Dallas White Flight, Dates, Numbers, and Lies

"Desegregation of the Dallas Schools was accomplished in the course of ten short years with a minimum of commotion and stress. This may be viewed as just short of miraculous." Published 1966.

"Education in Dallas" P 159

Desegregation was required by the Brown v Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954. Twelve years later this was the public record of desegregation in Dallas as found in a book published in 1966 called "Education in Dallas - 1874 to 1966." The book is in the Dallas Central Library, and several friends have told me they have it. The less than 2 page section on desegregation starts on page 159. The next decade proved the statement quoted above evolved into a great lie!

This was the public record Jim Schutze was facing as he wrote Accommodations. Accommodations will be discussed in the first of four weekly gatherings starting 8-8-17 at 7 pm at Mac's Southside, 1701 S. Lamar, Dallas. Here is the Facebook Link with details:  https://www.facebook.com/TheAccomodation/

Accommodations is best read with an understanding of DISD desegregation issues and history during these years.

DISD Administration has rarely been more wrong in an enrollment prediction than in May and August 1970. In May DISD was predicting as many as 180,000 students by the end of that school year. By August that prediction was down to 177,000 students. The final full enrollment count for 1970/71 was only 164,726. 

In 1969/70 DISD had a full enrollment of 173,799 students, the largest annual enrollment ever!  DISD thought they would be growing, but then suddenly started to shrink. The loss of White students was for the first time thousands greater than the increase in minority students that had sustained total DISD enrollment growth since 1965.  A new stage of White flight began as DISD full enrollment began to shrink. That shrinkage continued until 46,337 students had been lost in just 14 years! The full enrollment of 173,799 in 1970 was down to 127,462 by 1984. 

The summer of 1970 was the highest loss of White students in all 44 years of White Flight, 1965-2009, and in all of DISD History!

(I estimate that over 10,000 White students left the summer of 1970! - BB)

In 1971/72 DISD had the second highest loss as another 8,698 students left. White Flight continued with thousands leaving annually for three decades, until 2002 when the annual White loss fell to and remained in the hundreds for a total of 8 more years.

The 1964/65 school year was the highest White enrollment on record for DISD, 127,124. Then White numbers began to decline in 1966, but minority numbers grew faster than the White decline until 1970. Above please find the two pages from a 1874-1966 DISD History describing the desegregation process. Notice the page with cut out to highlight the desegregation process in DISD, and the statistical consequences. Also find below the chart with enrollment by race from 1970 to 2015.

White Flight ended in 2009 when White enrollment hit 7,207, the lowest DISD White enrollment in over 120 years. (This is an estimate as I have not yet checked 1889 enrollment numbers from 120 years earlier.)  In 2010 White enrollment went up, for the first time in 45 years, to 7,232. 

White enrollment increases have continued but are tragically concentrated in the best magnet schools, such as the Booker T. Washington Arts Magnet. Often non-minority students from expensive private schools, who were never DISD students, and often do not even live inside DISD, take places that should go to Black and Hispanic students from inside DISD. The Civil Rights battles are not finished!    

Magnet school demographics must come MUCH closer to matching those of DISD! How do you defend a ten-fold over-representation of White students? (Warning, listen to yourself trying to defend this privately before you do it in public. Record yourself and listen.)

All students must have an equal right to the best education possible! Racial patterns in achievement are still far too common.

There is still a well documented pattern of misusing need-based federal funds that are supposed to supplement education for children of poverty, children who do not speak English, and who have other special needs and therefore are allocated such Federal Funds. While these need based funds are properly allocated to the right schools, that increase is used to then replace regular funding that is moved from those high poverty schools to other less needy schools and apparently for other administrative costs in Dallas ISD. 

A federal complaint was filed 4-21-15 against DISD for the massive supplantation of federal funds that happened under Mike Miles.  This is how he was mysteriously able to secure a surplus while funding new programs in DISD. Here is a link to that complaint which is still under active investigation by the U.S. Department of Education, Civil Rights Division: http://schoolarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2015/06/title-vi-complaint-against-disd.html .  This complaint was amply covered on the evening news on June 3, 2015 covering also the resignation of the DISD Budget Director. See  http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/investigates/budget-director-leaves-amid-questions-of-misspent-disd-at-risk-funds/148904332 . 

Within 3 weeks, on 6-23-15, Superintendent Mike Miles also resigned.

We now know that underachievement by minority children of poverty is NOT necessary. (It is embarrassing to still have to say that in 2017.) We have proven minority schools with adequate resources can do as well or better than any other schools, especially if the students are grounded in their family history and have constantly updated written plans for the future! See recent School Effectiveness Indices scores for Zumwalt and Quintanilla and a report on the Time Capsule Project they are active in. 

Being grounded in history is always a positive to help improve student achievement. The Dallas White flight was preceded by 29 years during which one of the major Confederate Monuments, and all 5 of the DISD Confederate-named schools, appeared. They were attempts to stop integration and preserve a segregated community and school system.

Over 152 years have passed since the Civil War.  Why was it only during the 29 years of the fight to defend legal segregation, just before it was declared illegal, that Confederate names were appearing?  Can anyone believe honor for Civil War Heroes was the main reason?  What happened to that honor before 1927, or since 1956, in Dallas? 

On Sunday 8-6-17 another article by a group wanting all Confederate Monuments destroyed or moved identified an additional 6 names on DISD schools of people who served in the Confederacy in various forms that they think should be changed. That would have made for a total of 11 such schools in DISD, two with the names already changed. I question how many of these additional 6 are identifiable to the public as Confederate Heroes, but this would be a great issue for our students to research and vote on. The potential for this as a learning exercise for our students is very high.

There are people trying to destroy the evidence of the manipulations done with Confederate Monuments instead of adding to these raw evidence from history with a Monument to Education telling more of the entire story. We must use this evidence of abuse in relatively recent times to tell a much more complete Dallas History at the same locations where Confederate Monuments are now. See http://billbetzen.blogspot.com/2017/08/confederate-monuments-as-education.html .