President John F. Kennedy radio address 6-11-1963

This is the planned text to the radio address given by President John F. Kennedy on June 11, 1963, within 6 months of his fatal trip to Dallas.  This record is found online at https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKPOF/045/JFKPOF-045-005

It merits a historical marker on the Grassy Knoll in Dallas where he was killed just before he entered the Triple Underpass.  It is proposed that walkway on the north side become a Black History timeline from 1963 back to 1853 and the first recorded hanging of a Black person in Dallas, a 53 year old grandmother.  Many deaths followed and must be remembered in Martyr's Park, in the lower left hand corner of this photo of the Triple Underpass construction in 1935.

Tragically this was the image on 11-22-63 as he rapidly dying President Kennedy was rushed to Parkland Hospital.  It is recommended this Historical Marker to his historic radio address go on the patch of grass in front of the walkway to the right of the car carrying President Kennedy to Parkland.

Here is the text from the radio address with a U.S. President finally responding in a moral and more adequate manner to the cries and demands of Black Americans and all minorities for centuries:

Dallas needs to seek out a historical marker to remember this great address an use it as the first exhibit of a Black Timeline going back in Black History to Martyr's Park.

12-19-19 Board Meeting: Summary of 2019 DISD Transparency War

Generally, when I am speaking about STAAR tests or other tests that are made in Texas or Dallas, DISD students are doing well.  However, when those tests are nationwide tests the results tend to be disastrous.

Said another way, when it is easy to "teach to the test" DISD does well. When the testing is on more general abilities and it is harder to "teach to the test" Texas does bad, and DISD does even worse!

That pattern was illustrated painfully with this chart produced by the Dallas Morning News and posted in their 11-7-19 editorial titled "So we are better than Mississippi? Not any more."

These are scores from the National Association for Educational Progress (NAEP).  Added to this Dallas Morning News Chart are the two red lines showing when significant cuts to education in Texas were made in 2011, and when a non-educator was placed as Texas Education Commissioner in January of 2016.   While this chart is made for only African American 8th grade Reading scores, this general pattern of decline applies to all students in Texas and in Dallas.  Below are the NAPE scores for the past decade painfully documenting details of the decline in Dallas ISD.  Of these 20 scores covering the past decade in Dallas only one, a fourth grade math score for 2015, shows an improvement that is statistically significant. There are 12 scores, including all 10 of the Reading scores, that are statistically significant declines.

Finally, here is a summary of the 8th grade African American Reading scores for the nation, Texas, and DISD.  DISD is the worst, Texas is better, and the nation is better than Texas.

Texas must begin to look at how they are doing on nationwide tests more closely as our achievement appears to be the worst ever! 

Creating our own testing system in Texas, that makes us feel good when we teach to the test, is worthless in today's world!  This problem is bigger than DISD, but in Dallas ISD students are apparently suffering from it more than anywhere else in Texas.  Is that due to TEI, the Teacher Excellence Initiative which started in 2015 when the decline in NAEP scores in DISD appears to have accelerated?

Go to www.dallasisd.us to see a listing of Board presentations and other significant statements and studies done regarding Dallas ISD.

Since TEI started in 2015 Dallas ISD NAEP scores have fallen dramatically!

On 11-7-19 the Dallas Morning News published the following chart, edited here, demonstrating how dramatically Texas had fallen with the 2019 scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This is terrible for Texas!  It is even worse for Dallas as Dallas has fallen more than Texas.  the chart printed in the Dallas Morning News Editorial of 11-7-19:

The above chart shows Texas having 8th grade African-American NAEP Reading scores that are "worse than Mississippi." That translates to "The Worst in the Nation!" See the editorial at https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2019/11/17/so-were-better-than-mississippi-not-anymore/

In an earlier article on 10-30-19 about this drop in NAEP scores Dr. Hinojosa stated his problems with the release: "While Hinojosa said he didn’t have a problem with the data, he did have a problem with how it was reported. Even among the 27 urban school systems, DISD had a much higher percentage of high-poverty students and English-Language learners than most of the others, he said.

