Lately in my young substitute teaching career, I have been attempting to find jobs closer to my home. Tomorrow, I teach at Bryan Adams High, a scant fifteen minutes from my house according to MapQuest. This has had the affect of exposing me to more diverse student bodies. Until Tuesday, every school I had taught at was predominantly black and hispanic. Woodrow Wilson today was mostly Hispanic, but I did teach a class that was mostly white children - a first for me. The diference is shocking. All the kids are fairly equal in intelligence. The environment in many of the poorer neighborhoods just isn't conducive to learning.
The first thing I would do, if I were in charge of administrating DISD is clean the schools. I understand that repairs and renovations could be expensive, but cleaning is imperative - it's a health issue. I'd say the most important duty of the school district is providing a clean and safe environment for learning. We don't need computers or technology or more testing. We don't even necessarily need better pay for teachers. Dallas schools need to keep teachers in the classroom everyday. My showing up in a class essentially means that students will learn nothing even in the best of circumstances. If paying teachers more will keep them in the classroom than we should pay them more. The one magic bullet to save Dallas schools that no one mentions is parental involvement. We could do without half of the gimmicks and new tests if parents would get involved. If a child fails it is usually his parents' fault for not asking about his progress and disciplining him. My prescription for fixing performance of the school district.

1. Clean the schools.
   
2. Reduce teacher absenteeism.
   
3. Have a massive campaign to get parents involved in the schools.
   

Any school district that could do all three would be the number one public school district in the nation. If any school district could just get parents involved the improvement would be astounding.