That’ll get someone’s attention. Texas lawmakers “zero out” funding for standardized exams in hopes of drawing attention to a bigger conversation about testing. (h/t Joy Resmovits) (KUT News)

Priorities. A new report finds that universities spent more on athletics per athlete than on academics per student from 2005-10. (Inside Higher Ed)

Promising trends. In 2000, 61 percent of blContinue Reading »

Cutting costs, cutting time. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, over 120 school districts in 21 states have reduced the school week to four days. Most of these districts are small and rural. (Education Week)

A look at Rick Perry’s impact on education. Joy Resmovits responds to shots made by Arne Duncan and Robert Gibbs, pointing out that Texas’s education record,Continue Reading »

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the struggle over high school boundaries in Plano, Texas — a debate involving changing demographics, protests against busing, and questions of educational opportunity and equity. A well-to-do suburb of Dallas, Plano has experienced growth over the past two decades in the number of minority students attending (like many places in the country). RecentContinue Reading »

Alabama and Texas square off tonight in college football’s Bowl Championship Series (BCS) title game (although Boise State just finished undefeated, won its own BCS game, and has a justifiable claim to the title as well). While Ben Miller has already analyzed how well the bowl schools do in terms of graduating their students, the Associated Press has recently released a three-month study Continue Reading »

Mariah Blake describes some deeply disturbing developments in the ongoing process of writing new social studies textbook standards in Texas, which, due to the state’s size and textbook purchasing power, end up influencing what students are taught nationwide:

When the process began last January, the Texas Education Agency assembled a team to tackle each grade. In the case of eleventContinue Reading »