Dallas ISD Civil Rights Case Closed 9-22-17 without invalidating any of the 15 allegations! Equity Audit?

Below is the 9 page 9-22-17 letter from the U.S. Department of Education, Office For Civil Rights, that closed the then 2-year 5 month old complaint filed 4-21-15 by 15 DISD parents, and residents against Dallas ISD for the supplantation of Federal need-based funds in hundreds of schools. The need-based Federal funds were supposed to be supplementary funds above and beyond regular funding.  Instead they were being used to replace regular funding. The students in need were not benefiting. A summary of the complaint can be found at 
http://schoolarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2015/06/title-vi-complaint-against-disd.html

During these 2 years and 5 months over 300 additional pages were given to the DOE Civil Rights Division documenting these allegations. There were several in-person interviews.  This 9-page letter is the response.  It closes the case by giving technical reasons for not doing an investigation into each one of the 15 allegations identified. It does not invalidate a single one of the 15 allegations.

Mike Miles, the superintendent during the 3 years the supplantation situation in DISD  significantly deteriorated, resigned 6-23-15.  That was 3 weeks after a comprehensive report on the major Dallas evening news station, WFAA, Channel 8, about these allegations. If that resignation had not happened, the continued fighting of this case would have been necessary. 

It appears the degree of supplantation has definitely lessened in DISD since that resignation. Work must continue to document the extent to which it continues, and to determine how widespread it is throughout Texas, and in other states.  (See the creation of the School Equity Spreadsheet as one tool in this battle.)

Few things reflect the lack of racial equity inside Dallas ISD more than the potential for a hidden, ongoing supplantation of need-based federal funds to be continuing.  Why is data, in a format with which the public could easily verify inequity, hidden? 

As public school funds decrease relative to the need, the larger inequity picture in all of Dallas is worsening. The larger inequality between resources the average White child in Dallas, including all those outside DISD, has invested in their education and what the average minority child in Dallas has invested in their education, is only growing.

Below is the listing of the 15 allegations.  Below that listing is the full 9 page letter from the US Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights closing the complaints filed 4-21-15, but failing to invalidate any of these 15 allegations identified in the letter:

1. The DISD illegally supplants Title I, career and technical education (CTE), state compensatory education (SCE), and high school allotment (HSA) funding for regular education spending.
2. The DISD illegally supplants funding for supplemental programming such as programming for special education (SPED), homeless students, suspended and expelled students, students failing any test, and limited English proficiency (LEP) students for regular education funding for students.
3. The DISD's planned Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS) budgets filed with the State of Texas have not complied with House Bill 5 (HB5) requiring accelerated instruction for all high school students who failed an end-of-course (EOC) exam.
4. In 2014, the DISD gerrymandered the attendance boundaries for Lakewood Elementary School (LES) to intentionally exclude poor students that could decrease property values for LES. 
5. The DISD's April 24, 2014 decision to not consider redrawing the attendance boundaries for LES created de-facto segregation to limit LES to wealthy white students.
6. The DISD denies at-risk and low-income students equal access to equitable education resources with respect to magnet, talented and gifted (TAG), and performing and visual arts programs, support services (e.g., counseling, SPED and LEP resources), adequate facilities, and teacher equity and instructional leadership.
7. The DISD's principal and teacher hiring and evaluation practices have created excessive turnover and high teacher-student ratios at the DISD's campuses serving majority at-risk and low-income students.
8. The DISD disproportionately assigns African-American students to exclusionary discipline. 
9. The DISD denies African American and Hispanic students, special education (SPED) students, and limited English proficiency (LEP) students equal access to equitable education resources with respect to magnet, TAG, and performing and visual arts programs, support services (e.g., SPED and LEP resources), adequate facilities, counseling and teacher equity and instructional leadership.
10. The DISD's principal and teacher hiring and evaluation practices have created excessive turnover and high teacher-student ratios at the DISD's campuses serving the majority of African American, Hispanic, SPED, and LEP students.
11. The DISD discriminates against students with disabilities by denying them admission into the magnet and TAG programs.
12. The DISD discriminates against national-origin language minority students who are LEP by denying them admission into the magnet and TAG programs.
13. The DISD discriminated against minority students when it flagrantly refused to provide Accelerated Instruction as required by the state of Texas for all students failing an end of course exam in the 2014-2015 school year. The affected minority students were located on the same campuses whose regular education dollars were not comparable to that of magnet school campuses with high percentages of white students, and whose turnover rates in principals and teachers far exceeded that of magnet school campuses.
14. The DISD disproportionately assigns African-American male students to exclusionary discipline; and this occurred mainly at campuses where no supplemental programming existed because of illegal supplanting of Title I funds.
15. The funding of non-Title I campuses and magnet school campuses is not comparable to the funding of Title I campuses for the required foundation programs.

