There Are Two Dallas ISD Trustees Who Won't Let TFA Deal Sail Through Without a Fight

I have spent the last three years advocating for the kids because my son was one of the kids. I believe there are massive deficiencies at DISD including curriculum ("managed instruction with earned empowerment" is a joke), a culture of fear and intimidation that makes teachers ineffective, cronyism and nepotism that would make a logger blush and a misapplication of funds on contracts and vendors that does nothing to move the needle on student achievement.

 My son is very bright and rather than ditch DISD for private schools in grade 3 I was encouraged to take a look at Travis TAG for grade 4.  It was a fantastic experience and I advocate for this type of program because it works for those students who can pass the entrance exams which are, by the way, very very lenient. But your simple question goes much deeper into the problems that face us all...not just education issues but the elephants in the room - and there are many but poverty and race run deep. 

Out of DISD's 157,000 students only 4.6% are white.  The white students are not exactly evenly distributed across the district schools and some argue that there are a disproportionate number of white students in the magnet programs.  Some see this as out and out racism.  Now, before anyone's blood pressure peaks, understand that the magnet schools are funded EXACTLY the same as comprehensive schools today.  It didn't always used to be that way but it is now.  And south Dallas Learning Centers (funded at 120% of comprehensive schools) - the bone the white north Dallas politicians threw to south Dallas African Americans in 2001 as an incentive to release DISD from oversight by Judge Barefoot Sanders in the TASBY desegregation suit - have all been dissolved and are also funded "equitably". 

So what is a parent supposed to do in DISD when they want the very best for their child? They want to find the "best school with the best teachers" and that usually means looking at state school rankings which can be very misleading as has been noted in other posts here - one student in one sub-group can literally tank a whole schools rating. What else do parents do?  They look at TAKS score results.  These scores are also terribly misleading and goes to the problem stated earlier...a child in grade 6 reading at grade 3 level will have a tough time with any test. 

The false assumption is that the child has been a product of the American education system and as a sub-set the DISD system since Kindergarten.  In fact, kids at DISD speak over 100 different languages and enter the system from other countries and cultures at all grade levels. Magnet programs look "elite" because the kids may have had "life circumstances" unrelated to race that are advantageous.  For example, resources like books at an early age or attendance in a pre-k program or parents who took the time to read to them. The magnets are a meritocracy.  Is that unfair?  Inequitable? 

Are there poorly trained teachers? Yes. Are there teachers who should find another occupation? Yes.  So why do some kids thrive and are successful at "bad" schools while others fail?  What makes you think that the teachers are the fundamental difference that make one school substantially better than another?  I know it's counter-intuitive and I said it last night at the board meeting and I'll say it again.  Take the majority of our teachers out of DISD and plop them into a private school and they will be treated like stars and they will perform as well or better than any other private school teacher. I personally know quite a few DISD teachers who have made the leap from DISD to other districts (for lower pay) and to the private schools (for MUCH lower pay) who are very successful and their success is shared by their students.I am not a union stooge nor an apologist for teachers. Education is a complex problem but "blame the teacher" is both wrong and wrong-headed.

These posts have an unfortunate, bitter tone, but I'm encouraged by your confidence in your ability to find 10k great DISD teachers. "I bet I can find [them]" sounds like an offer to do so, and I think the community would be very interested in seeing your list and how you define "very good" or "great". 

I'm guessing that the mainstream opinion on this issue isn't far from my own: That there are a lot of great teachers in DISD, but that one of the causes of underperforming results (see below) relates to some teachers falling below the standard of "good". 

Your history of PTA experience, advising magnet schools and advocating for DISD progress is -- by anyone's measure -- respectable, and I wish more people shared your dedication. 

...but if you are truly so confident that nearly all of DISD's teachers are great, why have you spent the last several years of your life so zealously advocating for improvement in DISD and promoting magnet schools, which self-select their students? 

Does your confidence in nearly all DISD teachers mean that you would let your kid go to ANY Dallas high school? Would you send your kid to Adams, Conrad, Roosevelt, Spruce, Hillcrest, Pinkston or any of the other DISD high schools that are "academically unacceptable" and have at least 50% of their students failing a core subject?  

Don't feel bad if you're reserved about sending your kid to these schools. It's natural and parents should advocate for their kids' education. But the fact that most families in Dallas don't have options and have to send their kids to these schools (the same schools that you and I would avoid) should be a crime. And your confidence implies that there's not a problem and that all Dallas families have access to great teachers. 

http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/...

primi,I am not a teacher. I have a son who has spent 8 years in DISD with some great teachers and some middling teachers.  I got involved three years ago when DISD Trustees mismanaged the financials so badly that they found themselves $64M in debt; declared a fiscal emergency and fired 700 teachers to get back on track. I am a PTA member and former PTA officer and have had a seat on two SBDM committees.  I am chair of an education PAC,  www.DFPE.org. I am an appointed  member of the DISD Citizens Budget Review Commission, www.BudgetReview.org.  I sit on the Magnet Parents Advisory Committee.  I sit on the DISD Technology Review Committee.  I am an advisory member of Leadership DISD. I sit on the board of the TAG Foundation and I just got through speaking at tonights board meeting.  How about you? 

Let me ask you a serious question. Why do you think teachers are the ones responsible for "bad schools"?  In my experience with my son's schools the students struggled for lack of resources...not bad teachers.  No books in the library; no text books for each student; no computers that worked; intermittent access to the internet; no fancy technology tools; no air conditioning in the summer and blasting heat in the winter; toilets that overflowed and no toilet paper or hand soap; no writing paper; no working copy machines.  My son's school was ranked the best middle school and the best elementary school in the entire State of Texas! Why?  Because of his teachers...and not a single TFAer among them. My son also did not have to deal with the aching poverty or homelessness that can often manifest itself in behavioral problems.  He did not have to deal with gang bangers, knives and guns in school, AIDS, pregnancy, bullying, decrepit school buildings and a lack of after school programs like many schools in south and west Dallas.  DISD is continuing to balance the budget on the backs of the teachers, TFAers included...you reap what you sow.

