Houston ISD Magnet Program survey - admissions criteria

I wrote earlier about Houston ISD's questionnaire about its magnet programs; in particular about the survey question on funding. Another such question asked about how students should be admitted to magnet programs.

The magnet programs at HISD exist both to cluster students with similar interests, skills, and abilities, and to allow students from under-performing schools to attend programs outside their HISD zone. In a perfect world, every student who wanted to attend a magnet program would; however, there are a limited number of programs, and a limited number of students the programs can admit. Therefore there needs to be some way for a program to admit a fraction of its applicants.

One thing that makes this a little more complicated is that HISD has a parallel program called "Vanguard" which targets a subset of the children who are identified as "gifted and talented." I think the idea is generally sound - it's easier to provide a centralized accelerated academic program in a small number of schools than it is to have a separate such program in each of schools. I'll address each program (Vanguard, magnet) for each grade level (elementary, middle, high school).

Elementary school

• Vanguard

  HISD uses a battery of tests to determine which students are identified as "gifted and talented"; within that population, a further set of tests determine which students qualify for the "Vanguard" program. I'm not sure the data convince me these second tests are effective - it's not clear that all the students chosen for the programs end up thriving in them, nor is it clear that the students excluded from such programs would not have done better as participants. If the second battery of tests does not effectively differentiate between those populations, then perhaps admission to a Vanguard program at this level should be by lottery from the pool of "gifted and talented" applicants.
  

• Magnet

  I believe most magnet programs at this level accept applicants by lottery. This seems pretty fair.
  

Middle school

• Vanguard

  At this level HISD has more data about its students, based on grades, test scores, and teacher evaluations. It may have enough information to be able to tell which students would benefit from accelerated Vanguard programs. If so, selection based on these criteria would be appropriate. If the data are not enough to be able to rank students, then perhaps a threshold to apply plus a lottery among the qualified would be better and would allow more students to participate. Some students might not thrive in such an environment and may choose to leave it; programs should actively recruit new students for open spots in 7th and 8th grades to replace them.
  

• Magnet

The Magnet schools at this level are impressive - foreign language, performing and visual arts, etc. Students are likely to self-select at this point, so it may be that a lottery is reasonable as a selection process. On the other hand, it may be better to use the screening processes that high school programs use, below. Students can further be clustered in the school by aptitude for acceleration, if appropriate.

High school

• Vanguard

  By high school, the district should have enough data to be able to determine which students will do well in a Vanguard/accelerated program. Students will also self-select at this level, since these programs will typically include an expectation that students take a decent number of IB or AP courses and exams. The pressure to have a high GPA may convince students not to attend unless they're sure they'll succeed. Therefore, at this level the schools should probably have open admissions or a lottery of all candidates who qualify based on grades and test scores.
  

• Magnet

  The Magnet schools at this level are really incredible - foreign language, performing and visual arts, science/medical, engineering, even a school with a flight program. If the program has some minimum ability requirements it should test for them (language fluency or aptitude, science/math scores or grades, performing ability, etc.) Like the Vanguard programs above, students will likely self-select at this point, so programs should probably have open admissions or a lottery among all who qualify. The assumption is that anyone applying to such a school will be interested enough to succeed if they have the skills to do so.
  

Since one of the goals of the magnet program is to allow students to "escape" an under-performing they're zoned to, perhaps at each level some preference should be given to an applicant who is zoned to such a school. There also, frankly, should be more magnet programs!