The School Archive Project

Dallas ISD Blinked

2012-02-02T10:58:00.001-06:00

School boards and administrators everywhere struggle to improve their schools. However, on 1/26/12 the Dallas ISD administration and school board mandated 45 minutes into a teacher's daily schedule. DISD blinked!

Lack of administrative focus on student achievement was exposed. They didn't even have a goal focused position statement on this change! Their motivation is still unclear. Different reasons are being given.

Who is more focused on a student's achievement than their teacher, and hopefully their parents? With this change some of the freedom of teachers to focus their time most effectively on student achievement will be lost.

Lessons Ignored from Finland

2012-01-31T19:42:00.002-06:00

"When shown successful reform models elsewhere in the world, educators and lawmakers often scoff that there are no lessons for America."

This is the opening sentence of the "Lessons Ignored" article posted 1-30-12 on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The article goes over the strategies used by too many in the US to ignore what is happening in Finnish schools.

The final sentence in this article says too much in a nutshell talking about the U.S. educational system: “We keep making minor changes to an education system that is 100 years out of date. It is not that the United States has a bad system. We have no system.”

The Texas Education Budget Crisis Hits Dallas

2012-01-30T15:23:00.000-06:00

This week has been tragic for parents, students, and teachers in Dallas ISD.

The crisis started when at the Thursday Board meeting 11 schools were voted to be closed down. That same night the DISD Board voted to force teachers to work on the clock for 45 more minutes each day. This was done with little public information or discussion. Then, due to this vote, a young teacher who was the main income earner for 6 children was placed on leave for writing a critical letter to a board member. This past weekend the blogs exploded as is clearly visible by looking at comments at each of the above three linked news articles. Within the past 24 hours a "sickout" has emerged for Leap Day as a form of protest. Here is the organization web site for the quickly formed Teachers for Change. There were many more such articles written every hour!

The instigator of all this tension was last year's legislative session when relatively few ever went to Austin to protest what was happening. Only 13,000 showed up for the largest demonstration. That amounted to about one demonstrator for every 5 jobs lost combined with every 350 students pushed into more crowded classrooms. Ultimately over $5 billion was cut from the Texas education budget. This trauma in Dallas is the fallout, with some peripheral damage, from those tragic decisions.

Anyone angry about what is happening to our students, parents, and teachers, and the future of Texas, must contact their legislators!

The legislators who voted “Yea” to Senate Bill 1 (SB1) are responsible for starting this process rolling. We must focus on those who voted to pass SB1 which was the budget bill that cut the educational budget. Generally speaking "Yea" votes for SB1 were along party lines, but that is not always true. Here is a list of all Dallas area State Legislators and the votes they made on SB1:

Dallas Area State Legislators 2011 and their votes made on Senate Bill 1
(Right-click to enlarge chart and print.)

SB1 was passed 6-28-11 in special session. The final votes, as recorded above, are also recorded online. Go to the SB1 actions page at http://www.legis.state.tx.us/BillLookup/Actions.aspx?LegSess=821&Bill=SB1 and click on the most recent votes tabs for both the House and Senate, each at the top of the page. You will see the names of those legislators responsible, the "Yea" votes. We need to be calling their offices now asking for the reasoning behind their votes. Thank the legislators who voted "Nay." Then get ready for the next election, attend campaign gatherings, and ask questions. Our children need advocates to stand up for them!

You may also find your legislators and their contact information at http://www.legis.state.tx.us/ .

Exorcise Ghost of Separate but Equal from Dallas

2012-01-29T10:03:00.000-06:00

Today's Dallas Morning News editorial is titled: "Wanted: an innovator to nudge DISD out of its comfort zone." It lists qualities needed by a superintendent for Dallas ISD.

The editorial was credible and tempting until it said the new DISD superintendent should, "move more quickly on worthy ideas such as creating in-district charter schools ..."

This is a reminder that too many of the efforts to improve DISD go toward some students having educational resources made available to them separate from other students: magnet schools, charter schools, etc...

Such "separate but equal" practices appear to be critical in the Dallas comfort zone.

What would happen if the foundation for Dallas ISD were to become absolute equity among all schools for all students, at least through the 9th grade?

That has been the increasingly firm foundation in Finland for the past 40 years. Since 2000 Finland has had the highest student performance in the world! Every student in Finland does well.

Finland has a higher proportion of immigrants than 18 states in the US. Immigrants excel quickly in Finland.

The newest book on education in Finland, "Finnish Lessons" by Dr. Pasi Sahlberg, was published in November 2011. It is already sold out on Amazon. New copies are selling for as much as $450.00!

Dr. Sahlberg has a 2009 DMN article by Jim Landers on his web site that summarizes Finnish Education: http://www.pasisahlberg.com/downloads/Texas%20school%20reformers%20in%20Finland.pdf .

Dallas ISD students will continue to fall below students in Finland for as long as any DISD students are treated differently. The days of separate but equal must be gone in Dallas!

Is the Dallas Morning News willing to be pushed out of its own comfort zone and lead the charge for total educational equity?

Dallas ISD and the Texas Education Budget Cuts

2012-01-27T11:46:00.001-06:00

When the largest demonstration against $5 billion in education cuts during the 2011 Texas Legislative session only drew 13,000 demonstrators, the Texas Legislators saw little danger in making the cuts. Thus, for each one of those 13,000 demonstrators about 5 teachers and other staff lost their jobs, and 350 students were moved into more crowded classrooms all across Texas. The bill that did this was SB1, Senate Bill 1.

One small example of the results of these cuts was acted out at last night's Dallas ISD Board meeting. Eleven schools are being closed. That decision was combined with other negative decisions. The progress in DISD since 2006 is in danger:

DISD Enrollment & Graduation History 1996 through 2011
(Right click on the above chart to enlarge.)

The red cells in the chart above indicate graduation rate measurements going down from the previous year. That has not happened in Dallas ISD in years! But we will probably see these measurements begin to go down next year, or else the following year. Here we are only looking at the numbers. Think of the children they represent.

The CPI measured graduation rate in Dallas has improved by over 23 percentage points since the Class of 2006! Think of one of those percentage points as about 50 more Dallas children with diplomas.

Following is a list of Dallas area state legislators and their vote on SB1. While the voting was generally along party lines, that is not always true. Please print this out and join us in working to restore educational funding in the 2013 Legislative Session.

Dallas Area State Legislators 2011
(Right-click on the above chart to enlarge for printing.)

You may find more detailed information on the Texas Legislative Web site. Be certain your legislators know your thoughts on this issue.

Dallas ISD: one of the most improved graduation rates in all of Dallas County.

2012-01-25T07:10:00.000-06:00

Dallas ISD must continue the progress!

Graduation Rate Measurement History for Dallas County Texas Schools
(Right click on above chart to enlarge and/or print.)

This chart clearly documents the dramatic progress in Dallas ISD graduation rates, especially when compared to the other 12 large school districts in Dallas County.

What this chart does not show is that DISD had an 8 percentage point improvement during the two years just before the first year shown, and another percentage point increase last year, also not shown on this chart. These numbers are shown in the chart below.

From 2006 through 2011 the CPI graduation rate for DISD has gone up a total of 23.8 percentage points! DISD is one of the most improved, if not the most improved, urban districts in all of the United States. It certainly is the most improved in Dallas County!

Dallas ISD is going in the right direction! We must not slow down!

Dallas ISD Enrollment & Graduation History 1996-2011
(Right-click on above image to enlarge.)

The red squares in the chart above are years in which that graduation rate measurement went down. It appears such red squares may be in the DISD future again if we cannot change the way DISD teachers are treated.

Texas Public School Enrollment & Graduation Rate History

2012-01-22T16:33:00.000-06:00

From 2006 through 2010 Texas public schools made tremendous progress in the major dropout rate measurements. That is demonstrated on the following two charts that can be enlarged and studied in detail.

Texas Graduation Rate Progress 2006 through 2010
(Right click on above image to enlarge.)

The chart below presents over a decade of Texas graduation rate history. As is clear in the chart below, these past 4 years have set new records for progress in Texas. The chart above has been left blank for the years through 2016. It is predicted that the over 5 billion dollars in education cuts inflicted by the Texas Legislature the spring of 2011 will leave their mark on these measurements. Graduation rates may suffer unless we can somehow convince our students how critical their success in school is for their own futures, no matter what the state budget is!

Texas Public School Enrollment by Grade & diplomas, 1997-2011
& 4 graduation rate measurements
(Right click on above image to enlarge.)

Middle school progress needed

2012-01-20T16:42:00.000-06:00

(The following letter to the editor was printed in the Dallas Morning News on Friday, Jan. 20, 2012 and is online at http://letterstotheeditorblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2012/01/middle-school-p.html.)

Re: "DISD's Strengths -- Next superintendent will have assets going in," Sunday Editorials.

The most priceless sentences in Sunday's editorial serve as a summary of the problems a new superintendent will face: "Beyond the magnets, many neighborhood elementary schools reflect solid academics, but too often they feed into middle or high schools where achievement drops off sharply. The challenge for the next superintendent is to find out why and pursue policies to change that."

Anyone who studies the 15-year DISD enrollment and graduation spreadsheet will quickly see the significant improvements that have happened since 2005. But they are not enough. They must continue and accelerate. For that to happen, the mystery of why student performance drops starting in middle school must be uncovered.

What is it like being a sixth-grader in DISD? You struggle to establish yourself in a new social setting. You may have nobody in your home who has ever graduated high school. Nobody can tell you what it's like.

Some high schools, like Sunset, and the middle schools feeding into Sunset, appear to be making progress. Students are being intentionally focused onto their own futures -- repeatedly!

If every DISD high school had made the same progress since 2007 as Sunset, over a thousand more students would be graduating with the Class of 2012. How would a thousand more DISD graduates affect the Dallas economy? Taxes? Crime rate? The future of Dallas?

Bill Betzen, Dallas/Oak Cliff

Dallas ISD High School Enrollment 1-18-12 & dropout rate indicators

2012-01-18T11:48:00.002-06:00

The following chart was created from the enrollment figures that were posted onto the official DISD enrollment web site at https://mydata.dallasisd.org/SL/SD/ENROLLMENT/Enrollment.jsp?SLN=1000 as of 4:37 AM today, 1-18-12.

When a person concerned about dropout rates looks at school enrollment, the first thing you want to compare are freshman and senior enrollment numbers. The smaller the senior enrollment numbers compared to the freshman enrollment numbers, the greater the dropout rate with very rare exceptions. As a school makes progress in lowering their dropout rate, their senior enrollment becomes an ever greater percentage of their freshman class enrollment. This has happened at Sunset and Pinkston High Schools, both high schools who have received Archive Project students since 2006, and then started their own High School level Archive Projects in the years since. See the chart below:

Non-magnet Dallas High School Enrollment as of 1-18-12
One indication of graduation rate standings.
(Right click on above image to enlarge or print.)

Sunset, which received the largest majority of Archive Project Students, stands out significantly above the other DISD non-magnet high schools as having one of the highest graduation rates in Dallas ISD. Five years ago Sunset had one of the lowest graduation rates and highest dropout rates in all of DISD. Only 6 schools were worse, and one of them was Pinkston. Now they both are well above the DISD average shown in the chart above. Sunset now has one of the highest graduation rates and one of the lowest dropout rates for all Dallas ISD non-magnet high schools.

Dallas ISD Enrollment & Graduation Rate History

2012-01-12T07:00:00.000-06:00

The following chart was turned in at a meeting 1-11-12 at the Dallas ISD headquarters. It was a meeting accepting input as to the qualities the Dallas ISD Superintendant to be hired must have. It was recommended all finalists be given a large copy of the following chart, and 15 minutes alone, to study and interpret it:

Right click on the above image to enlarge and/or download the above image.

The applicants would then have to talk about the major achievements and challenges facing DISD as reflected in the spreadsheet. Questions would be asked: What does the chart document about Dallas ISD history? What does it document that must be improved? What improvements now happening must continue? What do you notice on the chart that most administrators would not notice? (On 1-18-12 a posting was made that focuses on the high school that is more responsible than any other in DISD for the graduation rate improvements shown in this chart.)

Any qualified applicant must be able to quickly read and interpret a spreadsheet if decisions within DISD are to truly be data driven. It is a trend that must continue to spread, and be more visible to the public. It is also a trend that must be cautious in dealing with data sets that are too often too narrow, often dangerously narrow!

Dallas ISD History & Progress 1971-2011

2012-01-08T07:28:00.001-06:00

The following chart tracks DISD enrollment and graduation patterns from 1971 to 2011. It documents one view of the civil rights agony in Dallas that is still too close to objectively access. However, graduation rate progress these past 5 years is clearly documented. DISD graduation rates are going up. They are now the highest they have been in over 25 years!

Dallas ISD Enrollment & Graduation History from 1971 to 2011
(Right click on above chart to download and/or enlarge.)

This progress must continue, and accelerate!

Thoughts about the above chart are welcome, especially from those who lived through this dramatic history. bbetzen@aol.com

Finland Educational System leads to students with some of the World's Highest Test Scores

2011-12-30T20:54:00.000-06:00

Pasi Sahlberg is director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?. The following quotes are from an article, from the 12-29-11 Atlantic Monthly, named What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success. It included statements Sahlberg made about Finland students who have had among the highest test scores in the world these past 10 years. The following comes from the article:

"When President Kennedy was making his appeal for advancing American science and technology by putting a man on the moon by the end of the 1960's, many said it couldn't be done," Sahlberg said during his visit to New York. "But he had a dream. Just like Martin Luther King a few years later had a dream. Those dreams came true. Finland's dream was that we want to have a good public education for every child regardless of where they go to school or what kind of families they come from, and many even in Finland said it couldn't be done."

Clearly, many were wrong. It is possible to create equality. And perhaps even more important -- as a challenge to the American way of thinking about education reform -- Finland's experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity.

The problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad.

"More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad."

Well said!

But here in Dallas, and apparently in many locations in the U.S., you will repeatedly hear statements dismissing Finland's experience that include: “These other countries educate just a few and we educate everyone. The sampling procedures are clearly wrong. They are totally homogeneous country. We are very diverse.” If you have heard, or made, such statements you need to read the following article: Is the secret to Finnish schools Finns or is there something for America to learn?

Until the remnants of the "separate but equal" mindset disappear we will not be open to the lessons from Finland. Our children may pay dearly for that failure as they struggle to fit into an expanding international economy.

Open Source Dropout Prevention

2011-11-03T21:48:00.001-05:00

The time has come to update the http://www.studentmotivation.org/ web site and make it much more user friendly. Too much is on the School Archive Project web site, and blog, that is too hard to find. The goal will be to create a truly open source dropout prevention project.

The economic benefit for Texas to cut the dropout rate in half for one year only would be in the billions of dollars! See http://www.all4ed.org/files/Texas_sebps.pdf .

Dallas City Council Redistricting, 5-9-11 Map Update

2011-05-14T11:09:00.000-05:00

(The plan below was updated 5-13-11 and that plan is being submitted formally to the Commission. That final plan can be seen at http://dallasredistricting2011.blogspot.com/

The plan below is left here for anyone interested in the evolution of the final plan.)

==================================

In an effort to reunite Inwood Northwest Homeowners Association, modifications were made by moving the west end of the southern border to District 13 to Lovers Lane. That allowed Midway to become the western boundary to District 13, another step forward in straightening district boundaries. Click on the above map to see a much larger copy. The demographic statistics generated by the above map are copied below from the handout used at redistricting community meetings. Click on the graphic to see a larger copy.

The Dallas City Council Redistricting Map: 05/07/11 version

2011-05-08T09:20:00.005-05:00

This 05-07-11 version of the Dallas City Council Redistricting map reflects the input of many dozens of people. At the same time, gerrymandering continues to be lessened. Here is the statistics page with an explanation for where the design process on this particular map stands. Public input is still needed and critical! Click on this image to make it larger:

Here is the map with the boundary lines shown that give the above statistics for each Dallas City Council District. Again, click on it for a larger copy.

