For supers, a brief stay in hot seat; Short tenures the norm with stress, challenges of today’s urban schools

By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 1A W.T. White can rest easy. Dr. White led the Dallas school district from 1945 to 1968 and holds the city’s record for longest-serving superintendent – 23 years. Mike Moses was burned out a few months past three. And no one expects the next superintendent’s tenure to last much […]

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‘Tired’ Moses walking away from DISD; Analysis: Successes are many, incomplete

By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 1A How you evaluate Mike Moses’ tenure as Dallas superintendent depends on what you value. As a manager and a political figure, it’s hard to call him anything but a success. He put a more positive face on the district than Dallas had seen in years. He convinced a […]

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And then there were three…; Students who fail TAKS get fewer retest chances to graduate on time

By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 1B For 63,984 members of the Class of 2005, it was the first last chance. That’s how many of Texas’ rising seniors failed at least one section of last year’s Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. This week, many of them filed into their high schools for another stab […]

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Teacher who let her pupils hit boy won’t be indicted; Mother says ‘justice system has failed’ son who was punished

By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 4B A Dallas County grand jury decided Thursday not to indict a Seagoville Elementary School teacher who disciplined an 8-year-old boy by having his classmates take turns hitting him. “She’s very relieved,” said the teacher’s attorney, Ted Steinke. “She feels bad about what happened. She had absolutely no malicious […]

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Research vulnerable to viruses; Study: Computer worms can – and do – disable scientists’ systems

By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 1B A crippling virus swept across the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston last month, disabling all it touched and stopping doctors from treating some patients. It wasn’t the sort of virus that could be stopped by surgical masks and drugs. Rather, it was the Sasser […]

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TAKS stakes rising for fifth-graders; Next year’s students are first to need math, reading for promotion

By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 1A You have to hope the fourth-graders at Rockwall’s Jones Elementary liked their teachers this year. They’ll be seeing them again soon enough. The school is shifting its fourth-grade reading and math teachers up a grade next year – in part because school officials want to provide every advantage […]

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TAKS scores: Some guidance for parents

Results announced Tuesday say how students performed on the TAKS statewide. But what about your child? If you haven’t already, you should soon be receiving a Confidential Student Report, or CSR, from your child’s school. Some districts, such as the Arlington ISD, sent scores home Monday. Others, including the Richardson ISD, expect to distribute scores […]

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State: DISD lags in teacher quality; District says numbers are better than those reported to TEA

By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 1B Nearly a third of DISD teachers in core academic subjects fall short of federal teacher-quality standards, according to a new set of data from the Texas Education Agency. That is by far the worst showing among Texas’ large urban districts – more than twice the percentage of second-worst […]

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