By Elizabeth Sander, Anastasia Goodwin,
Staff writers
Updated April 22, 2025 10:23 a.m.
Charter schools outperform traditional ISDs at the middle and high school level, but lag in elementary
Houston-area charter schools outperformed traditional campuses by 9 points on average at the middle school level, and 12 points at the high school level in 2024. However, average scores for charter elementary campuses were about 16 points lower on average than traditional ISD schools.
Chart: Anastasia Goodwin Source: Children At Risk
Melissa Phillip/Staff Photographer
Melissa Phillip/Staff Photographer
Melissa Phillip/Staff Photographer
Melissa Phillip/Staff Photographer
Melissa Phillip/Staff Photographer
Melissa Phillip/Staff Photographer
Additionally, about 75% of Houston-area elementary charters performed worse than the area-wide average for elementary schools, while, 84% of charter high schools and 70% of charter middle schools outperformed the area average for schools at their respective levels.
These results raise the question: Are charter schools better than traditional public schools?
“Some charters are better than some public school campuses,” Children at Risk CEO Bob Sanborn said. “The Texas charter school community is very different than in many other states. In many states, it’s all about white flight. Here, the charter schools overall have sort of focused on low-income kids, children of color, and so it’s a different deal here. But there are bad charters. There are horrible charters.”
Children at Risk has been ranking Texas public schools for nearly 20 years, primarily using student performance on state math and reading tests, as well as high school achievement data. The 2024 rankings are based on school performance data from the 2023-24 school year.
For elementary and middle schools, the nonprofit assigns rankings using three metrics from each campuses’ STAAR scores: raw student achievement, achievement relative to poverty levels, and year-over-year student growth. High schools are also ranked on a fourth metric of college readiness.
Unlike TEA ratings, Children At Risk does not include military or career readiness in its high school scoring metrics. Sanborn said that the nonprofit is focused on breaking the cycle of poverty for Texas children and that data supports college-attendance as a critical component in meeting that goal.
Best Houston-area districts overall
Elementary, middle, and high school campuses performed overall in 2023-24.
*Campus totals reflect the total number of schools ranked within the district across levels, including combined campuses which may have been rated at more than one level.
Table: Anastasia Goodwin Source: Children At Risk
Success with bilingual students
AMIGOS POR VIDA began in 1999 in a Gulfton-area apartment complex as a solution to overcrowding public schools and aiming to make charter education easily accessible for the residents of the complex, leaders said.
The school, now in a large building across the street, located within Houston ISD’s boundaries, is a 98% Hispanic campus with just over 700 students.
Its name may be in Spanish, but the school treats dual-language differently than others. Since the vast majority of students and teachers speak Spanish, Superintendent Freddy Delgado and Principal Kakoli Mukerji decided to try exiting into English-only beginning in the second grade, with extra language support throughout elementary school.
“The true model is 50% English speakers and Spanish 50%, you put them together, and they learn from each other. So by the time they’re in third grade, they’re fluent in both languages. Well, that was not the case here. They were all Hispanic kids,” Delgado said. “For example, in fifth grade, if they took the science test in Spanish, they had to pass it at a higher rate than the English one. That’s one thing. Then it was all academic Spanish, and some of our teachers do speak the language, but it’s not an academic level. So the kids were struggling.”
After making the switch, their student achievement scores grew, they said.
“We do see the difference when we get the kids in sixth grade coming from other schools and they have not really challenged them to learn the language. They are struggling,” Mukerji said.
A classroom of kindergarteners at the Amigos Por Vida or Friends for Life charter school is photographed on Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025 in Houston.
Raquel Natalicchio/Staff photographer
The school is now known to families in the area as one with a high-level of academics, and as a consequence, they have had to send students away with a waitlist over the past few years. But when their new building fully opens, it’s at partial capacity currently, they could have up to 1,200 students. Next year, they expect to expand by around 100 students, leaders said.
They are also hoping to open a second location of the school in the Alief area to serve a similar demographic and socioeconomic population that they serve now, Delgado said.
To serve a highly economically disadvantaged population of students, leaders say that the quality of the education correlates with students’ home lives. As such, they try to do what they can to help families in need.
“Our community involvement plays a big role behind our success,” Mukerji.
The school has a comprehensive family support specialist whose job is to meet with families to help their children get the most out of education at AMIGOS POR VIDA, including helping eighth–graders apply to the magnet high schools in their home district, and they have ESL and GED classes for parents to take at the school.
In times of need, the school donates items to families through a crisis fund, which was created by staff during the COVID-19 pandemic and has helped families purchase everything from clothing to groceries to furniture. The school’s fund has even helped families facing eviction pay half their rent.
Leaders also said they have created a serious atmosphere surrounding academics, and they were open that the school is “strict.” This year, they received new sixth-grade students who had been in their zoned elementary school and had kindergarten and first-grade levels of reading.
“That’s what we feel when we get (students) from local districts. A lot of them fall through the cracks and the big expectations are not there, so they come with that mental mindset: ‘I have never passed a test, and so it’s OK I have been failing,’ but that’s not OK for us,” Mukerji said.
To achieve that goal, Mukerji said it means letting teachers have autonomy.
Algebra teacher Mario Martinez instructs students at the Amigos Por Vida or Friends for Life charter school on Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025 in Houston.
Raquel Natalicchio/Staff photographer
This was evidenced in Mario Hernandez’s eighth-grade algebra class, one day in late February. Students had the opportunity to think about how they would solve a math problem and write it on the board. But students came up with so many different ways to solve it correctly that Hernandez, a 15-year educator at the school, took some time going over the different ideas, some he said he hadn’t even thought of, to help students learn.
“That took maybe 5, 10 minutes. It might have been a long time. It should have been two minutes. But you know what? They’ve picked something up that they’re going to use in the future. That’s what’s important. It’s not prescriptive,” Hernandez said. “I teach them to teach themselves.”
Houston regional Charter School rankings
Table: Anastasia Goodwin Source: Children At Risk
April 22, 2025|Updated April 22, 2025 10:23 a.m.
Elizabeth Sander is an Education Reporter at the Houston Chronicle. She covers K-12 schools across the Greater Houston area, with a focus on issues that impact the 500,000+ students enrolled in Houston’s suburban ISDs, charter schools and private schools.
She can be reached at elizabeth.sander@houstonchronicle.com.
Previously, Elizabeth was a Hearst fellow covering education, local politics and breaking news for the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News.
Ana joined the Chronicle in 2022 after previously working as a frontend developer and UX designer in the tech space. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in journalism.