Your questions and comments are welcome. This map must continue to be improved now that it appears to have met the population and ethnic distribution goals for each of the 14 Dallas City Council Districts. Balance will be the challenge as every change needs multiple more changes to achieve balance once again. Please let me know your concerns, especially if you see any errors.

Please also come to one or more of the Dallas City Council Redistricting Committees twice weekly meetings in various places in Dallas. You can find that schedule at http://www.dallascityhall.com/Redistricting/pdf/public_hearings.pdf . There are meetings every Tuesday and Thursday evening from 7 to 9 pm until May 24th. The public is strongly encouraged to attend.

I am in this process only as a private Dallas citizen and only represent myself in these postings. I've seen the damage of gerrymandering in Dallas for too many decades. It must be stopped! Only active citizens, angry enough to vote accordingly, can do that! While our children have been fighting and dying in foreign lands to protect peoples right to democracy, we are letting that same democratic process be damaged constantly right here in Texas. We owe a debt to our children to fix things here in Texas, especially for our children who have already died fighting for democracy elsewhere!

Bill Betzen, bbetzen@aol.com

Dallas City Council Redistricting Map Draft 05/03/11

2011-05-03T23:15:00.003-05:00

(The plan below was updated 5-13-11 and that plan is being submitted formally to the Commission. That final plan can be seen at http://dallasredistricting2011.blogspot.com/

The plan below is left here for anyone interested in the evolution of the final plan.)

=================================

We now have a first draft with statistics that only indicate need for minimal corrections. Here is the map. If you click on it a larger version will appear. Then, if you click on that copy, icons will appear that will allow you to enlarge it much more:

This map shows the basic lines. There will be minor changes made due to the input of the public and from the Redistricting Committee Meetings twice a week. Please send your opinions to bbetzen@aol.com, or post them here, on this blog. Here are statistics and comments that go with the above map:

Dallas City Council Redistricting Process Report

2011-04-27T19:36:00.019-05:00

(The plan below was updated 5-13-11 and that plan is being submitted formally to the Commission. That final plan can be seen at http://dallasredistricting2011.blogspot.com/

The plan below is left here for anyone interested in the evolution of the final plan.)

=================================

The first Dallas City Council Redistricting Committee meeting with the public was 04/26/2011 and went well. About 12 speakers all said basically the same thing: Do Not split my community/do not gerrymander.

Today, after two hours on the Dallas City Council Redistricting Computers, the following initial and very crude map was made:

Please just click on this image to see a larger copy. This is ONLY a draft and needs very much work.

Here is an example of the type of statistics that are produced, and change every time you move population from one district to another.

The above spreadsheet only has data for five of the districts which is a very crude estimate. This is the type data that changes by the minute as you work on your version of the Dallas City Council District maps changing district lines. Go to City Hall and give it a try! Help redesign Dallas to be an ever greater city! See information on the process at http://dallascityhall.com/council_briefings/briefings0810/2011Redistricting_CouncilBriefingFinal_08042010.pdf
The last page at this link has the details on the computers in Dallas City Hall Room L1AN. To schedule an appointment just call the Dallas Redistricting offices at 214-670-5417. The official Dallas City Hall Redistricting web site, complete with a multitude of maps, is at http://www.dallascityhall.com/Redistricting/maps.html

As Dallas City Council Redistricting process evolves we have a priceless lesson for our students in democracy.

2011-04-17T23:26:00.005-05:00

These postings on Redistricting will now, 4-30-2011, be moved to a site dedicated to redistricting. The issues of expanding the high school graduation rate should not loose importance or be confused with redistricting. Go to http://dallasredistricting2011.blogspot.com/ to see more postings on Redistricting for Dallas City Council.
===========================================
The History of Dallas continues to unfold and provides for our Dallas ISD students a priceless lesson in democracy. Like all cities, Dallas has a history of the unequal distribution of power with minorities and the poor being generally under-represented in positions of power. With the greater transparency being provided to processes such as redistricting, that lack of balance is slowly disappearing. You must make your own judgements as to how far we have yet to go. Here is a demographic spreadsheet on the current Dallas City Council makeup and how it corresponds to the demographic makeup of Dallas as reflected in the most recent census:

Here is a second spreadsheet only counting the Dallas City population for those age 18 and above.

If you see an error in either of these spreadsheets please do not hesitate to email bbetzen@aol.com. Accuracy is critical. The data from which these spreadsheets are made is from http://www.dfwinfo.com/ris/census/2010/PL.asp?geo=city&area=19000 .

Unless there are errors in the above spreadsheets, the simple conclusion is that the past decades growth in our Hispanic residents in Dallas has led to a significant imbalance on the Dallas City Council makeup. While that imbalance must be corrected in the redistricting process, unnecessary gerrymandering for partisan purposes will only be counterproductive as has been documented at http://www.studentmotivation.org/GerrymanderedDallas/. We must achive balance without risking the breaking up of our communities of interest. See Texans for Redistricting Reform and this video on youtube produced by the Tea Party in support of A. J. Pate and his methods that minimize gerrymandering, voter confusion, and the resulting voter apathy, while also meeting the Voting Rights Act requirements at the same time.

A report from the Texas House, 11:00 AM, April 1, 2011

2011-04-01T11:08:00.000-05:00

It is a sad day in Texas History to be watching HB 1 slowly move through amendments toward passage. The testimony is heart rending as a minority of legislators work to stop the process of cutting services to public school children, the elderly, and the disabled.

Many groups representing the elderly, the frail, the handicapped, and school children, are all walking about in the halls of the capitol. A few are here in the galleries. But a large group, almost 90% men, all in suits, are standing outside the House chambers in the lobby. I presume they are lobbyists. It appears they may hold the power, not the other groups walking about the capitol mentioned above.

Solution to Texas Deficit Crisis

2011-03-31T05:05:00.002-05:00

After many revisions the message to be used has been reduced to one statement:

A challenge is made for anyone to find an error in this statement. The http://www.texasflattax.com/ site has the data upon which this statement is based.

The cause and a solution for the Texas budget crisis

2011-03-28T23:09:00.007-05:00

After many months, and pages of discussion on how to avoid the painful and damaging cuts in services and education in Texas, there is one conclusion that is repeated more and more often in many different settings throughout Texas. The regressive taxation system in Texas is to blame. Here is one sign that will be seen around the Texas State Capitol during future gatherings:

Is there a more accurate way, in less than 14 words, to describe the cause for the pain and loss that the elderly, disabled, and children of Texas are facing?

The Texas budget would balance without cuts if the rich paid 2/3 of the effective tax rate paid by the poorest 20% of Texans. See www.TexasFlatTax.com.

Final Report Card on Dallas ISD Board Budgeting in 2011: Graduation Rate changes 2012-2016

2011-03-24T10:11:00.017-05:00

On March 24, 2011, the Dallas ISD Board will consider some of the most consequential changes possible relative to future graduation rate progress within DISD. They may take actions to lay off more than 500 teachers.

As indicated on the "Dallas ISD Report Card for 2011 Budgeting" below, the past 5 years have shown record breaking progress in raising the graduation rate within DISD. The DISD Class of 2010 set a 20+ year graduation rate record! Over 50% of the full 9th grade enrollment of 2006-2007 was reflected in the number getting diplomas with the Class of 2010! This is the first time DISD has gone above 50% in this graduation rate measurement in over 20 years! The indicators for the future are that this number will continue to grow at least through 2013! The five measurements used in this graph are as follows:

The ninth grade bulge reduction is the percentage of 8th grade enrollment reflected in 9th grade enrollment. Yes, 9th grade enrollments in Texas are usually much bigger than the 8th grade enrollments. This is the called "the 9th grade bulge," students repeating 9th grade due to poor middle school preparation and support in high school, often until they just drop out. As the bulge shrinks the percentage of 8th grade enrollment reflected in 9th grade enrollment grows, as has been happening for 5 years in DISD.
The percent of last yrs 9th grade in 10th is another indicator of the 9th grade bulge as students leave the 9th grade. As the bulge shrinks this number increases. DISD now has the smallest 9th grade enrollment, and the largest 10th grade enrollment, in over 20 years!
The Promotion Rate is the 12th grade enrollment as a percentage of original full 9th grade enrollment. It is the measurement used by John Hopkins University in their nationally known "Dropout Factory Study." The progress in DISD is wonderful and the number of Dropout Factory high schools in DISD is the lowest in decades.
The Graduation Rate as calculated here is the number of diplomas granted as a percentage of full 9th grade enrollment. It is not to be confused with the "Graduation Rate" numbers given out by both DISD and TEA. Those numbers include corrections from coding by clerks in each school so as to document valid transfers both into and out of our schools. The measurement in this chart only counts full 9th grade enrollment as compared with the full number of diplomas given, with no such corrections by coding clerks.
The Cumulative Promotion Index (CPI) rate calculation, is the most timely and predictive of these five measurements. It is calculated in the identical manner as the Graduation Rate above, using the four transitions toward graduation: 9th to 10th, 10th to 11th, 11th to 12th, 12th to graduation. The difference is that each of the transitions used in the CPI calculation is from a different student group so that all four transitions happen within the same calendar year and not one group spread across 4 years. Consequently the CPI is much more timely with all calculations used reflecting what is happening within the most recent year in a school or school district. It is also more predictive since three of the four groups measured have not yet graduated and will contribute to future graduation rates as well.

Here is the graph reflecting these 5 graduation rate measurements over the last 5 years in DISD. What will this same graph updated 5 years from now with then current data say about the decisions made in 2011 in DISD?

The anticipated loss of hundreds of teachers endangers the progress made over the past 5 years. Hopefully the updates that will be made to this chart in 2016 will not be a report card reflecting declines or setbacks but continued progress.

Graduation rates rise due to the positive relationships of students with teachers. Fewer teachers mean less potential for such positive relationships. Crowded classrooms lower graduation rates.

The ultimate responsibility for this crisis is with the Texas Legislature. The www.TexasFlatTax.com is a record of those issues. A bill now in committee, Texas House Bill 354, could eliminate the deficit by sharing the burdens more equally among all Texans. We have work to do in Austin to protect our students, and the future of Texas.

To see spreadsheets used to create these charts go to www.studentmotivation.org/texas for Excel copies, or study the progress that is demonstrated in the copy below:

Click on the above image to make it larger.

82nd Texas Legislature Report Card on Education

2011-03-19T11:12:00.023-05:00

Texans need to think of ways to evaluate the success of the 82nd Texas Legislature, now in session, regarding the planned budget cuts in education. There are now 4,933,600 children in Texas schools. We have a critical obligation to be vigilant and maintain the wonderful progress of the last 5 years!

Here is a suggested format for one report card on the effects of the budget work of the 82nd Texas Legislature on education. It is a graph of the progress of the past 5 years with space provided to fill in the blanks as these same measurements are documented over the next 5 years. How will the 82nd Legislature do? You may click on the above chart to see a larger image of it, print it out (landscape format), or email it to share with your legislator, or with your friends also working to help communicate the issues with our legislature.

The Excel format 1997-2011 enrollment by grade spreadsheet for all Texas children used in these charts can be downloaded from http://www.studentmotivation.org/texas/.

We must put this crisis in perspective:

The Texas school funding crisis is only the smoke.

Almost 50 years ago I was waiting in a grain truck north of Hereford in a wheat field on my dad's farm. I was waiting for the combine to fill up for the next dump. The smoke I suddenly smelled is like the educational funding crisis! While potentially deadly, the smoke was caused by the fire in the subble in front of the truck. That fire is like the Texas state taxation system. It is the real problem!

You cannot have a state taxation system that taxes the poor at a percentage of their income (12.2%) that is four times the rate (3%) at which the rich are taxed! School funding is only the smoke, deadly, but still just the smoke!

The problem with this analogy is that the Texas state taxation system crisis is nothing new or sudden!

See http://www.texasflattax.com/.

Questions are welcome,
Bill Betzen
bbetzen@aol.com

New Progress in Texas Schools shown by February TEA data release, but will budget cuts end this progress?

2011-03-17T23:51:00.005-05:00

The newest Texas Education Agency enrollment and graduation data for Texas public schools was posted in February on the TEA web site. I have been working today to update the old graph posted only with the enrollment data for last year. With this new data the progress that is happening in Texas schools is more than amply documented. Here is the initial draft of the graph I have made with the new data:

Click on the above chart to see a bigger copy. All four of these measurements tracked in the graph increased from 1.4 to 3.5 percentage points this past year alone with this update! This is wonderful progress for schools representing 4,900,000 students! It is also significant progress on four measurements tracking the most critical factor in our school system, the deadly dropout rate. No single variable contributes more consistently to the crime rate in Texas than the dropout rate.

The probability of this progress continuing is in danger with the currently planned cuts in education funding in Texas. The time is long overdue to correct the state and local taxing systems in Texas. The 20% of families with the lowest incomes pay the highest percentage, 12.2% of their income, in state and local taxes. The richest 100,000 Texan families, the 1% of the state with incomes over $463,000 annually, only pay 3% of their income in state and local taxes. We have a problem! Texas definitely has the money. We only need to decide that education is a priority. See www.TexasFlatTax.com.

Here is a report card to use in helping to communicate the message to legislators that we will be watching for the effects of their current refusal to address equal tax rates for all Texans but instead cutting public education:

If anyone wants a copy of the spreadsheet, and all the numbers used in creating the charts above, please email bbetzen@aol.com. I will continue to work on these charts to make them more useful. Ideas are welcome! Due to the budget crisis here in Texas it is urgent such updates on the wonderful progress in Texas education are known. The damage a 15% cut in funding for education would do to this progress is frightening!

The Rainy Day Fund will help, but a permanent fix to Texas tax inequities is needed

2011-03-16T19:24:00.002-05:00

The funding crisis Texas is facing is much bigger than only school funding, even bigger than the entire $27 billion deficit. This is an ongoing problem, year after year, as Texas tries to get all the money it needs for government, and a nice mansion for the current governor, disproportionately from the poor. The taxes in Texas need to come equally from all income levels so that everyone is paying the same proportion of their income in taxes. What is wrong with that?

If the wealthy paid the same percentage of their income in state and local taxes as the poor, Texas would not have a deficit.

From 6:30 to 9:30 AM this past Monday and Tuesday I stood with this sign at the entry way where legislators slow down to put their card into the reader to open the gate to the underground parking garage. They were polite and many gave strong verbal approval for this sign. Now we need to see action that moves the bills now before legislative committees out to the floor of the House and Senate for a vote. The legislators can fix this crisis by simply practicing equality, all income levels paying their fair share. What is the problem with that? See www.TexasFlatTax.com for details.

Texas Education Budget Cut Crisis

2011-03-11T21:32:00.002-06:00

There is nothing more painful that to have been part of a system that was constantly improving for the past 5 years and to suddenly see that system begin to fight against itself due to pending budget cuts. Texas was constantly improving for the past 5 years, as is clearly indicated by the constantly improving graduation rate data shown in this chart:

Texas must now decide how important the education of the children of Texas is. Is it so important that Texas will consider and discuss the possible addition of as much as 6% in taxes to Texan families making in excess of a half a million dollars a year? Texas is about to have the values of our great state exposed to the nation in a blunt and clear manner that has never happened before. There is no shortcut out of this fact.

Please study the alternatives presented in http://www.texasflattax.com/. They are simple. They will improve Texas forever. Come join us at the demonstrations in Austin this week. Here is the flyer being handed out at the demonstrations in Austin both Saturday and Monday.

Questions are welcomed.

Bill Betzen

214-957-9739 cell

Dallas ISD Board Meeting, children suffering, and Texas HB 354

2011-02-24T23:47:00.011-06:00

The filled-to-capacity Dallas ISD Board meeting this evening was an exceptionally sad event. Fourty speakers addressed the planned loss of teachers in their school, and other budget cut trauma being inflicted by the $27 billion dollar Texas deficit. Children spoke of their loss, of their fear of loosing teachers. I left after about 10 speakers.

It was simply too much. The problem is a state budget deficit. This evening many good and noble parents, children, and citizens were speaking out in attempts to protect the schools they know. To listen to this, while knowing this is only the tip of the iceberg, grew more frightening with every speaker. The same agony is going on in every district in Texas!

