This article presents an interview with Terry Grier, superintendent of the Houston Independent School District (HISD), Texas's largest district. Before taking this post, he had been a principal or superintendent for most of three decades and remains a reformer five years into his leadership. Grier has maintained his passion for improving schools…

Given the importance of hydrocarbons for this area, the purpose of this paper is to explore the response of universities to cope with new demands in the south of Texas and Tamaulipas, especially in relation to gas plays of Eagle Ford (Texas side) and Burgos Basin (Mexican side). To accomplish this task, in the first section of the paper a broad…

In its 2009 report "Teacher Compensation and Teacher Quality," the Committee for Economic Development urged business leaders to be active participants in school district deliberations about teacher compensation policies. The Committee for Economic Development (CED) noted that "business leaders can make the case to the public that…

This study explores biliteracy as understood and practiced in school and community contexts in a particular region of the US-Mexico borderlands, the Rio Grande Valley of southeast Texas. Drawing on capital theory, we contrast the ambivalent perceptions of Spanish/English biliteracy held by local pre-service and in-service educators with biliterate…

Across the 50 states, career and technical education (CTE) programs at the K-12 and postsecondary levels have seen enormous policy action - 2013 alone saw at least 78 substantive policy changes via legislation, state board rules and executive orders specific to CTE and workforce development. What are the drivers behind this sudden policymaker…

The population growth, labor force participation, and educational attainment of Latinos in the U.S. influence the composition of the current and future U.S. society, economy, and workforce. In 2012, the Latino population in the United States is the youngest and fastest growing ethnic group, with the highest level of labor force participation…

Our education system is in desperate need of innovation. Despite radical advances in nearly every other sector, public school students continue to attend school in the same buildings and according to the same schedule as students did more than a hundred years ago, and performance is either stagnant or worsening. One of the most important…

Research shows that having a highly educated workforce is critical to states and territories' economic competitiveness and to the well-being of their citizens. A growing number of state policymakers are concerned that the nation as a whole and their states are falling behind in the race to accumulate the educational capital needed to ensure that…

Using primary survey data, factors influencing preferences of international graduate students in the United States as to whether they prefer to stay in the United States or go back to their home country to start their careers are examined employing discrete choice analysis. Career opportunities and social climate are critical factors. Students…

The purpose of this research was to explore the challenges of access for first-generation Hispanic college students in a postsecondary institution on the southwest Texas-Mexico border. According to the U.S. Census (2010) between 2000 and 2010, over a ten-year span, Hispanics increased by 41.8% representing 37.6% of the population in Texas. Yet,…

Building on its previous work examining education and the economy, the Alliance for Excellent Education (the Alliance), with generous support from State Farm[R], analyzed the economies of all fifty states and the District of Columbia to determine the economic benefits that states could see by improving high school graduation rates. Using a…

Charter schools and successful charter management organizations that run them have grown significantly over the past decade but they must dramatically increase their scale in order to meet the demand for high-quality public school options for America's children. The limited supply of effective leaders and teachers is one of the key barriers…

In the May/June issue of "Change", US Undersecretary of Education Martha J. Kanter described President Barack Obama's plan for recapturing the position of the best-educated country in the world by 2020. She spelled out the formula for meeting the President's ambitious goal: increasing postsecondary access, improving the quality of a…

This study examines literacies practiced in bilingual households located in emerging communities along the Texas-Mexico border known as border colonias. Drawing on theoretical notions of space as geographic and temporal, the simultaneity of global and local forces at work in colonias, and expressions of agency that are "in between"…

When Morgan State University began offering its community college leadership doctoral program online this fall, it joined a crowded field of institutions offering terminal degrees to future leaders of two-year institutions. Given its record of success in graduating minority leaders, the online expansion of Morgan State's Community College…