Transparency FIRST! Continued DISD secrecy stops any tax increase.

Dallas ISD urgently needs to increase taxation on Dallas property by 13 cents per $100 valuation to better support Dallas ISD schools. But first a significantly more complete DISD transparency must be provided to the public! The people of Dallas must first be able to secure any comparison they want of any DISD schools using virtually any of the 200 or so most critical variables describing and measuring achievement in schools.

A working Excel School Equity Spreadsheet: a spreadsheet with one row for every school and over 200 variables in the columns on each of those schools, including the 32 budget item allocation categories per student from the online PEIMS Financial Reports.  These 32 items identify where the money to run the school is coming from, and how much money is allocated from each source for each child.

Most questions can be easily answered by erasing school rows and variables columns that you are NOT interested in. Such rapid transparency will instantly answer questions such as the following:

1. Parents could instantly compare schools anywhere in DISD with each other, schools near their home, or near their work, or near their grandmother.  It could be done quickly by erasing all schools in other zip codes and all variables not interested in.
2. Parents could focus on any variable, such as average teacher experience, School Effectiveness Indices (SEI) in each school, as well as many student achievement measurements. 
3. Child advocates can focus on the range of per-student funding by school in each of these 32 sources of funding per child in DISD schools, as well as both student and teacher demographics including student poverty levels.
4. As events happen during the school year, parents and the public can go back to this data base to check out whatever the issue happens to be, comparing schools in manners never possible before!
5. Child advocates could see if schools with higher percentages of high poverty, English as a Second Language (ESL), or handicapped students, are receiving the full amount of supplemental funding they should receive based on federal formulas, without any reduction in "regular" funding?

These, and hundreds of thousands of other questions, could instantly be answered with one School Equity Excel Spreadsheet for each school year.  Currently the work required to answer such questions keep school comparisons effectively hidden from parents and the general public.

The fatal problem with current transparency within Dallas ISD is that the data is broken up into multiple locations and formats so that comparing schools is a very time consuming and consequently impossible process for most people.  That changes with all the data unified into one spreadsheet with all the data in the columns and each row dedicated to one school. 

Here is a start with 95 variables for the spreadsheet, but this will quickly more than double as variables are added:

Item #	DISD School Equity Excel Spreadsheet Column data - one school per row with one column for each following data item:
1	Date Data is recorded
2	School Year represented in this data
3	School Name
4	Street Address
5	zip code
6	Census tract
	Student Enrollment:
7	# in pk
8	# in k
9	# in 1
10	# in 2
11	# in 3
12	# in 4
13	# in 5
14	# in 6
15	# in 7
16	# in 8
17	# in 9
18	# in 10
19	# in 11
20	# in 12
21	total enrollment
22	total enrollment capacity
23	White student enrollment
24	African American Enrollment
25	Hispanic Student Enrollment
26	American Indian Enrollment
27	Asian Enrollment
28	Hawaiian Enrollment
29	Multi-racial Enrollment
30	Ethnicity not reported
31	Total Female Students
32	Total Male Students
33	LEP total
34	BE
35	ESL
36	Sheltered
37	DEN
38	Not Served
39	LEP SPED
40	BE not LEP
41	LEP exit
42	At Risk
43	Economically Disadvantaged
44	Special Education
45	TAG
	Teacher Information:
46	Total number teachers
47	White teachers
48	African teachers
49	Hispanic teachers
50	American teachers
51	Asian teachers
52	Hawaiian teachers
53	Multi-racial teachers
54	Total Female teachers
55	Total Male teachers
56	SPED teachers
57	Counselors
58	% teachers 0-3 years experience
59	% teachers with 11+ years experience
	Achievement information:
60	School Effectiveness Indices (SEI) for this school year
61	Percentage of students approaching standards in STARR
62	Percentage of students meeting standards in STARR
63	Percentage of students mastering standards in STARR
	Expenditures by Object (Objects 6100-6600) - Data from PEIMS Standard Financial Reports
64	Total Expenditures all funds per student
65	Operating-Payroll all funds per student
66	Other Operating all funds per student
67	Non-Operating(Equipt/Supplies) all funds per student
	Expenditures by Function (Objects 6100-6400 Only)
68	Total Operating Expenditures all funds per student
69	Instruction (11,95) * all funds per student
70	Instructional Res/Media (12) * all funds per student
71	Curriculum/Staff Develop (13) * all funds per student
72	Instructional Leadership (21) * all funds per student
73	School Leadership (23) * all funds per student
74	Guidance/Counseling Svcs (31) * all funds per student
75	Social Work Services (32) * all funds per student
76	Health Services (33) * all funds per student
77	Food (35) ** all funds per student
78	Extracurricular (36) * all funds per student
79	Plant Maint/Operation (51) * ** all funds per student
80	Security/Monitoring (52) * ** all funds per student
81	Data Processing Svcs (53)* ** all funds per student
	Program expenditures by Program (Objects 6100-6400 only)
82	Total Operating Expenditures all funds per student
83	Regular all funds per student
84	Gifted & Talented all funds per student
85	Career & Technical all funds per student
86	Students with Disabilities all funds per student
87	Accelerated Education all funds per student
88	Bilingual all funds per student
89	Nondisc Alted-AEP Basic Serv all funds per student
90	Disc Alted-DAEP Basic Serv all funds per student
91	Disc Alted-DAEP Supplemental all funds per student
92	T1 A Schoolwide-St Comp >=40% all funds per student
93	Athletic Programming all funds per student
94	High School Allotment all funds per student
95	Prekindergarten all funds per student

This data is freely available online on each school, but not in such a single spreadsheet format allowing fast and easy comparisons. This format with a row dedicated to each school, and 200+ data items in the columns, makes it very easy to compare equity between schools.  The possible inequalities between the schools are not easily transparent, not easily visible, using the currently fragmented transparency in Dallas ISD.

The general concept of the DISD School Equity Excel Spreadsheet has been approved unanimously at a meeting of about 70 NAACP members and at a meeting of the Our Community Our Schools Coalition.  Other groups concerned about equity in DISD schools are being approached and are asked to join in this effort, and/or provide ideas and direction for this effort to expose the equity or inequity between Dallas schools.

The effort to make this information visible is much bigger than any of us. The battle for equity, and the many other massive improvements urgently needed in Dallas ISD, will be pushed and monitored by such greater public transparency!  The infinitely greater ability for everyone to compare schools in thousands of ways never possible before will drive Dallas ISD improvement! That will also improve Dallas!