One week ago today the Texas Education Agency sent word: With significant help from the state, the Dallas Independent School District racked up 63 exemplary schools, while several high schools long on the academically unacceptable list finally get a reprieve. Not all was well, as dropout and completion rates knocked…
The Dallas Independent School District’s spent the summer break spending 2008 bond money renovating 79 campuses. Says Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, “When teachers, staff and students return to many of their campuses next month, they will begin to see how these improvements will positively impact the learning environment.” To celebrate this…
We warned you in early June, when the Dallas Independent School District crunched some TAKS test scores and released its list of exemplary and recognized schools well ahead of the Texas Education Agency’s official date of, well, today: Those numbers were very preliminary. As TEA spokesperson DeEtta Culbertson reminded in…
The headline reads “4 in 10 Texas teachers moonlight to make ends meet.” But based upon the results of a survey of Texas teachers by Sam Houston State University, commissioned and released today by the Texas State Teachers Association, it could just as likely read, “Only 28.8 percent of Texas…
Five weeks ago the fate of Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa’s proposed over-age high school was in question, as trustee Bernadette Nutall took the $2-mil proposal from the fast track to the benches for a little look-see. But trustees finally gave it the okee-doke, and this morning the…
Beginning at 9 Sunday morning, three students from W.T. White High School will drive to Colorado in that very ride you see above: a $30,000, corporate-sponsor paid-for experiment nicknamed Quetzalcoatl. (Kids today — what’s wrong with a ’66 Chevelle SS 396 with a a 360 hp, 396 cubic inch engine?)…
Late yesterday afternoon, John McCall Jr. — the former president of the Old Oak Cliff Conservation League and its current attorney — sent word that the future of the old Oak Cliff Christian Church is looking bleaker than ever. Not that the building’s fate has been anything but bleak as…
Not together, mind you — this isn’t a joint project between Ewing Oil and the Hilltop. But both Larry Hagman, now positioning himself as the Anti-Palin, and Southern Methodist are making a singular push for solar power — the former Dallas star in a highly publicized ad for a German…
The football field’s already given way to a Pepsi-sponsored urban farm at Paul Quinn College, and today the school began clearing room for a few new additions to the South Dallas campus: lacrosse and soccer fields, new student dorms and a botanical garden.To clear up the space, the school’s tearing…
In May 2009, Highland Park High School grad Wendy Kopp’s Teach for America — which gives recent college grads a five-week crash course in teaching before dropping them in low-income urban and rural schools — sent close to 100 rookies to Dallas. DISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa celebrated their arrival in…
A Friend of Unfair Park points out that William M. Tsutsui started his new gig yesterday as the dean of SMU’s Dedman College. OK, then. But then I read the release and discovered that the Princeton-, Harvard- and Oxford-educated Tsutsui is “a specialist in the business, environmental and cultural history…
Three years ago, or shortly before the Dallas Independent School District introduced its “effort-based” grading policy, the school board reminded teachers: They were not to give students a grade lower than a 50 for any one grading period. As the great Kent Fischer noted, “The reason given was that students…
Since March, Brett Ferdinand — till days ago, a senior at Cedar Park High School outside of Austin — has been among six students blogging for The New York Times about their efforts to get into college. Most of the stories aren’t especially extraordinary — most, in fact, are about…
At this late date is there really any reason to go back and retell the tale of the Ghost of War on Christmas Past? You remember this, right? Kids at Plano Independent School District elementary schools pass out “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” pencils and Christian-flavored candy canes…
Seems we weren’t the only ones following the case of the Institute for Creation Research v. Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board; so too was The Chronicle of Higher Education, which alerts our attention to a ruling by U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks handed down Friday that has closed the case…
The University of Texas at Austin sends word today that it’s partnering with Dallas-based Education is Freedom — the beneficiary of Mayor Tom’s fund-raiser at the Dallas Zoo on June 26 — on a pilot program intended to “support students who might not otherwise consider the university as an option.”…
The latest Newsweek ranking of Best High Schools in the U.S. of A. is out, and, yet again, The School for the Talented and Gifted at the Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Magnet Center is at the very tippy-top. And it’s joined by eight other Dallas schools — though one’s Highland…
We’re not surprised that Vince Young was in a Dallas strip club (Onyx) at 3:30 a.m. Sunday morning. We’re not surprised that he was slapped with a citation by police after getting involved in a scuffle. And, considering the kukoos that have played at the University of Texas, we’re not…
At the Dallas Independent School District board meeting two weeks ago, the trustees held off on voting yea or nay on Superintendent Michael Hinojosa’s plan to open an over-age high school in the 2010-’11 school year. Most agree that, yes, it’s probably a very good thing to put, say, college-age…
There are a couple of comments worth pulling out frrom yesterday’s item about Dallas Independent School District’s $23 million budget surplus. Among ’em: Mike MacNaughton, founding member of Dallas Friends of Public Education, recaps yesterday’s budget briefing at Albert Sidney Johnston Elementary School. Following Chief Financial Officer Larry Throm’s PowerPoint,…
The Dallas Independent School District’s board of trustees will receive yet another briefing on the 2010-’11 budget Thursday — here’s that PowerPoint for those who like to get head starts on such things. But today, the district sends word that this year’s budget wraps up with a … this can’t…
We said it just last week: The Texas Education Agency won’t release its 2010 Accountability Ratings till the end of July, which hasn’t stopped the Dallas Independent School District from spreading the good news concerning a fifth straight year of improved TAKS scores and additional schools being added to the…
