The good news is that more than 90 percent of families surveyed feel their children are safe and welcomed in their Houston ISD schools. And that more than 80 percent of HISD families overall would recommend their children’s schools to other families.
Less encouraging perhaps is that favorable number drops to 67.2 percent of families overall who believe that HISD is improving and headed in the right direction. Another 17.9 percent said they were neutral on the subject and 14.9 percent had an unfavorable review.
The biggest fans of whether HISD is improving are Hispanic families at 76.8 percent — a 40 point difference with the white families that answered the same question.
Those are just some of the results from the HISD’s “Family Sentiment Survey” released tonight in which 42,851 families were surveyed with responses from 11,008 of them. Hispanics represented the largest group accounting for 59.7 percent of the responses, followed by Black families at 17.5 percent, white at 12.1 percent, Asian at 7.5 percent and Other at 3.6 percent.
HISD and its superintendent Mike Miles see the results as an endorsement of the district, especially with 84.1 percent responders overall who answered that they would recommend the district to other families.
Matthew Sawyer, HISD’s Deputy Chief of Data & Impact, oversaw the survey, and says the results show that people believe the district is headed in the right direction. The overall perception of the district from all groups including all questions was more than 90 percent positive.
“We doubled the participation rate [from a similar survey taken in May 2025.]” Sawyer said the two surveys shouldn’t be compared because a different methodology was used, the random sampling was done of a more representative HISD families group demographically. And because of the much larger sample size.
According to the report, the May 2025 results were out of whack with whites overrepresented by quite a bit and Hispanic families underrepresented by the same margin. That had been rectified for the most part in this December’s survey.
The results were based on what’s called a stratified random sampling within a representative group. All of the district’s campuses were included except the Texas Connections Academy and charter campuses, he said. Besides race, ethnicity, the survey team also looked at economic disadvantagement to ensure a representative sample.
“We’re very excited that we’ve built a documented, repeatable survey that we’ll be able to use for years to come,” Sawyer said.
He also took issue with the idea that 67.2 percent favorable response on the direction the district is heading was low.
“Two out of every three families indicated that the district was headed in the right direction. Two out of three; we’re incredibly proud of that result. We have more work to do and we’ll dig into the work on specific campuses and with principalsto understand how we can better engage with families so that hopefully we can continue to see the improvement that we’ve seen.”
A natural question comes up: if all these parents are so happy with the district, why did so many students transfer out of the district in the 2024-25 school year? And has there been a rather constant stream of pubic speakers at school board meetings with a litany of complaints about NES programs, the lack of librarians and other matters they feel are misguided? In response Sawyer said “I think every family gets to make decisions about what’s in the best interest of their students.
“What I can say is that our families that are here are telling us overwhelmingly that they believe in their schools and by a rate of 2 to 3 believe that the district is headed in the right direction.”
Whites had the highest unfavorable responses to the question of academic challenge and quality question with 14.6 percent unfavorable. Only 4.6 percent of Hispanics marked themselves as unfavorable, rising to 7.1 percent among Asians, 10 percent among Blacks and 13.1 percent of Others.
Besides demographic breakdowns, the district was divided into both New Education System schools and non-NES or PUA (per student allocation) schools.
On the question of whether parents would recommend their child’s school to other families, a higher percentage (85.3 percent) of families at PUA schools said they would, compared with 81.6 percent of NES families.
The further breakdown on the district perception question shows while 77.8 percent of families believe the district is headed in the right direction and improving, only 62.3 percent of PUA families think so. While only 9.1 percent of NES schools recorded an unfavorable rating, 17.6 percent of PUA schools did.
The district got high marks about its communications efforts with the public. As for Special Education, more of the families at NES schools (85.3 percent) think the district is doing a good job in support and communication there, than did the responses they got from PUA parents (79.9 percent.)
Sawyer is a former teacher who taught science, integrated physics and chemistry at Black Middle School in HISD. He says he likes collecting survey data because “I think that one of the most important things we can do as a district is to listen to our families. And insure that their lived experiences are informing the decisions and actions we take each and every day.”
One follow-up task for the district, Sawyer said, will be to look at campuses where they had lower response rates, “to ensure that we are hearing from more and more families, more consistently.”
“I think the more families we can hear from and hear from them consistently, the better we’re able to use that information to then drive engagement and change at the school level.”
This article appears in Private: Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2026.