An East Texas judge has allowed the Kountze cheerleaders to continue carrying banners bearing Bible verses on the football field until a trial over the issue set to begin on June 24.
Morgan Smith
Morgan Smith was a reporter at the Tribune from 2009 to 2018, covering politics, public education and inequality.
In 2013, she received a National Education Writers Association award for “Death of a District,” a series on school closures. After earning a bachelor’s degree in English from Wellesley College, she moved to Austin in 2008 to enter law school at the University of Texas.
A San Antonio native, her work has also appeared in Slate, where she spent a year as an editorial intern in Washington D.C.
Posted in
Public Education
Faith Meets Football and a Legal Dispute Ensues
Kountze has become the latest setting in a string of lawsuits over where students’ rights to religious expression end and the constraints on Texas public schools as governmental entities begin, showing the fine line administrators must walk.
Posted inState Government
The Evening Brief: Oct. 12, 2012
Your evening reading: Texas Longhorn Bevo’s Oklahoma roots; a $374 million Medicare billing scheme in North Texas; and the Texas Rangers as tweet police?
Posted inState Government
The Brief: Oct. 12, 2012
In El Paso, Gov. Rick Perry continued what has become a pre-session push for a top item on his policy agenda: higher education reform.
Posted in
Public Education
For Some Teachers, Classroom Strain Runs Deeper Than Budget Cuts
Some consequences of the Legislature’s more than $5 billion budget cut to public schools — like a loss of morale and stress levels in the classroom — aren’t easily measured. But the pressure on teachers may have more complex origins.
Posted in
State Government
Dewhurst Shuffles Senate Committee Chairs
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst on Thursday appointed state Sen. Dan Patrick as chairman of the education committee. He also replaced state Sen. Judith Zaffirini with state Sen. Kel Seliger as chair of the higher education committee.
Posted in
Public Education
TribuneFest: A Conversation About Standardized Testing
At the 2012 Texas Tribune Festival, I talked about standardized testing and accountability in public education with Texas Education Commissioner Michael Williams, Carolyn Heinrich of the LBJ School of Public Affairs, former Texas Workforce Commission Chairman Tom Pauken and Bill Hammond of the Texas Association of Business.
Posted in
Public Education
Select Texas Districts Aim to Pilot Testing Reforms
Thanks to a new law, a consortium of school districts could offer a new way forward as policymakers address the increasingly heated opposition to the state’s high-stakes standardized test-based accountability system.
Posted in
Public Education
Schools Turn to Parents’ Dollars for Support
Parents are opening their pocketbooks to fund everything from outdoor classrooms to extra teaching positions in public schools when state and district money falls short. But the influx of private dollars concerns civil rights advocates who say it only exacerbates existing inequities in the public school system.
Posted in
Public Education
Abbott Weighs In on School’s Bible Verse Controversy
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has stepped into what has become a national headline-grabbing controversy over cheerleaders at an East Texas school displaying Bible verses at football games.
