Last Tuesday, I was at the unveiling of new Dallas County community achievement scorecard, which gives a county-wide snapshot of education data for the 2013-2014 school year. It tells us the current makeup of our county’s students, the county’s poverty rate, costs and opportunity costs, asks if funds are being spent equitably, looks at poverty rate, analyzes achievement gaps at 11 spots throughout the pre-K to postsecondary student cycle, and so forth. It’s an important event, one anyone who cares about education in this area attends — in this case, that means Mayor Mike, Paul Quinn president Michael Sorrell, DISD board president Miguel Solis, DISD superintendent Mike Miles, business leaders, education nonprofit leaders, and so on.
Before the event, I talked with several DISD administrators about the efforts of DMN news reporters to re-fire the former head of the HR department. To say they were mocking of it would be a disservice to the word. To mock, there must be some measure of respect. They were dismissive of the story in the way one is dismissive of a drunk uncle you must put up with because he’s family.
“Look, if this city wants to have a real conversation about what it wants out of its school leadership and Superintendent Miles, that’s always fair to ask of us,” one said. “But that’s not what this is about. Not when you have people who can’t even understand that in a district with 20 percent mobility and specialized teaching roles, their idea of over-hiring is not only laughable but absurd. This is about trying to fire Miles before the May elections. We all know that.”
Indeed. If you were unaware of the ecosystem in which Dallas ISD exists, you might think this is a weird time to try to fire Mike Miles. DISD’s finances are in the best shape they’ve been in recent memory. The district is undergoing a merit-pay revolution being watched by the entire country, using a system (TEI) to give a comprehensive evaluation of teachers designed to pay the best teachers the most money. As well, it’s designed to help get our best teachers into our worst schools, where they are needed — initial results, according to administration officials who’ve seen them, show 30 percent of DISD “distinguished” teachers are at magnets and only 7 percent of them at our “improvement required” schools — an inequity that needs to change and can now be addressed openly. As well, the district has performed very well in recent years — although not as well last year — in terms of student outcomes when multiple factors are adjusted for the poverty of the district.
(You may have missed some of this, because the last item has never been published or acknowledged in the Dallas Morning News news pages, even though the school board itself had the report’s author in for a board briefing Q&A.)
More important, the district is undergoing a policy revolution. The largest components of this are noted in something recently released by DISD called the Comprehensive Plan. It says the district needs funds to enact transformative policy changes (and the necessary accompanying facilities changes) in three key areas: early education, school choice, and CTE (career and technical education). It’s the biggest story of the school year, incredibly important changes for students, the district, the city itself. It’s perhaps the biggest pure education story of the past five years in Dallas ISD.
(You may have missed this. The Dallas Morning News has not covered the policy suggestions in any serious way in its news pages. It has discussed the financing, in a slipshod manner, which I detailed in my last post.)
As well, there are other fascinating reform efforts going on in DISD, like those centered on personalized learning, which are important but are not discussed in the Comprehensive Report.
(You may not be aware of the personalized learning initiative. It has not been discussed in any meaningful way in the Dallas Morning News news section. I recently spent a year editing a magazine that covered the revolution in personalized medicine; personalized learning is really cool, and it will get its own post some day.)
So how can you fire the guy who has all that going on, especially given that he is leading one of the poorest ISDs in the country, one pushing a poverty rate of 90 percent? Because, as Jim Schutze has noted a few times this past week, this is the get-Miles ecosystem in which we operate. The latest scandal, one in which “too many” teachers were hired, fits well within this ecosystem. The story upon which it is based has the hint of authority, in that it contains quotes from school board members and cardinal numerals. But it omits key points that would easily explain the discrepancy to anyone who understands math — e.g., the average 20 percent student mobility within DISD, the fact that extra teachers at Improvement Required schools has shown student improvement, the fact that if 10 students move into a school you can’t simply move .5 of a teacher, the fact that the administration reacts to individual campus requests for teachers instead of controlling this centrally BECAUSE the board has directed the administration to emphasize campus control in such matters, etc.
