By Terrence Stutz
AUSTIN — The number of campuses on the annual list of the worst public schools in Texas soared again this year as the 2-year-old rating system pulled hundreds of schools below minimum achievement levels.
The Texas Education Agency reported Friday that 1,199 schools — including 71 in the Dallas Independent School District — have been identified as low performers because of poor test scores or unacceptable ratings under the state’s Public Education Grant...
By Rod Paige
By this time next month, 181 legislators will arrive in Austin for the 140-day session of the Texas Legislature. Houston's lawmakers will be asked to make serious decisions that affect all Texans - but none more important than proposals relating to public education. To the legislators, I have one simple message: Focus your decisions solely on what is best for Houston children.
As a former Houston Independent School District board member and superintendent, former...
By Ben Austin
On Nov. 16, the American-Statesman’s Julie Chang shared the compelling story of Diana De La Fuente, who, like thousands of other students in Austin, does not have access to a high-performing school in her neighborhood.
Desperate to escape their failing neighborhood school, Diana and her parents applied for a transfer to a better-performing school in West Austin. Unfortunately, their request was denied. The school district explained that higher-performing West...
By Preston Smith
Since the 1970s we've known of Moore's Law, which states the processing power of computers will double every two years. Forty years later, computers are presumably a million times more powerful. The education world is finally beginning to harness this power, taking us far beyond the origins of computer labs where students clicked away at the Oregon Trail and practiced word processing. Finally, we're starting to reach a point where adaptive online programs engage...
By Julie Chang
Sixteen-year-old Diana De La Fuente lives in East Austin, but she hated the idea of going to high school there.
Diana and her parents saw the Austin district’s diversity choice program as a way to get her away from the fights, drug use and other problems they had heard about at Eastside Memorial, her neighborhood high school.
