Brownsville either has great or really bad schools -- I can't tell which

The Brownsville Independent School District is the recipient of this year's $1 million Broad Prize, considered to be the nation's most important award for excellence in urban education and the prize that the Dallas School District Administration has been hungering for. The BISD won largely because its students outperformed those in other Texas districts with similar student populations on reading and math tests. (The schools population is 98 percent Hispanic and 95 percent needy.) The award was announced yesterday and what makes this really interesting is that on the same day state education officials announced the Brownsville district had failed to meet minimum achievement standards for the second straight year under the No Child Left Behind law.