Special education students in Texas are nearly twice as likely to be suspended as students in the general population, according to the Texas Education Agency — and though they make up just 10 percent of the overall enrollment, they account for 21 percent of expulsions.
Texas Education Agency
Posted in
Public Education
GOP to Doggett: “Doggone It!”
The state’s GOP leaders say the strings attached to $800 million in federal education funding by U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, are not only too restrictive — they could be unconstitutional. Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune has this report.
Posted in
Politics
The Weekly TribCast: Episode 41
Ben, Ross, Evan and Matt talk about President Obama’s visit to Texas and who didn’t want to be seen with him, the battle over strings attached to federal education money, Bill White’s donor-appointees and the legal and political definitions of residency.
Posted in
Public Education
Special Needs
After a decade in which Texas has seen a 400 percent increase in the number of children with autism, lawmakers are wrestling with how best to educate the afflicted — and how to pay for it.
Posted in
State Government
The New Math
Despite just-released ratings that show huge improvements, a Texas Tribune analysis finds that the performance of the state’s public schools — when decoupled from the controversial Texas Projection Measure — is little changed from 2008, the year before the accountability formula took effect.
Posted in
State Government
TribBlog: Texas Schools Fixed!
In new public school ratings released this afternoon, three-fourths of the state’s public schools — graded under a controversial formula called the Texas Projection Measure — now rank “exemplary” or “recognized,” the highest two of four categories of performance. Less than two percent of schools are ranked “unacceptable.”
Posted in
Public Education
TribBlog: Testing the Texas Projection Measure
The Texas Education agency plans to release school accountability ratings for every campus in the state on Friday. For the second year, the rankings will be filtered through the controversial Texas Projection Measure, which critics fault for inflating the school scores.
Posted in
Public Education
Texas Schools Have a Math Problem
A new study suggests that while the state’s English curriculum is among the best in the nation, our math curriculum doesn’t measure up to a set of new national standards. Matt Largey of KUT News reports.
Posted in
Demographics
The Weekly TribCast: Episode 37
In this week’s TribCast, Ross, Elise, Ben and Brandi discuss the issues framing Texas politics this week — education, immigration and campaign finance numbers.
Posted inState Government
TribBlog: TEA’s Scott “Happy to Scrap” Projection Measure [Updated]
Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott has been taking heat for ducking questions from reporters and a legislator regarding the Texas Projection Measure, the magic formula that last year suddenly moved thousands of Texas schools into higher state rating categories with little underlying achievement gain by students. He finally took questions from the Tribune, walking a fine line between defending the formula’s much-maligned statistical validity and saying it wasn’t his idea in the first place and, as he put it, “I’m happy to scrap it” if legislators and other critics have a big problem with it.
