MONDAY TOP NEWS LINKS:
Ericka Mellon, Houston Chronicle
In her sixth-grade history class at a small school in the Montrose area, 11-year-old Patrice Stubblefield read quietly from her textbook: “Subió el precio del petróleo.” She turned to two classmates at her table and explained in English that the price of petroleum rose in Latin America in 1980.
“It’s América Latina,” corrected Gresia Nunez, 12, the daughter of Mexican immigrants.
Nunez learned to speak and read English as a young student at Wharton Dual Language Academy, while Stubblefield learned Spanish at the school. At Wharton, native English speakers and native Spanish speakers study side by side, immersed in Spanish in the early grades with more and more English integrated as they get older.
The formula has worked well for Wharton, a Houston Independent School District campus serving students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. The middle school level earned an “A” grade this year from Children at Risk, a local research and advocacy nonprofit that annually ranks public schools across Texas. The elementary school earned a “B.”
Roughly a quarter of the schools in Texas earning A’s, based on their academics and other classroom factors, are in the eight-county greater Houston area, according to the Children at Risk analysis released to the Houston Chronicle.
(Read more of this story at the Chron.com)
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- State Legislators Release Grim Statistics On Texas Versus Other States (KUHF Public Radio)
- Two bills link teacher evaluations to student test scores (Chron.com)
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