Houston Education Research Consortium
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The Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC) is a research-practice partnership between the Kinder Institute and 10 Houston-area school districts to guide data-driven, equity-minded policy. HERC uses a jointly developed research agenda that involves both researchers and school district leaders working together on critical issues to improve educational equity. The research center follows a long-term, rather than project-based, collaboration to solve longstanding problems with a focus on informing decision-makers directly.
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Browsing Houston Education Research Consortium by Author "Kennedy, Camila Cigarroa"
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Item Exit Only or Revolving Doors: Student Mobility to and from Non-Texas Public Schools and Non-District Charters(Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research, 2021) Potter, Daniel; Bao, Katharine; Kennedy, Camila CigarroaEvery year, thousands of students leave traditional, Houston-area public schools for private schools, homeschools, or non-district charter schools. Some of these students eventually return to the public school setting. To investigate this phenomenon of “returners,” Houston Education Research Consortium researchers followed two types of leavers in a cohort of Houston-area students to see if and when they return. First, the researchers followed students who left the Texas public school system (TPSS) entirely. Because these students left TPSS entirely, it was not clear where they went (i.e., private schools, schools in other states), and only one-third of these leavers returned and stayed in Texas public schools. Second, the researchers followed students who left traditional public schools for non-district charter schools. Since charter schools in Texas are public schools, the researchers were able to follow leavers, and found that nearly 60 percent of these leavers eventually returned to and stayed at a traditional public school. Understanding that certain types of mobility function as a “revolving door” between educational entities has implications for how schools inform, serve, and support their students and families.Item Student Mobility in Texas and the Houston Area: Summary Report(Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research, 2022) Potter, Daniel; Bao, Katharine; Gill, Patrick; Sánchez-Soto, Gabriela; Kennedy, Camila Cigarroa; Stice, Kenneth; Alvear, Sandra; Min, JieEach school year, in the state of Texas, students unexpectedly change schools almost 450,000 times. In the Houston region alone, students change schools more than 60,000 times. These school changes are not random, tend to be geographically contained though not within school districts, and carry significant ramifications in the short-term for students’ performance on STAAR accountability tests and in the long-term for their risk of dropping out and failing to graduate from high school on-time. This report is the culmination of a multi-year study on student mobility undertaken by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research's Houston Education Research Consortium in collaboration with 10 public school districts in the Houston area. Complementary research briefs have been released providing more details on the full set of findings that are highlighted in this report. As such, this report pulls forward a selection of key takeaways from the overall study with a particular focus on implications for Houston area districts and recommendations districts could consider as they continue to work to support mobile students.Item The Role of College Prep Course Offerings and Course-Taking in Long-Term Educational Outcomes. Research Brief for the Houston Independent School District. Volume 8, Issue 2.(Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research, 2019) Holzman, Brian; Stroub, Kori; Kennedy, Camila Cigarroa; Lewis, BethanyIn this brief, we describe the distribution of college prep course offerings across Texas and determine which school characteristics are associated with higher and lower numbers of course offerings. We also examine how college prep course offerings are related to student-level college prep course-taking and, in turn, how course-tak- ing behaviors are related to long-term educational out- comes. This investigation of the distribution of college prep course offerings across Texas high schools reveals that more college prep courses are offered at larger, urban and suburban schools with higher levels of academic achievement and lower levels of economic disadvantage. Offering more college prep courses is associated with higher levels of course-taking, which, in turn, is associat- ed with improved chances of completing a postsecondary credential, particularly for lower-achieving students.