Student Achievement Data

The Collaborative has closely monitored achievement on state assessments since the early 1990s. At that time, achievement patterns revealed consistently low performance among Latino and other minority students, and large gaps between ethnic groups. Trend data made clear that achievement gaps grew through the grades with Latino student achievement lowest at the high school level.

Over the years, Latino student achievement has increased dramatically and the gap among groups of students has narrowed significantly. For example, in 1994 at 3rd grade, only 58% of Latino students passed the mathematics state test (TAAS), while 77% of White students did so. By 2010, 88% of Latino students passed the new, more rigorous test (TAKS) and the gap between Latino and White groups declined from 19 points to 7 points. At the 11th grade, performance was even more alarming. In 1993, only 30% of Latino students passed TAAS mathematics, while 61% of White students did so—a gap of almost 30 points. By 2010 though, Latino pass rates had improved dramatically—to 88%—while the gap between Latino and White students was reduced to 7 points. As with most other achievement indicators, academic performance for Latino students in the El Paso region exceeds that of all other large urban areas in the state.

The Collaborative has consistently placed a great deal of emphasis on elimination of remedial and low-level course offerings, K-12, and enrollment of all students in a college preparatory course of study. As a direct result of the Collaborative’s efforts, by 1996, all three large districts in the region implemented policies making the Recommended High School Program (RHSP), the Texas 24 unit college-prep program, the default curriculum for all high school students, eight years before the state took similar action. As of 2009, 93% of El Paso high school graduates completed the Recommended High School Program. This rate is the highest among large urban areas of the State, and is significantly higher than that of Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio. Of particular note are the tremendous gains that have occurred in enrollment and pass rates in key mathematics and science courses over the years. For example, enrollment of Hispanic students in Algebra II across all area school districts has increased from 40% in 1993 to 100% in 2007, with pass rates of over 85%. Similarly, chemistry enrollments increased from less than 30% to over 90% of all Hispanic students in that same time frame with course pass rates at 85%.

Graduation from high school remains a key indicator of the impact of the El Paso Collaborative on student academic achievement. At the time of the Collaborative’s inception, solid data on graduation rates were difficult to come by, but it was estimated that graduation rates hovered between 60 and 65%, with significant gaps between graduation rates for Hispanic and White students. Over the years, steady and significant improvements have occurred to the point where the El Paso region now leads most large urban areas in the graduation rates of its young people. The four-year rate for 2009—not including those students completing a GED—is 76 % for all students in our region. While the gap between Hispanic and White students in El Paso at 10 percentage points is larger than we would want, it is far lower than the 22 percent gap in Austin, the 21 percent gap in Houston or the 16 percent gap for the state. Finally the 75 percent Hispanic graduation rate for the El Paso region is significantly higher than the rates for Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio which are 67, 67, 66 and 62 % respectively.

College enrollment and completion among students in the El Paso Region has increased hugely over the course of the past 20 years. It is estimated that approximately 60% of El Paso area high school graduates attend college somewhere in the US directly after high school. Enrollment at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and the El Paso Community College (EPCC) of students directly after high school graduation has gone from about 25% in the early 1990s, to 34% in 2000, to 43% in 2010. These percentages do not take into consideration students who attend college at institutions other than UTEP or EPCC or those that enter after fall after high school graduation. The proportion of Latino students attending UTEP and EPCC has also increased greatly. Over the course of the last 30 years, UTEP enrollment has gone from being predominantly Anglo to being over three-fourths Latino. EPCC enrollments are also overwhelmingly Latino. Finally, far larger numbers of students are earning Bachelors’ degrees. At UTEP, the number of degrees awarded between 2000 and 2010 has almost doubled to about 4000.

In general, gaps in achievement across groups of students have been greatly reduced over the twenty years of the Collaborative’s work in El Paso area schools. Gaps between Latino and White students’ performance on TAKS have declined very significantly over the years, with Latino students’ performance improving at a faster pace than that of White students. Especially significant was the closure of huge gaps in TAKS science achievement and in math achievement at grades seven through ten. Similarly, differences in enrollment in and completion of mathematics and science courses and the full sequence of college preparatory courses, which were very large in the early 1990s, have virtually disappeared. Gaps among groups in graduation rates, passage of college placement requirements, and college-going and persistence rates have been reduced significantly. Significant achievement gaps continue to exist, however, in performance at the high end of TAKS (Commended level performance) and in performance on SAT and ACT tests.