I just heard an article on this idea a week ago. White affluent suburban schools breaking away from their larger district so they aren't dragged down any longer by the poorer, browner schools. I don't think this is how we should go as a country. The Chinese are going to whip our collective asses is we don't manage to educate our entire population.
That boat sailed a long time ago, and you know it, too. According to the NYT article, HISD's demography is: 62% Hispanic 26% Black 7% White 5% Asian An action, such as breaking up HISD, would give stronger control to communities within HISD that really aren't at all connected to other communities - it's a big city. Also, it would really just break up a "brown" district. Furthermore, I don't see why "white" presence is requisite for "non-white" academic achievement. So, if it's not money, management, race, or parents, then what is it?
The white people make sure the politicians at the Capitol still care what happens to the kids in the school. Aside from that, it has been shown many times over that economic and racial diversity in schools improves performance. The performance and expectations of a kid's peer group has a large effect on his own performance and expectations. If you shrink the school districts, the amount of mixing via zoning maps and magnet is also reduced. Given that Houston is highly segregated by income, some of these smaller districts will just get a higher concentration of poor people, more families that are poor because of disability or misfortune, more families that are poor because the parents themselves don't have good educations, with much less inclusion in the peer group of advantaged performers and strong families. Breaking up also complicates the finances. Educating healthy kids in stable homes is not expensive. Educating kids with disabilities requires more resources. Educating kids dealing with adverse situations at home does too. With a large district, you can get specialists and deploy them efficiently across the district. It also complicates who gets what real estate to tax. Having HISD's footprint basically cover metro Houston is uncontroversial. I don't really want to make districting a political football. I'm against this idea of parceling it up. If anything, I think we need to go the other direction. Keep schools small enough to be nimble and responsive, but get the economies of scale of having a large district and increase the mixing of the student body.
"Segregation" by income isn't anything that children/students can help. That's up to adults, and if the children have able-bodied and hard-working parents that are struggling to get by, then that says something about the overall economy - perhaps absent of educational attainment. What's true about NYC in the article above is true about Houston - Clear Creek ISD and Katy ISD are the top two performing districts that touch at least some part of Houston. (You can infer the non-white, non-black, non-hispanic to be Asian) Code: |District | Income| 6th Graders| Average Relative Grade| Overall Socioeconomic Status| White Status| Black Status| Hispanic Status| White Grade| Black Grade| Hispanic Grade| White Size| Black Size| Hispanic Size| |:-----------------|------:|-----------:|----------------------:|----------------------------:|------------:|------------:|---------------:|-----------:|-----------:|--------------:|----------:|----------:|-------------:| |Clear Creek | 88| 2944| 1.092| 1.073| 1.254| 0.437| 0.216| 1.434| -0.160| 0.223| 56| 9| 23| |Katy | 89| 4774| 1.074| 1.211| 1.424| 0.357| 0.465| 1.549| -0.104| 0.251| 44| 10| 32| |Fort Bend | 77| 5377| 0.641| 0.874| 1.485| 0.332| 0.084| 1.730| -0.462| -0.291| 20| 30| 26| |Klein | 79| 3448| 0.607| 0.880| 1.346| -0.569| 0.138| 1.354| -0.546| -0.120| 39| 15| 35| |Cypress-Fairbanks | 74| 8220| 0.525| 0.811| 1.312| -0.089| 0.109| 1.585| -0.492| -0.216| 32| 16| 41| |Humble | 91| 2708| 0.452| 1.100| 1.359| 0.321| 0.375| 1.256| -0.723| -0.262| 48| 18| 29| |New Caney | 59| 809| 0.000| -0.092| 0.096| NA| -0.905| 0.252| NA| -0.382| 49| 3| 45| |Galena Park | 42| 1589| -0.071| -0.530| -0.343| -0.756| -0.770| NA| -0.345| -0.084| 5| 18| 75| |Huffman | 82| 245| -0.091| 0.576| 0.435| NA| NA| NA| NA| NA| 80| 2| 16| |Spring Branch | 53| 2666| -0.175| 0.207| 1.595| -2.390| -1.130| 1.640| -1.330| -1.173| 31| 6| 55| |Crosby | 64| 386| -0.279| 0.314| 0.453| NA| 0.064| 0.227| NA| -0.605| 50| 18| 29| |Pasadena | 43| 4000| -0.397| -0.650| -0.064| -2.092| -0.989| 0.227| -0.916| -0.507| 9| 7| 81| |Alief | 35| 3504| -0.465| -0.999| 0.416| -2.233| -1.080| 0.188| -0.807| -0.556| 3| 32| 51| |Aldine | 35| 4782| -0.482| -1.287| -0.691| -2.449| -1.093| -0.020| -1.044| -0.345| 2| 27| 69| |Houston | 36| 15987| -0.489| -0.845| 1.170| -2.641| -1.180| 1.565| -1.073| -0.582| 7| 26| 62| |Sheldon | 47| 543| -0.737| -0.650| -0.887| -1.712| -0.363| NA| -1.247| -0.648| 13| 25| 57| |Spring | 49| 2706| -0.836| -0.421| 0.688| -1.388| -0.729| 0.185| -1.447| -0.734| 13| 41| 41| |North Forest | 36| 553| -1.520| -1.581| -1.064| NA| NA| NA| NA| NA| 1| 64| 35|
