Subject: Texas Education Agency

• Coming Up: Which Schools Are Horrible?

  August 1, 2007

• Report Card for All HISD Schools

  August 1, 2007

• School Board Gets The Boot In North Forest ISD

  July 31, 2008

• TEA Releases Ratings, Houston ISD Has Some Hits, Some Misses

  August 1, 2008

• You Can Ignore Evolutionary Theory In Texas

  August 14, 2008

• TAASk-masters

  Want an edge on that ultimate school exam? Have your $8 ready for this primer.

  October 5, 2000

• 180 Days in the Hole

  HISD insists that kids sent to its alternative school should spend an entire year there, no matter what. What a crock.

  April 19, 2001

• The Big Deal

  Vending machines are leaving Texas school cafeterias. But the mother lode of "minimal nutritional value" has hardly gone away.

  June 6, 2002

• Building Entrepreneurship on the Backs of Toddlers Gets All Kinds of Notice

  November 13, 2008

• Gift Giving at Soon-To-Be-Closed J. Will Jones Elementary

  Thanks to some generous people in Houston and from as far away as New York State, J. Will Jones Elementary will celebrate its annual "Gift of Giving" celebration this Thursday, distributing "donated presents and hurricane relief supplies to students and their families," HISD announced today. St. Nicholas will show up and everyone gets a gift.  "This year is especially important since so many families have faced hardships in our community," says Principal Brian Flores.  "Hurricane Ike,

  December 15, 2008

• And Now We Turn Our Attention to the 2009 Texas State Legislature and the Texas Education Agency

  By now, most everyone has heard something of the off-the-mike November conversation between Texas Education Agency Deputy Comissioner Lizzette Reynolds and Associate Deputy Commissioner Gina Day that was made public last week. After a very brief meeting, someone forgot to turn off her microphone and the two were recorded as Reynolds told Day to stop making excuses for the State Center for Early Childhood Development run by Susan Landry out of the Texas Health Science Center in Houston. Highlig

  December 30, 2008

• Bitter Lesson

  May 9, 1996

• A Question of Competence

  February 27, 1997

• Basic Ballard

  March 13, 1997

• Letters

  April 3, 1997

• Letters

  April 17, 1997

• Cost Cutting: Dan Patrick Says Drop Those Caps On Elementary Class Size

  Just in time for the 25th anniversary of the landmark Texas House Bill 72, Senator Dan Patrick has pre-filed a bill to amend it in several ways -- no, he's not touching No Pass, No Play -- but he is fiddling with the cap in place on the number of kids that schools can cram into their K-4th grade classes. Right now, a school must have no more than 22 students in each of these classrooms. Patrick's Senate Bill 300 would change that to "a campus-wide average" of 22. Which brings up visions of two s

  February 20, 2009

• What A Relief: You Don't Have To Pee Your Pants To Pass A TAKS Test

  Photo by cliff1066Last week saw the first volley of TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) testing for public high schoolers. Crucial to the success of the mission was a ruling from State Education Commissioner Robert Scott that yes, bathroom breaks are allowed during the testing. The Texas Classroom Teachers Association is claiming credit on its website for raising the question with Comnmissioner Scott earlier this month. During a Q & A session, TCTA members said they weren't sure

  March 9, 2009

• The Fix Is In

  February 25, 1999

• Adding It All Up

  March 4, 1999

• Grade Charades?

  July 1, 1999

• News Hostage

  July 15, 1999

• Power to the Principal

  At Madison High, Principal Warner Ervin's word is law. Teachers say that's the problem.

  April 2, 1998

• So Much for No Child Left Behind

  School test scores rise as more low-scoring students drop out.

  April 10, 2008

• White-Washing Those Black Rodeo Gala Tickets

  Well, Warner Ervin, superintendent of the Houston Independent School District's south region, must be feeling pretty good today. He's the administrator being reluctantly investigated by the Texas Education Agency -- after a lot of urging from citizen and former HISD high school teacher Del Murphy -- for tapping into HISD discretionary funds to buy tickets to the Black Heritage Western Gala. Reportedly, principals and other administrators, working with and for Ervin, were persuaded by the regiona

  April 16, 2009

• Opt In, Opt Out

  HISD continues to send students to CEP. Whether they go there, stay there or return successfully to their home school is anyone's guess.

