Very concerning, but I have a lot of questions.
Less than 20% of Houston ISD’s high school graduates earn enough to make a living wage in Harris County six years after obtaining their diplomas, according to an analysis of by Good Reason Houston.
A single adult needs to earn $42,158 a year to cover their basic needs in Harris County, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s living wage calculator. About 17% of HISD students who graduated in 2017 earned enough to meet or exceed this threshold by 2023, according to the local education nonprofit. Neighboring school districts only do slightly better.
The estimated living wage accounts for annual expenses for a single, childless adult in Harris County including $12,337 for housing, $9,823 for transportation, $3,785 for food, and $3,168 for medical costs.
Cary Wright, CEO of Good Reason Houston, said the number of students earning a living wage in HISD — and the rest of Houston’s area school districts — is “woefully insufficient” if they are aiming to provide students with the education they deserve and the ability to obtain high-wage, high-skill and high-demand jobs after graduation.
This data “should call upon Houstonians to really ask the question of, ‘Can we say with confidence that, because of the quality of our public education system that’s available to every child in every neighborhood, they are getting the world class preparation and support they need to be competitive with their peers in an ever changing, dynamic economy?’” Wright said.
This nonprofit’s analysis is based on data from 9,056 HISD students who graduated high school in 2017, including information from the Texas Education Agency, Texas High Education Coordinating Board and Texas Workforce Commission. HISD did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
The nonprofit found that, in total, 20% of students who graduated from high schools in the Houston region in 2017 earned enough to make a living wage six years after graduation, The districts in the Houston region include Aldine ISD, Alief ISD, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, HISD, Klein ISD, Pasadena ISD, Spring ISD and Spring Branch ISD.
“Somewhere close to 8,000 Houstonians are earning a living wage (every year) who graduated from an area high school, and the fact that our systems can only produce that amount of young people per year who are earning a living wage is, I think, a wake up call to every Houstonian,” Wright said.
HISD high school graduates reported a lower average annual wage after six years compared to the average Houston-area school district. HISD graduates with a bachelor’s degree earned $3,477 less, while HISD graduates with no postsecondary credentials earned $738 less than the average wage for all Houston-area graduates, according to the nonprofit’s data analysis.
Good Reason Houston’s study found that students were more likely to earn a living wage if they had met State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness reading standards or taken algebra in eighth grade. They also would increase their chances if they took at least five advanced courses in high school, such as Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes.
Good Reason Houston’s website is here and the report in question is here. It requires an email address to download, which I have not yet done. I looked around their website to find the report before I found it in the Chron story. They’ve got a lot of data and reports, and though they mentioned the Chron story about their report on Twitter, I didn’t see any announcement of or obvious link to the report from their website. Maybe be a little more user friendly like that? Just a suggestion.
As for the report itself, I agree that this is alarming, and that we need HISD to do a better job of preparing its students for future employment, both for the students themselves and for the economic vitality of our region. With the caveat that I have not read this report, this story raised a whole bunch of questions for me, including:
– The students who graduated high school in 2017 and went to a four-year university would have graduated from there in 2021 or so, right at the start of the pandemic. Those who attended a two-year college or who went straight into the workforce would have been there before the pandemic, but not by much. How much of an effect might that have had on their earning capacity? Thanks to a ton of stimulus spending, the US economy recovered pretty quickly, but there was still a lot of disruption. It would be very helpful to try to quantify that.
– You can see the map of the school districts in GRH’s purview, which includes a couple of higher-income regions but mostly places with lower-income students in the public schools. How do the graduates of, say Katy and Cy-Fair and Fort Bend and places like that compare? (Note: the story lists Cy-Fair as one of the districts in the Houston region, which seems to imply it was studied as well, but it’s not included in that map, while the others are. Not sure what to make of that.)
– What is the trend here? Has it always been this way with HISD and the other districts they did study, or has something changed in the last ten or twenty years? Basically, I’m asking for more context to this data.
– How much do the income and education levels of the families of these graduates affect their earnings? I have to think there’s some stratification between, say, the kids whose parents graduated from college and the kids who are the first in their families to go to college? Again, more context, please.
– Where do charter schools fit in on this? We know that overall, charters are roughly on par with public school districts – there are some good schools, some bad ones, and plenty in between. How do they do on this metric?
– What are the recommendations for improvement? The story mentions that “graduates [who] earned a postsecondary credential, including professional certifications” had the best outcomes (no surprise) and that expanded professional certificates being offered by community colleges ought to provide a boost. What specific steps should HISD be taking? What should the Legislature do to help?
I hope we learn more about this. I appreciate the research, but there needs to be followup. Campos has more.