What added to that frustration was knowing that the regressive taxation system, one built over the years by Texas politicians directed by paid lobbiests, has led to the human tragedy now unfolding. Unless there are significant changes made in our Texas taxation system such problems will continue.

The http://www.itepnet.org/ web site has a painful two page summary of the state and local tax rates in Texas listed by income level. This information is also addressed in a Dallas Morning News article from November of 2009. It shows that the poorest 20% of families in Texas pay 12.2% of their income toward state and local taxes. The next 20% of families, up to a $31,000 annual income, pay 10.2% of their income in state and local taxes. The most wealthy 1% of families in Texas pay only 3% of their income in state and local taxes.

If these 100,000 most wealthy Texas families, with an average annual income of about $2 million in 2011, were to have their share of the state and local tax burden raised by 5 percentage points, almost $10 billion could be generated to cut the Texas budget disaster nearly in half, even without the Texas Rainy Day Fund! Even with such a change the poorest Texans would still be paying a proportion of their income into state and local taxes that is over 50% higher than the rate paid by the 100,000 most wealthy Texas families! How can you compare the suffering between these two groups?

I've been told repeatedly today that a state income tax this will not happen "in Texas." Are we not telling the truth about what is about to happen to our students, our elderly, and the poor in Texas? Allow those legislators who are willing to protect the rich while allowing 4,800,000 students to suffer to stand up and vote so they can be counted! Transparency is needed! We must know what our legislators are doing. Is this suffering being ignored? Then Texas voters can vote at the ballot box after they have have seen what our schools are like next year after the planned cuts.

Support Texas HB 354 and bring it to discussion, possible amendments, and a vote. Legislators must be counted! Just go to the Texas Legislature online and contact the members of the Ways and Means Committee where the bill is now assigned. They have the power to both add any needed amendments and pass HB 354 to the floor for a vote.

See www.TexasFlatTax.com.

Toward a Texas budget surplus, & more progress in education

2011-02-22T06:18:00.006-06:00

If every Texan paid the same percentage of their income in state and local taxes as are paid by the average cafeteria worker or teacher's aid, then Texas would have a budget surplus to deal with instead of a deficit!

Study regressive taxation and the state and local tax rates by income level in Texas at http://www.itepnet.org/wp2009/tx_whopays_factsheet.pdf . There you will find that the 20% of Texans with the lowest incomes pay 12.2% of their income in state and local taxes. For the next 20% the average percentage paid is 10.3%. The most wealthy 1% of Texans only pay 3% of their income in state and local taxes.

If all Texans paid 10.3% of income in state and local taxes, Texas would have a budget surplus! If that percentage, and more, is not too high for the poorest 40% of families in Texas, why is it too high for the wealthy? If this correction was done with a state income tax, we could also deduct it from from our federal taxes as a federal deduction offset. The federal government would pay part of the cost.

Without such a change, the 4,800,000 children in the public schools of Texas will suffer. They will suffer due to a multitude of state services for children being cut, including school cuts leading to a lower quality of education in more crowded classrooms. This will affect their entire lives, and the future of Texas. What are we allowing to happen in Austin in our name?

See www.TexasFlatTax.com.

Is Texas education progress endangered by missing information?

2011-02-15T21:43:00.005-06:00

According to a spreadsheet provided by the U.S. Census Bureau at www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0445.xls, in Houston, families with $25,000 incomes pay 9.9% of income toward state and local taxes while those with $150,000 incomes pay only 4.4% toward the same state and local taxes.

This is called a regressive tax, one wherein the poor pay a greater percentage of their income than the wealthy. Texas is one of the 10 states with the most regressive tax system in the nation. More details about this pattern begin on page 8 of the report titled "Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States," at http://www.itepnet.org/whopays3.pdf. This study shows on page 102 that Texas requires families in the bottom 20 percent of the income scale to pay more than three-and-a-half times as great a share of their earnings in taxes as families in the top one percent.

I have spoken with about 20 people these past 48 hours about these numbers. All were amazed. The extend of the regressive tax pattern in Texas is not well known by the public. I would welcome information from anyone aware of reports and data showing that the Texas tax system is not as severely regressive as indicated by these numbers. Please email me at bbetzen@aol.com if you know where such information is located online. I will link to it here.

The Texas Legislature is planning to lessen the education resources available to the 4,800,000 children in Texas public schools, and thereby forcing our children to have something less in their educational process. This endangers the education progress Texans have enjoyed these past 5 years. It endangers the future of Texas. We must have all such information, like tax rates related to income level and other details of the regressive tax system in Texas, very visible and publicly known. Let the people know the numbers, and then let them decide what they think of the decisions made in Austin.

Again, please send corrections and/or better sources for such state and local tax rate information for Texas to bbetzen@aol.com. All voters need to know.

Texas Education Progress Survival: DIY students

2011-02-03T11:24:00.016-06:00

Trillions of hours of annual do-it-yourself (DIY) labor are the power behind our nation's ingenuity and growth. DIY work is also the power behind any student's success in middle school, high school, or college.

Until a student takes ownership for their own success in school, with personal goals they claim as their own, DIY efficiency doesn't happen. The process of setting life goals is a more normal process in small town and agrarian settings. It is too often lost in the rush of modern urban settings. If Texas inflicts the currently proposed budget cuts on our students, it will only be with expanding such DIY student efforts that current Texas Educational Progress will survive.

Texas secondary schools do not focus early enough, or strong enough, on the life goals students need to drive such DIY effort. Consequently students too rarely embrace the critical DIY ownership needed for their own education. School is something done to them, not something they understand as a resource toward personal goals. Thus one out of three Texas students drop out, one of the highest dropout rates in the nation!

By middle school the personal goals needed to drive DIY student energy should be expressed and documented. Such goals should be a comfortable topic of conversation. DIY student ownership of the educational process should grow to dominate personal decisions long before high school graduation.

The School Archive Project started in 2005 with a strong focus on long-term goals. That focus, combined with dynamic personal leadership at the schools, has helped liberate the DIY student energy in the targeted high schools. The major high school targeted with this project has seen graduation rates go from 33% to over 60% in 4 years. We are just beginning to see the power of DIY students empowered with strong long term goals.

Putting such goals into written form starts in the School Archive Project with parents writing a letter to their child about their own dreams for their child. That letter is then used by the student in writing a letter to themselves about their own history and goals for the future. Both letters are placed into the same self-addressed envelope, one envelope for each student. That sealed envelope is then placed on the shelf for that class inside the 500-pound vault bolted to the floor in the school lobby. The vault is very visible and seen by students several times every school day, a reminder of the dreams and goals in their letters. It is also a reminder of their planned 10-year class reunion when these envelopes will be opened. That is also when they will be invited to speak with then current students about their recommendations for success. They know to expect questions such as: "What would you do differently if you were 13 again?"

These 10-year class reunions should become a priceless source of feedback for teachers most dedicated to constantly improving their work with each new class of students.

The current Texas educational budget crisis requires new, tax free resources for our schools, including better ways to focus our students onto their own lives. Now is certainly when Texas needs such a low-cost, $1 per student (usually donated), resource as a School Archive Project in every secondary school. Our students must focus by middle school on their own long term goals, and update that focus constantly as they move toward graduation. They must be motivated to work on their own DIY student efforts in order to get the education they will need to be employable in 2020.

Texas Budget Crisis, Education, and Texas Children

2011-01-28T19:54:00.005-06:00

Details of the Texas budget crisis are being revealed more every day. The tragic educational cuts planned are embarrassing! Especially for any Texan who had hoped Texas was finally rising above the bottom place in educational attainment in the U.S.. The wonderful progress over the past decade that is revealed in the chart below will never survive the planned educational cuts.

Knowing the disaster that is about to happen in Dallas ISD, please study this chart closely. The progress shown will not only stop, but the number of children dropping out of our schools may begin to increase again. Think of these numbers as the children they represent, some of the 4,480,000 children attending public schools in Texas.

More details about each of these four measurments are found at http://schoolarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2011/01/four-measurements-of-graduation.html . We must somehow continue this progress!

Texas Education Progress endangered by planned 2011 Budget Cuts

2011-01-22T17:10:00.021-06:00

Any failure to meet the additional costs for public education in Texas, due to inflation and normal student number increases, will end the accelerating progress Texas has enjoyed over the past four years. ( Click Texas Budget Surplus to see how costs could be met.) The failure to meet such cost increases will also endanger the progress projected by the increasingly rapid decrease in the 9th grade bulge found in Texas enrollment patterns. All progress will be in danger if the normal cost increases are not met. But the 11%-13% in cuts recommended in the Legislature will be an educational disaster for Texas children!

Patterns of progress over the past 4 years are clearly illustrated in the spreadsheet below. It is a spreadsheet of enrollment by grade numbers for all Texas public schools. It includes grades from 8th to 12th and graduation numbers from 1997 to 2010. It provides five measurements drawn from these enrollment numbers to track Texas educational progress:

Two measurements in this spreadsheet are related to the 9th grade bulge. They measure it from both incoming and outgoing student numbers. As the percentage of 8th grade enrollment reflected in 9th grade enrollment grows, the bulge is disappearing. As recently as 2008 Dallas ISD had 9th grade enrollments that were over 35% larger than their 8th grade enrollments. Students were "stuck" in the 9th grade, repeating it more than once until they either pass on to 10th grade or dropout. The second "9th grade bulge" related measurement counts the percentages of 9th graders who pass on to 10th grade the next year. In too many school districts the majority of dropouts never make it to the 10th grade. In Dallas ISD we had years as recently as 1999 when less than 60% of 9th grade enrollment was reflected in the next years 10th grade enrollment. This year, 2010-2011, the DISD 10th grade enrollment is over 82% of last year's 9th grade enrollment, the highest percentage on record for recent decades! As the 9th grade bulge disappears dropout rates will continue to go down.

The data above was used to create the following graph on each of the five measurements to more clearly document progress. Notice especially the most recent Cumulative Promotion Index (CPI) measurement clearly illustrated in the graph below for the Class of 2009. This 5.9% CPI is almost double the second strongest improvement (3.2%) for any of the CPI rates that preceeded it in this chart covering 12 years! Texas is headed in the right direction!

The Cumulative Promotion Index (CPI) is a measurement more frequently found in academic circles, but it is a very solid predictive measurement for the direction that graduation rates are going. It takes the measurements from the same four transitions gathered in the graduation rate that normally follows only one group of students over the four transitions toward graduation: 9th to 10th grade, 10th to 11th, 11th to 12th, and 12th to graduation. The CPI takes the measurements from these same four transitions but from four different student groups making those transitions within one 12 month period. Thus the CPI for 2009 measures the transition of the 9th, 10th, and 11th grade classes of 2008-2009 to the next grade in 2009-2010, and the transition of the 12th grade class of 2008-2009 to graduation. The CPI graduation rate measurement is more timely, and also more predictive due to the fact that three of the four groups measured will be graduating at some time in the future.

The projected progress in Texas seen in the 5.9% improvement in the CPI will continue to happen unless there is a significant disruption in the funding of educational services provided to children. To continue the current progress cost increases due to growing student numbers and inflation must be met. But the 13% cut now proposed in the Texas Legislature will be a disaster! It shows no awareness by the lawmakers who are supporting such recommendations of what is happening both in Texas schools, and in the criminal justice system. Where on the priority list for each of these legislators are the children of Texas?

A 5.9% improvement in the Texas graduation rate would mean that over 18,000 more students are receiving a high school diploma. If that were not happening, what would the ultimate cost be to Texas for 18,000 more citizens without diplomas?

The normal high school graduate makes $10,000 more in annual income than the normal high school dropout. With 18,000 more citizens paying taxes as they spent that average $10,000 extra in annual income for 30+ years that would amount to $5.4 billion dollars more in spendable income in Texas. (18,000 x $10,000 x 30 = $5,400,000,000) This 5.4 billion dollars comes from a 5.9% increase in graduation rates being achieved for only one year. Add to that number the savings due to decreased law inforcement, less incarceration, and other social costs saved when students graduate and do not drop out. Money invested in education is the best investment.

Copies of the spreadsheets used in these calculations are available by request. All data used in these calculations come from the TEA web site. Challenges to this data, and these conclusions, are welcome!

Bill Betzen
bbetzen@aol.com
http://www.studentmotivation.org/

Texas Education Progress and 2011 Budget Crisis

2011-01-21T22:05:00.005-06:00

The currently proposed education budget reductions of 13% now being considered in the Texas House of Representatives will have terrible consequences! There are 4,850,000 children in the public schools of Texas. The current recommendations, if followed, would amount to one teacher, or other school employee, loosing their job for every 50 public school children in Texas.

Such drastic cuts would certainly have a very negative affect on education in Texas!

Below is one record of the progress made by our children in Texas over the past dozen years. It is an enrollment by grade spreadsheet for all the public school children in Texas showing their progress toward graduation. (Click on the spreadsheet to make it larger.) Significant improvements have happened during these years:

This spreadsheet clearly shows wonderful progress by our children. Yes, the percentage of 9th graders who are getting a diploma within 4 years is embarrasingly low, only 67.4 percent by the most recent numbers available for the Class of 2009. But that is a 5% improvement from 8 years before. Please notice that in all major categories Texas is improving! Also, it is indicated that more improvements were on the way. The notorious 9th grade bulge, where 9th graders get stuck repeating the 9th grade, and too often just drop out, is shrinking. That indicates that the graduation rate in two years will continue to rise. As dropout rates go down so do crime rates. But, with this dramatic budget cut, and the loss of teachers, will this progress continue to happen? (Please email bbetzen@aol.com if you want a copy of this Excel spreadsheet to work with. Data is all from the TEA web site.)

There are many issues. Public availability online of itemized budgets for every publicly funded service in Texas should be mandatory. This includes every school and school district, as well as roads, medical funding and all other services paid for by taxes. All the details should be easy to locate and understand online so the public can see how their money is spent. They certainly should voice opinions on cuts to make, or else decide on how to provide better for our children and find the money/resources needed.

Texas has constantly been improving the education of our children. That can continue if we make the needed sacrifices. What else in the budget could more directly change the future of Texas than investments, or the failure to invest, in our children?

Four Measurements of Graduation Progress in Dallas ISD 1996-2011

2011-01-17T19:35:00.018-06:00

Understanding the true graduation rate in Dallas ISD is critical to understanding what is happening to Dallas children. The first draft of the graph below was produced over a year ago to help clarify the issues relating to graduation rates. It tracks four critical measurements related to graduation rates within DISD. Now, with this 2011 version, each measurement is updated with one more year of data. The ongoing progress by DISD is shown in this graph. Each measurement improved a minimum of 4.3 percentage points to as much as 9.4 percentage points!

These are the four measurements used in this chart:

The percent of the previous year's 9th grade enrollment reflected in this year's 10th grade enrollment is a way to track the notorious "9th grade bulge." This "bulge" is an inflation of 9th grade enrollment caused by students who are "stuck" in the 9th grade, repeating it until many of them simply drop out. This bulge goes down as a greater percentage of each 9th grade's enrollment moves to the 10th grade. The shrinking of this bulge is a predictor for higher graduation rates. In the past the majority of students who dropped out of DISD were those students who also never made it to even enroll in the 10th grade. That is now changing with the largest 10th grade enrollments in history happening in 2010-2011!
The promotion rate is a measurement of the percentage of students who successfully make the first three transitions in high school: going from 9th to 10th, 10th to 11th, and 11th to 12th. It is a measurement used in many national studies, such as the John Hopkins University "Dropout Factory" study. It is used due to the difficulty of securing consistent graduation information from each high school across the nation. The 2007 John Hopkins University study declared all 21 non-magnet high schools in Dallas as part of the 2000 schools in the U.S. to be "Dropout Factories" with promotion rates of 60% or below from 2004 to 2006. Now 1/3 of these DISD schools are no longer "Dropout Factories." More progress is anticipated due to the current 70+% reduction of the "9th grade bulge." That reduction improves the potential that more students will be making it to 12th grade and on to graduation.
The graduation rate used in the chart is the percentage of full 9th grade enrollment reflected in enrollments for each of the three transitions mentioned above, plus the number of diplomas represented in the final transition from 12th grade to actual graduation. Please note that this graduation rate percentage has been growing more rapidly than the promotion rate since 2007. That indicates that more students are passing the relatively recent hurdles presented in the final year of school with more rigorous state testing since 2004. This is very positive progress!
The CPI rate calculation is the Cumulative Promotion Index used in academic circles as a more timely measurement of the progress being made in a school system. It takes the four transitions of the graduation rate described in number three above and compresses them into one 12 month time frame involving four different student groups. For the Class of 2010 the CPI was made up of the percentage of freshmen failing to transition that year (2009-2010) to be sophomores the next school year (2010-2011), the percentage of sophomores who failed to transition that year to be juniors the next year, the percentage of juniors who failed to transition that year to be seniors the next year, and finally the percentage of seniors who failed to graduate with the Class of 2010. That sum, subtracted from 100%, is the CPI. The CPI is a more predictive measurement because it measures the percentages of students-yet-to-graduate who have already successfully managed three of the four transitions counted in a graduation rate. If a CPI measurement is going down it is a warning signal as well for worse dropout rates to come. In this case DISD has reason to celebrate as the CPI is going up! We must then keep working for an ever higher graduation rate.

