HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — For the last year, Gabriela Sanchez-Soto and a team of half a dozen Kinder Institute researchers dove into state legislation to understand how we are getting our students college, career, and military ready.
“We spent a great deal of time literally just learning and embedding ourselves into this policy environment and reading legislation and understanding legislature,” Sanchez-Soto said.
The study from the Kinder Institute examined what happened when the A-F ratings were introduced in 2017. The data shows a big dip across demographics when it came to the number of students leaving school, college, career, and military ready. Sanchez-Soto said the dip can be attributed to the school’s adjustment to a new system, and not students suddenly underperforming.
“If the standards are changing, school districts need to adapt. And the fact that many different school districts did reach back to those levels they had before 2017 tells us many of them took the steps to adapt to the new environment,” Sanchez-Soto said.
Getting districts across the state back to pre-2017 numbers hit some roadblocks. Another noticeable dip can be seen in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic across groups, whether looking at race, language, or special education needs. And while this study wasn’t designed to dive into why we see this trend, Sanchez-Soto said she could make some educated guesses.
“We should recognize that students who have more economic resources in their families can pay for more things, they can pay for a tutor, they can pay for test prep,” Sanchez-Soto said.
Still, Sanchez-Soto said overall she thinks the A-F ratings have merit. Noting that they have allowed more flexibility when it comes to how we measure a student’s preparedness for life outside of school.
But the study did identify a need: better channels of communication.
Because school achievement goals and how we measure them start as legislation and then must be translated to real action, Sanchez-Soto said gaps can be identified when it comes to how successfully the state launches new expectations in schools.
“Creating scaffolding so that school districts can move into these new requirements in a way that supports their students while also increasing standards,” Sanchez-Soto said.
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