Houston ISD’s schools under Superintendent Mike Miles’ New Education System (NES) are more likely to serve schools with a majority of Black or Hispanic, economically disadvantaged, or emergent bilingual students, according to a new report from Good Reason Houston.
These schools were also not as likely to meet grade-level standards compared to their non-NES counterparts and were more likely to have high numbers of students considered “chronically absent.” The graduates of NES schools in 2022 were not considered as college-ready as the students from non-NES schools, the report further states.
“Unfortunately, for far too long, HISD has not sufficiently invested in these areas on the campuses that are today part of the New Education System, which has resulted in significant gaps in academic achievement,” Cary Wright, the CEO of Good Reason Houston, told the Defender. “However, the district, under the new administration, is now taking aggressive steps to combat this inequity to the benefit of Black students (and all students enrolled on an NES campus) by ensuring all NES schools use the most rigorous curriculum available today, incentivizing top educators from across the state to come work on NES campuses through a sector-leading compensation strategy, and focusing on the quality of instruction being delivered to every student, every day, on every campus.”
Here’s a quick recap
Miles announced the NES schools last year, wherein he also discussed the increased salaries, a performance-based pay structure, a standardized curriculum, and district-produced lesson plans.
NES launched at 28 schools during the 2023-24 school year, out of which 24 are in Kashmere HS, North Forest HS, and Wheatley HS feeder patterns — with a Black majority student population and four other campuses.
Soon after, 57 additional schools joined in and were called the NES-Aligned campuses.
Now, all of that will change. HISD announced in January that it will no longer distinguish between NES and non-NES schools. Another 26 “low-performing schools,” comprising Black majority schools like Thomas Middle School and Wesley Elementary School, will join Miles’ overhaul program in the coming school year. An additional 24 schools will have the option to be considered for the NES.
In total, 130 or around 47% of the schools in HISD will become an NES campus in the 2024-25 school year.
“The New Education System (NES), for instance, is fundamentally about addressing equity issues by ensuring the district provides the investment, support, and opportunities to students attending schools in communities that have a significant number of unmet needs,” Wright said. “NES, for instance, doesn’t just focus on providing the resources to increase student learning and achievement, it’s also focused on promoting exposure to new skills and access to opportunities, like international travel, that oftentimes are not available to every student the district serves.”
Let’s delve into the findings
- The report found NES schools serve Black, Hispanic, and low-income communities such as the Third Ward, Fifth Ward, The East End, Sharpstown, and Near Northside. Some of these communities still face issues related to segregation, health, poverty, and housing, among other challenges. Therefore, students at non-NES schools are 5.5 times as likely to be white or Asian than students at NES schools.
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Students at NES schools are much more likely to be considered economically disadvantaged and emergent bilingual, which means they speak languages than English more often at home.
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In terms of academic achievement, the report found that students who attended NES schools in the 2022-23 school year were half as likely to meet grade-level standards in reading and Math as non-NES students, the report states. In the 85 NES schools, only 22% of the student population could meet the Math grade level and 26% in the reading level, compared to the 45% and 56% of the students respectively, in non-NES schools.
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Another interesting trend the report found is that among students who met grade-level standards in reading, special education students in non-NES schools are four times more likely to meet them than at NES schools.
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Moreover, Black students in non-NES schools are twice as likely (48%) to meet these reading standards than NES students (24%). In the schools that are yet to join the program, 27% of Black students meet the standards.
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In Math grade-level standards, all the student groups were less likely to meet them at NES schools compared to non-NES schools.
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When it comes to chronic absenteeism, the report says NES students were twice as likely to be “chronically absent” in 2022 than non-NES students, and nearly 50% of Black students in these schools missed at least 10% of school days that year. Overall, absenteeism rates in HISD rose from 2020 to 2022, especially in NES schools, where it grew by 26 percentage points or from 14% in 2020 to 40% in 2022 — twice as much (13 points) or 6% in 2020 to 19% in 2022 as in non-NES schools.
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NES school graduates in 2022 were less likely to be college, career, or military-ready than their non-NES counterparts. However, NES schools have significantly improved, from a 36% readiness in 2017 to 59% in 2022. The 2017 rate of readiness in non-NES schools (63%) was twice that of NES schools (36%), which decreased in 2022 with 59% in non-NES schools and 75% in NES schools.
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Taking a closer look, graduates from non-NES schools were considered to be more college-ready than NES students, a gap that has not changed much. The latter were also less likely to enroll in college in the year after high school in 2017, which was quite common across the school district.
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On the contrary, 2022 NES students are more career or military-ready than non-NES students.
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More students who graduated in 2022 earned an industry-based certification through programming like Career Technical Education (CTE), which paved the way for post-high school success, than graduates in 2017.
What’s the basis of these conclusions?
The report considered the 85 NES and NES-aligned schools that were designated during the 2023-2024 school year and analyzed data from the Texas Academic Performance Reports for the 2022-23 school year. These metrics also reflected the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) aggregate performance data released in fall 2023 for the 2022-23 school year.
Thus, the organization analyzes the results from schools that were not identified as a NES campus yet and did not go through NES intervention.
Per the Good Reason Houston report, academic assessments conducted by the district called the Measures of Academic Progress Growth revealed that NES and NES-A campuses showed more growth in Math and reading than non-NES schools.
“The superintendent talks a lot about how the district needs to be making the case to families for why they should choose HISD,” Wright said. “What I hear from the community in our work is that parents want to be sure that kids are being prepared for jobs of the future, that kids are getting access to top-notch teachers and top-notch instruction every day, that kids go to safe schools that are modern facilities that meet their physical and otherwise learning needs.”
Aldine ISD is another such district in Houston that, under the superintendent LaTonya Goffney, has tried to address equity issues in campuses like Goodman and Worsham Elementary through the Accelerating Campus Excellence (ACE) program. Under this program, the district showed growth in reading and math in three years and a high talent retention rate.