Consistent documentation going back a decade on each DISD school is needed to document that none of these 15 allegations have existed.  If this documentation proves that they did exist, then continuing documentation must verify year to year, school by school, that these situations are corrected, and remain corrected.  This must be constantly reflected in annual, public, auditable information, online, from this day forward.

Work is needed to verify these allegations are not continuing to happen within Dallas ISD. A decade of history with the school by school funding from all sources as reflected in the PEIMS Financial Reports is needed first.  The reports should be annual reports, one for each school year, in Excel format spreadsheets with all schools listed, one per row, with 200+ columns of data including the 32 financial items reports in each PEIMS Financial Report for each school.

Here is the letter from the US Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, documenting these needs for Dallas ISD.

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The work to be done within Dallas ISD as reflected in the above letter must not be slowed down by the conflicts happening in Washington as reflected below.  How else can we claim to be authentically pursuing racial equity here in Dallas, the former national headquarters for the KKK?
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On 5-26-18 an NPR article explained why this Civil Rights Complaint against DISD from 4-21-15 was closed 9-22-17.  The article stated:

"Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, asked DeVos about the department's Office for Civil Rights, which began dismissing claims of civil rights violations this spring, under updated guidance for responding to cases. Department representatives have said the changes were meant to help the office manage its caseload.

DeVos said she was confident that the Office for Civil Rights was committed to upholding the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

"How do you do it if you continue to try to dismantle and defund the office?" Fudge asked. "I'm not understanding."

"We haven't done any such thing," DeVos responded."

You can find this full NPR article online at  https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/05/26/614008167/teachers-win-at-the-polls-devos-fields-questions-on-the-hill?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social 

School Equity Spreadsheet for Dallas ISD

A spreadsheet with 228 rows for 228 Dallas ISD schools, with 90+ columns of student, teacher, achievement, and financial data by student, shows the potential for equity issues to be exposed quickly! 

Such a well designed School Equity Spreadsheet will allow anyone to explore instantly any of these 90+ variables and the relationships between them in any single school, or in any sub-grouping of the 228 Dallas ISD schools.  Here is a first detailed draft of suggested variables being requested from the Legal Services, Public Information Request Division in Dallas ISD for this spreadsheet:
(To see the second draft adding 5 variables based on feedback from this first draft for a new total of 95 variables, go to http://billbetzen.blogspot.com/2018/04/disd-school-equity-spreadsheet-design.html)

