Dallas City Council Approves Contentious South Dallas Charter School

The fault lines running through the charter school debate Wednesday afternoon at Dallas City Hall were striking. The City Council chambers were filled with kids from one of Uplift Education’s schools, the one that’s been left in a lurch by council rancor over approving a seemingly routine zoning change. Joyce…

Report That Clears UT Athletics of Cheating Still Raises Red Flags

The University of Texas athletic department is unlikely to face any NCAA sanctions for accusations that members of the Longhorns’ basketball teams cheated in several classes. That’s the takeaway from an independent report commissioned by the university to investigate the claims of academic impropriety — at least if you believe…

DISD’s Best Neighborhood School Is in … South Dallas?

The popularity of Lakewood Elementary has effectively warped the East Dallas real-estate market as upper-middle-class-to-rich families outbid one another for homes within the school’s attendance boundaries. This makes a certain amount of sense, as Lakewood is a really good school that the surrounding community is heavily invested in, but it’s also…

New Texas Education Chief Mike Morath: Texas Public Schools Aren’t Hated, Just Misunderstood

Monday, Dallas ISD trustee Mike Morath was appointed Texas Education Commissioner by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Abbott touted Morath’s reform work within Dallas ISD, their shared commitment to early childhood education and Morath’s mountain-climbing experience in announcing the appointment. Basically everyone, including Dallas Mayor Mike Rawling and former School Board…

Dallas ISD Trustee Mike Morath Named Texas Education Commissioner

Mike Morath, the reform-minded former Mike Miles ally who currently sits in the District 2 seat on the Dallas ISD school board, is now the highest ranking education official in the state of Texas. Since being elected to the school board in 2011, Morath, along with former superintendent Miles and…

Teachers Unions and Koch Bros. Join Forces to Sell Out School Reform

Thankful is what I am. But being thankful always worries me. Maybe something terrible is about to happen. I am truly thankful that Dallas right now is pretty much at the forefront of the national school reform movement because of its comprehensive merit pay system for teachers. The Dallas Independent…

Dallas ISD Is Looking for a Better Way to Measure Student Poverty

On paper, Edwin J. Kiest Elementary in East Dallas’ Casa View neighborhood and Paul Laurence Dunbar Elementary in South Dallas/Fair Park, seem about the same, poverty-wise. Dallas ISD counts 96.1 percent of students at Kiest as “economically disadvantaged,” compared with 99.7 percent at Dunbar. Both are overwhelmingly, distressingly poor. On the ground, the…

In Texas, Child Care Costs More than College Tuition

When our older son began kindergarten last fall, my wife and I rejoiced. Some of our joy naturally sprung from watching him pass such a key childhood milestone — OMG, the little guy’s starting school! — but most of it admittedly came from the game-changing impact it had on our budget…

Don’t Blame Texas for Textbook’s Slavery Whitewash. For Once.

The Texas State Board of Education, the body that decides what millions of Texas schoolchildren should and shouldn’t learn, is the frequent subject and ridicule, and rightly so, what with its penchant for pushing creationism into science curricula, identifying Moses as an architect of the U.S. Constitution, chalking up the…

Taming Dade: The Fall and Rise of Dallas’ Worst Public School

The fight started on the third floor right before fifth period, when the kids were still buzzing from lunch and hardest to manage. Jennifer Duggins, a Spanish teacher, was monitoring the hallway outside her classroom when a surge of students rushed passed her and disappeared around the corner into an…

The Remaking of Dade Middle School

A year ago, South Dallas’ Billy Earl Dade MIddle School was in disarray. Things there were so glaringly bad that, on an impromptu visit in mid-October, six weeks into last school year, Superintendent Mike Miles got rid of Principal MIchael Jones and 10 teachers on the spot. The following Monday,…