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I was heartened to see that at least some of the DISD Home Rule Commission members read my collection of posts from Monday, in which I gathered all 10 of my home rule suggestions for their (and your) perusal. Bob Weiss, the head of the commission, emailed to tell me that everyone had received a printout of the posts. As well, two commission members, Jeff Veazey and Kevin Malonson, commented on the post.
I think each of their comments deserve its own post. Today I’ll respond to Veazey, who wrote the following:
You realize, of course, you are now the lone wolf in the wilderness calling for radical governance structure changes at the top of the district. SOPS submitted their proposed charter two weeks ago and even it presented no changes to the present board /governance structure. People now want from Home Rule in just a few months, what Dallas Achieves did, less than a decade ago, as a private sector commission, working hand in hand with the district, taking four years and spending $20 million in private sector money, to develop a plan that worked and continued to work until the new superintendent arrived. That plan involved heavy investment in pre-k, creating more community schools, hiring and training the best principals in the profession and giving them autonomy to lead their schools, among many of programs and plans that directly impact kids and that we can all agree on.
A lot to unpack here. First let me say that I’ve talked privately to Veazey. The guy is great: passionate about education, married to a teacher, open-minded, a credit to the commission. We disagree on certain things, but those disagreements come from different ideas of what would work to improve outcomes for kids, not from any political agenda or willful ignorance. The work he’s doing is a credit to the city. I should also note that he can be added to the long list of people who think I am a jackass. Add “perceptive” to his qualifications.
So when I say I think he is way, way, way off-base here, I believe it is simply because Veazey is one of many people who have been convinced that the above is true. It is not. The idea that Dallas Achieves was a great plan that Miles threw aside is the fever dream of a few self-interested parties (*coughcoughDONWILLIAMScoughcough*) who say that Dallas Achieves’ plan would have improved Dallas schools if only Miles had championed it and followed the plan when he arrived.
First, let’s quickly address the lone wolf thing. I think I made a pretty solid case why we large poor urban districts around the country have moved to mayoral involvement in public schools. I’m going to keep banging this drum, because I think it will help kids. So I’m okay with that.
Also, I think the reason SOPS didn’t recommend this has nothing to do with the merits of the idea. It has to do with the political reality of Dallas right now: Mayor Mike’s role in the clumsy rollout of home rule made him an easy target, someone you could label as a power-grabber, interested in expanding his empire. Suggesting mayoral involvement after that fiasco would have cratered the entire proposal.
That doesn’t mean that SOPS didn’t propose governance changes. The suggestions aren’t as radical as mayoral control, but they’re important changes. I’d say the mechanism to have a special election if student outcomes don’t grow is a pretty damned big deal. Impeachment, if it existed as an option today, might actually have some impact on Bernadette Nutall’s behavior. I’d say that’s a pretty damned big deal, too. Those are serious governance changes, and only two of the many governance changes SOPS proposed.
So we’ll agree to disagree on those points. But Veazey’s take on Dallas Achieves deserves a deeper look.
First, I’ve heard the comparison between the Home Rule Commission and Dallas Achieves before, and it’s never made sense. Dallas Achieves was a private group convened to make operational recommendations. The HRC has been convened to write a governing charter. Operational changes and governance changes are not the same thing. (Which is why, as another commenter noted, my suggestions involve school board reform more than school reform). There isn’t any kind of overlap in their missions. Those who want the HRC to become a Dallas Achieves want to confuse the commissioners and prevent the HRC from writing a charter.
More importantly, I think what he’s saying is inaccurate information about Dallas Achieves. I know Veazey served on the commission, but let me present my case. For background, here is the Dallas Achieves Commission plan and final report:
- Dallas Achieves formally sunset on January 1, 2010. The final meeting of the Dallas Achieves Commission was on September 17, 2009. The superintendent was Michael Hinojosa. In fact, it had been expired for so long when Miles arrived that he was not even briefed about the initiative until several months into his tenure.
- The commission was one of those typical Dallas commissions: loaded with too many smart people, run by consultants from out-of-state, loaded with money and good intentions but no real understanding of how to transform a school system. Nevertheless…
- The commission came up with 100 recommendations. Eight of them were deemed not actionable. Of the 92 remaining recommendations, they were broadly classified into categories of hierarchical difficulty, the most difficult of which was to prepare college ready students, which was effectively not achieved. (As I noted in the comments, in 2012 the district was still reporting 3 percent college readiness for black males, which is appalling.)
