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HISD's talent with SAT scores

Robert Kimball letter to Houston Chronicle

Just like with the dropout rate, the Houston Independent School District is once again bragging about its performance, using the same kind of strategies Enron used in its efforts to mislead the public (see the Sept. 1 Chronicle article "HISD posts SAT gains for second year").

It consistently claims that its goal is to have all students graduate and go to college. Yet, only 10 percent of high school students are taking the SAT. Students who are truly college bound begin taking the SAT, not the pre-SAT, in the 10th grade. But in order to raise SAT scores and its ratings, HISD appears to severely limit which students are allowed to take the test.

Wheatley High School, for example, has more than 900 students enrolled, but it reports that only 68 took the SAT. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand how it increased scores over last year. This policy limits students' ability to apply for college or assess their readiness. HISD has a unique talent for projecting a positive image.

If HISD is serious about preparing students for college, it must begin by testing all students, not just a selective few.

HISD posts SAT gains for second year in a row
Scores defy national trend but still fall short of state, U.S. average

By Jennifer Radcliffe

College-bound students in the Houston school district posted steady gains on the SAT for the second consecutive year, defying a national trend that has seen scores slip.

HISD's average combined score on the reading and math portions of the test increased five points to 952 this year. Scores on the two-year-old writing test slipped one point to 467.

The improvement comes after the district saw a 10-point jump in its SAT performance last year. Even with the gains, however, HISD trails state averages by 47 points and national averages by 65 points on the exam's combined reading and math portions.

Texas students scored a combined 999 on those two portions this year, compared with a national average of 1,017.

"We're making rapid progress and we are closing that gap really quickly," Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra said Friday. "We're putting the college-bound culture into the drinking water, the air and the food."

Carnegie Vanguard High School was HISD's top-scoring campus this year, earning a combined 1,162 on the math and reading portions to DeBakey High School for Health Professions' 1,160.

Bellaire High students earned 1,152. A 51-point jump boosted The High School for the Performing and Visual Arts to 1,151, adding its name to the group that scored in the 1,100s.

A nearly 400-point gap separated HISD's top performers from its bottom-scoring schools. Five campuses — Jones, Lee, Wheatley, Worthing, and Yates — earned combined math and reading scores in the 700s.

Jones High's 765 was the lowest this year, taking that dubious distinction from Wheatley High, where scores increased 110 points to 799.

"We have a long way to go to get all our SAT scores up to national averages," Saavedra said.

Officials in the 202,000-student district attribute many of the gains to a new mentoring program with top University of Houston students.

"It was quite alarming" to have the lowest scores in the district, Wheatley Principal Wiley Johnson said. "We needed to do something to react and respond to that."

Johnson, a 1982 Wheatley graduate, recalls struggling with the exam as a student. With extra help, he said, he raised his scores by 100 points to about 800 — which he hopes his campus average will approach next year.

Some strong gains
Students need even higher scores to gain entrance to the state's top schools. The average SAT scores of University of Texas freshmen who didn't rank in the top 10 percent of their class, for example, approached 1,300 last fall.

Saavedra applauded the strong gains made at campuses such as Challenge Early College High School, a small program located at Houston Community College that allows students to work concurrently toward associate's degrees and high school diplomas.

The 31 students tested there earned a 1,050 on the reading and math tests while their writing scores rose 28 points to 540.

"I'm actually proud," said 17-year-old Morgan Williams, a senior who plans to attend the University of Texas next year. "When we first started out, it was just an experiment."

About 4,700 HISD seniors took the test, about 300 more than last year. That puts the district's participation at 63 percent, the same as in 2005. The rate dipped 7 percentage points last year.

Spotting a trend
HISD's two consecutive years of progress show the start of a trend, board member Dianne Johnson said.

"It's a movement and it really is happening," she said. "HISD is preparing your children for college."

The 17 Kashmere High students who took the test — about 20 percent of the graduating class — marked the smallest number tested at any campus. Sterling High tested 48 students and Wheatley tested 64.

The only schools to test more than 200 seniors were Bellaire, Lamar, Westside and Lee high schools. Typically, scores drop as participation rates increase.

Two-thirds of HISD campuses saw their writing scores fall, including drops of more than 35 points at Sterling and Jones.

Students can earn between 200 and 800 points on each section of the SAT, with a perfect score for the three-part test at 2,400.

'Hard work pays off'
Many suburban districts celebrated high scores this week.

Friendswood, for example, earned 1,119 on the reading and math portions, and Katy posted a 1,079 average.

It's increasingly difficult to maintain above-average scores, officials said.

"Hard work pays off," said Humble ISD Superintendent Guy Sconzo, whose northeast Harris County district posted a 1,055.

"The challenge for school districts around the state is maintaining and increasing achievement in the face of declining financial resources from the state," he said. "This is especially true, given the increasing numbers of students who are economically disadvantaged and who have limited English-speaking abilities."

— Jennifer Radcliffe with Comment by Robert Kimball
Houston Chronicle
2007-09-07
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/5117745.html

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