And here we are: a hostile takeover of HISD is in the works. It was either a state takeover or charter management. They chose state takeover. I still say, "break up the big districts." ___ Could Texas take over Houston ISD? And why are people so upset? ... The district is facing a potential state takeover and possible state-mandated closure of the 10 schools, which are in in predominately African American and Latino neighborhoods. ... If a school district has one or more schools that have failed to meet the state’s academic standards for five consecutive years, HB 1842 mandates the Texas Education Agency appoint a board of managers to assume operations of the entire school district or close the schools that fall into that category. Those schools' academic performances are judged by students' standardized test scores. HB 1842 was passed in 2015, but Houston ISD officials only became aware of its ramifications in September, according to former Superintendent Richard Carranza. Another law, HB 1882, would give school districts a two-year reprieve on a state takeover and school closures if the district taps a charter school management group, nonprofit or university to assume operations of those struggling schools. District officials learned of this option in September, as well. On Wednesday, Houston ISD announced it would abandon plans to hand over operations of the 10 schools to Energized for STEM Academy, Inc., a charter partner announced the previous Friday. ... Before Carranza’s administration, former Superintendent Terry Grier instituted the Apollo 20 program in 2010, which was considered a moonshot to improve long-struggling schools when it was unveiled but proved controversial. ... Ultimately, the program's results were a mixed bag. While some campuses shook their "improvement required" label, others did not. Math scores improved during the program's tenure and dipped when it came to an end, but reading scores remained consistently low.
Movement to Charter/Private entities is a money grab A part of the government money laudering system Rocket River
The thing with Charter schools is that they are able to exclude students with special needs and others that might have difficulties in schools. Public schools need to educate those students.
I'll be surprised if Texas actually takes over HISD. It's not like they can manage it any better, so they'll just be adopting all the political liabilities that HISD currently shoulders, plus the ire of a bunch of Houston voters.
Did you mean to say “manage it any worse”? HISD failed these schools. These schools are not the only ones failing - they are however the worst. I don’t think the state has the ability to turn these schools around. I don’t think a charter has the ability to do so either. The entire school district does need to be split into at least the parts. Community involvement is important in education. If splitting up the district does not solve the issue then the issue definitely is the communities themselves.
I think not only would the failing schools do no better under the state, I think the performance of the rest of the district would get worse. What would TEA know about operations? I completely disagree on splitting up the district. All that would do is create a couple of high performing districts for affluent parts of town and smaller struggling districts in the poorer parts of town. You'd have less optionality for using magnet or other schemes to increase economic diversity on campuses. And you'd lose economies of scale to provide district-wide resources like bus pools, food services, web services and special education. The failure we see now is not, imo, an HISD failure, its a failure on the part of the state of Texas in exacerbating social inequities and then expecting local school districts to somehow compensate. I do agree with the idiots in Austin on the ultimate solution though, which would be to privatize k-12 education. I don't trust them to build it right, but if it was built right I think we could get more quality and more equity from competition. The thorniest problem would be how to fund it without causing the failed markets we see in healthcare and college education.
Another problem would be how to ensure that the private schools actually had to have an enrollment of special needs students. Otherwise all of the special needs kids get pushed to certain schools that end up being a dumping ground where nobody has a real opportunity. It's hard to mandate that kind of thing to private schools. Trust me, if schools can pick and choose the students they accept it's much easier to have great results. But it punishes the other kids at other schools.
