1-23-20 TEI Hurts Dallas ISD Student Achievement

Summary of more detailed content below:
1) TEI doubled teacher turnover!
2) TEI led to NAEP Scores suffering greatest 4 year drop on record 2015 to 2019! 
3) TEI led to 9-fold explosion of the average teacher salary difference between the 19 schools with the least poverty and the 200+ with the most poverty! 
4) Dallas ISD is now the best of the worst!

I just now, 4 PM 1-23-20, called Colorado Springs and verified they have stopped using Mike Miles' TEI Teacher Evaluation system due to constant and continued teacher turnover.

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1) TEI doubled teacher turnover!

Many changes happened since Dallas ISD began the movement toward what is now called the Teacher Effectiveness Indices, TEI, in 2013.  While there was much experimentation with payment incentives for teachers based on student achievement during the decade before 2013, the attitude of DISD changed significantly by the time the move toward TEI started.  Teacher input came to be virtually ignored in anything more than a symbolic fashion during the 2012/13 school year causing a major teacher exodus, doubling teacher turnover rates until the 2013 turnover alone equaled both 2010 and 2011 together!  

Dallas ISD teacher turnover that had been 2.8 percentage points below average Texas teacher turnover for 2006 through 2011, jumped to 3.7 percentage points above average Texas teacher turnover for 2013 through 2018!  In 2019 that turnover increased again from 18.4% in 2017/18 to 19.1% in 2018/19.

2) TEI led to NAEP Scores suffering greatest 4 year drop on record 2015 to 2019!  

The NAEP is considered "The Nation's Report Card." More details on NAEP scores in Dallas ISD can be found at http://billbetzen.blogspot.com/2019/12/since-tei-started-in-2015-dallas-isd.html.


3) TEI led to 9-fold explosion of the average teacher salary difference between the 19 schools with the least poverty and the 200+ with the most poverty! 

Following an open records request last year the average teacher salary data per school for the three years 2015/16, 2016/17, and 2017/18 was received.  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 average teacher salary differences between those 19 schools and the remaining 216 with higher levels of poverty was $423 in 2015/16. By 2017/18, under TEI, this average teacher salary difference had exploded over 9-fold to $3,953!

More details about this study, which includes a link to a Googledocs copy of the three years of salary data used 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 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 three 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."

Enlarge the chart below to help illustrate these numbers and see the two main conclusions made:

More details about this study can be found at https://billbetzen.blogspot.com/2019/11/dallas-isd-pays-teachers-of-wealthy.html.

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

4) Dallas ISD is now the best of the worst! 

Texas replaced Mississippi at the bottoms with the worst NAEP scores, but within Texas Dallas ISD is one of the most improved districts.

Dallas ISD succeeded in 2018/19 in shrinking the DISD/Texas Achievement Gap another percentage point, to 5 percentage points, the lowest in history! Given that only 17% of DISD students are not living in poverty, this is a fantastic achievement! Houston ISD has significantly less poverty with over twice the percentage of students, 36% of HISD students, not living in poverty. In spite of that advantage, HISD has a one percentage point bigger (worse) HISD/Texas Achievement Gap than DISD!

The problem for Dallas is that DISD NAEP scores dropped again documenting continuing decline since the start of TEI in 2015. This drop was even worse statewide in Texas! Now Texas is at the bottom!

These results suggest that the Texas STAAR tests are in their own bubble, not reflecting national standards. 

Teachers being taught to script to STAAR testing are taking time from other more broad education that leaves students vulnerable to worse scores on NAEP, The Nation's Report Card.