For the last few days, you may have been busy warding off a flurry eager people with clipboards. This weekend marked Dallas County voter registration days, and volunteers from both sides of the aisle were hustling to try to get your vote in November. They had good reason to be…
Texas, the most gung-ho gun state in the country, may be getting just a little bit less infatuated with firearms. This year, the percentage of gun purchase requests submitted in Texas is significantly lower than last year. The Houston Chronicle reports that 1.1 million gun purchase requests were submitted last…
After being inundated with images of poverty stricken unaccompanied Central American children this summer, you might be surprised to learn that the stereotype of the poor working class immigrant is rapidly changing in Texas. The growing demographic, it turns out, are educated and highly skilled — and the Texas economy…
Highland Park High School announced it would be suspending seven books from the high school reading list, just in time for Banned Books Week. So what’s wrong with the books? Each of the seven, award-winning texts feature themes about sexuality or include passages that some parents find too racy. See…
Since allegations surfaced that NFL star Adrian Peterson abused multiple children at his Texas home, debate has swirled between pro- and anti-spanking parents. For the majority of North Texas schools, though, there’s no question: Spare the rod, spoil the child is official district disciplinary policy in all but a handful…
If the city won’t give money to Dallas libraries, maybe the community will. Thursday was North Texas Giving Day, which means Friends of the Dallas Public Libraries, along with other north Texas do-gooder groups, were busy rattling their tin cans for spare change to raise money that, in the library’s…
It’s been a rough week for State Board of Education members, who have upheld their loyalty to TEKS social studies requirements despite bipartisan opposition (although for different reasons, of course). On Tuesday, the board heard public commentary against proposed social studies textbooks. The publishers, required to conform outrageously biased state…
#TacoBell’s cousin #banhmi restaurant logo angers #Vietnamese community http://t.co/nZcTJiAut5 pic.twitter.com/beYc2AKQpV— Sonny Lê (@sonnylebythebay) September 17, 2014 Banh Shop’s theme is apparently as red as the tomato slabs on their overpriced sandwiches. The fast food joint, owned by the Taco Bell parent company Yum! Brands, opened three days ago as a…
The internet has gone wild over the past few days with news that Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings is facing child abuse charges after disciplining his 4-year-old son with a switch, and was separately accused of leaving a scar on another 4-year-old son’s face. A native of Palestine, Texas,…
What’s that? Your arm just fell off? Naturally your first reaction might be something along the lines of, “Thank goodness I’m insured!” Your next reaction might be to scream in agony, but instead you might want to suck it up, save your breath and tell the ambulance driver not to…
As if Texas social studies textbooks haven’t been getting enough flack for pointed political and religious biases, a report released Monday by the National Center for Science Education highlights inaccuracies about climate change in proposed state textbooks. See also: SMU Academics Speak Out Against Political and Religious Bias in Texas…
It’s Monday, which means, according to federal data, that you’re more likely to be forcibly sodomized today than any other day of the week. Sorry if we just made your Monday blues 10 thousand times worse. Information gathered by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention from FBI…
Highland Park ISD plans to launch an elementary-level Spanish learning program next year. It’s a project that most in the district are embracing — after all, multilingualism is linked to dozens of developmental benefits. Bilingual individuals are often smarter, better listeners and in later life may see a delay in…
Kids chase each other. They have probably have chased each other since man could walk upright on two legs. Maybe it’s some sort of Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest struggle. However you look at it, kids have always chased and ran away from each other. A game of tag recently ended very badly…
Social studies textbooks have been under increasing scrutiny this year, as the successor to the science textbook controversy last year. For the first time in 12 years, the State Board of Education will review social studies textbooks, this time under social studies standards put in place in 2010. This time,…
On Sunday night, an SMU student was raped while jogging just off campus. There are no details so far about the girl, other than the fact that she was assaulted in one of the nicest neighborhoods in town, in University Park. But her case is much more common than statistics…
For Dan Elliott, his life’s work and now-generous income was born out of a horrendous family tragedy 25 years ago. “I got ‘the call’ from my mother, who told me that I needed to go tell my younger brother that his fiancee had been murdered,” says a stoic Elliott. “Someone…
Amid the storm of fast-food worker protests for better pay, Democratic candidate for governor Wendy Davis announced late last week her plan to boost Texas’ minimum wage to $10 per hour, which is generally how much national cost-of-living studies say is necessary for struggling workers to have improved quality of…
In the U.S., common knowledge — that’s a polite term for bigoted slander — says the English have the worst teeth in the world. That’s an unkind thing to say, and maybe not even true, as anyone who has traveled parts of the South can attest. So to soothe hurt…
The VA Hospital system has taken a beating in the last several months. Between the Arizona scandal unearthed this spring about veterans dying while waiting for care and continued reports of absurdly long wait times — this summer, the average veteran in Texas waited 60 days for an appointment, compared…
In the 2013 legislative session, state Representative Roland Gutierrez from San Antonio amended an education bill to require the Texas Education Agency to find out whether bigger Texas school districts would be better. In a word, no. See also: State Rep. Jason Villalba Threatens to Split DISD if it Doesn’t…
Three years ago, the state rolled out the shiny new STAAR exam, the Cadillac of state tests as far as the State Board of Education was concerned. It came after decades of testing overhauls and cumbersome acronyms, from TEAMS to TAAS to TAKS, all based on TEKS curriculum requirements. Fill…
