Yesterday I said I was troubled by how the Dallas Morning News seemed to be ignoring good news out of DISD. Now I offer an apology. Diane Rado and Tawnell Hobbs have a story in today’s paper about the 24 DISD schools recognized as “distinguished” by the TEA. That number was up from just eight in 2008. Yes, it was — and yet. A comparison of how many schools made the list in 2009 and how many made it in 2008 isn’t fair because of a bit of statistical legerdemain used by the TEA on the 2009 data. Without something called the Texas Projection Measure, 13 of those 24 schools would not have made the list.
If I see a press release on Monday, I expect a report in the next’s day paper. The Internet has conditioned me — all of us — to feel like a news cycle lasts about as long as it takes to hit the refresh button. But the sort of reporting that Rado and Hobbs did takes time — figuring out what the Texas Projection Measure is (figuring out that it even exists), getting comment from the TEA, etc. In this case, the reporting took about a day.
So cheers to them. I’ll take my lashes in the comments section.