If anyone wants copies of the spreadsheets and data sources used to create this chart, please email bbetzen@aol.com. Critical readings of the data are welcome! All data comes from publicly available sources, mostly TEA. The only data no longer easy to locate online are the enrollment by grade counts for DISD schools as of 11-05-10. These were used as the source for current enrollment numbers for the 2010-2011 school year. They are probably the most error prone of any numbers used to create this chart. They are still probably well over 99% accurate as a projection of the "official" enrollment counts that should appear on the TEA web site within the next 4 months.

Graduation rate progress by area in Dallas ISD

2011-01-16T21:22:00.020-06:00

Dallas media has often written stories giving false impressions that the dropout problems in Dallas are on the south side of Dallas. In 2008 that presumption was documented as being false! That year the promotion rate, and potential for graduation, for high school students continued to be higher in the 9 Oak Cliff DISD high schools than in the 6 North Dallas DISD high schools. That was the third year that was true. The difference had grown to one of 10.1 percentage points in 2007-08!! The 9 Oak Cliff high schools had 10.1% more of their 9th graders making it to12th grade! This measurement is called the promotion rate.

The promotion rate is composed of the first 3 transitions of the 4 transitions that combine to make the full "graduation rate." The promotion rate combines the transitions from 9th to 10th, 10th to 11th, and 11th to 12th. The last step toward actual graduation is not included in the promotion rate calculation. That fourth step with graduation data is hard to collect nationally on a consistent basis state to state. Thus, progress in raising the promotion rate only points toward graduation rates also going up and is not an absolute predictor. But it has been an accurate predictor for the DISD graduation rate progress in recent years.

The 9 Oak Cliff high schools in Dallas ISD continue to hold the lead over the other areas of Dallas ISD with the highest combined promotion rate in 2010-2011. They have the highest percentage of their 9th grade enrollment reflected in the full ultimate enrollment for the 12th grade three years later. However, they are only 3/10ths of one percent in front of the 6 North Dallas high schools. It is possible that in 2011-2012 North Dallas will pull in front of Oak Cliff for the first time in 8 years. This competition and progress is good news for all of Dallas. In this process the promotion rates for all areas of DISD have gone up 4 percentage points, or more, this year! Look at the chart below to see how all of DISD is improving.

Copies of the spreadsheets used to create the above graph are available.
Please email bbetzen@aol.com.

Sadly, promotion rates are the only calculations possible by school from the online TEA database. Due to lack of such consistent graduation data nationwide, it is the measure the national John Hopkins University "Dropout Factory" study was forced to revert to using, and which has been repeatedly mis-interpreted as a "graduation rate" by the press nationwide. The TEA online database, and all similar state accountability systems in the nation, must provide graduation numbers by school.

Annual enrollment data, combined with graduation data, should also be placed annually into one multi-year spreadsheet for each school and school district so as to show student movement. This only amounts to the annual collection of 16 numbers: Early Education, Pre-K, Kindergarten, the 12 grades, and the number of diplomas granted that year. These 16 numbers collected for each school and school district each year, and added to the same spreadsheet each year, would lead to a revolution in public accountability and transparency. Seeing the patterns these 16 numbers form, when placed into the same spreadsheet with the same 16 numbers for each year going back 20+ years, can tell you more about a school or a school district than any other single sheet of paper. Such spreadsheets help parents and politicians to better understand the meaning of a "20% dropout rate" claim when 50% of the 9th grade enrollment three years earlier is missing at graduation for that acclaimed "20% dropout rate" class. Such spreadsheets may eliminate such misleading dropout rate claims.

Such transparency is mandatory! It is leads to public accountability that is long, long, overdue. It makes it harder to hide children who are "missing at graduation." It helps people know that questions need to be asked.

Sunset High School made Dallas ISD Class of 2010 graduation rate record possible

2011-01-06T22:35:00.010-06:00

The Dallas ISD Class of 2010 set a graduation rate record going back over 20 years. The 6,984 diplomas given out in 2010 represent 49.6% of the full 9th grade class enrollment from four years earlier, when that enrollment was 14,079. This measurement of graduation rate has not been higher than 49.6% in over 20 years. (The measurements used in this calculation are not to be confused with the TEA graduation rate calculations, the AYP calculations, nor the Cumulative Promotion Index measurement for graduation rates.)

However, when you remove the tremendous progress made by Sunset High School in Oak Cliff, this wonderful 20+ year record almost disappears to only a 6 year record. The 49.6% DISD graduation rate goes down to 48.9%.

Sunset High School has made over a 150% increase in their graduation rate since the Class of 2000! The large majority of this progress was achieved since the Class of 2006, as shown in the graph below. This report is a comparison of Sunset progress with the progress within all of the rest of Dallas ISD, without Sunset. Just click on the image to see a larger copy.

It appears that almost all the progress within Dallas ISD is happening within Sunset based on this chart. While it is certain this is not true due to the wonderful progress eliminating the 9th grade bulge throughout DISD, it is certain that Sunset is a leader among the 40+ high schools in DISD. Below is an enrollment by grade chart for Sunset going back to 1997 which clearly shows the 9th grade bulge has virtually disappeard this year at Sunset. When both Sunset and Greiner Middle School, the other middle school feeding into Sunset, started their own School Archive Projects the summer of 2009, that meant that all students at Sunset were getting that forward looking and planning experience twice at a minimum.

Hopefully this progress within Sunset is being studied by Dallas ISD, and the results of those studies will be shared with the public. The reasons for this tremendous progress need to be known. This dramatic progress must be repeated in all DISD non-magnet high schools.

Most of the data from which this chart was made is available at http://www.studentmotivation.org/DallasISD.htm, and on the "DISD Stats by School" pages linked from that page. Questions about this data are welcome. Copies of more recent spreadsheets, used in these calculations but not yet online, will gladly be shared. Just email bbetzen@aol.com.

School Archive Project 2010 Annual Report

2010-12-29T19:51:00.031-06:00

Year 6 of School Archive Project shows real progress!!

Click on the above chart to see a larger copy, download, and/or print a copy.

Dallas ISD set a 20 year graduation rate record in 2010. The high school which contibuted the most to this progress, out of the 40+ high schools in Dallas ISD, is also the high school which received the large majority of School Archive Project students. DISD had an 9 percentage point graduation rate increase from 2007 to 2010. (Improvements are summarized in a 12-13-10 opinion piece published in the Dallas Morning News as “A teacher's report card on Michael Hinojosa.”) However, Sunset's graduation rate went up 25 percentage points during the same 2007-2010 period within which DISD improved "only" 9 percentage points.
The School Archive Project has gone from starting in one school in 2005 to now being in 7 schools at the end of 2010: two high schools, four middle schools, and one elementary school.
The money donated to install ten School Archive Project vaults is almost gone. The Dallas Educational Foundation (http://www.dallaschamber.org/index.aspx?id=DallasEducationFoundation) needs more donors to replenish the School Archive Project Fund. This fund provides a $1,500 grant to each DISD school starting a School Archive Project. Over 3,000 DISD students a year are now writing letters to themselves planning for their own futures. These letters are placed by the students into the vault bolted to the floor in their school lobby where the letters stay for the next decade. This 3,000 number needs to grow ten-fold so that more DISD students are actively involved in documenting plans for their own futures.
Sunset High School, which has received the majority of School Archive Project students since 2005, has gone from one of the lowest average graduation rates within DISD, only 34% (2000 to 2007), to one of 60% for the Class of 2010, which is over 11 percentage points higher than the DISD average. Sunset will have a graduation rate of 70% by 2013 based on current patterns reflected in their spreadsheet below. Sunset High School received a dynamic principal, Tony Tovar, about the time that the School Archive Project started. He gathered many talented staff and well designed programs into Sunset, including starting a high school version of the Archive Project with their own vault in 2009. The other middle school feeding into Sunset, Greiner Middle School, started it's own Archive Project the summer of 2009 as well. (Click on the "DallasISD Graduation Rate Progress" chart above to enlarge it and study the details of the dramatic progress happening, especially since 2009!)
The most significant modification of the Archive Project happened in 2010. Parents now start the letter writing process for their child by writing a letter to their child. They write about their dreams for their child. The student then reads and uses this letter to help write their own letter to themselves about their dreams and plans for the future. Both letters go into the same self-addressed envelope that the student then places into the vault for the next decade. It is certain these 10-year class reunions will be even more powerful for former students due to the priceless additional letter from their parents that will be waiting, with their own letter, in the School Archive.

The Archive Project progress has been accelerating and expanding. The 60% graduation rate is cause for celebration! Now to go far beyond it!

The dedication of the volunteer staff running the School Archive Projects in each school is to be acknowledged and honored. Each school has from one teacher to a team of such volunteers who run the Archive Project. They alone allow for the low $1 per student Archive Project cost.

We still need to get university-based research started into the validity of the dramatic achievements that appear to be happening in association with the School Archive Project. Hopefully such research will start in 2011 as the number of students reached by School Archive Projects continues to increase.

Please make a donation to the Dallas Educational Foundation if you would like to help more schools start a School Archive Project. This can be done at http://www.dallaschamber.org/index.aspx?id=DallasEducationFoundation. You may also simply contact your local school and offer to directly finance their starting a School Archive Project. A 500-pound vault can be delivered and installed for about $1,100 to function as the time-capsule. The school only needs one or more volunteer teachers to run the project, teachers who would love to encourage student writing and planning for their own futures. Teachers who would most love to see their students again in 10 years are recommended.

"Dropout factory" definition error by Dallas Morning News & other media

2010-12-03T22:33:00.014-06:00

A major error in the definition of “dropout factory” is being made by many news organizations across the US leading to significant errors in judgement regarding actual progress. That error mistakenly included in the "Dropout Factory" definition the last of the four critical steps high school students make on their way to graduation, the move from 12th grade to actually getting a diploma. The "Dropout Factory" definition only counts the first three moves: 9th to 10th, 10th to 11th, and 11th to 12th. It does not count the move to graduation as graduation data is very difficult to consistently secure on a national basis. This fact, combined with monumental increases in the Texas 12th grade dropout rate since 2006 due to raising graduation standards, is the reason that Texas, while leading the nation in loosing 77 "Dropout Factories," still had a decrease in the Texas graduation rate of 0.4%.

In Dallas this error was made by the Dallas Morning News on 12-4-10. That error can be found online with the posting of “Hits and Misses” . That posting includes the following statements: "The state has considerably fewer "dropout factories" than eight years ago. That's the result released this week by America's Promise Alliance and several other organizations that have studied dropout patterns across the country. In 2002, 240 Texas high schools qualified as dropout factories, meaning that 60 percent or fewer of their students graduated."

The "dropout factory" term was defined John Hopkins University in their historic 2007 study. It does NOT refer to schools wherein "60 percent or fewer of their students graduated." It only counts students who make it from 9th grade to 12th grade, not those who graduate.

On page 24 of the “Building a Grad Nation report," linked from http://www.americaspromise.org/Our-Work/Grad-Nation/Building-a-Grad-Nation.aspx , the definition of “dropout factory” is clearly given. Graduation data is much harder to collect on a national scale and therefore was not used in the “dropout factory” definition. Instead that definition is based on the "promotion rate." That is the percentage of 9th grade enrollment reflected in the 12th grade enrollment three years later.

For Texas, in 2002, 2003 and 2004, almost all seniors graduated. This change in definition by the Dallas Morning News makes little difference in such years. Only 0.7% of the original 9th grade enrollment were missing for the Class of 2002. Those years the 12th grade enrollment and the number of diplomas given out in Texas were almost equal. In 2004 Texas actually gave out about 800 more diplomas that it had 12th graders listed as enrolled. Those are the numbers reflected in the TEA (Texas Education Agency) data base. (See this history and data in a spreadsheet of Texas State Enrollment by Grade just over half way down the page at http://www.studentmotivation.org/DallasISD.htm.)

By 2008 in Texas this situation had dramatically changed. Texas had wisely implemented more meaningful graduation requirements. By 2008 the percentage of senior enrollment “missing at graduation” had gone up over 10-fold from 0.7% to 7.85%! Thus 21,485 Texas seniors of the 273,606 seniors in the Class of 2008 were “missing at graduation.” These dropouts are not counted by the “dropout factory” definition erroneously being used by the Dallas Morning News and other media. (Statistical data used in these calculations is secured from the Texas Education Agency web site at http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/adhocrpt/Standard_Reports.html .) That is why this newest America's Promise study reports on page 27 that, in spite of Texas leading the nation with 77 fewer "dropout factories," Texas had a graduation rate that went down 0.4% from 2002 to 2008, instead of going up.

Yes, Texas is still making progress. We now have more accurate data available. We also must have the more demanding standards for graduation that were implemented after 2004. But we are not making progress when the media are less than precise in the way they report on that progress and the data available. We must practice the same accuracy we want our students to master. The Dallas Morning News needs to correct this error.

It needs to be emphasized that this error by the Dallas Morning News is repeated across the US by several other news organizations. Too many news media staff are not familiar with the definitions involved. This is another issue we face in the battle fighting very real, and very high, dropout rates across the nation.

Dallas ISD progress fighting the 9th grade bulge is surpassing rest of Texas

2010-11-25T20:09:00.007-06:00

Dallas ISD progress lowering the 9th grade bulge is about to go below that rate for the rest of Texas. If you measure the 9th grade bulge as the percentage increase in enrollment from 8th to 9th grade, then Dallas ISD has gone from a bulge of 41% to one that is 11.9% this year. During this same time period the same measurement for the entire state has gone from 19.9% to 14.1% as of last year. This years Texas measurement is not yet available. Here is the chart reflecting that progress:

The above chart was made from this data:

The progress has been most significant the past 6 years when it went from 34.3% in 2005/06 to 11.9% as of 2010/11. This issue was described in detail at http://schoolarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2010/10/9th-grade-bulge-is-disappearing-from.html which was posted October 14th.

The above chart shows that DISD may be about to surpass the rest of the state if you look at the enrollment by grade records for the entire state of Texas.

Questions, and especially challenges about these conclusions are welcome. If anyone wants to see the spreadsheets used to generate this chart please email bbetzen@aol.com. The spreadsheets used to generate the numbers used in the above chart will gladly be shared. A critical reading of this information is needed. All the original data comes either from the TEA web site or from the Dallas ISD web site. It was placed into spreadsheets and the above numbers calculated. Such charts should be created for all schools and school districts in Texas. It would significantly increase public confidence in what our schools are doing, or else point out the problems we must face eventually, with or without such a warning.

Dangerous omission from the "21st Century City Conference" at Dallas City Hall on 11/12/10

2010-10-31T10:34:00.013-05:00

The plans for the 21st Century City Conference, on November 12, 2010 at Dallas City Hall, paint a wonderful view of our city, but leave out our schools!

