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!

Houston ISD Magnet Program survey - funding magnet programs

Houston ISD is conducting a survey of parents and teachers about its magnet program, sending out questionnaires and holding town hall meetings around the city. The survey they sent out asks a number of thought-provoking questions; I'm curious to know how they collate and respond to the submissions they receive. I wonder if they will hold a subsequent round of discussions so we can react to each others' responses.

One question asked how you would recommend funding the programs at magnet schools; they give three suggestions: (1) equal funding by school; (2) funding by pupil; (3) differential funding by type of program. They give only a small box for the response, so I thought I'd elaborate on my submission here:

Each paradigm has its merits and demerits.

• Funding by pupil has the problem that programs with few pupils, especially starting programs, may not have enough baseline funding to hire the personnel necessary to get established.
  
• Funding "by program type" implies differential funding - do STEM schools get more than music/arts schools? How about Vanguard/Gifted schools? Do we decide there are a small number of "types" and assign funding amounts to them? How would an innovative new "type" of program get established and funded?
  
• Finally, while equal funding per school sounds fair, it can be attacked as providing inordinate funding to schools with small magnet populations. It might also under-fund popular programs with a large number of applicants.
  

Perhaps a "tiered" system makes sense. Schools with 1 - 100 magnet students would receive some baseline amount; schools with 101 - 200 get more; and perhaps a per-capita allowance for every student over 200. That might be supplemented by service-based funding for things like after-school programs, or grants of initial capital to do things like purchasing art supplies and tools, musical instruments, gymnastics or dance items, etc.

Kudos to the Lanier Middle School Debate team

The Houston Chronicle has an article about the success of the debate team from Houston's Lanier Middle School, a public school in the Houston Independent School District. Because one of my children is on the team, I traveled with them to the 2009 National Junior Forensics League competition and was a volunteer judge for a number of events.

The experience was really enjoyable for a number of reasons. The competitors in all the different events were accomplished speakers; a number of schools stood out with impressive performances from their various team members, and it was a treat to observe them as a judge or in the audience. The Lanier group was of course one of the impressive groups, strong in both the speech/interp and debate tracks; this breadth of expertise served them well and ensured their 7th straight first-place national ranking, for although other schools were also very good in one or the other area, none were as good in both.

The other compelling reason to go again next year was the behavior of the team itself. They exhibited a welcome camaraderie with each other; for example, members would attend performances of their teammates when they were not competing themselves. As far as I saw, they were always respectful of the judges and other competitors and schools, thanking the judges after every round and congratulating the other competitors in the round when appropriate. When together, they played games or shared impressions and notes, and recognized the strengths of the other competitors. I think it was a good experience for my child to be part of such a large and supportive team.

As the team's coach Mr. Hill pointed out in the press conference, their success was due to their own hard work, but also in large part to the contributions of the alumni who returned to mentor and challenge the team, the parents who support the students, the school who value the team and treat them as champions (not just geeks!), and of course the coach, without whose guidance the students would not improve as much as they do over the years they're on the team.

Another fun map

Here's another fun map, showing how many students travel 10+mi at various magnet programs. Larger boxes mean more students.

I'm not sure how useful this one is; it's just a fun one to look at.

Where do the 10+mi riders live?

I got an early holiday present on Thursday: a response to my open records request to HISD for data on the magnet students riding 10+ miles to their programs. I was pleasantly surprised; I'd not received an acknowledgment, and was about to send a "snail mail" follow up to my original email request.

Part of what I found out can be seen graphically here at Geocommons.com, a web site that lets you upload geo-coded data and see it plotted on a Google (or Yahoo or Open Street Maps) map. You can have several "overlays" if you like, each corresponding to a data set. The data on that map shows how many students travel 10+ miles from each zip code - it's their home code, not the destination. I also received a long list of every school and the number of 10+ mile riders, and I got a small table explaining the racial breakdown of the same group:

Race	Percentage of 10+mi riders	Percentage of District
White	10%	8%
African American	48%	28%
Hispanic	34%	60%
Asian	8%	3%
Native American	<1%	<1%

In my request, I asked for income level bands, which they don't have; but I did get the response that 84% of the 10+ riders qualify for free/reduced lunches (this was also reported in the Houston Chronicle today). I also asked for the same distribution information for the magnet program as a whole, and for the district; I got the district racial breakdown from a different source, which also pointed out that district-wide, 79% of the students qualify for free or reduced lunches.

