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June 17, 2010
HISD loses four more principals to KIPP
Pamela Farinas, the principal of Houston ISD's Foerster Elementary, was honored Wednesday night as Principal of the Year for the district's west region. It turns out that was her final hurrah in the state's largest school district. Farinas is headed to the popular KIPP charter school chain. She will be a deputy head of schools and school leader (KIPP lingo for principal) at LIPP Liberation College Prep).
KIPP-co-founder Mike Feinberg, who began his career as a Teach for America teacher in HISD, also confirmed today that he has snagged a few other leaders from the school district:
-Daphane Carter, the principal of Bonham Elementary, is leaving to be a deputy head of schools and school leader at KIPP Spirit College Prep.
-Bill Sorrells, the principal of Thomas Middle School, is the new school leader at KIPP Polaris Academy for Boys.
-Eric Coleman, the principal of Westbury High School, will be a deputy head of schools at KIPP.
-As we've already reported, Paul Castro, the Westside High School principal who moved to Lee High School for a few months, will be a head of schools at KIPP.
It looks like the KIPP expansion, the 10-year plan to grow fivefold to 42 schools in Houston, is hitting HISD hard, at least in the leadership ranks. You'll remember that HISD
Only 15 percent of HISD freshmen graduate college -- UPDATED
The Houston school board heard a sobering statistic this morning: Only 15 percent of the school district's ninth-graders had college degrees four years after high school graduation day. This isn't an estimate (UPDATE: It's partly an estimate. See explanation below). This number tracks actual students from HISD with the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit that partners with public and private colleges. The only data we've had before is from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and that includes only those students who stay in state, so this is powerful information — which I'd like to see other school districts compile as well.
To HISD's credit, it asked the Apollo Consulting Group to dig into lots of student achievement data as part of the process to develop a strategic plan for the district.
But more on those staggering numbers: Of HISD's first-year freshmen, 69 percent graduate from high school, 52 percent enroll in two-year or four-year colleges and 15 percent graduate from those colleges within four years (UPDATE: It's actually four-and-a-half years). The chart below highlights this data.
UPDATE (2 p.m.): I've talked to Apollo's data guru, and she explains that the data covers two different sets of students, so there are some estimates here. The high school graduation rate is based on the Class of 2008. Of the 9,517 HISD freshmen in 2004-05, 69 percent of them