A problem I'm not sure how to solve. But the kernel of my idea on it is that educating special needs kids well should be a very profitable endeavor. But I don't think all schools should be doing it. Its a specialized skillset -- or maybe skillsets particular to the needs -- and a school should be able to demonstrate their capability. I don't know if you'd call that a dumping ground. I'd call it that if its a specialized place where kids are neglected. If its high performing, it needs a name that's more charitable. Can we get there? Honestly, probably not.
But the way schools currently get around teaching special ed kids is by simply saying they don't have the facilities to meet their needs. Public schools do have some of the facilities but often aren't specialized to educate those learners. Yet they still have to take them. Another problem with privatization is that all schools will be able to set their own standards. If I hold 5th graders accountable for what is currently 3rd grade standards the kids will appear to be performing fantastically and many will surpass the expectations set for them. Parents will want to pay for their children to go to those schools because they will have a track record of exceeding standards. Once kids get into those schools they too will exceed standards and parents will be so proud of how great the kids are doing. Everyone will ignore that the standards are set so low.
I'm not a small government free marketeer; I'm a big government free marketeer. If you turned this work over to the private sector (nonprofit, because I don't think I'd want a for-profit entity anywhere near kids' education), especially if you're using public dollars, you would regulate it and have performance standards. You might give schools some latitude on their own standards, but you would have to create some public rule stick to show parents how a school performs. But, something you have to keep in mind is that in a market-based system, people will shop for more things than just how much math a teacher can cram in a kid's head. People's needs and values are more diverse than that. Some minimum standards will need to be set as an ante to participate, but schools are going to carve out their places in the market based on unique value propositions. You see that a bit right now with current private schools -- some are elite college prep, some are missional providing quality education to poor families, some specialize in kids with behavior problems, some provide Christian environments, etc. But the diversity is limited to whatever value propositions appeal to parents or stakeholders with an ability to pay. If that market is expanded, the diversity would also expand. Minimum education standards are needed, but maximizing on book learning isn't always the parents' primary criterion (for whatever reason). Anyway, even with all the Republicans in Texas, I don't think any of this will happen. And, of it did happen, no way it's done in a way I'd think was just anyway. Just interesting to think about.
I think a fix for low performing schools is more after school programs. We can’t fix problems at home and the economy has long moved away from single earners in families, but giveng low income kids some after school structure is relatively low hanging fruit.
I like your thoughts about the minimum requirements and standards. I also agree that there is more to education than how much math can be crammed into a kids head.
You make it sound like smaller school districts would absolutely struggle to function. I noted previously that Katy ISD and Clear Creek ISD are the best performing school districts in Houston. Breaking something into a more manageable quantity is practiced in private industry and in government, and it is an effective form of management. Do you really think the Chinese are going to kick our butts at something because I provided this often-adopted solution for HISD?
Katy is not a small district, it's just not a big city district. It was a small district but a lot of people live in Katy now, it's probably one the country's fastest growing areas and I guess there are at least ten large high schools there. However Katy is still a nice suburb with an educated populous whose parents are involved in their kid's education. I agree with you, at some point trying to improve the district through the facilities reaches a maximum. HISD has been improving their schools. They can't improve the homes. That being said the lower performing schools may bring down a district in rating, but if a kid performs well in a bad academic performing district, the district doesn't hold the kid back. There is no reason to break up the district. Poor academic performance is about homes. Not saying you obviously, but everyone has to come to that realization. Even on economics, for the most part the parents have bad jobs because they are uneducated. Fixing the homes is the solution that can't be driven around
Katy is the standard for school districts across the country when including size and quality. I grew up in North Forest, the negative standard that no longer exists. It was in Northeast Houston, a totally black school district. It's was originally created because white people saw integration coming and created this district in the 20s between Humble and Houston which in terms of race is the bottom of East Texas. But it was an all white area. Then it became a middle class black area in the seventies and was quickly ruined by the crack epidemic. When talking crack epidemic you also have to consider kids going to jail and killing each other. When talking difference in the district, it's homes. Period How can good education happen when a kid is in jail for hustling crack or even worse. My parents sent me to Catholic School. Obviously all the kids aren't involved in that stuff but it's just the total environment if one kid in your class got killed in an incident involving crack and another couple kids are still doing it And the neighborhood was caught in the oil bust in the 80s. It was middle class in income but they were blue collar people. A lot of guys made a lot of money driving trucks
