Houston Independent School District: Culture Change Through Performance Pay

by Nick Morgan, DMC Managing Consultant

When Dr. Abelardo Saavedra was appointed Superintendent of the Houston Independent School District (HISD), Texas’s largest school district, he found pockets of deep poverty, a large population of ESL students, and underperforming schools. In 2005, only six of the district’s 281 schools were performing at the exemplary level, according to Texas state standards. When Saavedra retired in August 2009, his district looked very different. The demographics had not changed significantly, but HISD had become the highest performing urban district in Texas. The number of HISD schools on the state’s “exemplary” list had grown from six in 2005 to eighty-four schools.

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