Progress Texas doesn’t much like the virtual school movement that has drawn increasing numbers of the state’s grade-school students away from real classrooms, many of them full-time. For one thing, it’s proven ineffective, the group argues in a report released yesterday. Case in point: Texas Virtual Academy, an online charter…
Teach for America, the teacher pipeline founded by Highland Parker Wendy Kopp, is often tossed into the bucket with the rest of the tools in the reform movement’s toolbox, from charter schools to performance-based pay and the like. For that, and for its place outside the labor movement, it’s often…
What is the single most embarrassing thing that could happen to a college? Accidentally writing ‘pubic’ in the school’s title in the graduation program, of course. Hands down. No, not down there, gosh. And with the tagline ‘Unlimited Possibilities’ … you just cannot make this stuff up. To the graduates…
It wasn’t without some pride that I saw last week that my alma mater, the University of Texas at Dallas, had earned what may be its first superlative. (OK, maybe its second, but the most-hideous-architecture label was unofficial.) The Texas Tribune has helpfully compiled a list of average tuition and…
The Dallas Independent School District elections were held last weekend, and as we maybe should have known all along, Elizabeth Jones, Dan Micciche and Bernadette Nutall — the candidates with tens of thousands of PAC dollars and personal endorsements from the Citizen — blew out their competition. The most interesting…
You don’t shoot the goose that laid the golden egg. You just don’t — not unless you really, really have to or the goose stops pooping out gold. Which is why SMU’s firing of athletic director Steve Orsini yesterday was so perplexing, and why the non-explanation offered by school President…
As Matthew Haag noted yesterday over at the Morning News’ education blog, DISD’s Citizen Budget Review Commission made several recommendations at last week’s board briefing for how the district might cut costs. The most eye-catching: consider getting rid of metal detectors in middle and high schools. The commission’s report calls…
Every kindergartener with a sense of self-preservation knows not to trust the stop signs that jut out from the sides of school buses, because even though they are the same reflective red octagons as those planted in concrete and the word “STOP” is written in the same white font, people…
You knew it was coming. Incoming DISD chief Mike Miles laid it out pretty clearly during his first presentation to the DISD school board last week, to say nothing of his reformist track record in Colorado Springs. But a month and a half before Miles’ official July 1 start date,…
If you’re high right now, you may want to tune in. Try not to giggle. A University Texas at Dallas professor was awarded nearly $2 million dollars to study marijuana addiction for the next five years. We’re talking pot, the addiction suffered in silence — or in inappropriate laughter at…
In addition to sports team ownership and a sideline in media impresario-ness, Mark Cuban is quite the blogger: dishing out advice to the Occupy movement, fulminating about patent law, apologizing for some casual homophobia. And a few days ago, he aired his views on the small matter of student loan…
Oh. Right. That. After all the candidate forums and the radio debates and the mayor-izen endorsements, it turned out that the roughly 117 people who care about the politics of Dallas Independent School District were just extras in the occasional stage play put on by the North Dallas elite, who…
Prime Prep Academy, the charter school co-founded by former Cowboy Deion Sanders, recently accepted more than 1,100 students for its inaugural school year, and hundreds of those students are slated to attend its campus in Oak Cliff. The question is whether that campus will even be available to the school…
While his vision might not be as far-reaching as Deltron’s, incoming DISD chief Mike Miles outlined his vision for the future Thursday in “Destination 2020,” his first presentation to the board. The main job of the district, Miles said, is to “prepare students for college or for a Year 2020…
In two days, DISD school board trustee elections will be upon us, and we of Unfair Park are way more stoked than we have any right to be. Obviously, we’re particularly excited about the District 9 race between the incumbent Bernadette Nutall and her 20-year-old challenger, Damarcus Offord. You can…
Is it any wonder that Prime Prep Academy, the charter school hyped by Deion Sanders, is accepting triple the number of students that most charter schools accept in their first year? Everything about the place has been propped up with hopeful grandeur. Sanders, the school’s co-founder and spokesperson (though he…
Two Dallas high schools — the School for the Talented and Gifted and the School of Science and Engineering Magnet — didn’t just survive the multi-stage culling process U.S. News and World Report used to arrive at a list of the country’s 97 cream-of-the-crop schools. They snagged two of the…
Early last week, before the start of his ongoing divorce hearing with dramatics suited for a soap opera, former Cowboy Deion Sanders tweeted the above photo. It looks like a boring portrait of three wide-smiling, well-dressed men. In fact, the photo is quite revealing of the tangle of lies behind…
We tuned in to the Dallas ISD’s District 9 school board trustee forum on KHVN 970 yesterday between incumbent Bernadette Nutall and her challenger, 20-year-old Damarcus Offord. Host Robert Ashley and his station, it turns out, moderated the best debate thus far. The two clearly don’t like each other (nothing…
Mike Miles named Dallas ISD Superintendent from Dallas Independent School Dist on Vimeo. Yesterday we raised some questions about how the Dallas Independent School District might handle the employment contract of Mike Miles, the district’s new superintendent. Those details emerged last night — you’ll find Miles’ address above — and…
The Dallas Independent School District is expected to officially hire Mike Miles, a former Army Ranger and U.S. Senate candidate and the superintendent of a small school district in Colorado, as its top official later today. Although Miles was named a “lone finalist” a few weeks back, his hiring was…
Elliot Monteverde-Torres’ teaching career is still on pause, nearly two months after he filed a complaint about goings-on inside Botello Elementary School — and he’s heard almost nothing from DISD about his “potential misconduct,” he says. Monteverde-Torres was placed on paid leave following his allegations of BB guns being brought…
