School Accountability:Top-Down or Bottom-Up?

Bring Home the Mississippi Miracle: A Texas Triumph in Early Literacy

Bring Home the Mississippi Miracle: A Texas Triumph in Early Literacy Texas lacks a coherent third-grade literacy standard and statewide implementation system. Restoring a mastery-based promotion gate and aligning coaching, screening, and funding can reverse stagnating reading outcomes. Key points: Texas removed its third-grade promotion requirement, weakening the connection between reading mastery and grade advancement....

The Last, Best Hope: A New Texas University Looks to Restore Genuine Higher Education

As someone who has spent most of his life working in  American universities, my subsequent writing about it in these pages has been for the most part negative. And not without reason: My on-campus experience, coupled with my research, has led me to agree with the assertion that constitutes the subtitle of  Allan Bloom’s “The...

Making History: Texas SBOE to Decide on Social Studies Revisions

During the week of June 22, the State Board of Education is expected to approve the revisions to the Social Studies Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). This revision a major reform to how history is taught to Texas students, replacing a model where Texas, American, and World history were presented as isolated subjects and...