DMN Education

This is EXACTLY why EMERGE exists. Kudos to DMN Education for this story on education inequity faced by Texas' highest-achieving Black and Latino students. Through our state-of-the-art college advising curriculum and support services, 95% of EMERGE students matriculate to a four-year college or university immediately after high school graduation.

It takes a community! Because of our supporters and donors like MacKenzie Scott, we can help students thrive, no matter their circumstance 📚

Read more about how this gift will impact the Dallas Region in this piece from DMN Education: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2022/02/03/philanthropist-mackenzie-scott-makes-historic-gift-to-communities-in-schools-of-north-texas/

Get your opinion heard, but completing the questionnaire. Hi, I am Tamara Bell Boyle, Ed.D.. I am researching educator's preparedness. How prepared were you prior to COVID-19 pandemic quarantine (i.e., March of 2020 until June 2020, the end of the United States (US) academic year of 2019-2020)? The questionnaire is in chronological order. The questionnaire starts with some questions prior (i.e., the academic year of 2018-2019) to COVID-19 pandemic quarantine (i.e., March of 2020) to allow the research to have a baseline. The questionnaire continues in a chronological order and ends with your thoughts/expectations about this academic year (2021-2022).

******* Please note if you are not from the U.S. your opinion still counts!!! There is an optional spot to give your area, please just note more specifically where you are from. If you just state Birmingham the researcher will assume Birmingham, Alabama; therefore, please be more specific and type for example Birmingham, England. Thank you. *******

Your responses will be confidential and the survey should take approximately 30 minutes.

Link to questionnaire https://forms.gle/fbHe2BcidjvcWt927

A little background to the research:
According to "Coronavirus 'Confusion': Teachers Had Little Training for How to Do Online Classes", written on April 17, 2020, “Many teachers received a couple of days of training before being asked to overhaul nearly every facet of their job. The lucky ones had a couple weeks”. Was this true for you? In addition, in "The CHLOE 4: Navigating the Mainstream, The Changing Landscape of Online Education", which was published March 24, 2020 provided the following comment: "Mounting successful online courses requires time, effort, and expertise that are likely in short supply under emergency conditions. The immediate goal should be to facilitate communication between faculty and students on the remaining tasks and assignments necessary to complete course requirements, and to help sustain campus communities in these difficult times". However, did your educational institutions do more? For example, in "How K–12 Schools Map Paths to Effective Hybrid Learning", published January 05, 2021, discussed how the Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum at Leander Independent School District (Leander ISD), in Texas, explained “We can create documents, resources and exemplary lessons, but unless our teachers understand how virtual teaching is different from teaching in person, it’s really going to be a barrier for them” and understanding the possible barrier, for the 2020-2021 academic year, Leander ISD created a summer on-line learning experience for their teachers. Did your educational institution do something similar over the 2020 summer? What about the summer of 2021?

Prior research includes, but not limited to, "Factors Relating to Non-completion of Doctoral Degree in Education", which was presented at Mary Immaculate College International Conference, on May 25, 2018, in Limerick, Ireland. YouTube link is: https://youtu.be/fqUf6HHAPk8 From that research I wrote a paper "Another Option for Doctoral-non-completer-students Who Wish to Complete their Ed.D." and presented at the Canada International Conference on Education (CICE-2021) in collaboration with World Congress on Education (WCE-2021), on June 24, 2021, at the University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada (Synchronous-online setting via Zoom) YouTube link is: https://youtu.be/jKothiuyad4 In addition, from this research I wrote "Gwynedd Mercy University’s ABD Completion Program for Doctoral-non-completer-students Who Wish to Complete their Ed.D.", which was published in Literacy Information and Computer Education Journal (LICEJ), Volume 12, Issue 1, 2021 from "Another Option for Doctoral-non-completer-students Who Wish to Complete their Ed.D. The link https://infonomics-society.org/licej/published-papers/volume-12-2021/

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me at [email protected].

Lastly, I would really appreciate if you could please like and share my questionnaire, even if you are not an educator. Thank you in advance.

What the heck is this all about?
Do you job and find out if this was a falsified PPP application.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10223182859740746&set=p.10223182859740746&type=3

WHAT THE LEGISLATURE WANTS TO KEEP SECRET ABOUT SCHOOL FUNDING

TEA released the 2017 – 2018 PEIMS Actual Financial Data last week. The state, once again, significantly failed to fund public education. Let’s take a quick look at where the M&O funding for schools comes from.

School funding comes from four funding streams: local taxes (property taxes), other local and intermediate (money received by one district for services provided to another school district), state taxes (sales tax/franchise tax revenue), and federal funds (money from the federal government). 94.96% of the M&O funding came from a combination of local property taxes and the state.

I am going to start by attributing the recapture money, also known as Robin Hood funds, to property owners. This is funding that came from the property taxes of property rich districts and was sent to the state to be redistributed to other school districts. Property owners paid an increase of $1.8 billion in property taxes in 2018. This represents an increase of 7.81% or $341 per student. The state contribution increased $5.4 million (yes, million). This represents an increase of 0.03% or $1 per student. With funding levels tied to the actual M&O tax rate, not the revenue, school districts are not able to lower their M&O rate without losing funding. This system is designed on appraisal districts increasing your property values year after year, thus decreasing the state contribution.