“When you break it down for the level of poverty, we do pretty well,” Hinojosa said. “But NAEP just puts scores out in larger comparisons, without disaggregating.”  See article at 

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2019/10/30/students-in-dallas-and-fort-worth-continue-to-struggle-on-national-assessments/

My question is in a comparison over time. The DISD demographics have not changed significantly but scores are still going down relative to other cities. The biggest shock is in the link to NAEP 8th grade scores for all Dallas 8th graders of all races compared with the nation and with Texas. In both 2017 and 2019 Dallas declined more than either the nation or Texas! This NAEP data is from https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading/districts/scores/?grade=8

Yes, in both the 2017 and 2019 NAEP testing in reading, Dallas 8th graders declined more than either the nation, or Texas!

Below are two more charts from this same NAEP data with the scores over 5 testing cycles covering 10 years for both 4th and 8th grade in math and reading.
The NAEP fourth grade Dallas Math scores have no statistically significant change compared to other large cities except for improvement in 2015. However, in reading Dallas fourth graders suffered statistically significant declines in scores for every one of the 5 tests covering 10 years!

Second, here are the 8th grade math and reading scores for the same period covering 10 years in Dallas. In 8th grade Math only the two most recent scores are statistically significant. Sadly they are declines as compared to other large city schools. In 8th grade Reading all 5 years of testing covering the past decade show scores that reflect a statistically significant decline as compared to other large cities.

Several other patterns are present:
1) Except for Fourth Grade Math, the highest test scores are in 2013 for both grades and subjects.
2) The buildup to TEI in Dallas started in 2013 but was not active until 2015 when the more rapid NAEP scores decline began relative to the rest of Texas.
3) The decline appears to be accelerating and DISD sticks out in Texas as having a worse than average decline in Texas. This is all happening as Texas itself has declining NAEP scores compared to the rest of the US. This only makes it look worse for Dallas.

Are NAEP scores going to be a factor in Dr. Hinojosa's bonus plan?
Are NAEP scores going to be a factor in the assessment of the TEI?
What factors would cause for such dramatically declining NAEP scores covering 4 years to be ignored in answering these questions beyond "It was not in the evaluation plan."

Dallas ISD pays teachers of wealthy & White students even more under TEI!

Testimony being given at monthly Dallas ISD Board Meeting on 11-21-19:

Data clearly shows that Dallas ISD pays teachers of more wealthy & White students significantly higher annual salaries than all other schools! This difference has increased significantly since the start of TEI, the teacher value-added evaluation method called Teacher Excellence Initiative.

Following an open records request, the average teacher salary per DISD school for the three years 2015/16, 2016/17, and 2017/18 was received. (It is linked below in Googledocs.)

In 2015/16 there were 19 schools with economically disabled student percentages below 70%. The difference between those 19 schools and the remaining 216 with higher levels of poverty was $423 in 2015/16.  By 2017/18, after several years of TEI, this difference had exploded over 9-fold to $3,953!

Obviously teacher salaries are growing much faster in the schools with below 70% of students living in poverty, and growing more slowly in the most poverty stricken schools.

(Please join with me in studying the average teacher salaries in each school. The new data for 2018/19 was available by August. I simply have not had time to check. - BB)

More details about this study can be seen by studying the data received from Dallas ISD and found in Googledocs at 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1y4vYXOKkDHkBmval2AP6Eal5KiugVNiYPn037u--Bfs/edit#gid=154474520

Another study on this data was done focusing on the three WHITEST schools in DISD, Lakewood & Mockingbird Elementary, and Travis Middle School, with over 50% White-non-Hispanic enrollment. The average teacher salary in these three schools had gone up from 2015/16 to 2017/18 an average of $9,607. This has resulted in average teacher salaries that are over $11,200 higher than the average of all the other schools in DISD. The average school in DISD only had an average teacher salary increase 2015/16 to 2017/18 of $2,099.

Tragically, this study shows that the school with a significantly higher School Effectiveness Indices (SEI) had salary increases that were half those of the mostly White schools.  

Here is the definition of SEI from the Dallas ISD Data Portal: "School Effectiveness Indices are Dallas ISD's value-added measure of the academic performance of a school's students. The SEI model is an alternative to evaluating school performance with absolute measures such as passing rates. SEIs are a fairer method for determining a school's effect on student performance because they take into consideration known factors over which school personnel have no control, such as socio-economic status, language proficiency, and gender."

How can DISD claim that they are focusing more resources on the most needy students?

