Learn more about our new HISD Superintendent here and here. One thing to highlight, from the first link:
Q: What are your priorities for HISD?
A: Houston is a good urban district. It has the potential to be the best large school district in the country. There’s no question the dropout rate is unacceptable, as is the graduation rate.
Q: How will you improve the rates?
A: Most anywhere I’ve worked you will see significant decreases in the dropout rate and significant increases in the graduation rate. Long-term strategies include making sure students are in school on a regular basis.
Q: How do you get kids to show up at school?
A: You hold principals accountable for attendance. You use your telephone messaging system, and when kids are absent, you contact parents. You make home visits. You may have attendance incentive programs. We did that in San Diego this past year and improved our student attendance by almost a half a percentage point.
Q: What’s another strategy to curb dropouts?
A: Last year in San Diego, we installed new state-of-the-art computer labs in all of our high schools, and the principals staffed those labs with what we call a graduation coach. We allowed students to use a computer program to retake courses they had failed.
If Grier succeeds are reducing HISD’s dropout rate and improving its graduation rate, then I think his tenure here will be successful pretty much no matter what else happens. It would also save us a bunch of money in the long run.
The students in the class of 2012 who will drop out of school are projected to cost the state and its economy $6 billion to $10.7 billion over their lifetimes, a new study from the Texas A&M Bush School of Government and Public Service found.
Dropouts are more likely to be unemployed or earn less than high school graduates, pay less in taxes, get welfare payments or end up in prison.
On the flip side, Texas will save as much as $1.1 billion in the state budget by not having those same students in the classroom. But the researchers said the budget savings are swamped by the long-term economic costs.
“It is essential that policymakers begin making this issue a priority in an attempt to reverse the current trends and their implications on the Texas economy,” the researchers wrote.
State Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said lawmakers are well aware of the dropout problem and are always looking for programs that work to reduce the number of dropouts, such as expanding career and technology education to make school more relevant.
“There is no magic bullet,” said Shapiro, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee. “If there were, we would have done it a long time ago.”
I’ll resist the urge to make a crack about the “Bush School of Government” and note that I think State Sen. Shapiro is wrong. The solution to this problem is ultimately a much greater investment in children and families. Really making a dent in the dropout rate means making a much stronger effort to combat poverty, hunger, and poor health in children, all things we currently do a lousy job of here in Texas. And it’s not that we can’t do these things, it’s that we choose not to in this low tax, low service state of ours. But you’ll never get folks like Sen. Shapiro to admit that.
Anyway. Given the political and economic realities that Superintendent Grier will face, I wish him the best of luck in lowering the dropout rate in HISD. I fear he’ll need it.