Houston Independent School District
The Houston Independent School District or HISD operates schools in Houston, Bellaire, and West University, Texas. HISD also takes students from Southside Place and a small portion of Tomball.
Former HISD Superintendent Rod Paige pushed the district into new heights with the PEER Program. Improving scores from its schools have caused a lot of praise from others nationwide. Kaye Stripling took over when Rod Paige headed to Washington, DC as part of United States President George W. Bush's Bush Administration cabinet. HISD is highly regarded in the bilingual education of its predominantly Hispanic student body (including recruiting teachers from Mexico, Spain, and Central and South America) and its magnet (Performing Arts, Science, Health Professions, Law Enforcement, etc) High Schools are considered a model for other urban school districts as a way to provide a high quality education and keep top performing students in the inner city from fleeing to private schools or exurban school districts.
There is recent controversy over HISD over a New York Times report that alleges that HISD is not reporting school violence to the police.
In another controversy, a state audit of HISD's performance called many of the district's improvements into serious question. One of the district's most publicized accomplishments during the Paige era was a dramatic reduction in dropout rates. However, when 16 middle and high schools were audited, it was found that over half of the students who left school in 2000-2001 should have been counted as dropouts, but were not. The audit resulted in a recommendation to label the entire HISD as "unacceptable."
Notable Schools
- Bellaire High School, in the city of Bellaire, has neighborhood and both AP and IB programs. It has been ranked in a magazine as one of the top high schools in the United States.
- High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA) is a performing arts high school located in the Montrose district of Houston.
- Mirabeau B. Lamar Senior High School is a high school in HISD that has both neighborhood and IB programs. The school is so famous that people put it as their school on their obituaries
- River Oaks Elementary School is a school which draws students from the entire Houston Independent School District. River Oaks Elementary is celebrating its 75th anniversary in the 2003-2004 school year.
- T.H. Rogers School is a part Vanguard school, part school for the deaf, and part school for multiply impaired children. The Vanguard program at this school is among the most challenging in the city of Houston, and perhaps even one of the most challenging in the state of Texas.
For a full list, see: List of schools in Harris County, Texas#Houston Independent School District