Dallas ISD History did not start in 2013/14! 10-24-19 DMN Editorial pretends it did.

Dallas Morning News published an editorial 10-24-18 titled "Is Dallas ISD letting bad, old-school politics creep back in?"  

The erroneous 10-24-19 Dallas Morning News editorial ignored much of DISD History. The 43 Improvement Required (IR or failing) schools in 2013/14 were high poverty & suffered from under-funding. In 2013/14 they were receiving $887 less Regular Funding per student than the ten schools with 50% or more non-poverty (more White) students.  Here is the chart with the average Regular Funding per the more wealthy (White) schools:

Here is a chart with the higher poverty schools that all went IR or failing:

By 2017/18 there were only 4 IR schools. There is also a more equitable funding district-wide.

Obviously there are many additional reasons for this progress, but greater equity is the largest one that nobody is talking about, and it is still not fully corrected. These two charts point to the 2013/14 funding inequity.

The chart below points to the phenomenal progress made in Dallas ISD leading up to 2013.  This progress turned around dramatically in 2013/14 due to new leadership and the massive supplantation of need-based funding, taking Regular Funding away from high need, high poverty schools by a new superintendent.

It is not an accident that when a federal complaint about this 2013/14 supplantation was filed by 15 Dallas ISD residents, and covered heavily on the evening Channel 8 News the evening of 6-3-15, that Superintendent Mike Miles announced his resignation within 3 weeks, on 6-23-15.

A letter from the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) dated September 22, 2017 documents the 15 allegations, none of which were invalidated as the investigation was closed by new DOE leadership. That 9 page letter is posted at  http://billbetzen.blogspot.com/2018/04/government-response-to-4-21-15.html .

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.

The 2 Dallas ISD high schools in 2012 to beat Highland Park High School became 9 in 2019!

2012 to 2019 the 36 established Dallas ISD high schools improved wonderfully! These three charts are a study based on the percentage of students in each school who met TEA standards each year in each school from 2012 to 2019. There are three charts with the same information in each chart but sorted by different data. All charts include the percentages for Highland Park High School, the most affluent high school in all of Dallas County. It is also the only high school in Dallas County with no children living in poverty. It is included to give some comparison as to the poverty gaps that are being made smaller by our public schools! In 2012 only 2 DISD schools had higher percentages of students meeting standard than Highland Park High School. By 2019 that number had grown from 2 to 9 schools. They also did it with average poverty rates above 67%.
The first chart is of Dallas ISD High Schools ordered by improvement 2012 to 2019. The second chart is ordered by improvement in 2019 alone. The third chart is sorted from the largest enrollment high school down to smallest.
Schools in the top 12 schools in both of the first two lists are the best of the best, unless they are like Townview Science and Engineering that was already at 93% in 2012, definitely the best! Can't go higher than 100%, so it is lower on the second list.
Gilliam and Garza did exceptionally well in both Top Twelve lists! They also have the highest poverty levels among the schools on both lists. Such success must spread!

First Chart: Dallas ISD High Schools ordered by improvement 2012 to 2019.

This second list is ordered by the 2019 achievement, a more absolute standing of the schools currently.  In 2019 Dallas ISD had 9 high schools with higher percentages of students meeting standards than Highland Park High School. In 2012 only two Dallas ISD high schools had higher percentages than Highland Park.

This second list has all schools listed by 2019 achievement only.

This third and final list is in order by 2019 student enrollment:

There are many ways to look at this data.  This is only the tip of the iceberg, but it indicates tremendous progress by Dallas ISD!

9-13-19
Bill Betzen

Lancaster ISD as most improved, 2012 to 2019, of 14 ISD's in Dallas County

The chart below lists the 14 largest ISD's in Dallas County as of 2019. Using Texas Education Agency meeting standards data from 2012 through 2019 it shows the 7 year gain in the percentage of students meeting standard for each district each year.  This data was found on the Commit Database at https://commitpartnership.org/dashboard/dashboard-gallery

Notice that, with a 7 year gain of 24 percentage points, Lancaster ISD has the highest percentage gain of any Dallas County school district!  Dallas ISD is second place with 18 percentage points.  Coppell and Irving are tied for third and fourth with 17 percentage points gain each.  Fifth is Grand Prairie with 14 percentage points gain.

