New Rice-HISD consortium aims to close socioeconomic gaps in Houston education

Rice University:
B.J. Almond
713-348-6770
balmond@rice.edu

HISD:
Jason Spencer
713-556-6390
jspence3@houstonisd.org

New Rice-HISD consortium aims to close socioeconomic gaps in Houston education
Laura and John Arnold Foundation contributes $1.3 million

Rice University and the Houston Independent School District (HISD) are developing a consortium to collaborate on research aimed at closing socioeconomic achievement gaps in Houston elementary and secondary education, officials announced today. The Laura and John Arnold Foundation is supporting the effort with a $1.3 million grant.

The grant will be used to create the Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC), which will undertake a rigorous research agenda aimed at understanding and meeting the needs of local education leaders. The main goal is to produce research findings that will lead to more effective and meaningful programs so that all students, regardless of their background and socioeconomic status, have equal opportunities in the classroom.

“An important part of Rice’s commitment to the city of Houston is helping to improve K-through-12 education,” Rice President David Leebron said. “This new consortium promises to bring rigorous research to the task of helping our educators achieve the best learning outcomes for our students, who are the future of this city.

“We’re grateful to our Rice trustee, Laura, and her husband, John, for providing such generous support for the consortium.”

The consortium will be housed at Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research and will include an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students from sociology, political science, history, psychology, computer science at Rice and the University of Houston.

“We know that the first step toward closing the achievement gap is putting an effective teacher in every classroom,” said HISD Superintendent Terry Grier. “HISD is grateful to the Laura and John Arnold Foundation for its ongoing generous support of HISD’s Effective Teachers Initiative and for this new research partnership with Rice University.”

HERC plans to create partnerships between researchers and K-12 practitioners to evaluate the effectiveness of HISD programs and identify ways to better help educators.

“Rather than pursue research solely because it might be of interest intellectually, we want to be sure the education research we produce is useful for local public schools,” said Ruth L