Irving ISD Receives Commit! Bright Spot Award: 5-Year Improvement

Irving Independent School District was recognized at our Annual Community Achievement Scorecard event in March with the first annual Commit! Bright Spot Award: 5-Year Improvement. Recognized for the best performance over the five years that Commit! has been measuring academic success across the county, Irving ISD has seen a 12% gainacross Commit!’s ‘Cradle-to-Career indicators’ , and a 3% decline in income-based achievement gaps. In total, 2,161 more students are meeting key benchmarks from kindergarten readiness through high school graduation rate in Irving ISD.

Irving ISD’s growth in the last year-and-a-half, in absolute and in relative terms, has been quite significant. Using the Level 2 Final Recommended (postsecondary readiness) passing rate, Irving ISD outgrew state performance on 17 of 21 STAAR exams from 2014 to 2015 — closing its gap with the state by more than 8% on the English I and II and 4th Grade Math exams, respectively. Moreover, Irving ISD continues to shine nationally in Advanced Placement (“AP”) exam participation and success rates.

Irving ISD Superintendent Jose Parra attributes the district’s success to a clear set of guiding principles across the organization, a concentration on collaborative leadership, a prioritization of attendance growth and dropout prevention, a student-centered focus, and a data-driven, continuous improvement of the curriculum.

“Irving ISD had the highest growth rate of student achievement across our indicators ranging from Kindergarten readiness to high school graduation.” explained Sagar Desai, Chief Operating Officer of The Commit! Partnership. “The other key factor was Irving’s success in helping low-income students achieve at levels commensurate with their peers.”

Only one other school district in Dallas County matched Irving ISD’s performance since the inception of The Partnership, and that was Lancaster ISD.

The cradle-to-career indicators included in this measurement are: kindergarten readiness, 3rd grade reading, 4th grade math, 8th grade science, algebra 1, college readiness, and high school graduation. These indicators were determined based on best practices and input from community leaders across the country as the key measures for student success across their K-12 academic career.

A key goal of The Commit! Partnership is to use data to help identify outlier success in Dallas County schools. To learn more about best practices across Dallas County as they are published, follow The Commit Partnership on both Twitterand on Facebook.