Dallas ISD 36 established high schools and progress 2012 through 2019

As of 2019 Dallas ISD has a total of 36 established high schools. 22 are comprehensive neighborhood high schools serving a specific feeder pattern.  The remaining 14 are magnet schools of different types and Early College High Schools serving various areas of interest.  Here they all are on a list with the percentage of students meeting TEA standards each year from 2012 through 2019.

Multiple conclusions are indicated with this data. Notice Trini Garza ECHS has the highest performing of all but 2 high schools, and those two average a percentage of non-handicapped by poverty students that is four times larger than that percentage of non-handicapped students at Garza ECHS. 

Dallas ISD Annual Racial Equity Spreadsheet History Missing

Wonderful progress is anticipated in racial equity due to the strong changes in keeping Dallas ISD Magnets first for Dallas students. These changes were covered in the Dallas Morning News on 8-1-19 in the article titled "Here's Dallas ISD's new plan to stop suburban cheaters from stealing magnet school spots."

This is a major move toward racial equity.  Now for DISD to release decades worth of annual racial equity spreadsheets.

Each spreadsheet would cover one school year's worth of data for Dallas ISD schools.  The base for each spreadsheet would be the School Information File format found in the Dallas ISD Data Portal. See https://mydata.dallasisd.org/SL/Master_Ref.jsp

It would expand this demographic and achievement information for each school in a row for each school.  It would add many more variables including the 32 financial variables per school showing moneys allocated by school as reported in the PEIMS Financial Reports.

A decade of such reports will expose massive supplantation of resoures away from high poverty minority schools inside Dallas ISD. Such transparency would allow DISD to develop a truly effective data-driven Racial Equity Program!  Dallas would lead the nation!

Justin Henry and Ben Mackey, could you help such annual Racial Equity Spreadsheets, covering each year of the past decade, to be made public?  We need such a foundation for a truly data-driven racial equity program within Dallas ISD.

Dallas ISD White Flight through a 50 year lense

Dallas ISD White Flight was actively happening 50 years ago. White families were leaving DISD in increasingly great numbers, but minority enrollment was growing much faster. In 1969/70 DISD was about to celebrate another record high all time enrollment. Dallas prepared for more record growth not knowing 173,799 would become the all time DISD enrollment record for the next half century. White Flight exploded the summer of 1970. Over 10,000 White students left! Could Dallas make more progress by exploring this history with a 50 year lense as it unfolds over the next decade? Sam Tasby, a DISD parent, was about to file a lawsuit in 1970 that would change Dallas more than any parent lawsuit in Dallas History! A DISD school is now named in his honor.

From page 159 of "1874-1966 Education in Dallas" published in 1966.

55 years ago, during the 1964/65 school year, Dallas ISD had what was to become the highest White-non-Hispanic enrollment on record for DISD: 127,124 students. Then White numbers began to decline in 1966, but minority numbers grew faster than the White decline until 1970. 
DISD Administration has rarely been more wrong in an enrollment prediction than 49 years ago, in May and August of 1970. In May 1970 DISD was predicting as many as 180,000 students for the next school year. By August that prediction was down to 177,000 students. The final full enrollment count was only 164,726, over a 9,000 total enrollment loss in one year!  
They had terribly underestimated White Flight! Over 10,000 White students had left Dallas ISD in 1970! 
They were possibly resting on the statement published in 1966 in "1874 - 1966 Education in Dallas" on page 159: "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 in 1966. This copy is in Dallas Public Library.

The peace did not last! This 1966 statement in a DISD History book accuraely reflected one viewpoint, but was terribly wrong! White Flight was about to explode! 50 years ago the 1969/70 DISD full enrollment of 173,799 students was to become the largest annual enrollment in DISD History to date. DISD did not know that. 
DISD thought they would continue growing in 1970/71, but then suddenly DISD 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 when White students began to leave.

A new stage of White flight began as DISD full enrollment began to dramatically shrink. That shrinkage continued until total enrollment had lost 46,337 students in just 14 years! The full DISD 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! It was estimated at far over 10,000 students.  

