Search

The issue of school safety has been interrogated as school shootings have occurred multiple times each year in the United States. This devastating reality has captured the attention of many throughout the United States. School leaders have implemented strategies to increase school safety, including the creation of practices to deter shooting incidences in schools. One such practice, the arming of school district employees, is the focus of this study. We sought to answer the following research questions: 1) How do superintendents describe their experiences implementing and leading the practice? and 2) What lessons have superintendents learned related to the practice? The data sources for this study included superintendent interviews, school district policies, and relevant documents. The findings included descriptions of the practice, the process of implementation, legal and policy guidelines, and advice for school leaders.

As open enrollment charter districts have continued to grow in Texas, researchers and policymakers have continued to investigate how charter districts market themselves to the public in an effort to recruit students, teachers, and finances. Although a wealth of research has examined how charter districts recruit students, teachers, and finances through traditional methods, recent developments in computer science now allows researchers to measure the size and visibility of district websites on the Internet. As a result, this study uses the Texas Education Agency and SEMrush data from the 2018–2019 school year to compare the website size and popularity of charter school district and traditional public school district websites to understand how these districts invest in their robustness of their web presence. Results suggest that when compared to traditional public school districts in Texas, charter school districts publish smaller websites (p < 0.001) and are less popular on the Internet (p < 0.001) than traditional public peers. Implications for research, policy, and competition between open enrollment charter districts and traditional public school districts are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In December 2021, Texas lawmakers passed a bill related to the national debate and politicization of critical race theory (CRT). Texas Senate Bill 3 seemingly limits the teaching of "sensitive" topics. These perceived limitations may present challenges for social studies teachers in the state. This study examines the knowledge and perspectives of social studies educators regarding Texas SB 3 and its impact on Texas 6-12 social studies teachers' classroom pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creating and sustaining an organizational culture that contributes to high academic achievement is frequently a problem in schools. This basic qualitative study explored measures implemented in thriving campus cultures and effective leadership on those campuses by interviewing principals and teachers in Blue Ribbon Schools. The study focused on principals’ and leaders’ perceptions of three different campuses in South Texas. The study selected schools that have been awarded Blue Ribbon campus designation in 2019 to explore factors that contributed to these campuses’ success. The study drew perceptions from three principals and four teachers from two different districts in the Rio Grande Valley. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article features the Community Revitalization Project (CRP), a special division of Legal Aid of North West Texas (LANWT) based in Amarillo, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Lubbock founded in February 2017. Topics include the key to CRP's community lawyering team Community Lawyering Project and a few of the cases and projects that CRP has taken on in its three main focus areas such as housing justice, community development, and environmental justice.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the characteristics of gas stations where skimmer attacks occurred in a sample of Texas gas stations between 2019 and 2021. This paper seeks to contribute to the literature related to payment card fraud at the gas pump by providing one of the first examinations of the gas stations where gas pump skimming is known to have occurred. Design/methodology/approach: Using data collected from a Texas state regulatory agency between 2021, the authors examine characteristics of gas stations where a gas pump skimming was detected. Findings: Results suggest that the presence of a surveillance camera system was significantly related to gas pump skimmer detection for gas stations in both urban and rural areas. Europay chip readers were not present in any of the pumps where a skimmer attack was detected. Originality/value: Gas pump skimming is a form of payment card fraud that costs upwards of US$11bn a year in the USA alone. Gas pump skimming occurs when electronic devices are illegally installed fuel pumps to capture data or record cardholders' personal identification numbers. This is among the first studies to use data obtained from a state agency with specific information regarding each individual occurrence of gas pump skimming. As such, the paper makes a unique contribution by exploring specific characteristics of gas stations where skimming and ultimately payment card fraud, occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Hiring teachers is among principals' most critical work but what remains uncertain is the relationship between a principal's tenure in a school and the rate at which they hire teachers who will stay. Teacher retention and principal experience are key predictors of school stability. This study therefore investigates the influence of principal tenure on the retention rates of teachers they hire over time. Design/methodology/approach: The authors