At the beginning of January, the Texas Education Agency issued its new statewide summary of schools that failed to meet state standards for 2013 and whose students are eligible to seek transfer under the state Public Education Grant program. The feature of the summary that grabbed the most headlines wasRead More

Last Month, Los Angeles Dodger Clayton Kershaw signed a $215 million dollar contract to become the highest paid pitcher in Major League Baseball history. A product of Highland Park High School, Kershaw has amassed quite a resume during his first six seasons in the league. Debuting on the mound atRead More

To elaborate upon a piece that Thesis published about the history of children’s literature, I thought it necessary (not to mention, well, interesting) to get a sense of the present and future of the canon of works that have captivated young hearts and inspired young minds.  An enriching afternoon spentRead More

On January 31, the Houston Independent School District announced annual instructor bonuses through its ASPIRE program, a merit pay program for teachers funded through state and federal grants and partly through local funds. Statistical analysis suggests that schools with the highest bonuses on average were wealthier, whiter and more selectiveRead More

Imagine if applying to college worked like a 50-50 raffle.  You pay your application fee, get a ticket and watch the admissions officer at Really Elite Fancy Pants University pull numbers out of a hat to determine who gets a spot in the entering freshman class. It seems unfair, right? Read More

Soon after video games made the leap from the arcade to the personal computer, educational video games were introduced in schools. 1985 saw the release of Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego – the former designed to teach children about American history, the latter made toRead More

The preeminent camp for smart kids is coming to Rice University beginning this summer. Duke’s Talent Identification Program (TIP) announced that it has partnered with Rice to offer its prestigious 3-week “Academy” Summer Studies Program beginning June 8, 2014. The residential enrichment program will host 325 high-achieving 8, 9, andRead More

Houston tutors have an answer to your student’s problems: online homework help service blasts off from Texas. It’s a too common occurrence when a teenage child comes home and asks for help with his Algebra II homework. Unsurprisingly, not many adults remember how to translate a parabola. It’s of noRead More

During his fifth State-of-the-Union address on Jan. 28, President Obama announced no major new educational initiatives. Instead, he spent the modest amount of time he dedicated to education highlighting and defending his existing record on education, Obama also announced several modest expansions of existing programs and encouraged Congress to takeRead More

When you first walk into the Museum District’s Post Oak High School, little is hidden, including the teachers. The school, a single story, 6,000 square foot brick and glass-walled structure with an open-concept floor plan, was designed with the third teacher in mind. The third teacher is not a humanRead More

For many of us, some of our fondest childhood memories are associated with the stories and books we learned from our parents, heard from our teachers, and discovered for ourselves. I, for one, get nostalgic at the mention of my friend’s dog Spot (for those who may not directly seizeRead More

The 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress Scores for math and reading are in, and the results for Houston are definitely mixed. Locally, the conventional wisdom is that Houston continues its steady improvement in math, but lags behind in reading. HISD Superintendent Terry Grier is working with administrators and (presumably)Read More

When the Houston Independent School District Board of Trustees tentatively voted to ban the use of racially based mascots and nicknames at its schools during its Dec. 15 meeting, its actions joined a several-decade old trend of American schools and sports franchises de-emphasizing or eliminating logos and nicknames associated withRead More

Last month The Atlantic published an article by Amanda Machado, entitled: Why Teachers of Color Quit, which she followed up with an interview segment on NPR. In the article and interview, Machado outlines the three reasons she walked away from the profession of teaching: a lack of cultural sensitivity byRead More

Recently, major national news sources covered topics which Thesis has been following for some time now: teacher evaluations and national standardized testing norms.  First, on December 18th,  Al Jazeera America drew its readership’s attention to how schools all over the country have had to postpone (or even sacrifice) designing andRead More

Earlier this fall, in between writing for Thesis and teaching two community college classes, I enrolled in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC): “Central Challenges in American National Security, Strategy, and the Press.” The urge, while mostly compulsive, was driven by the immediate, fluid state of the international climate (SyriaRead More