A nonprofit group that grew El Paso’s charter school network and invested in teachers in traditional public school systems is receiving a $10 million grant as it marks its 10th anniversary.
The Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Educational Development (CREEED) will receive a $10 million grant from the Woody and Gayle Hunt Family Foundation, which previously gave $12 million to the organization.
A key part of CREEED’s mission has been to increase the number and percentage of El Paso County students who complete a college degree or credential, said Woody Hunt, the El Paso businessman and philanthropist whose family foundation has provided most of CREEED’s funding since 2014. That has meant changing expectations and measures of success, he said.
“An academic will say, ‘We’re doing a great job considering the student population we have and their economic struggles.’ The business community will say, ‘We need to get out of this environment. The way to do that is to not let that be an excuse and we’re going to have to get above the income levels of the parents,’” Hunt said.
Hunt said several El Paso schools have shown over the past decade that students from predominantly low-income backgrounds can outperform students in wealthier districts across the state. That has required a commitment from the business community and school leaders.
One of CREEED’s initial primary goals was to expand the number of charter schools in El Paso. But Hunt said a number of factors — particularly El Paso’s declining student population — may mean charter schools will play a more limited role in El Paso education than originally planned.
Investments in charter schools
In 2018, CREEED provided $12 million to bring IDEA Public Schools, a charter school network that began in South Texas, to El Paso County. That effort continues to draw criticism from those who say the expansion of charter schools in the region diverted funds from traditional public school systems and undermined them.
“What they want to do is have corporations direct what is taught and what is created in terms of products coming out of the school system,” said Ross Moore, president of the El Paso Federation of Teachers and Support Staff, a union in the El Paso Independent School District.
Moore also said CREEED has amplified the emphasis on student testing, which “focused more classroom time on testing or test preparation than on learning and developing critical thinking skills.”
Hunt said expanding charter schools was necessary for two main reasons: to make El Paso more attractive to businesses looking to move to El Paso from areas with extensive charter school networks, and to push El Paso’s traditional public schools to improve in the face of additional competition.
“I think competition, which we are all accustomed to in the private sector, is generally beneficial,” he said.
Hunt noted that El Paso’s traditional public school districts are now open enrollment districts and compete with each other for students, much like charter schools compete for those students.
Data from the Texas Education Agency shows that El Paso students who attend schools outside their home districts are just as likely to go to another traditional school district as to a charter school.
TEA records show that about 15,000 El Paso County students (about 9% of all students in the county) were enrolled in eight charter school systems last year. Hunt acknowledged that falls short of CREEED’s expectations for charter school enrollment.
“We are behind that and all of that is attributable to IDEA’s position compared to its original plan,” he said.
IDEA Public Schools is the largest charter school system in El Paso, with about 5,900 students last year. TEA has been investigating IDEA’s state operations since 2021 over allegations of improper spending, and earlier this year, it assigned a conservator to help oversee IDEA.
“They were expected to do the same thing at 20 schools and 10 campuses (in El Paso), and they’re already half of that, 10 schools and five campuses. We still have expectations that they will resume, but it hasn’t happened yet,” Hunt said.
Moore offered a different explanation for charter schools’ enrollment problems.
“Because those who do go to charter schools, more often than not, have a bad experience despite the publicity, and they share it with their friends. And, honestly, school districts have been fighting back. Not as much as I would like, but they have been fighting back,” she said.
Investments in public schools
Both Hunt and CREEED Executive Director Eddie Rodriguez said an important step for the organization and educators was to define successful school achievement.
A decade ago, El Paso school districts touted the number of students who scored at least “close to standards” on state tests, they said. Now, districts focus on the number of students who meet or exceed state standards set on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR tests.
“I think one of the things that has happened in these 10 years is the recognition, from the perspective of the leaders in our region — I mean the academic leaders, the superintendents — that no, we are going to be measured against grade-level standards. So I think in that sense, we can think of the last 10 years as a positive movement,” Rodriguez said.
Hunt said it was misguided to focus on students “getting closer” to standards.
“That really had no correlation with postsecondary success, whereas meeting the standards or mastering the standards… might have a correlation there with postsecondary success,” he said.
Hunt and Rodriguez said El Paso’s traditional public schools had been closing long-standing achievement gaps with state averages until the Covid pandemic shut down in-person education for parts of two school years starting in 2020. Student test results showed the gap widened again immediately after the pandemic, though it has narrowed over the past two years.
CREEED’s investments in public schools have focused on improving teacher training, expanding the number of teachers qualified to teach classes that enable students to earn college credit in high school, improving parent engagement, and getting more students to take and pass Algebra I in eighth grade rather than the traditional ninth grade.
TEA is also pushing the teaching of Algebra I through eighth grade.
“I think the reality is that we started in that direction before the state did. And as a result, I think that speaks well of the recognition (by El Paso schools) that this is something that needs to be done,” Rodriguez said.
The future of CREEED, education in El Paso
A common outcome driving CREEED investments has been getting more El Paso students to earn a college degree or credential after completing high school. Historically, El Paso has had the highest rates in the state of students enrolling in college after high school, but the lowest rates of students completing college.
“So you have to ask yourself, what’s going on here? Are you producing graduates who want to pursue post-secondary education but haven’t been prepared to do so?” Hunt said. “Or are you producing graduates who want to pursue post-secondary education but, because of family circumstances or family income support, can’t sustain it through completion? Or is there a labor market that doesn’t have the right price signals that tell someone that if they stay in school and finish their education, that can translate into a monetary increase in their financial situation?”
Hunt believes all of these factors play a role and need to be addressed. Improving educational attainment levels is crucial if El Paso wants to be economically competitive with other areas, including other border communities, he said.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for El Paso County schools in the coming years will be declining enrollment. The number of children born last year to El Paso County residents was 21% lower than the number a decade earlier, according to state records.
Declining enrollment will reduce state funding, increasing the need for schools (whether charter schools or traditional school districts) to compete with each other for ever-shrinking numbers of students.
“I think open enrollment (for traditional school districts) will probably slow the growth of charter schools. I think open enrollment in our traditional public schools is creating more competition,” Hunt said. “I see all of this as a positive and really accomplishing the same thing as a charter school system.”
Hunt said that with increasing competition among traditional school districts, “charter schools, instead of representing 15 or 20 percent of the student population, end up representing 10 percent or something like that.”
Rodriguez said that over the next decade, CREEED will focus on institutionalizing a higher college completion rate (whether technical certificates, associate degrees or four-year degrees) as a goal of El Paso’s education system, from the youngest grades through college.
That will make El Paso – and its residents – more competitive for the higher-paying, more skilled jobs of the mid-21st century, he said.
“The goal from our perspective is to make sure that over the next 10 years we really establish this process as a fundamental element for our community and our society to function, and that people take it as an accepted component,” Rodriguez said.
#million #give #Paso #professionals