followed 11,717 Texas principals from 1999 to 2017, and tracked the teachers they hired in each year of their tenure in a school to see if principals became more effective at hiring teachers who stay over time. The authors use regression with fixed effects and find that the longer a principal stayed in a school, the more effective they were at hiring teachers who stay to both three- and five-year benchmarks. Findings: Principals hire significantly more teachers who persist after they have led their first school for five or more years; however, the average principal in Texas leaves a school after four years thus never realizing those gains. The authors' second main finding indicates that principals who enter an unstable school (less than 69% retention in the two years prior to the principal's arrival) and stay at least five consecutive years, can counteract prior instability. Originality/value: This study provides initial evidence that principals establish a great deal of building-specific situational expertise that is not easily portable or applicable in a subsequent school placement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Hispanic Higher Education is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study examines the retention rates of new teachers in Texas given their initial certification type and initial school setting. The 5-year persistence rates of 175,664 teachers from 2000 to 2015 are analyzed using logistic regression to calculate the probability of new teacher persistence at the school, district, and state level. Main findings suggest that teachers' certification type and initial school setting are statistically significant predictors of new teacher persistence, and traditionally licensed teachers initially placed in traditional public school are more likely to persist when compared with other preparation types or initial placements into charter schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been efforts to modify teaching modalities to avoid interruption in the learning process. Previous studies determined a correlation between accelerated classes and student achievement, but there is a lack of research on the efficacy of accelerated learning in response to a pandemic. This study analyzed college student academic achievement and withdrawal rates in accelerated 8-week English courses to determine whether fast-paced courses were a better modality than 16-week courses. Quantitative methods were employed with collected archival data to establish comparative statistical relationships between students' success and withdrawal rates in accelerated-term and full-term English courses. Nonrandom sampling was conducted to obtain intended data from 368 college students in a Texas public college in 2019-21. The results indicated that students in accelerated sections had higher success rates and lower withdrawal rates based on the characteristics and limitations of this study. Further research is required to focus on factors that might affect the outcomes, such as teaching styles and preparedness of professors to handle different modalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an effort to keep pace with an expanding knowledge-based economy, K-12 schools across the U.S. are increasingly shifting their STEM teacher professional learning programs to help teachers foster student experiences with skills such as problem solving, adaptability, and creativity. This study utilized quantitative and qualitative data to examine the impact of school culture and teacher professional learning factors on teachers' self-reported instructional practices in a sample of Texas middle grades STEM teachers (n = 115). Triangulation of quantitative and qualitative survey data revealed connections between the influence of predictors on teaching practice and teachers' reported perceptions of barriers to effective instruction. Building teachers' professional capacity and the provision of adequate time and/or funding significantly and positively predicted teachers' use of effective STEM practices, such as whole-group discussion and small group collaboration. Qualitative analysis of teachers' perceptions of barriers to STEM instruction showed that teachers perceived that a lack of time for collaboration, external expectations, and teacher motivation were among the greatest barriers to high-quality STEM instruction. Building teachers' professional capacity by strengthening teachers' feelings of instructional preparedness, providing opportunities for collaboration, and building teacher motivation were identified as key areas of focus for encouraging teacher use of reform-based instructional practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses various issues related to the labor movement in San Antonio, Texas, during 1865-1915. There is no record of any combination of workers in San Antonio prior to 1865. In that year the San Antonio Laborers' Association was formed. By the early 1880's, under the name of Arbeiter Verein, it claimed 175 active members. Ten years after the formation of the Laborers' Association, the first trade union--Local 172 of the Typographical Union--was organized in the city. It was also the first union in San Antonio to be chartered by a national body. But, the membership was very small. . Early in 1882 representatives of seven trades met in an effort to perfect grievance-machinery for the disposal of employee complaints. Out of their discussions the omnibus San Antonio Mechanics' and Workingmen's Union developed. Printers, carpenters, painters, reporters, collectors, and shoemakers were numbered among the 40 members. Apparently the union served primarily as a clearing house for complaints. That no encroachment upon the prerogatives of ownership was contemplated is evident in the preamble of the union's constitution.

