Dear Partner,
Welcome to the fourth monthly edition of the Learning Curve. We’re grateful for your continued commitment to staying informed about Houston’s public education landscape.
This month’s edition brings a spotlight on critical issues impacting our community, including the surge in college enrollment, the impact of AI tutors on student performance, the roadblocks faced by large-scale tutoring programs, and the need for micro-school accountability. We also delve into the ongoing dialogue surrounding the Houston ISD bond proposal, inviting you to join the conversation and share your valuable perspectives.
This month we highlight:
Thank you for your continued support.
Happy Reading,
The Good Reason Houston Team
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College enrollment is bouncing back, with more 2022 high school graduates enrolling in higher education within a year of graduation, according to the 2024 High School Benchmarks report. This uptick and improved student persistence rates signal a positive shift in postsecondary education trends. Notably, students from high-poverty schools saw the most significant increase in overall completion rates (+0.6 to 25.1 percent), highlighting the potential for education to be a powerful equalizer. However, significant gaps for low-income students persist, underscoring the need for targeted support and resources.
"...an optimistic sign for high school graduates who are choosing to enroll in college," said Doug Shapiro, Executive Director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
🚀 What it means for the city and students of Houston
Houston’s diverse higher education landscape offers numerous opportunities for local high school graduates, with nearly 435,000 students enrolled across 33 institutions in Fall 2023. The city’s robust community college system, accounting for almost half of total higher education enrollment, is crucial in providing accessible pathways to postsecondary education. To capitalize on the national upward trend and address persistent inequities, Houston must focus on enhancing support services, increasing financial aid options, and strengthening partnerships between PK-12 schools and higher education institutions to ensure all students, especially those from low-income backgrounds, can access and succeed in college.
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A recent study comparing the math progress of over 1,000 high school students reveals that those using ChatGPT for practice performed worse on subsequent tests despite solving more problems correctly during practice. Even a ChatGPT version designed as a tutor failed to improve test scores. Researchers suggest this may be due to students over-relying on AI and ChatGPT’s frequent errors in problem-solving approaches. Given the “relentlessly hierarchical nature of mathematics,” it is also possible that students lacked foundational math fact fluency that AI could not ameliorate.
🚀 What it means for the city and students of Houston
These findings raise important questions about the effectiveness of AI tools in math education for Houston students. While AI might help with immediate problem-solving, it could hinder long-term learning and skill development, especially in foundational math concepts. However, conflicting evidence from other studies, such as one that showed that an AI tutor helped Harvard students learn more physics in less time, indicates that the impact of AI in education is still not fully understood. For Houston educators and students, this underscores the importance of maintaining a strong focus on math fundamentals and balancing conceptual and procedural knowledge, as promoted by TEA’s Math Research-Based Instructional Strategies while cautiously exploring AI’s potential benefits in education.
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Matthew Kraft, a professor at Brown University, has highlighted the challenges of scaling tutoring programs to help students recover from pandemic learning losses. While previous small-scale studies showed significant academic gains from frequent tutoring, large-scale efforts like Nashville’s program, which served nearly 7,000 students, yielded only minimal improvements. The program faced logistical issues, such as coordination problems and mismatched content, and many students needed more foundational support rather than grade-level tutoring. These findings and similar results from Washington, D.C. suggest that large-scale tutoring may not be as effective as initially hoped for helping students catch up.
🚀 What it means for the city and students of Houston
Recent findings from Washington, D.C., show that large-scale tutoring programs have had minimal impact, raising concerns about their effectiveness. These findings could have significant implications for Houston’s efforts to address learning gaps. While tutoring seemed promising, its limitations highlight the need for solid and effective classroom teaching, like the approach being implemented in the New Education System. Houston educators and policymakers should focus on improving everyday classroom teaching and carefully evaluate any tutoring programs to ensure they genuinely support students’ academic growth and produce meaningful results
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Given the importance of effective public education and the need and demand for data, this article asks: “How can states justify doing such a lousy job at informing parents?” Using publicly available data nationwide, analysts review the reports that states share about student outcomes in public schools and conclude that states need an opportunity to shape parents’ thinking about what matters for school effectiveness and why. Lack of best practices, user-unfriendly designs, inconsistent data presentations, and an unclear intended audience all make these important reports less functional than they should be.
🚀 What it means for the city and students of Houston
A few districts in Texas took a bold step this summer by releasing preliminary ratings for its schools even as a lawsuit prevented TEA from sharing this official data. As a result, at least within those districts, families have some information about their child’s school performance. Even so, families have a right to know more about how well their children are being educated. Given the data nationally, legislators and policymakers have work to do to ensure that this information is transparent and accessible.
"We're all being held to that same calculation. So the fact that [the state's rating system] is imperfect does not mean we shouldn't measure it at all," said Dallas ISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde. "I feel like I owe it to our community and, frankly, to the state of Texas to say, 'Here is where we are.'"
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A poll from the University of Houston and Texas Southern University released last month found that 65% of Texans support legislation providing school vouchers to all parents in the state. Sixty-nine percent support offering education savings accounts for all parents. In the upcoming legislative session, the Texas legislature is expected to consider bills related to these accounts. It’s important to note the rise in microschools in other states that have implemented ESAs. This article highlights how microschools, which tend to emerge as educational choice options expand, often lack consistent accountability.
🚀 What it means for the city and students of Houston
For Houston, this means that if the state legislature passes bills expanding education savings accounts (ESAs), we could see a rise in microschools here, similar to what’s happening in other states. While this might offer more choices for families, it raises concerns about ensuring that all students receive a high-quality education. Without consistent accountability measures, micro-schools may not provide the same oversight and standards as traditional public schools, potentially impacting student outcomes. Houston’s educators, parents, and policymakers will need to closely monitor how these changes could affect our city’s educational landscape and work to ensure that every student has access to a robust and well-supported learning environment.
Learn more about ESAs
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Houston Independent School District has initiated community discussions on its proposed $4.4B bond, which includes plans to co-locate 15 schools across seven campuses. The district aims to invest $580 million in renovating or rebuilding these campuses to accommodate the additional students. This move marks the beginning of HISD’s engagement with the community ahead of the November vote on what could be the most significant school bond measure in Texas history.
🚀 What it means for the city and students of Houston
This bond proposal represents a significant potential investment in Houston’s educational infrastructure, affecting the state’s largest school district and its 183,000+ students. The recent town hall at Edison Middle School, where HISD sought community input on co-location concerns, signals the district’s commitment to addressing stakeholder questions about safety, transportation, and academics. As more community meetings are planned, Houston families and educators have a crucial opportunity to shape the future of their schools and ensure that this historic investment aligns with the community’s needs and expectations for educational improvement.