You are nothing but a shill for TFA if you believe the many failed schools in DISD are due to the teachers instead of the parents of many of these kids.

Funny how every single low-income, run-down, single-parent, teen-parent urban district in this country has all the "bad" teachers.  

And the suburbs?  Their success has nothing to do with the number of stable, 2-parent homes.  Nothing to do with the absence of rampant drug abuse among adults, the absence of monthly moves to new apartments.  Nothing to do with the presence of college-degreed fathers.  Nope, it's because by some weird quirk, they ONLY have "good" teachers.

As for the bad teachers who do exist, behind every one of them is an incompetent, do-nothing principal avoiding conflict.  $3 million spent on TFA is not going to fix that.

Look at many of the principals at the failed schools.  Crony hire, nepotism hire, crony hire, etc.  

Taking $3 million from the kids to have a few enthusiastic teachers scattered around the district is a waste if you aren't going to FIRST fix the principals hired by friends and family.

According to my math, $3mm divided by 100 TFA teachers divided by 5 years equals $6000 per TFA teacher year.  Actually it should lower as in years 2 through 5 there will be 200 TFA teachers.  Don't forget to say "thank you" to TFA.

(1) Read the data cited in my previous text. Maybe you and other DISD teachers cannot agree on performance measurement criteria for yourselves--though you seem to be able to grade students just fine--but the UT Dallas came up with its own criteria.  Read the article from which the PDF is excerpted and you will see further empirical positive critiques of TFAs efforts.

(2) As for illiterate students you are forced to teach, how did the student become illiterate?  This is why bad teachers are so devastating: you take a year of education from a child's life and his ability to recover is severely compromised.

(3) I am blaming teachers, especially those who care more about bad mouthing TFA then teaching students.  I am also blaming the administrators and the trustees.  There is plenty to blame and teachers need to own up to their share.

(4) You have a very skewed view of a bell curve if you believe 90% of the DISD teachers are "very good."  If there are so many very good teachers why are there so many failed schools?

(5) So what responsibility do teachers have for the poor DISD schools?

And exactly how do you properly measure teacher performance? Requiring a teacher to move a kid in grade 6 to a grade 7 reading level when the kid enters grade 6 with a grade 3 reading level is impossible without abandoning the rest of the kids in the class. And 93% of the TFA teachers at DISD are NOT from the Ivy's but from UNT, Lamar, SMU, etc. Hiring the best teachers is of the utmost importance but the statistics on DISD TFA teacher performance are based on the CEIs which have been thoroughly discounted as worthless. The pervasive "blame the teacher" attitude is not only wrong but wrong-headed.  Yes there are bad teachers...but out of the 11,000 teachers at DISD I bet I can find 10,000 very good ones.

Maybe the outcomes have as more to do with the teaching skills of the teachers  rather than at what desk the teacher sits.

All of you DISD apparatchiks and poor performance apologists should open your eyes: there are now 43 failing schools in DISD.  TFA did not fail these children--the trustees, administrators and teachers have failed.  Your answer is (1) don't hire bright, energetic, Ivy League students praised by about everyone who has seen them at work, but to instead (2) bitch about TFA and the eleven schools needed to be closed and the poor teachers who are on the firing line instead of the TFA teachers.

By my math there are 32 more schools needing to be closed and every single under performing teacher in those 43 failing schools should bear responsibility for these failures. So what are your answers to 43 failing schools filled with uneducated children and incompetent teachers? Give some solutions besides your TFA trash talk.

You really don't think which campus a teacher is assigned to impacts the kind of student they get? Have you ever checked the achievement gaps among different DISD schools? Landing a teaching assignment at DESA or Lakewood makes a huge difference in your outcomes. Pretending it doesn't is disingenuous.

TFA teachers may not be silver bullets, but at least they are real bullets.  To my knowledge they have yet to "fail" an entire school, much less forty of them in a year.  I have to believe that in more than 40 failed schools there are quite a few teachers there who bear significant responsibility for this failing performance.  If you do not fire the lousy teachers and ineffective administrators these schools and others will continue to fail.

Quit worrying about whether TFA is getting an easy assignment, which seems like quite the canard since the TFA recruits their teacher for difficult environments, and worry about whether the DISD teachers are up to snuff, and if not, how to make them effective or get them out of the class room.

TFA is not the problem at DISD, business as usual is the problem at DISD.

I don't know about the degree requirements for Texas schools, but I think it is clear that the average TFA teacher is no worse than average.  Considering their educational backgrounds this does not surprise me.  Frankly, a lot of the criticism leveled at TFA seems to be based in large part on envy of the TFA teachers' accomplishments.

I question whether advanced degrees in teaching are necessary for all students.  I can see the efficacy of teaching how to teach for relatively rudimentary subjects, but wonder if these skill sets translate to a secondary pre-college curriculum.

And yes, it may be "easier" to teach an affluent child but it would seem there would be enough data points to distinguish student aptitude from the teachers' abilities.  I fear too many of our teachers want to land the fruits of working at Lakewood, rather than accepting the challenges of teaching in poor schools, a challenge TFA kids are more than willing to take on.

These terrible teachers and failing schools are destroying our city's youth and their futures.  I wish more teachers would care as much about the quality of their students' education and less about assignments, TFA and the other irrelevancies constantly dredged up to demean their "opponents."