The sixth annual Building a Grad Nation report, released last week, showcases an encouraging trend. According to the most recent data, the United States is still on track to achieve a 90% high school graduation rate by 2020. The 2013 graduation rate of 81.4% was a record high. More importantly,Read More

Teach for America, or TFA, is a program which recruits high-achieving college graduates to teach for two years in low-performing or underserved public schools. Some Houstonians may know it as an organization whose alumni went on to found Houston’s YES Prep and KIPP charter schools. Many others may know TFARead More

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation annually awards millions in funding to education initiatives aimed at impacting both students and policy. One of the goals stated by the Gates Foundation in regards to education are to support innovation that can improve U.S. K-12 public schools and ensure that students graduateRead More

President Obama’s State of the Union address last week has already received much media attention, and the policies discussed in it have drawn considerable commentary from both sides of the aisle. On the topic of education, most attention has been focused on the President’s ambitious plan to make community collegeRead More

The Texas Education Agency published its annual Public Education Grant list which is used to rate which schools across the state require improvement. Houston ISD, the state’s largest district, topped the list with 86 different elementary, middle and high schools requiring improvement due to low test scores and other factors contributingRead More

As an undergraduate at Rice – an excellent school across the board, but particularly known for its STEM programs – I had many encounters with engineering students who disliked studying the arts. They would tell me they simply didn’t see the point – where were the practical applications? With theRead More

The 2014-2014 school year brought Texas its highest ever number of students enrolled in public schools throughout the state.  According to a November 2014 report published by the Texas Education Agency (TEA), Texas public school enrollment has increased by almost 19% since 2003. Currently, there are over 5 million studentsRead More

Exhausted teenagers may soon see their dreams come true at a later morning hour. The school start time debate has shifted as proponents of later school start times now have greater scientific evidence to back up their claims. In August of this year, the American Academy of Pediatricians recommended thatRead More

It’s been a big week for President Obama with the announcement of his executive action on immigration. This hot-button new policy and the buzz surrounding it have eclipsed many other national policy issues for the moment, so you may not have heard much about what else the President has beenRead More

On Monday, the massive open online course (MOOC) platform edX opened registration for AP Biology: Part 1, the first course on the site which explicitly focuses on preparing students for an AP exam. The course has been made available in partnership with Rice University’s Center for Digital Learning and ScholarshipRead More

Montessori-style programs have long been a popular choice among upper-class parents for their children,  but recent research suggests that Montessori-style pre-kindergarten may particularly beneficial for low-income Latino children – especially for acquiring language skills. Ayra Ansari of UT-Austin and Adam Winsler of George Mason University examined 13,000 low-income black andRead More

A new research paper has found little connection between teaching quality and improvement of standardized test scores. At issue is the idea of value-added measures (VAM), evaluating teachers by seeing how much students improve on standardized test scores and using deviations in expected improvements to rate teachersDistricts highly rate teachersRead 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

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

Democrats for Education Reform have set up shop in Austin, Texas, and they are planning on adding to the educational dialogue across the state. To begin with, it must be mentioned that there is a lot of difficult rhetoric and political language to wade through when discussing education reform. ButRead More

At a March 13 meeting packed with community members, the Houston Independent School District Board of Education voted to close Dodson Elementary School and repurpose Jones High School. The vote to close Dodson divided the board 5-4, with board members Anna Eastman, Rhonda Skillern-Jones, Wanda Adams and Paula Harris opposedRead More