HOUSTON --The 11 News I-Team has found that some of those grand plans to improve our schools may have some big flaws.
Under the Federal No Child Left Behind law, if your kid is in one of the worst schools, you have the right to transfer him or her to a better school. But 11 News found that the “transfer option” is rarely used in the Houston Independent School District.
One reason: parents complain the schools offered as options aren’t much better.
The transfer option supposedly gives the student a chance to attend a better school and gives the underperforming school a financial incentive to improve.
"With each student there you're receiving funding for that child, so when that child leaves you're losing funding," said Pam Evans, HISD’s director of external funding.
This year, there are 25 HISD schools (of the total 228) that have failed to meet federal standards for two consecutive years, missing minimum standards for math, reading and attendance. That measure of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) as it’s called makes them subject to extra measures for improvement, measures that can be as extreme as the wholesale sacking of teachers and administrators.
But HISD told 11 News that a mere 800 students in four years have asked to transfer out of those underperforming schools. That’s a tiny percentage of the thousands who were eligible.
One of those schools is Sharpstown High. It’s where Robert Butler is a senior and is president of his class.
"They really talk down on Sharpstown, like, this is a school you don't want to go to," Butler said.
Where do students want to go?
“They all want to be at Bellaire," said Bulter.
Bellaire High is just a few miles from Sharpstown, but can seem a world apart: it’s surrounded by some of Houston's most affluent neighborhoods and counts among its graduates celebrities including movie star Dennis Quaid and baseball’s Bubba Crosby.
“Westbury tries to get there, Madison. You see all kind of kids and their parents trying to rush into that school," said Butler.
But getting into Bellaire isn’t easy, it’s full. And so are many of HISD'S best schools.
That means that the only sure way to transfer out of an underperforming school is to attend one of the two offered as options by the district. The problem is, those options sometimes aren’t significantly better.
“If the only other option the student has are not-so-good schools, then most students aren't going to put in the effort to switch schools," said Scott Imberman , an economist at the University of Houston who has studied the effects of the No Child Left Behind law.
For example, kids at Sharpstown are guaranteed admittance to Waltrip High, a school which does meet minimum standards. But the other option offered, Scarborough High, has missed meeting the federal standards three out of the past five years.
HISD acknowledges it's a legitimate gripe, but the district contends it’s not the only reason so few parents request transfers.
“Many parents feel very confident in many of the neighborhood schools, even though many of the indicators show we have cause for concern," said Dallas Dance, HISD’s middle school chief.
He has a point, at least, according to Butler, who in a surprising twist, revealed he used to go to top-rated Bellaire High. But earlier this year, his family moved a few miles away, closer to Sharpstown. Butler could have stayed enrolled at Bellaire, but instead, he decided to do the un-expected and transferred to low-rated Sharpstown.
He said he decided to move because of what happening at Sharpstown, which has never met new, federal standards.
“Brand new staff, brand new principal," Butler said.
This year, in a move that caused uproar among some staff members, HISD not only replaced the principal at Sharpstown, but half of all the teachers. What's more, it hired a small army of tutors who provide individual help every day to every ninth grader.
That's unheard of in most any public school.
It's part of a program based on research by Harvard that looked for the most successful ways the nation's worst schools have made improvement.
HISD calls it the Apollo 20 program and has it up and running in 20 of its worst-performing schools. No one knows if it'll work here, but student Robert Butler is betting his diploma that it will.
More information: HISD transfer options