As you search online and read the press releases for the conference, they build on the statement on the Conference web site: "The 21st Century City Conference addresses the enormous shift taking place in the way we build out our cities. We seek a more humane city, one that allows for the complexities of diverse lifestyles while offering serene and quiet places that feed the soul. We want a city that is vibrant and alive and we want, once again, to learn from nature."

That sounds great, but how do we prepare the people who will be our citizens for most of the 21st Century?

An atmosphere for planning the next century within which such an omission of public education happens may help explain why less than 50% of the full Dallas ISD 9th grade enrollment are ever represented in the number of diplomas given out four years later. This atmosphere is not new. This graduation rate has been below 50% well over 20 years! The good news is that in spite of it the percentage of those graduating DISD schools is improving! It almost broke 50% with the Class of 2010, and will break that 20+ year old barrier with the Class of 2011!

While improvement is good to see, we still have a major crisis. It is a complex crisis that at least needs to be mentioned at any "21st Century City Conference" about Dallas. These students, and the many who drop out of school, are the future taxpayers, workers, inmates, and leaders in Dallas. We need fewer inmates and more workers and leaders.

Remember, only a small fraction of that minority who actually graduate DISD high schools are prepared for college work. We have a long way to go. We must make education more of a central part of life in Dallas for everyone. It should be an identified part of any conference planning for the next century.

Any discussion of the future design and architecture of Dallas that does not include at least a mention of school design in the conference plans is missing what is probably THE major building block for the future. Attention must be given to having school buildings that are centrally located in their communities, well designed, and built following the highest standards of sustainability. Dallas should never again have newly built schools with leaking roofs within 10 years!

The 21st Century City Conference plans speak about seeking "a more humane city." Such advances for Dallas will never happen if public schools are not included in the search!

Any potential stirred by “Waiting for Superman” dies without school transparency.

2010-10-30T18:24:00.010-05:00

On 10-28-10 State Representative Eric Johnson of Dallas, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and Big Thought, along with many others concerned about our Dallas schools, sponsored a showing of “Waiting for Superman.”

It was a very good evening. The most critical reality that emerged that evening, after the obvious that "something must be done," was that before any long lasting progress happens in our schools they all must provide complete public transparency related to student enrollments by grade, demographics of all children served, and monies spent.

Such data must be easy to locate on every school and school district web site. It must include information that is already easily available in every schools' records. It only needs to be made public. It should include student enrollment by grade, including graduation numbers. Such data must be reported annually and go into one large spreadsheet covering a minimum of 10 years of history. Four measurements of the graduation rate and student movement should be calculated on the spreadsheet and then graphed annually to illustrate progress, as reflected in this graph for Dallas ISD:

http://www.studentmotivation.org/DallasISD.htm#graph

Once school culture becomes aware that such numbers will be made public, changes in priorities will evolve. More work will happen to motivate students to stay in school and succeed.

Such transparency will be a central tool for the supermen and women who are already working to save our schools. With it they will be able to assess how bad things are, create solutions, like the School Archive Project, and then follow the progress year by year as things improve, or as design changes are needed in any project.

Hopefully here in Texas, due to the data already publically available on the Texas Education Agency web site, we can have much of this information more quickly available for every school and school district. The major thing missing on the TEA web site is a simple multi-year spreadsheet for every school and school district. If all goes well, a legislative remedy will be possible within the year.

Encouraging early voting in Dallas - with a message for our students.

2010-10-20T19:05:00.011-05:00

This photo was taken 4:30 PM, 10-20-10, at Clarendon/Westmoreland intersection in Dallas. The sign directs people to Martin Weiss Recreation Center for early voting.


It is never right for a teacher to tell their students for whom they themselves are voting. However, such questions are a priceless opportunity for a teacher to speak of the power of the vote. This is a time to talk of the absolute necessity that people in positions of authority never try to influence those over whom they have authority regarding such a precious right. It is also a time to speak of the absolute necessity for every adult citizen to vote and be involved in the decisions made in our democracy. This afternoon many of my students saw me with the above sign as I worked about two miles from our school to encourage Dallas citizens in voting early. This work was near the closest early voting location in our area, a location that is not marked from the nearby 6-lane road. Hopefully these efforts during Dallas early voting will send the right message. Free choice is priceless! We must educate ourselves to best preserve our ability to choose. We must vote based on reasoned choices for our democracy to work!

Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah & question to anticipate: “What were we thinking?”

2010-10-17T10:40:00.005-05:00

Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah wrote a powerful article, originally printed in the Washington Post, that was re-printed today in the Dallas Morning News: "Accepted now, unforgivable later."

He asked a critical question for the future as we will look back on what we are now allowing to happen: "What were we thinking?" We need to be asking such questions now. Much suffering could be avoided!

While Professor Appiah listed four "contenders for future moral condemnation," he left out our nation's high school dropout rate. The scandalous reality is that in 2010 less than 70% of our U.S. students are finishing high school within 4 years? This disaster certainly merits being a contender for future moral condemnation. In too many urban school districts the graduation percentage is even less than 50%!

In 20 years hopefully graduation rates will significantly improve so we can be looking back at current numbers and exclaim: “What were we thinking!”

It is such a “What were we thinking?” question that is at the heart of the most successful dropout prevention efforts. In 2005 the School Archive Project was started at a Dallas ISD middle school. It started with the bolting of a 350-pound vault to the school lobby floor to function as a time capsule. It holds letters parents write to their child about their dreams for their child, and a second letter written by that student to themselves about their own dreams and goals. Both these letters are placed by the student into one self-addressed envelope that will be retrieved at the class 10-year reunion. Students know that at this same reunion they will be invited to speak to the then current 8^th grade students about their recommendations for success. They are warned to be prepared for questions such as “What would you do differently if you were 13 again?”

As Professor Appiah says: “… we'll be better off for anticipating the question.”

That has been proven in the School Archive Project.

The first high school that began getting most of the School Archive Project students in 2005 had averaged a 34% graduation rate from 2000 through 2007. Then the graduation rate began to go up! By the time the Class of 2010 graduated the graduation rate had risen to over 60% due to this future focus and other improvements!

The Archive Project began to spread in 2009 due to the results being seen, and the negligible cost since such letter writing fits easily within normal lesson plans. Now six larger, 500-pound vaults have been bolted to the lobby floors in 6 more Dallas ISD schools. Such a vault in a place of honor, with hundreds of letters being archived each year in it, and passed many times every day by all students, sends a constant reminder of the need to work and plan for the future. Ten-year class reunion planning changes the student perspective about the passing of time.

The power of focusing on the future, and questions of accountability, will change our culture more than anything money can buy. That is the power of preparing every child to answer, 10 years after middle school, that priceless question:

“What would you do differently if you were 13 again?”

9th grade bulge is disappearing from Dallas ISD enrollment, and the number of boys compared to girls is more balanced

2010-10-14T19:16:00.016-05:00

Beginning with the Dallas ISD enrollment for 2005/2006 the 9th grade enrollment bulge began to go down.

For the decade ending with the 2005/2006 school year the 9th grade enrollment had averaged over 14,700 students. Meanwhile the average 8th grade enrollment had only been 11,025. This made the "9th grade bulge rate" to be 33.3% more students than were in the average 8th grade class for DISD during these years. This was caused by students being poorly prepared for high school who then repeated the 9th grade in exceptionally large numbers. The bar chart below illustrates this pattern in Dallas ISD, a pattern repeated in most school districts in Texas. For all of Texas, from 1997 to 2008, the average "9th grade bulge rate" was 18%.

http://www.studentmotivation.org/DallasISD.htm

The above bar chart illustrates the 9th grade bubble/bulge which is now less than half as severe as the above graph indicates. With the Dallas ISD enrollment as of 10-14-10, taken from https://mydata.dallasisd.org/SL/SD/ENROLLMENT/Default.jsp, the "33.3% bulge" of the decade prior to 2005/2006, has been lowered to below 12% with the current 20010/2011 enrollment! This is a significant reflection of the reasons our dropout rates are going down! Below is the graph showing this progress by year:

In the process of the above documented progress, the number of girls related to the number of boys has also become significantly more balanced combined with the lowering of the dropout rate.

The 9th grade enrollment for Dallas ISD in 2004-2005, as reflected in the TEA data base online, shows that 52.7% of 9th grade enrollment was male. This was probably mostly due to the higher retention rate for boys. That was 6 years ago. As of 10-14-2010 the current Dallas ISD enrollment indicates that only 51.7% of the 9th grade enrollment is male. This represents a 41% improvement. The 5.4 percentage point difference between the male and female numbers in 2004/2005 is now lowered 41%, to a 3.2 percentage point difference as of the 10-14-2010 enrollment.

The 12th grade enrollment change is even more significant. In 2004/2005 the 12th grade enrollment was only 45.9% male in Dallas ISD. Since then the male 12th grade enrollment has grown to 48.2% of the senior class enrollment as of 10-14-2010. Thus the 8.2 percentage point spread between male and female senior class enrollment from the years before 2005/2006 has shrunk 61% within the past 5 years to a spread of only 3.6%. This 61% improvement within 5 years, in equalizing the balance between the number of boys and girls, is significant progress!

The dropout rate progress in Dallas ISD is positively affecting many factors in the lives of our students, and in the life in our city. The many positive results from lowering the DISD dropout rate will be much more valuable to our city that any other single civic improvement that is possible.

(Since the above post it was discovered that progress in Dallas ISD is now moving it in front of the average schools in the state of Texas relative to the 9th grade bulge. See http://schoolarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2010/11/dallas-isd-progress-fighting-9th-grade.html )

Rosine Smith Sammons Lecture In Media Ethics: Jim Lehrer

2010-10-07T06:43:00.003-05:00

Last night at SMU was fascinating! Jim Lehrer spoke about history in Dallas and many events directly related to media ethics. All seats in Caruth Auditorium were taken with chairs on the stage for the overflow! His covering of Dr. Martin Luther King's trip to Dallas in 1968 was exceptionally instructive.

However, just as amazing was to survey online media and blogs this morning and to find only one short tweet about last nights lecture: 'Final words: "I am not in the entertainment business" Jim Lehrer#sammons'

Why is so little online coverage/discussion given to this powerful snapshot of Dallas History? It appears that the sometimes painful exploration of history may have failed while other "entertainment" wins.

Dallas students have no time to be waiting for Superman

2010-09-29T22:35:00.008-05:00

Dr. Hinojosa will be staying in Dallas. That is good. If he can continue, and maybe even accelerate, the progress of his first five years, he may achieve that status of "Superman."

Graph is from http://www.studentmotivation.org/DallasISD.htm#graph .

But Dr. Hinojosa knows that the real super heroes are our students. It is the students who do the needed work to achieve graduation, often with honors while living in poverty with very difficult family situations. DISD must motivate and support them. With an ever increasing transparency as to what is happening within DISD, combined with an active district-wide focus by students on their own futures, DISD will see this progress continue.

Our students have no time to wait for a super hero. Their future is being formed now! Progress must happen now. There can be no "waiting for Superman."

Dallas Mexican American Historical League (DMAHL): 2010 Texas State Fair Exhibit & Presentations

2010-09-25T21:53:00.017-05:00

On 9-25-10 an exceptionally positive presentation was given at the DMAHL exhibit in the Nature & Science Museum on the State Fair Grounds. The first four Hispanic members of the DISD school board spoke of the individual years they served on the board during the years since 1969. It was an exceptionally powerful exchange of ideas and history. This was the first time these four pioneers had ever all sit down together to discuss this shared history as DISD School Board members. In addition to being a reflection of DISD history, this was a powerful affirmation of growing up Hispanic and pushing for equal rights, a process still evolving.

Below is the schedule for the next few weeks of the Texas State Fair for DMAHL presentations, including today's presentations and the names of the speakers. All presentations are being video-taped for the archives of the Dallas Mexican American Historical League, and hopefully will be available to the public through the www.dmahl.org web site now under construction. These State Fair presentations are open to the public and scheduled on the second floor of the Nature and Science Museum at Fair Park, near the DMAHL exhibit. More exhibit details are at
http://www.natureandscience.org/exhibits/crozier_tech.asp .

Dallas Mexican American Historical League
Speaker Forums - 2010 State Fair

Crozier Tech High: The Mexican American Experience 1940's to 1970's

Sept 24, 2010, Sat. - 1pm DISD Historical Reflections

Former School Board Members

Trini Garza 1969-1970, 1991-1994

Roberto Medrano 1974-1986

Rene Castilla 1986-2005

Jose Plata 1995-2001

Sept 30^th, Thurs - 1pm 1940's – The Greatest Generation – Remembering Crozier Life -

Our men leave to war

1940's Alumni

Philip Revillas

Anita N. Martinez

John Zapata Gonzales

October 3^rd, Sun – 1pm The Tri Ethnic Committee 1971 Desegregation Court Order

Rene Martinez

Trini Garza

Frank Hernandez

Oct 7^th, Thur – 1pm 1950's – The Silent Majority – Tech guidance counselors created the workforce

1950's Alumni

Jerry Maldonado
Robert Miramontes
Pedro Aguirre
Cipriano Munoz
Rev. Isabel Gomez
Rafael Gomez

Oct 9^th, Sat – 1pm Mike Gomez – Pursuing acting “Milagro Beanfield”

Oct 14^th, Thur – 1pm 1960's – The Baby Boomers – The Rebel Wolves/Civil Rights – Vietnam

1970's – The “Me” Generation – Crozier Closes, Trade vs Technology

1960's & 1970's Alumni

Mary Bocanegra

Gloria Velasquez

Frances Rizo

Tom Lazo

Armando Esquivel

Richard Medrano

Alejandro Oballo

Luis Sepulveda

Johnny Moa

October 16^th

The History of The Bill Harrod Church

Elsa Cadena

Olga Uribe

Benita Villa

October 17^th

My Time with Jack Ruby

Richard “ Chick” Ramirez Tech Alumni

No Las Vegas Gamble

2010-09-24T05:59:00.004-05:00

While we are in the middle of the Michael Hinojosa job application for superintendent in Las Vegas, one thing is certain, most students in both Dallas and Las Vegas are not watching. What are students worried about? Their interests go to the millions of issues created by social networks and advertising media that occupy the evenings and weekends of our children: video games, movies, purchases, passing time with friends and family, and occasionally some study.

Our goal as teachers is to tilt those millions of interests so that school work and study gain in popularity. Without a more realistic vision of their futures by our students, that will never happen.

It is not a gamble to spend more energy and time focusing our students onto their own lives 10 years into the future. Until that future vision is more real, until students can easily and credibly talk about it by the time they are finishing middle school, cities like Dallas and Las Vegas will both continue to have only about half of their students graduating high school within 4 years.

Hopefully somewhere, someday, a superintendent will cut these dropout rates in half within 6 years. It will only be done using some of the methods from the School Archive Project.

Las Vegas, Clark County School District , & Dr. Hinojosa

2010-09-16T23:39:00.006-05:00

What is happening in Las Vegas carries some lessons for the School Archive Project.

Clark County School District has been as manipulative and misleading as any school district in the public reporting of their dropout rates! As recently as 2-26-10 they have publicly claimed

(http://ccsd.net/news/pdf/20100226-2042989254.pdf ): “The overall dropout rate for ninth through twelfth grade students in the Clark County School District (CCSD) has improved for the second consecutive year, down to 4.6 percent in 2008-09 from 5.8 percent in 2007-08.”

The real dropout rates are much closer to 46%!

A long history of similar manipulative communications in Dallas ISD have blogs repeatedly accusing Dr. Hinojosa as being responsible for dropout rate disasters that plagued DISD long before he came in 2005. The real DISD dropout rates were simply never made public. Still, since 2005, significant progress has been made within Dallas ISD as reflected in the graph at http://www.studentmotivation.org/DallasISD.htm#graph .

It is strongly recommended that the finalist chosen for the superintendent position demand that Clark County School District clearly communicate their real dropout numbers to the public. They should demand this before they accept the position. It will lead to the greatest progress possible in Clark County and will help them avoid the groundless, mindless criticism that Dr. Hinojosa is receiving on Dallas blogs.

