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Dallas County students make gains and show broad-based progress across STAAR End-of-Course assessments

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Strong growth in Algebra I and Biology highlights progress in courses critical to college and career success

DALLAS, June 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Today, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) released STAAR End-of-Course (EOC) assessment results for the 2025-26 school year, offering an important snapshot of how students across Texas are progressing toward key academic milestones tied to postsecondary readiness and long-term economic opportunity.

Dallas County grew the percentage of students meeting grade level standard by 7 points across all EOC assessments, outpacing the state’s growth of 5 percentage points.

Across Dallas County, students demonstrated growth across all five EOC assessments, with 14 of the county’s 15 largest school systems increasing their overall percentage of students meeting grade levels across EOCs. Of those 15 systems, 7 surpassed the growth seen by the state.

“These results reflect years of sustained, intentional work across our school systems,” said Miguel Solis, President of The Commit Partnership. “Across Dallas County, district leaders, campus leaders, and teachers are increasingly aligned around what matters most for student success, particularly in high school.”

“Through stronger collaboration, a shared commitment to ensuring students have access to rigorous, grade-level instruction throughout their academic journey, and clearer pathways to college and career success, districts are creating more coherent experiences that support student achievement,” Solis continued. “The improvements we are seeing on EOCs are the result of this long-term focus on high-quality teaching and learning.”

Growth was particularly strong in Algebra I and Biology. Since 2025, Dallas County students achieved an increase of 9 percentage points in Algebra 1 proficiency and an increase of 12 percentage points in Biology proficiency at the “meets grade level” standard.

The encouraging trends in Algebra I and Biology are especially notable given the role both courses play in preparing students for success after high school. Research demonstrates that students who complete Algebra I in 8th grade are more likely to enroll in and persist in postsecondary education, which is linked to higher lifetime earnings.

Today’s release doesn’t provide the grade level of the Algebra 1 testers; however, many Dallas County districts have implemented policies to increase the number of students accessing the course in middle school so it’s encouraging to see the results trending in this direction. Additionally, Biology provides foundational knowledge for many healthcare and STEM pathways, sectors that remain among the largest and fastest-growing employers in the Dallas region.

Looking ahead, House Bill 8, enacted during the second special session of the 89th Texas Legislature, will expand the tools available to school systems for monitoring student progress throughout the academic year. Although the legislation eliminates the English II EOC assessment beginning in 2027–28, it also authorizes optional beginning- and middle-of-year assessments in the remaining EOC subjects that are aligned to state standards. These assessments can help educators identify and address learning gaps earlier, enabling more timely interventions and better preparation for end-of-year assessments.

The EOC results released this week represent the first installment of a broader picture of student outcomes that will continue to emerge throughout June as STAAR results become available for grades 3–8. The Commit Partnership will continue analyzing the data to better understand where students are making progress, where challenges remain, and what practices may help accelerate long-term student success across Dallas County.

TEA makes statewide assessment data publicly available, and the information is often shared through reports and data files that require time, context, and technical expertise to fully interpret. The Commit Partnership translates that data into accessible insights that can be more easily understood and used to inform decisions that support student success.

Commit’s 2025–26 STAAR Results Data Dashboard turns complex state data into accessible, visual insights that allow educators, policymakers, funders, and community leaders to compare results across places, student groups, subjects, and years. We also provide additional views of the data that are especially relevant to local decision-makers, including county-level trends, regional comparisons, legislative districts, and other groupings that are not always easy to see through state reporting alone.

“Data is most useful when people can understand it and act on it,” Chelsea Jeffery, Chief of Strategy, Insights & Talent at The Commit Partnership. “As a third-party nonprofit, Commit works alongside partners to interpret analysis and mine for insights that help align everyone to what these results mean and how we can scale what works for students.”

Commit’s dashboard reporting initial insights and results of STAAR EOC Results for Dallas County can be found here.

Read more about Commit’s analysis of STAAR EOC Results for Dallas County on its Latest Learnings blog here.

