Despite the robust body of scholarship on southern school desegregation, little has concentrated on the ways Black students' home communities helped them persist in desegregated schools. Using oral history interviews, historical methods, and community cultural wealth, this paper examines key forms of knowledge, or capital, that the Black Waco…

Mariachi programs entered the public schools in the Southwest in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the Chicano movement ushered in an awakening of pride in Mexican heritage. The purpose of this historical biography was to examine the life and career of mariachi educator Ezekiel (Zeke) Castro (b. 1939). Zeke Castro taught mariachi and orchestra…

Through the lens of the school board, this essay examines school governance dynamics as a southern, historically white public school district struggled to implement school desegregation. In 1976, the city of Waco simultaneously elected its school district's first trustees of Color, Dr. Emma Louise Harrison and Rev. Robert Lewis Gilbert. Harrison…

Mexican American educational history has become a vibrant field of study since the late 1980s. In the last seven years, however, it is notable that this research has inspired community-based efforts to preserve and publicly commemorate challenges to unequal education. In this commentary, we discuss the archival recovery of the "Francisco…

Fifty years after the Supreme Court issued its ruling in "San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez," the trajectory of school finance desegregation has shifted from expansive federal hopes to narrower state efforts. Attempts to address many of the disparities continue to be constrained by the complex and intersecting nature…

School funding formulas built upon historically inequitable foundations, such as the property-tax-based system in Texas, warrant continuous monitoring to understand the degree to which they contribute to inequity. Following a review of the political and legal history of the state's school funding formulas and the most recent school finance changes…

Schools are dynamic environments surrounded by static brick and mortar. Schools are a complex entanglement of systems clinging to normalcy led and composed of individuals seeking growth and progress. There is constant turnover as students move through the systems, gaining mastery, seeking support, and receiving guidance. Employees similarly move…

Desegregation in the south had many goals, among them was creating equitable opportunities for students in schools. Much of the literature on desegregation efforts are focused on general education and little research has been done on the effects it had on school orchestra programs. Orchestra programs in Texas schools have had a historically strong…

Mexican American Studies (MAS) courses have been criticized for many years. Legislation in Arizona and Texas have attempted to ban the content. This article pushes back on this attempt of oppression and offers MAS teachers a framework to apply when teaching the content. Using a timeline to depict the years of attempts for Mexican American Studies…

The 2017 TEKS revision, the 2023 STAAR redesign, and the 2024 TCTELA conference theme call on literacy professionals to "forge the future of literacy" in Texas. Specifically, the future demands that we more fully integrate reading and writing instruction and that we help students develop a deeper understanding of author's purpose and…

In response to disparities in postsecondary access, governments have enacted policies to facilitate the admission of traditionally underrepresented students. Known as affirmative action in the United States, the legal justification of this approach has varied. This article describes the legal and political history of affirmative action, the social…

Background/Context: School segregation scholarship underlines that litigation challenging the segregation of Mexican American students in Texas schools stressed their legal racial identity as white. "The other white race strategy," as scholars call it, granted Mexican Americans the right to access resources designated for the country's…

Since the 1920s, colleges have offered how-to-study courses orientating students to the rituals of academic study. We present an historical overview of these courses by highlighting major developments including the emergence of courses that evolved from skill-based curriculum underpinned by behaviorism to strategy-based curriculum underpinned by…

Many industrial arts, technology education, and now technology and engineering education leaders have made their mark on our profession. Their legacy is something that members of the profession enjoy and have a responsibility to continue and build upon. This is the fifteenth in a series of articles entitled "The Legacy Project." The…

Contrary to Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell's majority opinion in "San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez" (1973), Texas's school finance system was the result of years of legislation and state-building that gave some areas the resources and capacity to provide more educational opportunities than others. As this…