The School Zone

The School Zone (TSZ) is a partnership between a group of non-profits (currently 20+) and 10 public schools in West Dallas. TSZ’s goal is to ensure that children of all ages in West Dallas have access to high quality learning opportunities, from birth to college. TSZ features a powerful and effective multi-partner intervention tailored to high-need students from economically disadvantaged families. The intervention uses student specific performance data to 1) inform the actions of parents who are catalysts for student achievement and 2) integrate school and social sector resources to remove root causes of student underachievement. 

In 2010, TSZ began a study of the relationship between unmet student/family needs and school performance. We identified four variables present in West Dallas that, if applied together and informed by student performance data, could drive the reforms we sought. If we 1) involve parents in their children’s development at all ages, 2) provide high-quality early childhood education for every child, 3) support teaching and learning, 4) provide families with a safety net of essential resources through a coordinated and highly-targeted social sector that is informed by integrated school and family-level data; then even the most at-risk students will remain on grade level and graduate from high school college- and career-ready. 

CCE leads this strong partnership and is joined by the Dallas Independent School District, City of Dallas, United Way of Metropolitan Dallas, and 20+ non-profit community-based providers. Together, these partners are laying the groundwork for a high quality pre-school network to help ensure that children enter kindergarten with sufficient school readiness skills, increasing availability of parenting and family strengthening resources, and bringing in the resources of the Simmons School of Education and Human Development at SMU. 

Using community-based resources to effect durable school reform is not new. The Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) employs a similar, nationally recognized strategy. HCZ’s successes and challenges lead us to believe that all four core components – parent engagement, early childhood education, quality teaching and learning, and a network of community support - must be applied together. Each of the components has been successful in limited application, especially in the presence of heroic activity on the part of a non-profit or school. Alone none has proved to be the silver bullet that transforms public education. 

TSZ serves approximately 5,000 of the 7,500 children in West Dallas. Parent, community and school interventions will be monitored and a quasi-experimental research design will test TSZ’s effects on a case-study group of 660 students, including a cohort of 330 students (150 kindergarteners and 180 sixth graders) enrolled in the Pinkston feeder pattern compared to a sample of 330 Dallas ISD students (not in West Dallas) with matched academic, demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.