As the nation's eleventh largest school district, Dallas Independent School District serves more than 161,500 students who come from homes where 58 different languages are spoken. Operating with a $1 billion dollar budget, DISD employs 18,678 employees including 10,000 teachers in 218 schools.
17 Aug 2001
MEDRANO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL MOVED TO ACCEPTABLE RATING
Good News Helping Jump-Start A Successful New School Year
DALLAS—DISD General Superintendent Mike Moses on Friday released a copy of a Texas Education Agency letter approving an appeal to grant an "acceptable" rating for Edison Medrano Academy, completing a week of good developments and good news for the nation's eleventh largest school district.
The approval of Medrano's appeal ensures that only 10 DISD schools are now rated as "low-performing," down from 28 last year. The approval announcement comes one day after DISD accountability ratings showed the system has been able to almost double the number of schools that are rated as "acceptable" or "recognized." TEA's ratings reflect how well state schools are performing based on their TAAS scores, dropout rates and student attendance.
"Medrano Elementary School has been rated as acceptable and that is more good news for DISD students, teachers, administrators and the board of trustees," Moses said. "We've had a good first week of school and received some positive news that can be used to jump-start a successful school year. The news from the state this week shows we are getting more serious about performance in DISD and we're going to continue to do even better."
Moses held a news conference on Thursday with five area principals to announce the news about the state's ratings.
"We are not going to become complacent about our successes. We hope that's been made clear to everyone," Moses said. "We can and we must do better."
The accountability ratings released Thursday show that the district has 16 schools rated as "exemplary," 32 schools rated as "recognized" and because of the TEA action, only 10 rated as "low-performing."
The ratings are based on a statewide system that takes into account a school's TAAS scores, dropout rate and student attendance. There are four classifications with exemplary being the highest, and low-performing being the lowest. Most DISD schools were rated as "acceptable."