This blog on Texas education contains posts on higher education, as well as preK-12 policy accountability, testing, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, race, class, and gender issues at both the state and national level. It also represents my digital footprint, of life and career, as a community-engaged scholar in Texas.
This is the 2nd time that Trini Garza High School, headed by principal Dr. Macario Hernandez wins national Blue Ribbon school. In 2018, the school won National Title I Distinguished Award as captured in this earlier post on the school's accomplishments that delves into why they are so successful: Dallas early college campus singled out as one of the nation’s top schools for low-income students
That piece references the importance of having teachers that come from the community. Dr. Hernandez himself is a member of this community. This aligns with a growing research literature that points to the power of community-based teachers to educate the children in their own communities.
You did it again, Macario. None of this happens without excellent leadership—and to do so in the throes of a pandemic is no small thing.
The coveted honor recognizes schools for high performance and closing achievement gaps.
Kathlyn Joy Gilliam Collegiate Academy was just recognized as a 2021 National Blue Ribbon School for the first time since 2014. It's one of four Dallas-area campuses that received the National Blue Ribbon School honor Tuesday.(Emil Lippe / Special Contributor)
Four Dallas-area campuses received National Blue Ribbon School honors Tuesday, recognized for their high performance and work to close achievement gaps.
The schools, among 26 receiving the status in Texas, were Dallas ISD’s Trinidad “Trini” Garza Early College High School at Mountain View and Kathlyn Joy Gilliam Collegiate Academy; Mesquite ISD’s Porter Elementary School; and Christ the King Catholic School in Dallas.
The program selects campuses based on either how well students perform on standardized tests or how much progress they make in closing achievement gaps among student groups.
Students at Garza and Gilliam typically earn college credit while completing their high school diploma as well.
The majority of those at Garza will be first-generation college students, principal Macario Hernandez said. Among its 431 students, 88% are Hispanic and about 8% are Black. More than 85% come from families that are struggling financially.
The honor is “validation for all the hard work of our teachers and our students and our parents,” Hernandez said. He added that the status is a celebration for the teachers and students who persevered despite the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The school staff values students’ home culture, racial backgrounds and lived experiences, he said, which allows teachers and students to build relationships that transform the experience for the entire campus community.
“It’s a family that really builds on each other’s strengths,” Hernandez said. “Humility and valuing and respecting and working with people with compassion and empathy can go a long way.”
Gilliam principal Gayle Ferguson Rodgers said the award is proof that a school can perform at high levels despite its at-risk population.
A majority of its students, most of whom are Black or Hispanic, also come from low-income families.
“This award is a celebration of everyone’s efforts as we do our mission here at Gilliam, which is to have college access and success for all,” she said.
Ferguson added that being named a National Blue Ribbon School “wasn’t a goal,” but that the school’s community only focuses on delivering on its mission every day.
The staff’s commitment to the school’s vision “Every Child. Every need. Whatever it takes.” became abundantly clear for Porter Elementary Principal Leeann Englert when she began working at the Mesquite school. She credited parents for pushing the school to meet high expectations.
“The campus exudes this vision in every conversation they have and in every decision they make,” she said in a statement. “Everyone is deeply invested in the success of our children.”
The schools join more than 9,000 others that the National Blue Ribbon Schools program has recognized in the past 39 years.
“I commend all our Blue Ribbon honorees for working to keep students healthy and safe while meeting their academic, social, emotional, and mental health needs,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a written statement. “In the face of unprecedented circumstances, you found creative ways to engage, care for, protect, and teach our children.”
The four local campuses are among 302 public and 23 private schools honored across the U.S. on Tuesday.
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from The Beck Group, Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, The Meadows Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University and Todd A. Williams Family Foundation. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.
Valeria Olivares, Education Lab Reporting Fellow. Valeria is a reporter for The Dallas Morning News Education Lab focusing on higher education. She was born in El Paso, but was raised across the border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. She has previously interned at The San Antonio Express-News and The Texas Tribune. She loves internet culture and green tea-flavored sweets.
So very proud of my UT Cultural Studies in Education doctoral student, Macario Hernandez, for this extraordinary achievement. Mr. Hernandez is principal of Dallas ISD's Trini Garza Early College High School. His early college campus was just recognized by the Texas Education Agency as "one of the nation’s top schools for low-income students." As you can read for yourself below, he was one of two schools statewide that received this recognition.
Aside from being a Title I principal extraordinaire and a "hidden gem" himself in DISD, Macario is also researching "homegrown teachers." These are educators that are from the community that have worked in their communities—sometimes for decades—as teachers. He himself is both a homegrown teacher and principal and is a testament to the power of this model of which I myself am an advocate [Keyword "GYO," "GYO Teachers," and "NLERAP" on this blog for prior references to this national agenda for change.]
"G-Y-O works! It save lives," he expressed, as a featured speaker at a national Grow Your Own Educator Summit held here in late January in Austin, Texas. As mentioned in this Dallas Morning News article that correctly notes his and the school's philosophical underpinnings in caring relationships, people can indeed work together in unison and improve their children's lives while enhancing the quality of relationships in the larger community, as a whole. Relationship-building, respect, and caring have to reside at the core of one's intention and practice. Keeping schools small also helps.