  October 5, 2006

• Methodology

  March 2, 2006

• These Kids Go to the Best Public High School in Houston

  March 2, 2006

• The Also-Rans

  The schools who could have been contenders

  March 2, 2006

• Methodology

  February 23, 2006

• Another Bright Spot

  Carver High School

  February 23, 2006

• Houston's Best Public High Schools

  February 23, 2006

• Guest Column: HISD's Ethnic Gap

  Stats show how district policies help whites with educational opportunities

  July 1, 2004

• Watching You

  Katy ISD students better be really good, or there will be hell to pay

  March 18, 2004

• Johnnie and Dilbert

  Plus: Taking ExCEPtion

  August 22, 2002

• Million-Dollar Babies

  Some CEP students have been locked in for years

  June 27, 2002

• Letters, November 29

  Piety or Pac-Man, At Any Rate, Bell View

  November 29, 2001

• Fostering Praise, Down on Westbury, TEA Trickery?

  Letters from Novemeber 1

  November 1, 2001

• But Who's Counting?

  Thousands of students disappear from our schools yearly, but the TEA insists they're not dropouts

  October 18, 2001

• Mystery Code

  Alvin ISD exempts conscientious objectors from dress code rules. But nobody can get that exemption.

  March 8, 2001

• School's Out Forever

  "Unschoolers" like Holly Furgason don't believe in public education. They don't even believe in teachers. They believe in the ability of their children to teach themselves. Will the law catch up with them?

  April 20, 2000

• Learning Curves

  Charter school scandals are teaching Texas a hard lesson -- one the state should have known fouryears and $77 million ago

  July 22, 1999

• Why Johnny Might Someday Be Able to Read

  When Eldo Bergman confronted his son's reading problems, he took the scientific approach. Now he is trying to convince schools to do the same.

  May 14, 1998

• Maxwell's Demons

  If you get crosswise with Larry Maxwell, beprepared to go to court

  September 14, 1995

• School Districts Don't Need To Close To Protect Funding, TEA Says

  When the Fort Worth school district made the seemingly bizarre decision to close down for a week even though they hadn't experienced a single confirmed case of swine flu, there were some rumblings that FWISD officials were more concerned about budgets than parents.Parents might have to spend a week scrambling for child care, but FWISD would not need to worry about any ADA money.And ADA money is very, very important to schools. It's got nothing to do with the Americans with Disabilities Act; the

  May 1, 2009

• School's Out For Summer: Travis Elementary Closes For Rest of School Year

  Photo courtesy of WikipediaTravis Elementary, the school where one kid after another was coming down with or thinking he was coming down with swine flu, was supposed to open next Tuesday to finish out the year in some sort of style. That's not going to happen now, Norm Uhl, spokesman for the Houston Independent School District just announced. "The state and city health departments have asked us to keep Travis closed for up to ten more days, so it will not re-open on Tuesday, but we anticipat

  May 22, 2009

• HISD's Rankings Improve, As Promised Yesterday

  ​HISD announced yesterday they had set a record for the percentage of its schools ranked "exemplary" or "recognized" by the state, and the official release of the information today backed up the claim.Last year 57 percent of the district's schools were included in those two categories; this year it's 73 percent.The results:Exemplary      84 schools    31 percentRecognized   116 schools    42 percentAcceptable   &nb

  July 31, 2009

• TEA Releases Further Details On School Rankings

  ​The Texas Education Agency has released the 2009 school rankings -- let the talk of how schools are gaming the system begin!!Results are searchable by district, by category, by all kinds of things.The 12 HISd schools that have been ranked "unacceptable":High Schools -- Jones, Kashmere, Lee, Sterling, Westbury, Worthing and Sharpstown. Not many surprises there.Middle Schools -- Attucks, Dowling, Fondren, Ryan, and the Walipp/TSU school.No HISD elementaries were ranked unacceptable, according t

  July 31, 2009

• HISD's Gets On The Rankings Roller Coaster

  ​Oh, HISD. You didn't get to enjoy your "We Got Great Rankings!!" moment for long.Just a week after crowing about their improvement in the state's assessment of schools, the district got slammed by the feds for failing to make the grade in No Child Left Behind rankings.The dispute comes down to statistics, racial subgroups and different methods used to measure success. The feds also put an emphasis on drop-out rates, and coming up with a "drop-out rate" is an art that is not very disciplined."

  August 6, 2009

• Magna Charter

  October 1, 2009