The University of Texas-Austin is on the national forefront of efforts to improve college completion rates of entering students from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds. The scope of UT’s program is outlined in a long-form article by Paul Tough in the June 8 issue of the New York Times Magazine A briefRead More

The Houston Independent School District (HISD) posted mixed results on the latest standardized test results. According to a district press release, HISD tended to show more improvements on the math sections of the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) test, particularly for grades 3 through 8. Scores on theRead More

  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

The Houston Independent School District has earned the platinum seal from the Texas State Comptroller’s Office Leadership Circle Program last week, recognizing its efforts to maintain financial transparency to taxpayers and voters. Sixty-two districts out of more than 1,000 in the state received platinum certification from the state. Other localRead 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

When is the best time to start saving for college? If you have a child, the answer is now, or perhaps yesterday. Due to many factors including increasing capital spending, expanding administration and the withdrawal of state funding from public universities over the last 20 years, tuition is increasing atRead More

HISD’s Scarborough High School is now offering a retail immersion course entitled “Etail/Retail,” which includes an on-campus Walmart mockup, as the class is sponsored by the well-known big box chain. The product of an idea from Tracy Davis, Director at University of Houston-Downtown’s Center for Retail Management, Etail/Retail includes lessonsRead More

The kids are all right — at least that’s what a new wave of data from the Centers for Disease Control  reporting that teenagers are engaging in fewer risky activities strongly suggests. The figures stem from by the CDC’s annual Child and Adolescent Health study, an ongoing survey which justRead 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

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

Under its May 15 budget proposal, the Houston Independent School District recommends a 3.4 percent raise for new teachers. The plan includes smaller raises for experienced teachers and eliminates elevated salaries for advanced-degree holders. During the current school year, teachers with less than four years’ experience are in step 1Read 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

The doors on each of The Emery/Weiner School’s instructional areas say “classroom” in both English and Hebrew. Students who go through the school’s entire middle and high school curriculum will study the language for at least two years and take required coursework in Judaic studies every year. Each senior classRead More