10 Dallas ISD high schools fail to make the grade time and again
3.7.10 – Where is the black outrage? Is it only all about job entitlement and not teaching children….
10 Dallas ISD high schools fail to make the grade time and again
With their school’s future at stake, parents recently gathered in Pinkston High School’s cavernous auditorium to hear about exciting changes – an academic overhaul that could save the school from closing.
But Dallas administrators didn’t mention that Pinkston’s abysmal test scores and graduation rates triggered federal requirements to overhaul the school two years ago, and school officials resisted making dramatic changes such as closure or takeover.
Ten of more than 30 Dallas ISD high schools have missed the federal academic bar so many times that they are in the worst stage of the national No Child Left Behind school rating system. They represent a third of the schools from Texas that are in such dire shape.
Today, thousands of disadvantaged students attend chronically failing high schools in Dallas, illustrating the challenges and shortcomings of the federal law that was former President George W. Bush’s signature education reform.
While the law aimed to fix the nation’s most troubled schools, districts such as Dallas were allowed to make reforms on paper that were never carried out – with no consequences.
No Child Left Behind is being debated in Washington, and the Obama administration is proposing a rewrite of the law that changed the landscape for public schools across America. It demanded that students pass annual reading and math tests, regardless of race and socioeconomic backgrounds, and required dramatic overhauls at high-poverty schools where students repeatedly failed.
But turning around failing schools became an elusive task, particularly in urban districts plagued by high poverty, staff turnover, ineffective teachers and lackluster parent involvement.
“There are no silver bullets, there are no easy answers,” says Robin Ryan, chief academic officer for the Dallas Independent School District.
The 10 chronically failing Dallas ISD high schools: A. Maceo Smith, Bryan Adams, Carter, North Dallas, Pinkston, Roosevelt, Spruce, Sunset, Adamson and Samuell.
‘Big, big challenge’ continue…. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/030710dnmetdallasreform.3f9194c.html
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Comments
It's one of the "unspoken" tragedies in the Black community that outrage over the quality of education comes only when people begin losing jobs. Too many in the Black community believe that people who work for the public schools are owed a job whether they're actually doing their jobs or not. Of course, the biggest losers are the children who continually show up in college (if they make it that far) woefully unprepared for the rigors of academic life.
The above by Deborah is total nonsense. The issue is POVERTY exactly as it is in Rhode Island. Can something be done to mitigate it? Of course it can but the USA is incapeable or unwilling to do what is necessary.
1) http://www.boldapproach.org
2) Pass a law that says every school distict will be funded by the state at the level that the richest suburb in the state wishes to fund its schools.
3) Only highly certified, highly educated teachers are allowed to work in any school in America.
4) Class sizes in poor schools not to exceed 20.
5) Heavy investment in ECE.
6) Substantially raise the minimum wage.
7) Pass Canadian style medicare for all health care.
See, it wasn't that hrd was it. Do not skip a step. Every single step must be followed or you are not serious.
Think I'm joking? This is what the serious grown up countries do.
Doug,
I am not going to pretend to understand all the items on your list, but I could not locate a project to focus students onto their own futures anywhere.
Education will not improve, dropout rates will not improve, until we can provide our students with a realistic focus on their own futures, and the role education plays in that future. Motivation will be missing.
We have been working to provide such motivation in one Dallas middle school since 2005. The results have led to the largest graduation classes in over a decade at two of the 10 schools listed in the above article: Sunset and Pinkston. Both schools still have problems and much work to do, but they are doing less of their work to improve grades like too many schools to, by pushing out students. Graduation rates are being watched finally and that is good for our students. Graduation rates will continue to go up. I recommend you study the http://www.studentmotivation.org web site and the many spreadsheets and bar charts there that document the progress being made, and the problems that continue.
This article was based on old information combined with a NCLB mindset that is very well critiqued by Dr. Diane Ravitch in her immediate educational best seller that hit the bookshelves two weeks ago: "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education."
We have a lot of work to do.