Sorry for all the context, but if you watched the Dallas ISD board meeting last week — hell, if you care about education at all in this city — context is what you need. Because context is what you rarely get from the daily media covering the district, and that’s why last week’s meeting was so instructive. It’s also why board president Miguel Solis, trustee Mike Morath, and Miles himself called out the Morning News for its continued fluffing of status-quo hate-mongers. (My interpretation of their words; actual words will vary.)
I know you don’t have time or interest to watch the entire four-plus hours of video from last week’s meeting that sits at the top of this post. So let me cue up an important sequence that will tell you all you need to know.
Click here for video from that meeting set to begin at the 2:17:42 mark. (At least I hope it does. Having crazy problems with this relatively easy technology today.) First, I want you to know how hard that was for me to decide to start there. Because it cuts out so much insanity that comes before it, so much muddled thinking on the part of status-quo board members, it makes me crazy. One quote you won’t see is earlier when Elizabeth “I chart numbers; that’s what I do” Jones drives home her point to administrators that “leveling and kids go together.” And Ann Smisko, Miles’ No. 2, repeats in a monotone, “Leveling and kids go together, yes” in the same soul-dead way one might say, “It places the lotion in the basket, yes.”
Okay, so that video I linked to starts with Jones recapping her problem with the administration, parroting the DMN stories: The administration projected that it needed teachers to account for 161,500 kids. This was in September. When they leveled — basically, tried to figure out which teachers fit which holes, then add teachers for holes where there is no fit (an algebra teacher can’t teach a dual-language class, for example) — they based the number of teachers they needed on a figure of 161,900 kids, or 400 more kids. (Begin the ominous music signaling a front-page scandal, please.) Then, Jones points out that the number the district reported to the state (which it must do to get state funds, based on the number of kids enrolled), that number was lower: 160,361. “So we’re well below, we’re in a variance there,” Jones says. “[Leveling] doesn’t explain the variance at such a great order of magnitude, unless you’re trying to cover for something you’ve already done.”
Now, before we get to the very obvious answer — one that could be easily guessed by anyone familiar with enrollment patterns at large urban districts — let’s take a minute to marvel at what Jones is saying here. She’s saying that being off 0.81 percent in a projection suggests there is a cover-up. She’s saying that HIRING MORE TEACHERS suggests a cover-up. She’s accusing the administration of a cover-up. To what end, no one has ever explained to me: the nefarious effort to … hire … more … teachers?
Okay, continue with the video and you get CFO Jim Terry’s very obvious answer:
• The district has to budget for the projected high point of number of students. In any large urban district, that number is seen in the first month, so late September or early October. It then drops the rest of the semester. Which is why, by the time the district reports the enrollment to the state in late October, that number is falling. But you can’t budget fewer teachers than you need just because you know enrollment would fall, because every kid there on Day 1 or Day 10 deserves the most resources the district can afford to help him or her. (You can’t just fire them as enrollment declines for obvious reasons, not the least of which is that teachers sign one-year employment contracts.)
• Watch Superintendent Miles try to add further explanation. When he talks about “erring on the side of advocacy of our assistant supes and EDs and principals,” he’s talking about the fact that these extra teachers that were asked for — the reason for the nefarious $6.4 million request — were requested because campuses asked for them. In other words, not because the district said “let’s hire more teachers,” but because principals and their bosses advocated for the need for more teachers to get the outcomes the district wants. Remember this. It will be important soon.
• Also, please note what Jones does when Miles tries to answer her question. She just starts yelling at him. Shortly thereafter, she begins complaining about there not being ENOUGH teachers due to administration policy, in a weird undercut to her argument. (If you’ve watched her, this nonlinear stream-of-consciousness-mixed-with-belittling-anger thing is nothing new.) Miles then rightly asks the question, “Are we arguing about too many teachers or too few?” The cackle from the audience was NOT from me, because I was watching the video feed from home. The home from which I cackled.
• Jones then asks if the district has too many or too few teachers. The answer is too few — explained earlier in the meeting. (Miles then gives yet another brief explanation of leveling.) Wait, you’re saying: Too few? How can that be? The DMN said that the district hired 316 teachers too many teachers! We’ll get to that.
