Detailed proposals for change, publicized before Board Meetings, are needed.

This month's misled effort by Dallas ISD Administration to expand SB 1882 applications into current DISD schools is another painful example of both a bad plan and the failure to follow basic professional practice.

Such lack of proposal documentation has been allowed too often by the Dallas ISD Board. Plans for major changes made without public planning documents must stop!

A well planned and documented proposal, giving goals and research, with the data driving the decision, should be required. It must include an assessment of the costs and risks involved, and benefits anticipated for our students! Such a written proposal should be required before any consideration by the Dallas ISD School Board.

These undocumented SB 1882 plans were verbally presented, but hopefully do not reflect the abilities of the presenters. Did supervisors stop a more formal proposal from being prepared? Detailed proposals should be written and attached to the public agenda items before any future major DISD proposed changes can be considered!

Documentation saves time, and with such documents the public can respond, ask better questions, and make much more valuable comments in a more timely manner.

Why are DISD Trustees allowing such undocumented planning? Trustee Forman stands out as leading the questioning at the 10-3-19 Briefing!

DISD has lost valuable time. Our students do not have time! Student achievement must accelerate NOW! Income & racial achievement gaps should have disappeared from DISD years ago!  Our students have no more time to waste!

A documented plan requirement may even stop such poorly planned ideas from ever taking up Board time again as bad plans often die in the planning process.

Again, thank you Trustee Foreman.

10-17-19 Bill Betzen, a presentation given to the Dallas ISD Board today.

Dallas ISD Progress 2000 to 2013, then it stopped!

Anyone who thinks the progress in Dallas ISD only started in 2013/14 is ignoring the data!

DISD had enjoyed more than a decade, from 2000 to 2012, of low teacher turnover. Since major student achievement is usually delayed a year following major changes, the consistent lowering of the Texas/DISD Achievement Gap went from 2000 to 2013! The Gap went from 20 percentage points in 2000 to only 8 by 2013!

Then progress went backwards big-time in 2013/14 as preparations for TEI were made with the record high of 43 failing DISD schools! That disaster was accompanied, naturally, by and an exploding Texas/DISD Achievement Gap. DISD lost 5 years of Achievement Gap progress in 2013/14 with the Gap going back up to 11 points again, to the old 2009 Gap! Teacher turnover exploded in 2012 and was over 21% by 2013! Teacher turnover has stayed higher than any year on record prior to 2012, ever since!

Study the chart below. All data on this chart comes from the Texas Education Agency web site, Snapshot, or from the Dallas ISD Data Portal, as collected over the years. Sadly some of the older DISD data is no longer online. Why? Does someone want to stop multi-year comparisons like this of progress?

Dallas ISD did not recover academic progress, back down to an 8 percentage point Gap, until 2016/17.  Teacher turnover remains at record levels! Before 2012 DISD teacher turnover averaged
2.8 percentage points LOWER/BETTER than Texas statewide. Since 2013 DISD teacher turnover has averaged 3.7 percentage points WORSE/HIGHER than Texas! Is that an accident?
Who is trying to destroy Dallas ISD?

Is there a profit motive somewhere?

Or were politicians threatened by an increasingly well educated core of critically thinking students who would vote? It is no accident that Texas has one of the lowest per student education investments in the nation. Such low education investment is related to low voter turnout nationwide. Only Hawaii & West Virginia had lower voter turnout in November 2016 than Texas!

Or is it all of the above?

Dallas ISD Middle School School Effectiveness Scores dropped in 2018-19

This is the chart for SEI Scores of Middle Schools in order from highest to lowest from last year's 2018-19 ratings.

School Time Capsule Postmaster Research Proposals

The indications for progress through the volunteer work of School Time Capsule Postmasters is significant.  These volunteers help students plan their own futures in writing every year, and explore their family histories with new information from elderly relatives every year. This process improves the self image of students.  They take charge of their own lives.

Teen pregnancies go down, negative behaviors decrease, and academic performance improves.  High school graduation rate soar.

In child welfare terms, the number of referrals from the area of town with schools using the volunteer work of postmasters, goes down.

This pattern must be verified in by research.  If a funded project were to start School Time Capsule Projects in every elementary and secondary school in two of the highest child welfare referral feeder patterns belonging to two high schools in a high poverty urban area, these hypotheses could be well tested within 5 years.

See blog postings below but most especially at https://schooltimecapsule.blogspot.com/ to see what is being proposed by better understanding the School Time Capsule Project and the work of a postmaster.

This is a very quick first draft.  This posting will be worked on.