When your legislator, neighbor, friend, or anyone else tries to tell you that school taxes are out of control, you can remind them that the state depends on rising property taxes to fund education; refusing to increase the sales tax/franchise tax contribution to offset rising property taxes. When your legislator claims to support public education; I invite you to check out how they vote on pro public education bills at Project Educo. We have scores from the 85th Session posted now, as the legislature starts voting on bills, we will start providing scores for this Session. More than one group is keeping score.

ABBOTT’S CLAIMS ABOUT DALLAS ISD TEACHER PAY NOT SUPPORTED BY DATA

I listed to Governor Abbott say in his state of the State address, “When I visited Blanton Elementary school in Dallas, I met an outstanding teacher who was only in his third year of teaching and already making more than $90,000 a year in salary.” This comment may be heard at the 22’32” mark of his speech. This statement caught my attention. I decided to do some research to verify this claim. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhI3aXqDzDA

I submitted an open records request to Dallas ISD on 2/5 seeking the salary of every professional employee assigned to an ACE campus for the 2016 – 2017, 2017 – 2018, and the 2018 – 2019 school years. I asked that the information be presented in a way that allowed me to see base salary, any stipends, years of experience, assigned campus, and their position. I started my review by looking at 3rd year teachers at Blanton.

According to the information provided by DISD, the highest base salary for a third-year teacher at Blanton is $53,000. When you add the ACE stipend, it bumps it up to $58,000. To be absolutely clear, according to the information provided by Dallas ISD, there is not a third-year teacher at Blanton Elementary making more than $58,000. This is a far cry from $90,000.

I expanded my search to include all third-year teachers assigned to an ACE campus. Once again, the highest base salary is $53,000. When you add the ACE stipend, it bumps it up to $58,000. Again, to be crystal clear, there is not a third-year teacher at an ACE campus in Dallas ISD making $90,000 a year.

I then expanded my search to include all teachers at an ACE campus. The information I received from DISD shows a total of 355 teachers assigned to an ACE campus. Nine of these teachers, or 2.5% of them, have a base salary of $82,000 (Exemplary II on the DISD scale). Eight of these teachers are also receiving an ACE stipend of $7,000 for a total compensation of $89,000. The ninth teacher is receiving a $3,000 ACE stipend for a total of $85,000. Looking at the years of experience for this group shows that they have been teaching for the following number of years: 5, 6, 7, 10, 15, 16, 18, 19, 29. This is an average of 14 years of experience per person. Interestingly enough, eight of the nine teachers work at an elementary school and one is at a middle school. According to the DISD scale, there are NO teachers at the “Master” level. A teacher does not make a $90,000 base salary until they reach this level.

I looked at the overall experience of all the teachers assigned to an ACE campus for the 18 – 19 school year, their average base salary, average total salary, and highest salary in that experience group. For comparison sake, according to the 17 – 18 Texas Academic Performance Report, the statewide average teacher salary in 17 – 18 was $53,334. Teachers, on average, had 10.9 years of experience in 17 – 18. For Dallas ISD the average teacher pay was $56,788 with 9.9 years of experience.

First Year Teacher = 32 total teachers- $52,000 average base salary, $53,000 average total salary - $57,000 highest salary
2nd Year = 25 - $52,144 - $55,704 - $57,400
3rd = 23 - $52,878 - $56,443 - $58,000
4th = 22 - $56,257 - $60,121 - $70,000
5th = 23 - $57,252 - $61,557 - $72,000
6th = 26 - $58,413 - $62,413 - $89,000
7th = 19 - $59,527 - $63,370 - $89,000
8th = 12 - $60,781 - $65,781 - $89,000
9th = 9 - $63,667 - $69,112 - $81,000
10th = 8 – $60,916 - $65,166 - $80,480
11th = 15 - $60,618 - $65,085 - $85,000
12th = 15 - $63,788 - $68,454 - $82,480
13th = 12 - $59,738 - $64,488 - $69,220
14th = 15 - $59,842 - $65,442 - $73,300
15th = 6 - $59,254 - $63,254 - $73,300
16th = 9 - $61,688 - $66,021 - $89,000
17th = 9 - $65,506 - $70,283 - $89,000
18th = 4 - $55,633 - $60,883 - $72,000
19th = 12 - $61,595 - $66,595 - $89,000
20th = 6 - $66,577 - $70,577 - $89,000
21st = 5 - $62,114 - $65,914 - $74,223
22nd – 45th = 46 - $63,501 - $68,219 - $89,000
Unknown = 2 - $51,500 - $52,500 - $54,000
Total ACE Teachers = 355 - $58,745 - $62,784 - $89,000

I went back to the 16 – 17 and 17 – 18 school years to see if, perhaps, this mythical teacher taught then; they did not. Chris Tackett reviewed their compensation plan and determined that it was not possible for a third-year teacher to make anywhere close to $90,000. The data released by Dallas ISD shows this as well.

While I do not like discussing people’s pay, I am absolutely sick and tired of politicians misleading people about public education. I am in the middle of my career and I can count on two hands how many teachers I’ve met along the way that support any type of merit pay system. While I am thankful that this last election got the attention of our legislators, it is the votes that matter. More than one group is keeping score. Follow Project Ēdūcō to see how your legislator supports public education.