Change is coming on HISD courses
Advanced classes to become automatic for some students
Houston Independent School District is overhauling how high school students are enrolled in advanced courses next year, automatically placing those who achieve at grade level into more challenging classes as the default rather than requiring them to opt in, as they did in the past.
By boosting enrollment in advanced courses, the district hopes to expose more students to college-level material and prepare them for higher education. Questions linger, however, about how HISD will implement the expansion, and while some community members are celebrating the decision as a move toward greater equity, others question whether it will have the intended effect.
“This is a very intentional policy to increase enrollment (in advanced courses) among students who potentially have the academic ability but are not being counseled by teachers or counselors or administrators to take these classes,” said Virginia Snodgrass Rangel, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Houston’s College of Education.
“It’s a very well-intentioned policy, but I think it’s all going to be in the implementation, starting with whether campuses have the classes to offer,” Snodgrass Rangel said.
The policy is not entirely new to HISD, which has been placing gifted-and-talented students into advanced courses as a default since 2009, and builds upon state legislation passed last year that requires schools to automatically enroll the top 40% of achievers on the fifth-grade math STAAR in advanced math the next year.
Now at HISD, if a high school student meets or masters their grade level on their State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness math, reading, science and social studies exams, that will automatically qualify them for advanced coursework in those areas, said Adrian Acosta, interim deputy chief of college, career and military readiness at HISD.
“It goes back to accessing higher education. By providing exposure to advanced courses, they have a higher chance of being successful after high school,” Acosta said.
Advanced courses include pre-AP, pre-IB, AP, IB, dual-credit and dualenrollment classes, according to a report presented to the board of managers in February. In previous years, students opted into such courses largely at the recommendation of teachers or counselors. Acosta said other standardized tests, such as the PSAT, ACT, SAT and NWEA exams, will also be included in the determination of students’ eligibility moving forward.
Counselors will be responsible for developing students’ schedules, and they have the ability to make “necessary alterations” with regard to advanced courses, according to the February report.
In March, the Education Trust, a national education advocacy nonprofit, released a report that found racial and economic disparities in dual-credit enrollment across the state. That pattern holds true at HISD as well, where only about 25% of Black 11thgrade students were on track to graduate with college credit, compared with the district average of about 36%, according to the February report.
Judith Cruz, former HISD trustee and assistant director of the Houston region at the Education Trust, called HISD’s new policy a “step in the right direction” and predicted it will help more students make it to college or find gainful employment after graduation.
“So many students are looked over for advanced coursework when it comes to strictly teacher recommendations and grades, but when you have an autoadmission policy ... a lot more students of color and low-income backgrounds will be able to access advanced coursework,” Cruz said.
Snodgrass Rangel, the UH professor, said that while the policy’s intentions are noble, she worried its rollout could be hampered by financial restraints and teacher shortages, as HISD and school districts across the country brace for budget cuts and have struggled to hire specialized teachers.
She said it might have been more prudent for the district to pilot this program at one or two high schools and scale it up.
Others, such as former HISD teacher and administrator Ruth Kravetz, say the policy is the wrong answer to the question of how to increase equity in advanced course enrollment.
She said the decision should be arrived at through a holistic understanding of criteria, including standardized test scores, classroom assessments and teacher recommendations, in a way that “marries quantitative and qualitative data.”
“Stating that all the people who meet some metric will automatically be put in these courses as a default presumes that the only thing that matters is quantitative data and not the dayto-day interactions teachers have with kids,” Kravetz said.
HISD did not provide information on exactly how many students were enrolled in advanced courses this year or how many it expected to enroll next year. Kravetz worries, however, that basing enrollment on standardized tests may actually exacerbate the problem of racial and economic gaps in advanced courses.
Results of last year’s endof-course STAAR exams showed that performance gaps between Black high school students and others decreased in most subjects, while gaps between Hispanic students and the rest of the student population increased.
“They want, on paper, to improve access to underrepresented groups, but if one metric becomes the monolith, you’re still missing lots of kids, maybe more than otherwise,” Kravetz said. “I’ve met too many students who on paper looked like they wouldn’t be successful and were.”
Acosta said HISD is working with campuses to develop master schedules and has begun providing campus leaders with student data so they can begin preparing courses. The total of students on grade level will determine how advanced courses are offered in the master schedules, the February report said.