SMU and DISD team up to go cradle-to-career in West Dallas

By Eric Nicholson

By most measures, LG Pinkston High School is failing. The school, which neighbors Fish Trap Lake in a poor area of West Dallas, has higher dropout rates, lower graduation rates, and lower test scores than the rest of Dallas ISD. It is considered academically unacceptable by the state and has been for several years.

That's not to say that people aren't trying to improve things. A coalition of nonprofits and community groups, with a big assist from SMU, has focused on improving Pinkston and its feeder schools as a means of revitalizing a long struggling part of the city.

But those efforts will enter the next phase come Saturday when, right after giving Mike Miles until July 2013 to obtain his Texas superintendent's certification, the DISD Board of Trustees will decide whether to sign an agreement with SMU's Simmons School of Education, the city of Dallas and about 20 nonprofits to transform West Dallas into a Promise Neighborhood, the federally assisted versions of the Harlem Children's Zone, the by all accounts very successful program that tracks every child's education from cradle to graduation.

The stated goal of the project, dubbed The School Zone, is to "improve school performance, raise graduation rates, and increase college readiness," which is straightforward enough, but it's the same goal that's has aimed for and missed for a long time. The key is the new cradle-to-career approach that tracks kids through their educational career.
 
The thought is, per the partnership agreement, "that if we increase early childhood educational opportunities, provide families with targeted resources from a coordinated social sector, improve teaching and learning, and engage parents in their children's development, then students will be more likely to graduate from high school prepared for college and careers."

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