Performance pay in public education is a touchy subject. It seems like a good enough idea in theory, but once you get into the details of how exactly performance will be defined and measured in practice, things start to get thorny. One option for avoiding controversy: Define performance as attendance…
You know Gail Spurlock for finally revealing to the world that the Pilgrims were not only a persecuted religious minority who established a beachhead of European settlement in North America but were, more importantly, communists. It’s why they died. This wouldn’t have been terribly newsworthy were Spurlock not running for…
Dallas, both city and county, has held the line on property taxes in recent years despite dwindling revenues and shrinking budgets. Still, your property tax bill is probably going to increase after September 1, when Dallas County Community College District’s new budget goes into effect. DCCCD spokeswoman Ann Hatch said…
The University of North Texas at Dallas has come along way since it was founded in 2000 as a 55-student extension of UNT’s Denton campus. In 2007, it moved onto its permanent campus and three years later became a standalone institution that now boasts a shade over 2,000 students. Not…
By most measures, LG Pinkston High School is failing. The school, which neighbors Fish Trap Lake in a poor area of West Dallas, has higher dropout rates, lower graduation rates, and lower test scores than the rest of Dallas ISD. It is considered academically unacceptable by the state and has…
The world of early childhood education is cutthroat. There are only so many hyper-concerned parents willing to shell out public college tuition for their 3-year-olds to get the type of preschool education that will propel them into the Ivy League. Used to be, you could slap the name “Montessori” on…
Back in May, longtime Dallas Independent School District educator George Clayton was defeated in State Board of Education reelection bid, apparently ending his all-too-brief, redistricting-shortened two-year term. The loss was partly because he was badly outspent by Tincy Miller in her attempt to regain the seat she occupied for several…
Given his high profile over the past few months and some much-publicized decisions, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Mike Miles has actually been DISD’s superintendent. Which he has, of course, but not officially and not full-time until Monday, when he took the reins in earnest. It was a busy…
Incoming DISD superintendent Mike Miles might have been getting the impression that Dallas wasn’t as friendly as billed, what with all the pointed questions about administrators’ pay scale. So, to prove we really do love him, the Dallas Regional Chamber is unrolling a billboard campaign timed to coincide with the…
The $1.15 billion 2012-13 budget approved unanimously by DISD trustees last night contained no real surprises. We already knew the state was cutting $37 million in funding. The district opted not to seek a tax increase, so to compensate, the district trimmed $22.8 million, or about 2 percent, from last…
News has been trickling out as DISD Superintendent Mike Miles has filled out his leadership team. Thursday, it was Seattle Public Schools’ Aurora Lora as assistant superintendent. Friday it was Ft. Worth ISD’s Sylvia Reyna as school leadership chief and the fifth and penultimate member of Miles’ cabinet. The burning…
Dana Allen, a Lakewood parent, is thrilled with the education her 5-year-old receives at Lindsley Park charter school, but is displeased that the school has no gym, no cafeteria, no library and no computer lab. She attributes the absence of such basic niceties to the school’s lack of state funding…
When it meets later this morning, the DISD Board of Trustees will get an update on efforts to boost the number of students taking and passing Advanced Placement exams. As the graph above shows, the short answer is, a helluva lot more than there used to be. Right at a…
At his odd press conference defending the $185,000 salary of his communications chief, new Dallas ISD supe Mike Miles mentioned that he’s never had coffee with Jennifer Sprague. It sounded unlikely, but you knew what Miles meant: They don’t hang out. They’re not bros. But it was only a matter…
So it’s been easy to get bogged down in the last few days with questions like “Holy shit! Jennifer Sprague is making how much?” and “Wait, you think us media types are blowing this salary thing out of proportion because Jennifer Sprague is young and blond and has boobs?” But,…
Back before I posted this piece about how DeVry — yes, that DeVry — wanted to train students from one of its Caribbean medical schools in Texas hospitals, I reached out to the for-profit university for a more detailed explanation of their plans and, perhaps, a comment. None came. But…
Incoming DISD superintendent Mike Miles called Saturday’s sit-down with the board a retreat, but that’s probably a misnomer. The meeting was long and took place on a weekend, and there was a platter full of bacon, but Miles didn’t give an inch. In a Q&A session with media beforehand, Miles…
As the district announced yesterday, and the DMN reported over the weekend (paywall), DISD is accusing five private tutoring companies of more $500,000 in fraud. That’s on top of more than $140,000 the district accused two other companies of illegally taking in April after an external audit. The companies deny…
If you’re like me, you associate DeVry with grainy daytime TV advertisements from the mid-1990s hawking cut-rate degrees in things like medial records and mechanical drafting. But the for-profit college has apparently been moving up in the world, now training not only your stenographer but your doctor. DeVry entered the…
Big front-pager in today’s Morning News about how Mike Miles, Dallas ISD’s new superintendent, will pay his new communications chief, Jennifer Sprague, $185,000 a year. The general consensus among those interviewed for the story: Holy hell that’s a lot of money for that job. Which makes sense because, well, holy…
When Joseph Drake, a fourth grade teacher at Central Elementary School, fired off a testy email to DISD Trustee Edwin Flores (Sample line: “People like you destroy morale, beat us down into the ground, and make us wish we had been greedy enough to go into the business world as…
Two years ago, when George Clayton announced that he was seeking to represent Dallas and Collin countie on the State Board of Education, the first question was, “Who?” It soon became clear that Clayton was, on the surface at least, a mild-mannered administrator at North Dallas High School who believes…
