We’ve built a searchable database of public school rankings based on data collected by the Houston-based nonprofit Children At Risk. In contrast to the Texas Education Agency’s “ratings,” which rely almost entirely on the percentage of students passing the TAKS test, the rankings blend 12 different measures for elementary schools, 10 for middle schools and 14 for high schools — including TAKS results, ACT and SAT scores, AP exams, attendance rates, graduation rates and the percentage of economically disadvantaged students on every campus. How does your school stack up?
Public Education
Explore The Texas Tribune’s coverage of public education, from K-12 schools and funding to teachers, students, and policies shaping classrooms across Texas.
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Public Education
TribBlog: A Hearing on History Hearings
The Mexican American Legislative Caucus, the Senate Hispanic Caucus and the House Black Caucus are throwing a “special hearing” to stoke backlash to the State Board of Education’s recasting of American history.
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Health care
Slipping Through the Cracks
What’s in an IQ score? For autistic or profoundly mentally ill Texans: everything. A growing number of disabled young adults are considered too high-functioning for state care services, but their families say they’re too dangerous to go without them. Admission to state-supported living centers is limited to disabled people with IQs under 70 — and community-based care is generally capped at an IQ of 75.
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Criminal Justice
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Grissom on the fall of Norma Chávez; M. Smith and Ramsey on the runoffs, the results, and the aftermath; Hu on the Tea Party’s birthday party; Thevenot and Stiles on the path between schools and prisons; Ramshaw on prosecutors’ reaction to helping hands from Austin; Hamilton on self-appointed lawyers; Galbraith on property rights and power lines; Aguilar and Grissom sit down with the mayor of Juárez to talk about his crime-ridden city; Kraft on telling the stories of Texans and other Americans who died in Vietnam; Ramsey on slots and horses and casinos; and Hamilton goes on a field trip with Jim Hightower to hear the history of populism. The best of our best from April 5 to 9, 2010.
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Public Education
TribBlog: Don McLeroy on Al Jazeera
From the Department of You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: The Arab world’s favorite news source takes on the State Board of Education.
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Higher Education
“The School-to-Prison Pipeline”
A new report by Texas Appleseed spotlights two troubling trends: the high number and proportion of discretionary expulsions by school districts, often for low-level “persistent misbehavior,” and the disproportionate severity of discipline meted out to African-Americans.
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Public Education
TribBlog: Drop-Out Throw-Down!
Bill White and Rick Perry fought over the hotly contested high school drop-out rate on Tuesday. Is it 30 percent (White)? 10 percent (Perry)? Or, more likely, somewhere in between?
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Public Education
TribBlog: Katrina’s Exiles Thrived In Texas Schools [Updated]
More than five years after Katrina, a long-term Texas Education Agency study finds that Louisiana students in Texas schools — many who came from among the nation’s worst campuses — have generally thrived here.
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Economy
Tomorrow Never Dies
Lobbyists and lawmakers are fighting to preserve the terms of the contracts signed by parents who enrolled in the Texas Tomorrow Fund prepaid college tuition plan.
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Public Education
The Textbook Myth
Despite all the handwringing about Texas’ influence on the textbook market nationally, it’s just not so, publishing insiders say. The state’s clout has been on the wane and will diminish more as technological advances and political shifts transform the industry.