Assaults on teachers in Texas have risen by 18% over the past two school years, with over 3,500 staff members injured by students, raising concerns about school safety and the availability of mental health resources.

23andMe, the popular at-home genetic testing company, has helped millions of people uncover their family roots and health risks through DNA analysis. Experts fear as the company faces financial issues they may sell the data.

Questions linger about the company’s future and what happens to the DNA data of millions of customers.

Amy Davis explains how to check your private information and what to do to keep it safe.

The Texas Education Agency says there’s time to fix problems before officially reported data is used to determine how much money districts get.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore has signed two measures into law to better protect personal data online from Big Tech. One of the bills signed Thursday will make Maryland the second state to create strong limits on information collected on children, though the first in California has been halted in court.

The Texas Tribune’s data visuals team helped contextualize many of the state’s major stories this year. Here’s a look at some of our most memorable work.

Each year, approximately 300,000 students begin eighth grade in a Texas public school. Use our database to learn about the education outcomes of these eighth grade cohorts, including higher education enrollment and graduation rates.

Fabiana Chaparro will join the multimedia team, and Caroline Covington will join the data visuals team.

As coronavirus testing continues to increase in Texas, some have wondered how the number of tests being performed compares to the number of cases reported in the state.

They are the gold standard metric to measure a fire department’s effectiveness at responding quickly to emergencies, but HFD is headed in the wrong direction.

The Texas Department of State Health Services launched a dashboard Tuesday aimed at tracking the distribution and administration of COVID-19 vaccines across the state.

KPRC 2 Investigates looked at four different categories of crime reported over a period of five years -- from 2016, before Art Acevedo became Houston’s chief of police, through 2020, his last full year.

HOUSTON – As a whole, we’ve been studying and counting cars on our roads for more than 70 years, but data on cyclists and pedestrians is limited. TxDOT has teamed up with Texas A&M Transportation Institute researchers to evaluate the best pedestrian bicycle monitoring technology to get an accurate pulse of those who walk or bike on our Texas roadways. According to Texas A&M, pedestrians and cyclists are about 5-10% of the total traffic stream we see in Texas. “This is a fairly new area in traffic monitoring in terms of monitoring bicyclists and pedestrians, and it uses some newer technologies,” P.E. So this information is imperative to help identify pedestrians and cyclists make their presence count when it comes to transportation planning.

ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) – We’ve all heard the stories of companies’ data mining and big brother watching our every online move. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, Reddit, Amazon, Apple, Google … social media has connected us all in so many ways, but how much of your data does someone have? For Facebook, click Settings and Privacy, then Your Facebook Information. Sites like Facebook track your web and location history as much as possible and you won’t find all of that in your data request download. You can view your location history on Facebook by going to Settings, Location, and click View Location History.

HOUSTON – Houston Police Department Chief Art Acevedo held a news conference Friday morning to address the surging homicide numbers in the city. Not yet, according to the numbers announced by Acevedo. When asked if it’s the right strategy, Acevedo replied without hesitation: “Of course.” Asked again, Acevedo replied: “Absolutely. Acevedo replied: “I don’t know your numbers right now.” KPRC 2 Investigates reminded the chief they were his department’s numbers. Surging homicidesWatch a replay of the special report from KPRC 2′s Mario Diaz that aired Tuesday about the rising homicide numbers in the city.

HOUSTON – Voters in Texas turned out in huge numbers during the election. Despite polls showing Texas as a battleground state for the presidential race, the Lone Star State’s reputation as reliably red continued in 2020. President Donald Trump, with 52% of the vote as of Thursday afternoon, trounced former Vice President Joe Biden, who had 46% of the vote. U.S. President - Texas Vote View All CandidatesHowever, the six-point margin of the 2020 presidential race in Texas is a bit tighter than the nine-point margin between Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016. Profile of a Texas voterData collected by the Associated Press helps build a profile of the average Texas voter and how he or she voted.

Aaron Barker has been a senior digital editor at KPRC 2 since 2016. As a meteorologist, he specializes in stories about the weather. He has covered Hurricane Harvey, the Astros first World Series win, the Santa Fe High School shooting, the ITC fire and Tropical Storm Imelda.

HOUSTON – Building on seven months of extensive data gathering, analysis and publication, the Texas Medical Center is updating its public dashboards to provide user-friendly information in tracking COVID-19 in greater Houston. The dashboard highlights the reproduction rate (rate at which COVID-19 is being spread), testing trends, number of overall positive cases, and ICU bed capacity, among other topics. KPRC 2 uses this information to keep news reports up-to-date for the nine counties the TMC serves. “There is no delay in the TMC data so when you look at testing data, positivity rate, people being hospitalized, you’re getting real-time data,” said Dr. Mark Boom, with Houston Methodist Hospital. President and CEO of TMC, Bill McKeon, said the real-time data shows proof when social distancing has worked.

