Bellaire High School Makes HISD’s List Of Higher Performing Schools

Bellaire High School is among 75 HISD schools to earn a place on this year’s National Center for Education Achievement (NCEA) list of Higher Performing Schools.

Schools included on the list are higher performing in one or more subject areas. HISD had 14 schools rated higher performing in all subject areas, including Bellaire High School.

That’s more than the other seven large urban Texas districts combined, which had a total of 10.

“In order to reach our goal of becoming the best school district in the country, we first have to become the best school district in the state,” HISD Superintendent Terry Grier said. “Once again HISD has outperformed the other seven large urban districts in the state and that’s a credit to all of the members of TEAM HISD which includes our employees, parents, business partners, volunteers and community leaders.”

The NCEA study identifies which schools are preparing students better than expected. NCEA uses a statistical technique called a Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). HLM is commonly used to identify the value-added effects of schools. The model is based on the school’s student performance on the state assessment and is run separately for each tested subject. Typically, these subjects include reading, mathematics and science.

NCEA focuses on a value-added analysis of the schools based on prior-year student achievement. The value-added analysis examines whether students enrolled in a particular school have performed above what was predicted, based on state assessment scores from the previous year.

NCEA also recognizes schools based on continuously enrolled student performance measured on the state achievement level that is closest to the College and Career Readiness (CCR) Targets on the state assessment. This measurement is evaluated within the context of the school’s percentage of students who are eligible for free or reduced lunch.

HISD has been using value-added analysis to measure academic progress since 2007.

Based on last year’s results HISD paid out more than $42 million in performance bonuses this week to 16,527 employees.