DALLAS – Today, former Mayor Ron Kirk endorsed the concept of Dallas ISD becoming a Home Rule district under the petition process launched by Support Our Public Schools. Mayor Kirk released the following statement:
Education is the most critical issue defining our success as a city. I welcome this conversation about how we can improve and modernize Dallas ISD in an effort to better prepare our children for college and the workforce.
Fears surrounding this movement are unfounded. Home Rule offers us several ways to make needed changes in our schools that will positively impact our kids and their ability to learn.
Dallas has grown into an international city, and education is the new global currency. We owe it to our children, our families and our future to control our own destiny through education, and that means taking bigger, bolder steps like this toward improving our public schools. I would love for Dallas to be the pioneer in taking advantage of this important tool provided to us by the Legislature.
For more information visit supportourpublicschools.org.
The Home-Rule effort for DISD is living within a mass of incomplete data.
White Flight dominated DISD enrollment numbers for the first 40 years after 1970! But in 2010 something changed. For the first time in 40 years, from 300 to as many as 8,000 White students did not leave DISD. Instead the White student population grew by 25 students! Something had changed, apparently permanently based on numbers since 2010.
Graduation rate records were being established. Real progress was happening. See a 40+ year DISD enrollment history by ethnic group at http://schoolarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2014/01/minority-presence-down-in-booker-t.html
DISD was very public with these achievements. Why are they suddenly being ignored in this home-rule effort? I’ve verified this graduation rate progress with other calculations. The data clearly shows that DISD improved faster than the rest of Texas from 2007 to 2011: http://schoolarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2012/08/dallas-isd-is-catching-up-with-all-of.html
Mr. Morath has even alleged that there has been no improvement in college ready rates since 1996. He forgot to consider the over 20 percentage point increase in graduation rates since then. The number of college ready DISD students graduating has increased by 70% while the size of the DISD student body has increased less than six percent.
Is that enough progress? Absolutely not! But it is misleading the public to only give part of the data, and then declare there has been “almost no progress for an entire generation,” as Mr. Morath did in a Q & A session published by the Morning News this weekend.
The Dallas Morning News must publish corrections to these data errors!