About The Commit Partnership
The Commit Partnership aims to break the cycle of poverty in Dallas County by examining its numerous root causes and working with others to remove systemic barriers to opportunity for all students. Commit Partnership discovers robust data insights and activates them through trusted relationships to innovate systems and unlock public funding in ways that address the root causes creating current student outcomes. Commit Partnership’s true north goal is that, by 2040, at least half of all 25–34-year-old residents in Dallas County, irrespective of race, will earn a living wage.

For more information, connect with Commit Partnership at communications@commitpartnership.org and on social media.

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SOURCE The Commit Partnership

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The Inner Circle acknowledges Daniel Beer as a Pinnacle Professional Member Inner Circle of Excellence

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NEW YORK, Sept. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Prominently featured in The Inner Circle, Daniel Beer is acknowledged as a Pinnacle Professional Member Inner Circle of Excellence for his contributions to Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence.

Daniel Beer has built a distinguished career as a technology executive, entrepreneur, and innovator dedicated to helping organizations harness technology to achieve sustainable growth and meaningful collaboration. As founder and chief executive officer of Trusted Associates and chief executive officer of Freeman and Clarke Inc., he leads initiatives that combine strategic technology leadership with emerging innovations in artificial intelligence and digital transformation.

Mr. Beer specializes in information technology strategy, platform development, organizational modernization, digital infrastructure, and fractional chief information officer and chief technology officer services. Through Freeman and Clarke Inc., he provides executive technology leadership that enables organizations to align technology investments with long term business objectives. At Trusted Associates, he focuses on developing collaborative technology platforms, cultivating strategic partnerships, creating innovative applications, and making investments in artificial intelligence companies that advance practical, real world solutions.

Mr. Beer earned a Bachelor of Music Education from the University of Sydney in 1997 before completing an equivalency certification for a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Science through the University of Maryland in 2012. His unique educational background combines creativity with technical expertise, allowing him to approach technology challenges with both analytical precision and innovative thinking.

Throughout his career, Mr. Beer has consistently demonstrated visionary leadership. He founded Techknowledgy Group at the age of 20 and successfully grew the company into a respected managed services provider over a fifteen year period. Later, as Chief Information Officer for the New York Hotel Trades Council, he led the modernization of the organization’s information systems and digital infrastructure, significantly improving operational efficiency and technology capabilities. Today, he continues expanding his influence through leadership roles with Trusted Associates, Freeman and Clarke Inc., and as an investor and advisory board member for Relate Research and Technology Company.

His professional accomplishments have earned recognition through inclusion in Marquis Who’s Who Top Executives, honoring his leadership, innovation, and contributions to the field of information technology.

Outside of his professional endeavors, Mr. Beer enjoys singing in church choirs, supporting personal development programs, and participating in animal rescue efforts, including fostering and rescuing dogs alongside his family. He credits the mentors who invested in his growth without expecting anything in return for shaping both his leadership philosophy and his commitment to serving others.

Looking ahead, Mr. Beer plans to continue advancing technology solutions that promote global collaboration while pursuing initiatives that improve literacy, raise awareness of neurodiversity, reduce incarceration rates, and create opportunities that benefit society as a whole. He remains committed to using innovation as a force for positive change.

Guided by his W5 philosophy, Mr. Beer believes true success is measured by helping others succeed. Through collaboration, communication, service, and innovation, he continues to build organizations and technologies that create lasting value for clients, communities, and future generations.

Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, editorialteam@continentalwhoswho.com

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-inner-circle-acknowledges-daniel-beer-as-a-pinnacle-professional-member-inner-circle-of-excellence-302872896.html

SOURCE The Inner Circle

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Thoma Bravo Announces Strategic Growth Investment in Tanda

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Investment to accelerate Tanda’s product innovation and global growth

