As expected, Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles was pretty happy Wednesday morning as he presented comparison slides of the just-released national NAEP scores that showed several areas of growth among the randomly chosen HISD students tested in January and February 2024.
The superintendent’s presentation emphasized areas of growth — compared to 2022 scores — as opposed to actual levels of performance. The test was given to fourth and eighth grade students in reading and math. Some of his highlights included sub-groups within those categories such as the note that 4th grade Black students increased reading scores by 8 points. Likewise, in 8th grade reading, students with disabilities increased their scores by 10 points.
“The headline is that HISD students have stopped the decline and are rebounding,” Miles said at a Wednesday morning press conference. “Now we’re moving up in the right direction.
“We’ve regained from the COVID loss. Most of the nation hasn’t done that.”
The problem is, according to the above chart and reflected in others throughout the country, results are not so rosy if you look back to before the pandemic years. The National Assessment Governing Board issued a statement that overall, students are not performing at the level they were before COVID hit and essentially shut down the schools.
Improvements are seen from the 2022 scores but in most cases they still fall behind the scores prior to 2019. For instance, according to the NAEP report, the average score at fourth grade across the country was two points higher compared to 2022 and three points lower as compared to the pre-pandemic score in 2019.
“Compared to 2022, the score increased for middle-performing students at the 50th percentile and for higher-performing students at the 75th and 90th percentiles; there were no significant score changes for lower-performing students at the 10th and 25th percentiles.”
This was true in HISD as well.
Miles was careful in his comments cautioning that HISD still has a way to go, like other districts, to dig themselves out of the pit created during the height of the pandemic years when students weren’t on campus to attend school.
In HISD, the NAEP chose students from 108 elementary schools for the 4th graders and 44 middle schools for the 8th graders. Of these, 30 were New Education System campuses, the remaining 78 schools that are not operating under that program introduced by Miles. The tests are not administered by HISD but by the NAEP organization. Some examples of his highlights, but read the whole report.
While making comparisons to the national, large city and Texas results are encouraging …
… they still don’t tend to totally counter where we are compared to where we had been. Especially when you consider where students were scoring in 2011.
An education group out of Dallas, Commit Partnership, analyzed the NAEP data and one of the points it made was this: “The 4th graders taking the NAEP in 2024 were Kindergarteners in 2020 when in-person instruction was disrupted by the global health crisis – a key age for early literacy development. The 8th grade test takers were likewise in 4th grade at that time – and potentially missed out on foundational math skills needed to grasp advanced concepts later. But this is also an unmistakable signal that we need to significantly improve learning acceleration for struggling students.”
That Dallas-based organization noted that “Houston ISD increased the percentage of students considered proficient on all four assessments, reversing a historic downward trend.”
Last year, HISD released STAAR scores that showed improvement, although still below statewide marks. Next week the district will release the latest MAP growth scores from the NWEA education company. As Miles collects “data points” to who that HISD is making strides, he’s hoping that the community focuses on growth above everything else.
Here’s all of the HISD power point:
