The Dallas Independent School District (DISD) has announced the addition of thirteen new choice schools with exciting programs to begin next school year. Now, there will be over seventy choice schools within the district.
Per Edchoice.org, “School choice allows public education funds to follow students to the schools or services that best fit their needs — whether that’s to a public school, private school, charter school, home school or any other learning environment families choose.”
According to Dallas ISD News Hub, on February 18 and February 22, leaders from Dallas ISD’s Office of Transformation and Innovation went to the schools to share the good news among teachers and campus leaders.
Each school’s campus leadership team collaborated to create a plan for the programs they believed would be most beneficial to their students’ academic success. After spending hours creating them, the leadership teams submitted their plans to Public School Choice 8.0.
Executive Director of Instructional Redesign and New School Launch Shakeatha Butler commented, “We are proud of these principals and schools for bringing their talent and energy into creating innovative school options in families’ backyards.”
The new choice schools and the programs they will implement in the fall of 2022 are as follows:
- Arcadia Park Elementary School will pilot the creation of a leadership model.
- Bayless Elementary School will initiate a leadership model.
- Ben Milam Elementary School will initiate a visible learning model.
- Boude Storey Middle School will transform into a STEAM school.
- Edna Rowe Elementary School will initiate a Montessori model.
- Frank Guzick Elementary School will start off small and build toward becoming an International Baccalaureate school.
- Gabe Allen Academy will initiate a new technologies model.
- Paul L. Dunbar Elementary School will transform into a STEM school.
- Reinhardt Elementary School will initiate a personalized learning model.
- The iLearn Virtual School will offer self-paced, anytime instruction for grades three through nine, eventually covering kindergarten through twelfth grade.
- The Medical District BioMedical School will be a brand new school that implements a STEM program with a focus on biomedical sciences.
- Thomas J. Rusk Middle School will pilot a career and leadership explorations model.
- Urban Park Elementary School will transform into a STEAM school.
According to The Institute for Arts Integration and STEAM, STEAM programs are built on the foundations of STEM, but with an added bonus. While STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, the “A” in STEAM stands for the Arts.
Both programs focus on learning via creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking, hands-on experiments, and collaborating with peers.
As the U.S. Department of Education explained, “In an ever-changing, increasingly complex world, it’s more important than ever that our nation’s youth are prepared to bring knowledge and skills to solve problems, make sense of information, and know how to gather and evaluate evidence to make decisions.”
The Public School Review stated that Dallas ISD’s average math proficiency score is 47%, compared to statewide public schools’ average of 51%. The average reading proficiency score for Dallas ISD is 40%, compared to the statewide average of 47%.
Dallas ISD ranks in the top 1% of Texas’ public school districts for largest student body.
For the 2018-2019 school year, Dallas ISD academically ranked at number 660 out of the 1,199 districts in the state. According to H. David Ballinger’s DFW Residential Real Estate report, Carroll ISD ranked number one on the top twenty-five list for academics and test scores.
