The Texas legislature passed House Bill 5, which will introduce some progressive changes to the current education system. For example, the bill will create an endorsement plan for students to pick from five different areas of study (business and industry, arts and humanities, STEM, public services, and multi-disciplinary services), createRead More

Continuing its widespread coverage of assessment tests, Thesis would like to share with its readers some results from the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a test designed and administered by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) every three years which gauges the capacities of 510,000 fifteen-yearRead More

In the last year alone, Texas has doubled-down on efforts to blaze its own educational path. The state sought a waiver from No Child Left Behind, voted against joining the Common Core Standards, and approved a sweeping education bill designed to regulate how Texas schools are assessed (House Bill 5).Read More

Volunteerism can, often, seem like a patchwork practice: people showing up from different communities, backgrounds, and financial situations to lend their time for a cause or purpose. Passion leads to involvement, and this is certainly on display with political campaigns, environmental movements, and religious organizations. The human desire to improveRead More

As teachers have been put under increased pressure to “teach to the test” and boost their students’ performance scores, curricula have been grossly condensed. Depth of knowledge is sacrificed for cursory breadth of knowledge, and in lieu of spending additional time on a given subject to foster discussions, encourage creativeRead More

Today Memrise.com is launching a new application called Cat Academy in an effort to attract more users. Ed Cooke, co-founder of Memrise, called it “a hypnotically relaxing learning experience.” He went on to declare it, “One of the great contributions in Western education,” tongue-in-cheek. But the point is clear: MemriseRead More

Current sophomores at St. Stephen’s Episcopal will be the first class with the option of graduating with an International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma. The IB Diploma Programme, a widely-recognized, two-year intensive program for juniors and seniors, offers college-level curriculum (for college credit) in 146 countries. It emphasizes global citizenship and focusesRead More

On November 14th, Assistant Secretary of Education Deborah Delisle issued a letter which drastically reduces obligations for those states which previously sought and received waivers on implementing key tenets of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation. As Thesis previously reported, the national government absolved Texas, together with 41 other statesRead More

Historically, Dallas has been viewed as a Southern city big on spending, fashion, and oil. While Dallas certainly helped cultivate this image with its economic expansion in the 1980s, it has, conversely, cultivated an impression that Dallas is a homogeneous city less concerned than, say, the Northeast when it comesRead More

A little more than one month ago, the Dallas Morning News’ education blog drew my attention to a frightening trend in student achievement demographics.  Namely, based on the results of the National Center for Education Statistics’ 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) – which bi-annually ascertains performance in mathematics,Read More

A growing number of parents in East Dallas have become fed up with what they view as an inefficient and unresponsive Dallas ISD. Their frustrations range from a perceived over-emphasis on student test results to the inability of parent volunteers to effect changes in school administration, as highlighted by the storyRead More

Houston may find it should have listened to the lessons of tax increases past. In 2008 Iowa raised its sales tax from five percent to six percent. The change was marketed as an education tax, with the extra penny going to the schools for books and materials. The actual result:Read More

As a counterpoint to an article Thesis published on October 28th about waning literacy, numeracy, and ICT competence among American adults, the New York Times recently highlighted the results of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, which found that American high-school students seem to be outperforming their internationalRead More

Teens grumbling about having to scrape themselves off their beds to slog off to school is irritatingly common, but despite their incessant complaining, there’s proof they actually do like being shuttled off to school. After all, we’ve seen what happens when children are outright denied their right to an education.Read More

Just two weeks after the Dallas Morning News reported that Texas had scrapped student performance-based merit pay for teachers, it appears that standardized test results will now, in part, determine teachers’ salaries in the Dallas ISD.  Previously, teachers were eligible for pay hikes based solely on seniority; as David LeeRead More

Not one. The annual award which “…celebrates high-performing schools and schools with a high percentage of students from disadvantaged backgrounds that significantly improve whole-school test scores and student subgroup test scores,” according to the Department of Education website, did not select a single school in Texas out of 286 nationwideRead More