Once such dropout rate transparency is given, the power and progress of the School Archive Project can much more easily be proven. The power of focusing a student into full ownership of their own history and future will be seen.

School Archive Project starting at Pinkston High School in Dallas

2010-09-14T23:41:00.007-05:00

The morning of 9-11-10, School Board Trustee Eric Cowan, Pinkston Principal Norma Villegas, DISD Superintendent Dr. Michael Hinojosa, and Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert posed together before they boarded a bus to knock on doors and bring back students who had not yet returned to school. They are standing in front of the School Archive, a 540-pound vault bolted to the floor in the Pinkston High School lobby a few weeks earlier. It is part of a 10-year time-capsule and class reunion/mentoring project that is helping more students graduate through a constant reminder of their own plans for the future. This will be the first year for the School Archive Projects starting at both Pinkston and Edison.

Here are the instructions for starting a School Archive Project that were shared with Edison Middle School staff, which are, with a few changes for 4 years in a high school, the same 8 steps shared with Pinkston staff:

1. All students and parents write a letter the first month of school. The first meetings with parents will involve a description of the School Archive Project and the need for them to write a letter to their child about their dreams for their child. They should write stories from their family history providing the roots from which they are sending their child into the world, as well as their dreams and hopes for their child. They should write about how they are willing to help their child achieve these goals. This letter may someday be a priceless possession for their child, and even their grand children, and great grand children. It will be a document for the family history just as the letters their children will write may also become valuable family history documents. Such letters will help students focus on their critical long term goals.

2. Both these letters, the parent's letter and the student's letter, are then placed together into one envelope. Each student seals their envelope and places their name and home address on it. These envelopes are placed into the School Archive, 540-pound vault, bolted to the floor in the school lobby in a location passed by all students many times each day.

3. These envelopes stay in the vault during the middle school years, until the last month of 8th grade, just before students leave for high school. Hopefully what these letters represent is a common topic of conversation during the middle school years. Teachers may use the existence of this letter, and the plans for future letters and the eventual Class Reunion, in times where future focus and motivation may be needed to help a student focus on work.

4. The letters are pulled from the vault the last month of 8th grade, returned to the students, to be used to write a second set of letters by both parents and students. Their dreams and life goals are updated to focus 10-years into the future. Both new letters are then placed into another self-addressed envelope.

5. This time the students themselves place their envelopes onto the shelf for their class inside the School Archive Vault. This happens on “Archiving Day,” a day at the end of 8th grade when 8th grade students pose with the class in which they wrote their letters for a photo. They stand together, in front of the School Archive Vault, holding their letter. After the photo they place the letter into the vault themselves. They know they will receive their letters back as they return for their 10-year 8th grade class reunion.

6. They each receive two copies of the photo taken that day, one for them and one for their parents. On the back of the photo are the details of the Archive Project including the estimated dates and details for their 10-year 8th grade class reunion.

7. It is recommended that the 10-year reunions happen the week of Thanksgiving. Then the current students will have 6 months to digest what they hear before they write their own final 10-year letters focusing 10 years into their own future. A school tradition has been established.

8. The details on the back of the photo include the fact that, at the Class 10-year Reunion, they will also be invited to speak with the then current 8th grade classes. They will be asked to talk about their recommendations for success. They should be prepared for questions from the decade younger students such as: "What would you do differently if you were 13 again?"

Archive Projects starting at Edison Middle School & Pinkston High School

2010-08-14T18:05:00.001-05:00

This past week we had one 540-pound vault bolted to the floor in the lobby of both Edison Middle School and Pinkston High School in Dallas. This now means that starting this year almost 100% of the students at both Pinkston and Sunset high schools will have the possibility of going thorough the Archive Project letter writing process four times, once upon entering middle school and again on leaving, and once again on entering high school and again on leaving. It was a very good week! Here are the instructions shared with Edison staff on Thursday which, with a few changes, are the same 8 steps shared with Pinkston staff:

1. All students and parents write a letter the first month of school. The first meetings with parents will involve a description of the School Archive Project and the need for them to write a letter to their child about their dreams for their child. They should write stories from their family history providing the roots from which they are sending their child into the world, as well as their dreams and hopes for their child. They should write about how they are willing to help their child achieve these goals. This letter may someday be a priceless possession for their child, and even their grand children, and great grand children. It will be a document for the family history just as the letters their children will write may also become valuable family history documents. Such letters will help students focus on their critical long term goals.

2. Both these letters, the parent's letter and the student's letter, are then placed together into one envelope. Each student seals their envelope and places their name and home address on it. These envelopes are placed into the School Archive, 540-pound vault, bolted to the floor in the school lobby in a location passed by all students many times each day.

3. These envelopes stay in the vault during the middle school years, until the last month of 8th grade, just before students leave for high school. Hopefully what these letters represent is a common topic of conversation during the middle school years. Teachers may use the existence of this letter, and the plans for future letters and the eventual Class Reunion, in times where future focus and motivation may be needed to help a student focus on work.

4. The letters are pulled from the vault the last month of 8th grade, returned to the students, to be used to write a second set of letters by both parents and students. Their dreams and life goals are updated to focus 10-years into the future. Both new letters are then placed into another self-addressed envelope.

5. This time the students themselves place their envelopes onto the shelf for their class inside the School Archive Vault. This happens on “Archiving Day,” a day at the end of 8th grade when 8th grade students pose with the class in which they wrote their letters for a photo. They stand together, in front of the School Archive Vault, holding their letter. After the photo they place the letter into the vault themselves. They know they will receive their letters back as they return for their 10-year 8th grade class reunion.

6. They each receive two copies of the photo taken that day, one for them and one for their parents. On the back of the photo are the details of the Archive Project including the estimated dates and details for their 10-year 8th grade class reunion.

7. It is recommended that the 10-year reunions happen the week of Thanksgiving. Then the current students will have 6 months to digest what they hear before they write their own final 10-year letters focusing 10 years into their own future. A school tradition has been established.

8. The details on the back of the photo include the fact that, at the Class 10-year Reunion, they will also be invited to speak with the then current 8th grade classes. They will be asked to talk about their recommendations for success. They should be prepared for questions from those decade younger students such as:
"What would you do differently if you were 13 again?"

New AYP 2010 report again shows south side comprehensive high schools better than north side.

2010-08-06T20:27:00.006-05:00

The new, 8-4-2010, Texas Education Agency AYP (Acceptable Yearly Progress) Report, at http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/ayp/2010/distcampfinal10.pdf, is additional powerful documentation of the superiority of the 15 non-magnet high schools on the south side of Dallas over the 7 similar DISD high schools on the north side. (See Page 48 in this report for DISD.)

While there are individual parts of the AYP report that must be strongly questioned, the overall pattern of the 15 non-magnet south side high schools doing much better than the 7 non-magnet high schools on the north side of Dallas is clear. The data below is taken from the above linked AYP report.

This AYP report shows that only 2 of 7 north side high schools made AYP, or 28.6%, while 5 out of 15 of the south side made AYP, or 33%. While this is not a big difference, when you count the reasons given for each school not meeting AYP, a very strong pattern emerges.

On the north side there were a total of 12 reasons for not meeting AYP spread among the 5 schools for an average of 2.4 reasons in each of these 5 schools. On the south side there were a total of 13 reasons given for the 10 schools not meeting AYP for an average of 1.3 reasons spread among these 10 school.

Then you look for more patterns and see that only 1 out of 5 north side schools did not make AYP for only one reason. On the south side there were 7 out of 10 schools that did not make AYP for only one reason.

Finally you notice that three north side schools, (43%), had three reasons for not making AYP! NONE of the south side south side high schools had three reasons for not making AYP!

Based on the above, along with previous evidence collected (http://schoolarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2010/08/dallas-northsouth-gap-myth-suffers-with.html) can anyone deny that the non-magnet high schools on the south side of Dallas are doing better than those on the north side of Dallas?

How can Dallas media speak of a "North-South Gap" wherein the North is always superior? They can only do it by avoiding any reporting in print on the repeated academic patterns indicating a different gap, one with the south side on top!

All DISD schools and students must do better, must constantly improve. Transparency helps that to happen.

Dallas North/South Gap Myth suffers with almost half of all DISD high schools in North Dallas rated as UNACCEPTABLE by TEA!

2010-08-02T09:13:00.033-05:00

Some of the most prominent Dallas media continue to engage in "body language" promoting the "Dallas Myth" that DISD schools on the north side of Dallas always perform better than those on the south side of Dallas. They do this by refusing to adequately present the overwhelming evidence of significant indications that schools on the south side of Dallas are better than schools on the north side of Dallas. The southern half of Dallas will be defined by this map.

This week the new TEA ratings came out. They show that there is over a 100% greater probability for a DISD non-magnet high school on the north side of Dallas to be rated UNACCEPTABLE that for a DISD non-magnet high school on the south side of Dallas to have such a rating. In this north/south division we will use this map from the Dallas Morning News North-South Dallas Project pages. These ratings also show that only one of the 4 remaining (i.e. not rated UNACCEPTABLE) north side DISD high schools, Jefferson, received their rating by having "met absolute standards," without using TPM, or other related rating aids. Meanwhile, for the 15 non-magnet DISD high schools on the south side of town, 7 of them received their acceptable ratings by having "met absolute standards."

TEA ratings show 3 (43%) of the 7 non-magnet DISD high schools on the north side of Dallas (Conrad H.S. must be added) are rated as unacceptable: Bryan Adams, Hillcrest, and North Dallas High School. The same TEA ratings show that only 3 (20%) of the 15 non-magnet DISD high schools on the south side of Dallas are rated as unacceptable: Samuell, Carter and A. Maceo Smith.

It was documented that significantly higher percentages of south side 9th grade students were making it to the 12th grade from 2005 up to the present. In 2008/2009 Oak Cliff was even 11 percentage points over North Dallas in this measurement! Look closely at the graph on the last page linked above. Note that the 6 North Dallas high schools used in this rating (Conrad was too new to be included) ALMOST caught up with Oak Cliff in this promotion rate with the 2009/2010 school year. The Dallas Morning News has not mentioned this measurement of progress for the south side in print. It appears they do not want to acknowledge how far behind the North Dallas schools were for several years, and still are!

Now, with the new TEA ratings, a new and more solid indication is available. TEA shows a more significant measurement wherein 43% of the north side high schools are rated unacceptable while only 20% of the south side schools are so rated. Also, only 25% (one) of the remaining 4 north side high schools were able to make their rating by meeting absolute standards, i.e. without the TMP or related help. On the south side over 58% (7) of the remaining 12 south side high schools were able to make their rating by meeting absolute standards.

The time has long passed for these differences to be publicly shared in major Dallas print and television media. The failure for this to happen shows "body language" indicating the media want to do nothing that may damage the old Dallas myth that the south side is somehow "worse" than the north side.

It remains to be seen if the Dallas Morning News will acknowledge IN PRINT that the south side of Dallas has made tremendous progress in several educational areas while the north side appears to have fallen back.

The good news remains that, overall, the children of Dallas are ALL making progress. Dropout rates are down and graduation rates are up. The progress must continue!

We must allow this north/south gap debate to be a form of entertainment, painfully reflecting the ongoing history of Dallas where still not enough has changed. The REAL WORK must continue in the classrooms and dining rooms all over Dallas, work for the futures of ALL our students.

The Dropout Prevention Two-step - a summary of the School Archive Project

2010-07-02T16:56:00.004-05:00

The first step is dropout rate transparency. Every school district should have a multi-year enrollment by grade spreadsheet online for each school, with graduation numbers for each year.

High dropout rates seen with such transparency will initially make people angry, but it gives a place to start. Progress can then be tracked from data that is already being collected, but is simply data not visible in this format online for US public schools. Dropout rate patterns and progress will now be more clearly exposed.

The second step is to understand that our students must want to stay in school for the right reasons, not because the classroom is an effective detention facility! Students must be focused on their own futures in as concrete and physical a way as is possible. They will better envision the value of education.

To achieve the future focus a Dallas middle school started the School Archive Project in 2005. It is a 10-year time capsule and class reunion project. It involves a 350-pound vault bolted to the floor in the school lobby to function as the 10-year time-capsule. The School Archive holds letters 8th grade students write to themselves about their history and plans for the future. Students can place several letters into their envelope for the vault. In addition to the letter to themselves, they can include letters from their parents, or a teacher, about their dreams for the student.

At the end of the year, before students go on to high school, there is a small ceremony wherein students pose in front of the School Archive, with their Language Arts Class, holding their sealed letters for a photo. They then place their letters inside the vault.

Students receive a copy of this photo with information on the back about their 10-year class reunion. They are reminded that they will be invited at that 10-year reunion to speak with then current 8th grade classes about their recommendations for success. They are warned to prepare for questions such as; “Would you do anything differently if you were 13 again?”

Thinking of answering such a question in 10 years helps students realize the value of current school work. They must build their own futures. Nobody is going to do it for them.

The first students to write letters for the School Archive graduated in 2009 as members of the largest 12th grade class in over a decade! The Class of 2010 then significantly improved the graduation rate of the Class of 2009!

This project has now spread to 6 schools within Dallas ISD. It is a simple project helping teachers do what teachers have always done, focus students onto their own futures.

At a cost that is about a dollar per child per year, this is a project all schools should have. It only requires one dedicated teacher as project manager who is also interested in motivating students to write more, to better understand the flow of time and history, and to graduate.

Bill Betzen
The School Archive Project
www.studentmotivation.org
It is requested that you share any improvements to the School Archive Project you may develop.

Sunset High School in Dallas ISD is leader in dropout prevention progress in Texas!

2010-06-23T13:37:00.001-05:00

The great news is that Sunset High School in Dallas gave 483 diplomas to their Class of 2010. That is 76 more graduates than were in the Class of 2009, and the largest graduation class ever! The "raw" graduation rate, based on total 9th grade enrollment four years earlier, went from 49.4% last year to 60.8% for the Class of 2010 based on the 483 number. It is wonderful progress!! (This 483 number was taken from the 483 names that were listed on the Sunset graduation program. It will probably not exactly match the number that will ultimately be the official number of graduates, but it will be close.)

Due to the decreasing number of 9th grade failures and the growing upper grade class enrollments, it is almost certain Sunset will achieve a 70% graduation within the next few years. It is now possible to see an 80% graduation rate is even being within sight!

The reason these achievements are so significant is that during the 8 year period, from the Class of 2000 to the Class of 2007, the average graduation rate (calculated as the percentage of the 9th grade enrollment four years earlier who received a diploma) was 34% for Sunset High School. The graduation rate for the Class of 2010 is now 60%! That is over 25 percentage points higher!

Does anyone know of another Texas public high school who has made this much progress?

The reasons for the progress are multiple. A dynamic principal and staff are the central reason. They are future focused. They have emphasized that focus on the future by starting their own School Archive Project in 2009, but their future focus was present long before that happened. As of 2009 all the feeder middle schools sending students into Sunset now also have School Archive Projects. Once Sunset achieves the 70% raw graduation rate they will have doubled what had been their average graduation rate for the eight years up to and including the Class of 2007. That is amazing!!! (See http://www.studentmotivation.org/DallasISD/#sunset for the enrollment by grade history for Sunset. It is not yet updated with the most recent 2010 numbers.)

Article by Mercedes Olivera on Archiving Day at Quintanilla Middle School

2010-05-15T14:07:00.006-05:00

An article was published this morning in the Dallas Morning News titled "In school, putting plans for life on paper." It was written by Mercedes Olivera, Dallas Morning News and published on page 4 of the Metro section for Saturday, 5-15-10:

"It was a ritual unlike any other at most public schools.

This week, eighth-graders each lined up at Quintanilla Middle School in northern Oak Cliff and placed a white envelope inside a 500-pound vault bolted to the floor in the lobby.

Inside the envelope was a letter, written over the course of one hour to three days, containing the students' past, present and – they hope – future.

Alejandra Calderón said she cried when she wrote hers. She wants to be an obstetrician when she grows up and wrote that in her letter.

The simple act of writing down her goal may have sparked an image of her father, who also wrote down what he wanted for his daughter the day she was born.

