Parents with children attending school in the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) feel that a lack of school choice is the main reason the district is one of the worst performing in the state.
In a poll conducted by The Dallas Express, respondents were asked to identify and rank several possible causes for the dismal student outcomes produced by DISD, including factors like a lack of parental involvement or insufficient funding.
A lack of school choice came away as the survey’s top concern, with the answer making its way onto roughly 19% of respondents’ top three choices, edging out 18.6% of respondents who included “mismanagement by trustees” in their top three.
The poll results come as several pieces of school choice legislation continue to navigate the Texas House of Representatives, despite indications that there is not currently enough support there to put something on Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, as previously reported in The Dallas Express.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, DISD struggled to keep student-to-teacher ratios for elementary schools under the state-mandated maximum, relying on waivers from the Texas Education Agency (TEA). In October 2019, the district requested more than 200 waivers, all for elementary schools, where at least some classrooms were clocking as many as 28 students per teacher, People Newspapers reported.
DISD has been struggling to find enough teachers to staff its campuses in recent years, deploying various schemes and hiring incentives to try to get enough qualified staff to educate the roughly 142,000 students in the school system.
The Dallas Express reached out to the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and asked how many classroom size waivers DISD filed for this school year. The agency directed the news outlet to a TEA waiver portal, where The Dallas Express found that DISD received 197 waivers for the 2022-2023 school year, virtually all for elementary schools.
Theoretically, the overcrowding issue could, in part, be alleviated by a school choice program that would allow district parents to pursue educational opportunities for their children outside of DISD, thus decreasing the population pressure in almost hundreds of classrooms and allowing the district’s hardworking teachers to devote more time and attention to each student under their charge.
Last school year, only 41% of DISD students scored at grade level on their STAAR exams, and that was with 110 classroom size waivers approved by TEA.
A closer look at the results for DISD third and fourth graders shows just how far behind they are compared to their peers in surrounding districts.
Forty-one percent of DISD third graders scored at grade level in reading, while the average for Education Region 10 (which includes DISD) was 52%. In third-grade math, DISD scored 40% at grade level. The region averaged 45%.
When it came to district fourth graders, only 46% scored at grade level in reading. The region’s average was 55%. In math, only 39% of DISD fourth graders scored at grade level, six points below the regional average of 45%.