wanted his frozen embryos destroyed, as was delineated in the contract he and his ex-wife signed before beginning the process. His ex-wife wanted to use the embryos.

A Texas appeals court ruled that it would honor the “emerging majority view that written embryo agreements … are valid and enforceable,” a stance that “best serves the existing public policy of this State and the interests of the parties.”

The Texas Supreme Court also declined to take up that case, so that appeals court ruling is the most recent precedent governing this issue.

Earlier this year, in a high-profile case with significant repercussions, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos qualify as people under the state's wrongful death statute. The state's fertility clinics halted their work, throwing the future of reproductive technology into legal limbo until the legislature stepped in to clarify.

While the details are different, this case was expected to have similar implications in Texas.

“Recognizing ‘personhood' status for a frozen embryo, as requested by Petitioner, would upend IVF in Texas,” the American Society for Reproductive Medicine wrote in an amicus brief. It would “inject untenable uncertainty into whether and on what terms IVF clinics can continue to operate in Texas.”

Juan Salinas II contributed reporting.

Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. Jon Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!