Since 2007, escape rooms have become increasingly popular in mainstream society. The heightened sense of urgency felt when participating in escape games, united with the possibility of engaging students both in academic and soft-skills has led teachers to add escape games to the list of game-based strategies increasingly used in classrooms. Through action research, two educators developed 37 educational escape games for one South Texas middle school over the course of eight months. This article explores the fidelity of incorporating curricular content into educational escape games. Although researchers concluded that it is possible to effectively incorporate content into the educational escape games, it is more difficult than anticipated. Effective inclusion of curriculum content requires a focus on the content objective combined with a high level of content-specific knowledge and pedagogy. Furthermore, game design and logistics can hinder the rigor of the curriculum embedded in the games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Out in the west Texas town of El Paso ... is found the first ABET accredited engineering leadership degree program in the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Litigation in education has drastically risen over past decades, representing the need for teachers to have a foundational knowledge of the educational laws which govern them. The myriad of educational law sources and the perpetually changing nature of school law serve as barriers for teachers' competence in educational law. The purpose of this study was to identify the specific in-service educational law training needs of Texas school-based agricultural education (SBAE) teachers. Furthermore, this study sought to determine the effect of background characteristics on teacher's perceived competence on educational law issues. An educational law needs assessment was distributed to a probabilistic sample of Texas SBAE teachers (n = 325). Two-hundred and thirteen teachers completed the needs assessment, yielding a response rate of 65.5%. The Texas SBAE teachers identified (1) qualified immunity, (2) search and seizure of students, (3) transportation of students in school and (4) personal vehicles, and (5) teacher-initiated removal of students as their highest-ranked educational law in-service needs. The results of a factorial ANOVA indicated the educational law competence of teachers was significantly different based on the amount of previous educational law training the teacher had received. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although students living in rural areas perform academically on par with their peers, they are less likely to complete a postsecondary credential due to geographic, economic, and other barriers. Greater Texas Foundation, a private grantmaker focused on postsecondary student success in Texas, fosters rural collaborations as part of its philanthropic strategy. This article reflects on lessons learned by foundation staff from this strand of work. It describes innovative models for postsecondary support developed by the foundation's rural partners, discusses the need to balance direct program support and capacity building, and emphasizes the importance of visiting rural communities in person. The article suggests several ways funders can deepen their engagement with the rural communities they serve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School–police partnerships that place police officers in K-12 schools are continually forging nationwide, despite a lack of empirical evidence of effectiveness. In response to this trend, we examined the current state of such partnerships, as well as school policing practices in general. We conducted focus groups with educators and school-based law enforcement officers (N = 43) across the state of Texas. Our results revealed five key areas of opportunity for improving collaboration: recognizing the desire for cross-training; knowing who has authority when; nurturing the 'serve' component of school policing; gaining community support; and the need for strategic documentation. The present study serves a larger purpose, which is to inform the development of a strategic framework to guide school policing programme implementation. All results indicate a need for and potential positive impact of such a framework to enhance school–police collaboration and thereby improve school policing outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public high school principals (n = 130) participated in a study comparing extracurricular activities available at high schools located in poverty areas with extracurricular activities available at high schools not located in poverty areas. Results indicated that high schools in poverty areas are, in general, characterized by fewer extracurricular opportunities. In other words, it was found that the number of extracurricular opportunities available to students was negatively correlated with both the percentage of students receiving free school lunches and the poverty rate of the surrounding area.

This article presents an English language arts teacher's critical reflection on how she worked with her middle and high school students to develop perspectives about the world in her classes. The article is grounded in the idea that teachers are researchers who constantly implement new ideas and reflect on their own teaching for their own professional growth and students' success in learning. The research questions that guided the current study are: What possibilities and challenges does the teacher encounter while developing students' critical awareness about the world in this global era? How do students show their developing awareness through their speaking and writing? The findings show both possibilities and challenges with making critical global connections and doing more than offering opportunities for global engagement.

