Is the Dallas Independent School District serving its students well when preparing them for future success? The Dallas Express dug into this question.
The best snapshot available is the Texas Education Agency’s (TEA) accountability report for the district, especially the data concerning its College, Career and Military Readiness metrics.
The 2021-22 report reveals that only 25% of DISD students scored “at or above the college-ready standard on SAT, ACT, TSIA, or earned credit for a college prep course,” a figure that trails Texas’ own unimpressive 41%, based on an average of all its public school districts.
Additionally, DISD has seen a steady decline in the number of students who graduate high school and start college right after the summer. Between the academic years 2017-2018 and 2020-2021, the district saw this metric fall by roughly 12%.
Other numbers in the report do not look very good for the district’s Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) program, which, as previously reported in The Dallas Express, is supposed to allow DISD high school students to earn an associate degree or industry certification in a skilled trade by the time they graduate.
In the most recent available data, a disappointing 12% of graduates earned an associate degree, and just 10% earned industry-based certification in a trade.
Additionally, there does not seem to be any available data on whether the industry-based certification aspect of P-TECH is succeeding at priming students for a career in a lucrative trade, even though the program has been in effect since 2015.
The Dallas Express reached out to DISD and asked the district if it had any additional data on the graduating class of 2022 regarding college entry or acceptance. We also asked what it is doing to turn around its flagging after-summer college entry numbers.
Finally, we asked for any evidence the district could provide that shows whether industry-certified graduates from the P-TECH program actually end up in lucrative trades.
The Dallas Express had not heard back as of press time.