In 1971/72 DISD had the second highest loss as another 8,698 White 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.  
White Flight finally ended in 2009 when White enrollment hit 7,207. From 1964/65 to 2008/09 120,000 White students had left Dallas ISD to achieve the lowest DISD White enrollment in over 120 years in 2009.  
In 2010 White enrollment went up, for the first time in 45 years, to 7,232. That was 45 years after having a White-non-Hispanic student enrollment of 127,124.

Dallas Morning News should allow this discussion of racism.

Would the Dallas Morning News page 3 add on 7-21-19, copied above on the left above, be possible without the Dallas Racist History?

I just sent this letter to the Dallas Morning News.  Do you think we will see it in the paper?
=========================

Page 3 of the 7-21-19 Dallas Morning News honored high performing employees from a large Dallas Company. Would such a virtually all White group of employees have been possible without Dallas History? 

Dallas was founded on the work of slaves. After slavery, their descendants were then subjected to 150 years of discrimination. Hispanic families joined them as targets of the Dallas KKK. Dallas became the KKK National Headquarters in the 1920’s. The underfunding of Black and Brown schools has still not ended today in the DFW area!  Transparency is simply not provided to prove otherwise for a reason.

Would this page in the Dallas Morning News on 7-21-19 honoring mostly White employees happen without such a racist DFW History?

Dallas ISD invests more money in teachers of wealthy students!

Following an open records request earlier this school year I received the average teacher salary per school for the three years 2015/16, 2016/17, and 2017/18.  This salary data does not support the claim that more resources are going to the more needy students. The opposite is true! 

In 2015/16 there were 19 schools with economically disabled student percentages below 70%. The difference between those 19 schools and the remaining 216 with higher levels of poverty was $423 in 2015/16. By 2017/18, under TEI, this difference had exploded over 9-fold to $3,953!

Obviously teacher salaries are growning much faster in the schools with below 70% of students living in poverty, and growing more slowly in the most poverty stricken schools. 

Please join with me in studying the average teacher salaries in each school. The new data for 2018/19 should be available by August.

More details about this study, which includes a link to a Googledocs copy of the three years of salary data used as received from Dallas ISD, can be found at  
http://billbetzen.blogspot.com/2018/11/dallas-isd-teacher-excellence.html.

Another study on this data was done focusing on the only three schools (Lakewood and Mockingbird Elementary, and Travis Middle School) with over 50% White-non-Hispanic enrollment. The average teacher salary in these three schools had gone up from 2015/16 to 2017/18 an average of $7,771.  This has resulted in average teacher salaries that are over $9,500 higher than the average of all the other schools in DISD.  The average school in DISD only had an average teacher salary increase 2015/16 to 2017/18 of $3,144.

How can DISD claim that they are focusing more resources on the most needy students?

Racial & Ethnic Balance at Booker T. Washington Arts Magnet

The first Dallas Black high school was established in 1892.  It was rebuilt, moved, and eventially the building we know today as Booker T. Washington was constructed in 1922 with the name changed from the Dallas Colored High School to Booker T. Washington High School.  It remained as a segregated Black school until being closed in 1969. The Class of 1969 just celebrate the graduation they were denied at Booker T. 

In 1976 in was reopened as the Booker T. Washington Arts Magnet (BTW) and began the evolution into becoming one of the best high schools in the nation.  Due to its popularity the admission process has often been in the Dallas news. The debates over the years have mostly been on how this historically segregated Black high school has become the most White high school in DISD. The good news is that by one measure, the current numbers show progress over the past 5 years in re-integration. This is that progress:

Yes, those numbers reflect 5 years of progress! 

In 2013/14 the situation was much worse!  White students were 17 times more likely than Black DISD students, and 37 times more likely than Hispanic students, to be attending Booker T. Washington. Over the past 5 years those abusive differences have been much more than cut in half.  BTW is much more inclusive, but still has a very long way to go. 

Here is a spreadsheet demonstrating how these two sets of numbers have been calculated.  The 2013/14 numbers came from the 2014/15 Data Packet giving the 2013/14 numbers.  The current numbers were taken 6-9-19 from the current DISD Enrollment numbers online at
https://mydata.dallasisd.org/SL/SD/ENROLLMENT/Enrollment.jsp

Dallas ISD is making significant progress but still has a very long way to go for equity.

Suburban student submitting false documents to get into BTW was reported on last week by the Dallas Morning News: "How Dallas ISD plans to stop the suburban cheaters stealing admission slots at prestigious Booker T." 

