Unhealthy Living
Texas school districts will no longer be required to offer health classes—and that’s just sick.
Texas school districts will no longer be required to offer health classes—and that’s just sick.
It’s time to do for Texas what Charlie Wilson and George W. Bush said they wanted to do for Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s time for nation-building. It’s time to fix infrastructure and invest in human capital. It’s time to train for high-wage, long-term jobs, time to recognize that as
Our state’s demographic tsunami is waist deep and rising daily. If we don’t bring more historically underserved students into higher education, we will face a lower standard of living as we fall behind in economic competitiveness. Higher education needs to institutionalize the pathways to a college degree in our
The full-time pre-K bill seems like a slam dunk. The price tag: $300 million.
Should Texas pay students to learn?
Ninety-four percent of Texas high school students receive abstinence-only education. More than half of these teens are losing their virginity. So what do the majority of Texans really want their kids to know about sex?
David Dewhurst’s committee assignments late Friday spotlighted the challenge this session presents for Florence Shapiro, whose interest in running for the U.S. Senate places her in perilous territory vis-a-vis the Texas Senate’s presiding officer, who likewise is considering a relocation to Washington. While Dewhurst’s committee assignments shifted authority from Shapiro
The reason so many Texans testified in favor of strong language supporting evolution in the TEKS is because they’re having to play defense and they’re losing.
For the 140 full-time, residential students lucky enough to be enrolled there, the Texas School for the Blind is “heaven,” “home,” and “the first place I had friends.”
“If someone can show me a way that we’re going to attend to the needs of kids without finding out where they are, without diagnosing the problem, I’m all ears. But it’s not possible.”
Diana Natalicio on the future of higher ed in El Paso.
Green buildings, awesome movie theaters, and high-speed semiconductors won’t be worth much if we fail to educate our kids, more and more of whom can’t speak English when they enter the school system. Good thing this California native, who was picked by the League of United Latin American Citizens as
What Samir Patel learned in five years of not winning the national spelling bee (other than the root words of “eremacausis”).
Warren was born and raised in New York but has lived in Houston for more than twenty years. She is an eleventh-grade U.S. history teacher at Hastings High School, in the Alief Independent School District, which serves one of the state’s most ethnically diverse student populations. More than sixty languages
The Texas Education Agency flunks out.
Texas Southern University’s missed opportunity.
Each year, some 55,000 talented high school musicians try out for 1,500 chairs at the Super Bowl of band geekery: the Texas Music Educators Association Clinic/Convention in San Antonio. Once upon a time, I made the cut.
A ranking of 574 elementary, middle, and high schools that really make the grade.
At the Giddings State School, violent teenagers come to terms with their horrific crimes—and learn how to avoid committing them again—through role-playing exercises in a jailhouse version of group therapy. This is what your tax dollars are paying for? Well, it works. For a while, at least.
In four years as president of Texas A&M University, former CIA director Robert M. Gates—who knows a thing or two about leading a strong, hidebound, misunderstood culture—has left few areas of campus life untouched. But putting sushi in the dining halls is nothing compared with overhauling the Aggie brand.
A tip of the hat to risk-taking, barrier-breaking, establishment-tweaking Texans.
When parents at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, in Austin—where the Capital City’s moneyed elite have educated their kids for more than fifty years—rebelled against the teaching of ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ it was, you might say, a learning experience for everyone involved.
Does incentive pay for teachers make the grade?
At Westlake, even if your parents wouldn’t spring for Ralph Lauren, you could still work your way into the in crowd.
Where high school football memories are made.
What happened—and didn’t—when we “fixed” school finance the last time.
Who thinks tuition deregulation stinks? Middle-class kids—and me.
A read on textbooks.
Of course I want to help my son get a decent education. But the demands placed on parents these days are almost too much to bearwhich is why I'm in danger of flunking my life.
Garza High School principal Vicki Baldwin talks about the daily assault on public education, President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind policy, and what a non- traditional school like Garza has to offer kids.
Austin's Garza High is a rescuer of lost souls. Too bad President Bush's education-reform law considers it a failure.
A Harvard know-it-all predicts that the emerging Hispanic majority will be a drag on America. Tell it to your friends in Cambridge, bub.
Senior executive editor Paul Burka, who wrote this month's cover story, "Corps Values," talks about diversity at A&M, the future of the Corps of Cadets, and Aggie traditions.
Photographer Peter Yang on getting Aggies to pose for their portrait and what makes a good picture.
What place does tradition have at Texas A&M these days? One by one, the old ways are disappearing from the venerable campus, and many Aggies are up in arms. But embracing change may be the only way to save the school they love.
Senior editor Pamela Colloff talks about the typical A&M student, chivalry, and Aggie spirit.
It took a while, but I finally found my niche at the University of Texas at Austin.
Senior executive editor Paul Burka talks about this month's cover story, "Greatness Visible."
I was looking for a change when I decided to move to Austin and attend the University of Texas. Until I got there, I had no idea how big the change would be.
Can one man change the world's largest Baptist university? He can if he's controversial preacher-president Robert Sloan, Jr. And, just maybe, one man can destroy it too.
The dream of a first-rate university rising out of the prairie north of the Colorado River is almost as old as Texas itself. Which prompts the question, When will UT finally live up to its potential?
Juliet Garcia, president of The University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, talks with us about her life and roots in South Texas.
Bill Wittliff and Edwin "Bud" Shrake, the recipients of the 2002 Texas Book Festival Bookend award, embody Texas literature today.
From elementary school to high school, we've got more than five thousand public schools ranked. See if your kid's school is making the grade.
texasmonthly.com: You are featured in Dorothy McConachie’s book, Top Texas Teachers. How were you chosen?Carolina Carner: They picked 35 teachers from across the state. One of my students nominated me at Barnes and Noble in Round Rock. McConachie got thousands of entries, and I was picked out of all of
An Austin group brings theater into schools.
In the new book, Top Texas Teachers, author Dorothy McConachie gives 35 educators top honors.
These are the best of the best—the top ten high schools in each of four economic categories, as ranked by the National Center for Educational Accountability. For the full list of more than one thousand public high schools in Texas, see page 170 (in the print copy).HIGHEST ECONOMIC GROUPCollege Station/A&M
DISTRICT/SCHOOL| STARS | % LOW INCOME | ALGEBRA PASSING RATEPewitt/Pewitt | 5 | 50.4 | 95.0Ysleta/Del Valle | 5 | 89.4 | 78.6Hidalgo/Hidalgo | 5 | 96.9 | 62.1San Antonio/Highlands | 5 | 89.0 | 57.2San Antonio/Jefferson | 5 | 90.6 | 57.1_________________________________________Humble/Quest | 1 | 9.4 | 26.9Holliday/Holliday |
Find out in our updated, expanded, and still exclusive ranking of nearly every public high school in Texas.