HISD high schools currently offer a variety of programs of study, where students can opt to take a series of courses in a certain subject and work to earn an industry-based certification. Each campus can offer different CTE programs in topics like hospitality, marketing or STEM, but programs of study are not uniformly offered at every school, according to the district.
"One of the problems that this was causing is you might take a ninth grade course at one high school and move to another and not be able to continue in that focused area as you move around," said Kristen Hole, HISD's chief academic officer. "We wanted to ensure there was a common set of offerings across all of our high schools that students could be able to access."
Starting next year, all HISD campus with zoned students will now be required to offer between two to four of the same programs of study based on their size. The list of required programs — known as "foundational programs of study" — will be entrepreneurship, networking systems, distribution and logistics, and health informatics.
Schools with the entrepreneurship program of study, for example, would offer classes such as business information management, statistics and business decision making, mobile application development or marketing, and then students in the program could take an exam to potentially earn an industry-based certification in entrepreneurship and small business.
"Separate and unique campuses" — or schools with no zoned students where everyone must apply to attend like HSPVA and Carnegie Vanguard High — have the option to add the foundational programs of study next year but they will not be required to do so, according to district documents. Hole said during a district presentation Wednesday that all campuses can continue to offer their current programs of study.
HISD wrote in February that it will begin rolling out the uniform programs of study over four years, starting with offering the foundational programs to freshmen next year. The district will also work with campuses to sunset "programs that are not leading to outcomes," meaning that schools would stop offering certain programs to ninth graders but continue to offer them to 10th to 12th graders.
To choose the foundational programs of study, HISD said that it identified options that met a minimum threshold for job growth, volume and wages, and then picked four that would allow students to incorporate artificial intelligence into the classroom and develop transferable skills.
"How can we really modernize our work and our guidance and our instruction around our Career and Technical Education courses so that we can prepare students for jobs of the future?" Hole said. "That's a really big focus on what we're doing, and how we're doing it is really envisioning what we are preparing students to be able to do when they graduate."
According to the district, the lack of centralized options in previous years meant there was little standardization of curriculum, equipment and training or support from HISD's Central Office to ensure courses complied with federal and state requirements.
"We'll ensure there's high quality curriculum and experiences designed into that coursework that will ensure it's aligned to the future of work," Hole said. "We're centrally funding all of the CTE teachers that will teach in those particular programs of study just to support our campuses and ... add these to their existing offerings."
The Texas Education Agency lists the descriptions of all the programs of study that districts can offer during the upcoming school year, along with the approved courses, aligned industry-based certifications and degrees, jobs and wages that are aligned with the program.
According to the TEA, the entrepreneurship program teaches students how to launch businesses, manage daily operations and analyze management structures, while the health informatics program focuses on exposing students to the management of patient information in the health care field, including writing and interpreting medical reports.
In the networking systems program of study, students will work on designing information networks, analyzing data processing challenges and improving computer systems. The distribution, logistics and warehousing program teaches students how to manage daily warehousing operations and logistics personnel, according to the TEA.
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