The goal of our ongoing research is to identify strengths and weaknesses of high school level science fair and improvements that can help science educators make science fair a more effective, inclusive and equitable learning experience. In this paper, we confirm and extend our previous findings in several important ways. We added new questions to our anonymous and voluntary surveys to learn the extent to which students had an interest in science or engineering careers and if science fair participation increased their interest in science or engineering. And we surveyed a national rather than regional high school student group by incorporating our survey into the Scienteer online portal now used by Texas and some other states for science fair registration, parental consent, and project management. We learned that about ~60% of the more than 300 students in the national cohorts completing surveys in 2017 and 2018 said that they were interested in a career in science or engineering, and ~60% said that participating in science fair increased their interest in science or engineering. About two-thirds of the students were required to participate in science fair, and that requirement reduced the frequency of students who said that science fair increased their interest. In the worst case, ~10% of the students who said that they were not interested in a career in science or engineering and who were required to participate in science fair engaged in research misconduct (i.e., plagiarism and making up their results). Students' positive comments about competition in science fair focused on the competition incentive, whereas their positive comments about science fair that was non-competitive focused on learning about the scientific process and learning in general. We discuss the findings in the context of National Science Teaching Association guidance about voluntary science fair participation and begin to identify features of science fair practice consistent with increased student interest in the sciences or engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided by the "constructivism in practice" dilemmas framework developed by Windschitl (Rev Educ Res 72(2):131–175, 2002) we investigated the conceptual, pedagogical, cultural, and political barriers that 24 K-12 mathematics teachers working in a high-poverty urban school district in Texas encountered when trying to implement student-centered teaching practices learned through a rigorous professional development program. Themes that emerged from this qualitative analysis included barriers concerning lack of awareness of constructivist theory, difficulties facilitating student-centered activities in the classroom, poverty, lack of instructional autonomy, and high-stakes testing. Identifying a wide breadth of barriers to student-centered teaching may inform teacher educators and school administrators working in urban contexts in developing strategies to overcome these obstacles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literacy educators have long understood the importance of designing multicultural instruction for students. However, in an educational context that is both increasingly multilingual, literacy educators are not realizing that multiculturalism isn't enough. This article focuses on practitioner friendly recommendations for understanding linguistic diversity in the middle grades, designing physical spaces that support multilingual literacy communities, and designing affective spaces that support multilingual literacy communities. The recommendations in this article rely on data from a qualitative multiple case study to describe the approaches that middle schools recognized as Texas Schools to Watch were used to meet the needs language and literacy needs of their specific English Learner (EL) populations.

When Houston Texas grew from a sleepy, southern entrepot to sunbelt metropolis, the city’s commercial civic elite adopted a systematic approach of organized philanthropy as a way to rationalize giving and bring it in line with modern urban services. As a select set of city builders transformed local giving from random charitable impulses to increasingly complex philanthropic undertakings, their benevolent behavior took many forms, from scientific charity to regulatory action and, finally, to detached foundations. Over time, more rational giving also became more professional and wealthy donors sought a new status—that of philanthropist—and with it, the great cultural authority to address the city’s social problems. Philanthropists in Houston fashioned a number of mechanisms to realize their vision of what the modern metropolis should be. Understanding this vision adds to our knowledge of the multiple voices that derived power and status from their efforts to guide the construction of growing cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Out in the west Texas town of El Paso … is found the first ABET accredited engineering leadership degree program in the USA., (© 2022 Wiley Periodicals, LLC.)

