atpe.org
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9 winter 2014
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As students move through high school, the picture
is mixed; the number of low-income Texas students
who are college-ready according to SAT/ACT is still
very low. Yet even in high school, there has been great
progress. The percentage of low-income students
leaving high school with high enough scores to
bypass remedial mathematics in community college
increased from 33 percent in 2005 to 57 percent in
2013, and gains are visible in almost every school.
This improvement in career and college readiness
took place at the same time that Texas's high school
graduation rates soared, reaching second-best overall
among the states and frst for African American and
Hispanic students. These offcial results have met
a great deal of skepticism. They seem too good to
be true. I checked the numbers, both with some
simple estimates and with a state database following
each student through school from 2003 to 2013.
Somewhat to my own surprise, I concluded that the
state results are most likely correct.
Looking toward the Future
There is little time to pause for congratulations.
After House Bill 5 of 2013, testing and graduation
requirements dramatically changed. Teachers can
now focus more on teaching and less on testing,
but students, parents, counselors, and teachers will
all need some time to get used to the new freedom
provided by personalized graduation plans with
endorsements, selected by students based on their
areas of interest. There is the risk that career and
college readiness will slip backward because students
are no longer uniformly required to take courses
preparing them to enter community colleges and
universities without remediation.
Yet Texas teachers and students have shown they
can achieve some of the best results in the nation.
Let's keep that in mind in K-12 schools, colleges, and
universities, as we public educators try to fnd the
best path forward for Texas students.
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