A story in yesterday’s Dallas Morning News about a slow-down in turnover among public school principals in Dallas contained this unattributed wisdom: “Experts say a principal needs five years at the same school to make real improvement. When the principals keep changing, so does the teaching staff. Student test scores…
It was impossible Tuesday, at the first Texas State Board of Education meeting discussing a proposed new Mexican-American Studies textbook, to find anyone willing to say they believed the text was fit for Texas classrooms. Attendees called book in question, Mexican American Heritage, racist, inaccurate and embarrassing for the state…
Donald Trump has a point. When he asks black voters what the hell they have to lose, he misses nuances and conflates things that shouldn’t be conflated. But he has a point. And we are the living proof of his point here in Dallas. Last week the three African-American members…
Let’s back off 10 feet and look at both the nose and the tail of this rat now gnawing at the city’s new downtown law school. The University of North Texas Dallas College of Law (DCL), about to begin its third year of operation, is threatened with non-accreditation by the…
Monday, Texas public universities ushered in the first day of a new reality. Anyone on campus licensed to carry a handgun is now legally allowed to do so on portions of state owned, four-year college campuses, thanks to a bill passed during the 2015 legislative session. On Tuesday, Texas Attorney…
On a sunny morning in early May, a wayward DART bus pulled to a stop in front of Paul Laurence Dunbar Learning Center in South Dallas. From the porches of tumbledown homes, neighbors glanced with mild curiosity as the school’s principal, Dionel Waters, stepped aboard. Waiting for him on the…
Oh, happy day. Under a recent edict, Dallas school kids now will have to take fewer tests. And, as we all know, testing is a form of child abuse invented by testophiles. Why else would any decent adult ever make a kid take a test? Why, indeed? I thought we might…
Reality check. That’s all. I just thought you might like to know that Texas now leads the nation in spending more on prisons than schools. To be sure, we spend more on public education in Texas than we used to. State and local expenditures for pre-K thorugh 12th grade increased…
When the Texas Legislature decided to allow the licensed, concealed carry of handguns on the state’s public university campuses, it gave the state’s schools until the beginning of the 2016-2017 academic year to get things figured out. On Wednesday, the University of Texas at Austin finalized what campus carry will…
When grief and profound mistrust swirl together in a threatening cloud above our heads as they have this past week, we should be forgiven the occasional lapse into fear and even despair. But even one moment of fear and despair may mask a more important reality: There are specific pragmatic…
Late Wednesday, former Baylor University Head Football Coach Art Briles asked a federal court to remove him as a defendant in a lawsuit brought against the school by a former student who claimed she was raped by a player. That player, Tevin Elliot, who has been convicted and sent to prison…
Huge news just happened at the Dallas Independent School District. It’s a story that solves the riddle of school reform and ought to end the debate about former Superintendent Mike Miles, at least among people with any intellectual honesty. But it’s about to slide by us virtually unnoticed. First, a…
Ester Zapata’s sister and brother attended Mount Auburn Elementary. Zapata’s two eldest children, now 24 and 18, went there as well. So when it came time for her youngest, Emily, to enter kindergarten, there was no question that she’d follow in the footsteps of her aunt and uncle and brother…
On the map, District 2 for the Dallas school board looks like a mini-Texas with a big white hole in the center, which, in a sense, it is. Right at the heart of the city, District 2 swings up from East Dallas, takes in Preston Hollow and runs over to…
The Dallas ISD board is going to take a long look at board Vice President Miguel Solis’ idea to get stop suspending kids in kindergarten, first and second grade. Solis hopes it’s not too long. Solis first brought up his plan at last month’s board briefing. Keeping kids out of…
Of Dallas ISD’s 227 schools, eight are reasonably affluent, meaning half or less of their student populations are poor. Even then, to get to eight, one must count William B. Travis Academy (fourth and fifth grades) separately from William B. Travis Vanguard (sixth through eighth) even though they share a…
On a chill night four days after Christmas, Steve Baxter settled into the molded plastic bleachers in The Colony High School gymnasium and beamed as his younger son, Andrew, took the court for his fifth straight game as the Richardson Pearce Mustangs’ starting point guard. Baxter had ample reason to…
Baylor’s mess, the one the Southern Baptist Convention-affiliated school got itself into by turning blind eyes and wagging fingers to women who accused the school’s football players of sexual assault, isn’t nearly settled. Personnel dominoes are still falling, potential athletes are leaving the school in droves and the school’s leadership…
Erika Estrada never quite fit in with the moms of White Rock Valley. “It’s very Stepford,” she says. Estrada got an inkling shortly after she and her husband, Rick, bought a spacious ranch-style house on Highedge Drive in 2004 and they were peppered with invitations to living-room Bible studies. She…
I tell myself, if it’s anything to do with how adults feel about kids and education, don’t try to predict it and do try not to be surprised. Dallas School Board member Miguel Solis is arguing for a new policy to reduce the number of very little kids who get…
In the 1970s, when Sam Tasby’s lawsuit forced Dallas ISD to stop slow-walking desegregation, white enrollment began to drop like a stone. In 1970, there were 94,383 white students in the district. By the end of the decade, the district enrolled fewer than half that many, 42,030. The rate of decline…
As it has in each of the last four years, Dallas ISD’s School for the Talented and Gifted has been named the best high school in the country by U.S. News and World Report. The district’s Science and Engineering Magnet, which shares the Yvonne A. Ewell Magnet Center building with…
