UT Dallas has always been a university, i.e. an institution of higher learning where one can take classes and learn things and get an accredited degree. But it’s never really been a college, in the sense of a vibrant campus-centered community. When I graduated five years ago, the ghetto of…
It was a sad day — for reporters at least — when North Richland Hills’ Lady Theresa Thombs lost her bid for a seat on the State Board of Education. Between her outrageously padded resume (she claims to be an “international ambassador” and carrier of “diplomatic papers”), her seeming inability…
On Tuesday, the White House released a report — and a star-studded public service announcement — aimed at reducing the estimated one in five women who is sexually assaulted during her college career. “Colleges and universities can no longer turn a blind eye or pretend rape and sexual assault doesn’t…
Yesterday, the nonprofit Children at Risk released its annual rankings of North Texas public and charter schools. Dallas ISD performed incredibly well, its magnets snatching seven of the top 10 slots in the high school rankings. Newly minted educator Deion Sanders fared considerably worse. The Fort Worth campus of Sanders’…
For the second time in three weeks, the SMU student body has shot down a proposal to add an LGBT student senate seat. Students voted on the measure on Wednesday and Thursday — a re-vote after an initial attempt fell a few hundred votes shy of the two-thirds majority required…
Now that the bogeyman of home rule has transformed some of Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles’ fiercest outside critics into his ardent supporters, the time seems ripe to formally mend fences with the school board. Easier said than done. Though things have calmed in recent months, Miles’ relationship with his…
For the past six years, apparently, El Centro College has been planning a rooftop wind farm for its Downtown Dallas campus. On Tuesday afternoon — Earth Day — the project went live as students watched on a student union video feed. It’s a relatively modest effort as far as wind…
For all the roiling arguments surrounding Dallas ISD — over governance and closing achievement gaps and teacher pay and whatever else two adults might possibly disagree on — there’s one topic over which there is little debate: Dallas ISD does magnet schools right. Just in case you needed a reminder,…
CORRECTION: A previous version of this post stated incorrectly that the teacher leading one of Conrad high’s autism units, Aimee Kelly, had been fired for alleged misconduct toward a student. She has not been fired, but is on paid administrative leave and her boss has recommended that she be fired…
There’s a reason you find so many charter schools in decrepit strip centers and old Walmarts. Decent, school-appropriate real estate is hard to come by. When it is available, it’s expensive, and charter operators, who don’t get facilities funding from the state like public schools do, are often forced to…
You know the debate over public schools in Dallas has gone squirrely when retired teacher and education activist advocate Bill Betzen stands before the City Council and offers implicit approval of Mike Miles’ tenure as DISD superintendent. Betzen, speaking in advance of a council discussion on the home-rule proposal for…
Garland ISD’s foreign teachers aren’t in danger of being sent back to their native countries because the human resources director might have been taking all-expense paid trips to the Philippines, or pocketing fees he wasn’t supposed to be charging in the first place, or illegally funneling business to his step-kids,…
Garland ISD trustee Scott Luna typically has a clear path to victory. Three times he’s been up for election, three times his name has been the only one on the ballot. Not this time. He has a challenger, 21-year-old Lawrence Billy Jones III, and now Luna’s become embroiled in a…
High school students in Texas can take, and get credit toward, electives like floral arrangement, team sport officiating, and turf-grass management. But not for Mexican-American studies, something activists, education groups, and several dozen state lawmakers are pushing to change. They came out in force for Tuesday’s State Board of Education…
Two years ago, SMU finally climbed off the Princeton Review’s list of the country’s most “LGBT-unfriendly” schools. The news was welcomed by administrators, who have worked hard to shed the university’s homophobic image, but it hardly meant that The Hilltop had suddenly become a bastion of progressive inclusiveness. Case in…
Dallas County Schools — the local school district with no schools or students but lots and lots of school buses — sent word last Friday that it was preparing to unveil the “School Bus of the Future,” and that this futuristic vehicle will “will revolutionize school bus transit and exponentially…
The Texas legislature’s decision to cut $5.4 billion from the public education budget three years ago had some rather predictable consequences: fewer teachers, larger class sizes and a sizable drop in the telling funding-per-pupil metric. Texas promptly dropped to 49th on the latter metric among states and Washington, D.C. This…
The way that Azleway Charter School Superintendent Steve Lenz describes it, his students wouldn’t last long at a regular old public school. Even the ones that aren’t hospitalized or in special ed are often several grades behind where they should be. They also tend to move a lot. “Some of…
Dallas ISD Trustee Mike Morath, who came forward yesterday to explain his role as the watchmaker who set into motion Support Our Public Schools, is Rain Man-like in his ability to spout off statistics. He — and Mayor Mike Rawlings and the others behind the home-rule push — have been…
Just so there’s no confusion, the White Student Union of Tarrant County College never had any official connection to Tarrant County College. The group was founded a little more than a year ago by Richard Railey, a 56-year-old white supremacist who happened taking classes there. There was nothing for the…
The folks behind Support Our Schools, the group pushing to free Dallas ISD from many state regulations by turning it into a home-rule district, have finally gotten around to explaining themselves. Their stated goals: to combat voter apathy, extend the school year and school day, woo back the middle class,…
There are plenty of very good reasons to blow up Dallas ISD’s board of trustees. Its meetings are long, petty and often unproductive. In a district that’s more than two-thirds Hispanic, just one of its nine members is the same. Choosing trustees by geographic district discourages district-wide thinking and encourages…
