Last we checked there were around 800 teachers vying for 700 vacancies scattered throughout the Dallas Independent School District. Which, sure, sounds a little odd, given that only a few months ago the district was considering thousands of layoffs due to the state’s decision to gut public education. But truth…
Football coaches, even the high school kind, can be angry men. This is especially true early in the season, when their lives, from their standpoint anyway, are just one big shit salad of false starts and bad reads. Knowing all that, I would have forgiven Patrick Williams, the new coach…
Back in March we took a look at Dallas Independent School District trustee Edwin Flores’s proposal for evaluating the district’s best teachers — an imperative, he said at the time, given the layoffs and buyouts taking place due to the state’s budget shortfall. Turns out, that was bit the tip…
And the hits just keep on coming: One week ago today the Texas Education Agency officially announced that the Dallas Independent School District had more campuses deemed academically unacceptable (33) than exemplary (30) — a radical shift from last year’s stats, thanks in large part to the state doing away…
With a bright blue Frisbee on his head and a blow-up ball hanging from his lips by its mouthpiece, 9-year-old Emanuel spins around in circles so fast, his new camouflage backpack lifts from his body like a parachute at the moment of landing. Today is his birthday, but it feels…
Hundreds of former Dallas Independent School District teachers flocked to Harold Wendell Lang Sr. Middle School late yesterday. They were hoping to find new jobs after being told earlier this week that they were caught at the fault line of a shifting, budget-tightening rearrangement. The school’s parking lot was packed…
The Texas Education Agency won’t officially release its based-on-TAKS-scores state accountability ratings till ’round 1 this afternoon (here, for those so interested), at which point Commissioner of Education Robert Scott will hold a press conference in Austin. But the Dallas Independent School District’s not wasting any time releasing its results,…
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve received numerous emails suggesting I sign up for something called Leadership DISD, which promises to develop “education-focused, informed leaders within the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) service area who affect positive change and help to lead support efforts to bring about significant improvements…
And speaking of redistricting …The Dallas Independent School District will begin holding hearings tonight during which the public will finally get a long, hard look at the draft maps on the table, courtesy San Antonio attorney Rolando Rios (who Carla Ranger initially didn’t want to hire) and the law firm…
The State Board of Education met yesterday to debate which supplemental materials the state should use to update its outdated science textbooks. To make things easier, before the meeting, the board’s choices were narrowed down by allegedly reliable panels of stakeholders. But when it came to a biology panel making…
This morning at the Museum of Nature & Science in Fair Park, a group of very small people in oversized white lab coats were intently pulverizing strawberries in plastic bags. “Smash your strawberry into as fine a mess as you can,” urged their instructor, a considerably taller person, also lab-coated…
Front page of the morning’s paper has a pay-walled story about the Dallas Independent School District’s decision to “quietly” halt construction on a handful of schools due to receive ’08-bond money redos — quietly, as in, “During budget talks this spring, school leaders quietly decided to halt renovations and repairs…
It was revealed yesterday that Texas educators are just a wee trigger-happy when it comes to student discipline, removing almost 60 percent of the state’s students from the classroom at least once during middle and high school. Minority students are especially likely to get the boot, the Justice Center at…
Under the baking sky at the Texas Motor Speedway, a small, rotund man adjusted his straw hat and tightened his grip on a green flag nearly half as tall as he was. “Houston Lady Racers, you’ve got 30 seconds,” he said to the high-school aged girls surrounding him. They flanked…
The Dallas Independent School District, currently without a superintendent, is now without a chief academic officer — and only 13 months after Ivonne Durant was bumped up from Northwest Learning Community supervisor to that particular title under then-Superintendent Michael Hinojosa. DISD just posted to its Facebook page her adios, given…
Dallas Independent School District spokesman Jon Dahlander, back from summer break, shot me a note this morning about a short film called Von Bagdad nach Dallas. “At some point, you need to see this,” he wrote, explaining he had a lone copy on DVD given to him a while back,…
Yesterday, some 8,500 Dallas Independent School District elementary students reported to 17 campuses, from Bryan and Caillet to Truett and Winnetka, to begin summer school. Pardon: Make that summer camp. At least, that’s how district officials and DISD’s educational partners sell the idea to kids who’ll spend summer vacation learning.And…
Former Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa officially begins his new gig in Cobb County, Georgia, today. Hence, this morning’s piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “New Cobb superintendent’s job 1: Close students’ achievement gap.” Long story short: Cobb County, like most urban districts around the country, has seen an…
In April director Morgan Spurlock came to the Dallas International Film Festival to show his sponsored-from-start-to-finish documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, after which he and I engaged in a little post-screening Q&A at the Magnolia. During our chitchat, I asked him about a sequence in the film concerning budget-beleaguered…
Exactly one month ago we got a look at longtime Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews’ list of the best public high schools in the country — the same list that used to run in Newsweek. The School of Science and Engineering at Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center came in…
Speaking of redistricting …Had an awfully long talk with Dallas County Commissioner Maurine Dickey this afternoon, which I’d post now if she didn’t mention a few things worth tracking down. So that’ll have to wait till tomorrow. But while we’re on the subject, I see here that Nate Silver and…
No doubt, Dallas PD’s million-dollar helicopter is the big-ticket item over on Lone Star Auctions — bigger, certainly, than the donkeys, mules and potbelly pigs being sold off by Dallas County. (I’m gonna call this one “Groucho.”) But I see the Dallas Independent School District’s selling off dozen of portables…
