Impact Strategy Group × Dallas Independent School District logo
For Dallas ISD · Learning Forward 2026 Annual Conference

228 campuses. One strategy. Uneven execution. The gap is structural.

Dallas ISD is not underperforming on effort. It may be underbuilt for the conditions its strategy requires.

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23% to 86%+
Math proficiency gain, one school year (ISG Founder, Newark classroom)
20+
Years inside underbuilt education systems (ISG Founder)
$16M
Largest annual budget managed by ISG Founder
WBE + MBE
WBENC and NMSDC certified — active supplier diversity pathway
We've been studying Dallas Independent School District

Built around what Dallas ISD is actually navigating

Dallas ISD has centralized academic strategy, named continuous improvement frameworks including PDSA and Engage to Learn, and a data infrastructure that includes the MyData Portal and Curriculum Central. What the district also has — visibly, measurably — is persistent variance in how that strategy lands at the campus level. Twenty-four middle schools required targeted emergency intervention. Southern-border campuses diverge materially from district averages. The framework exists. The conditions underneath it are the question.

The departure of Deputy Superintendent of Academics Dr. Brian Lusk in late 2025 opens a window that districts rarely plan for: a moment when the organizational conditions underneath the academic strategy become newly visible, and newly available to be examined. That window is not a crisis. It is the clearest diagnostic opportunity Dallas ISD will have in this cycle.

ISG Founder Tanya Johnson co-authored 'Continuous Improvement Is a Powerful Engine for Equity,' published by Learning Forward — the organization convening this conference. That work was not theoretical. It came from inside the systems, with practitioners, diagnosing conditions. That is what ISG does. Dallas ISD is not failing. It may be underbuilt for the impact its strategy intends.

Tailored to Dallas Independent School District's key stakeholders

Chief Academic Officer
Angie Gaylord

Your frameworks are right. The conditions beneath them may not be built yet.

The challenge

Gaylord holds academic accountability across 228 campuses where centralized strategy — including named frameworks like PDSA and Engage to Learn — is producing documented outcome variance. Twenty-four middle schools required targeted intervention. The Deputy Superintendent of Academics role is in transition, placing additional pressure on the CAO function at the exact moment strategy-to-execution alignment is most critical.

How we help

Impact Strategy Group's Shared Seeing surfaces where Dallas ISD's leadership team agrees on the words but executes differently across campuses — making that structural dynamic visible, understandable, and solvable without adding another framework on top of the existing ones.

Proof: ISG Founder Tanya Johnson moved math proficiency from 23% to 86%+ in one school year by diagnosing conditions, not reassigning blame to teachers or curriculum.
Send me what is relevant to Dallas ISD. →
Chief of School Leadership
Tiffany Huitt-Powell

Principal quality is necessary. Conditions are what make it sufficient.

The challenge

Huitt-Powell is responsible for campus execution quality across a district where 24 middle schools required targeted intervention and southern-border campuses show outcomes that diverge from district averages — a structural and geographic execution problem that sits underneath principal quality, not inside it.

How we help

Impact Strategy Group's Intentional Design diagnoses whether Dallas ISD's organizational conditions — not just the principals — are built for the campus-level impact the district intends, then designs what is missing. Custom to this system, built from the inside out.

Proof: ISG works with organizations, not at them. The people closest to the problem already hold important pieces of the solution. ISG makes the structure visible.
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Deputy Superintendent of Staff and Accountability
Pamela Lear, Ed.D.

Data-rich is not the same as action-ready.

The challenge

Lear owns the accountability infrastructure in a district that has invested in the MyData Portal and Curriculum Central with an explicit mandate for inquiry-based continuous improvement. Persistent outcome variance across 228 campuses is the accountability function's clearest signal that the data infrastructure is not consistently producing better decisions at the school level.

How we help

Impact Strategy Group's Rhythms of Learning builds the organizational decision cycles that close the gap between data Dallas ISD already collects and decisions that actually improve — shifting the system from compliance-reporting rhythms to embedded learning rhythms at the campus level.

Proof: ISG Founder Tanya Johnson co-authored the Learning Forward article on continuous improvement and equity — the same professional body convening this conference in Dallas.
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Executive Director of Professional and Digital Learning

Professional learning events are investments. Rhythms of Learning are what make them compound.

The challenge

Dallas ISD's professional learning apparatus — including large-scale events like the annual Level Up Summer Learning conference — represents significant district investment in episodic training. Without embedded organizational rhythms between events, that investment builds awareness at the individual level but does not reliably change conditions at the campus level.

How we help

Impact Strategy Group's Rhythms of Learning builds the continuous-improvement habits and decision cycles that make professional learning events compound over time — turning what the district already invests in into lasting organizational capability rather than episodic exposure.

Proof: ISG's Implementation and Leadership Development arc is grounded in adult learning theory, ensuring the rhythms are owned by the organization after the engagement ends.
Send me ISG's thinking on learning rhythms. →

The Architecture of Impact

Three questions that reveal whether Dallas ISD's conditions are built for the impact its strategy intends.

Shared Seeing

Surfaces where Dallas ISD's leadership team agrees on the words — PDSA, continuous improvement, Engage to Learn — but executes differently across 228 campuses. Makes the structural dynamic visible and solvable.

Intentional Design

Designs the organizational conditions Dallas ISD needs to produce consistent campus-level execution — not a template adapted from elsewhere, but conditions built for this system from the inside out.

Rhythms of Learning

Builds the decision cycles that turn data Dallas ISD already collects — through MyData Portal and Curriculum Central — into improved campus-level decisions rather than compliance-reporting outputs.

Stay connected to what ISG sees in systems like yours.

Dallas ISD has the strategy, the frameworks, and the data infrastructure. Fill out the form and we will follow up with thinking specific to the conditions gap your role is navigating — no pitch, no proposal.

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