Texas's two largest school districts tell a similar story with different details. Houston ISDET graduated 84.3% of its Class of 2024. Dallas ISDET graduated 84.4%. Both sit more than 10 percentage points below the state average of 94.4%.

The gap between these two urban systems and the state they anchor is larger than the gap between Texas and the national average. And while both have made progress over five years, neither has managed to close that distance.

Two paths to the same place

Houston ISD entered the five-year window at 82.0% for the Class of 2020, rose to 83.7% in 2021, dipped to 81.7% in 2022, and then climbed to 83.0% and 84.3% over the next two years. The trajectory has been a choppy upward drift, gaining 2.3 points over five years.

Dallas ISD started at the same 82.0% but took a different path. Its rate dropped to 80.1% for the Class of 2021 and bottomed out at 79.8% in 2022 before mounting a sharper recovery: 81.4% in 2023, then 84.4% in 2024, gaining 4.6 points off the trough. Dallas's recovery since 2022 has been the steepest among the state's large urban districts.

The convergence is striking. From different starting trajectories, both districts arrived within a tenth of a point of each other in 2024.

The at-risk picture

At-risk graduation rates tell a parallel story at a slightly lower altitude. Houston graduates 80.5% of its at-risk students. Dallas graduates 82.3%. The state average for at-risk students is 92.1%.

That means roughly one in five at-risk students in Houston and nearly one in five in Dallas do not graduate on time. Given the size of the at-risk populations in both districts, this translates to thousands of students annually.

Dallas's at-risk recovery has been particularly volatile, dropping from 79.4% in 2020 to 72.5% in 2021 before climbing back to 82.3% by 2024. That 10-point swing in three years suggests shifting identification practices or intervention strategies as much as real changes in student outcomes.

Houston under state control

Houston ISD has been operating under state-appointed management since June 2023, when the Texas Education Agency replaced the elected board with superintendent Mike Miles and an appointed board of managers. The takeover was driven by years of governance problems and chronically low-performing campuses, not directly by graduation rates.

The graduation data does not yet reflect the full impact of the takeover. The Class of 2024 spent most of high school under the previous administration, with only their senior year under Miles. Any effects on graduation rates from the new management will show up more clearly in the Class of 2025 and beyond.

What the data does show is that Houston's graduation rate has been improving slowly but steadily since 2022, a trend that predates the takeover.

How the other urban districts compare

Among Texas's seven largest urban districts, Austin ISDET led with a 90.2% rate in 2024, though it has been declining from 92.8% five years earlier. San Antonio ISDET posted 85.5%, showing the steadiest improvement trajectory of the group. El Paso ISDET brought up the rear at 82.3%, having declined 5.3 points over five years.

Aldine ISDET, a Houston-area district of more than 84,000 students, posted the largest gain of any major urban district: from 79.0% to 84.6%, a jump of 5.6 points that included a dramatic 6.2-point surge in a single year.

The 10-point gap between the state average and its two largest districts is not unique to Texas. Nationally, large urban districts tend to trail their state averages. But the size and persistence of the gap in a state that graduates 94.4% of students overall raises questions about whether the state's high-performing suburban and rural districts are masking a fundamentally different reality in its cities.

The Houston ISD and Dallas ISD did not respond to requests for comment.

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