Good Reason Houston’s annual connectED convening recently united thousands of Houstonians to rally behind a new regional North Star goal: doubling the rate of young people earning a living wage by 2040. Attendees from various sectors, including Pre-K-12 education, higher education, non-profit organizations, corporations, and philanthropy, all focused on a unified education continuum. This continuum follows student success from the first day of pre-K to the first day on the job. To realize this comprehensive “cradle-to-career” framework, we are highlighting a set of key indicators that will track student progress across their educational and early career journeys. Our Education Snapshot ties the effectiveness of our Pre-K-12, higher education, and workforce development systems to the ability of young people to pursue lives filled with choices and long-term economic opportunities.
In this blog, the second of three, we examine our Core Development indicators – the mid-section of our education continuum. We believe that by ensuring more students are meeting these important milestones, we can set them up for success and opportunity in the future.
Our Early Learning metrics zoom in on the percentage of students meeting and mastering grade level standards in reading and math in third grade. In Core Development, we look at the same statistic for grades 4-8 reading and math. Continuing to measure the ability of our students to meet grade level standards in both reading and math together throughout elementary and middle school ensures that they maintain early momentum. The combined percentage of fourth through eighth graders meeting grade level standards on state-administered STAAR tests in both math and reading across our region made slight progress from 2023 to 2024. Again, we hope to see this number increase when the 2025 data becomes available from the state.
Thinking about student long term success, math is, unsurprisingly, critical. Good Reason Houston research has found that taking Algebra 1 in 8th grade is linked with higher likelihoods of attaining a postsecondary credential and earning a livable wage in young adulthood. On the road to our regional North Star, we hone in on the number of middle school students taking Algebra I End-of-Course (EOC) exams divided by the total number of eighth graders in
The Houston region saw 31% of 8th graders take Algebra 1 in 2024, up from 29% in 2023. We expect this important marker to continue to grow as more and more districts build out their plans to fulfill their statutory obligations to expand access to advanced math pathways under Senate Bill 2124.
But the journey obviously doesn’t end when students take the test. Did students develop the advanced math and English skills needed to succeed when they graduate? STAAR EOC exams measure how well students accumulated the knowledge and skills we expect them to develop by the end of high school. Meeting standards on math and reading End of Course exams (EOCs) on-time ensures students are prepared for high school graduation. More students across the Houston region met grade level standards on Algebra 1, English 1, or English II EOCs in 2024 than in 2023, and we hope to see this progress continue into 2025.
The path to postsecondary has one more stop. Our research has found that graduates who attained postsecondary credentials were more than 3x more likely to earn a livable wage in young adulthood than those who didn’t, so ensuring our high school graduates are ready for college is critically important, even if they plan to go straight to the workforce.
Looking at the percentage of graduates who met Texas Education Agency’s college readiness standards, such as passing the ACT or SAT exam or meeting Texas Success Initiative (TSI) standards, we find the a steady increase: 60% of 2023 graduates meeting standards, an 11-point gain from 2022 when less than half of graduates were college ready.
