BISD Among Finalists for Broad Prize for Urban Education

By Gary Long, The Brownsville Herald, Texas

Apr. 2–The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation announced Wednesday that the Brownsville Independent School District is among five finalists for the 2008 Broad Prize for Urban Education, one of the most prestigious education awards in the country.

The prize is a $1 million annual award that honors urban school districts across the county that are making the greatest progress in raising student achievement. The winner will receive $500,000 in scholarships for graduating seniors. Each of the five finalist districts already will receive $125,000 in such scholarships.

“This is as good as it gets,” a jubilant Superintendent Hector Gonzales said Wednesday morning after announcing the news to BISD principals and administrators at district headquarters.

“You cannot apply for this award,” Gonzales said. “There’s a lot of districts that go after it, but we didn’t. They found us.”

Gonzales and other administrators said qualifying as a finalist is a credit to all of BISD, but particularly its students, teachers and principals.

“Where the rubber meets the road is all of the hard work that’s happening in the classroom,” said Salvador Cavazos, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.

Other finalists include the Aldine Independent School District near Houston, the Broward County and Miami-Dade County public schools in Florida and the Long Beach Unified School District in California.

Over the next two months, teams of educational researchers and practitioners led by SchoolWorks, an educational consulting firm, will conduct site visits in each finalist district to gather information and observe classrooms.

A selection jury of prominent people from business, industry, public service and education will then review the performance data and select the winner.

The winner will be announced Oct. 14 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Past winners include the New York City Department of Education, Boston Public Schools and the Houston Independent School District.

For more on this story, read Thursday’s Brownsville Herald.

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