Texas education commissioner stepping down

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AUSTIN - Texas' top education official is stepping down from his post at the end of the year.

Commissioner of Education Michael Williams said after years spent driving back and forth between his home in Arlington and his agency in Austin, he was ready to return to private life.

"While carrying out my responsibilities, I have kept my house in Arlington and managed to keep a long-distance relationship with my wife," Williams said in his resignation letter to Gov. Greg Abbott. "But after more than 16 years of weekend commuting, I feel that it is finally time to simply head home."

The resignation will prompt Abbott to name a successor. In a statement Thursday, he expressed gratitude for the commissioner's tenure.

"Commissioner Williams is a public servant dedicated to elevating our state's education system to be the best in the nation," Abbott said. "I am grateful for his leadership and steadfast advocacy on behalf of our students, and I wish him the best of luck in all future endeavors."

Then-Gov. Rick Perry appointed Williams in September 2012. Previously, Williams became the first African American to hold a position in the state's executive branch when Gov. George W. Bush in 1998 appointed him to the Texas Railroad Commission; he was re-elected to that post three times.

A Midland native who attended the University of Southern California, Williams also served under President George H.W. Bush in the U.S. Department of the Treasury and U.S. Department of Education, and was an adjunct professor at three Texas universities.

During his time as head of the Texas Education Agency, Williams shepherded the state through difficult times such as cuts in the state's budget for public schools and public disagreements with the U.S. Department of Education over local control.

Monty Exter, lobbyist for the Association of Texas Public Educators, the largest educator group in the state, said Williams has remained unpopular in some circles due to his unapologetic support for the importance of testing, but he has done the best he could with what was often a difficult environment.

"When you compare him to his immediate predecessor, he did actually a pretty decent job with what he was given," Exter said, referring to Robert Scott, a Perry appointee who resigned in 2012 after spending the longest time of any commissioner in the post.

Like Scott, Williams repeatedly bucked the federal government, reminding officials in Washington that he did not have - and did not want - the authority to force school districts to comply with certain mandates under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Williams was still locked in this fight this month, when he urged the federal agency to remove Texas' "high risk" status and grant the state a waiver from the 2001 law's mandates.

Williams also has focused heavily on Texas' testing regime in his three years in the position, during which time the state was forced to repeatedly delay increasing the passing difficulty of the exams due to poor student performance.

Williams this month announced the state's mandatory tests for K-12 students, called the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, gradually would begin to get harder beginning this year. The move has been unpopular with teachers, many of whom are assessed based at least in part on student scores on these exams.

Abbot must name a successor to take Williams' place before his resignation date of Jan. 1, 2016.