This college graduation season has been abuzz with protests against commencement speakers. Portions of the student body have weighed in against invitations to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at Rutgers, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Legarde at Smith and former University of California Chancellor Robert Birgeneau at Haverford,Read More

Administrators at the Houston Independent School District have made some slight adjustments to finalize their new magnet school funding mechanism. The new plan keeps the broad outlines of the revised plan presented at a budget workshop in May, keeping  proposed per-student allocations the same for most programs including the VanguardRead More

The Houston Independent School District has delayed a scheduled vote on a proposal to change its Magnet school funding program. The vote was scheduled for tonight’s  HISD Board of Education meeting, but will take place at next week’s meeting, when the board will vote on the district’s proposed 2014-15 budget.Read More

On Monday, President Obama signed a new executive order intended to ease debt burdens for 5 million students. The centerpiece of the initiative will allow students to cap their monthly payment of Federal direct student loans to 10 percent of their annual income under a program called “Pay As YouRead More

A data analysis error has led to large revisions in the Texas non-profit advocacy group Children at Risk’s annual rankings of schools. The Houston Chronicle reported on May 19 that a miscalculation in the organization’s “growth index” rating led to the errors in the final rankings. The growth index measuresRead More

The Houston Independent School District has modified a controversial proposal to standardize future magnet school funding. During the April 24 budget workshop, HISD administration proposed eliminating extra funding for Vanguard programs that serve gifted and talented students to redistribute funding more equally across non-magnet schools. On May 15, the administrationRead More

According its recent budget proposal, The Houston Independent School District will eliminate local magnet funding for its Vanguard schools that serve gifted and talented students in the district. The $3 million will be redistributed among zoned non-magnet schools to expand programming. “There are some schools that don’t receive any fundingRead More

The Spanish Embassy has honored Wharton Elementary School’s Dual Language Program as its School of the Year for the United States and Canada in 2013. The award for academic excellence in Spanish is given by the Education Office for the U.S. and Canada, which is a technical body of theRead More

A cheating scandal at two Houston Independent School District Elementary School deepened on Thursday, May 8, as the HISD Board of Education terminated five teachers from Jefferson Elementary School accused of “improperly assisting” students on statewide standardized tests, including the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness. The five dismissalsRead More

It’s more difficult to get into Houston ISD’s (HISD) most selective schools than it is to get into Harvard; HISD’s top ten most selective schools accepted fewer than 5% of applicants. Nearly 48,000 applications were submitted to Houston Independent School District (HISD)’s 96 magnet schools by the December 20, 2013Read More

The nation’s public high school graduation rate hit its highest level in 40 years, according to the latest version of an annual report from the magazine Education Week. The magazine’s annual study of graduation rates, Diploma Count, reported that 74.7 of students in the United States graduated with a highRead More

Sequestration cuts from the Budget Control Act of 2011 will continue to bite students and parents borrowing to pay for college, according to a report from Clare McCann at Forbes Magazine. The Federal Department for Education announced today that student loan origination fees will slightly increase for all loans takenRead More

Seven district teachers and the Houston Federation of Teachers have sued the Houston Independent School District in Federal District Court, charging that the district inappropriately uses standardized test scores in teacher evaluations. The lawsuit has national implications as federal education policy encourages districts to increase their use of standardized evaluations.Read More

A recent study has added to the research challenging the widely accepted use of homework as an education tool, this time specifically focusing on the effects of large amounts of homework on the well-being of affluent students. The article, entitled “Nonacademic Effects of Homework in Privileged, High-Performing High Schools” wasRead More

Eleven schools in the Houston Independent School District were ranked in U.S. News and World Reports prestigious list of Best High Schools in the United States.  The rankings include more than 4,700 of the top high schools in the country. Carnegie Vanguard, the district’s flagship high school for gifted andRead More

Students interested in enrolling in a specialized program for the 2014-2015 school year and their parents can examine the offerings at the Houston Independent School District Choice Fair this weekend. The fair will take place this Saturday, April 26 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Northwest Mall, 9500Read More