By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 1A Federal officials have estimated the size of Texas’ dropout problem for the first time and say it’s almost quadruple what the state says. Five percent of Texas high school students dropped out in the 1999-2000 school year, according to a new report from the National Center for Education […]
By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 1C Looking for some cheap thrills? Thirty dollars can buy you and a date a whole day’s worth of them with a little imagination. And Texas Living is here to help with a new feature: Cheap Date, which will appear occasionally on Saturdays. We’ll send our resident thrill seekers […]
By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 1A If your child is stuck in a failing school, a new federal law is supposed to give him a way out this fall: the right to transfer to any better school in your district. So that parents would have time to plan a switch, states across the country […]
By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 10H Confused by the alphabet soup of acronyms educators throw around? Don’t know your M&O from your I&S, your TAAS from your TAKS from your TEKS? We’re here to clear up your confusion (well, some of it): ADD, ADHD: Attention deficit disorder, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The conditions […]
By Joshua Benton and Terrence Stutz Staff Writers Page 1A The last time Texas students had to adjust to a new state test, they stumbled. It was 1990, and the outmoded Texas Educational Assessment of Minimum Skills, or TEAMS, had just been put out to pasture. Its new, tougher replacement: an up-and-comer called the Texas […]
By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 10H It’s the question every parent wants answered: How good is my child’s school? Unfortunately, the experts you might ask – the principal, for example – often have a vested interest in making things look as positive as possible. So parents look for objective sources, such as hard data. […]
Read More… from Where to find data on your school: 3 sites provide it free
By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 6H Navigating the bureaucracy of the public school system is difficult with any child, but it can be truly intimidating if your child has special needs. The great news is that there’s plenty of help out there for you. In 1975, Congress passed what is now called the Individuals […]
By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 11H Once a child enters third grade in Texas, his parents get an objective, annual look at how he’s doing: the state standardized test. Tests have changed over the years – from TABS to TEAMS to TAAS to TAKS – but since the 1980s there have been hard data […]
By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 35A If you want your child to attend St. Rita Catholic School this fall, be prepared to answer a few tough questions. For the first time, the northern Dallas school is asking all of its parents to undergo a background check before the school year starts. Other area Catholic […]
By Terrence Stutz and Joshua Benton Staff Writers Page 1A Performance ratings for Texas school districts declined for the first time in several years in 2002 as middle-school students came up short in their knowledge of government and history. But collective marks for individual campuses were up over last year as a record number of […]