The purpose of this fully mixed concurrent equal dominant status (Leech & Onwuegbuzie, 2009) mixed research study was twofold. The first purpose was to examine the relationship between the incidents of school violence and the size of middle schools in the state of Texas. Additionally, perceptions of school violence of principals from different-sized middle schools were examined to ascertain whether they believe school size plays a role in the number of incidents of school violence, as well as whether their perceptions align with the discipline data, specifically fighting, assaults, and aggravated assaults. A total of 842 middle schools in Texas comprised the sample for the quantitative phase. Data analysis in this phase involved correlation coefficients, analysis of variance, and trend analysis. In particular, after applying the Bonferroni adjustment, a series of Spearman's rho revealed that all six discipline variables were statistically significantly related to school size. The qualitative phase involved a classical content analysis of interview data yielded from 7 principals from 1 Texas school district. The most common emergent themes were (a) 600-899 students was an optimal school size; (b) fights were the most common experiences with school violence; (c) the socioeconomic status of students accounts for different levels of school violence; (d) size does matter; (e) fighting was the most common violent incident occurring on their campuses; (f) students fight because they lack problem solving/control; and (g) students will either cheer or report to an adult if they witness a violent incident. Implications of the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this narrative phenomenological case study was to explore administrator strategies related to teacher retention as perceived by teachers in one Texas charter school district. The researcher found that teachers perceived 19 administrator strategies as contributing to teacher retention. Strategies include being approachable, providing feedback to teachers, accommodating teachers' needs, recognizing and appreciating teachers, being in classrooms, maintaining a mentoring program, providing professional development based on teachers' need and choice, supporting teachers with student discipline, setting high and realistic academic expectations, maintaining parental involvement, maintaining team meetings, maintaining good work conditions, maintaining job security, offering salaries that are competitive with surrounding districts, reducing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The study aimed to examine nutrition label use and dietary behaviours among ethnically diverse middle- and high-school students, in Texas, USA.Design: The School Physical Activity and Nutrition (SPAN) survey is a cross-sectional statewide study using a self-administered questionnaire to assess nutrition and physical activity behaviours. Height and weight measurements were used to determine BMI. Multivariable logistic regression was used to determine associations between nutrition label use and dietary behaviours, with gender, grade, ethnicity, BMI, parent education, socio-economic status and nutrition knowledge as covariates.Setting: Participants from 283 schools, weighted to represent Texas youth.Subjects: SPAN 2009-2011 included 6716 8th and 11th graders (3465 girls and 3251 boys). The study population consisted of 39·83 % White/Other, 14·61 % African-American and 45·56 % Hispanic adolescents; with a mean age of 14·9 years, and 61·95 % at a healthy weight, 15·71 % having overweight and 22·34 % having obesity.Results: Adolescents who did not use nutrition labels had 1·69 times greater odds of consuming ≥1 sugary beverages/d (P<0·05). Adolescents who used nutrition labels had 2·13 times greater odds of consuming ≥1 fruits and vegetables/d (P<0·05). Adolescents who used nutrition labels had significantly higher healthy eating scores than those who did not (P<0·001). For every 1-point increase in nutrition knowledge, adolescents had 1·22 greater odds of using nutrition labels.Conclusions: Nutrition label use is associated with healthier dietary behaviours in adolescents. Intervention strategies for youth should include efforts to teach adolescents to use labels to make healthy food choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on legal developments in marketing relative to the regulation of monopolistic methods. The article focuses on United States court cases pertaining to market control and collusive practices. In the case of United Shoe Machinery Corporation v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld the decision made by the District Court of Massachusetts that United Shoe was guilty of monopolization. The case of Victor Patrizi v. L. L. McAninch was settled by the Texas Supreme Court, which found that McAninch's commitment not to permit others to use equipment similar to machinery it sold to Patrizi violated Texas antitrust law.

As teacher quality is judged and tenured teachers are rated ineffective, educators are challenging teacher evaluation systems in the courts as they adversely affect their employment. Teachers have lost jobs, pay, tenure, and career advancement. This article reports on these cases, providing an interpretation in light of court cases about teacher evaluation with an emphasis on value-added models (VAM), and focuses on the litigation working its way through the courts.

Presents a discussion on the requirements of the foreign language curriculum, which would teach students to speak several languages in the International School of the Americas in San Antonio, Texas. Modifications made on the requirements.

In 2012, the Austin Independent School District reported that over 60 percent of its students identified as Hispanic. However, the number of theatrical offerings for children including Latino stories or Latino/a characters on Austin stages is staggeringly disproportionate to the number of Latino children living in the community. Mariachi Girl is a new bilingual Spanish/English musical for child audiences. This paper articulates and analyzes research findings from surveys collected from children, teachers, and care givers who saw the production. The paper introduces the term culturally responsive artistry and offers new perspectives and suggestions on how arts institutions and theater educators can form lasting relationships with minority communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using race as a factor in admissions policies was contested in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Although the U.S. Supreme Court firmly held in Grutter v. Bollinger that race can be considered among many factors in admitting students, the recent decision in Fisher has posed many questions and challenges for institutions of higher education. It is clear that the Supreme Court has made it more challenging for institutions to advance institutional diversity. This article examines the ruling in Fisher and how it impacts admissions in K–16 education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]