Felicidades, Macario! Congratulations! You are the embodiment of the very GYO dispositions that all of our leaders and teachers need to have if we are to be positively oriented in a culturally relevant and attuned manner to the wishes, hopes, and desires of our communities.
You have at Trini Garza what every kid on the planet wants. To be cared for, valued, and loved in a culturally relevant, genuine, in-it-for-the-long-haul, way. It's additive, not subtractive. It's about extending students' resources and potentialities rather than about subtracting them, turning on its head the demonstrably wrong-headed project of assimilating youth in a culturally and linguistically eviscerating way.
We are all so incredibly proud and happy for you and the many lives that you generously and graciously touch!
Dallas early college campus singled out as one of the nation’s
top schools for low-income students
by Corbett Smith| Staff writer
It is
fitting that Macario Hernandez’s office at Dallas ISD’s Trini Garza Early
College High School has a window that faces one of the school’s main
thoroughfares. If a student or teacher needs a word, it’s easy to flag down
Hernandez, the school’s principal, and pop in for a chat.
Those connections — built with
students, parents and the Oak Cliff community — are what Hernandez points
to when asked to describe his campus’ successes.
"Relationships are the
foundation for everything we do on this campus," he said. "Being able
to make a connection with that student, it's profound because you're vested in
that student, vested in the community."
Located on the Mountain View College
campus, Garza was selected by the Texas Education Agency as a National Title I
Distinguished School, one of only two schools in the state to receive such a
designation for the 2016-17 school year. The other is Houston ISD's
charter Project Chrysalis Middle School.
The award, presented to Hernandez
and three of his teachers by the National Title I Association earlier this
month at a conference in Philadelphia, honors high-poverty schools that excel
in student performance or closing achievement gaps. One of DISD’s first early
college high school efforts, with a student body that’s 86 percent
socio-economically disadvantaged, Garza was one of 34 schools across the nation
to be praised “for exceptional student performance for two or more consecutive
years.”
For the past three years, Garza has
received all seven distinctions — indicators that a school is outperforming its
peers — awarded by the TEA. The school’s performance on state assessments
across all subjects was double the state’s average last year.
“I think that Trini Garza is one of
the hidden gems in DISD,” trustee Audrey Pinkerton said during an award
assembly at Mountain View’s performance hall on Monday. “And now, the secret’s
out.”
When Hernandez spoke to the
assembly on Monday, he was quick to remind the audience that they were the
engine for the school’s achievements.
“This is about you, all the time,”
he said.
The statement isn’t just puffery.
It matches his collective, bottom-up approach to leadership, crafted over a
decade as a volunteer community organizer and activist for Dallas Area
Interfaith and administrative stops across the district.
“To me, this award isn’t about one
person or one school,” Hernandez said before the event. “It’s about a community
of learners. Relationships we have with students, teachers, parents,
relationships we’ve built with the college partner, with the college president
— that’s what’s really made us successful at this campus. Outside of that, it’s
about valuing the stories and lived experiences of the people who go here.
“I grew up in Oak Cliff, so my job
isn’t as much a position to me, as a calling.”
Senior Brandon Leal left the
Kimball feeder pattern to apply at the school, intrigued by the dual-credit
model that allows students to graduate with a high school diploma and
associate’s degree.
He’ll head to the University of
North Texas in the fall, with 60 college credits under his belt.
Leal credited the school’s small
size — just 434 students — with fostering a sense of togetherness, with
students banding together to help one another meet high expectations of college
coursework.
“It’s a really good learning
experience," Leal said. "You’re asked a lot of tough questions, since
this is based on both college and high school. But it’s helped me get ready.”
So happy to share with you this news story titled, "Dr. Angela Valenzuela and Growing Your Own Educators Movement" written by Alfredo Santos, publisher and editor of La Voz, a local newspaper that you can also find online. You can read the entire January/February 2018 issue here.
In this issue, he features our work here in Austin, Texas, in partnership with the Austin Independent School District and the City of Austin's Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center (ESB-MACC) to carry out activities and instruction for fourth and fifth graders at Academia Cuauhtli, physically located on the grounds of the ESB-MACC. Our participants emanate from Sanchez, Metz, Zavala, Houston, and Perez Elementary Schools.
I like how he contextualizes our Grow Your Own (GYO) Educator program. It's what many communities before us have done and are doing right now.
This is a movement that is about people and connection. It's about revitalizing our languages, cultures, and identities and being able to navigate fluidly in the messiness and richness of cultural and linguistic borders and frontiers. It's about roots and rootedness, and empowering communities by creating formal structures that reinforce informal ones that promote sustainability for a great cause. It is about working together on one of the most sacred things that we could possibly imagine doing as a society, namely, the education our young.
You can read either my literature review or literature review summary on GYO educators here published by the Intercultural Development Research Association out of San Antonio. And do check out Santos' other issues of La Voz to learn more about the Mexican American community that he so dutifully and selflessly covers here in Austin, Texas. Gracias, Santos!
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