When 48 DISD schools wound up on the so-called PEG list of what the TEA deems “unacceptable” schools, you read about it in the Dallas Morning News — as you should. But when the TEA names 24 elementary schools as “distinguished” (up from eight the previous year), you hear nary a peep. When the good news went out in a release yesterday, I wondered on this blog how the paper would play the story, whether it would be on the front page of Metro or whether it would be buried. I never considered that the paper simply wouldn’t do the story at all. I find this troubling.
Update: A mea culpa to the DMN.
9 comments
They didn’t mind printing headlines naming many schools among “the worst in Texas”, some based on TAKS scores in one subgroup three years ago.
Call me cynical but I think they have forsaken their longtime subscribers in the city to pander to the nefarious notions suburbanites have about any and every DISD school. I think it may be part of their marketing strategy.
I would argue that longtime DMN subscribers, the ones the dead-tree edition is published for, are way too old to have school-aged kids.
Still, Tim’s point is valid. It’s a story that should have appeared SOMEWHERE in the print edition.
This is part of a continuing pattern. No one wins as long as this keeps happening, except the DMN, who loves having something, anything to kick.
We all know that good news doesn’t sell.
Dallas Morning Who?
Nice schtick, Tim. Smart money says you’ll have your kids in private schools by middle school or your next major pay increase – whichever comes first.
Look people, I’m glad you’ve bought into D’s counter punches against TDMN hook-line-and-sinker, but the fact is that DISD as a whole is a glaring example of a bloated and underperforming district, and these “distinguished” schools are merely doing their job. We should expect nothing less.
Lost in the shuffle, or maybe more important, is the fact that DISD parents as a whole are also underperforming, which is why we’ve allowed a once decent district to fall apart.
It seems silly to micromanage TDMN’s story choices when there are clearly major problems that cannot be fixed within confines of the current structure.
So a web story has since been posted but not without a asterisk regarding TPM. I don’t like TPM either but I point out that it’s used statewide and was not invented here.
It would have been nice to have such statistical explanations by DMN during the years where homogenous schools were rated based on one student group’s performance while comparable ratings were denied schools held accountable to disaggregated data.
Where was the asterisk in the reporting and commentary on PEG schools – an asterisk noting that two schools on the “worst” list were also on the “best” list?
OK–your little rant is a bit disingenuous because your story isn’t, well, the whole story.
First of all, 13 of the 24 schools wouldn’t have made the list had they not been “helped” by the state’s newly implemented Texas Projection Measure, or TPM.
The TPM formula allows schools to pass by projecting how students will perform in the future on the exams even if they are currently failing!
TEA’s Debbie Ratcliffe said on Tuesday that if districts compared the number of distinguished schools in 2009 to those in 2008 the comparison wouldn’t be accurate because TPM was not used in 2008.
It seems to me that DMN’s lack of coverage of this non-story is preferable to your own inaccurate blog post.
@ RT
Agreed. DMN set the standard by first reporting TWICE on PEG schools – based on TAKS scores in one subgroup three years ago – and therefore should report on all other performance distinctions.
@TravisDad: Disingenuous? I assure you my “little rant” was sincere. And I certainly didn’t know about this TPM business.
Now then. That said, I do owe the DMN a mea culpa for hounding them for not getting the story into print. The legwork they did to explain TPM and get comment from the TEA justified a day’s delay in getting the story into print. I’ll put up another post shortly.