BRISBANE, Australia and SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Thoma Bravo, the world’s largest software-focused investment firm, today announced a strategic growth investment in Tanda, a leading workforce management, payroll and HR platform for shift-based workers. Thoma Bravo’s investment will support Tanda’s continued product innovation, including the company’s AI roadmap and its expansion into new markets. Tanda’s co-founders will remain significant shareholders and will continue to lead the company, with Jake Phillpot remaining Chief Executive Officer. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Tanda is the market leader in workforce management for shift-based employers, serving approximately 8,000 businesses globally across hospitality, retail, quick-service restaurants, healthcare and other frontline industries. Tanda’s integrated workforce management platform combines employee recruiting, onboarding, rostering, time and attendance, gross wage calculations and payroll on a single codebase. This natively built product suite enables employers in complex, highly regulated markets to manage compliance and ensure employees are paid accurately. Trusted by thousands of organizations, Tanda’s platform powers the daily operations of some of the most demanding frontline businesses in the world.

“Taking on an investor was a very big decision for Tanda,” said Jake Phillpot, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Tanda. “We’ve been a bootstrapped company with no outside capital since we were founded 14 years ago. What started as an idea when we were still housemates at university has become a global business that we have built without taking shortcuts. Through a lot of hard work, we have market-leading products, growing market share and so much more room to grow. We thought the time was right to take on our first investor.”

“Thoma Bravo was the obvious choice as our financial partner,” Phillpot continued. “They understand software at an extraordinary level, have spent decades helping companies like ours scale and share our ambition for what Tanda can become. By partnering with the world’s number one software investor, we intend to become the global category leader in our space. Most importantly, the things that make Tanda precious won’t change. The founders will still come to work every day, and we’ll still obsess over how we can make our products better for our customers.”

“Managing and compensating employees accurately is a fundamental obligation of all employers, yet it remains a universal challenge, particularly for businesses with shift-based employees,” said Carl Press, a Partner at Thoma Bravo. “Employers are frustrated by a patchwork of legacy systems that cannot address their complex needs and expose them to operational and legal risks. Jake and his co-founders identified this problem and built Tanda from the ground up with customers and their employees at the center of every product decision. In doing so, they’ve laid the groundwork to become the definitive AI-native workforce management solution in the shift-based economy. We couldn’t be more thrilled to help them drive the next chapter of accelerated growth and innovation.”

“Tanda has everything we look for in an investment: market leadership, a fiercely loyal customer base and a product-first founding team with deep domain expertise,” said Adam Kinalski, a Principal at Thoma Bravo. “Jake and his co-founders have built a rare business that matches strong product-market fit with exceptional operational execution. We’re excited to partner with them on their mission to make Tanda the global standard in workforce management and payroll software for shift-based employers.”

Barrenjoey Advisory Pty Ltd is serving as financial advisor to Tanda, and SBA Law is serving as legal counsel. Piper Sandler & Co. is serving as exclusive financial advisor to Thoma Bravo, and Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Allens are serving as legal counsel.

About Thoma Bravo
Thoma Bravo is the world’s largest software-focused investment firm, with approximately $170 billion in assets under management as of June 30, 2026. Partnering with some of the world’s most sophisticated investors, Thoma Bravo’s private equity and private credit platforms reflect a focused investment strategy, supported by disciplined execution, deep sector expertise and leadership continuity. Over the past 20-plus years, Thoma Bravo has acquired or invested in approximately 600 software and technology companies, representing more than $325 billion of aggregate enterprise value (including control and non-control investments, as well as add-on acquisitions). Learn more at thomabravo.com and on LinkedIn.

About Tanda
Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Brisbane, Australia, Tanda (operating internationally as Workforce.com) is an all-in-one payroll, HR and workforce management system for businesses with shift-based and hourly workforces. Tanda’s platform brings rostering, time and attendance, award interpretation, compliance, payroll and HR onboarding together in a single system, helping employers in hospitality, retail, healthcare and other frontline industries schedule efficiently and pay employees accurately. The company serves thousands of customers across Australia, North America, the United Kingdom and Southeast Asia. For more information, visit tanda.co.