While I have not seen the demographic profile, it is safe to say that the suburban students do not help BTW to be more inclusive.  That is another way wherein slots at BTW are being taken from DISD minority students, 95% of the students within Dallas ISD.

Such lack of equity at Booker T. Washington gives several ways a civil rights lawsuit may be directed.  The failure of DISD to prepare their own pk-8 students to become highly competative candidates for BTW needs to be explored in the formation of such a complaint.

Sadly there are many examples of a lack of equity within Dallas ISD, like the average salary paid at the three 50%+ White schools: http://billbetzen.blogspot.com/2019/02/higher-dallas-isd-teacher-salaries-are.html

Rooha Haghar, 2019 Conrad Valedictrian denied freedom of speech & DISD apologised.

-------------- Second Update made on 6-13-19 -------------------

This article in the NY Post has one of the more complete reports on this event that I have seen. It linked to the 33 second clip that Rooha had posted on Twitter which account included this text from Rooha explaining what happened:https://nypost.com/2019/06/12/district-apologizes-for-cutting-off-valedictorian-who-mentioned-trayvon-martin-tamir-rice/
In explaining why the names could not be given a teachers told Rooha that Whites are discriminated against and her naming of Black victims of violence would incite more such discrimination.

Here is what Rooha wrote and posted into her Twitter account linked in the NY Post article:

We are very proud of you Rooha! The conversation you requested should happen. The public is learning some necessary and valuable lessons due to your bravery.

-------------- First Update on made on 6-12-19 -------------------

On 6-11-19, it was great to hear that Dallas ISD has apologised to Rooha Haghar for all the right reasons! Congratualions Rooha! This embarassment by Dallas ISD has helped thousands more hear your well said words! I still urge you to give your talk in front of the DISD Board so the main points fit into the three minute limitation. You can do it! Sign up for the 6/27/19 meeting! We Dallas ISD supporters (i.e. supporters of DISD when they truly supports students) need to stand and cheer your success! Please let us know if you will speak on 6/27/19. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2019/06/11/dallas-isd-apologizes-grad-whose-speech-cut-mentioned-victims-injustice

-------------- Original Post of the incident -------------------

Rooha Haghar, 2019 Conrad Valedictrian denied freedom of speech, should tell her story at the 6/27/19 Dallas ISD Board Meeting so the entire room can stand to support her! Speakers before her could pave the way by speaking about freedom of speech and critical thinking being mandatory parts of the DISD curriculum! Then invite those who agree with critical thinking and freedom of speech in our schools to stand for Rooha Haghar when she speeks. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2019/06/06/dallas-isd-valedictorian-says-speech-silenced-mentioning-shooting-victims?


It has been posted that this was the rest of her talk that she was unable to give:
""And while we are receiving our diplomas tonight and moving on to bigger things, they were students who were robbed of this opportunity.



To all the kids who got left behind because their education educational needs cannot be met,To the students that had to drop out to work and help their families financially,

To the Baha’i youth of Iran who are denied access to her education by the government some serving time in prison for wanting to teach,

To the kids that were murdered in senseless mass shootings,
To Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice and all the other children who became victims of injustice,

To the kids across the globe affected by war, famine, persecution, and child labor who have lost years of education due to hunger displacement lack of finances and lack of educational resources,

I’m sorry.

You see tonight is a celebration of our achievements, yes, but it is also a reminder of all the work that needs to be done. And as much as I hate to say this, “Class of 2019, we just might be the future.” So no matter which path you take in life, where you end up in the next decade, remember you have an obligation to community, and the world at large.”

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Here is another news article on freedom of speech denied the Conrad Valedictorian, Rooha Haghar, on the day of her graduation. It includes a video of the event which makes what happened clear: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/valedictorian-says-her-microphone-was-cut-after-she-mentioned-trayvon-n1014631?   Trustee Micciche is setting to the left of the principal who signals the microphone to be turned off.  I wonder what Trustee Micciche's opinion is.

If Dallas ISD has not made a public response to this anti-critical-thinking action by a DISD Principal, everyone should call 972-925-3720 by 6/26/19 to sign up to speak at the next days meeting.  My that time my planned testimony will be posted at www.dallasisd.us.
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