“Houston lags in education,” is the headline of an L.M. Sixel story in today’s Chronicle:
More students need to graduate from high school and college if the Houston area is going to be competitive in an economy that is knowledge-based, a Gulf Coast Workforce Board report says.
[snip]
For the second year, the board compared Houston with Atlanta, Denver, San Diego, Dallas, San Antonio and Miami. It used publicly available economic data, ranging from job growth to median household income to the number of new businesses.
The Houston area scored fifth among the seven, losing points because a higher proportion of its residents live in poverty, don’t speak English and haven’t finished college.
Another troubling fact, according to the report, is the low ratio between 12th graders to 9th graders which, while it doesn’t directly correspond to a drop-out rate, indicates students are leaving high school before they graduate.
[snip]
Compared to its peer group, Houston also has more at-risk youth — the 16- to 19-year-olds who haven’t graduated from high school but who aren’t enrolled in college.
I can’t imagine that the general basis of the report’s findings come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Houston. And for a mega-dose of irony, check out the last paragraph of the story.
Since I didn’t see a link to the report, I searched “Gulf Coast Workforce Board” which brought up links to The Work Source, which then led to (what I assume is) last year’s report (pdf), if you have any interest in seeing what the report is measuring and where Houston placed previously.
