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Texas News
West Oso ISD announces honorees for the 2023 Women in Education Awards
West Oso ISD has announced its two honorees for its 2023 Women in Education awards by Education Service Center Region 2, according to a press release from West Oso ISD.

Both honorees will be recognized for their service at a banquet on Wednesday, March 29 at 5:30 p.m. at the Omni Corpus Christi Hotel.

One of the honorees, Velma Rodriguez, has served on the West Oso ISD Board of Trustees since 2000. Rodriguez has served as a secretary, vice-president and a two time board president for West Oso ISD. She also was an elementary school teacher for 20 years.
UTSA announces new initiative for Latino student success
The $2.4 grant will help more than a dozen first-gen students between 2023 and 2028.


The University of Texas San Antonio on Monday announced a new $2.4 million grant that will help support first-generation Latino students over the next five years. 

The initiative is made possible by a gift from the Hector and Gloria Lopez Foundation, and will provide full-ride scholarships to 15 recipients, including tuition, housing, study programs and paid internships. 
Educating all kids is key to Texas’ economic future
Texans are smarter than Ron DeSantis

Last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a proposal to deny in-state tuition to college students who came to the U.S. as children without documentation.

Texan and American voters are much smarter than DeSantis. Educating all children regardless of immigration status is popular nationwide. More than 70% of Americans support legal status for Dreamers, according to data from Pew Research, including 61% of Texas voters. Twenty-three other states offer in-state tuition rates to Dreamer college students. And last year in Arizona, 83% of Democrats, 56% of Independents and nearly a third of Republicans voted to support Dreamer tuition, overturning a 16-year ban.
’I felt like a broken compass’: How networks help Hispanic families approach Down syndrome
Ayako Chan was 35 and had a master’s degree in special education, but nothing could have prepared her for what she felt when 19 years ago she was told at a Dallas hospital that her newborn son Ken was born with Down syndrome.

“You are like in shock, and then you feel sad because it really is the loss of that healthy child you were expecting. And at the same time you feel anxious because you don’t have control”, said Chan, 54, originally from Los Mochis, Mexico.

Like Chan, many North Texas Hispanic families with children with this condition face a slew of sentiments and challenges that go from language barriers to a lack of guidance on available resources.
Dallas ISD Among 234 Districts Asking Texas to Pause Refresh of A-F Accountability Grades
The agency’s plan to refresh its A-F accountability system would make many districts drop a full letter grade this year, and would also be applied to last year’s scores as well.

Last week, Dallas ISD joined 233 school districts and a handful of advocacy groups in signing a letter asking the Texas Education Agency to pause a measure that would retroactively move the goalposts on its A-F school accountability system.

Almost every other North Texas school district did, too, including Frisco, Fort Worth, Plano, and Richardson. 
Announcements
Save the Date!
TALAS will be hosting its Summer Leadership Conference in Round Rock, TX on June 12-14, 2023.
Affiliate Feature
CTALAS, TALAS’ Central Texas affiliate, commits to continue TALAS’ mission to improve learning outcomes for Latino learners by providing leadership development, collective impact, advocacy, and a proactive voice for Latino and non-Latino leaders who have a passion for serving the fastest growing student population in the state.
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National News
Education Secretary Wants to Change the Way Funding for English Learners Is Managed
Sec. Cardona Wants to Move Title III to OELA. Here’s What That Means

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona is proposing to move the federal program that supports the nation’s English learners back into the hands of the Education Department’s office of English language acquisition, or OELA.

Federal formula grants for English-language acquisition, known as the Title III program, are currently managed by the office of elementary and secondary education, or OESE, within the department. In his proposed 2024 budget, President Joe Biden is looking to grow that program funding to $1.2 billion, a $305 million increase.
Inexperience: The one reason for superintendent turnover no one is talking about
In 2019, the superintendency changed for good. The job is now a multifaceted and complex one that no one could have anticipated and it requires intense training and preparation, one expert says.

Since 2019, the superintendency was changed forever. What once was a profession that required you to ensure students met their academic potential is now a multifaceted and complex job that requires intense training and preparation. As a result, turnover has reached unprecedented levels, and there are no signs it will be slowing down any time soon.
Higher ed can do much more to include immigrants, starting with English instruction
Effective solutions exist and must be replicated

Last fall, U.S. college enrollment fell for the third straight year, part of a significant and steady drop of nearly one million students since the start of the pandemic.

At the same time, employers, including higher education institutions, have been grappling with intense staff shortages.

We are overlooking a segment of potential students and workers who could help address both challenges: immigrants and refugees.
San Francisco Insisted on Algebra in 9th Grade. Did It Improve Equity?
A much-debated change to math course sequencing in the San Francisco schools designed to reduce racial inequities has increased Black students’ access to some higher-level courses.

But racial inequities at the most advanced levels of high school math remain largely unchanged, according to a new analysis released March 20.

The mixed findings, from a team at Stanford University, are almost certain to be seized on by both proponents and opponents of the reform, which has been hugely influential: A draft rewrite of the state’s math framework, for instance, would encourage other districts to use a similar course sequencing.
Most school apps are tracking students. The question is: How closely?
‘Administrators lack resources to properly assess privacy and security issues around educational technologies,’ report warns.

Students are being exposed to various levels of tracking technology on nearly all of the edtech sites they most often use at school, a new study warns.

These extremely popular sites, such as Zoom, “are making extensive use of tracking technologies,” says the analysis conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago and New York University. “Cookies and trackers are not necessarily malicious or harmful in nature; however, they do still record information about the visiting party,” they added in their review of more than 15,500 K12 public school and district domains.
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