"Either a lawyer or a doctor," Julio Calderón said, recalling what he wrote that day.

He said he wants more for his children than he did for himself. "There were a lot of things I could've done and didn't," he said.

Natalia Hernández also cried thinking about ..."

The article goes on to speak of more Archive Project details. It was a very positive article that hopefully will encourage more schools to start their own School Archive Projects. Until then, we can celebrate with the students we are honored to serve. This year at Sunset High School the raw graduation rate for the class of 2010 will represent more than 55% of their 9th grade enrollment from 2006/2007. That is a 6% increase from the previous graduation rate record last year of 49%, and almost 20% higher than the average 9th grade graduation rate for the past 10 years at Sunset of only 36.3%!

We have come a long way and still have a long way to go. Let's celebrate breaking the 50% barrier and work to get well past the 60% barrier ASAP at Sunset High School! (The Sunset enrollment history to date is at http://www.studentmotivation.org/DallasISD/#sunset.)

Dallas ISD Wins Broad Award by 2014!

2010-04-03T09:54:00.011-05:00

This morning a Dallas Morning News Columnist, Mr. Ragland, wrote an opinion piece on the facts surrounding the failure of Dallas ISD to win the Broad Award in 2010. He made a bet that DISD will also not win the Broad Award in 2011. I venture that there is about an 80% chance he is correct. However, by 2014 at the latest, Dallas ISD will win the Broad Award! DISD is heading in the right direction to win the Broad Award!

In his article Mr. Ragland quoted DISD leaders speaking about significant academic progress made within the past 4 years by DISD students. Dropout rate progress was not mentioned.

Other school districts on the "road to Broad" have pushed academic progress forward causing many struggling student to drop out under the pressure, thereby raising dropout rates. The greatest achievement within DISD is that record academic progress is NOT being made at the cost of a rising dropout rate. Instead, as DISD grades rise the graduation rates are also going up! Dropout rates are going down!

Three of the four most important positive measurements pointing toward rising graduation rates are now at the highest recorded levels in DISD for over a generation! The fourth measurement is also heading up, and will achieve the same "highest in over a generation" level within two years!

Study the graph at http://www.studentmotivation.org/DallasISD.htm#graph to see the documentation for this progress to date.

It shows that the 9th to 10th grade promotion rate has gone up to 75% this year, the Cumulative Promotion Index is now up to 54%, and the 9th to 12th grade promotion rate has now gone up to over 54%. These are all the best measurements in over a generation!

Finally, if you look higher on this same web site you will find the enrollment by grade spreadsheet that generated this graph. It shows that 9th grade enrollment has gone down from an average of over 14,000 students every year prior to 2007/2008, to just 12,300 this year. That reflects that fewer 9th graders are failing and repeating 9th grade, another significant achievement in the past 4 years!

In spite of the fact that total DISD enrollment has gone down over 2% since 2005/2006, the current 10th grade enrollment is one of the largest in a decade. The current 11th and 12th grade enrollments are the largest in DISD history!

While DISD still has a long way to go, there are many very good things happening! DISD students are to be congratulated! As this progress continues, within the next four years DISD students will win the Broad Award!

Family History and Emotional Stability

2010-03-30T06:20:00.002-05:00

The power of story was reinforced again by research published February, 23, 2010 in the Journal of Family Life, and online at http://www.journaloffamilylife.org/doyouknow. It shows one of the major reasons that the School Archive Project is so successful, by reinforcing the focus on family history and the recording of family stories, in ultimately helping students stay in school. Here is the abstract:

Abstract

Family stories are theorized to be a critical part of adolescents' emerging identity and well-being, yet to date we know very little about adolescents' knowledge of their family history and intergenerational family stories. In this study, we expand our previous findings that pre-adolescent children who know more about their family history display higher levels of emotional well-being. Sixty-six broadly middle-class, mixed race, 14- to 16-year old adolescents from two-parent families were asked to complete a measure of family history, the "Do You Know..." scale (DYK), as well as multiple standardized measures of family functioning, identity development and well-being. Adolescents who report knowing more stories about their familial past show higher levels of emotional well-being, and also higher levels of identity achievement, even when controlling for general level of family functioning. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

Dr. Diane Ravitch and the "Not Test?" critique

2010-03-15T09:04:00.005-05:00

There have been columnists who have criticized Dr. Ravitch by writing: "....what are they supposed to do? Not test?"

The answer to this issue is somewhere in the middle of current practice. We must test! Such feedback is critical. But should we give that feedback the undeserved power we are now giving testing? It is as if people outside the school system needed to think they understood everything happening inside schools, and now think testing does that.

Should the results of testing literally run our schools? Are the tests that accurate?

It appears people think these tests accurately represent everything our children need to know to succeed in the real world.

We must sober up! That is not how the world is!

Dr. Diane Ravitch changing the view of U.S. Education

2010-03-11T22:10:00.003-06:00

The wisdom of Dr. Diane Ravitch has been rapidly exposed in news articles and on blogs over the past few weeks as her new book has been released. Here are her words, followed by the title of her new book I am in the process of reading. This publication may do more to help the public school children of the United States than any other book published in our life times. Dr. Ravitch writes in an article published 3-9-2010 in the Wall Street Journal:

Given the weight of studies, evaluations and federal test data, I concluded that deregulation and privately managed charter schools were not the answer to the deep-seated problems of American education. If anything, they represent tinkering around the edges of the system. They affect the lives of tiny numbers of students but do nothing to improve the system that enrolls the other 97%.

The current emphasis on accountability has created a punitive atmosphere in the schools. The Obama administration seems to think that schools will improve if we fire teachers and close schools. They do not recognize that schools are often the anchor of their communities, representing values, traditions and ideals that have persevered across decades. They also fail to recognize that the best predictor of low academic performance is poverty—not bad teachers.

What we need is not a marketplace, but a coherent curriculum that prepares all students. And our government should commit to providing a good school in every neighborhood in the nation, just as we strive to provide a good fire company in every community.

On our present course, we are disrupting communities, dumbing down our schools, giving students false reports of their progress, and creating a private sector that will undermine public education without improving it. Most significantly, we are not producing a generation of students who are more knowledgable, and better prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship. That is why I changed my mind about the current direction of school reform.

Ms. Ravitch is author of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education," published last week by Basic Books.

On the same day that the above comments were published in the Wall Street Journal the Dallas Morning News published an editorial titled "DISD must act now to fix or close failing high schools." That editorial went on to list 10 high schools, some on that list due to out of date information.

That editorial was a perfect illustration of the dangers Dr. Ravitch is addressing. Anyone who claims they support the Dallas Morning News editorial must be able to address the issues Dr. Ravitch addresses. One of the most basic is to ask where it is proven that closing schools, or other plans being presented, helps children?

The Dallas ISD track record only indicates that closing a school and forcing the transfer of hundreds of students, as was done at Spruce High School, increases the potential for a higher dropout rate. The constantly raising promotion rate for the 6 Southeast Dallas high schools suddenly dropped 5 percentage points in 2008-2009 when Spruce was closed and reopened only for freshmen and sophomores. Allegedly the seniors and juniors were transferred to other Southeast Dallas high schools. Many students never made that transition. Who did that move help? See the graph at http://www.studentmotivation.org/dallasisd/#graph .

Yes, something must be done. Credibly connecting students with their own futures, and acknowledging that they themselves are in charge of that future, may be a first step.

Central Falls High School Dropout Prevention Plan

2010-03-07T15:41:00.004-06:00

The crisis at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island is not the fight between the teachers union and school administration. That is only a distraction! The real crisis is the dropout rate. We must keep our focus where it belongs.

The 52% dropout numbers presented for Central Falls High are very familiar here in Dallas ISD. A 48% graduation rate would be a 4 percentage point improvement from the average 2009 graduation rate for Dallas ISD schools.

In 2005-2006 the total 9th grade enrollment was 14,680 for Dallas ISD. In 2009 there were 6,383 diplomas given out to that same class within Dallas ISD. That is a simple graduation rate of 43.5%. That was also the highest graduation rate for Dallas ISD in 4 years! It was a 2% improvement from 2008.

Thank God they are not firing the 10,800 teachers here in Dallas ISD! Instead we are working on a solution. There are dropout prevention projects all over our district. Current 2009/2010 enrollment for the 11th and 12th grades in all 32 high schools in Dallas ISD is 5% higher than it was in 2005/2006! This is an increase of 758 more upper class students during a time when the total district enrollment has gone down over 2%! Our graduation rate will continue to go up!

Our graduation rate will go up especially at two schools who used to have the lowest graduation rates in Dallas ISD: Sunset and Pinkston high schools. They are responsible for 417, or 55%, of this 758 student increase in upper grade enrollment. They are also the only high schools, from the 32 high schools in Dallas ISD, where almost half of their incoming freshmen have participated in the School Archive Project at the middle school level. That project helps students focus on their plans for 10 years into the future.

The following is a dropout prevention plan for Central Falls High School and it's feeder school, Calcut Middle School, based on what has been learned in Dallas since 2005. Each school needs to have staff meetings to discuss several future focused alternatives for their students, including the School Archive Project and the Freshman Transition Initiative. Have staff study the http://www.studentmotivation.org/ web site, as well as the http://www.freshmantransition.org/ web site, and any other similar projects, to prepare for the meeting. Invite staff to bring information about other future focused projects to more effectively provide their students with a realistic vision of their own futures. The goal is for students to much better understand how current classroom work relates to that future.

At the meeting staff will talk about the value of effectively focusing their students on their own futures. Donors should be easy to locate before the meeting who are willing to fund the needed vaults, as well as materials and/or training for the Freshman Transitions Initiative, if the teachers vote to try these projects. Both projects could easily work very well together, or separately.

If they decide on the School Archive Project then all students could start the process this year by writing letters before the end of the school year. These are letters students write to themselves about their lives and plans for the future. Parents should also be invited to write letters to their child about their hopes and dreams for their child. If parents are unable to write this letter another adult in the child's life, including a teacher, could write the letter. These letters by adults in the child's life are read by the student and then placed with their own letters inside the self addressed envelope each student places into the school vault. The 8th graders and the 12th graders would always be writing their letters with the focus being 10 years into the future.

Next year only the freshmen at Central Falls High, and the 6th graders at Calcut Middle School, would start the year by writing their letter for their respective school archives. Again their parents and/or adults in a students life would write an updated letter of their hopes for the child to be with the letter the student writes. These letters will be inside the child's envelope in the vault all during their high school or middle school years. At the end of 12th grade, or 8th grade, that letter would be pulled, and read for ideas as the students write their final letters for the vault. That letter would be placed by the students back into the school vault to wait for their class 10-year reunions.

Once the School Archive Project and/or the Freshman Transition Initiative were to start, a rapid change in attitude among students should be seen. Students will begin to realize that they are responsible for their own futures.

The teachers will be sending a priceless message to their students if they are able to tell them, "I look forward to seeing you at the 10-year reunion," as the students leave for the next level of education.

Everything that helps to create a family atmosphere in a school will be reinforced with these plans. It will all happen with the help of a vault turned into a time-capsule, and a plan focusing 10 years into the future.

Enrollment growth shows we have a dropout cure!

2009-12-22T08:03:00.008-06:00

In December of 2009 it was discovered that, while only 2 out of the 32 high schools in Dallas ISD receive over 90% of the Middle School Archive Project students, those two schools account for 55% of the growth in 11th and 12th grade enrollment, within these 32 high schools, from 2005/2006 to 2009/2010.

This is the strongest indication to date that the School Archive Project, started in 2005, has a powerful effect in positively motivating students to stay in school.

From the 2005/2006 school year to 2009/2010 DISD made significant dropout rate progress. That progress included increasing 11th and 12th grade enrollments by 758 students or 5% during those 4 years. (At the same time the district itself lost 2.5% of it's total student enrollment.) However, when you look closely at the source of this 758 student increase you find that 417 of this increase, 55% of it, happened at two out of the 32 DISD high schools: Pinkston and Sunset high schools, the "Archive Project High Schools."

The data behind these indications can be studied at http://www.studentmotivation.org/.

It appears we may have found the dropout "silver bullet," a dropout cure. In 2010 we will celebrate as record numbers of students graduate within Dallas ISD. The School Archive Project will continue to spread! Schools in DISD who want to start such a project can have their principal send an email to Linda Johnson at the Dallas Educational Foundation at 3700 Ross. There is enough money left, after having started 4 other Archive Projects this year, to cover expenses for five more schools.

If anyone wants to give to the "Archive Project Fund" go to www.dallasisd.org/about/edfoundation/programs.htm and read about the School Archive Project mentioned at the bottom of that page. Donations can be designated and mailed to the Dallas Educational Foundation at the address given. $1,500 will install the needed vault, and cover other expenses for the first few years, to get the project started at your local school. Of course donations can always be made directly to your school if the principal wants to get a project started. Projects are now happening at the elementary, middle school and high school level at 5 schools within DISD.

Students benefit from time spent focusing on their own futures.

More evidence of progress in Dallas ISD

2009-11-24T20:39:00.022-06:00

In addition to the progress being documented in academic areas (see http://www.dallasisd.org/Dallasisd2009ProgressReportFINAL.pdf) there is record setting progress in student dropout rates! Using data posted 11-20-09 on the "current enrollment statistics" pages on the DISD web site (https://portal.dallasisd.org/mydata/) it is very easy to document the significant progress being made lowering the dropout rate in Dallas ISD schools throughout all areas of Dallas. A total of 157,151 students are documented in this 11-20-09 data and included in these trends.

This current enrollment data was downloaded and added to the DISD enrollment by grade spreadsheet on the http://www.studentmotivation.org/ web site. That spreadsheet includes DISD student enrollment since 1996-1997.

Below is a chart reflecting changes over the past 14 years using four separate measurements of graduation/dropout rates in DISD generated on this spreadsheet. Click on the chart to see a larger copy. All measurements indicate significant progress being made in DISD, especially during the past 4 years combined:

If anyone is interested in seeing the spreadsheet used to create this chart, it can be downloaded from from http://www.studentmotivation.org/DISDenrollmentbygrade1997-2010.xls . It is good for as many people in Dallas as is possible to know more about what is happening in our schools.

A second spreadsheet contains enrollment spreadsheets for each one of the 21 "Dropout Factory" high schools, so designated in a John Hopkins University national study in 2007. It was used to create the chart in the previous post comparing achievements in three geographic areas of DISD. It also can be downloaded from a different link: http://www.studentmotivation.org/DallasISD/DallasISDHighSchools1997-2010.xls .

The best news for DISD is that, following the criteria used by John Hopkins University to designate "Dropout Factories," a minimum of three of the 21 schools can no longer be classified as "Dropout Factories" based on this current data. When a school has three consecutive 9th to 12th grade promotion rate annual averages that together average above 60%, it would no longer be judged to be a "Dropout Factory." It is almost certain that the number of "Dropout Factories" in DISD will continue to go down for at least the next two years based on the current, very positive, enrollment patterns. Graduation rates are rising!

We have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving in DISD.

Dropout Rate Progress in Dallas ISD

2009-11-23T14:06:00.008-06:00

This past week the Dallas Independent School District released current enrollment numbers which indicate very positive progress in lowering the dropout rate. Using these enrollment numbers it was determined that the Cumulative Promotion Index has gone from 46.6% last year to 54.0% this year! This 7.4 percentage point gain is wonderful! Current enrollment numbers indicate it will continue to go up next year as well.

Other good news is that the improvements were spread all across Dallas, and were especially positive in North Dallas where the 6 high schools went from an average 9th to 12th grade promotion rate of 39.6% in 2008-2009 to 53.6% for 2009-2010! The graph below shows this years progress compared with the past 11 years. DISD well on the road to setting new records with the 2010 graduation rate.

If anyone is interested in copies of the spreadsheets going back a decade that were used to come to these conclusions and create the above graph, please email bbetzen@aol.com. Copies of both spreadsheets will be emailed.