- Notably, one of the recommendations was to implement a pay for performance system for teachers, which was deemed 100 percent implemented. Odd, since there was no such program when Miles was hired two years after Dallas Achieves ended. (And which Miles is now trying to implement, albeit clumsily. That said, it received positive attention today from the New York Times.)
- One of the recommendations was to build an incentive system for assistant principals. That was deemed 0 percent achieved. Miles has implemented an actual incentive system for principals, and it is in his plan this year to do the same for APs. So, this Dallas Achieves goal will finally be achieved roughly 10 years after Dallas Achieves was launched and 5 years after it expired, and only because Miles is the superintendent.
- One of the recommendations was to develop a data warehouse to provide actionable information needed to push transformation, deemed 75 percent complete by the final Dallas Achieves report. Roughly $7M of the $20M raised by Dallas Achieves was for this project, which mostly came from the Dell foundation. The district, under the leadership of Arnold Viramontes, built this system from scratch as part of the office of transformation. That office was eliminated with Hinojosa’s last budget proposal, and Viramontes was forced out to go to HISD. The data system that was developed has been completely scrapped as unworkable and has been replaced by a series of commercial off-the-shelf products that are still only barely used by district staff; still, said staff mostly agrees that it is more usable than the prior system.
- One of the recommendations was to provide collaborative planning time districtwide for teachers and was noted as 100 percent implemented. This is heralded as hugely useful by policy wonks who study the issue, when implemented properly, and is branded under the term “PLC” or Professional Learning Community. The PLC time was eliminated in the last budget Hinojosa passed before he left.
- Of the 92 Actionable recommendations from Dallas Achieves, a couple have to do with early childhood education. The final report does not indicate any progress on any of those objectives.
That last one is key. The report’s recommendations regarding early childhood education were vague: raise awareness, improve quality, improve access. Let’s compare then the early childhood initiatives of Dallas Achieves with those of Destination 2020. Below, is the part of Dallas Achieves that addresses early childhood. Below that is the Destination 2020 plan (click to enhance):
There is no comparison. Dallas Achieves doesn’t offer any metrics related to success. Destination 2020’s entire plan is built to around accomplishing a single objective. The Dallas Achieves “action items” are vague, and there are four of them. Destination 2020 includes 30 of them, each of which is accompanied by an entire action plan with success metrics.
The truth is this: Dallas Achieves was a valiant effort by outsiders to try to influence operations within Dallas ISD, but much of it didn’t get done. None of the early childhood recommendations were accompanied by any kind of systemic implementation. The district’s org chart was unchanged — Early Childhood was overseen by a director before, during, and after Dallas Achieves, and there was no noticeable operational change during Dallas Achieves. A year after Dallas Achieves sunset, with the last budget proposed by Hinojosa, the board insisted on a full-day funding allocation for every pre-K classroom in DISD. So pre-K expansion started pre-Miles, but post-Dallas Achieves, and apparently not in any way tied to Dallas Achieves. And there wasn’t any focus on outcomes even with that funding expansion. It is only now that you see operational changes within the district to ensure pre-K is actually working.
Other early childhood initiatives see a similar trajectory. The DISD HIPPY program has been in place for several years, and I’m not sure if it predated that Dallas Achieves recommendation or came about because of it. What I do know is that the program was tiny until very recently, with Miles tripling the size of HIPPY since his arrival. Again, there’s just no comparison between Dallas Achieves and Destination 2020.
I get why powerful people in town want to recall Dallas Achieves fondly. Lots of them put money into it. But this thing was the epitome of the Dallas Way: a bunch of rich guys hired a bunch of consultants and talked to everyone for months and months, spent a ton of money, got little-to-no buy-in from the school board or the administration, and delivered a PowerPoint with a note that said YOU’RE WELCOME. Since then, they’ve blamed everyone but themselves for the fact that it didn’t help kids. Which I wouldn’t have a problem with, if their efforts weren’t hurting kids now by focusing on things that have little-to-no relevance to the home rule commission itself, a commission that should just come out and say they’re focused on school board reform. That post is coming soon.
