1972 – The HERD – Side 2 : Track 4 – “Oye Como Va” from Carter Cowboy on Vimeo.My favorite doc in the about-to-wrap Dallas International Film Festival was Thunder Soul, about the Kashmere Stage Band straight outta Houston in the can-you-dig-it 1970s. Perhaps a sequel, then, about the David…
Over the weekend, New York Times personal finance writer Tara Siegel Bernard visited with Sunset High School’s Mathew Frost, an 11th and 12th grade American history and economics teacher giving his students a real-world look at how to balance the books. In other words, he’s teaching to the actual test…
Just went over to the Dallas Independent School District’s Web site to look at something else when I found this newly posted release: “Three schools launching a pilot program to give parents online access to their child’s academic progress.” It’s pretty self-explanatory: In May the DISD will let parents at…
UNT Dallas and the surrounding area from UNT Dallas on Vimeo.That video above was just posted to Vimeo by the University of North Texas at Dallas — but says here it was sent out a couple of weeks ago to “the Board of Regents, potential donors, the Texas legislature, and…
Perhaps you’ve seen the promotional materials — they’ve been everywhere during the past five years, as the Dallas Independent School District (and superintendent Michael Hinojosa, especially) eased on down that Road to Broad, so named for the $2 million award given to urban school districts who made “the greatest progress…
SMU sends words of a media and human rights symposium set for next week — which includes a tribute to director Rob Epstein, two-time Oscar winner for co-directing the docs The Times of Harvey Milk and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt. And the April 6 night tribute-to and conversation-with…
It took a while for Patrick “Buzz” Williams to get State Board of Education candidate George Clayton on the phone before the GOP primary earlier this month, but he finally did — long enough to ask the North Dallas High School teacher, then considered a long shot to beat incumbent…
Thanks to Larry James, I just spent the better part of an hour getting better acquainted with the 8-year-old Process Access Dallas, a coalition of thousands of physicians and more than a dozen hospitals — and many, many more working under the auspices of the Dallas County Medical Society –…
Allen Gwinn over at www.dallas.org has posted a report from DISD’s Office of Professional Responsibility about its investigation of Maria C. Silva, former manager of the district’s Adult Basic Education Department. The typical journalese way to describe the report would be “scathing.” A more accurate description would probably be “holy-crap-I’m-glad-she’s-not-my-boss.”If…
Speaking of the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees…Only a few days ago, Tawnell Hobbs was noting how there seems to be very little interest in the forthcoming election for the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees, scheduled for May 8. In fact, till Tuesday, Lew Blackburn and…
I’ve got a copy of Diane Ravitch’s latest tome on my bedside table — just haven’t found the time or fortitude to plow through the Houston native and former secretary of education’s “intellectual crisis” and subsequent “U-turn,” as The New York Times put it a few days ago. Because, once…
After a couple of weeks playing phone tag, Unfair Park finally managed to connect with George M. Clayton, the District 12 State Board of Education candidate opposing incumbent Geraldine “Tincy” Miller in Tuesday’s GOP primary. Clayton has been something of a mystery man to the Republican Party folk and state…
My wife just dropped by our son’s Northwest Dallas DISD elementary school to do some volunteer work in the library. But as soon as she arrived, best I can tell, the principal put Everette Lee DeGolyer on lockdown. Why? I called the front office as soon as I got my…
Yesterday a good Friend of Unfair Park who fought to keep Adamson High School away from the Dallas Independent School District’s wrecking ball suggested it was time we take a closer look at the 107-year-old Davy Crockett School on Carroll Avenue, a designated city historic landmark. The school was given…
Well, who knew? The eyes of Texas have been focused on the GOP primary race between Governor Rick Perry and challenger Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison as the ultimate throwdown between far right and somewhat-less-than far right Republicans. In the meantime, while we weren’t looking, “moderates” may slip in the backdoor…
We’ll have more on this later today, when Uplift Education’s Rosemary Perlmeter has a moment to talk. But for months, we’d been hearing that the Science Place Building 2 — otherwise known as the space housing the Planetarium — might be getting a new tenant. And, sure enough, there it…
The Texas Tribune’s Brian Thevenot has been studying the U.S. Department of Education’s latest pile of funds slated for Texas schools — $390 million aimed at rescuing the lowest performers — and asks whether the program’s good intentions will wreak havoc on schools doing their best to do better. Take,…
DeSoto resident Pamela Bradley, who once worked for the city of Dallas, feels cheated by the education system. She was raised to believe that education leads to better jobs, so she got a master’s degree and started a Ph.D. program. But now Bradley finds herself in this disheartening position: Her annual…
This morning, The Wall Street Journal takes up the issue of newcomers filling up the Plano Independent School District — specifically, “a flood of poor, minority students” whose entry into the district prompted the contentious fight over redistricting. The district voted on a feeder alignment plan on December 15, which…
Friend of Unfair Park The Big Guy just shot us an e-mail with the subject header “Mary Kay > Christopher Columbus.” Also contained within his missive: a link to this Associated Press story about the brewing battle over State Board of Education’s new social studies curriculum standards, for which the…
As we mentioned Monday, the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees will discuss at tomorrow’s meeting its contingency plans for Kimball, Roosevelt, Pinkston and Seagoville high schools should the Texas Education Agency deem them academically unacceptable for a fifth straight year. As DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander pointed out, the…
This morning, during a speech at a Big Brothers Big Sisters benefit breakfast, Mayor Tom Leppert announced a few possible corporate relocations to Dallas — among them, he said, a Fortune 200 company to which he clearly sent an iPhone. But that wasn’t the breaking news that jumped out from…
