Everybody always says the schools should be the No. 1 issue in the city. I wonder how we’ll take it when that idea suddenly comes true? Maybe well, maybe not very well at all. Gov. Greg Abbott has been giving off strong signals in recent weeks that he thinks the…
Practice forgetfulness. Forget about the bitterness over the new statewide grading system for schools and school districts. Forget the whole debate over school reform in Dallas. For two seconds, do the good kind of forgetfulness. Now ponder this: The overwhelming objective evidence is that the Dallas public school system has…
The Observer asked Dr. Stephen F. Waddell, an experienced educator and leader in school innovation, for his take on Texas’ controversial new A-F grading system for public schools. See a longer bio and partial list of his bona fides at the end of his essay. This month school districts across…
Gov. Greg Abbott and Dallas School board member Miguel Solis held dueling press conferences Tuesday at public school campuses barely a mile apart in East Dallas, Abbott calling for higher pay for teachers and Solis asking where the money is. Unspoken was a startling new theme shared by both sides:…
Just before the end of the school year in June, the students who run Prosper High School’s award-winning student newspaper Eagle News Online found themselves wondering if they could still run a newspaper worthy of the national awards they’ve racked up over the last few years. Prosper High School principal…
Almost every school and every school district in Texas got a report card Wednesday, spelling out for parents, students and anyone else paying attention how the Texas Education Agency believes the institutions it oversees are performing. The new, Legislature-approved measures are easy to read and make it easier to compare…
There must be some ancient instinct buried somewhere in our Cro-Magnon genetic roots that makes people start squealing and whining like they’re going to die if you dare suggest there might be something wrong with their kids. And not just their own kids but kids who are in their care…
1Last December, a youth program issued a call seeking 50 local men to go to Dallas’ Dade Middle School for a mentorship breakfast to inspire boys. About 600 showed up, and the positive response made national headlines for a heartwarming viral story of men serving as role models to boys…
A doctor in a white coat walks into a examination room. The patient’s diagnosis: veisalgia. There is no cure, only treatments. The patient will have to live with nausea, lethargy, muscle aches and a sensitivity to bright light and loud noises. Doctor leaves the room. Next patient. Relax, dude, it’s…
Dallas school trustee Joyce Foreman urged the Dallas City Council last week to begin using its power over real estate zoning as a sword to chop off new charter schools at the knees by denying zoning for new campuses. She accused the charters of bleeding the public school system of…
The staff of Prosper High School’s student news website Eagle Nation Online has racked up an impressive number of awards and a reputation for reporting on more than just pep rallies and school events. The students dig deep for sources on stories such as a report on how teachers “strongly…
Students in the halls of McKinney North High School were placed on lockdown at about 11 a.m. Friday after a student died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in an empty classroom. Two days later, in a parking lot next to the school’s sports building, hundreds gathered to sort out their…
There are things in the news these days to make us all cry inside. I’m thinking of the Roseanne story and what it really says about us. So I had to share this local story. This is the opposite kind of story. It actually gave me a lump in the…
Gov. Greg Abbott’s new school safety plan, unveiled at Dallas ISD headquarters, is voluminous, if not at all unexpected. The governor, seemingly chastened by the murder of 10 students and teachers at a high school in Santa Fe earlier this month, told reporters Wednesday morning that Texas schools need better…
The outrage that came to Southern Methodist University last week after news stories heralded a “racist survey” conducted by the university, is precisely the kind of outrage that led SMU to conduct the survey in the first place. The survey is only one leg of a seven-year project at SMU…
Charter schools in North Texas ranked lower overall in quality than traditional public schools in the state, according to a recent report by Children At Risk, and charter schools serving primarily black or Latino students did worst of all in terms of achievement. When a Texas school falls short of…
University of North Texas communications student Chelsea Shaw wants a campus restaurant to close after a student employee typed a racial slur on her receipt Tuesday afternoon. The student employee, who was later identified as the chef, typed the N-word on Shaw’s receipt instead of asking for her name. Both…
Activists in Austin got something Wednesday for which they’ve pushed for almost five years. The Texas State Board of Education gave preliminary approval to a Mexican-American studies elective for high school students, closing out a debate that began with an unsuccessful attempt in 2014. They couldn’t do so, however, without…
I don’t make ’em up, folks. I just try to keep up. Sometimes I need to just tell you about a thing — just put it out there on the table and say, “Go figure.” Last week, President Donald Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, came through town as the…
Thursday afternoon’s conversation, like a lot of things involving Betsy DeVos, teetered among the surreal, the confusing and the merely frustrating. The secretary of education and private school choice advocate was in the midst of a hostile crowd but did her best to seem engaged without out actually engaging. DeVos…
Former Dallas County Schools Superintendent Rick Sorrells faces up to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty Monday to conspiracy to commit wire fraud during his time at the school bus service between 2011 and 2016. Sorrells took more than $3 million in cash and other assets from a company…
An op-ed piece in yesterday’s New York Times reminded me that somebody needs to write a book — maybe I’ll do it — called What White People Think Black People Think. The essay by David Leonhardt was headlined “A winning political issue hiding in plain sight.” It said political research…
