In a neighborhood with problems, the last thing anybody needed was a big, bad abandoned building. Something like that is a scary billboard warning people away. All the more appalling for the owner of it to have been the public school system, whose No. 1 priority ought to have been…
We must knock wood and throw salt over our shoulders. Don’t say anything to mess it up. But the Dallas public school system, already an unheralded center of innovation, may also be emerging as an unheralded beacon of stability. And the unheralded part — no New York Times stories, no 60 Minutes…
University of North Texas officials are condemning a university system attorney’s use of a racial slur during a campus forum on First Amendment protections Thursday evening. Caitlin Sewell, assistant general council for the UNT System, used the word as an example of protected speech during a panel discussion titled “When…
A Baylor University professor is apologizing to students this week after a guest speaker in his class promoted conversion therapy during his presentation. During a Tuesday session of professor Lewis Lummer’s American Sign Language III class, the Rev. Jari Saavalainen, pastor of a deaf church near Chicago, gave a guest…
On the first day back in class after a tornado tore through North Dallas and left her school in shambles, the list of things algebra teacher Kristen Dale’s classroom didn’t have was quite a bit longer than the list of things it did. It had about a half-dozen circular tables,…
At a little after 9 a.m. Wednesday, Kristen Dale was walking the halls of Thomas Edison Middle Learning Center in West Dallas, stopping groups of kids as they passed. Where are you headed? Do you know where you’re going? she asked. Some of them, being teenagers, tried to blow her…
Something important in local education has happened over the last few days, a story that has already slipped beneath the wave of tornado news. It is worth noting as both a harbinger of progress and a very depressing reminder why progress comes hard. Dallas school Superintendent Michael Hinojosa has announced…
Most, if not all, of the students at Dallas ISD schools that were shut down after Sunday’s tornadoes can expect to be back in school this week. But exactly where they’ll be in school is another matter. School officials canceled classes Monday at 20 campuses where the storm had knocked…
Teams from schools across Collin and Dallas counties met up last weekend to play in front of a screaming crowd at a stadium in the shadow of Globe Life Park in Arlington. They were playing Nintendo. Mixed into the crowd were parents, classmates, coaches and district administrators. This tournament, they…
In the end, everything about Hollywood is basically absurd, so the same is true for the prosecution of two actresses, Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, on charges they paid bribes to get their kids into college. But a story based right here in Dallas reminds us that stupid Hollywood tricks…
The Dallas ISD board of trustees voted Thursday night to close a struggling alternative high school and replace it with satellite programs at three campuses. Patton Academic Center, in Oak Cliff, is an alternative school for students who either are over-age or behind in class credits needed to graduate. It’s…
Nearly everyone involved, including Dallas ISD officials, trustees, parents and students, agrees that something needs to be done about John Leslie Patton Jr. Academic Center. Exactly what should be done is another matter. District officials want to shutter the school and move its students and the services it offers them…
A former Baylor University economics professor is suing the university, accusing officials there of mishandling sexual misconduct claims against him. The professor, who is identified in court documents as John Doe, resigned from the university last year amid an investigation into the professor’s relationship with a student. In the lawsuit,…
For the last eight years, a group of Baylor University students has been trying to persuade the school to allow them to form an LGBTQ student group. Earlier this month, the group got an official answer from the university. It wasn’t the one they’d hoped for. Baylor officials notified members…
Among dozens of changes included in a school finance reform bill Gov. Greg Abbott signed earlier this year, lawmakers included a provision that sends new money to school districts across the state and requires them to use it to expand their half-day prekindergarten classes to full-day. But weeks into the…
In 2017, Texas lawmakers passed a bill barring school districts across the state from placing their youngest students in out-of-school suspension. But the following year, a handful of North Texas schools continued suspending those students, according to a new report from Texans Care for Children, a nonpartisan policy organization. Fort…
Two years ago, when Texas lawmakers reworked the way the state’s colleges and universities handle remedial courses, they hoped to find a solution that would help students who weren’t college-ready get up to speed in a way that wouldn’t derail their academic careers. One year after the new model went…
Dallas school leaders are confident they know how to pull the district’s lowest-performing schools up in next year’s school assessments, they told members of the school board Thursday afternoon. The Dallas ISD board discussed the district’s performance on the Texas Education Agency’s A-F ratings at a board workshop Thursday. Dallas…
Dallas ISD continued to perform above average in a new round of state A-F district ratings released Thursday. The district scored a B rating for the 2018-2019 school year, the same grade it received the year before. But twice as many schools in the district received failing marks in this…
Beginning this fall, Texas students will learn a fact that’s as true today as it was in 1861: Texas and the 10 other states that made up the Confederacy seceded from the Union over the issue of slavery. New state social studies standards for fifth and seventh grades require students…
Five years after it began, Dallas ISD’s revamping of its early learning strategy appears to be paying dividends, according to a report given Thursday to the district’s board of trustees. Derek Little, the district’s assistant superintendent of early learning, told the board that Dallas students who enroll in pre-K programs are…
Beginning next year, Texas will require nearly all high school seniors to apply for federal financial aid before they graduate, whether they plan on going to college or not. One state to the east, education officials in Louisiana created a similar requirement three years ago. Nearly all high school students…
