After years of fiddling with merit-pay schemes, the Houston ISD is tying student test scores to the decision to ax teachers. Not surprisingly, the move — on the cutting edge of reforms nationally — has teachers howling in protest.
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: “Mayor, Dogcatcher, Whatever”
Whatever his job might be, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro says he would have applied for the federal government’s Race to the Top education grants, which could have been worth $700 million to the state’s schools.
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Health care
Day Care Danger
The Texas Workforce Commission spent nearly $50 million during the last two years on day care centers and in-home childcare providers with troubled track records — including sexual and physical abuse, kidnapping, and leaving infants to suffocate and die in their cribs. A Texas Tribune review found that at least 135 subsidized facilities had their licenses revoked or denied by the Department of Family and Protective Services in 2008 and 2009 and had their funding immediately suspended.
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Public Education
Meet the Flintstones
Nearly a third of Texans believe humans and dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.
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Demographics
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Hu, Philpott, and Ramsey on the Democratic gubernatorial debate, the pre-game, the post-game, and the highlight reel. Thevenot on the push for accountability in persistently low-performing schools. M. Smith on the Republican assault on sitting Republican appellate judge. Hamilton on a county with more than one Tea Party trying to claim conservative voters. With lawmakers staring down a growing budget crunch, Aguilar looks back at the last one for instruction. Grissom finds that U.S. Border Patrol has quietly stopped a program to deport illegal immigrants through Presidio. Ramshaw reports on a West Texas nurse who got into and out of criminal trouble for complaining about a doctor she worked with. The second University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll finds Rick Perry and Bill White with big leads in their respective party primaries. Rapoport found herself in the eye of the storm, traveling with Debra Medina on the day the candidate unexpectedly and disastrously made national news when Glenn Beck asked her on his radio shows about the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11. The best of our best from February 8 to 12, 2010.
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Public Education
TribBlog: NYT Mag on SBOE’s “Christian Nation”
It seems the social conservatives on the State Board of Education may be on their way to getting more ink than any other politicians in modern Texas history, a cause that will be helped in this Sunday’s printing of The New York Times Magazine.
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Public Education
Tom Leppert: The TT Interview
The Dallas mayor left a hugely successful private sector career to lead the country’s ninth-largest city through an economic meltdown and the aftermath of a City Hall corruption scandal. And he doesn’t regret a minute of it. Here, he talks about fighting a sky-high crime rate, how he keeps party politics from his office, and every urban area’s Achilles’ heel: education.
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Public Education
The Brief: February 10, 2010
Paging Dr. Doug Ross. Debra Medina may soon be endangering your popularity.
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Demographics
Democratic Gubernatorial Debate: Liveblog, Video, Audio
In their first and probably only televised debate, Bill White sounded experienced, as you’d expect of a three-term mayor of Houston, while wealthy hair care magnate Farouk Shami was more passionate, more animated, and much more prone to political mistakes.
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Criminal Justice
Reform Follows Function
The federal push for accountability at “persistently low-achieving” schools across Texas is running smack into the hard, slow work of improvement at the local level.