David Abbey is the principal of Kingswood Park Public School in Penrith, New South Wales, Australia, considered a suburb of Sydney. Kingswood Park has its familiar issues — a “socio-economic disadvantage” in large part because of a dwindling student body, “a significant Aboriginal population” and many of its students hailing…
At this very moment, the Dallas independent School District’s Citizens Budget Review Commission — assembled in March to bring fresh eyes to a district budget in need of gutting, thanks in large part to Gov. Rick Perry and the state Legislature — is meeting to discuss two proposals on the…
Below, Dallas Independent School District trustee Edwin Flores hopped in the comments to underscore something he said during yesterday’s discussion concerning Teach for America. Said the trustee yesterday, TFA corps members in the district “outperform two-thirds of all our teachers in math and science” — not just first-year teachers or…
Three hours after their start time, the Dallas ISD board finally got around to discussing whether or not to extend the district’s contract with Teach for America — which would seem like a no-brainer after you read this 2010 Atlantic piece about TFA or this January 2011 study by the…
The Dallas Independent School District board has yet to get down to business; at the moment it’s behind closed doors in executive session. But moments ago it heard from a parade of public speakers, all of whom were awfully well behaved and used their three minutes wisely as they spoke…
I didn’t have time to tune in yesterday for the entirety of the ad hoc committee meeting of some Dallas Independent School District trustees tasked with rewriting the district’s “educational philosophy.” At close to two hours, it wasn’t a short discussion either — it never is when trustees gather ’round…
So much for that proposal to stretch some Dallas Independent School District students’ calendars till July 26. Still: District parents have till Monday to vote on two calendar options, down from the five presented to trustees earlier this month, and on the surface, at least, both run longer than the…
All the ducats for Saturday’s TEDxSMU wingding at the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre are long gone, but no matter: As The Hilltop reminds, you can espy the doings from three remote locations: the Texas Theatre, Tech Wildcatters and the AT&T Foundry in Plano. And, of course, it’ll livestream on…
Interesting: I see the Dallas Independent School District has yanked from its Thursday agenda that STAAR End of Course Policy Impact briefing we posted yesterday. Also gone: the supporting docs for the Teach for America review, which we posted last week. At least they haven’t pulled this (yet): Discussion of…
After the jump are two docs parents of kiddos in the Dallas Independent School District might want to look at sooner than later — before Thursday morning, certainly. That’s when the trustees will begin discussing how to factor in the new State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness test scores,…
One week from tomorrow, the Dallas Independent School District’s board of trustees will settle in for what’s sure to be a calm, reasonable and thoroughly thoughtful discussion about extending the district’s contract with Teach for America through the 2017 school year. The cost of the new deal: $3 million spread…
Just three years ago, 94 percent of the state’s school districts told their kiddos: Just say no to sex. And that was that when it came to sex ed — abstinence only and nothing but, which was working out real well considering that Texas’s teen-pregnancy rate was the third-highest in…
Shortly after the ad hoc committee met to discuss closing those 11 schools yesterday, Dallas Independent School District trustees gathered to receive the district’s latest audit, which shows a fund balance of $135 million — meaning, the district has added close to $100 million to its emergency reserves over the…
As we mentioned Monday, the Dallas ISD trustees just got through discussing a very touchy subject: school consolidations and the repurposing of facilities — or closures, for those who aren’t sensitive to the subject matter. In all, DISD higher-ups are recommending shuttering 11 schools, nine elementary campuses and two middle…
Ah, so this is why Dallas Independent School District board president Lew Blackburn and trustee Bernadette Nutall want to clamp down on public speakers at school board meetings — comments made by Dallas NAACP President Juanita Wallace at the October 20 board meeting. Specifically, they’re furious over Wallace’s assertion at…
Teach for America, the nonprofit teacher pipeline founded by Park Cities native Wendy Kopp, has made a couple of appearances in the Morning News lately, first in a news story and then an editorial about the rate at which TFA teachers stick in their jobs. Apparently the first class of…
This story in last week’s paper served to remind us of what we’ve known for months: Sooner than later, the Dallas Independent School District’s trustees would begin discussing closing campuses to make up for the second round of budget cuts, a guesstimated $30 million worth, due to hit in the…
Speaking of learnin’ stuff …At last week’s Dallas ISD board meeting, district spokesman Jon Dahlander told the trustees that so far, a few hundred folks had signed up to read to kiddos on Friday, when the district’s hoping to round up 1,111 volunteers for its so-called “community-wide celebration of reading.”…
Get ready for remedial history, college-bound Texans, because the statewide blueprint that dictates what you learn in high school isn’t doing you any favors — a longstanding tradition in public secondary education, according to a report prepared for the Texas Board of Higher Education. A 1998 survey commissioned by the…
A couple of years back we espied three pallets of band uniforms and hats being auctioned off by the Dallas Independent School District, and at quite the nice price. (The whole lot wound up going for … $15.) This, then, is the sequel: Whilst perusing the latest DISD surplus-equipment offering…
Though there are a few exceptions to the rule, for the most part any one Dallas City Council member may pull an item from the council’s agenda and have it deferred till the next voting agenda meeting. Not so with the Dallas Independent School District, not anymore. Last month, six…
At yesterday’s Dallas ISD board meeting, trustee Mike Morath had a fairly novel idea regarding the school calendar. Long story short, he said: Let’s consider testing the merits of a radical school calendar change that would include more than 200 days of instruction. And, he told his fellow trustees, let’s…