I worry that reducing or eliminating services for the 10+mi riders will make magnet attendance difficult for 84% of them (2822 students). They are likely to have the least flexibility in their schedules or access to transportation.

Resouces:

• geocommons.com
• batchgeocode.com calculates lat/long coordinates for a batch of addresses
• swivel.com lets you graph various data sets, but I didn't really get the hang of it. Looks cool though.

Houston ISD December Board Meeting

Hi Folk(s?)

Prior to today, there was a widespread assumption that the Houston ISD Board would address the issue of transportation for Magnet students at their December meeting. However, when you look at the agenda published for the meeting, there's no mention of that issue as a topic for discussion or decision.

It's been reported that the decision will happen at the January meeting; but, as always, read the agenda first.

That said, there is a group of parents who will be attending the meeting to demonstrate their position on the issue. The plan is to meet at 6:00pm at

HISD Administrative Headquarters Hattie May White Building - Board Auditorium 4400 W 18th St, Houston, TX 77092-8501 Hwy 290 @ Loop 610

HISD Magnet Statistics

I've heard some opinions from Mary Nesbitt (HISD District Advisory Committee Member), Maggie Solomon, Judy Long, Ann Blackwood (HISD Parent Engagement Committee Members) and Ed Klein (Greater Houston Partnership) floating around in emails and on the Viewpoints page of a local weekly. The gist of their argument is that by making changes to magnet transportation, HISD is potentially removing large amounts of funding from magnet programs. While they may be correct in the worst case, I believe that their argument is incomplete; and that's perhaps intentional, as a complete analysis would diminish the alarm they seem to profess in their writing.

Let me be clear. I am opposed to HISD making transportation changes for the 2009-2010 year for magnet students, but for different reasons, which I outlined in an earlier post. What I'm objecting to is this use of statistical information to try to create an extreme reaction, which in my opinion, makes it more difficult to enter this discussion on a collaborative basis. Let me say how I disagree with the conclusions in the email/article.

First, the facts. They are, unfortunately, not simple to corroborate. The authors claim a student is worth $3446.00 in funding to the school they attend; let's accept that on face value. The authors also seem to know exactly how many students at various schools must travel 10+ miles to attend; I have been unable to date to get this information from HISD, so I'll assume they have direct access to information I can't corroborate.

Next, the analysis. Given the number of 10+ mile travelers in each magnet program, the authors make a straightforward calculation on how much funding the school would lose if those riders were unable to attend; they multiply the number of students by $3446 and report the result. For example, Lamar HS, with 230 affected students, would potentially lose $792,580.00; Westside HS, with about 400 affected students, would lose $1,374,954.00. Those are big numbers, and would cause a big disruption; the program would have to curtail staff and possibly faculty to meet the shortfall. Overall, the nearly 3400 affected students would represent over $11,500,000.00 in funding at stake.

But it's only half the story. Their analysis assumes that the magnet programs would not be able to find new students to attend, which is almost certainly not the case. I called Lanier MS (163 affected students) and found out that each year 600 applicants qualify for 235 spots. If students 10+ miles away were unable to attend, it would affect those directly (which I would argue is a worse effect), but is unlikely to affect the program at Lanier much. For Johnston MS (206 affected students), a similar situation; they receive on the order of 1000 applicants for 250 spots. TH Rogers MS receives several hundred applicants for 75 open spots. Carnegie HS (141 students affected) has several hundred applicants for 150 spots. Westside HS, with a huge 399 students potentially affected, admits 120-200 per year, of around 400 qualified applicants. Again, a transportation disruption could have a huge affect on the students, but may or may not cause the programs to see the financial reductions the authors describe.

