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…
On Thursday, the Dallas Independent School District’s board of trustees will have their “second reading” of contingency plans for four high schools at risk of being labeled academically unacceptable by the Texas Education Agency for a fifth straight year. The at-risk campuses are Kimball, Pinkston, Roosevelt and Seagoville, and, exactly…
And, speaking of Mark Birnbaum …When last I spoke with the Dallas-based doc maker, he was out and about filming Mayor Tom Leppert and other council members for a short promoting the new convention center hotel. He hasn’t seen the finished film yet — he was but a shooter on…
Right before Christmas, Dallas Independent School District board president Adam Medrano told Unfair Park he is “not sure what can be done at this point” to save the Oak Cliff Christian Church, which DISD purchased in the fall to make way for some piece of the new Adamson High School…
Texas Tech fires head football coach Mike Leach. Two words: Holy. Shit. A saddening, maddening day for Red Raider Nation. My take: It took two to tango, and both Leach and the James family are at fault. Both Texas Tech and Leach will ultimately regret letting this spark burn out of control…
An op-ed, co-written by SMU President R. Gerald Turner, has been circulating through the nation’s newspapers in recent days; here’s yesterday’s pit stop in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in which Turner and William Kirwan, chancellor of the University of Maryland system, argue that college athletics’ business model is “on a path…
Early this morning, a Friend of Unfair Park forwarded along an update from the Old Oak Cliff Conservation League: “A Glimmer of Hope for Oak Cliff Christian Church.” That, of course, is a reference to the 1905 building recently acquired by the Dallas Independent School District for the Adamson High…
If you like a Santa Rampage or a Santa Ride, don’t forgot: You’ll love an Unsilent Night, which makes its downtown Dallas bow tomorrow night. The NYC and SF events, among others, took place over the weekend; for those wondering what’s in store, some highlights. Also, after the jump, a…
The story of Taylor Pugh, the 4-year-old preschooler suspended by the Mesquite Independent School District for his long locks, is making the cross-country rounds today. Thanks to this Associated Press video, MISD spokesperson Laura Jobe’s hairstyle has now been called into question…
Waiting on a call back from Steve Leach, the so-called “buy guy” at Half Price Books, about something entirely unrelated to this point. But, to kill a little time, let me share with you a couple of items I picked up at the Northwest Highway mothership Sunday morning and converted…
A couple of weeks ago we noticed that the Dallas Independent School District’s board of trustees was considering a new “Superintendent Evaluation Instrument,” which broke down the criteria into three separate categories: “student achievement,” “sound financial management” and “stakeholder satisfaction.” For the purposes of this particular report card, percentages were…
Patricia Viramontes has long been one of Dallas Independent School District’s more controversial figures, dating back to at least September 2007, when district officials concluded that, yes, maybe the DISD’s executive director of instructional technology services shouldn’t be reporting to her husband after all, nepotism policies being what they are…
Jon Dahlander, spokesman for the Dallas Independent School District, posted a comment on Unfair Park today that perfectly expressed the school system’s official position on the preservation/demolition of Adamson High School. It blames abandonment of the school on the people who have been fighting to preserve it. And then it…
Speaking of old local cases involving schoolchildren sitting in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit …On Tuesday, the court handed down an opinion in that years-old case involving a Plano Independent School District third-grader and other PISD-off kiddies told by district officials that, no, they couldn’t hand…
Far as the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees is concerned, there are three factors that go into determining how good a job the superintendent’s doing: “student achievement,” “sound financial management” and “stakeholder satisfaction.” Those, say the board, “embody the core beliefs and expectation of the community as represented…
Governor Rick Perry stopped by DISD’s Emmett J. Conrad High School on Fair Oaks Ave. yesterday to tout the Texas Workforce Commission’s $1 million investment in expanding robotics education programs across the state. Conrad, of course, boasts an estimable robotics club — the RoboChargers — that, for the last three…
He sounded a little groggy when he spoke to Unfair Park this morning. But University of North Texas junior Stephen Michael Benavides had a long night: The chair of ACLU’s student chapter spent Thursday night appealing to the UNT Supreme Court to adopt language of a failed bill and allow…
