The State Board of Education doesn’t vote on new high-school biology textbooks until Friday, but the Discovery Institute — an avowed foe of teaching evolution in public schools — is bracing for the worst. Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, an institute board member, tells Evolution News and Views that the proposed…
Preston Hollow Elementary is losing the battle to woo the middle- and upper-class families who live nearby. It’s not unique in this regard. Sanger Elementary, you’ll recall, was spurned by the coveted high-level-city-bureaucrat demographic, and other grade schools in Dallas’ well-heeled ‘hoods draw largely from poorer neighborhoods, while the local…
Every year, thousands of Texas high school graduates continue their educations at community colleges, but only a fraction –16.2 percent according to a recent study — will ever go on to complete a four-year degree. A number of factors contribute to such an abysmal college completion rate, most of which…
Just before 9 a.m. on Tuesday, 16-year-old Jerry Nguyen stepped out of a friend’s Volkswagen Beetle in front of Bryan Adams High school to wait for his bus. He was struck and killed a few moments later as the car was executing a U-turn. Nguyen studied science and engineering at…
Justin Lookadoo can’t figure out what all the fuss is about. He showed up at Richardson High School yesterday to give the same motivational speech he’s given to students thousands of times only to have his name desecrated on Twitter and be pilloried by the media. His presentation, he told…
Around 1 p.m. today, the hashtag #lookadouche showed up on the Twittersphere. A group of students at Richardson High School were skipping regularly scheduled math or science classes to attend an optional PTA-sponsored assembly. The day’s guest speaker was a motivational speaker who has co-authored faith-based dating books, Dateable: are…
A student en route to Dallas ISD’s Townview Magnet died this morning after being struck by a car. The incident happened at East Dallas’ Bryan Adams High School. According to news reports, the teen was dropped off by a woman just before 9 a.m. to wait for the bus. The…
It’s a touchy subject, booze and rape on college campuses. Emily Yoffe, Slate’s advice columnist, caught hell last month for suggesting that parents and universities need to do a better job warning students of the connection between binge drinking and sexual assault. Yoffe offered a measured argument that is backed…
Isaiah Smith isn’t one to lay down in the face of injustice. When the Birdville High School student, who is gay, learned via a TV show that restaurants can legally refuse to serve gay people, he petitioned the Keller City Council to ban LGBT discrimination. When he decided that the…
Former state Representative Allen Vaught doesn’t want to create a White Rock ISD, per se. He just thinks Dallas ISD is too big, too unwieldy to function effectively. The Whiterock ISD Facebook page he put up on Saturday was a way of “planting a flag where people can rally to…
Mr. Martinez knew it was coming, was bracing for it, was already crafting how he might respond in the office and the halls and the parking lot at morning drop-off. Still, when it hit on Sunday, it had to hurt. Martinez — first name Hector, not that it gets used…
It’s September 28, 1963, and the mood in the visitor’s locker room of Ann Arbor’s Michigan Stadium is somber. SMU’s undersized Mustang football players hang their heads, mourning their season-opening 27-16 defeat at the hands of the Wolverines. There are few words as the players prepare for the trip back…
Ridicule Baylor University all you want. Mock the school for its 19th century social mores, for waiting until 1996 lift its dancing ban, for its campus-wide ban on alcohol, for being “guided by the understanding that basing “human sexuality is a gift from the creator God.” Go for it. Just…
The Aledo High School Bearcats didn’t want to score 91 points over Fort Worth Western Hills on Friday night, nor did they intend to hold their opponent completely scoreless. When the team glanced at the scoreboard as time expired and discovered they’d done both those things, the pangs of remorse…
KIPP Destiny Elementary opened with little fanfare this August in a converted Mervyn’s storefront across from Southwest Center Mall in Red Bird. The national charter school network, which already operates the KIPP Truth Academy middle school a few miles away, is saving that for Wednesday. That’s when tennis great Andre…
When Texas’ State Board of Education convenes next month to adopt new biology textbooks, chairwoman Barbara Cargill will be disappointed. The Republican from The Woodlands is a staunch advocate of teaching “all sides of scientific explanations,” which is code for more Genesis and less Darwin. Yet none of the 14…
Dallas ISD still won’t comment on the case of Cristy Nicole Deweese, the 21-year-old teacher whose Playboy-modeling past came to the attention of the Internet last weekend. The evidence, however, suggests that she was fired on October 10. Piece of evidence No. 1: There is a Facebook page calling for…
Deion Sanders has responded to allegations that he assaulted the chief financial officer of his charter school in what has become typical Prime Time fashion — by maligning his adversary and stressing his heroic, unwavering commitment to children. That’s the line he took when he accused his then-wife of assault…
Caine Smith, an 11-year-old from Haltom City, seems legit. He’s thoughtful, eloquent, and self-aware, moreso than many adults you’ll encounter. In spite of, or probably because of all that, he’s tormented daily by classmates, who push, punch, choke and otherwise abuse and humiliate him. So, he made a video for…
Even before the Internet, the young men at the Townview Magnet would have figured out that Cristy Nicole Deweese, their new Spanish teacher, had posed in Playboy. Someone would have gotten their hands on the February 2011 issue, in which an 18-year-old Deweese was featured as “Coed of the Month,”…
The robocalls from Alliance AFT; the misleading mailers hastily called up at the last minute by God (and a Houston PR firm) only knows; the scathing “research paper” by arch-nemesis Don Williams; the chastisements of John Wiley Price, they all failed to convince Dallas ISD’s Board of Trustees. On Monday…
Creationists wield outsized influence in the shaping of textbooks in Texas. In the past, they’ve worked to burnish history’s less-than-glowing view of Joseph McCarthy and to bring to the classroom Intelligent Design — creationism gussied up with the thinnest patina of science. And because the State Board of Education has…
