HISD Exploring Increased Autonomy Opportunities for Top-Performing High Schools

Houston ISD (HISD) is proud to announce its continued exploration of pathways to provide more autonomy to its top-performing high schools (9th to 12th grade). These are schools with an established track record of academic excellence, with no major achievement gaps between student groups. HISD believes that with increased autonomy, these high schools can continue to innovate while preserving the unique characteristics and programs that make them beloved to their students, families, alumni, staff, and broader community. While HISD is in the early stages of exploring increased autonomy with eligible schools, no final decisions have been made by either the District or schools, who we expect to deeply engage with their staff and key stakeholders before moving forward.

Before the state intervention, all of HISD’s 273 schools operated with a great deal of autonomy with very little accountability. This led to grave inequities and the failure to provide high-quality educational opportunities for the vast majority of HISD students. In response, HISD developed the Defined Autonomy Framework to raise student achievement and close achievement gaps, by allowing for flexibility and innovation at high-performing campuses while maintaining rigorous expectations for every single school. The Defined Autonomy Framework was designed to allow greater flexibility for schools that are more successful, using state accountability ratings as the primary metric, and less autonomy for struggling, C, D, and F-rated campuses.

The Defined Autonomy Framework has worked well. HISD has improved the quality of instruction in almost every school across the District while maintaining the unique nature of its magnet and specialty schools. Two years into HISD’s transformation, the number of A- and B-rated campuses have more than doubled, and the number of D- and F-rated campuses have gone from 121 to 18, with no F-rated campuses. Achievement gaps across the District are narrowing. Having made so much progress, HISD is now considering greater programmatic flexibility and innovation for its highest performing schools through a Level 5 autonomy initiative.

HISD Superintendent Mike Miles previewed the District’s interest in Level 5 autonomy at 2025 Convocation, this school year’s kick-off event. Since then, HISD has taken several steps to explore this innovation with its highest performing school leaders. HISD has only considered granting this expanded autonomy to high schools that have maintained an “A” accountability rating for at least the last four years and have less than 25% Black-White and Hispanic-White achievement gaps on the ELA and Math STAAR exams. By using this definition, HISD can ensure that only schools and school leaders who are truly serving all students well can be considered for expanded flexibility.

Earlier this school year, HISD staff met with the principals of those high schools that meet the high standard for Level 5 autonomy to share information about the initiative, discuss its benefits to the schools, and gauge the school leaders’ initial interest in exploring the process of gaining further autonomy. In turn, eligible school leaders have begun an informal process of engaging their teachers, staff, PTO/PTA leaders, and key stakeholders.

Level 5 autonomy will be enabled by use of Texas law SB 1882, which allows districts to partner with a variety of organizations, including non-profits to manage a school. Through SB 1882, eligible and interested highest performing schools will have the opportunity to form or engage an existing school non-profit board that, if approved by the HISD Board and the Texas Education Agency, would operate the school more autonomously under a performance contract with HISD.

HISD’s highest performing high schools, with unique instructional models, that wish to pursue Level 5 autonomy will benefit from becoming an Innovation Partnership School through SB 1882 in the following ways:

• Increased principal autonomy over instruction and operations to implement their innovative model, including decisions around curriculum, assessments, calendar, staffing model, hiring, evaluation, and more.
• Additional resources to support and sustain innovative practices through the additional per-pupil funding allocation from TEA, as applicable.
• Sustainability by helping to preserve and scale successful practices that are driving student outcomes.

The performance contract defines the autonomy that each partner school would receive and the performance outcomes the school must achieve to continue its autonomy. Schools would still be HISD schools, and the performance contract also defines service-level agreements outlining which services the District will provide to the partnership school, services like transportation, food services, and other back-office functions.

Once eligible schools have gauged their interest, they will need to engage or form their non-profit boards. The HISD Board of Managers and the Texas Education Agency will hold final approval of the performance management contract between HISD and each individual school non-profit board. While no final decisions have been made on which schools will move forward, HISD will provide updates on the schools as the process moves forward.

“Level-five autonomy is a bold opportunity for Houston ISD’s most successful and innovative school leaders to enjoy a greater level of flexibility, increased resources, and the stability that comes from being managed by their own non-profit board. By enshrining student outcome targets, including achievement gap benchmarks in the performance management contract, HISD will ensure that these schools continue their track-record of serving all students well, while ushering in an era of increased innovation for these schools,” said Superintendent Miles.

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