El Paso ISDET and McAllen ISDET serve strikingly similar student populations. Both are majority-Hispanic districts on the Texas-Mexico border. Both serve high proportions of economically disadvantaged students and English learners. Both operate in communities shaped by immigration, cross-border commerce, and federal policy.

Their graduation trajectories have gone in opposite directions.

El Paso ISD's graduation rate fell from 87.6% for the Class of 2020 to 82.3% for the Class of 2024, a decline of 5.3 percentage points. McAllen ISD climbed from 95.8% to 98.3%, a gain of 2.5 points. The gap between the two border districts widened from 8.2 points to 16.0 points in five years.

The Valley is not just holding steady

McAllen's 98.3% graduation rate for the Class of 2024 is not just good for a border district. It is among the highest rates for any district of its size in the state, sitting nearly 4 points above the state average. Brownsville ISDET, the Valley's largest district, graduated 93.7%, close to the state average.

What makes the Valley's performance notable is the context. These are districts where 90% or more of students are Hispanic, where the majority qualify as economically disadvantaged, and where English learner populations are large. In other parts of the country, those demographics predict graduation rates in the low 80s or worse. In the Valley, they do not.

McAllen's economically disadvantaged students graduated at 98.0%. Its English learners posted 97.6%. Its at-risk students reached 98.1%. Each of those subgroups graduated well above the state's average for all students. Special education students, at 85.8%, are the one major exception in McAllen's reported data.

El Paso's decline cuts across every subgroup

El Paso ISD's 5.3-point decline was not concentrated in any single population. Nearly every subgroup with reportable data fell, and the one that edged up did so from a low base.

Hispanic students dropped from 87.4% to 83.0%. Economically disadvantaged students fell from 85.0% to 79.8%. At-risk students went from 83.7% to 80.0%. English learners showed the least decline, edging from 76.3% to 76.9%, but started from a much lower base.

The district's at-risk graduation rate followed a particularly volatile path, plunging from 83.7% to 74.7% for the Class of 2021, recovering to 80.8% by 2023, then slipping again to 80.0% in 2024. The post-COVID disruption hit El Paso's at-risk population harder than any other subgroup, and the recovery has been incomplete.

Same demographics, different outcomes

The divergence between El Paso and the Valley complicates simple explanations for graduation gaps. If poverty, language barriers, and border-community challenges determined graduation rates, El Paso and McAllen would look similar. They do not.

The difference is unlikely to be explained by demographics alone. El Paso ISD serves about 51,000 students compared to McAllen's 24,000, and larger districts tend to have more operational complexity. El Paso is also more urban, with the challenges that come with a city that straddles the largest binational metropolitan area on the U.S.-Mexico border. McAllen, while growing, retains more of a mid-size community character.

Whatever is driving the Valley's success in graduating its students, the border is not the barrier it is often assumed to be. McAllen is proving that a majority-Hispanic, high-poverty, border district can graduate students at rates that rival the wealthiest suburban systems in the state.

El Paso ISD at 82.3% is now the lowest among Texas's major urban districts, narrowly under Fort Worth (82.6%) and several points behind Houston and Dallas (84.3% and 84.4%). Whether El Paso can reverse the five-year slide will depend on factors that go beyond the border.

El Paso ISD and McAllen ISD did not respond to requests for comment.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.