There’s been plenty of intense reaction across the country to new immigration laws passed in The Grand Canyon State. Ben Philpott, who covers public policy for KUT News and the Tribune, reports on how both sides are already looking ahead to future battlegrounds.
Raving Arizona
Posted in
Higher Education
Inman Inside
Every Friday since a blast at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia killed 29 miners, graduate students at UT’s LBJ School of Public Affairs have been treated to an insider briefing. The name of their course is Managing Crises, and their professor, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, is dealing with a big one.
Posted inState Government
Cleaning Up the Gulf
Work continues to plug the oil well leaking in the Gulf of Mexico after the explosion and sinking of the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon rig. Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports on clean up efforts.
Posted in
Public Education
Grade Stagflation
Hundreds of school districts can continue giving failing students inflated grades, after a Travis County Civil Court judge declined to rule in a lawsuit challenging the state’s interpretation of a new law mandating “honest grades.”
Posted in
Demographics
Smaller is Better
In a new statewide ranking of public schools that we published yesterday, the Dallas Independent School District boasts seven of the top 25 high schools but also 18 in the bottom quartile. Not surprisingly, the best ones have a small student population, while the worst ones are megacampuses — an example of a larger trend in school rankings data.
Posted in
State Government
TribBlog: Traffic Surcharges Attacked
Criminal justice advocates today told the Texas Public Safety Commission that their proposal to fix the broken Driver Responsibility Program fell far short of the comprehensive approach needed to help more than 1.2 million Texans who have lost their licenses because of the program’s steep surcharges.
Posted inState Government
2010: The Debate Delay
Setting a date for a tete-a-tete between Gov. Rick Perry and Democrat Bill White will take awhile. The Perry camp is refusing to debate White until the former Houston mayor releases more of his income tax returns.
Posted in
Demographics
TribBlog: Lt. Gov. Dewhurst Dispatches from the Border
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst went to El Paso today, talked with state, local and federal police, took an aerial tour over the dangerous borderlands and pronounced that Mexico’s drug war is a “very serious threat” to all Texans — a threat the feds aren’t protecting you from.
Posted in
Health care
TribBlog: Dog Days at DSHS
It’s an email you’d expect to see taped up at a coffee shop, not sent out from the Department of State Health Services: “Missing Puppy Found!”