I think there are already plenty of reasons to ask HISD to postpone or amend any changes to transportation for magnet students. I just think this reported analysis is sloppy, and should be disregarded.

Don't Change Magnet Transportation in 2009-2010

HISD is considering making changes to the transportation made available to students in its successful magnet programs. Unfortunately, these changes seem to be part of a terribly compressed timetable between proposal, discussion, and decision. Very few pertinent facts and analyses are being presented to students and parents by HISD. Finally, HISD is presenting these changes as an opportunity to reduce expenses, but is not giving a commitment on how those savings may be applied elsewhere. For these reasons, I think HISD should not try at this time to make changes to transportation; instead, they should consider starting a discussion and deliberation process which will frame these changes as part of a plan to support, strengthen, and extend the magnet programs. To put this into a bigger context, they should also discuss the expense reductions available in other parts of the budget, and should plan for implementation no earlier than the 2010-2011 school year.

The timetable. It seems a bad idea to rush through a decision process which has the potential to negatively affect almost 3,400 students directly, and possibly 11,000 students overall (the total population of the magnet programs). These students and their families, who are among other things citizens and taxpayers, deserve more consideration than they seem to be receiving during this process. Surely these stakeholders should receive more than an opportunity to "be heard"; the process should be more collaborative and consultative, and should be slowed down so each group participating can receive good information and make informed decisions.

The information. There has been a lot of information (data?) flying around, but not enough of it identified as directly from HISD, or available from their web site. Faced with a proposal which affects such a large community, HISD should seriously consider creating a web site with at least the proposals and an impact analysis. At best would be community oriented tools, such as at least a feedback form so people can contact HISD and ask for more information and/or discuss how the proposed change might impact them.

I would like to see, for example: how many students will be affected at each magnet program? what are the demographics of the affected students (aggregate age, economic, geographic, ethnic/racial information)? How does that compare to the populations of the whole magnet program and the district? Is any sub-group going to be impacted disproportionately? What provisions will be available for families which cannot adjust to the new regime?

The bigger context. I have not heard enough about how these changes fit into the plan for either the magnet programs in general, or the overall HISD budget at large. If these proposed economies would be applied back to the magnet schools and programs, where will they go? Will existing programs get expanded? Failing programs get more resources? New programs established? In what proportion? And is that a firm commitment?

If this is instead about cost reductions, it's not clear that saving $8 - $9 million in an overall annual budget of $1.6 billion is going to have much effect. If the issue here really is a concern that falling property values will lead to lower taxes and a smaller HISD budget, then where are the significant reductions going to come from? How many students will those changes affect? Given the magnitude of the possible savings and the number of students involved, is this proposal reasonable?

Perhaps students, teachers, families, and staff might feel better about participating in this process if HISD were to commit to its magnet programs, to promise that any changes would affect the smallest possible number of students and families, and that families which demonstrably can't cope with the changes will not be left behind or forced to exit their chosen programs. It appears that HISD needs to go a long way to establish trust with its constituents, and should consider how to take advantage of every possible opportunity to do so.

HISD Transportation Meetings

Dear readers: please don't forget these upcoming transportation meetings, as well as the regularly scheduled Board meeting at 5pm at the District headquarters:

• Districtwide Magnet Transportation Community Meetings Schedule

  Date	Time	Location
  December 2	6:30 p.m.	Waltrip High School
  December 4	6:30 p.m.	Chávez High School

• Regional Magnet Transportation Community Meetings Schedule

  Date	Time	Location	Region
  December 3	6:30 p.m.	Madison High School	South
  December 3	6:30 p.m.	DeBakey High School	Central
  December 8	6:00 p.m.	Austin High School	East
  December 9	6:00 p.m.	Davis High School	North

Transportation in Houston ISD

I went last night to the HISD meeting at Westbury High School, which discussed possible savings from reconfiguring transportation for magnet students (I'm pretty sure this includes Vanguard students as well). I found it interesting for a number of reasons.

