Dallas ISD Aims for Zero D and F Campuses
Dallas ISD wants to have zero D and F campuses by next year’s public school ratings. Dallas students posted significant academic gains this year, with dozens of struggling campuses improving in the 2025 A-F scores. Only 16 campuses received a D or F rating, the lowest count the district has had since the state began issuing campus grades in 2019.
Now DISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde is aiming to bring all of the district’s schools to an A, B or C grade. She expects to achieve it. In the past year, the number of F-rated schools dropped from 24 to 2, while D-rated schools decreased from 41 to 14.
Current Progress and Goals
That means only 6% of Dallas students attend a campus that received a D or F rating, compared to 26% in 2023 and 24% in 2024. Having no D and F schools “begins to support that, with the right approach, with the right research strategies, all kids can,” Elizalde said.
“It makes it kind of hard for other school districts to go, ‘Well, our kids can’t because we don’t have enough money, because they’re poor, because they don’t speak English,’” she said. “I hope that the message is that there is hope that if we can do it in Dallas … it starts to make people rethink our deficit philosophy around poverty.”
Achieving Zero D and F Schools
DISD is the second-largest district in the state, with 228 campuses serving nearly 140,000 students, 90% of whom are economically disadvantaged. A number of North Texas districts, including Highland Park ISD and Carroll ISD, already have zero D and F schools. But those districts have far fewer campuses than DISD and lower rates of low-income students.
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Achieving zero D and F schools would put Dallas ISD on par with its peer districts. Houston ISD, the largest district in Texas, had zero F schools this year, after two years under a state takeover. None of the 96 campuses in Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, the state’s third-largest district serving nearly 118,000 students in Harris County, scored lower than a C.
Success Factors
Miguel Solis, president of Commit Partnership and a former DISD trustee, said Dallas’ track record over the past few years suggests that reaching zero D and F schools by next summer is “absolutely achievable.” Elizalde attributes the district’s success in recent years to long-term investments paying off, investments that include early childhood learning, high-quality instructional materials and the pay-for-performance teacher model known as the Teacher Excellence Initiative.
“We have to continue to ask, ‘How did we get here?’ How is it that 49 schools from the original 65 were able to no longer be a D or F?” Elizalde said. “So we know it’s very possible, and so being able to just look internally, what were the successes for those schools, and ensuring that those are the same things.”
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Student Outcome Goals
DISD Board President Joe Carreón said the district’s student outcome goals, which were developed with community input, have helped guide the district’s trajectory. The measurable goals aim to improve students’ state assessment scores and college, career and military readiness.
“Ensuring every student is at a great campus is what this Board strives for and we will get there by remaining fiercely focused on our student outcome goals of increasing achievement in reading, mathematics, and college readiness,” Carreón said in a statement.
Turnaround Models
Solis also pointed to the success of DISD’s signature turnaround model, formerly called Accelerating Campus Excellence. Since 2015, the district has temporarily provided longer days, extra tutoring and additional student support to chronically struggling schools. The district also offers stipends to encourage Dallas’ best educators to work at and lead those campuses.
District leaders will increase support in, and closely monitor, low-performing schools, as well as any “fragile C” schools that could drop over the next year, Elizalde said.
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District leaders are also evaluating whether they need to move teachers from other schools to those campuses or add extra support staff, like a counselor or social worker.
District Support Initiative
A math specialist will be transferred from a high-performing school to Ronald McNair Elementary, which received an F this year. The school showed greater declines in math proficiency, Elizalde said.
Many of Dallas’ low-performing schools, which district leaders projected would receive a D or F, were chosen earlier this year for DISD’s new campus turnaround model, the District Support Initiative.
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The three-tiered model, which will replace ACE
