Page 12W

Sunday, April 18, 2004

The Dallas Morning News

SCHOOLS
Story by Angela Shah
tion, one of the nations oldest community foundations. Theyre the bedrock of society, he added. Having empty-nesters and childless people only is an organic weakness in a community. History and geography can make it difficult for cities to craft policies to shore up that weakness. Texas division of city and school responsibilities flows from the nationwide push early in the 20th century to protect schools from the municipal corruption and cronyism of the time. Thats why school-district boundaries can slice across city-limit lines. The city of Dallas includes parts of the Plano, Richardson, Highland Park and other school districts besides the DISD, which itself embraces parts of other cities. We should note that we fully appreciate the city government does not control the quality of education, Booz Allen said. This does not mean, however, that it has no role (or bears no responsibility) for improving it. Half of the respondents to The News 2003 poll rated the Dallas school district as only somewhat effecHow Dallas schools stack up in the region Suburban schools were much more likely than those in the DISD to be rated Exemplary or Recognized by the Texas Education Agency. DISD Suburbs

DALLAS AT THE TIPPING POINT:

ew indicators better predict a citys vitality than the performance of its public schools. Student achievement today creates a skilled workforce tomorrow. It attracts business, nurtures wealth and ensures a citys prosperity. So where does that leave Dallas? Not in the game. Even as many big cities move aggressively to bolster public education, City Halls relationship with Dallas largest school district remains informal at best. That arms-length distance cant continue if Dallas hopes to remain vibrant, the Booz Allen Hamilton report concludes.
Alone among most of its peers, Dallas City Hall has no systematic approach for bolstering neighborhood schools by improving the physical environment and fostering community involvement, the report found. Because education is so central to the citys economic future, City Hall is responsible to its stakeholders for building an active, results-oriented partnership with the Dallas Independent School District. From renovating inner-city school buildings to finding summer jobs for teachers and students to providing social services on school campuses, other cities are finding ways to improve public education that have little to do directly with what goes on inside the classroom, Booz Allen found. Thats because todays outside-theclassroom challenges are so immense. If children struggle because they come from poor families with limited English skills and parents working two menial jobs, is that solely a school-district responsibility? Or should cities be engaged, too especially by expanding economic opportunity and tightening the social-service net? Booz Allens findings, best-practices guidelines from the National League of Cities, and interviews in Dallas suggest that the City Hall-DISD partnership is far less robust than it could be. Dallas does dole out about $5 million each year for community-education activities, chiefly for arts programs. About $1 million seems to directly affect DISD. But how those initiatives relate to each other seems to be in the eye of the beholder. Which might explain why City Manager Ted Benavides sees a unified whole Theres 1,000 ways we relate to each other where DISD spokesman Donald Claxton sees something much less. A bunch of ancillary, chopped-up projects all over the place is how he described the City Hall-DISD relationship. Since Dallas operates without a strategic plan, there is no framework in which to fit a city education policy. The City Councils first-ever goals list doesnt include public education the No. 2 issue facing the city of Dallas, according to the 2003 Dallas Morning News Poll. Could the dialogue be more aggressive? Superintendent Mike Moses asked in an interview. Im not going to disagree with you. There are probably some more things we could do together. Mayor Laura Miller, who campaigned as a champion for education, emphasized her strong support for the DISD and willingness to do pretty much whatever Mike Moses asks me to do. Describing the Dallas-DISD relationship, she offered a catalogue of event-driven collaboration, such as classroom reading and talking up a ninth-grade mentoring program. Without giving specifics, she said that the upcoming report from a mayoral jobs task force would take the DallasDISD partnership to a different level. From where Avo Makdessian sits, a strong Dallas role in education would be a break with the citys past. As the full-time liaison on education issues for Mayor Ron Gonzales in San Jose, Calif., he meets other city representatives on the schools-conference circuit nationwide. Among Texas cities, San Antonio and Corpus Christi are familiar. But Dallas is missing in action. Dallas, for sure, I havent seen, he said. o o o AMERICAN CITIES DALLAS included have done much in recent years to repair a tattered urban fabric. Trendy nightspots and in-town lofts for childless twentysomethings and empty-nesters are symbols of downtowns on the rebound. Only one ingredient is missing, experts say: middle-class families with children. For cities to have a middle class is very, very important, said Paul Grogan, president of the Boston Founda-

Measuring school performance

The SAT provides one performance gauge for students who aspire to go on to college a critical step in an economy that puts a greater premium on education. 2002 SAT scores for students in the dominant school district in each peer city
1,200

1,000

850
800

Exemplary

27 40 129 15

191 111 103 7

Recognized
600

Acceptable
400

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Low-performing

*Memphis SAT score translated from ACT score

Rankings applied based on students performance on the 2001-02 Texas Assessment of Academic Skills.