For Thoma Bravo

Abby Farr
Vice President, Communications & Marketing
+1 646-957-2067
afarr@thomabravo.com    

For Tanda

Georgie Pollok
Head of Marketing
media@tanda.com.au 

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/thoma-bravo-announces-strategic-growth-investment-in-tanda-302872908.html

SOURCE Thoma Bravo

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PeerTrust Launches Public Service to Evaluate Citation Integrity and Scientific Due Diligence Beyond Citation Counts

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New “Know Your Scientist” tool allows insurance carriers, universities, research funders, and science investors to inspect citation accumulation patterns and network anomalies.

FREDERICK, Md., Sept. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — PeerTrust is now publicly available at PeerTrust.Report, giving science stakeholders a way to examine unusual patterns in the citation record behind a researcher’s scholarly profile.

Citations influence hiring, funding, promotion, institutional rankings, and decisions about scientific partnerships. Yet those decisions often rely on how frequently a scientist has been cited, with little scrutiny of where those citations came from or how the surrounding network developed.

PeerTrust introduces Know Your Scientist (KYS), researcher-level scientific due diligence based on public scholarly records. The service examines three distinct anomaly types:

Coauthor Network Concentration: Unusual concentration of citation activity within a researcher’s coauthor network.Reciprocal Citation Relationships: Repeated reciprocal citation relationships.Publication Velocity: Abrupt changes in publication output.

PeerTrust weighs these signals and produces an evidence-oriented report for human review.

“PeerTrust tells decision makers where unusual citation structures appear and gives them evidence they can inspect,” said Bassem Kadry, Chief Innovation Officer at ScienceWerx. “What that evidence means still requires context and human judgment.”

An unusual pattern is not a finding of misconduct. Close scientific collaboration, consortium publishing, changes in team size, or rapid growth in research activity can all produce legitimate anomalies. PeerTrust is designed to identify records that warrant closer examination, not to infer intent or assign guilt.

Computational Reproducibility Benchmark

The system has also undergone a computational reproducibility benchmark using a deliberately citation-enriched cohort of researchers identified through exceptionally highly cited recent publications. A separate team reimplemented the public PeerTrust methodology in Python and compared its results with the production system using identical preserved bibliographic evidence.

Both implementations returned the same final PeerTrust classification for all 260 researchers that could be scored. Across the complete set of benchmarked outputs, 258 of 260 cases matched exactly. The two remaining cases contained small numerical differences that did not change their classifications.

In the deliberately difficult test cohort, 116 of the 260 scored researchers received an ELEVATED or HIGH PeerTrust classification. The cohort was specifically constructed around unusually strong recent citation visibility to stress-test the system and cannot estimate how common citation manipulation or research misconduct is among scientists generally.

“Scientific due diligence often stops at publication and citation counts,” said Khalid Saqr of KNOWDYN. “If those numbers influence funding, appointments and partnerships, organizations should be able to examine the structure behind them before making consequential decisions.”

PeerTrust’s methodology separates automated anomaly detection from human judgment. The system organizes bibliometric evidence for review; it does not replace expert assessment, institutional investigation, or due process.

About PeerTrust & Next Steps

PeerTrust is a transatlantic joint initiative of ScienceWerx and KNOWDYN. The public service is live now at peertrust.report. PeerTrust is moving next into API access and institutional deployment and is identifying insurers, universities, research funders, investors, research-intelligence, and research-integrity organizations interested in bringing Know Your Scientist into existing review and scientific due-diligence workflows.

About ScienceWerx, Inc.

ScienceWerx was born from a simple yet powerful observation: countless groundbreaking scientific discoveries remain trapped in academic journals and laboratories, unable to make a real-world impact. The gap between brilliant research and market-ready solutions represents a massive loss of potential for humanity.

About KNOWDYN LTD

KNOWDYN LTD is an Intellectual Property (IP) custodian and licensor. The company is registered in England and Wales and operates in 17 countries across the Americas, Europe, and East Asia.

Website: peertrust.report

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/peertrust-launches-public-service-to-evaluate-citation-integrity-and-scientific-due-diligence-beyond-citation-counts-302872905.html

SOURCE ScienceWerx

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