Dallas South News post of the day: 4 unacceptable DISD Schools in trouble
Categories: Education, Featured
Written By: Shawn Williams
By Shawn Williams – Editor, DallasSouthNews.org
In the last week Tawnell Hobbs of the Dallas Morning News has been reporting on the poor performance of 4 DISD High School: Kimball, Pinkston, Roosevelt, and Seagoville. According to Hobbs, the high schools have been deemed academically unacceptable for four consecutive years. This sets up the possibility that each school would remove 75 percent of teachers and reassign at least 50 percent of the students.
She also writes that there are contingency plans to have the four schools act as “Sattelite Magnets” for Townview also known as shuffling chairs on the deck of the Titanic.
These school must all be considered as serious candidates for a Spruce style reconstitution. After being in the same low performing situation a few years ago, it was decided that 75% of the teachers at H. Grady Spruce would be removed and students disbursed to other DISD schools.
As we’ve reported here, Spruce High is making strides under the direction of Dr. Lucy Davila Hakemack. Test scores are up, and even more importantly students feel like that can have a positive high school experience.
It’s important to use any means possible to keep these schools as part of their respective communities for the long term. And while currently these schools represent community underachievement, it doesn’t have to be that way. They could all benefit from fresh ideas, new thinking, and a better approach. The same could be said for DISD as a whole.
While each of these schools could gain from partnerships with entities like TI, SMU, TAMU-Commerce, and El Centro as mentioned in Hobbs column, throwing up our hands shouldn’t be the answer. Reconstitution is painful and costly, and doesn’t look good for the school or district once it takes place. But when you have an example like Spruce right inside DISD, it seem like the option would be fully vetted and seriously considered.
Photo of Dr. Michael Hinojosa from Dallas Elevators
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December 21st, 2009 at 10:28 pm
New thinking? How about turning our children’s futures back over to them?
That is the goal of the web site at http://www.studentmotivation.org that documents the School Archive Project. It is a time-capsule and 10-year class reunion project used to focus students onto their own futures. Two out of 32 high schools in DISD receive over 90% of the School Archive Project students from middle school at this time. Those two high schools account for 55% of the growth in DISD 11th and 12th grade enrollment since 2005/06! That is a major indicator that the dropout rates are falling due to this simple focus on the future!
The second class to write School Archive Project letters was in the 8th grade in 2005/06. Since then the number of students in the 11th and 12th grade combined for all of DISD has gone up by 758 students. (Go to http://www.studentmotivation.org/dallasisd/ to see the spreadsheet with these and the following calculations. A copy in Excel format can be downloaded.) Most of this increase, 55%, happened at the two schools receiving most School Archive Project students, Pinkston and Sunset high schools. These schools together have 9% of the high school population for all of DISD. At Pinkston, with less than 3% of DISD high school students, their gain of 96 students in the 11th and 12th grades accounted for 12.7% of all the gain for DISD. (During this time the total Pinkston enrollment dropped by 3.7%.) Sunset, with 6% of DISD high school students, accounted for a gain of 321 students, or 42.3% of all the gain for DISD. (During this time Sunset enrollment grew by 11.8%.)
Due to the popularity of this project among students, and the positive effect on motivation, four more DISD schools started School Archive Projects the summer of 2009: Greiner and Brown middle schools, Sunset High School, and Macon Elementary School. They all took advantage of a fund that had been established at the Dallas Education Foundation to provide $1,500 grants to cover the purchase and installation of a 500 pound vault in their school lobby, as well as other initial expenses. The School Archive Project is reaching more students! It is a new way of thinking about school.
January 18th, 2010 at 10:26 pm
I went to the presentation this evening at the Winspear Opera House to hear your conversation with Dr. Michael Eric Dyson of the work of Dr. King. It was a wonderful evening with many painful challenges made to us, totally in keeping with King’s message.
At one time it appeared you were about to discuss the real issue in education in too many urban areas of the US, but it did not happen.
How could you avoid speaking about how Dr. King would have responded to the continuing dropout crisis? Nothing affects our community more!