What Dallas residents say

The 2003 Dallas Morning News Poll asked residents how they would rate the Dallas Independent School District is in terms of educating young people
Very effective 17% Somewhat effective 49% Not very effective 21%

Not at all effective 6%

Not sure/ refused 7%

DISD at a glance
The Dallas Independent School District is, by far, the largest school district within the city of Dallas. Population: 985,293 Square miles: 351 Cities served by the DISD: The district includes all or parts of Addison, Balch Springs, Carrollton, Cockrell Hill, Farmers Branch, Garland, Highland Park, Mesquite, Seagoville and University Park. Other school districts that serve Dallas: Besides the DISD, the city of Dallas is served by the school districts of Highland Park, Richardson, Plano, Irving, Garland, Wilmer-Hutchins, Duncanville and Cedar Hill. The districts operations Figures for 2002-03 school year
30

DISD residents: an ethnic breakdown

White Black/African-American American Indian and Alaska Native Asian Some other race Two or more races 2.8% 0.6% 1.9% 19.7% Hispanic origin 40% 26% Non-Hispanic origin 60%
49%

tive in terms of educating young people. Fewer than one in five said the DISD was very effective. Its task is huge. Nearly 80 percent of the districts 163,000 students come from homes classified as economically disadvantaged. A third of them are considered to have only limited English proficiency. Of the 78 percent of its students who graduate, fewer than half plan to attend a four-year college. Their average SAT scores are weak, compared with those of inner-city peers and students in the Dallas suburbs. All of this exacts a toll on Dallas, whether or not City Hall takes an activist stance on education issues. Families with school-age children who can afford to move outside the district or send their children to private school are strongly inclined to do so, the Booz Allen report found. In city neighborhoods with homes in the Dallas and Richardson school districts, those in the RISD portion are valued at 30 percent to 35 percent more. That means lower tax receipts from properties on the DISD side of the boundaries. And a bill will come due, too, for producing a workforce ill-equipped for the modern economy. When you dont have half of high school kids even planning on going to college, and the returns on education have never been higher and theyre increasing, yes, you have to expect the city to have a lower economic growth, said Dr. Donald Hicks, professor of political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas. Poor schools also could thwart Dallas plans for its undeveloped land. Dallas future the southern sector is largely within the DISD. The portions of Dallas inside the Plano, Highland Park and Richardson school districts are heavily built-out. The National League of Cities also recognizes schools as an urgent priority for municipal leaders. City leaders in Phoenix created a school-based program through which the citys Human Services Department reaches out to youngsters who need social services. In San Antonio, the city government is a member of the San Antonio Education Partnership, which strives to boost high school graduation rates and steer students to college. City Hall kicked in more than $650,000 in scholarship funds in 2001. City leaders are realizing they cant say its not their problem, said Bela Shah, program associate for the Coalition for Community Schools at the Institute for Educational Leadership in Washington. o o o NOT LONG AGO, THE DALLAS INdependent School District struggled to govern itself, much less to work with City Hall. Former Mayor Ron Kirk, who was elected in 1995, recalled the defensiveness that sometimes met his own overtures toward the DISD: The first thing a mayor always hears from a school board member is: Look, I got elected just like you did, Mr. Mayor, you S.O.B. So, stay out of my business. Distance and discord marked the city-school relationship in the 1990s. Bickering school trustees found unusual common ground in attacking Mr. Kirk for suggesting in 2000 that voters dump the entire board. The full City Council didnt make things any better by declining to endorse the school districts 10-years-inthe-making, $1.37 billion bond vote in 2002. (Some individual council members did speak up.) Fast forward to 2004. With the school boards internal flare-ups quieted, Dr. Moses wins plaudits for bringing stability and a sense of progress to the district even if student-performance gains are still slow. In my first five years as mayor, I knew five superintendents, said Mr.

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Housing/household type Renter-occupied housing units

55%

Owner-occupied housing units

45%

Educational attainment in Dallas Percentage of the over-25 population without a high school degree or a GED
35

31%

$1.3 billion
Total budget
25

$58.3 billion
Assessed property valuation

13,087
Professional staff

361,722
Households

20

6,726
Support staff

35.9%
Households with individuals under 18

15

163,327
2002 enrollment

18%
Households with individuals over 65

10

$350,701
Assessed valuation per student*
*District figure based on student count of 166,231, some of whom are prekindergarteners who are counted differently for the purposes of total enrollment.

3.35
DISD students: an ethnic breakdown
Hispanic African-American White Asian/Pacific Islander American Indian 1.1% 0.3% 6.3%

Challenges in the classroom

77.6%
Students from homes classified as economically disadvantaged

32.1%
Students classified as limited English proficient

70
Approximate number of languages spoken in homes of DISD students

Why do the ethnic profiles look different? Hispanics can be of any race, and different data sources break down population groups differently. The ethnic breakdown for all DISD residents comes from Census Bureau data. The breakdown for the DISD student body comes from school-district data.

SOURCES: U.S. Census Bureau, Dallas Independent School District, Booz Allen Hamilton analysis, DallasRelo.com, peer-city school districts, National Center for Education Statistics, 2003 Dallas Morning News Poll

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Average family size:

60.9%

31.4%