John Q. Adams Elementary saw a drop in enrollment of roughly 12% since the 2021-2022 school year.
The campus is located at 7852 Umphress Rd in southeastern Dallas, in Trustee Camile D. White’s District 4. Its website indicates that 442 students are currently enrolled at the school. However, there were 502 enrolled two school years ago.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, White was named The Dallas Express Bad Apple of Q3 for the 10,043 students who attended underperforming schools in her education district during the 2021-2022 school year. Such campuses received either D or F ratings in student achievement from the Texas Education Agency (TEA).
While high schools have additional metrics by which TEA determines student achievement outcome accountability scores, elementary and middle schools are exclusively assessed based on student performance on the annual STAAR exams.
TEA gave John Q. Adams Elementary a 56 out of 100 for student achievement that school year. The campus came in significantly below districtwide STAAR averages in math, reading, and science. Despite the efforts of the school’s dedicated educators, only 27% of students scored at grade level in reading. Some 31% scored at grade level in math, and only 9% met grade level in science.
Districtwide averages in reading, math, and science were 43%, 39%, and 37%, respectively.
A demographic breakdown of the 502 students enrolled at John Q. Adams Elementary during the 2021-2022 school year indicates that the overwhelming majority (94.4%) were Hispanic or Latino.
The drop in enrollment comes as more parents are putting their children in charters and private schools because of lackluster student outcomes and claims of politicized curricula at traditional public schools, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Mandy Drogin, campaign director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s education initiative Next Generation Texas, told The Dallas Express that such dynamics were likely behind the growing support for school choice legislation in Texas.
“I think more and more representatives, more and more parents, more and more Texans realize that there is not a downside to [school choice] and we need to put control back in the hands of parents where it belongs,” Drogin said.
The Dallas Express reached out to Trustee White to ask what factors may have figured into the steep drop in enrollment at John Q. Adams Elementary but did not receive a reply by press time.