Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Dallas ISD Progress 2000-2013, and Disaster 2014-2015!

From 2000 to 2013 Dallas ISD had the most consistent improvement in student achievement and graduation rates of any time in DISD History. The DISD/Texas Student Achievement Gap (DSAG) went from 20 percentage points in 2000 to only 8 percentage points in 2013.  If the improvement rate had continued the current DSAG would be in the 6 percentage point range, and that much closer to being totally eliminated!
Dallas ISD Student Achievement Gap with Texas 2006-2015
Sadly in 2013 DSAG improvements were ending. The 2014 DSAG was 11 percentage points, a 37% deterioration.  By 2015 it had worsened to over 13 percentage points. DSAG grew over 60% since 2013 to the highest (WORST!) level in 8 years! See the chart below for this growing achievement gap:
1995-2015 Dallas ISD/Texas Student Achievement Gap (DSAG) History 
The above chart was created using the statewide data from the TEA web site as to statewide percentages of students passing all tests and how those numbers each year compare with the same student passing rates in Dallas ISD.  The chart also has recent data on principal turnover showing how that negatively affects student achievement.

The 2015 numbers will be adjusted as they are based on 3-8 STAAR scores only to secure an estimate of the gap for 2015.

Work will continue to be done on this chart.  Comments and questions are valued.

All of the data from 2014 and earlier on the percentage of students passing all tests comes from the "Snapshots" of both Dallas ISD and of Texas for those respective years as found at http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/snapshot/.   Download the data for Dallas ISD and go down to the section on STAAR on the page that has "---------------STAAR ---------------" with "% AT PHASE-IN 1 LEVEL II OR ABOVE " under it.  That first row under this heading where the percentage of the students passing all tests is given.

The data for 2015 comes from calculations performed on STAAR results available May 2015 which were only the 3-8 exams.