This database was last updated in January 2013 and should only be used as a historical snapshot of data from the 2009-10 school year. For more recent data on public and charter schools, check out Miseducation.
ProPublica analyzed federal education data from the 2009-2010 school year to examine whether states provide high-poverty schools equal access to advanced courses and special programs that researchers say will help them later in life. This is the first nationwide picture of exactly which courses are being taken at which schools and districts across the country. More than three-quarters of all public school children are represented. Read our story and our methodology.
From http://projects.propublica.org/schools. © Copyright 2011 Pro Publica Inc.
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Hightower High School
3333 HURRICANE LN, MISSOURI CITY, TEXAS, 77459 | Grades 9-12
| Students | Total Teachers | Inexp. Teachers | AP Courses | |
| This School |
2,730
|
159
|
14% | 19 |
| District | 69.3K | 4,294 | 12% | 23 |
| State | 4.01M | 269,017 | 14% | 15 |
Hightower High School, part of the Fort Bend ISD, is located in Missouri City, Texas. The school reports enrolling 2,730 students in grades nine through 12, and it has 159 teachers on staff.
Hightower High School is below the state average and in line with the district average in terms of the percentage of its students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. On average, 48 percent of students in Texas qualify for free or reduced-price lunch programs, whereas 30 percent of Hightower High School students do. At the district level, 30 percent qualify.
ProPublica's analysis found that all too often, states and schools provide poor students fewer educational programs like Advanced Placement, gifted and talented programs, and advanced math and science classes. Studies have linked participation in these programs with better outcomes later in life. Our analysis uses free and reduced-price lunch to estimate poverty at schools. We based our findings on the most comprehensive data set of access to advanced classes and special programs in U.S. public schools — known as the Civil Rights Data Set— released by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights.
Hightower High School offers 19 AP courses, and 28 percent of students participate in those classes.
The school's pass rate for AP exams of 58 percent is below the district average of 70 percent.
A school's AP pass rate is determined by the number of students who both sat for AP exams and passed some or all of those exams.
Hightower High School has an enrollment rate of 12 percent for math classes, and 33 percent of students take chemistry. The enrollment rate for physics at the school is 12 percent, and the gifted and talented program has a participation rate of 14 percent.
North Forest High School, in Houston, Texas, is a higher-poverty school than Hightower High School, with 100 percent of its students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. The school offers 13 AP courses, and 14 percent of students are enrolled in those courses.
These data points were reported by schools and districts to the Office for Civil Rights. For more information about the data, see our full methodology.
— Generated by Narrative Science
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