More STAAR? The Texas Senate Proposes Even Higher-Stakes Testing for Students.
On Monday, the Senate passed a proposal to add four more writing tests and tie school funding directly to third-grade test results.
Mimi Swartz, the author, with Sherron Watkins, of Power Failure, The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron, is an executive editor of Texas Monthly. Previously, she was a staff writer at Talk, from April 1999 to April 2001, and a staff writer at the New Yorker from 1997 to 2001. Prior to joining the New Yorker, she worked at Texas Monthly for thirteen years. In 1996 Swartz was a finalist for two National Magazine Awards and won in the public interest category for “Not What the Doctor Ordered.” She was also a National Magazine Award finalist for her November 2005 issue story on tort reform, titled “Hurt? Injured? Need a Lawyer? Too Bad!” and won the 2006 John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest, Magazine Journalism, for the same story. In 2013 she won her second National Magazine Award (again in the category of public interest), for “Mothers, Sisters, Daughters, Wives,” a compelling look at the state of women's health care in Texas.
Over the years, Swartz’s work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Esquire, Slate, National Geographic, and the New York Times’ op-ed page and Sunday magazine. It has also been collected in Best American Political Writing 2006 and Best American Sportswriting 2007. She has been a member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 1994. Swartz grew up in San Antonio and graduated from Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She now lives in Houston with her husband, John Wilburn, and son, Sam.
Articles by Mimi Swartz
Enjoy Houston’s Intoxicating Jasmine Air While You Can
It's that magical—and all too brief—time in the city, when the heady blooms seem to make everything a little bit better.
New Study Reaffirms That STAAR Reading Tests Are Not on Grade Level
Eight different readability formulas showed the test's reading portions are at a higher level of difficulty than appropriate for the grades they’re assessing.
My father always pampered his pets. So when he fell ill and moved in with us, it was no surprise that his corgi came to rule our home. What I didn’t expect was for Trilby to care for me after Dad was gone.
Testing the Test: New Legislation Filed to Audit STAAR
More challenges emerge to Texas’s least favorite exam.
Are Texas Kids Failing? Or Are the Tests Rigged?
Leading educators and testing experts have studied the exams and find that they are asking kids to understand passages aimed two or more years above their grade level.
The Texanhood of George H. W. Bush
He built an oil empire, revitalized the state’s Republican party, gave rise to a political dynasty, and forever changed the Lone Star State. Yet the question dogged him his entire life: Was he a real Texan or merely a Yankee transplant?
The Power Issue: Sylvester Turner Is Reaching Across the Aisle to Save Texas’s Biggest City
The Houston mayor understands the wisdom of maintaining good relations even with people you disagree with again and again.
The Power Issue: John and Laura Arnold Are Guiding Philanthropy Into the Age of Big Data
A Houston couple brings the ”Moneyball” philosophy to social change.
The president and CEO of Houston’s Episcopal Health Foundation has some bold ideas for retooling our medical system.