Item #	School Equity 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
	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	Special Education
43	TAG
44	Economically Disadvantaged
	Teacher Information
45	Total number teachers
46	White teachers
47	African teachers
48	Hispanic teachers
49	American teachers
50	Asian teachers
51	Hawaiian teachers
52	Multi-racial teachers
53	Total Female teachers
54	Total Male teachers
	Achievement information:
55	School Effectiveness Indices for this school year
56	Percentage of students approaching standards in STARR
57	Percentage of students meeting standards in STARR
58	Percentage of students mastering standards in STARR
	Expenditures by Object (Objects 6100-6600) - Data from PEIMS Standard Financial Reports
59	Total Expenditures all funds per student
60	Operating-Payroll all funds per student
61	Other Operating all funds per student
62	Non-Operating(Equipt/Supplies) all funds per student
	Expenditures by Function (Objects 6100-6400 Only)
63	Total Operating Expenditures all funds per student
64	Instruction (11,95) * all funds per student
65	Instructional Res/Media (12) * all funds per student
66	Curriculum/Staff Develop (13) * all funds per student
67	Instructional Leadership (21) * all funds per student
68	School Leadership (23) * all funds per student
69	Guidance/Counseling Svcs (31) * all funds per student
70	Social Work Services (32) * all funds per student
71	Health Services (33) * all funds per student
72	Food (35) ** all funds per student
73	Extracurricular (36) * all funds per student
74	Plant Maint/Operation (51) * ** all funds per student
75	Security/Monitoring (52) * ** all funds per student
76	Data Processing Svcs (53)* ** all funds per student
	Program expenditures by Program (Objects 6100-6400 only)
77	Total Operating Expenditures all funds per student
78	Regular all funds per student
79	Gifted & Talented all funds per student
80	Career & Technical all funds per student
81	Students with Disabilities all funds per student
82	Accelerated Education all funds per student
83	Bilingual all funds per student
84	Nondisc Alted-AEP Basic Serv all funds per student
85	Disc Alted-DAEP Basic Serv all funds per student
86	Disc Alted-DAEP Supplemental all funds per student
87	T1 A Schoolwide-St Comp >=40% all funds per student
88	Athletic Programming all funds per student
89	High School Allotment all funds per student
90	Prekindergarten all funds per student

The above 90 data items come from the Dallas ISD Data Portal (items 2-58) and from the PEIMS Standard Financial Reports maintained by TEA (items 59-90).

Yes, this data is freely available on every school, but not in this spreadsheet format which will make it very easy to compare equity and save hundreds of hours of work which de facto keep this data and the equity comparisons from being transparent.

Full Community support is needed to demand the release of this full information in this format. The Dallas NAACP at their 4-3-18 meeting voted to support the release of this data in this format.  The 70 or more members present voted unanimously to support this open records request to become a critical step in the work toward verifying, securing, and maintaining equity in Dallas ISD for all students.


Today, 4-10-18, all members present at the monthly Our Community Our Schools meeting voted to support this open records request.

Other organizations dedicated to equity among all students in DISD are also being approached. They include LULAC, CASE (Coalition for an Accountable System of Education), both Dallas teacher organizations, NEA and AFT, the Dallas League of Women Voters, and others. The members contacted to date have all voiced support for this open records request, but a formal vote at a membership meeting has only been done by the Dallas NAACP and Our Community Our Schools.

The goal is for as many education advocates and organizations as possible to support this open records request, know what the battle is for, and understand what to expect with this new level of transparency.

Some DISD Board Members have been contacted about this request and the support for it is universal so far. They can speak for themselves.

This open records request, submitted 4-9-18, is a significant step toward potentially the highest level of transparency related to the nuances of equity in DISD History. The above specific list of 90 variables will be submitted on 4-16-18 to the DISD Legal Services, Public Information Request Division.

Again, while this open records request deals with data that is public in a multitude of separate settings by school, that data has never been available in this single spreadsheet format by school. That simple change will allow schools to be compared by any of these multiple demographic, financial, achievement, or funding variables in the battle toward studying, verifying, achieving, and maintaining equity for every DISD student. This transparency will allow public confidence in Dallas ISD to continue to grow, unless there is a fight against such transparency by Dallas ISD.

It is hoped there will be no problems with fulfilling this request. It is certainly understood that more discussion may be needed. We welcome questions working toward the most accurate information possible.

Once the study of this format for a spreadsheet starts, it is very possible we may find variables that should be added to the spreadsheet for each school. Suggestions are welcomed so that such additions are done up front and not needed later.

Imagine the power of such a spreadsheet in order by the amount of "regular" funding per child allocated in each school.  Given recent history, it is reasonable to expect that schools with the largest amount of "regular" funding per child will be those schools with the lowest percentage of economically disadvantaged students, or ESL students, or other need-based category of students.  Such a pattern lessens the reality of need-based funds being truly supplementary. That is, they are no longer extra funds in addition to the equal allocation of  "regular" funds should be received by all schools.