09.05.05
Katrina evacuees
Transfer policy hinders schools
‘Talent drain’ makes it hard for some campuses to meet standards
– reported by the Houston Chronicle
Thousands of Houston ISD high school students are transferring to campuses with better reputations, draining struggling neighborhood schools of their top students and making it tougher for them to meet state academic standards.
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The Houston Independent School District has for years prided itself on an open-enrollment policy that lets parents send their children to any school that has enough room. The practice lets students from some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods attend schools that serve Houston’s economic elite.
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Ten of HISD’s 23 traditional high schools lost at least a quarter of their students last school year. Half of those 10 schools are considered “academically unacceptable” by the state. Two of them, Wheatley and Kashmere, have fewer students than any other HISD neighborhood high school.
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