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