HOUSTON – Tuesday saw the largest single-day increase in newly reported coronavirus cases in the Houston area since the numbers started being tracked in March. After a steady decline in the number of newly reported COVID-19 cases for the past couple of weeks, 14,687 cases were added to the numbers Tuesday. A bulk of those newly reported cases – 13,875 – came from Harris County. “341 cases are from the last 14 days, 424 are from the last 15-28 days, and 13,110 are from 28 days+,” the tweets read. However, county health officials have said they back-date the results so that their data reflects when the case was reported.

HOUSTON – Tropical Storm Beta dumped more than a foot of rain on some places in the Houston area during the nearly three days it was in the vicinity. The southern part of Houston and Harris County was one of the hardest-hit areas by the floodwaters, where more than a foot of rain fell on some communities. The amounts varied widely across the county. For example, Hobby Airport on the southeast side received 11.76 inches of rain, while George Bush Intercontinental Airport got 5.48 inches of rain. Here’s a look at the 10 highest rainfall amounts reported by the National Weather Service during Beta.

HOUSTON – When the Texas positivity rate suddenly doubled this month, parents and teachers preparing to go back to school weren’t the only people scratching their heads. “It’s making it very confusing for people, and for physicians too,” said Dr. Diana Fite, president of the Texas Medical Association. KPRC 2 has reported on other COVID-19 discrepancies, including the difference in how the state and Harris County count Coronavirus deaths. “That just confuses people all the more, so it’s hard for them to know what to do to protect themselves,” Dr. Fite said. “The data still gives trends, it still gives information,” Fite said.

HOUSTON – After days of hitting record-high positivity rates in Texas last week, the numbers fell dramatically. State health officials said that fluctuation was caused by problems in data being reported by some labs. On Aug. 7, the seven-day positivity rate hit a record of 19.41%. Lara Anton, of the Texas Department of State Health Services, said that rollercoaster rate was caused by coding errors on data that was being entered by three labs in Texas — Walgreens, Christus Meditech and Quest Diagnostic. “We were first alerted on May 7 there was an issue,” the spokeswoman for Quest said in a written statement.

AUSTIN – Beginning Monday, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) started posting to its website COVID-19 case counts and deaths by facility name for state-supported living centers, state hospitals, and state-licensed nursing and assisted living facilities. “HHSC has a legal and ethical obligation to protect the private health information of everyone we serve, both in the private facilities we regulate and those we operate,” said HHS Executive Commissioner Phil Wilson. Data for the state-operated SSLCs and state hospitals will reflect confirmed cases as of the previous business day. Because nursing facilities and assisted living facilities self-report data to HHSC, HHSC says staff must review and correct any clerical or reporting errors to ensure data integrity. To accommodate time for this review, HHSC says data posted on these facilities will reflect counts two weeks prior to the date of posting.

SAN ANTONIO – A new map put out by the Stanford Big Local News platform shows the severity of coronavirus across the country, broken down by county. KSAT-TV reports the site was developed with data provided by state and local health agencies, along with data from the New York Times. The map is tracks the confirmed number of COVID-19 per 100,000 people. COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new virus, stands for coronavirus disease 2019. The disease first appeared in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, but spread around the world in early 2020, causing the World Health Organization to declare a pandemic in March.

HOUSTON – The sheer volume of data being shared by health officials in the Greater Houston area can make it difficult to understand the true scope of the impact coronavirus is having on the region. For the purposes of reporting COVID-19 cases, officials at Harris County Public Health have divided the county into four quadrants. This map shows the quadrants being used by Harris County Public Health during the coronavirus outbreak. (HCPH)For the purposes of the Harris County analysis, the number of cases in the county is also compared below to the number of cases within the city limits of Houston. More of our coronavirus coverageFIND ALL OF OUR COVERAGE: See everything you need to know about coronavirus on our special page.

Texas, how are we doing in terms of social distancing from one another? According to data from unacast.com, Texas scored an average grade of "B" for social distancing statewide. Both of which recently earned an “F.”Locally, Houston-area counties scored well in social-distancing. The data was used along with guidelines from the World Health Organization and the CDC on social distancing. Devices used by unacast.com were used to determine the size and population of each county observed.