The beginning of the presentation was information about the current situation. HISD spends (according to their calculations) a net of $16.2M on transportation for students in the various magnet programs. When they look at how that breaks out, $8.9M is spent on transporting students 10+ miles to their destination, often on buses which are only partially full and which make a lot of stops on a long route. In the Q/A session, it was discovered that the transportation expenses were essentially flat for the past 8 years; that's impressive, actually, when you consider the various increases in salaries and the cost of living (including fuel). The last interesting statistic (if I understood it correctly) was that over 70% (it was either 72% or 78%) of that transportation budget was for salaries and benefits, not fuel or maintenance - so rising/falling fuel prices are not a huge effect, and more efficient buses would be a big capital expenditure for a small cost savings.

With that in mind, the officials at the meeting made four proposals to realize savings in the system:

1. Eliminate bus routes of 10 miles and over. Students outside the 10 mile radius from their destination school would have to travel inside that radius to a pick up point at an HISD school. They would be assigned to schools on a space-available basis.
2. Students outside the 10 mile radius would have to come into a 'drop off' spot inside the 10 mile radius where a bus would pick them up. This may be one spot for a common set of students. It may or may not be a school.
3. ALL magnet students would be assigned to a pickup and drop-off spot, which may not be their local school. This would allow HISD to coalesce students to pick-up locations based on their destination, not their home address.
4. ALL magnet students would be picked up from their local high school.

Now, you'd think that the last option would save the most money; instead of having buses originating from elementary schools (a lot of them) and terminating at magnet schools all around town (elementary, middle, and high schools), you'd instead have collection points at high schools (only a few places) and drop-offs as before. Fewer collections points should mean fewer routes, but maybe the number of kids at each collection point would be large enough to require a large number of buses on each route anyway.

In any case, each option would have a different amount of savings realized. The first option would save the most - the whole $8.9m. The last option would save the least - $6.1M, with the other two falling in between. To me, the last two options would be maximally disruptive, as it changes the transportation habits of all magnet students; the first two options would only affect students traveling 10+ miles to their school. According to HISD, of about 200,000 students, about 40,000 are magnet students, and about 12,000 are being transported via bus. Nearly 3,400 students travel 10+ miles from pickup to drop-off.

Many parents at the meeting seemed to have the impression that these transportation changes were only the first step in a grander plan to eliminate magnet programs altogether. They based this, I think, on some comments by HISD Superintendent Dr. Saavedra; I've not heard the comments (can someone provide links if they can find them?), but I've heard that impression from a disparate set of parents in various venues. The officials at the meeting kept responding that it was the Board of Trustees who made the final decision; If I read between the lines, I'm guessing that this was to perhaps reassure the parents that Dr. Saavedra was not making the decision, no matter what his public comments. I spoke with one of the officials afterwards, who said the board was in fact very proud and supportive of the magnet program; I came away with the impression that the board's goal was to preserve and strengthen the magnet program, not to impair it, certainly not by making it difficult for students who are zoned to under-performing schools and who attend schools farther away.

Another issue which will need to be considered is that there are a significant (how many?) number of parents for whom it would be difficult to drive their students back and forth from a bus stop distant from their house. I'm guessing that their children right now walk to their local elementary school to be picked up, and walk home from there when they're dropped off. I do think that some provision should be made to assist those parents and students; it may be that Metro can help out with subsidized bus passes or some other support. That seems less appealing for elementary and middle school students.

Of course most (all?) of the parents at the meeting had children attending magnet schools; many were from the neighborhood. I was impressed by principal Coleman of Westbury, who was calm while he listened to a number of parents angrily describe his school as unacceptable (some said attending his school would harm their children). I would hope that some of the savings from these changes would go to strengthening local/home schools.

The officials at the meeting made the point that the transportation savings could be used to make the existing magnet schools more uniformly excellent; it would be my hope as well that the funds could be used to create even more magnet programs in under-served geographic areas. It would be my hope that enough academically excellent magnet programs can be established so that no child needs to travel more than 10 miles from their home school to receive an excellent or specialized education. In fact, I think I'd only be comfortable supporting these transportation disruptions and savings if the amount saved were pledged back to the magnet program to strengthen struggling magnet schools and to establish new programs. I don't know offhand how that might be codified.