Humble ISD trustees received an update on the new systems and support programs the district put into place to raise college, career and military readiness scores in future Texas Education Agency accountability ratings.
The details
Melissa Leigh, HISD senior director of personalized student success, provided trustees with the overview during the board’s March 10 meeting.
In November, Leigh said officials had implemented several new programs and initiatives at the beginning of the 2025-26 school year to help boost the district’s CCMR scores and keep better track of student progress.
Leigh described the CCMR rating as a ‘‘lagging indicator,’’ meaning the TEA uses data from the year prior when compiling a district’s score. Leigh noted the data used to compile HISD’s CCMR projections for the 2025-26 school year reflects student outcomes from the 2024-25 school year.
According to the projections, HISD is expecting to see its overall CCMR score rise from 62% for the 2024-25 school year to between 78%-81% for the 2025-26 school year.
“I would like to just remind everybody this is for the 2024-25 school year under [Superintendent] Brown's leadership,” Leigh said. “We really didn't start pushing this until January [2025], so this is pretty much one semester.”
Some context
According to district data, HISD’s score for total CCMR criteria came out to 62% for the 2024-25 school year—20 percentage points behind the state average of 82%.
Leigh said the district’s score reflected practices that were implemented by former Superintendent Elizabeth Fagen, who was formally terminated by the district in November 2024.
“To address the elephant in the room, we were given different directives by our previous administration,” Leigh previously said during the board's Oct. 21 meeting. “We were focusing on local indicators that were given to us and not the state indicators that are being measured for accountability.”
A closer look
Tong Utakrit, HISD director of advanced learning and services, said a lot of the projected gains are coming through efforts to increase college readiness initiatives for high school students.
Among the new programs implemented in the 2024-25 school year include Texas College Bridge, which Leigh said provides college prep courses that can help students avoid having to take remedial coursework at more than 100 partner colleges and institutions.
In the 2024-25 school year, HISD received a score of 49% for college readiness compared to a state average of 70%, Utakrit said. According to the new projections, officials are expecting the district’s score to rise to between 73%-76%.
Utakrit noted the Texas College Bridge program has allowed officials to place more emphasis on college prep courses for the SAT, ACT and TSIA exams.
“We knew that many of the surrounding districts in the state were utilizing these courses, so we were able to lean into our amazing principals, who did a fabulous job in a short amount of time in being able to get our students college ready using these college prep courses,” Utakrit said.
Also of note
Larry Wilson, HISD director of career and technical education, said the district has also made some headway in the industry-based certificate portion of its CCMR score.
In the 2024-25 school year, Wilson said the district’s score came in at 19%, compared to the state average of 35%. Wilson said the district is projected to raise that score to 20% for the 2025-26 school year.
While Wilson noted the 1 point increase didn’t seem like a big jump, he said the district was actually anticipating a drop in this score due to changes implemented by the TEA.
“For the class of 2025, students needed to have two courses and a program of study,” Wilson said. “For the class of 2026, students need to have four credits: three courses, and one of those courses need to be a level 3 or 4 course.”
Wilson said some of the changes implemented, such as a new tool aimed at helping educators keep better track of students’ CTE courses, will take a few years before they have a greater effect on the industry-based certificate portion of the district’s CCMR score.
“Many of our implemented strategies that we've done over the past two years really won't fully impact us until this year's freshmen are seniors, so we'll continue to see some incremental growth for the next couple years,” Wilson said.
