William McKenzie: explains why Success at Dallas’ Sunset High matters to all of us

2:41 PM CST on Monday, March 2, 2009

If you want to see America's future, come to Sunset High School in Oak Cliff.

That's where you'll find it, if you buy the idea that America's destiny is linked to its growing Latino population. And it would be hard not to, when you consider the numbers in America's second-largest state. A demographer told a House committee last week that Latino children, by far, make up the largest group of Texas children under age 5.

Sunset mirrors that shift here, the one also rippling across America. A Dallas high school that once educated a largely white student body is now 95 percent Hispanic.

That may seem irrelevant to a suburban parent shuttling between kid soccer games, but the plight of lower-income Latino students, like Sunset's, should matter enormously. This is not a trend you can move farther away from having to face.

Look at it this way: When baby boomers in the burbs ease into retirement, Texas will need educated Latinos working their way up in corporations, caring for the frail in hospitals and running for political office. Today's suburbanites will need educated Latinos with earning power to buy those four-bedroom homes once boomers begin downsizing to condos. No other demographic group is growing fast enough to fill such needs.

That's why the Sunsets matter, regardless of our address, and why we should praise their success.

Sunset, a dark-red-brick campus along Jefferson Boulevard south of the Trinity River, outperformed its peer schools in one key indicator, adding more academic growth to its students – more than any other Dallas high school, including Townview, which regularly shows up on surveys as one of America's top high schools.

What does this mean?

The Dallas school district has internal benchmarks that show how much "value" classrooms add each year. Last year, Sunset did better than any DISD high school in helping students improve in various subjects.

Tony Tovar, the fast-talking former coach who leads the 2,200-student campus, attributes the breakthrough to interventions with struggling students. The approaches include creating an "academic corps" for after-school teaching and launching special tutoring for students with limited English skills.

Or, as Tovar told me, "We tried to break things down like a golf swing."

Now, here's the realistic part. I may be thrilled, but Sunset students still can't compete equally with the kids from suburbia, much less the ones from China and India who will be tomorrow's engineers and scientists.

Consider Sunset's students with limited English skills, who make up about 25 percent. In each grade, they lag far behind their peers in such areas as math and reading.

You can't find a tougher education problem. Deborah Stipek, Stanford University's education dean, told The Dallas Morning News editorial board last week that schools may need to rethink the four-year high school model for students with limited English skills.

She has a point. Perhaps those kids need longer to graduate; perhaps they should be so immersed in English that they spend a year doing nothing but learning the language.

I am not sure which, but I do know that kids who arrive in the ninth grade with a fourth-grader's English reading skills will face enormous odds. Give up? Hardly. The best words George W. Bush ever uttered were about not buying into the "soft bigotry of low expectations." But at least we should have enough bilingual teachers to reach these kids.

This is where Education Secretary Arne Duncan could invest some of that money the Obama administration wants to put into schools. Clearly, schools in the many states with growing Latino populations face the same problems as Sunset.

For the moment, though, let's cheer Sunset. Even if its progress is incomplete, it's progress. If Sunset and schools like it continue on that trajectory, America wins. 

William McKenzie is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist and a moderator of Texas Faith at www.dallasnews.com/texasfaith

12:00 AM CDT on Monday, April 27, 2009

By KENT FISCHER / The Dallas Morning News

If asked to name the best high school in Dallas public schools, you might name Townview, Woodrow Wilson or Booker T. Washington.

But this year, it's Sunset High atop Dallas ISD's in-house school ranking system, which purports to evaluate how well schools perform in relation to the demographics of the students they serve. In other words, the schools that do the best job with the kids they have.

What is going right at Sunset?

District officials are trying to figure that out, because the answers could help shape tactics for reforming other struggling high schools.

The educators at Sunset don't have a magic answer. They say many things, some out of the school's control, have contributed to the strength of the campus.

"I can't put my finger on any one thing," said English teacher Bryan Lindsey. "It's a combination of lots and lots of tiny factors."

They pinpoint the following as pieces of their success:

• Middle and elementary schools that, teachers say, send well-prepared kids on to Sunset.

• The neighborhood surrounding the school, which is well-established and doesn't suffer from the severity of problems that others do.

• A strong cadre of veteran teachers.

• District-wide reforms.

• Improved parental involvement.

Propping up, reforming and reorganizing struggling high schools has, for two years, been a priority for the top brass in the Dallas public schools.

Nine high schools have already been "reconstituted" because of low test scores, and six more face possible closure if scores don't improve. Finding a reliable turnaround strategy is among the district's most daunting challenges, administrators have said.

Superintendent Michael Hinojosa has recently been heaping praise upon the faculty and students at Sunset, one of the district's bright spots.

Challenges

That's not to say that everything is perfect at the north Oak Cliff high school. Only 55 percent of students graduate in four years, and of those who do earn a diploma, only 40 percent enroll in a post-secondary degree program. But when compared with the district's other "comprehensive," non-magnet high schools, Sunset and nearby South Oak Cliff High are the district's best examples of success in the inner city.

Teacher Justin Glowney's son attends Greiner Middle School, a Sunset feeder, and he put the education program there up against any.

"His experience at Greiner has been, by far, the best, and he's attended schools in Plano and Garland," Glowney said.

Glowney says the better middle school preparation is key.

"We get great kids out of middle school," he said. "They're prepared. They know what school is about. They know the [academic] content."

In fact, the entire feeder pattern – down to the elementary schools – plays a big role, said Principal Tony Tovar.

None of Sunset's eight feeder schools is academically unacceptable, according to the state. Two are academically acceptable, five are recognized and one is exemplary. Only two last year had a district-calculated "School Effectiveness Index" below the district average of 50. (Sunset's SEI last year was 59.9)

Tovar said Sunset also benefits from a neighborhood that is more established than those surrounding many of Dallas' other high schools. Sunset has also seen an influx of qualified students transferring out of DISD's low-performing high schools under state and federal rules that allow kids to switch to higher-performing campuses.

Tovar said he had to turn down more than 300 students last year who wanted to transfer into Sunset from nearby schools.

Tovar, a career administrator with DISD, said he doesn't meddle in his teachers' classrooms. He says he simply tries to stay out of his their way and let them teach.

"I'm not the smartest guy in the world," he said, "but I can motivate people and get them pumped up."

Parental involvement

Tovar also attributed the school's success to the district-wide initiatives implemented under Hinojosa's Dallas Achieves, most notably the smaller class sizes and common planning time for teachers. He credits his community liaison, Nora Garcia, with boosting parental involvement at the school.

Sunset's PTA regularly has more than 100 parents turn out for meetings, Garcia said. That number may not be huge considering Sunset's enrollment tops 2,200, but it is much higher participation than most of the district's non-magnet high schools.

"Whenever I see a parent, I approach them, introduce myself and tell them what Sunset has to offer," said Garcia, who has lived in the Oak Cliff area for 18 years. "I love this neighborhood. It's a matter of knowing how to get to the parents."

Lindsey, the English teacher, agreed that parental involvement, strong feeder schools and common planning time for teachers all play an important role in the school's upward swing. But so too does a committed corps of veteran teachers who have been at Sunset for years.

Lindsey came to Sunset four years ago from a nearby high school and said he "was shocked" at how collegial the faculty was.

"I immediately fell into a circle of teachers who were genuinely committed to doing their jobs well and to helping others do their jobs well," he said. "It's an environment that gives me the freedom and the resources to be a professional."