HISD gets some improvements, needs some more

Mostly good news.

State school ratings released Tuesday showed academic gains across Houston ISD this year, but enthusiasm over the results was tempered by 10 struggling campuses again falling short of state standards, leaving the district under threat of state intervention and even takeover next year without more progress.

District administrators heralded the results, released publicly by the Texas Education Agency, while also pledging to buckle down at the 10 schools that have now received at least four straight “improvement required” marks.

HISD officials were warned last week that a 2015 state law requires either the closure of schools that receive five straight “improvement required” ratings as of August 2018 or the state takeover of local boards in districts with chronically failing schools.

In the Houston area, three other districts had faced possible state intervention if long-failing schools didn’t show improvement. Those districts — Aldine, Alief and Spring Branch — all made the grade Tuesday, removing the threat for those systems.

That left only Houston ISD, which faces a monumental task in the coming months: Turn around 10 schools in high-minority, high-poverty areas that have repeatedly not met state standards. They are Blackshear, Dogan, Highland Heights, Mading and Wesley elementary schools; Henry Middle School; Woodson PK-8 School; and Kashmere, Wheatley and Worthing high schools.

District officials have said they plan to devote additional resources to those campuses, fill all vacant positions in them, and work with local leaders — including Mayor Sylvester Turner — to secure other aid for those students.

“It’s what we wake up thinking about. It’s what we go to sleep thinking about, if we even go to sleep,” Superintendent Richard Carranza said Tuesday.

Still, Carranza saw positives in the results. Of 259 Houston ISD campuses graded by the state, 27 were labeled “improvement required,” the lowest number in the five-year history of the ratings. And after multiple years of failing grades, four campuses — Cook, Kashmere Gardens and Lewis elementary schools and Victory Prep South, a charter high school — met state standards in 2017.

“I’m incredibly excited, incredibly buoyed by the results,” said Carranza, who was brought to Houston a year ago from San Francisco, where he was schools superintendent. “For 90 percent to be performing so well is a great achievement.”

See here for the background, and click over to the story to see the ratings. Clearly, progress has been made, but the question is how much that will count for if some or all of those still-underperforming schools are on the list again next year. The Press has more.

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2 Responses to HISD gets some improvements, needs some more

  1. Bill Daniels says:

    Hey Kuff,

    I’d like to know how the 5 year clock on non performing schools works with the former North Forest ISD schools. They were failing so badly that the state gave them to HISD. I’m assuming that they didn’t pass this year, either, so what happens? Does HISD get a new clock for those schools?

  2. Seth says:

    North Forest High School is the school that was formed from the two failing NFISD schools, Forest Brooke (sp) and M. B. Smiley (sp) high schools. North Forest is not on the list of failing schools.

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