• Jones makes some more allegations, then drops them as soon as it’s pointed out she isn’t making sense. This part could be any board meeting. Elizabeth Jones then is told she’s out of line, she yells at Solis, people clap because anti-Miles people are absurd, and then she wraps up her harangue.
Okay, now we’re about 10 minutes into this section, and trustee Dan Micciche looks at the question of over-hiring. “When you look at the text messages [from the DMN article], it looks like over-hiring occurred.” He asks for clarification. (Please see the direct-but-respectful manner in which he asks said question.) Terry explains that it’s not really about number hired at that point, it’s not “bodies already here,” it’s about positions needing funding. The important part is when Miles and Terry point out how tough the game of musical chairs is when principals want more teachers to fill specific roles. Then Micciche says, okay, but the concern is that these text messages said the district over-hired.
At this point, trustee Mike Morath can’t wait anymore, barking, “That’s not what they said!” After Miles kind of fumbles through his point, Micciche says he’ll accept Morath’s point of information and asks him to explain what he means.
This is the crucial part. This shows you how the DMN not only inflated some text messages to a fake scandal, but it also based the story on something that they didn’t understand.
This portion begins at 2:37:18, which I’ve cued up here. To quote the always quotable Zac Crain, Morath breaks it down like a fraction. The DMN said that the text messages suggested the district hired 316 too many teachers. Not right. The number 316 was the total number of additional positions requested of the administration by the schools themselves — 257 for increased enrollment, the rest for other reasons.
“The reason we are here tonight is that the people who read this set of instant messages radically misinterpreted what they were reading,” Morath says. “I don’t see any quotes from staff member in this article. This is an entirely inaccurate article.”
Then Joyce Foreman says some stuff.
If you forward to 2:47:42, Morath reiterates his points. (Notice that Foreman leaves the room.) Morath brings up the problems with the article’s assumptions, and again he says that the story is “wholly and completely inaccurate.” Then he asks for a retraction.
Now, what is Morath pointing out? That schools asked for 316 more total positions. There is no cover-up regarding that request, because how could principals and campus advocates know (or care) about overall enrollment or teacher levels districtwide? The administration said, no, that’s too many positions, but more teachers are a good thing for kids, so we’ll try to get you 137 (out of a request for 178 more positions overall, which includes things like counselors). They asked the board for $6.4 million for that. At no point THEN OR NOW has the district over-hired teachers, because it was responding to campus need requests. End. Of. Story.
It doesn’t surprise me that some trustees can’t understand this. Perhaps you were on Facebook this weekend and saw Joyce Foreman’s insane arguments on behalf of her shameful voting record. (An overlooked gem: Her contention that she voted against a home-visitation program with United Way because UW gathers data on kids — well, sure, UW is an outcomes-based organization — and that the data is housed “in California,” as if the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act is unenforceable there.) Again, no surprise. Tiny numbers of older (read: no kids in schools) voters elect trustees in May elections, and no one cared to change that fact with the opportunity Home Rule presented, because Boogeyman. Also, the positions are unpaid. As a result, you’re going to get idiots or demagogues or both on the board sometimes.
But the newspaper should understand this story, right?
No, not when you operate with the level of contempt for the people you cover that the paper displays. I’ve written about it more than once before, and I suspect I will do so again. There are plenty of examples I haven’t even touched on. And that contemptuousness is why the paper hasn’t reported in any in-depth way on the district’s comprehensive plan from a programmatic standpoint. In fact, when DISD gave the DMN the plan and begged for coverage, saying it would make its top administrators available for explanation and interviews, the paper’s news team told them, “We’re too busy with text messages.” Folks, that is unacceptable. Explaining an enormous policy change like that is the paper’s freaking job.
And that’s why we’re where we are today as a district and as a city: The paper of record won’t engage its readers in an adult conversation about educating our poorest, neediest kids. Instead, we get half-assed readings of text messages and meaningless quotes from trustees whom everyone knows want Miles fired for any reason before the May elections. We get a panicked and divided board alternately scratching its head and asking for the head of Mike Miles. We get more proof that DISD is the city’s biggest piñata, that the status quo is salivating as it takes its swings, aided by a paper unwilling to do its job. That’s the real scandal.