How to set up and manage a School Archive Project

2009-06-14T13:09:00.010-05:00

Now that we are starting five new School Archive Projects in Dallas ISD schools at all levels (three middle schools, one high school, and one elementary school), and now that we have the first nationally published article on the Archive Project by America's Promise, there's need for more detailed instructions to help in starting additional School Archive Projects.

The School Archive Project is a simple reinforcement for the work teachers already do to focus students onto their own futures. It helps focus students on what they need to succeed in life as an adult. It provides an additional tool for teachers that is also very popular with students.

The basic steps in setting up a School Archive Project are:

1) You must have the full commitment of the school administration for the project. This is not a one person project, though one person can get it started. With administrative support it is easier to obtain the 30 or so minutes needed every year with all school staff to help everyone understand how the Archive Project reinforces work already being done to motivate students to prepare for their own futures. The better all staff in a school understand the Archive Project the greater the success will be!

2) The vault must be visible by all students as many times every school day as is possible. Location is critical. A bright spotlight focused on the vault helps draw attention to it.

3) Start the school year with an initial writing project for the incoming students no matter their grade level. It could be as simple as a letter about their current life and work and their plans for the school year, or a more researched family & personal history with plans they have for their life. This letter will be placed into the vault with the understanding that students will take it out of the vault to update it or to write another letter before they leave that school to go on to middle school, or high school, or college. As student pass the vault they may think of the letter they already have in it as well as the letter they will be writing before they leave to their next level of education.

4) End the school year with the final letter writing project by the departing class be they 5th graders going to middle school, 8th graders going to high school, or seniors going out into the world and/or other studies. That project is the final draft of the letter for the vault. This is where it is highly recommended that photos be taken and a copy of that photo given to students as a reminder of their letter and their class reunion.

More details for this process are on the http://www.studentmotivation.org/ web site. Do not hesitate to write bbetzen@aol.com if there are questions.

2009-05-30T09:46:00.003-05:00

The 9th to 12th grade promotion rates for Bryan Adams and Sunset were as follows for the past 5 years up to and including 2008-2009:

Bryan Adams: 44.7%, 44.2%, 39.9%, 29.4%, & 35.9%.
Sunset H. S. : 43.6%, 38.7%, 45.5%, 55.8%, & 57.3%.

If Bryan Adams does not have higher TAKS scores in recent years due to the volumn of 9th graders missing, then something really is wrong, in addition to loosing 2/3 of the freshman class.

This data is taken from the enrollent by grade spreadsheets for each non-magnet DISD high school that can be found at http://www.studentmotivation.org/dallasisd/. On that page Bryan Adams is school # 6 and Sunset is school # 20.

Progress in Oak Cliff with dropout rates

2009-05-07T21:28:00.011-05:00

The above graph reports on the 21 non-magnet high schools within DISD who are also over 10 years old. It separate them into three groups: Oak Cliff, Southeast Dallas, and North Dallas. There are 6 high schools in North Dallas, the area north of the Trinity on the west side of Dallas and north of I-30 on the east side of Dallas. There are 6 high schools in southeast Dallas, the area south of I-30 and east of the Trinity River. There are 9 high schools in Oak Cliff, the area south and west of the Trinity River. When you take the enrollment numbers for each of the schools in each of these areas of Dallas and put those enrollment numbers into one spreadsheet for each area of Dallas the results indicate many common Dallas myths that are not true.

A major indication of dropout rate is the percentage of 9th graders who make it to the 12th grade. It is called the promotion rate. Sadly it must be used in this report because the TEA web site does not give graduation numbers by school, only by district and larger geographic area. However enrollment numbers are given, so the promotion rates can be calculated. It is this same promotion rate that was used by John Hopkins University in their 2007 study that designated 1700 "dropout factories" in the US, a list in which all the non-magnet high schools in Dallas were included.

Using enrollment numbers going back for the past 10 years you quickly see that the 6 North Dallas high schools within DISD during that time period had a promotion rate than has dramatically fallen in recent years while Oak Cliff had consitently risen. In the 2008-2009 school year the lead of Oak Cliff over North Dallas has grown to the extent that the 9 Oak Cliff high schools have a promotion rate over 11 percentage points above the 6 North Dallas high schools. See the details that help explain the following spreadsheet at www.studentmotivation.org/dallasisd.

Another Dallas Dropout myth bites the dust!

We have something to celebrate in Oak Cliff! Now to continue the same progress we have had for the past 8 years for the next 8 years!

Let students set the standards

2008-12-28T15:10:00.002-06:00

(The following email was sent 12-28-08 to the Interact web site for Jacksonville Florida in response to the artile at http://www.jacksonville.com/interact/blog/2008-12-28/lowering_standards regarding the need for higher standards for passing in high school.)

Yes, I said let the students set the standards. This is a long term process.

I teach middle school and helped start a 10-year time-capsule and class-reunion project targeted at student retention and motivation. When students return 10-years after 8th grade they are invited to speak with then current 8th grade students about their recommendations for success. That is when they are able to set the standards. They speak about what it takes to best succeed in the world after 8th grade. Who better can set the standards than those who have lived life after school and know what it takes to succeed?

This project started 4 years ago in an inner-city Dallas public school as a focus on the future to lower dropout rates. Since starting the 9th to 10th grade attrition rate has gone down 40%. Not bad for a $2 per student investment for supplies and a photo given to each student. It is a photo of their Language Arts class posing in front of the 350-pound vault bolted to the lobby floor in the middle school lobby to function as the time-capsule. In this pose they each hold the self addressed letters they have written to themselves, that are then placed by them into the vault after the photo is taken. The letters stay there for the next decade. On the back of the photo is a label with details about the Archive Project and the planned class 10-year reunion, and their planned presentation to decade younger students at that reunion.

Who would better know the standards current students should meet than young adults who were in those same students places 10-years earlier, and therefore know what it takes to best survive the next decade?

9th to 10th grade attrition rate down 40%!

2008-11-23T22:26:00.005-06:00

In the September posting below I wrote that "the 9th to 10th grade dropout rates at Pinkston and Sunset have actually gone down over 25% over the past 3 years!" Since then the 2008-2009 enrollment numbers have come in. They indicate that in this, the fourth year, the 10th grade enrollments show that 76.5% of last years 9th grade number is represented in this years 10th grade number, up from the 71.5% for last years 10th grade. Thus in 4 years we have had a 40% improvement in the percentage of 9th graders making it to the 10th grade at Pinkston and Sunset combined.

Sunset is now planning its own School Archive Project, as are several other schools.

Dallas Mayor Leppert working on dropout rates!

2008-09-07T15:17:00.002-05:00

The work of Mayor Leppert is increasingly impressive.

I was at a meeting recently when Mayor Leppert very accurately spoke of the dropout crisis Dallas is facing. He described the dropout rate as "56% to 61% depending on the source of the statistics." He was speaking of the percentage of the 9th grade enrollment who do not make it to graduation. It was the first time I had ever seen a Dallas leader give such accurate numbers for our dropout crisis!

The graduation classes for Dallas ISD for the past 8 years, 2001 through 2008, had an average of 14,816 classmates enrolled in their 9th grade classes. Yet the average number of diplomas given out at the end of 4 years of high school, after that 14,816 enrollment in the 9th grade, was only 6,433 during these 8 years. This means the average graduation rate for the past 8 years has been only 43.4%. That also means that 56.6% of our 9th grade students were missing at graduation. (www.studentmotivation.org/dallasisd.htm)

It is very painful and hard on our city to admit how bad the dropout problem is. Fortunately it appears we finally have a leader who is facing this truth. Now change is finally possible! Our children, and our city, will be the ultimate winners!

Mayor Leppert sees that vision. He is willing to admit the hard truth of current dropout numbers. That is the only way to begin to work to change them so our children ultimately win!

Other positive news is that the 9th to 10th grade dropout rates at Pinkston and Sunset have actually gone down over 25% over the past 3 years! The power of the School Archive Project is slowly being manifested. In 2008-2009 it is planned to have 6 more Dallas ISD schools start School Archive Projects.

2008-06-28T17:59:00.003-05:00

There is very good reason to believe that the two schools who receive the majority of students who have been involved in the Archive Project will achieve a 50% graduation rate with the class of 2010.

The percentage of students making it from 9th to 10th grade has improved over 10% since the Archive Project started. That improvement should provide for those increases to continue through graduation. The class of 2009 may be close to the 50% graduation rate and possibly even make it.

Only from 35% to 45% of the students at these two schools are Archive Project students. If we can get Archive Projects going at the two other middle schools feeding into Sunset and Pinkston we may see graduation rates well above 50%.

2008-05-17T16:46:00.001-05:00

"See you in 10 years!"

Think back to when you were in middle school. With rare exception there was no expectation you would ever see your middle school teachers again unless you had the good fortune to be in a small community within which the teachers also lived. Middle school was something to “get through” and never look back.
Now, imagine you had worked on a letter during your middle school years documenting your life and plans for the future. You had then placed that letter into a vault bolted to the floor in your middle school lobby pending a class reunion 10 years off in the then-seeming distant future. When you said goodbye to your teachers as you left for high school some of them said “See you in 10 years.”
How would such a send off have changed your views of school?
Knowing of the planned 10 year reunion, and that you may be seeing your teachers again, is it possible your work in high school, and then maybe college, would have been affected?
Now, imagine you are a child with an 87% probability you are poor enough to be on the free school lunch program, your Mom and Dad, who probably do not live together, never graduated high school, and few people, if any, were even pushing you to graduate high school, much less college.
How would such a send off have changed your views of school and what you may achieve?
I value your thoughts,
Bill Betzenbbetzen@aol.com

2008-05-12T21:38:00.005-05:00

This is another way to look at the same statistics and hopefully make them easier to understand. This chart is focused on those students who make it from 9th to 10th grade and how that percentage has improved in recent years at Pinkston and Sunset. Hopefully this is an easier to understand bar chart. It has been used to replace the other chart on the percentage of loss that was originally used.

The progress being made needs to be clearly understood.

Revolution in Progress!

2008-05-04T21:45:00.004-05:00

This bar chart shows the amazing progress these past three years at the two high schools in Dallas which receive the large majority of Middle School Archive students. Pinkston and Sunset used to be listed among high schools with the worst dropout rate statistics for Dallas ISD. If the pattern established these past three years at Pinkston and Sunset continues for another year they will have moved to be among the top half of Dallas ISD high schools with the lowest dropout rates! Something good is happening at Sunset and Pinkston!

For the 11 years prior to 2007 the average percentage of enrollment loss between 9th and 10 grade was 36.9% for all of Dallas ISD high schools. In 2007 that average went down to 32.1% for all of Dallas ISD. Progress is being made everywhere! However at Pinkston and Sunset combined that average was even better, falling below 30%! These numbers can all be verified by studying the spreadsheet that can be downloaded from http://www.studentmotivation.org/DISDenrollmentbygrade1996-2008.xls to provide statistics for all of Dallas ISD. To see the enrollment statistics for Sunset and Pinkston go to http://www.studentmotivation.org/PinkstonSunset.html.

We are making progress in Dallas ISD! The only danger is the possibility that the 2008 Bond election on May 10th will not be approved by voters. That would set us back.

New Evidence Archive Project is working!

2008-04-23T23:20:00.006-05:00

The Texas Education Agency in March released on their web site the 2007-2008 enrollment data for schools in Texas. From this data the enrollment data for the two high schools (Pinkston and Sunset) that Quintanilla Middle School feeds into was selected and studied going back for the past 4 years. It showed a consistent pattern for both high schools:

1) Initially in 2005-2006 9th grade enrollment went up at both high schools. That freshman class included members from the first Quintanilla class to write letters for the Archive.
2) For the next two years at each school 9th grade enrollment went down - probably indicating that fewer students were failing 9th grade each year at each school.
3) Additional indications that fewer were failing 9th grade each year is found in the fact that 10th grade enrollment went up every year during this same time at each school.

These numbers indicate something good was happening for students at each of these schools. A study selecting out for Quintanilla students at each of these schools is needed to verify that they were the source for most of these positive enrollment changes over past 4 years. That is being requested.

The value of focusing students onto their own futures and their own achievements appears to be working!

The spreadsheet containing these numbers for these two schools can be downloaded from www.studentmotivation.org/PinkstonSunsetenrollment04-08.html. Please let me know of any errors seen.

4-19-08 Presentation on School Archive Project

2008-04-05T12:14:00.001-05:00

The Middle School Archive Project will be described as one of the presentations at a community meeting at 10 AM on 4-19-08 at the Pleasant Mound/Urban Park United Methodist Church at 8301 Bruton Rd. in Dallas.

Dropout Counting in the News

2008-04-05T10:05:00.010-05:00

This past week dropout issues were in the news. Dallas found that their dropout rate is the seventh worst in the nation. However, among cities of a million or more population, Dallas would have been at the bottom of the list, the worst student dropout rate in the nation! This status was also given Dallas for numbers from the graduation class of 2004. Since then the graduation numbers have continued to go down. In 2007 Dallas had the highest percentage of seniors who failed to graduate for any Dallas ISD class since before 1997! For the class of 2007 16% of the seniors failed to receive a diploma! See www.studentmotivation.org/dallasisd.htm for the painful numeric details.

By 2007 the graduation rate in Dallas ISD had fallen to 40.5%, 4 percentage points below the 2004 rate!

This week U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced that they would be requiring all states to use the same definition for dropout rates nationwide. It is long overdue!

The common dropout definition to be used needs to be simple, easy to track and verify, and fully transparent. In search of the needed transparency these numbers should be reflected easily for each school district in an annually updated spreadsheet of enrollment by grade. That spreadsheet should include the annual count given for diplomas actually granted, and at least 10 years of enrollment & graduation history. A spreadsheet similar to the one at www.studentmotivation.org/dallasisd.htm is recommended. Every school district in the nation needs such a simple spreadsheet easily available on their web site. It would expose what is really happening.

Yes, there will certainly be things that happen in all communities that cause these numbers to fluctuate annually. Those events should be explained in footnotes to the spreadsheet and never be allowed to compromise the validity of the numbers given in the spreadsheet. Too much has been hidden for decades about what is happening to our children. Simple true numbers and statistics must be mandated. If any educational administrator is fearful for their employment due to what is reflected, they should be able to explain those fluctuations, but not change the numbers reported.

The goal is to be consistent throughout the US so numbers in every state can be validly compared with those in any other state.

Middle School Archive Project - Dropout Prevention

2008-01-21T11:42:00.000-06:00

The Middle School Archive Project design and history from 2005 to the present are described in detail on the http://www.studentmotivation.org/ web site. This blog is where feedback is posted and responded to.

The Middle School Archive Project is a response to the dropout crisis being faced in most US schools. The John Hopkins University designation of 1700 schools as dropout factories is a major step forward in US education. It is simply admitting the problem. All Dallas ISD non-magnet high schools are on the "dropout factory" list. See http://www.studentmotivation.org/DallasHighSchoolsCSOSlist.htm for details.

All high schools are challenged, especially those on the "Dropout Factory" list, to place their enrollment numbers by grade onto a spreadsheet going back 10 years, with the last number being the number of diplomas given out each year. Such a Dallas ISD spreadsheet is at http://www.studentmotivation.org/DallasISD.htm that shows the work we must do. Most of the public will be shocked by these spreadsheets. They require school administrators to explain how 30-65% of the 9th grade classes can be missing at graduation and the school still claim a single digit dropout rate, often below 2% as has often happened in Texas. That is why you will not find them on school district web sites. As painful as they are they these spreadsheets must be made public in school district web sites. They are the best place for us to document the progress toward curing our dropout crisis.

Please study the Middle School Archive Project (http://www.studentmotivation.org/) and the way it uses a large vault bolted to the floor in a school lobby under spotlights. The vault will have 10 shelves inside and function as a 10-year time-capsule for letters 8th graders write to themselves. They know they will not retrieve them until their 10-year class reunion. They know that at that reunion they will be invited to talk with the then current 8th grade classes giving their recommendations for success. Questions such as "Would you do anything differently if you were 13 again?" will be asked.

It appears that thinking ahead about replying to such questions helps students focus on the value of their current studies more easily.

How would you improve this project?