In Dallas, geography is destiny. That’s the unavoidable conclusion from a recent study by Stand for Children, a Texas nonprofit, which crunched incarceration and college-preparedness rates in Dallas, ZIP code by ZIP code. “It became immediately obvious that a small number of zip codes send a lot more inmates to…
Conventional wisdom and mountains of anecdotal evidence suggest that old people are really, comically bad at doing things: driving; operating those newfangled pocket telegraph thingamajigs; gauging other people’s interest in the details of their goiter surgery; continence. We can go on. This is low-hanging fruit. But researchers at the University…
Six years ago, SMU religious studies professor Mark Chancey teamed with the Texas Freedom Network to produce a report on the Bible classes that were proliferating in the state’s public school classrooms. Chancey’s not-very-surprising finding was that these classes were not so much even-handed, academically rigorous surveys of the text…
It seems like only yesterday that erstwhile DISD communications chief Jennifer Sprague blew into town alongside new superintendent Mike Miles. With a $185,000 a year salary, the 31-year-old Sprague’s name quickly became a synonym for “overpaid and under-qualified,” and after about six less-than-spectacular months on the job, she quietly left…
In the wake of last month’s shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the subsequent proposal by local state Representative Jason Villalba to arm specially trained teachers, DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander dismissed the idea that Dallas teachers will soon be roaming the halls packing heat. He did leave the door…
A career in professional football does terrible things to the brain. Early-onset dementia; Alzheimer’s; memory loss; chronic pain — they’ve all been linked to the sport, which has prompted a few thousand former players and their family members are suing the NFL, saying it hid the dangers of the sport…
Julius Hill’s summer trip to Europe was miserable. The 13-year-old Greiner Middle School student was one of several students who signed up for a nine-day tour of Italy and Spain organized and led by his teacher Vicki Reed. While there, Reed reportedly singled him out, yelling and belittling him constantly,…
With the recent recession came a corresponding boom at two-year colleges as students sought to gain marketable job skills without shelling out big bucks to attend costlier four-year institutions. That boom is now over, and the numbers in Texas are bearing that out. Between fall 2011 and fall 2012, 2.7…
Allen is football crazy. For proof, look no further than the high school’s new, $60 million football stadium. For further proof, there’s the Allen Hawks, which Texas Monthly labels “the best 12-year-old football team in Texas.” There’s no objective way to prove that, of course, no state tournament like there…
On Friday evening, after schools had closed and most everything else was winding down for the holiday, the Morning News reported DISD communications chief Jennifer Sprague is resigning. Sprague’s abrupt departure is the surest sign yet that Superintendent Mike Miles’ administration is in crisis. She was one of his most…
When Minnie K. Patton wrote her will, she left a portion of her estate to the Dallas County Community College District Foundation to create a scholarship in her name. She’d grown up poor and uneducated in rural Oklahoma and wanted to give students the shot at upward mobility that she…
OK, business-community school reformers. I believe you mean well. But your guy is toast. You recruited a school superintendent who cannot and will not make it in the big city. You can get all stubborn about it and defend him to the last ditch. If I had to bet, I’d…
Six months into his tenure at DISD, it’s now official: Superintendent Mike Miles is hellbent on squandering whatever good will he was granted upon his arrival. Case in point was his news conference Wednesday to more fully address findings in a recent internal audit concluding that he and top staff…
As we reported earlier, newly elected state Representative Jason Villalba announced his intention to file legislation allowing Texas school districts to arm trained faculty and staff members. “School marshals,” I think he calls them. In case you were wondering whether we might see ol’ Coach prowling the halls of a…
Several things emerged from the internal Dallas ISD audit the Morning News got its hands on earlier this week. One was that Superintendent Mike Miles didn’t hesitate to bend or break established protocol when he was assembling his leadership team. Another was that DISD really didn’t want the report to…
News has been bouncing around the right-wing blogosphere for a while now (and to trustees with Irving ISD) that some 70 percent of school districts in Texas are indoctrinating children with pro-Islam propaganda. WorldNetDaily, which if nothing else is free of left-wing bias, reports “students are learning the ‘fact’ that…
Donna Pulkrabek says she was pushed out of her job at UT Southwestern in May after reporting mistreatment of laboratory animals even though, as manager of the school’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), that was her job. According to a lawsuit filed by Pulkrabek, she had raised concerns…
Plotting a new course for Dallas ISD was never going to be a quick or easy thing. It’s a huge bureaucracy and one that’s laden with problems, some that are common to all large, diverse urban school districts, some that are DISD-specific, a legacy of administrations passed. So Superintendent MIke…
Mike. I’m talking to you. Your whole story now, your profile, is all about the Miles-high salaries. “DALLAS ISD SUPERINTENDENT DEFENDS HIGH SALARIES…” “DISD’S NEW COMMUNICATIONS CHIEF WILL MAKE $185,000…” Wrong. So wrong. One hundred and eighty degrees wrong. Think in terms of sack-cloth and begging bowls. That’s what you…
For more than two decades now, SMU’s men’s basketball program has languished in mediocrity. It saw moderate regular-season success during the Mike Dement era of the late ’90s and early ’00s but made the postseason only once, and that was a berth in the lowly NIT. Its last trip to…
Way back in January, over the objections of just about everyone affected, the Dallas ISD Board of Trustees tacked a mandatory 45 minutes onto every teacher’s workday. How the teachers used the time would be up to principals. Not surprisingly, the decision sparked considerable resentment among teachers who felt the…
There has been a lot of ink devoted over the past few days to Dallas ISD being named a finalist for $40 million in federal Race to the Top funds, which built to a crescendo yesterday when Education Secretary Arne Duncan came to town. That all sounds fantastic, but what…
