Texas

Pearson, the only company to have handled Texas' public school standardized tests, probably won't be running the next four years of STAAR. The Texas Education Agency decided to offer most of a new testing contract to rival ETS.

Whether students, teachers or school officials will notice the change is a question state officials declined to answer Monday.

If the contract is signed, Education Testing Service will coordinate the testing program and develop, administer, score and report results of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness

The fortunes of big-box stores rise and fall. Ever optimistic, retail store chains build stores anywhere they think might turn a profit, and then end up closing many of them when the economy goes south. It’s not uncommon to see the perfectly good buildings they leave behind repurposed for something else: churches, business schools, offices. […]

The post Texas town turns abandoned Wal-Mart into public library appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

Idaho- and Texas-based company Rohinni has demonstrated an innovation that could revolutionize one key feature of onscreen reading – backlights.  The company’s innovation, Lightpaper, is described as “the world’s thinnest LED lighting,” and is essentially just what it says it is, a paper-thin white LED illuminated surface, that according to Rohinni can be manufactured in […]

The post Printable lighting offers the backlight of your dreams? appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

In the education world, all eyes were on Texas Friday. For the first time since 2002, the Texas State Board of Education voted to adopt a new generation of social studies products. That includes some 89 textbooks, workbooks and other classroom materials. The vote matters because, with about 5 million students, the state has a big impact on the national textbook market. As for what's in the books, that wasn't entirely clear until Friday. 

Poetry, that harmless, airy-fairy, abstruse pursuit … that you get slapped with a $5.6 million lawsuit for. Come again? Yes, this is exactly what happens in Stephen Harper‘s Canada, where Vancouver poet and professor at Simon Fraser University Stephen Collis is one of six defendants being sued for $5.6 million by Texas-headquartered energy giant Kinder […]

The post The poet, the pipeline, and the punitive lawsuit appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

A U.S. federal judge denied a bid by Apple Inc on Wednesday to hold off a trial in a case brought by state attorneys general accusing the company of conspiring with five major publishers to fix e-book prices.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in a brief order said the July 14 trial had already been postponed once and should go forward, paving the way for more than two dozen states to pursue hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

More Blogs