Nothing Ventured In Public Education, Nothing Gained

The Houston Independent School District seems to be turning from being a stodgy school system with waning public support to a district on the cutting edge of new ideas in public education.

The Houston City Council, at HISD's request, recently voted to create a special taxing district so a new school can be built on the crowded east side.

This past week HISD contracted with a private school to teach some of the district's more difficult students.

Could this be further evidence of some sort of sea change for the district? We hope so.

HISD's move to contract out the teaching of some of its more troublesome students was a significant step that is being watched and lauded in many quarters. Something has to be done for students, when all the usual alternative education methods have failed.

The normal story of young people with behavior or academic problem is a sad one. The become lost academically and eventually drop out of school. Their life is often at a dead end with little or no good prospects for their future. Tragically this occurs to hundreds of HISD students annually, even though taxpayers have expended tens of thousands of dollars to help save them.

But HISD's contract with Community Education Partners holds the promise of turning these students around and at the comparatively reasonable cost of $7,500 per student.

The private school will take about 450 HISD problem students, determine where each is in their reading and math abilities, etc., then provide each with an individual learning program based on what they know.

The goal is for the students to improve to the point where they advance academically two grade levels per year. If Community Education Partners fails in getting students to meet the goal, the students are kept for another year at no additional cost to HISD.

The CEP program is said to be fully accountable to the district when it comes to student performance. That will be a critical component in the agreement, accountability and objective testing of these students to accurately judge their rate of advancement.

Of course, HISD has contracts with other schools, but those are primarily to relieve overcrowding and don't relate specifically to problem students. They also don't offer a guarantee as does the CEP agreement.

All in all this contract with CEP represents a bold initiative for HISD. School trustees are saying no to doing business as usual. That's progress.

If, as many believe, the CEP relationship succeeds in keeping these problem children in school, or most of them, and sees them graduate and go on to college, it will serve as a challenge for the school district to do as well itself in educating children.

In another matter, when it comes to new construction using a tax increment district to finance a new high school is a creative solution by HISD. It gets around voters' recent rejection of the district's bond proposal.

But what might be useful in this circumstance should not be used as a general tool for school finance. Residents of the district need to feel they are all in this together, and the district needs to work toward having well-maintained schools in every neighborhood and quadrant.

If HISD continues to explore and utilize innovative ideas like selective use of tax increment districts and privatization -- and such ideas prove to be successful -- the district will have broken the mold and earned back some much-needed public confidence.

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