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Aug 1, 2008 6:18 pm US/Central
DISD Letting Students Choose Their School
DALLAS (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
If your neighborhood school isn't making the grade, what should be done about it? In Dallas, the school district is touting the concept of "school choice", a plan that would let students head to campus of their own choice.
In Dallas' Martin Luther King Jr. branch of the public library Brittani Williams surfs the web for her college choice. But when it came to what high school she would the teenager had little choice.
In the same library, mothers Maria Martinez and Kim Carden will have a personal choice for their children, under a new Dallas ISD program.
"Well, I think they should pick their own school, like my daughter she picked Lincoln instead of Madison," Carden explained.
The program is called the Parental Public School Choice. Starting next year Dallas ISD will allow freshmen to transition to one of six high schools being redesigned as 'career center' campuses.
Students and parents make the school choice - not the school district.
"The comprehensive high school that's been a model for decades, but now what we're trying to do is expand the opportunities of career pathways at other different schools," said DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander.
Parental choice for public schools is pretty rare in this country. The Garland school district has an open enrollment policy, but it's used as a tool to racially desegregate schools.
For Dallas, choice is about change. But as a recent high school graduate Williams isn't sure it's needed. "I honestly don't think it would work, because if they get to choose what school they want to go to, they would use friendship, and that would distract the academic level."
Dallas schools have a plan to expand the school choice program to all high school and middle school campuses in the coming years.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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