Department of the Interior. Bureau of Indian Affairs. Pierre Agency

These young women would've excelled on the exams, we're sure.

Providing yet another reason for me to be thankful I never have to attend another day of primary school, The Dallas Morning News' Matthew Haag enumerated a little of what's on DISD's controversial exams for elective courses in elementary school Thursday afternoon. They are tough.

The list is littered with stuff I couldn't do now, much less when I was a kid. Kindergarten art students are expected to "[c]reate artworks using a variety of lines, shapes, colors, textures, and forms." Maybe, maybe expecting a 5-year-old to color within the lines is reasonable, but to appropriately use texture? C'mon.

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The Texas UIL's system of determining high school athletic eligibility has meted out another dose of its strange justice. Gabrielle Gregory, a junior point guard at Irving MacArthur and a four-star recruit who's made a verbal commitment to Kansas State, has been sidelined for the first weeks of the season while awaiting a decision from the local district executive committee on whether she lives where she says she lives.

Gregory enrolled at MacArthur in January after spending two years at Triple A Academy, a Dallas charter with an uncommon concentration of basketball talent. According to her previous athletic participation form, Gregory and her mother, Tamika George, had recently moved from a small house in Dallas near Love Field into her aunt's apartment in Irving.

To be eligible to play basketball, Gregory and her mom had to prove that they had, in fact, moved to the Irving apartment as they claimed on their enrollment documents and that they hadn't done so for "athletic purposes." The first they accomplished by signing an affidavit swearing they lived with the aunt and then, when their residence in the apartment was called into question, causing Gregory to be pulled from school one month into the spring semester, by having mom's name added to the sister's lease. Proving the second, inasmuch as human motivation is complex and difficult to divine from outside a person's brain, is basically impossible.

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On Thursday, Christian Davis, far left, and Kristopher Martin, center, were ruled ineligible to play at Kimball this season.

It was never going to be easy for Kimball to win its fourth state basketball title in five years. The heart of last year's team, 6-foot-7-inch small forward D'Angelo Allen, was gone for University of Missouri. Gone, too, was longtime Kimball Coach Royce "Snoop" Johnson, who was fired in the wake of last spring's Dallas ISD athletics recruiting scandal, though not for recruiting but for tweeting something dumb.

It seemed, though, that longtime Kimball assistant Nick Smith was primed to pick up where Johnson had left off. Smith, after all, had studied under Johnson for years. He knew the kids, knew the system and his roster was stacked. Standout guard Jawun Evans, one of the area's top prospects, was returning for his senior season, and he was to be joined in the starting lineup by four other Division 1 recruits, a remarkable collection of talent on a public high school hoops team.

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Don't you tell us how smart we are.

Boston is the smartest large city in the United States, according to a new study from New Geography. Dallas did not fare nearly as well.

The numbers behind the rankings are straightforward. Weight is given to the number of college graduates in each of the Census Bureau's Metropolitan Statistical Areas as well as any percentage increase in the number of graduates over the time measured (2000-2013).

As of 2013, 32.6 percent of DFW residents have at least a bachelors degree, a 4.1 percent increase since 2000. By the researchers' calculation, that leaves Dallas as the 41st smartest large city of the 52 measured.

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Duncanville ISD thought it was getting a great deal when, one year ago this month, it switched electric providers and signed on with the State Power Program through the state's General Land Office. Just like that, Duncanville ISD's price-per-kilowatt hour dropped almost 20 percent, from 7.3 cents to a maximum of 6 cents.

But Duncanville school officials overlooked one important maxim when it comes to selecting an electric provider: You don't fuck with TXU.

Duncanville ISD had been contracting with the electric utility since 2009. The deal, thanks to an extension signed in 2012, was locked in through 2016. Now that the deal's been broken, TXU says in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday that the district owes $1.2 million.

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US Capitol

These dudes were obviously thinking of Moses and King Solomon when they made the United States.

On Tuesday, the State Board of Education met for the final hearing on the adoption of new social studies textbooks. The board intended to cast the first vote on the textbooks, with the final vote scheduled for Friday. But after hours of impassioned testimony from both the right and the left, the board postponed any official action on the books until Friday.

See also: SMU Academics Speak Out Against Political and Religious Bias in Texas Social Studies Textbooks

The adoption process has been riddled with controversy. Critics were quick to point out that certain passages that alluded to climate change denialism. Moreover, many textbooks emphasized Christianity and Christian theology as not only the dominant religion in the United States, but implicitly the superior religion. Several books were plagued with misinformation and sloppy rhetoric.

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Lot and his daughters. "Oh, man, I'm sho drunk right now I don't know whatsh going on."

Last week, Highland Park ISD released its updated high school reading list. The list provided titles required for in-class reading, optional outside reading and the passive aggressive list of "approved" but not taught in the classroom reading.

Students will have to get parental permission to read six books on the required and outside choice list: Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Jeanette Walls' The Glass Castle, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and David K. Shipler's Working Poor: Invisible in America.

See also: Highland Park ISD Bans Books Because Sex

HPISD Superintendent Dawson Orr will make the final decision on all English department books at the December 9 board meeting.

Let's hope that between now and then someone tips Orr to certain oversights in the list, which -- we're shocked to note -- includes the biblical book of Genesis as required reading for English IV classes, no permission slips required.

Seriously, Highland Park, have none of you heathens ever read Genesis?

Smut. Smut. Smut. It's nothing but smut.

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Vinita Hegwood, the Duncanville High School English teacher whose profane tweet aimed at "dumb duck ass crackers" went viral on conservative social media, has resigned, she announced Thursday afternoon.

Hegwood was suspended without pay in anticipation of her being fired after her Friday night tweet went viral

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Madison's star shooting guard and Texas A&M commit Admon Gilder.

Dallas ISD has, for the moment at least, put last spring's athletic-recruiting scandal behind it. The 15 coaches and administrators Superintendent Mike Miles fired over the summer have exhausted their appeals. Madison High School's 2012-13 and 2013-14 basketball titles have been vacated. There's a new athletic director and, the district says, a renewed commitment to enforcing state rules ensuring that high school athletes are playing where they're supposed to and not changing schools for athletic purposes.

On Tuesday, the UIL District 11-4A Executive Committee turned its attention to the future, namely figuring out if Madison High School's all-state shooting guard and Texas A&M commit Admon Gilder should be eligible to play at Madison during his senior season. Hang with us -- it's complicated.

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NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Despite reports on climate change denialism in social studies textbooks, publishers still refuse to correct the errors.

For the first time since 2002, the Texas State Board of Education is considering the adoption of new social studies textbooks. The books must incorporate 2010 state social studies standards, which have been criticized as right-wing biased and blatantly conservative.

See also: Proposed Texas Social Studies Textbooks Get Climate Change Wrong Too

Yet after the first round of public testimony and state board meetings, some textbook publishers still have not amended implications that climate change does not exist. Several books allude to supposed disagreements within the scientific community about the causes of climate change, and include academic citations from conservative, denialist groups such as the Heartland Institute.

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